- Preferred Name
Randall, Byron
- Brief Biography
1918-1999
- Nationality
American
- Occupation
Artist
- Description
Randall was an American artist primarily based on the West Coast. He moved to Oregon during early childhood, attending Salem High School and beginning his training as with classes in sculpture at the Salem Art Center. He also took painting courses from Louis Bunce and was introduced to the director of the Phillips Gallery in Washington DC, which lead to Byron's first solo exhibitions in DC and New York in 1938-9. After living in Mexico briefly and working with the Taller de Gráfica Popular (a relationship that continued through the 1960s), he returned to Salem as a teacher in the new Federal Art Center in 1941. He spent the rest of his career living and traveling between California, Mexico, Canada, Yugoslavia, and Russia. He served in the Merchant Marines in the South Pacific during WWII and worked as an artist-correspondent for Canadian World News. He established the Artist’s Guild of San Francisco and the San Francisco Graphic Arts Workshop. He married his early sculpture teacher, Helen Nelson, with whom he traveled to Mexico and had his only child, a daughter. After Helen tragically died in a car accident, Byron married Emmy-Lou Packard, a prominent printmaker who trained as a mural assistant to Diego Rivera. The pair exhibited together multiple times and influenced each other's ouevres significantly. In 1964 they produced a landmark exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Art in Moscow. Byron's final companion, Pele de Lappe was also a printmaker and is represented in the JSMA’s collection. Randall’s prolific oeuvre includes woodcuts and linoleum cuts, watercolors, oil paintings, sculptures, and multi-media works on paper. He worked until his death and exhibited internationally, including in Canada, Scotland, and Russia. His work is primarily featured in West Coast academic museums but is growing in national reach due to the recent work of his granddaughter, Laura Chrisman. Other institutions with current holdings include the Hallie Ford Museum, Salem OR; Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust; Janet Turner Print Museum, Cal State; Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco; UCI Institute and Museum; Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga University; University of Washington; Musée National des Beaux-Arts, Quebec.
