Noah Purifoy - Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture

 

 "The Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture sits on ten-acres in the Mojave Desert foothills near the Mojave National Preserve, an austere expanse of scrubby desert and jagged mountains established in 1994 as part of the California Desert Protection Act. The site holds the home, studio, and sculpture park of renowned assemblage artist Noah Purifoy (1917-2004) who lived there from 1989 until his death.
Purifoy first gained acclaim for his participation in the 1966 traveling group exhibition 66 Signs of Neon, which he organized with fellow artist Judson Powell. The groundbreaking show with work by eight artists was organized in response to the August 1965 racial riots in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. Purifoy, a cofounder and first director of the city’s Watts Towers Arts Center, had watched the riots from the Center’s doors and the work that he created for the show was constructed out of rubble that he salvaged in the aftermath. The experience had a profound influence on him, which he recounted in the exhibition catalogue: “Judson and I, while teaching at the Watts Towers Art Center, watched aghast the rioting, looting and burning during the August happening. And while the debris was still smoldering, we ventured into the rubble like other junkers of the community, digging and searching, but unlike others, obsessed without quite knowing why.” The event marked a turning point in Purifoy’s work and fundamentally shaped his career. He viewed art as a vehicle for transformation, stating that he simply wanted to be known as an artist who made art for the sake of change and who strove to understand art and its role in the world."(tclf.org)

 

Noah Purifoy - Outdoor Desert Art Museum

Noah S. Purifoy (August 17, 1917 – March 5, 2004) was an African-American visual artist and sculptor, co-founder of the Watts Towers Art Center, and creator of the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum.He lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California. Purifoy was the first African American to enroll in Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts) as a full-time student and earned his BFA in 1956, just before his fortieth birthday. He is best known for his assemblage sculpture, including a body of work made from charred debris and wreckage collected after the Watts Riots of August 1965.Wikipedia
"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."(.noahpurifoy.com)