tb'r4*rte; c T I O N S

33 - t Q: When you frst became nvolved n art, was t through your father's work, or was t through school? A: I've been makng objects, whar 1 thought was art, snce 1 was a ktl. I'm a good example of the son lvng out the father's dream. My father was a frustrated artst; he always wanted to do art hmself hut somehow felt that t wasn't a reasonable thng to pursue, based on hs own experences. I receved a lot of encouragement early on to make artworks, and yet, when t was tme to go to school, he was strongly opposed to my studyng art. Hs feelng was that I should study somethng 1 could make a lvng wth. There were some real contradctons. 1 was rased n a neon-sgn shop and was traned to be a sgn man. And yet he felt that t was good to get an educaton. The queston became. What would I study to be a sgn man to take over the busness? I studed archtecture, but I had to make a decson about my focus. It was then that I began to turn my attenton to sculpture. That seemed to be a way that I could work at everythng I lked. 1 lked workng n the trades wth my hands the physcal aspect of t. I also was able to ncorporate color and draw. So a that pont, after I had gone to archtecture school for about four years, 1 made a clear decson to focus nstead on makng sculpture. v d Q: Were you exposed to art n elementary school? A: When 1 went to frst grade, I ddn't tb'r4*rte; c T I O N S ThePunhc Art of Lus Jmenez A CXWVKRSATION w DRI \I:I TURM;R AND BRUCK C. WI:BK The voluptuous sculptures, drawngs, and prnts of Lus Jmenez (hom 11 Paso, Texas, l l >40) tre represented n the collectons of the Metropoltan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Insttute of Chcago, the Natonal Collecton of Fne Arts, the Natonal Museum o/ Amercan Art. and the Hrshhom Museum among others. One of hs frst commssons for a publc sculpture was the "Vaquero" for Moody Park n Houston (l l >77). Jmenez joned the faculty of the Unversty of Houston as professor <( fne art n 14 and tune dvdes hs tme between I louston and hs studo and home n a converted sx-room WPA elementary school n Hondo, New Mexco, Hs work was tn- subject n/.; retrospectve exhbton and catalogue. "Lus Jmenez, Man on hre" (Albuquerque Museum. 14); the Moody Gallery of I louston exhbted a selecton of hs recent work n sprng 16, The followng s excerpted from a conversaton wth Drexel Turner and Bruce Webb n February 16. know how to speak Knglsh; both my parents' famles were from the other sde of the border, lnt the teachers took me to the second grade so I could show other students how to make a wolf out of clay. So evdently I was already farly competent at makng thngs, and other people seemed to renforce t. That was gratfyng. Q: Dd you get renforcement from both of your parents? A: No. 1 certanly had much more postve renforcement from mv moth-

34 C l o 3 4 S er. There was never any real renforcement from my father. He saw me as competton. It was a complex problem for hm. Q: What sort of art was avalable n HI Paso for you g r o w ng up? A: The T o m l.ea mural on the federal Buldng was the closest 1 came to seeng any art n HI Paso frsthand. I was fortunate that my father had some art hooks around, and I remember spendng a lot of tme readng them. I remember he had a set ol Muybrdge's books of photographc moton studes. M y early exposure to art really wasn't n F.I Paso; t was d o w n n Mexco. We had famly n Mexco Cty, and we w o u l d go d o w n every year. I he \e.r I turned sx, we spent about three or four months there. I saw all the murals. We went to all the museums, ncludng the archaeology museum. I saw more stuff frsthand n M e x c o than 1 ever dd n HI Paso. Q: What mpressed you the most? A: At that age? Probably the dnosaur bones. Q : When you were g r o w n g up, was T o m Lea stll a w o r k n g artst? A: I le stll s, though he's qute old now. Q : Do you know hm? A: N o, no. When 1 was about seven or eght years o l d, we moved from where I'd g r o w n up, n the southern part of El Paso, to a house my parents bought n the central part that was across the street from T o m Lea's stepmother's house. We knew her and hs stepsster, but I never knew h m. I knew of h m, of course, and I knew of the murals and couldn't help but be affected by them. Rut he was never a role model for me n the sense that some of the Mexcan m lra lsts were. Q : Consderng what El Paso was lke then, you seem to have ambvalent