L.A. artists discuss 'What LACMA means to me' By JESSICA GELT APRIL 10, 2015

For more than 50 years the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has

captured the imaginations of some of L.A.'s most beloved artists, often

speaking to the vibrant complexity of the city they call home. It has also

provided fertile ground for grand daydreams and fodder for lifelong

inspiration.

A handful of them share what it has meant to them, in written comments

and interviews.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

John Outterbridge (with daughter Tami Outterbridge) on his childhood in

Greenville, N.C., and a tribute piece to his parents that is part of

LACMA's permanent collection titled "John Ivery's Truck: Hauling Away

the Traps and Saving the Yams":

Many would have called my father a handyman, a jack-of-all-trades, a

junkman. I'll call him a "collector." He collected the things of life and its

experiences, and his truck was that receptacle. "John Ivery's Truck" is a

genuine characterization of what builds an individual and the idea that

life itself is a chunk of raw "poetic-ness" that's constantly in the process

of being molded, shaped, purified. It's about my father and how unique,

how tough, how courageous, how consistent he was. How complete he

ended up being in spite of his circumstances.

My father oiled that old truck, and he kept it running; he kept

it humming. But more than that he oiled and anointed the individuals

who came into contact with him — like me and my brothers and sisters

and even my mother, Olivia, who shared his courage and so much of

what he represented. He was a man who — when my mother could no

longer stand or speak — came home each night and got down on his

knees to whisper prayers in her ear. How do you kneel on 70-year-old

knees? That's character.

"Hauling away the traps" speaks to the challenges that we live with and

yet we find a way to shoulder them. It's about the colorful baggage and

burdens we carry and how the heart is that carrier. "Saving the yams"

says that no matter what my circumstances, I will always find an

opportunity to share the "poetic-ness" of life. Like yams, life is a tasty

edible thing that we can devour.

That piece is more than a hunk of wood. It's also the carriage of my first

museum experience because, as a kid, we never had a museum. But we

did have a backyard that was arrayed with the precious baubles of the

so-called junk trade. It was fragrant with the sweet smells of the

lemongrass and red clay that my siblings and I ate. It was decorated with

glass bottles and colorful rags, with rusty old machines and the wooden

Coca-Cola crates that we sat on with our too-short legs as we learned to

shift gears in "John Ivery's Truck." Our yard was alive with inanimate

objects — and living things too — like the goat my father brought home

because that's how someone had seen fit to pay him that day. Castoffs,

what was junk to others, became resource, conversion, meaningful

substance.

Images of that backyard museum still dance in my head. They play out

in my thoughts and in my work. The idea that life — that art — has the

audacity to be anything that it needs to be at a given time. And now a

piece of that, a piece of John Ivery and Olivia, lives because my daddy's

truck roared right into LACMA and parked itself!

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Ed Moses on young love and paintings made of red:

I loved the dioramas, I was in love with this girl, she was really cute, and

I had a pair of white buck shoes for my trip to Hawaii, so I walked

around the rail. And I wore them on the field trip and everyone

commented on my shoes, and suddenly Neva Jean Carpenter noticed me,

who I'd always had a crush on.

This was in 1939 — my first memory of a trip to Exposition Park. I saw

giant dinosaur skeletons. Expo Park had historical paintings as well as

dioramas before the Wilshire building.

I remember a couple of Picassos captured my attention along with

various Renaissance painters.

The biggest challenge I faced at LACMA was 26 years later staging "The

Red Paintings." That show was curated by Stephanie Barron under

Maurice Tuchman's direction. "The Red Paintings" were coincidentally

installed as my graduate thesis exhibition at UCLA. Prior to that there

were annual events and the invitational at Exposition Park, which was

the first time my work was exhibited at LACMA. Billy Al [Bengston] was

in that invitational, too. Both of us were feeling mighty fine since that

was the only game in town for painters like us.

The Ed Kienholz show [in 1966] was, of course, great — especially

"Back Seat Dodge." He insisted that they would charge and he would

split the fee; everybody was outraged at his audacity. People lined up for

two blocks to see that exhibition.

(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Judy Fiskin on a mother's love and art for children:

I have a memory of going to LACMA as a young teenager with my mother

when it was in Exposition Park. I remember it being in the basement,

and I have a persistent but fuzzy memory of seeing a Van Gogh show

there. This would have been around 1950, and I haven't been able to

verify whether there actually was a Van Gogh show there around that

time. [The show was from December 1958 to Jan. 18, 1959.] My

mother was an art history major in college, and she went to whatever art

there was to see in Los Angeles in those days and often took me with

her. After my brother and I left for college, she was a docent at LACMA

for 17 years.

