His hair is now graying and thinning on top and he is no longer
employed by print powerhouse Rolling Stone magazine, but San Juan
Bautista resident Futzie Nutzle says life is better than ever for
an artist committed to bringing his view of life to the public
through pictures.
San Juan Bautista – His hair is now graying and thinning on top and he is no longer employed by print powerhouse Rolling Stone magazine, but San Juan Bautista resident Futzie Nutzle says life is better than ever for an artist committed to bringing his view of life to the public through pictures.
Futzie, known to the IRS as Bruce Kleinsmith, made a name for himself in the 1970s when he nabbed a job as one of Rolling Stone’s first cartoonists to have his work displayed on the letter’s page.
His drawings, which he described as a “sparse, spontaneous, aggravated way of thinking” that never had a constant character or theme, graced the magazine’s pages for five years.
Although his time at Rolling Stone ostensibly was his claim to fame as an artist, he believes the work he’s doing now is the best he’s done in his life.
While he still paints out of his studio in San Juan Bautista – mostly various portraits of the Mission San Juan Bautista – he is also focused on publishing three books of his work and running his antique shop Fool’s Gold with his wife, Halina. He also displays his work, some of which is for sale, on the walls of the Aromas and San Juan libraries for anyone who’s interested.
But fame has never been something he yearned for – which is why he has a policy of no pictures of his face appearing in any publication – or money, for that matter.
“It’s never been about the money, but I can’t brag about that,” he said. “Most people have gotten property by now – I’ve never been interested in that. I’ve always had other stuff to do.”
That other stuff included creating a multitude of political paintings over the years, starting an underground newspaper in Santa Cruz in the late 1960s where he developed his pen name, and publishing cartoons in a well-known Japanese publication for more than 10 years.
Kleinsmith, who grew up in Ohio and moved to California in the 1960s, penned Nutzle when he and three friends started the underground newspaper The Balloon in Santa Cruz in 1966. At the time, Santa Cruz was being taken over by developers and Kleinsmith and his friends drew politically subversive cartoons expressing their dislike of the corporate take-overs, he said.
After several years of using his Futzie alter-ego, he decided he liked it so much he’d keep it.
But his new name was the only thing sophomoric about his work. In 1975, while visiting friends at Rolling Stone, he just happened to have some of his work make its way into the right people’s hands and landed a full-time cartoonist spot. While he started off drawing other people’s ideas, he worked his way into submitting his own thoughts on politics, social consciousness and the state of affairs in America.
He never used a constant character like “Peanuts” or “Garfield,” but drew whatever interested him at the time.
“It was doing something familiar and putting a twist on it – like a piano with a V8 engine instead of keys,” he said.
And although he did it for five years before his “silent five-year contract” ran out, the experience was hard to describe, he said.
“The most interesting thing is to look back on those times and realize how much progress we were making as a culture at that time. People were still interested in art and music,” he said. “There was respect and negotiation between people a lot more than now. Now I’m not sure about the importance of art.”
When he lost his position at Rolling Stone, he traveled to Japan to visit friends and, again, his work found its way onto the right desks at the Japan Times. The English-language paper published his work from 1985 to 1998.
It was during that time that he moved to San Juan Bautista, married his wife, who became the San Juan Bautista Chamber of Commerce executive director last year, and went into seclusion of a sort.
But he recently started having small-scale art shows again and is pleased his mind is still fresh and he’s never given in to conforming with the main-stream idea of art.
“I haven’t imposed rules on myself,” he said. “I’ve stuck to my guns and stayed on subject.”
Erin Musgrave covers public safety for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or
em*******@fr***********.com