feelngs and some less-than-pleasant memores. What was t lke growng up there? A: Yo u summed t up! In some ways you can only feel sorry for a cty lke El Paso. It had a rch Mexcan hertage, as dd San A n t o n o. Yet the cty went to great lengths to cover that hertage up, nstead o f pluggng nto t. It had to do w t h racsm they ddn't want to acknowledge that hertage. So n a sense we were left to g r o w up n a knd of vacuum, not acknowledgng the Mexcan sde of our hertage. There were some real contradctons that I thnk El Paso stll has trouble dealng w t h. Q : Were there any partcular mentors or teachers, other than your father, durng ths tme? A: There certanly were mportant mentors. M y frst-grade teacher came at a very mportant tme for me, and I p l n g 1 6 have fond memores of her. She renforced my ablty to learn but also encouraged me artstcally. I w o n a ctywde frst-grade art contest w t h a bg rabbt or somethng lke that. T h ro u g h out school there were teachers that were supportve. In junor hgh, I had an art teacher w h o was very supportve, but after that 1 was not allowed to take art. I had to take a more practcal electve. Q : A n d that was? A: Mechancal drawng, of course. But I had a really outstandng teacher n junor hgh. Q: Can you remember her name? A: Her name was M s. Sandrock. She was a dvorcee, and n retrospect I thnk she probably had problems where she was teachng. She was seen as beng maybe a lttle too progressve to be teachng n junor hgh; there were all these rumors. They fnally hred somebody else, but I wasn't takng art anymore. C o n g back to the early experences, 1 also have to say that I had nfluences from my mother's sde, not just from my father. M y uncle, my mother's brother, also worked n the shop. It was a small shop, but the entre crew was lke a bg famly; I started w o r k n g there when 1 was sx. A t a certan pont, because my father was always out anyway, he left me n the care o f my uncle, a hghly sklled metalworker. He made letters out of sheet metal for buldngs lke banks. I w o r k e d w t h h m. That aspect of my educaton was really about craft. It was not makng art necessarly, but t certanly was mportant. Q: What does a sx-year-old do n a shop that makes sgns or an cghtor ten-year-old? A: Well, I helped my uncle. So I was rased w t h the tradtonal apprentce program, whch s not very common n ths country hut was very common n M e x c o. Every journeyman has a helper, and that helper starts out by sweepng the floors. It's lke n Japan, you start sweepng the floor, then, eventually, you're lke a gofer you go brng thngs, you mark thngs. After a whle, f the apprentce has been at t long enough, the journeyman s supervsng the apprentce, and the apprentce s dong most of the w o r k. 1 thnk by the tme I was 16,1 could do everythng n the shop. I could spray, I could w e l d, I could bend sheet metal, I could bend the neon. (,}: (.n Mm pont m l sgns, v u In I I Paso, that are yours? A: N o, most of them have gone. I have one that 1 pcked up out of the sgn junkyard and kept I'd worked on t when 1 was I d. It's a rooster. But what happens to buldngs happens even more so w t h sgns. Everybody wants C t e 3 1 S the new sgn out there, and so most of the old sgns are scrapped, even the ones that were really great. Some were made out of porcelan enamel and could've lasted forever, especally n that clmate. They d d n ' t wear out; they went out of fashon. Q: When you go to the cty, do you stll pay partcular attenton to the sgns? A: N o, I'm not totally conscous. I had a dffcult problem w t h El Paso. I have very fond memores of the shop and the workers, but my feelngs about my o w n father and about the sgn busness are conflcted. 1 was never n a poston of collaborator n the busness or n the desgn. That was always hs thng. Q : Y o u went to archtecture school? A: Yes. I fnshed four years of a fveyear program at the Unversty of Texas at Austn. Q : Wha t led you to that? Was t the mechancal drawng teacher? A: N o, that was the tranng my father felt w o u l d be good for me. If I was gong nto the sgn busness, or f 1 was gong to use my art ablty, he felt t should be n somethng practcal. I got out of hgh school and had to make some career choces, so he lned me up to talk to a commercal artst and some o f hs frends that were archtects w t h the dea that "these are choces I'll supp o r t. " Snce 1 was a very obedent son, I talked to hs frends and decded 1 ddn't want to make commercal art. So the logcal choce was archtecture school. As I progressed 1 took mostly art courses as my electves. 