Catalogue Entry

Ever since his high school days with his friend Walter Hopps, Kauffman was interested in jazz, often attending live concerts in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, including famous venues like the Burma Lounge. By 1952 Kauffman reunited with Walter Hopps at UCLA, and they joined up with another jazz enthusiast, Jim Newman, then at in Oberlin college. They joined others in forming a venture called Concert Hall Workshop. Their stated purpose was to promote jazz at public venues. With his architecture skills, Kauffman was the one to draw the plans for a future concert hall, as well as the graphic designer for concert programs. Kauffman's architectural design for a concert venue is shown here. At this time, Kauffman said, "It was more of a Moholy-Nagy attitude, somewhere between design and architecture."

Craig Kauffman also was a co-founder of Syndell Studios, along with Hopps, Newman, Ben and Betty Bartosh, Michael Scoles and Shirley Nielsen. Syndell Studios produced the legendary “Action: Concert Hall Workshop presents Action Painting of the West Coast." Craig Kauffman designed the announcement for this, with graphics that showed Constructivist influences, and Kauffman and others show mounted the Action I show on the Santa Monica pier. Hopps was in the Army, stationed at Fort Ord, and arrived for the opening of the show and music presentation.