Obituary: Upbeat Adolph Rosenblatt sculpted lunch-counter regulars

Many people who never visited, or even saw, the Oriental Pharmacy or Goldmann's lunch counters have a sense of the colorful swath of humanity who gathered there, thanks to Adolph Rosenblatt.

For his mammoth "Oriental Pharmacy Lunch Counter" (1987), Rosenblatt sculpted and painted 50 figures representing real people who ate there — artists, doctors and nurses, a pregnant woman, even his daughter, Sarah — and the waitresses who served them. He didn't include himself, but that's his rumpled blue jacket on the coat rack.

"I tried to do every person I got emanations from," Rosenblatt told Milwaukee Journal art critic James Auer in 1987.

In an essay on her husband's art, his wife, Suzanne, reported that people often left his exhibits laughing. "Perhaps it's because the gallery full of sculptures seems like a room full of people they know, scaled down in size and caught in their everyday activities. The cup of coffee is on its way to the mouth, the child is modeling with clay (while Adolph is modeling her), a man is mowing the lawn, closing a window, reading the newspaper."

Adolph Rosenblatt, who lived in Shorewood, died Feb. 16 of natural causes. He was 83.

He was the patriarch of a remarkably creative family. His wife, Suzanne, is a poet and artist. Their sons, Joshua and Eli, are visual artists, and daughter Sarah recently published her third collection of poetry.

He was born Feb. 23, 1933, in New Haven, Conn. Rosenblatt earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at the Yale School of Art and Architecture, where his mentors included the great painter Josef Albers. Rosenblatt moved in to Milwaukee in 1966 to teach art the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; he retired as a professor of art in 1999.

Rosenblatt started out painting two-dimensionally, but with a palette knife rather than brushes. The thickness of those paintings led him to sculpting in beeswax, then casting in bronze. When the cost of bronze prompted him to look for an alternative, he took inspiration from his sons' schoolboy projects and began working in clay. But he retained a painter's passionate concern with color.

"The longer one studies Rosenblatt's clay works … the more they suggest Expressionist pictures that somehow left the canvas and took on a third dimension," Milwaukee Sentinel art critic Dean Jensen wrote in 1982.

"My dad was very resilient, that's why I never thought he would die," said his daughter, Sarah. He was born with clubfeet, requiring an operation. He was also dyslexic, making academics a challenge.

Yet, Sarah said, her father was "very upbeat. He used to sing in the morning when he would get up."

Both funny and passionate about making art, when he took his children to a Brewers game, he would bring clay to sculpt people in the stands, Sarah said. Once he got so involved in sculpting at the baseball game he paid no attention to the plumber's crack he was exposing.

"He was too busy to pull up his pants," Sarah said, amused by the memory.

His playfulness was a quality that initially attracted Suzanne to him, she said. "He loved playing games and being silly."

He also loved going to the movies, which led to a sculpture even more complex than "Oriental Pharmacy Lunch Counter." Starting with visiting cousins from Israel, Rosenblatt sculpted colleagues and friends sitting in the balcony of a movie theater. By the time "My Balcony" was displayed in 1999, Rosenblatt had sculpted more than 80 people waiting for the movie to start.

"He asked people to pose with spouse or child or lover so he could get their relationship to each other. And he went out of his way to find a few people willing to pose in a two or three hour kiss," Suzanne wrote in an essay on this artwork.

Rosenblatt had dozens of one-man and group shows in Wisconsin and elsewhere. He was given a Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.

His many UWM students included Jim Rygiel, winner of three Academy Awards for special effects on the "Lord of the Rings" movies. In a 2013 interview with Duane Dudek, Rygiel credited Rosenblatt with teaching him how to "think alternatively. One of the exercises we did were one-second sketches, in which you literally drew a human figure in one second."

A public memorial will take place at noon March 26 at the UWM Zelazo Center, 2419 E. Kenwood Blvd. The family suggests memorial contributions be made to Express Yourself Milwaukee, 3331 W. Lisbon Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53208.

Jewish Museum Milwaukee will exhibit "Moments & Markers: An Adolph Rosenblatt Retrospective" beginning June 16. "Oriental Pharmacy Lunch Counter" will be one of the works on display.