1 fnally decded not to contnue wth archtecture. I made art objects even whle 1 was n archtecture school and even w o n a prze n an art contest at the unversty wth a lmestone carvng. Q : Dd the desgn projects you dd n archtecture look lke the w o r k of someone nterested n art? Were they dfferent from those of the other students? A: It was hard to be dfferent because there was a lot of pressure to c o n f o r m. There were a few nstructors w h o were dfferent. M r. Montenegro, who taught desgn, was an artst w h o had gone to the Art Students League. 1 le approached begnnng desgn as f t were a three-dmensonal art course. I was totally energzed by that class I felt as though 1 were dong art projects. But Montenegro was really an excepton; most teachers thought lke engneers. Q: Were they dong orthodox modernsm at that tme? A: Very. Erank Lloyd W r g h t was not okay too far out. Q: W h o were the archtects you were drawn to whle you were a student? A: Lous Kahn, Paul Rudolph. And I p r n t 1 6 lked Wrght's w o r k. I thnk he had a real specal feelng for space. I was drawn to people lke hm and ths crazy guy w h o lves out n the desert Q: Soler? A: Soler. I even talked to some of hs assstants. I was so frustrated, some tmes I w o u l d wrte these long letters to people lke Soler and Henry M o o r e. Q : D d you send them? A: N o, I never d d. Eventually I went to New York and worked as an assstant to a metal sculptor, Seymour L p t o n. 1 called hm and sad, " I ' d lke to w o r k w t h y o u. " I guess everybody fnds a role model, but, w t h o ut seemng too cocky, I'm not sure I ever had one. I just wanted to do what 1 wanted to do. Q: Whle you were w o r k n g for L p t o n, dd \ on make frends wth hm or others n the art communty? A: L p t o n, never. I went n as an apprentce; he never socalzed wth me: he was not partcularly generous that way. He was very generous n terms of talkng about hs w o r k and askng my opnons. He was not a very socal person; I ddn't get nto the art communty though h m. Q: Do you thnk t was tme well spent? A: It was mportant for me to see how an artst operated. I ls support system was very small hs wfe and hs assstants. H a r r y Rand, now curator at the Natonal Museum of Amercan A r t, also w o r k e d as l.pton's assstant. Le ddn't work there at the same tme, but I met hm later and our experences formed an nterestng bond. Q: At some pont after New Y o r k you were a Rome Prze Fellow. A: N o t exactly. It was a md-career grant, through the Natonal Endowment for the Arts, for only three months. The grant ncluded some travel money. Q : Was that some knd of epphany for you? A: It really was. Before gong to Europe, I had a very narrow focus, wantng to w o r k only wth Amercan mages. Gong to Rome that very frst tme made me realze how unversal so much of that magery s. Q : I saw your drawng of the elephant and obelsk. A: Rght, Bernn's elephant n S. Mara sopra Mnerva. Q : Were there other thngs that partcularly attracted you whle you were there? A: When I went to school. Baroque was thought of as sort of the decadent perod that followed the Renassance. And when I went to Rome, where I was n a poston to evaluate on my o w n, 1

35 C I e 3 4 S p t went crazy. I mean, my G o d, ths guy Bernn was ncredble. I saw every Bernn n Rome, whch s not easy to do. I went nto churches that were closed, even f I had to brbe people, I had been n Rome three months, w.iknj; past the Pantheon all the tme, whch 1 never bothered to go nto because n art hstory they sad t was strpped. One day I fnally decded to walk nsde. And starng at the center ol that space, t was just... my god. That space s just ncredble. So yes, t was really an eye-opener. I haven't gone back to Rome, but I had a smlar opportunty to go to France, and then from there to Span and more of Italy. I'd lke to see a tor more, but 1 have trouble makng the tme. Q: Your frst bg splash was the seres of sculptures wth automoble-related magery and thngs of that nature. Was tha when you really found your voce f that's a far queston? A: I frst, as you say, found my voce, wth those seres of shows n the late sxtes n New York. The response wthn the art communty was mmedately very postve. A recent show n New York n November focused on the work I dd