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.

Concrete Sculpture

The next phase from Georgesco's Wood Sculptures was to use one of his Wood Floor Pieces from 1973 and stand it upright on a 12' x 12' x 3' thick piece of Steel Plate with holes drilled into it to accommodate steel re-bars, which were latter welded in place. The wood floor piece had become the first mold for what was to be Georgesco's first Concrete Column. The wooden floor piece which was now standing vertical on the steel plate was siliconed in place to prevent the now to be mold from leaking. The steel re-bars were carefully fitted inside the now first half of the wooden mold. After the the re-bar was fitted a second half of the mold was constructed from 3/4" inch plywood and fitted and silconed in place, the mold was held together with bar clamps.

The ceilings in Georgesco's Venice, California Studio were 10' tall so the pieces which stood 119" tall were set under a recessed skylight to allow room for the concrete to be poured into the top of the mold. The finished Columns were only 1" shy of touching the ceilings when completed. A custom formula of concrete was prepared with pea gravel to accommodate the tight fitting tolerances between the re-bar and the mold. A minimum of 1.5" of concrete is the minimum tolerance for reinforced concrete. Of course Acrylic additives were used with the Portland Cement Formula for added strength an flexibility. Latter pieces used Formica which was laminated to the concrete molds to produce a glass like finish similar to marble and vibrated with a special concrete vibrator to eliminate any air pockets.

This was beginning of a new series of sculptures in concrete which evolved from their first relatives "The Wooden Floor Piece Series". This is how a artist can become prolific in his work. The artist must simply allow the work to speak and with a Vocabulary of Shapes in place the works begin to evolve on a journey of their own. This Series of Concrete Columns and Tripods was the catalyst to catapult Georgesco into the Top Collections in Los Angeles and New York. The first exhibition of these Modern Contemporary Sculptures was at Newspace Gallery, in Los Angeles 1976. The exhibition was deemed as a overnight success in 1976, and in 1977 William Wilson, critic from the Los Angeles Times wrote, " Georgesco's work looks so solved, almost smugly knowledgeable about its own ability to push the Art Worlds Masterpiece button." These works as similar to their counter part the "Wooden Floor Pieces Series" standing vertically on end is a great example of how a vocabulary can evolve without being starched into its own formula.