CLEVELAND HEIGHTS Artist, Sebring native, turns 100

Schreckengost, who turns 100 today, awaits his next design inspiration.
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS (AP) -- Viktor Schreckengost, a prolific designer whose works ranging from toys, ceramics and paintings to dinnerware and trucks have touched countless lives, expects his next inspiration to come at any time.
"I'll probably do it when I get there," Schreckengost says with a chuckle when asked what he would like to create for his 100th birthday today. "I'll know what to do. I'll know what I need."
Schreckengost, a Sebring native now hunched over a bit and hard of hearing, always seemed to know what to create by responding to needs -- like improving the ride of a child's wagon or making user-friendly tableware with an artistic flair.
"It's function. That's what I was always attracted to," says Schreckengost, as he sits in the sunny studio of his rambling home crammed with design samples, letters, paintings, exhibit schedules, yellow magazine clippings and boxed dinnerware.
He has approached his 100th birthday with the same functional outlook that has been a hallmark of his work. "I don't know that I have any birthday plans -- just keep on living," says Schreckengost, who remains largely unknown outside the industrial design community because of his aversion to self-promotion.
And to what does he attribute the longevity of his design appeal and his life? "I think I've always avoided anything that would interfere with a good life, over-extension of needs -- trying to keep it simply enough so I can absorb it, do it, enjoy it."
Celebration
To mark his birthday, more than 130 galleries and museums throughout the United States are participating in a "National Centennial Exhibition" highlighting his works, including his alma mater, the Cleveland Institute of Art, which displayed his student works from 1925-29.
His artistic creations include paintings, sketches, sculptures and famed New Yorker ceramics that caught the eye of Eleanor Roosevelt. His industrial designs include millions of bicycles sold by Sears, iconic children's pedal wagons, lawn chairs, sit-down lawn mowers, American Limoges dinnerware -- all with eye-catching flair.
"I tried to get to the bottom of the thing first, not a surface treatment," he says. "You get to the basic form first and then the color and texture and all the other stuff added to it so it becomes very complicated, even though it appears simple."
His design work and teaching career at the institute both took a similar approach, he says. "It starts with the basic idea that you're trying to project: What are the devices? What are the shapes? The lumps -- what are they? What are the materials, the shine?"
Schreckengost leans forward to rotate his desktop sculpture of a bigheaded moose with droopy eyes. "They become real. Look at those eyes," he says.
His advice to his students over the years?
"First of all the subject: What is it? Is it human? Is it animal or what? Is it a plant? Is it a material of some sort? That is the first thing you have to develop is the means of the structure of it. Then you can make it any shape you want, but unless it has the right texture to it, it doesn't work. It's the textures and color and lightness or darkness of it."
Schreckengost has a busy travel schedule to mark his birthday, including a trip to New York. He works with his wife of 15 years, Gene, 70, and small staff on gallery business matters and he still finds time to occasionally visit Sebring.
Upbringing
He remembers growing up in Sebring and, in a rare bit of bragging, recalls a teacher marveling over his drawing skills, taking the items to faculty meetings and eventually bringing him along to show off his work. "They were always so kind and encouraging," he says.
His father worked in Sebring's ceramics business, and the young Schreckengost quickly developed the routine of sketching zoo animals, making clay molds and painting them, sometimes experimenting with the colors and exaggerating odd features.
"Whether it was a monkey or a cow or a giraffe or whatever, I just loved to remind people of the peculiarity of that thing," he says. "I could look at an animal and go home and do it."
His legacy includes generations of students who became designers who shaped the output of industrial America in the post-World War II era.
"Viktor was way ahead of his time, straddling fine art and rational design," said Bruce Claxton, 58, a 1971 institute alumnus who studied under Schreckengost. He now puts that to work as senior director of design integration for Motorola Inc. in Plantation, Fla., trying, for instance, to make firefighter radios more user-friendly in a smoky environment.
"Viktor showed us how to get a buzz on about life. He was so enthused. I think another word I would use is passion for design," Claxton said. "Not to be corny, but he's a real Renaissance man."
Earl Bateman, who sells Schreckengost items from his Manhattan gallery, calls him a modern-day Leonardo with broad impact. "Everything he has done over his entire career has been part of the popular culture," he says. "His work spans so many styles. He didn't focus on being a fine artist but he created fine art."
Schreckengost won't complicate his formula for a visitor, carefully detailing a love for the basics, like sizing up a blade of grass. "What makes it happen, stands out," he says.