n the sxtes and seventes. After my Hrsr show, 1 got nto two Whtney shows, whch gave my work a lot of vsblty. In fact, I got a lot of attenton early on that I probably don't get now wth the publc art. The New York museum shows gave the work a knd of stamp of approval and vsblty that publc works don't necessarly get. I left New York n the earls' seventes and came out west to develop a way of lookng at publc art. At that tme there were not a lot of great examples ot contemporary publc artwork. The one that everybody can brng to mnd s Alexander Caldcr's pece, hlmnga, from about 1%K for Grand Rapds, Mchgan, but the response, even to that, was not overwhelmng. I wanted to develop a new approach comng out of popular culture. The publc peces I do now speak n a knd of publc language. That s where I've gotten attenton n recent years. Q: To what extent do you get nvolved wth the stng of your publc work the Denver arport, for nstance? A: The spaces for art at Denver had already been planned out, so t ddn't seem that nterestng. They weren't where I would have put them thc\ weren't focal ponts, so 1 decded to go to the commttee and tell them, " L o o k, I thnk what we really need s somethng gong on outsde." 1 thought t would be nce to have somethng to dentfy the ste out on the knoll, an mportant focal pont as you're enterng or leavng the arport. I sad, "You've got a natural ste here. What f we call f MttsUx Overlook for the wld mustangs that use to be out here, and have a mustang sculpture Mutonq Overlook, Denver Internatonal Arparl, proposol 12. ^ ^ wth eyes that lght up?" I also wanted to have some hstorcal plaques leadng up a tral to the mustang. They lked the dea and went along wth t. Q: Had you thought about a sculpted nteror desgn for the arport before they went along wth the mustang? A: I turned n some very prelmnary drawngs, I thought, " W h a t could be more Amercan than the corny stuff lke cowboys and Indans and stuff lke that?" So I thought on one sde I would have a buffalo hunt, and on the other sde I'd have a stampede wth the cowboys. However, what I really wanted to make was a horse. I used ro tell people that my work was totally dctated by the ste, but now I realze t's really not. I have a personal agenda certan mages that 1 want to work wth. When 1 go to work some where, I'm sort of dovetalng my personal agenda wth the character of the place and the ste, and tryng to make ths all work together. Q: Do you often feel constraned by the clent or the audence for a publc pece? A: It's nterestng that you refer to the clent relatonshp wth the artst, I've been very fortunate wth publc commssons, peces funded wth publc money, because the> were ether Nl A projects or General Servces Admnstraton. There was never any drecton gven to the artst, whom they trusted as a professonal. They gave you the budget, and expected you to take the ball and run wth t. What I do s work out drawngs and models, then work wth the communty. 1 say, " L o o k, ths s what 1 want to do, and what do you thnk?" At a certan pont they do have to approve the project, but there's nobody there to say, "dee, you have to make a bg blue horse wth eyes that lght up." Q: The pece of art that maybe has a lttle spunk, or has a tendency to engage you, may be much more controversal. A: That's absolutely true, and the problem that we face as we run nto more controversy s that there wll be more generc work. I thnk that's really a danger. Q : Your work seems to have a real sprt. But one person's dea of sprted can be provocatve to another person, or even lurd. Some people have complaned that n Boner Crossng n San Dego, the skrt was too lght, the man's pants were bulgng suggestvely, and the color was not realstc. H o w do you respond to that sort of crtcsm? A: 1 don't thnk that one work of art s gong to do t for everybody. The soluton s to have more art out there. When I talk to communtes I say, "Look, not everybody's gong to lke t." Poltcans are lucky f they get 5 I percent of the vote. My works are not created wth the ntenton ot pleasng an audence. I thnk the worst thng that can happen s for a work to be gnored. Sometmes what ntally repels people becomes somethng they later learn to embrace. Q : We have ths pcture of a polar bear that looks lke a soap carvng. Could you tell us about t? \ : It's p u t tt a sgn m> father made, and n fact when my dad was young, he Vuqucrc, Moody Pork, Houlon, 177.

