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Collage, Title unknown in The White House 1990-1993
I do not wish to be an artist, I only wish that art enables me to be.
– Noah Purifoy, 1963
Born in Snow Hill, Alabama in 1917, Noah Purifoy lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California, where he died in 2004. He received an undergraduate degree from Alabama State Teachers College in 1943 and a graduate degree from Atlanta University in 1948. In 1956, just shy of his 40th birthday, Purifoy earned a BFA degree from Chouinard, now CalArts.
His earliest body of sculpture, constructed out of charred debris from the 1965 Watts rebellion, was the basis for 66 Signs of Neon, the landmark 1966 group exhibition on the Watts riots that traveled throughout the country. As a founding director of the Watts Towers Art Center, Purifoy knew the community intimately. His 66 Signs of Neon, in line with the postwar period’s fascination with the street and its objects, constituted a Duchampian approach to the fire-molded alleys of Watts. This strategy profoundly impacted artists such as David Hammons, John Outterbridge and Senga Nengudi. For the 20 years that followed the rebellion, Purifoy dedicated himself to the found object, and to using art as a tool for social change.
In the late 1980s, after 11 years of public policy work for the California Arts Council, where Purifoy initiated programs such as Artists in Social Institutions, which brought art into the state prison system, Purifoy moved his practice out to the Mojave desert. He lived for the last 15 years of his life creating ten acres full of large-scale sculpture on the desert floor. Constructed entirely from junked materials, this otherworldly environment is one of California’s great art historical wonders.
The Artists Alley is a place where famous artists from different venues be it printed comics, webcomics, crafts, and more put their works on sale, and for a little extra: an autograph too.
I regret to say I didn't spend much time there because I was busy doing other stuff, but I can say that it was moderately sized and some of the stuff looked pretty good. Still doesn't hold a candle to Otakon's Alley though.
Aerosol Enamel Artist Wongi Wilson spraying up a wall left bare on Barbadoes St after the September 4th Christchurch earthquake.
Photo Brad Armstrong / All Rights Reserved 1998, The late Fritz Scholder Artist of Scottsdale, Photographed at Arizona State University.