Concrete and Stainless Steel Sculptures

After taking several years off from making art I had moved into the Art Deco, "Desmond's" Building in the Mid Wilshire Area of Los Angeles Where I began doing sculpture studies for a new updated series of Concrete and Stainless Steel Columns. These New Contemporary Art pieces would be started in a smaller scale in expanded cement and aluminium and were exhibited at Hoffman Borman Gallery in Santa Monica along with Richard Sera in 1988. The lease on the "Desmond's" Studio had doubled around 1989 when Ace Gallery leased the whole 30,000 square feet of the 2nd floor of this building for their new Modern Art Gallery. Due to this improvement in the building, when my 3 year lease was up it had doubled forcing me to move farther East to Downtown Los Angeles on Olympic and Slauson. The ceilings in this new studio were 20 feet plus so I began doing very large "Concrete and Stainless Steel" on Steel Tubular columns, some without the tubular columns, from 8 ft. to 16 feet high. These pieces were fairly ambitious as few Galleries had ceilings tall enough to house such tall works.

This series was a vast improvement over my first "Concrete Columns" from the 70's. The construction was of a completely new engineered system. Instead of the columns being conceived in a X pattern from the top view with four opposing faceted sides, I looked at the X top view as where stainless Steel rails would be welded in place to steel re-bars in opposing faceted sides. This time the metal skeleton would become the structure for the wooden molds to be clamped to the stainless rails creating a column that was more durable, had protected edges and was more streamlined than its preciser from the 70's. It was also the opening of a new additions to my Vocabulary as the shapes on each side of the sculpture was created by connecting the opposing edges of 2 facets from all 4 points. In a way you could say I took facets and had simply gone to 3/4 view on each side compared to their block like predecessors.

This series took more than 3 years to complete and during this time I found that my rent was bleeding me dry. I decided to move to a equally large space for half the money in a all Black neighborhood known as South Central. It was funny when I would walk to the corner Liquor Store for cigarettes I would often be stopped by the police , who would ask if I was lost, being one of the few White people in the neighborhood.

After completing around 8 fairly monumental "Concrete and Stainless Steel Columns" I was picked up by The Jan Turner Gallery and had my first One Man show again in quite a few years. I had gotten myself in several group shows along the way but Jan Turner was the next dealer to give me a shot at a Solo Show again in 1990 on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. My name had kind of dried up after leaving the Art Scene for 5 years but I was to fight on, the Art Scene had grown so much during these years that it was almost like starting over.
I remained in South Central for around 6 years and during this time I returned to Newspace Gallery after Jan Turner retired.
I had met a beautiful Dutch girl during this time and got married. The only problem being she did not drive a car and worked for a fashion designer in Venice. She would have to walk through the streets of South Central every morning to get the Bus to go to her job in Venice. One day some Black Girls started throwing rocks at her from off the train tracks. This was a sign that it was time to move again.
We had gotten in the habit of taking weekend trips once or twice a month and one of these trips we went to Palm Springs. I was no stranger to this town as my father was a Architect and had worked their in the 50's and 60's. We were on our way to San Diego from Palm Springs and my wife had picked up a Real Estate Brochure. She began reading off large properties with new homes for $50,000, $60,000 and even $40,000. We had looked at possible studios to buy in Long Beach, San Pedro and even Boyle Heights, but these places were at least $185,000 in a bad neighborhood. Needless to say I turned the car around and we checked into the Hotel 6 in Palm Springs. The next morning we went to the first Real Estate office we could find. I told the Realtor I was a sculptor and needed a place that was remote enough to not bother neighbors with the grinding I did when working on my sulptures. He showed us a beautiful New Home with Tile Roof on 1/4 acre for $59,000 in a area known as "B Bar H Ranch". The place was perfect and I could not talk my wife into looking at anymore homes, so purchased the house on the spot and moved to the out skirts of Palm Springs, in 1995. Needless to say the old tried and true reoccurred and after some time the artist started showing up in the neighboring communities such as Ed Moses and Zittel with her "High Desert Test Site". Just goes to show that where the artist go to find cheap rent, always ends up drawing more artist and eventually the prices go up and the ones left out must search out new areas. Unfortunately at this time in 2008 most areas have been developed and I feel sorry for the young artist to come, as real estate and studio's are now so expensive that I am wondering how the next generation will survive. Anyway this is how I ended up in the desert and find L.A. to be night mare after spening almost 45 years there. The overpopulation, high rents and grid lock, is such a contrast to where I am now. I don't regret moving to the desert for a minute.