36 < dd a lot of soap carvng. He won a natonal soap-carvng contest sponsored by Proctor &: Gamble wth the models he made for that hear. He was supposed to wn a scholarshp to the Chcago Art Insttute, hut t was durng the Depresson, so he ddn't get t. Q: How do you dstngush between art and craft between the polar bear carvng and the polar hear sgn? A: It's n the percepton of the vewer and n the percepton of the person who makes t. A lot has to do wth condtonng by socety. For nstance, n the 1500s or 1600s, Furopeans were takng pre-columban works and meltng them down. The artsts that mentoned seeng them Drer was one of them thought they were art. I verybodj else thought the) were jusl curous objects; they ddn't see them as art at all. * Allgator pond, Son Jacnto Ploo. El Poso, to. 110. «te* Lu Jmete. 5r., sgn for Gystol C I M I I M I, El Paso, 185. What I thnk dstngushes art s that t s not dervatve. Art should be unk[ue n some way. Now, I have seen other polar bears from the md-140s. In my father's case, I know the way he worked. I le went to the lbrary and found pctures ot polar bears, then coped what he thought was the best one. I le worked from pctures and ddn't try to go beyond what he was lookng at. Where he was really creatve was, ot course, n hs use of neon lor the northern lghts behnd the polar bear. Another tme he made a washerwoman for a laundry and cleanng sgn she actually moved, scrubbng on a washboard. That was pretty creatve and nnovatve. Bur s t art? Q: You talked about your nterest n mages comng out of popular culture. At what pont does that happen? A: Now that you pont out the bear thng and my nterest n popular mages, I realze that I have tred to focus on what 1 thought were clched mages that were clched because they struck a nerve wth a lot of people. There s always a reason why people dentfy wth certan mages and they become popular. What I try to do s to make you look at the clche agan. If you see tne more bronze cowboy, t doesn't regster anymore because you mmedately classfy t.s bronze cowboy. I wanted to do somethng that not only made you look at the clche agan, but look at t n a new way. Q: Durng the sxtes and seventes, Andy Warhol's type of pop art came out of popular culture. Would somethng lke that only nterest you f t's been there long enough to he banal? A: I would say pop art s, for lack of a better word, very cool. Ot all the pop people, the ones I relate to, n terms of what I do, are Nancy and I d Run ho/. because content was mportant for them. For most pop artsts "the medum s the message" the mage, devod of content, s the message. Whereas the content for Kenholz and for me s very mportant. That's a good dstncton. 1 wll say that t was the pop artsts who enabled a whole generaton to accept mages out of popular culture. Allgator lountan. El Poso, proposal, 187. Q: The allgator fountan you dd n FJ Paso has that had an effect on the way the fountan s used or the way people regard t? Has t been a magnet? A: When we unveled that pece, there were a couple of thousand people there people who had not stepped nto that plaza for 20 or 30 years. But art can't do t all. Ths s not gong to totally energze downtown Fl Paso, where sx out of ten stores have folded because they reled on the peso. The allgator pece works really well n that space, even though t's an awkward pece on ts own. A fog system s part of the project, so that the allgators st n ths mst or fog. In addton to dong somethng really nce vsually gvng the allgators a knd of moton and actvty t cools the area off n the square, where t gets to be I 10 degrees n the summer. The day after we nstalled t, the mayor turned the water off because hewas afrad of someone slppng on the tle and sung the cty. I met wth the cty people, and we worked out a lowcost soluton lo use a swmmng pool coatng on the tles that has grt. The mayor vetoed that dea. What he wanted was a planter all the way around the pece. Reporters called and asked me about t, and I told them that my work was very much