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| David Ireland Chronology 1930 August 25. David Kenneth Ireland, Jr., is born in Bellingham, Washington, to Martha Quam and David Kenneth Ireland. He is the third of four children. 1948 Ireland graduates from Bellingham High School. 1948–50 Ireland attends Western Washington College of Education (now Western Washington University), Bellingham, concentrating in art and mathematics. 1950–53 While attending the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC,
now California College of the Arts), Oakland, Ireland studies theater
and industrial design with Eric Stearne, printmaking with Nathan
Oliveira, and sculpture with Robert (Bob) Winston, among others.
1953 Ireland receives a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in industrial design and printmaking from CCAC. 1955–56 After serving in the U.S. Army for two years, Ireland returns to Bellingham and works as an illustrator and color coordinator for a local architect. 1956–57 Ireland travels to Europe for the first time, visiting England, Scotland, France, Switzerland, and Italy with friend Jack Rykken. During the winter, Ireland travels to Johannesburg, South Africa. He stays for approximately a year working as a draftsman for a local architectural firm and exploring southern Africa. 1958–65 Returning to Bellingham, Ireland works as an insurance broker for his father’s firm, Ireland & Bellingar. He simultaneously establishes Hunter Africa, an import business and gallery for African artifacts. 1961 Ireland marries Joanne Westford, a native of Bellingham. 1962 Son Ian is born. 1964 Daughter Shaughn is born. 1964–65 With Gene Estribou, Ireland co-films and produces an independent African wildlife film, Mara, shown in major film festivals throughout the United States.
1965–72 Ireland relocates Hunter Africa to San Francisco and settles with his family in Tiburon, just north of the city. He operates two businesses in San Francisco’s North Beach area: Hunter Africa, a wildlife design studio, and David Ireland, Ltd. Safaris, which provides wildlife photography and hunting tours to Kenya and Tanzania. He also travels worldwide. 1972 After almost 14 years, Ireland closes Hunter Africa and his safari
business, but continues to live in the San Francisco area.
1972–74 Redirecting his attention back to art, Ireland begins graduate studies at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) on the GI Bill. He focuses on printmaking; his graduate advisor is Kathan Brown, then chair of the print department. He also meets Bay Area conceptual artists, including Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, and Tom Marioni, among others. Ireland simultaneously attends Laney College, Oakland, studying plastics technology and lithography with Gerald Gooch and serving as a teaching assistant in lithography. He maintains a studio on Union Street in the old Hunter Africa storefront and begins to exhibit prints in local and national venues. 1974 Ireland receives a Master of Fine Arts degree from SFAI. After graduating, Ireland moves to New York. He completes his 94-Pound Series, in which he makes drawings every day using the contents of an ordinary 94-pound sack of dry cement. This piece is a turning point in his creative process. 1975 Ireland travels to Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. He returns to San Francisco and purchases an 1886 Victorian house at 500 Capp Street in the Mission District, which serves as his home and studio.
1976 At the invitation of Tom Marioni, founder and director of the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA), San Francisco, Ireland works on Marioni’s piece titled The Restoration of a Portion of the Back Wall, Ceiling, and Floor of the Main Gallery of the Museum of Conceptual Art, another turning point in his work. Ireland begins work on his home at 500 Capp Street with a new sense of vision. As he performs the everyday tasks of cleaning the house and stripping and sanding its surfaces, these actions and the materials that result from them become part of his art. Solo exhibition, David Ireland, opens at the Whatcom Museum of Art and History, Bellingham. Ireland exhibits paintings and prints from 1970 to 1976. 1978 First public viewing of 500 Capp Street. Ireland presents his house, including the historical remnants he uncovered during his work on the building, as an archaeological relic. Ireland receives a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Visual Artists Fellowship grant. 1978–79 On his NEA grant, Ireland travels throughout Asia. While abroad,
he designs chairs and has them fabricated in Hong Kong. 1979 Ireland purchases a house at 65 Capp Street in San Francisco and begins a major renovation. In place of the original building, he creates a two-story structure that explores the changing nature of light. 1982 First public viewing of 65 Capp Street in the exhibition David Ireland’s Houses, coordinated by Leah Levy Gallery in San Francisco. Ann Hatch purchases 65 Capp Street and establishes Capp Street Project, a nonprofit artist-in-residence and exhibition space that opens in 1983. 1983 Ireland travels to Europe and receives his second NEA Visual Artists Fellowship grant. 1984 Ireland’s first major East Coast solo exhibition, Currents: David Ireland, opens at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. 