User:DZaller/sandbox

= Artist Name = Joe Artist (b. 1956) is a nationally and internationally exhibited American artist, educator, writer, and arts administrator who has worked in Los Angeles since the early 1980s. His works in painting and sculpture are included in dozens of public and private collections and have been featured in numerous books, catalogs, articles, and reviews. He has contributed to the primary literature on art and design in higher education, has provided academic and institutional leadership for Otis College of Art and Design12, and has consulted for other leading art and design schools.

Life and Education
The grandson of Viennese émigré composer and USC professor Ernest Kanitz, and son of composer and author William Lavender and historical researcher Mary Lavender, Randall was raised in a creative household that allowed him to follow from an early age a natural proclivity toward artmaking. He took art classes at Every Woman's Village (Van Nuys, California) and at Riverside Art Museum (Riverside, California) in the 1960s and 1970s. While at John W. North High School (Riverside, California), he spent countless hours in the ceramics studio before moving on to California State University, Fullerton, where he studied clay and glassblowing with ceramic sculptor Jerry Rothman. Lavender earned a B.A. in Ceramics in 1979, and an M.F.A. in Sculpture in 19811,12,14 under mentor Roland Reiss at Claremont Graduate University (Claremont, California).

Following graduate school, Lavender and his fellow student, sculptor John Frame, joined with architectural designer Eve Steele and artist/building contractor Lynn Roylance to develop a 14,000sf artists-in-residence leasehold project in downtown Los Angeles (the Firestone Building).2 Soon afterwards, Lavender accepted a position at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.1 In 1983 he returned to LA, where he and Frame moved to adjoining studios in the Santa Fe Art Colony, creating a shared wood-shop between them. Today, Lavender lives and works in West Los Angeles.