REFORM- by Susanna Salk for 1stdibs
“I broke my own rule by coming here without a job,” says former actor and now California furniture impresario, Gerard O’Brien of his initial move to Los Angeles from New York with his family seven years ago. They had lived only blocks from the World Trade Center and left New York just five days prior to the towers being attacked. “I felt a huge guilt having left Manhattan, as if I had abandoned my city,” recalls O’Brien, “but California was the place to be if I was going to pursue acting.”

Going west set off a whole chain of events that changed the course of O’Brien’s career. “If you had told me then that I’d eventually be in a 5,000 square foot showroom on La Cienega Boulevard selling design, I never would have believed you,” he says. He had always wanted to have his own shop but to do so in New York was too intimidating. “I had too much respect for those who were already doing it,” says O’Brien. “Besides, what could I do there that hadn’t already been done?” But in Los Angeles, his perception and optimism shifted as he came to the realization, “I couldn’t afford to indulge in acting any longer.” After a year of getting the lay of the design land, O’Brien realized that maybe there was room in the area of post-war California Modernism. “No one was really focusing on it and I knew there were stories to tell there,” he says, “Besides, as my friends will tell you, I’ve never been adverse to risk.”

O’Brien had always been drawn to the California artist craftsmen of this time period. His point of view was influenced by the “California Design” series of catalogues that were published in conjunction with the Pasadena Art  Museum exhibitions of the same name. “Curator Eudora Moore changed the way these shows were presented and photographed,” says O’Brien. “She would take the material out of the studio and shoot it in these epic outdoor vistas of design communing with nature.  The potpourri of pieces that were showcased really inspired me. I’m an ephemera nerd who kind of latched on to this time period of design and never let go.”

With the opening of his Reform gallery in 2002, O’Brien sought to showcase the California production furniture masters including Greta Grossman, Maurice Martine, and Paul Tuttle along side artisan crafted works just as the Pasadena exhibitions had. A turning point was his exhibit “CA Design” which, for the first time in decades, celebrated the California artists who reigned between 1956 -1976. Masters such as Otto Natzler, Sam Maloof, and Harrison McIntosh made the pilgrimage to O’Brien’s gallery, and he was ecstatic to have his heroes gathered under his own roof. “It was astonishing to celebrate their work and see that it was relevant all over again,” says he, “I knew I had to make the core of my business be about them.” Julius Schulman was commissioned by O’Brien to document the exhibit.  Schulman also photographed Reform’s second major exhibition: “Rudolph Schindler, The Gingold Commissions”.  O’Brien admits,“The opportunity to have this icon of the California Modernist movement document these shows, was an opportunity I could not pass up.”

“I’m definitely more a collector than anything else, and I want people to know they can count on me to always have unique pieces.”   It has been his championing of forgotten masters like J.B. Blunk, and Arthur Espenet Carpenter that led to Reform being the only California-based gallery invited to participate in the Design Miami/Basel Fair. But this successful showcaser of design is nowhere near ready to rest on his laurels. Says O’Brien: “I still have plenty of stories to tell.”
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