about makng art accessble to the people. I'd rather run the rsk of vandalsm than create a barrer between the work and the people Q: Are there allgator T-shrts? Have any of your peces ever made t onto T-shrts? A: Oh, yeah, we've gone that whole route, I once had a postcard of the Fargo pece sent to me from a collector n Arzona. There was no menton of the artst, t just sad, "Sodbuster, Fargo, North Dakota." The sculpture has developed a lfe of ts own. Q: What sort of propretary nterest do you thnk the artst retans after a work has been put n place? What f the pece or ts ste s changed somehow? A: About all an artst can do s remove hs name from t, so t's not assocated wth hm anymore. I had one pece lke that for I lorton Pla/a n San Dego. I was selected as the artst after a com-

C t e 3 4 S p r n g 1 6 C t e 3 4 S j j r n y 1 6 petton. I proposed a pece that I would do as a collaboraton wth my dad I wanted to do a pece wth hm before he ded and wth the workers I grew up wth n the shop. 1 proposed a 0-foot llumnated obelsk n the center of a fountan about.14 feet across. I wanted to have sea creatures from the area as a sculptural element that would support ths very statc obelsk, lke Bernn's Four Rvers fountan n the Pazza Navona. My dad and I collaborated on the desgn of the obelsk, then he desgned all the lghtng for t, and the workers bult t they came n after ther regular jobs and bult t. Ths was really rewardng for me, and there were no problems everythng worked well. Ths was a publc pece, but the money came from the developer, and before I fnshed the project, he declared bankruptcy. 1 had to sue hm, and I only got SO percent of my money. Because he went bankrupt, all the electrcty was never suppled to the ste. The temporary lne was left, but that was t, whch means that all of the pumps can't run. If the pelcans that are supposed to be sprayng water n are on, you can't have the center fountan on. There's not enough electrcty to ever have the thng run properly. They don't mantan t, ether, so I've never wanted my name out there. Ths was the most complex project I've ever done. It was very frustratng. Q: Can I ask you how much a project lke that costs? A: Yes $ I.S0,000, whch I felt lke was a lot of money back then. Q: You mean the materals, the buldng, everythng for SI50,000? A: I ddn't make any money on that one. Q: What do you submt to a competton lke that? A drawng? A: Drawngs and a lttle model. Q: Have you ever thought about makng a truly knetc pece, lke the washerwoman your father dd? Does a place lke Las Vegas have any attracton for you? A: As a matter of fact, I was called n to make a proposal for Las Vegas. It was a curous stuaton. They wanted a pece nstantly. I told them I couldn't produce a pece nstantly. They decded to buy a Vaquero to put a pece n rght away, whle I made a larger pece. The way so many of these publc thngs go, after they bought the Vaquero, they decded they ddn't even want to see my proposal. Q : Are there themes that you're playng wth now that you're storng up n your mage bank? Or themes you haven't had the opportunty to nvestgate yet? A: Yes, that's true of any artst. Because every project takes so long, I'm always several years ahead n developng thngs. I've got the armature fabrcated for the Denver project, but I haven't really started makng t yet. Q : What about the Frefghters' Memoral n Cleveland? A: In Cleveland, Claes Oldenburg's Free Stamp s on one dagonal half of the park, and I have the other half. The courthouse sts on the west sde, l a k e F.re s on the north, and the Oldenburg sculpture, ths three-story red object, sts n the southwest corner of the ste. M y half of ths ste drops off sharply toward the lake. And what I've desgned s a somewhat trangular base wth a trangular berm that goes around and drops off sharply. Ths s the man street grade. The Rock and Roll flal of Fame sts between Lake Ere and the ste. So ths s a prmary thoroughfare on the east sde. The reason the base for the sculpture s trangular s that I