A BOOK FLOWN

Noah Purifoy, internationally renowned assemblage sculptor, died on March 5 in an accident at his home in Joshua Tree, age 86. Noah Purifoy said he would like to be remembered as an artist who made art for the sake of change and strove to understand art and its role in the world. He always said: "I hope my work provides inspiration for a person to do today what they couldn't do yesterday, no matter what it is. That's art. That's the fundamental creative process and it's something that changes people and empowers them." Artists and friends in Joshua Tree are planning a memorial event at Noah's art site in March. The foundation will announce its plans at a later date. For further information and details, contact the foundation office at (213) 382-7516. The Noah Purifoy Foundation, www.noahpurifoy.com, established in 1998 to preserve Purifoy's outdoor desert art museum in Joshua Tree, will continue to move forward and ensure his legacy as an artist and creative genius.

Noah Purifoy was born in Snow Hill Alabama on August 17, 1917. His parents encouraged him to pursue an education and he graduated from High School in 1935 and continued his studies at Alabama State Teachers College in Montgomery where he majored in history and social studies and earned a B.S. degree in Social Work in 1939. Due to the social and political realities of the times, he never got an opportunity to teach history or social studies but instead taught wood shop at a High School in Tuscaloosa from 1939-42. At the advent of the Second World War, he enlisted in the Navy and served in the South Pacific as a Seebee until 1946. Upon his honorable discharge from the armed forces he promptly enrolled at Atlanta University and in 1948, received a M.S.W. in Social Work. For the next few years Mr. Purifoy worked as a Social Worker, first in Cleveland at the Cuyahooga County Child Welfare Board, and then he moved to Los Angeles and landed a position at the Los Angeles County Hospital. Almost immediately, Noah became frustrated and disillusioned with the nature of Social Work and abruptly quit his job and enrolled at the Chinouard School of Art. His serious focus on art making began in 1951 and by 1954, when he received a B.A. in art, he had begun to formulate his ideas about the relationship of art to self, community, society, and culture.

Purifoy co-founded and directed the Watts Towers Art Center in the 1960s. The fires of the Watts rebellion in August 1965 dramatically forged a new direction and heightened awareness. Purifoy along with artist/musician Judson Powell ventured into the riot-torn streets of Watts and collected charred wood and melted neon signs. Purifoy then recruited six other professional artists, consciously including whites, and created sixty-six separate works of art. The exhibition entitled "Sixty-six Signs of Neon" was both an ambassador for community arts and an eyewitness to an inflamed community's anger. It traveled to nine universities in California from 1966-1968. When the tour ended, Purifoy tried to find a permanent home for the works without success. A majority of the works returned to the junk heap with the exception of Purifoy's "Sir Watts," a piece that became emblematic of the Watts community rising from the ashes to redefine itself and its aspirations. In the catalog for "Sixty-six Signs of Neon, " Purifoy shared his philosophy of art: "We wish to establish that there must be more to art than the creative act, more than the sensation of beauty, ugliness, color, form, light, sound, darkness, intrigue, wonderment, uncanniness, bitter, sweet, black, white, life and death. There must be therein a ME and a You, who is affected permanently. Art of itself is of little value if in its relatedness it does not effect change…a change in the behavior of human beings… through communication…and communication is not possible without the establishment of equality among individuals, one to one." During this period, Purifoy, who held two academic degrees in social work and one in fine art, taught and influenced many fellow artists among them David Hammons and John Outterbridge. Together with Purifoy these artists took art into the streets and to community people.

In 1976, then Governor Jerry Brown appointed Purifoy as a founding Member of the California Arts Council (CAC) where he served for eleven years. There he helped design, administer and fund Artists in the Schools, Artists in Communities and Artists in Social Institutions. The CAC was the first to adopt these innovative programs. They continue to serve as a role model for the rest of the country and remain funded today. In 1987, Purifoy resigned from the Council and resumed making art, moving from the dense urban Los Angeles scene to the spacious rural community of Joshua Tree, California at the invitation of artist Debbie Brewer. He went there primarily because he wanted to do an earth piece and could not find adequate space in Los Angeles. It took him ten years to save enough money to do the earth piece. In the interim he started working on smaller pieces of outdoor sculpture. "The desert," Purifoy said, "permits you to build with the breadth and the width and the depth of the piece." With the desert as his studio, its big skies and flat empty spaces, Joshua Tree gave Purifoy the creative freedom to expand his repertoire by developing flexible, see-through forms along with sturdy architectural structures.

A Retrospective entitled Noah Purifoy: Outside and in the Open traveled nationally and was a critical and public success in 1997. Richard Candida Smith, intellectual historian in American Studies, in the retrospective catalog essay noted: "Purifoy has spent a lifetime trying to make us ponder how we respond by pushing us to rethink the nature of the objects that surround us. He issues a spiritual challenge. He asks us to let go of our certainty that the world is primarily a place where we do things to achieve goals and get ahead." In a review in Art in America, art critic Joe Lewis concluded: "Trying to balance community activism and art production is an arduous task. There are few success stories and even fewer guiding lights. African-American or not, now Purifoy's time has come."

Purifoy's work is represented in the collections of the Corcoran in Washington; Oakland Museum, California; Illinois Bell Telephone Company, Chicago; and the Whitney Museum, New York as well as in numerous private collections and universities in the United States, Europe and Africa. Noah received awards and recognition from among others: The Andy Warhol Foundation; The Flintridge Foundation, Visual Artist Award, Pasadena , California 1997-1998. Catalog; the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1997; the Lannan Foundation, Getty Trust Fund for Visual Arts, California Community Foundation to support the California African American Museum Foundation sponsored Noah Purifoy Touring Retrospective, Outside and in the Open, 1997-1998. Catalog; Florsheim Art Fund, Florida, 1996; Gottlieb Foundation, New York, 1995; and the Pollack Krasner Foundation, New York, 1993

Noah Purifoy is survived by four sisters, Mrs. Ophelia Jeffries, Mrs. Mary Lewis, Mrs. Lucille McDaniel, and Ms. Esther Purifoy, all of Cleveland Ohio.

The Noah Purifoy Foundation preserves and maintains Purifoy's site for public appreciation and participation. The foundation mission also seeks to promote public recognition and appreciation of the values Noah Purifoy's work has embodied over four decades as an artist and educator. Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome.