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Noah Purifoy (1917–2004) was an artist that influenced many artists through his innovative use of assemblage and found objects, particularly in the context of the 1965 Watts Rebellion and socially engaged art in Los Angeles. Committed to social change, he worked at Watts Towers Art Center and California Arts Council before creating a 10-acre Outdoor Desert Art Museum of junk sculptures in Joshua Tree during his last 15 years. In 2015, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) staged the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Noah Purifoy since his passing in 2004.
The California Arts Council is posthumously honoring Noah Purifoy with a special memorial tribute at their 50th Anniversary Celebration event on April 20, 2026, in Sacramento — recognizing him as one of the original 1976 appointees alongside figures like Ruth Asawa.
The Noah Purifoy Foundation aims to preserve Purifoy's heritage. In this video we speak with Joseph S. Lewis III, President of the Foundation and Professor of Art, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine, about Noah Purifoy's influence and legacy, how the Noah Purifoy Foundation came about, and the foundation's mission and future plans.
Noah Purifoy Foundation / Interview with President Joseph S. Lewis III. Los Angeles, March 7, 2026.
The California Arts Council is posthumously honoring Noah Purifoy with a special memorial tribute at their 50th Anniversary Celebration event on April 20, 2026, in Sacramento — recognizing him as one of the original 1976 appointees alongside figures like Ruth Asawa.
The Noah Purifoy Foundation aims to preserve Purifoy's heritage. In this video we speak with Joseph S. Lewis III, President of the Foundation and Professor of Art, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine, about Noah Purifoy's influence and legacy, how the Noah Purifoy Foundation came about, and the foundation's mission and future plans.
Noah Purifoy Foundation / Interview with President Joseph S. Lewis III. Los Angeles, March 7, 2026.
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CreativityTranscript
00:07Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me to speak with you about Noah.
00:14For me, it's a passion and a love, and that's why I've been involved with the Foundation
00:21all these years.
00:24When you think about Noah and his past, his path, consider this, that he was born in 1917
00:37and grew up at the height of Jim Crow in the U.S., went to high school and college, taught
00:47high school, manual arts shop, and then the Second World War happens, and he joins the
00:55armed forces as a CB, and CBs were, like the engineers, they built airfields and accommodations
01:03for soldiers in the South Pacific.
01:07He comes back to the United States and takes a course at Atlanta University in social work,
01:15gets his MSW, and eventually makes his way out to California.
01:23He works as a social worker in California for a few years and then realizes that social work
01:29is just not going to do anything.
01:32And one day, gets up from his office, leaves, walks down the street, and enrolls in Chouinard
01:40Art School, which subsequently becomes Cal Arts.
01:48And at the age of 40, he receives a BFA, which would be his third degree as a black man
01:55in
01:56America, which in and of itself is an incredible accomplishment, especially in those days.
02:04And I think that his work as a CB and an industrial arts teacher was something that took over this
02:18idea of creativity, even though when you think about building airfields as a creative process.
02:27He's asked to create an arts program in Watts, and that becomes the beginning of the Watts
02:36Towers Arts Center with Judson Powell.
02:41And, you know, for the next many years, he's making art, he gets involved at the community
02:49level, at the governmental level, and then retires and pursues his own personal work.
02:58Always connected to the idea of the creative process.
03:01Always connected to the idea of giving voice to people who don't necessarily have voice through
03:09various means, and developing a philosophy of art as a problem-solving activity.
03:25As co-founder and director of the Watts Towers Arts Center, Purvoy responded to the 1965 Watsu
03:31Rebellion by creating the landmark exhibition, Six Science, Science of Neon, using charles
03:38debris collected from the streets.
03:40And I think that's what inspired the body of work.
03:42Are you thinking so far for you, Coach?
03:43Yeah.
03:44I'm glad I'm glad.
03:45Hey, we're in Norms in Southern California having breakfast, so...
03:49This is really good.
03:51Yeah.
03:53Well, I'm glad.
