0.37 James surls, b. 1943

Prevailing wind

I think any great concept starts with, in a sense, capturing the moment; it’s like riding the prevailing wind. You happen to be wanting to go someplace, and that’s the way the prevailing wind will take you. You get to do two things at once. Lawndale [Art Center]

This was in maybe ’78, ’79, ’80. The school, the power structure of the school, came and said, “Oh, my goodness, Mr. Surls. We are so sorry. The building burned. We just don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re going to have to continue classes and put you somewhere, so we’re going to put you in this old warehouse over a couple of miles off campus.” Which it turns out was Lawndale; Lawndale was the name of the street. They put us over in that building, apologized and left, and I was the happiest man on the planet! The idea of the warehouse, the big, raw, space—I mean, that’s a paradise for artists. It’s a paradise particularly for sculptors who—keep in mind now—are noise makers, dust producers, junk collectors.

So Lawndale in a sense came about just because God struck the building with lightning and set it on fire. And I happened to be the recipient of the good fortune [and] so did some other people. They also moved graduate painting over to that building. Graduate painting had the upstairs: huge studios, great studios, good studios, high energy. It was almost like playing in the freeway, in a sense. Like putting yourself in traffic. Lawndale was able to be the doorway of an enormous amount of traffic. We just happened to be the right people, in the right place at the right time to take care of a situation.

Lawndale was like being handed a race car, and someone says, “Hey, here’s the keys to the car. You can go as fast as you want to go.” Whoa! What an invitation! I mean, a race car, not just an old jalopy. They thought, “Poor people, having to work in that hot, old building.” I looked at it like a Ferrari, and I assumed the keys. To tell you the truth, I just assumed directorship. No one gave me that. As this “imaginary” director, I didn’t have an imaginary staff. I had probably 30, 40, 50 or 60 eager students available. They weren’t all my students—some were other people’s students, like the graduate painting people. But I became pretty authoritarian in my willingness to say, “Hey, I need ten guys to come down here and move a stage.” Now, they could say, “Kiss my ass—I’m not going to do it.” But they were incredibly willing to participate. They would move a stage. Paint a wall. Get ready for something. And those guys got to come to the performance. That was their reward. They got to be there when the reality of the action took place.