1984–85 Collaborating with Robert Wilhite and Jerry Monteith, Ireland completes a commission for Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C. Jade Garden, an apartment for visiting artists, features an interior created by Ireland and furniture by Wilhite. 1985–88 Ireland completes Inside Outside, a commission for the visitors’ waiting room at the State Reformatory in Monroe, Washington. 1986 In the first of several collaborations, Ireland designs sets and costumes for Douglas Dunn and Dancers’ performance of Dances for Men, Women, and Moving Door, at Marymount Manhattan Theater, New York, and Festival d’Automne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. 1986–87 Ireland works on Newgate, an entryway installation to a landfill preservation area at Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, San Francisco, a project with the California State Department of Parks. While artist-in-residence at the Headlands Art Center (now Headlands Center for the Arts), Sausalito, California, Ireland develops and implements a plan to revitalize the center’s main offices in Fort Barry, abandoned 1907 army barracks. With assistance from Mark Thompson, fellow artist-in-residence and project renovations manager, and 24 artist interns, nearly 4,000 square feet of derelict space are transformed into public meeting rooms. 1987 SFAI honors Ireland with the Adaline Kent Award and hosts a solo exhibition, David Ireland: Gallery as Place. Ireland receives a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant. Ireland teaches at SFAI, where he returns frequently thereafter. 1988 Ireland creates Pittcairn, a large-scale outdoor sculpture for Sculpture at the Point, a site-specific sculpture exhibition organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Partnering with architect Mark Mack, Ireland designs furniture for Headlands Center for the Arts. Ireland receives the Engelhard Award from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Ireland receives an Award in the Visual Arts from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He participates in the accompanying touring exhibition that premieres at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A ten-year survey of Ireland’s work is organized by the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery, University of California, Santa Cruz. David Ireland: A Decade Documented, 1978–1988 is also shown at the University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley (now Berkeley Art Museum), and Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine. Projects: David Ireland opens at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 1989 Ireland receives a Eureka Fellowship in sculpture from the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco, and an award from Architectural Record for the planning and design of rooms at Headlands Center for the Arts.
1990 After meeting Paco Prieto, Ireland establishes a studio in Prieto’s Oakland work complex. Ireland completes two commissions. For the Pacific Enterprises corporate office at First Interstate World Center, Los Angeles, he creates an interior wall treatment in the stairwell connecting several oors. He also collaborates with architect Frederick Fisher on an interior and structural wall treatment for Security Pacific Bank Gallery, San Francisco. Invited to help stabilize the interior of a late 19th-century powerhouse in the historical Boott Cotton Mills, along the Merrimack River in Lowell, Massachusetts, Ireland develops The Generator Room with volunteers and students. The project is never completed due to lack of funds. 1991 Ireland receives an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree from CCAC. Ireland participates in the groundbreaking ceremony for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s new building and creates an “archaeological relic” from the event.
1993 With independent curator Jane Levy Reed, Ireland travels to Skellig Michael, a remote island off the coast of Ireland. Ireland participates as a faculty member in the artist-in-residence program at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. 1993–96 Collaborating with architect Henry Moss and master craftsman John Sirois, Ireland creates the Abbot Hall Artist Apartment for the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. 1994 Solo exhibition based on the artist’s travels to Ireland, David Ireland: Skellig, opens at the Ansel Adams Center for Photography, San Francisco. 1996 Ireland travels to Italy as a Resident Visual Artist at the American Academy in Rome. 1998 The Flintridge Foundation, Pasadena, California, honors Ireland with a 1997–98 Visual Artists Award. Ireland collaborates with architect Mark Mack to design cottages for the Montalvo Center for the Arts’ artist-in-residency complex, Orchard of Artists, Saratoga, California. 1999 SFAI recognizes Ireland with an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree. Ireland completes The Big Chair, 2000 IKEA, Emeryville, California, awards a commission to Ireland for Big Chair, a twelve-foot-high steel club chair. 2003 Ireland receives a commission from his alma mater, Western Washington University, Bellingham, in partnership with the Washington State Arts Commission Art in Public Places Program. Ireland’s proposal for the university’s Outdoor Sculpture Collection is a thirteen-foot-high steel club chair. |
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