In 2001 when I staged a video installation at LACMA called "What We

Think About When We Think About Ships," I didn't think I could make

art that children would relate to. But I came into my installation one day

and there were three little boys inside, each with their eyes up against

one of the peepholes, looking at the video screens, reciting the action in

a way that told me that this was not their first viewing, cracking each

other up and then starting over again when the film cycled back to the

beginning.

Another time I came in and a little girl was twirling in front of LACMA's

Fitz-Hugh Lane painting of a sailing ship, with her skirt billowing up

around her. I felt those were among the best responses I'd ever gotten for

my work — just expressions of unmeditated pleasure, unlike any reaction

you'd get from an adult. Also, just before I was asked to be in the show,

someone had told me that as a child they had made drawings in the

street with glue and then set the glue on fire. I thought about this for

days, feeling miffed that I had missed that as a child. When I started

thinking about ways to represent ships, I realized that I could make a

drawing of a boat in glue and light that on fire, and put it in the piece,

and that was really satisfying.

LACMA used to have an art rental gallery. People could come in and rent

a piece of art for a certain number of weeks at very low cost. The work of

"emerging artists" was chosen for this program, and when my work was

picked I felt I was on my way as an artist, even though no one rented my

photograph.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

Patssi Valdez on youthful striving and a trip to Oz:

I saw a David Hockney exhibit at LACMA in the late '80s. I had been

struggling as a painter, and one of my weakest points was color theory.

Anyway, I attended this show with a friend and I said, "Oh, my God, I

think I could do something like this," and this friend of mine thought it

was the funniest thing she had ever heard. In a way it felt like a dare. I

proceeded to make my first successful body of paintings after seeing that

exhibit and that sort of launched my painting career.

Before that I was in Asco [a Chicano artist collective based in East L.A.]

and a Chicano art group that was older than us was having a show at

LACMA. We were 10 years younger and we were [upset]. We were like,

"How about us?" I remember crashing that opening. I can't remember

what I wore, but we showed up in these extreme costumes because we

thought we should have been included.

As a very young artist I used to feel a lot of angst and I was very

rebellious. I remember thinking, "How in the world am I going to get

inside of this institution? When is the door going to open for an artist like

myself?"

It almost felt like an impossibility, but I was determined that I was going

to get in there somehow. That happened 40 years later. At one point I

even forgot about it — I went about my career and didn't think about it.

When I was finally approached to exhibit there I took it with a grain of

salt. That was the Asco exhibit in 2011.

As an individual artist I'm still waiting. Well, I don't think I'm really

waiting, but I'm hoping that one day I'll be accepted inside those doors

with my own work, and I'm hoping that will happen in this lifetime. It's a

county facility so I'm thinking the collection should be more diverse. I

was disappointed that after the Asco exhibit they didn't purchase or

collect one of the pieces from that show.

It was the only museum we had way back when, and it was extremely

special as far as I was concerned — it was like reaching Oz. So I guess

I'm still on the yellow brick road.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Alexis Smith on the museum's evolution:

I was part of the group that started MOCA, and when we began that

initiative LACMA was the only art museum in Los Angeles. Now that we

have so many high-profile museums, it's hard to imagine what it was like

when LACMA was the only game in town. It was important to establish

MOCA as a voice for contemporary art in Los Angeles, but since then,

LACMA has evolved more and more to incorporate contemporary art into

the program. LACMA is a primary museum for Los Angeles with its broad

program of art from around the globe and through the ages. Michael

Govan's initiative to develop the campus and add major outdoor works

has given it even more visibility as a thriving place for art in Los Angeles.

LACMA has several of my works in its permanent collection representing

different media and different periods of time. A few years ago, LACMA

selected my piece "Sea of Tranquillity" (1972) to print as a postcard.

The funds for the acquisition were put together by a small group of local

art collectors who purchased the work for LACMA. It means a lot to me

that these friends came together to support my work and that LACMA

selected this piece for a card that is still in print to benefit the museum.

(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Ed Ruscha on a day to remember:

The 1965 LACMA opening gave the city a star-spangled jolt, and no one

had any idea where it would lead us, which made everyone into idealists.