03:55So, I'm an old guy, so I need to write a few notes for myself.
04:00And, just to say that Judson Powell, who was the co-founding director of Watts Towers and
04:11Noah, Judson pulled some work, some of the residue of the Watts Rebellion.
04:18And, Noah, and they started kind of putting those things together and subsequently brought
04:23in a number of other artists to create what becomes 66 Science of Neon, which at the time
04:31was a multi-generational, multi-gender group project, right?
04:41And, this is a quote from Noah I thought would be very good.
04:50He says that 66 Science of Neon essentially was creating a new form of communication for
05:03people who otherwise would not or could not communicate to confront what had happened in Watts.
05:11And, this is...
05:13It began as an expression of the necessity for art education, asserting that art must
05:20affect change in human behavior, not just offer aesthetic experience.
05:27And, this is something that Noah follows through on throughout his art making, that the reuse
05:34of used materials or junk, kind of giving them second life or new life or new way of looking
05:42at things, and how that relates to our lives and how we look at ourselves and how we can change.
05:50So, basically, the creative process and how the creative process affects humanity.
05:56For example, creativity begins with a chemical reaction in the brain.
06:03Something happens.
06:05And, as an artist, we take that one reaction and we make a mark, we do a movement or write
06:13a note
06:13or kind of bring some people together.
06:17And, then we step back and look at that and then another reaction takes place.
06:22And, we build upon those things.
06:24We create relationships between either form, people, ideas, their connectivity.
06:31And, that's what 66 Signs of Neon really was about.
06:37It's that kind of connecting the community that Noah felt couldn't respond directly with making work about what happened.
06:52In 1976, Noah Perfor was appointed to the California Arts Council, where he helped launch pioneering programs.
07:03And, how did that public policy experience influence his artistic practice and broader philosophy?
07:11Well, I think it's the reverse.
07:14It's his artistic practice influenced his public policy.
07:19And, I say that because when he was co-founder at Watts Towers, one of the things he created there
07:26was a program to help people who dropped out of high school get their diploma and then move forward educationally.
07:38So, a lot of people said Noah stopped making art when he joined the Arts Council.
07:43But, I contend that he didn't stop making art.
07:47He was still making art.
07:48Those programs are art in and of themselves.
07:52They call it relational aesthetics.
07:58Right?
07:58Joseph Boyce, for example, is another, this is a person who kind of looked at art, I believe, in the
08:04same way.
08:04Right?
08:05That, you know, building community.
08:09So, the idea of the practice, the creative practice is inherent in this kind of educational idea of bringing artists
08:19into these situations or environments that, you know, didn't have that interaction or connectivity before was very important to him.
08:31You know, for example, and let me just also say that those programs are still in existence.
08:37And they were some of the first, if not the first programs of those kind in the country.
08:44Yeah.
08:45Yeah.
08:45It's remarkable.
08:46Yeah.
08:47And this is something, when I first heard him speak, I was just so fascinated by this, this idea of
08:53what he had done, because my background is in community arts as well.
09:00Well, in the South Bronx in the 70s, with Fashion Motor and my partner, who is Austrian, Stefan Einz, we
09:11made this place.
09:12We took a burnt out building, put half a roof back on, some plexiglass for windows, borrowed some electricity from
09:22the city, and opened a space.
09:25And in that space, we brought together people who would not normally come together.
09:30We had people from uptown New York, downtown New York, Europe, Asia, to find a way to kind of communicate
09:39with each other through the creative process.
09:43And some of the people who came through there, besides people who you'd know, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Marilyn Mentor,
09:51Tom Ardenas, with people who you would not necessarily know, but now you know, David Hammonds, for example, Jean-Michel
10:00Basquiat.
10:03So, you know, so like, and then, those folks, with the people who've become the initial graffiti writers, Lee, Lady
10:14Pink, Crash, Zephyr, Khor, who were teenagers at the time, who were now well-established artists internationally,
10:27who changed the world with graffiti.
