Bruce Ariss

Bruce Wallace Ariss, Jr. was an American painter, muralist, writer, illustrator, editor as well as theater and set designer, amateur playwright and actor, and overall icon on the Monterey Peninsula, California. Ariss was born in White Salmon, Washington, the son of Bruce Wallace Ariss, a construction contractor, and Anna (née Kerwin). Ariss attended Oakland Technical High School before enrolling in the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. 1934), where he was art editor of the campus publication Occident and editor of the campus humor magazine The Pelican as well as heavyweight boxer. Bruce Ariss was a renaissance man, but primarily an artist, producing hundreds of works of art during his long career. One of his most noted works is titled Lower Alvarado Street, completed in 1936. Ariss' artwork was influenced by Diego Rivera; Ariss claimed that Rivera told him that a woodblock carving of him by Ariss was the best portrait that any artist had ever done of him. Unfortunately, many of Ariss's oil paintings and sketches were destroyed with his house in the 1990 fire. And inbetween everything else, he published one SF novel.