Harold Balasz
American, born 1928, died 2017
Celebrated Spokane, Washington-based artist Harold Balazs created abstract sculptures and public art installations in a variety of materials. Balazs's family moved to Spokane in the 1940s. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1951 from Washington State College (now Washington State University) in Pullman, Eastern Washington. Many of his works are prominently featured in Spokane's public spaces. He was honored with a Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 1988. Balazs continued to produce artworks into his late eighties.
In Seattle, Mr. Balazs’ works include the dramatic metal sculpture near the entrance to the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building at 915 Second Ave., commissioned in 1976 for the federal General Services Administration. Untitled, the work, resembling a flying heap of machine parts, is made from sheet copper, and rests on a base of brick and concrete. His work of enameled steel panels, “Rhododendrons,” was at the Kingdome before its demolition, and today graces the Fourth Avenue facade of the entrance to the King County Administration Building.
Mr. Balazs was born in 1928 and grew up in Westlake, Ohio. His mother enrolled him in art classes in Cleveland when he was 11 or 12, and according to a Washington State Magazine interview in 2014, that’s where he first encountered enamel works by Ohio artist H. Edward Winter. “I was enamored with them,” he told the magazine. “I said, ‘I’m going to do that one day.’ And I did.” After his family moved to Spokane in the 1940s, he enrolled at Washington State College and earned a fine-arts degree. He graduated in 1951 and started selling enameled jewelry in Spokane.. Soon his work attracted the attention of local architects who embraced a midcentury modern aesthetic starting in the 1950s, and they began incorporating his work in their designs.
In a 2016 interview with The Spokesman-Review, Mr. Balazs said he started selling work while still in college.
“A gang of us formed a club and auctioned off our watercolors and drawings to earn a little change. I also did posters for dances and fraternity functions and made jewelry. And I connected with (Spokane home-furnishings retailer) Joel Ferris while I was still in college, and he introduced me to buyers in Seattle and Portland.”
That passion to create, he told the paper, never waned. “Never … never. I still have to go out to my shop every day, even if just to walk around in the debris.” That workshop was famously messy. It also was the kind of place that drew young artists who happily took up Mr. Balazs on the offer to come out and make stuff. “If he liked stuff a young artist was doing, he would invite him up to his studio to work with him. That’s how he became known as ‘Uncle Harold,’ ” said Sue Bradley, a longtime friend and gallery owner. “He had the ability to make you smarter, more creative, a better version of yourself.. While best-known for his large sculptures, Mr. Balazs was prolific in a number of genres..
He also created pieces for dozens of churches, including a large concrete sculpture at Messiah Lutheran Church and metal pieces for St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. At Spokane’s modernist gem, St. Charles Catholic Church, Mr. Balazs’ fingerprints are everywhere, from the 17-foot-tall welded black metal sculpture of St. Charles Borromeo on the building’s facade to the 12 enamel panels on the entry doors that tell the story of Jesus’ life.
Balazs learned from his father, a metalworker, an appreciation for a well-made thing. That craftsmanship, combined with genuine emotion, results in works that have impact. “His work was always approachable and accessible because it was suffused with joy, with discovery, with invention and without any whiff of artifice, the ‘market’ or posturing,” Mitchell said.