want to have a trangular paved area that s bermed, gong up to the sculpture. The frefghters wll meet two or three tmes a year to have ceremones at the memoral, so the sculpture has to functon as a place to have these ceremones rght n front of t. The sculpture s actually a long flame that goes up, n fberglass, wth a frefghter at one end of the flame pontng to the Oldenburg sculpture and toward Cty Hall. They have an okay budget to work wth, but t's a real challenge to make the sculpture and elevate that end ot the park. N o w we've got to look at the money; the amount allocated was for the sculpture, not landscapng. Q : H ow hgh s the flame? A: O h, probably about.10 feet, so vsuall\ n wll work wth the Oldenburg. The sre s nterestng because the grade s so steep. It's not the knd of grade you would normally walk up, but you can, from ths walkway, whch then J Colonnade of workers, Hunrs Pont Market, Soulh Bronx, proposal, 11 vehcular now, and when we see food carred around, t's alt n whte boxes, whether t's beef or vegetables or whatever. But the people n the market sad, " O h, von can't leave those sculptures out there because somebodywll sreal them and sell them to the junkyards or somethng. You've got to get rd of the colonnade dea and maybe just bunch up one or two fgures over here at the opens up nto the ceremonal area. entrance." By the tme we reached the end of our conversaton, I decded f they really ddn't want the colonnade, Q: I wonder whether you sense great I could put a couple of fgures over dfferences among Amercan ctes. You at the entrance, whch dsapponted talk about archtecture as a sgn, as a me, because I lked the dea of a colonnade somehow extendng that exper- way of gvng a place dentty. When you go n and you're asked to make a ence. You know, lke the old Burma pece for a cty, you must develop a Shave ads as you're travelng along sense of the place, an dea of what the the hghway. people are lke. A: When I was nvted to propose a pece for l a r g o, I was told, " Y o u mght Q: A lot of your work n ctes makes not be nterested n t because you condtons vsble that are under-recognzed. The conography of Pttsburgh aren't gong to be dealng wth any art people." In fact, my experence n Fargo wasn't about Joe Steelworker, and was totally postve. They lved up to certanly the allgators aren't part of all ther commtments. When 1 arrved, the conography of El Paso. These are they sad, " O h, you want to see what lke hdden or lost parts of ctes, the the ste looks lke wthout snow?" They cultural connectons back to the way worked through that whole nght wth somethng used to be lke the way equpment to remove lke 20 feet of food was delvered to the market n snow off the ste so I could see t. They New York. were absolutely wonderful. When I A: I try to connect wth the myth; the sad, "I thnk we need to go hgher mages are not always realty. Myths wth the base," they sad, "Doesn't t may at some pont grow out of realty. work better at ths heght?" And I sad, The mage of the Amercan cowboy has "Yeah, but we have to thnk about vandalsm." And they just looked at me cowboy hats and boots, there are no become mythcal. For all the talk about and sad, "Vandalsm n Fargo?" They real cowboys n my part of the country. ob\ ousb d m* I I. I M vandalsm n They all drve pckup trucks now. It's a Fargo. There I got a sense of the people busness, lke farmng s now agrbusness; there's no longer a guy out there and the cty. wth hs plow dggng up the drt. Q: Speakng of places where they do That's the myth, but somehow we all have vandalsm, you're workng n buy nto t. the South Bronx now too. A: I was selected to do the Hunts Pont Market there. They nvted fve artsts to submt proposals and chose mne. But that's been on hold because ot Mayor Gulan's budget. It's all approved; I just can't start on t. Q: What's t lke? A: A man carryng a pg. What 1 orgnally proposed was a colonnade of workers lke the old Roman senators, but marchng out of the market carryng foodstuffs. Most of the traffc s