Monday, January 7, 2019

A Letter to Noah Purifoy


Dear Noah,

Thank you for your generosity.  Creating the free desert museum in Joshua Tree, California provided my family with the honor of experiencing your immersive art in the expanse, rather than in typical white rooms, although the sculptures would be striking there too.

Corrugated structure by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004
Having the Drinking Fountains positioned near the entrance creates a heart-breaking context for the entire collection.  Have the fountains ever had running water?  Providing drinking water at the site would cause disturbing interactions with those works.

Drinking Fountain Installation referencing "Separate but Equal" facilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal

Detail of "Colored Water Fountain," referencing "Separate but Equal"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal

How would it feel to drink there?  Privileged, outraged;  what about guilt, rebellion, spewing, and trouble...?  The fountains are a volatile work with unmistakable content.  They influenced all of my thinking as I wandered through the rest of the artworks.  Ouch.

Entropic sculpture by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

Feelings of personal and cultural devastation hung over me throughout your acreage.  These are amplified by the years of entropy, wind, and gravity that pull and twist the works to the earth in your absence.  

Figure by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

Did you intend for the gradual effects of time to continue to fashion the works?  They work with your assemblage techniques, pushing the feeling of a life endured under institutionalized degradation; not from an overt system like prison, but our culture.  My culture.

Entropic sculpture by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

As an artist I understand the joy of making, the freedom and rush as artworks come together, and how they can change by adding a new part.  I appreciate the gratification of being absorbed in creating.  

Stack of chairs by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

But I believe that we express ourselves from the abundance of our heart.  Does Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder haunt your imagery?  


Metal sculpture by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

The idea of using anything at hand to create a shelter, wiring it together, piecing…the urgency of your creation speaks of desperation, of using anything to pull life together.  

Structure by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

Ultimately, what's inside us is what we have to work with.  Your power, outrage, sorrow, compassion, and urgency, conjure up images of shanty towns, homeless encampments, southern Appalachian hovels.

Structure Interior by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

Steel sculpture by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

The metal arrangements relate the message abstractly.  As linear structures they are entropic, slouching compositions, but they communicate  social injustice as a part of the whole installation.  

Aluminum sculpture by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004
As abstractions they are dystopian; but in context with the house-like installations they are direct and real.  Dystopia is a philosophy, but your life experience takes this body of work beyond words.  

Stick sculpture by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

House structure by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004

Ground arrangement by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004
The heaps, whether stockpiles or installations that may have collapsed, are a sad but potent conclusion in themselves. 


Ground arrangement by Noah Purifoy, c. 1987-2004
Piles of stuff for future use, or trade, creates an environment of disorder.  I have seen crushing poverty operate the same way while in ministry in southern Appalachia. 





(Maybe I’m the one with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.) 



Sincerely,

James