10:32So you have the confluence of all those folks at Fashion Motor.
10:36That's my background.
10:37When I heard Noah talk, I realized, oh, I'm not alone.
10:42And here's somebody who's been in the trenches for decades.
10:47And it was, for me, it was a transformative moment.
10:50Tell me a little bit more about it. How did you get to know him?
10:53And I met Noah, I believe it was in 1997.
11:04Don't quote me on that.
11:06But he had a retrospective at the California Afro-American Museum in Los Angeles.
11:12And my phone was just jumping off the hook, people saying, hey, you've got to go see this exhibition.
11:17So I went down, and I was blown away by Noah's work.
11:22It was so fascinating.
11:25It was, I mean, you could see everything in it.
11:31And what a lot of people don't know about Noah is that he was really well-read.
11:36He was very conversant in philosophers from Kant, Heidegger, Royden, all the way down.
11:46But you could see that in the work.
11:49And that day he actually spoke.
11:52I got to hear him speak.
11:53And he went through his life, and I was shocked.
11:57I just, I was so amazed by this person.
12:03Because he had a life that I aspire to in terms of its connectivity, in terms of giving back, in
12:14terms of its depth and breadth intellectually, aesthetically, and from the community point of view.
12:21But I didn't introduce myself that day.
12:23I was probably scared, to be honest with you.
12:30But in any case, I was writing reviews for Art in America at the time.
12:35And I called them and said, I'd like to review this show.
12:37They said, go ahead.
12:38So I did a really nice review of the show.
12:41And fast forward about a year or so later, the Flintridge Foundation used to award artists, a writer, educator every
12:51year with a fellowship.
12:53And I was invited to that luncheon.
12:57And Noah was getting one of those awards.
13:01And to be honest with you, I didn't even realize that at the time.
13:04And this woman comes over to me and says, she looks at my name tab.
13:08She goes, you wouldn't happen to be the Joe Lewis who wrote that review of Noah Pureforce working on America,
13:14would you?
13:14And I said, yeah.
13:15It was Sue Wells, who was the co-founder of the foundation.
13:18And she literally took me by the ear and dragged me over to Noah's table.
13:25And we sat there and talked.
13:27And a couple weeks later, I was out in the desert.
13:30A couple weeks after that, they asked me to join the foundation.
13:35A little time after that, Richard Candida Smith, who was the director of Archives of American Art on the West
13:44Coast,
13:44who was the president at the time, retires, moves to the Bay Area.
13:49And I was asked to become the president of the foundation.
13:52And that was 25 years ago.
13:58Cool story.
13:59And let me say, Noah was...
14:01It's very difficult to explain the presence Noah had.
14:07But let me give you the story.
14:10I brought my father and my daughter out to see Noah in the desert.
14:14And at the time, he was living in the trailer.
14:18Well, let me backtrack.
14:22Noah retires.
14:25And when he retired, he didn't have enough money to live in Los Angeles.
14:31He basically had Social Security, that was it.
14:35He was looking for a place to go.
14:36And Debbie Brewer, who was one of the artists in 66 Science of Neon, invited him to go live in
14:46her son's trailer in Joshua Tree.
14:52And he took her up on the offer.
14:54And immediately began making work there.
14:59So that's how that all happens.
15:05And, okay, forward a little bit.
15:08I bring my daughter and father to meet him.
15:12And when he had guests, he used to bake a chicken, make some collard grains, and cornbread.
15:19We're in the kitchen in the trailer.
15:21And Noah asked my father to do something.
15:24And my father, who was born in 1920, says,
15:27Yes, sir.
15:29And my daughter looks at me, and she mouths the word.
15:35There were three years difference between the two guys.
15:39And he called him sir for the rest of the day.
15:41And we were like, okay.
15:45But that's a cultural thing, you know, in the black community.
15:49He was my father's elder, even though he was like three years more.
15:55But that's the kind of presence Noah had.
15:58And he would call you out.
15:59If he thought you were half-stepping, he would not hold back.
16:05He called me on the carpet a couple of times.
16:10Because he always, he demanded 100% effort in everything.
16:19Did he have, when he moved there, did he have a vision, you know, for this unique site?
16:24Or how did this evolve?
16:27I mean, it's really huge. It's not a small site.
16:30Yes.
16:32He was 72 when he moved.
16:34Yeah.
16:36The majority of the larger works he made by himself with just a little help.
16:46He had, he had a vision, but I wouldn't say it was plotted.
16:51In other words, I wouldn't say that he knew exactly what he was going to do.
16:57Because he was working somewhat intuitively, but obviously with an overriding idea, an overarching idea about the world.
17:08Yeah.
17:10Yeah.
17:10He wanted to, he was looking at Cali Mesa actually as a possible place for him to go.
17:18But he started immediately making stuff.
17:21And it was, you know, he had made stuff prior to that, obviously, in the years he had been in
17:29Los Angeles.
17:31The difference was that in Los Angeles he could find junk just by driving around.
17:39In the desert, people don't throw things away in the desert.
17:43People, they use everything.
17:45They fix everything.
17:47My father's generation was the same way.
17:54Everything.
17:57Yeah.
17:59Nothing is thrown away.
18:01Right.
18:06But, yeah, you know, the work evolved organically.
18:13And it's like a city.
18:14I mean, it's, you had a theater, you had a lot of different spaces for different occasions.
18:20It's really incredible.
18:22Were you ever able to go into the Quonset Hut?
18:27To the Quonset Hut?
18:29No.
18:29No.
18:30So, in the Quonset Hut, there were about 45 discrete pieces, smaller pieces, which we've moved into the new shape.
18:38We'll talk about the Mellon Grant a little later.
18:44Yeah, you know, he just kind of, you couldn't stop him.
18:50He just kept making stuff.
18:56That's a really passion about what he did.
18:59Absolutely passion.
19:02I think, with most artists that I know, there's no stopping them.
19:09It doesn't matter.
19:11They don't have a studio, they use a kitchen table.
19:13They don't have a kitchen, they use the bedroom.
19:17Yeah.
19:17I mean...
19:18It's not a day job.
19:20Right.
19:21And, whether you're successful or not, I mean, the foundation was created with the idea of kind of creating and
19:36cementing Noah's legacy.
19:39Because, in spite of all of what he had done, he was relatively unknown.
19:47And, every artist, black artist, who came through Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s went through Noah.
19:53David Hammonds told me that he had to leave Los Angeles to get out under the thumb of Noah.
20:02But, Carrie James Marshall, Ulysses Jenkins, Senga Nanguti, the list goes on and on and on.
20:18The California Arts Council is posthumously honoring Noah Peripheral with a special memorial tribute.
20:31What does this recognition mean to the foundation?
20:34And, how does it help amplify Peripheral's legacy today?
20:39I think it's very important because most people don't know that he was a founding member of the Arts Council,
20:45or that the programs that he authored are still in existence, not only in California, but nationally.
20:54The foundation's primary goal was to establish Noah's legacy and also maintain the site.
21:05So, anything that we can do to bring attention to Noah is fantastic for us.
21:11And, I think that really changed in 2015 with the LACMA retrospective.
21:17And, what was very interesting about that was very few people knew about Noah.
21:25And, when people went and saw that show, their mouth dropped because you could see the depth and breadth of
21:40his knowledge, how it fit into the history of art.
21:45And, some of the pieces they brought out from the desert, once you put them in the white cube, of
21:50course it changes the way they look.
21:52And, when you see them in the white cube, you understand what he was doing from a more academic point
21:59of view.
22:01And, that put us on the map. And, that took 15 years for that to happen.
22:12Sometimes, as an artist, you have to wait a very long time to be recognized.
22:16Yes. 15 years.
22:18The sad part about that show was that it didn't travel.
22:25And, it didn't travel because no one knew who Noah was.
22:30And, of course, you have to schedule those things years in advance.
22:33But, when people saw it, they realized, oh no, we didn't take this show?
22:40You're right. Back then, I didn't think about that, but you're right, yeah.
22:44Because, yeah, why did this show not travel? It's a shame.
22:49No one knew who he was.
22:52And, the Wexner, it went to the Wexner in Ohio, which was, but that was it.
22:56I mean, that show should have been at the Met, or the Museum of Modern Art.
23:00It was, it was, it was a kind of show that, and, the New York Times credited it as one
23:13of the 10 best shows in the country that year.
23:17Rightfully so.
23:19Right?
23:19Yeah.
23:20So, it was, it was a shame, and, it was, but it happened, and it put us on the map,
23:26and, drew a lot more attention to Noah,
23:30brought a lot more people out to the site, raised the level of his presence, much higher than we could
23:38have ever done, just doing what we did.
23:44Yeah, the Outdoor Museum is a living, evolving sculpture park.
23:50So, it's exposed to the Mojave Desert.
23:54Um, what are some of the biggest challenges the Foundation faces in preserving this site?
24:04Well, when you come to the site, and stand and look at it, you'll understand.
24:11Noah believed that the environment was his collaborator.
24:17And, initially, he was opposed to the, the creation of the Foundation.
24:24Because, I'm sure he, he understood what it would take to preserve that site.
24:34And, I don't think he was sure that the people who were around really had the, the courage, the energy,
24:44the knowledge, the finances, to keep that set alive.
24:51And, he was kind of like, you, you really want to keep this? Really?
24:56What happened was, a county inspector came, and said, oh, this is pure junk, we're going to bulldoze this.
25:06And, I'm sure it had a lot to do with his race, because if you drive around that area of
25:11the country, you'll see people building all kinds of stuff.
25:15Right?
25:16In any case, we went down, we got an appointment with the county commissioner, and four or five of us
25:23went down there.
25:23I brought all these books that Noah was, and all the coffee table books that he was at.
25:30We had a conversation with the commissioner, and said, how can we emulate these issues that the inspector brought up?
25:39And, there were issues.
25:41We had a meeting with, like, 15 inspectors on the site.
25:47Vector control, that's like rats and mice, waste management, housing, I mean, all kinds of inspectors.
26:00And, came up with a plan, and they said, well, you need to do X, Y, and Z, which we
26:07did.
26:10And, then they backed off.
26:13And, when Noah saw that, he realized that we were serious.
26:18And, became more interested in the foundation.
26:24And, his only requirement was that we build no fences.
26:31And, to this day, there are no, well, there's a fence around the earthwork because it's, it's a hazardous, so
26:37we had to close it off.
26:39But, there are no fences.
26:42So, you don't, um, have issues with vandalizing the site?
26:47Occasionally.
26:49More during, um, COVID, because a lot of the, you know, neighborhood, or area kids would come out there and
26:57drink, and, but no, nothing substantial.
27:01We have had some pretty obnoxious graffiti on a couple of the pieces, yes, but cleaned it off.
27:08We've had the, uh, uh, donation box ripped out of the ground and stolen.
27:15Uh, but, you know, other than that, no.
27:20For a long time, the foundation was supported by eight or nine of the trustees writing a check annually.
27:31We had, our expenses were very low.
27:35We didn't have, um, we had a caretaker occasionally, and the place was just open.
27:42Uh, a few years ago, probably about five years ago, we realized that we needed to, uh, figure out a
27:53more, um, professional way to look at the work and the site.
28:00And wrote a grant to the Mellon Foundation, which was approved, and we got $500,000 from them to collaborate
28:10with, uh, conservators to build a, uh, environmentally controlled building to put all of the small work in.
28:19Uh, and we were successful with that.
28:22We worked with, uh, the, the cultural heritage program, conservation program at UCLA, which was focused on, um, BIPOC, um,
28:33you know, black and brown people who were interested, and women in particular, who were interested in conservation preservation.
28:40We had the whole site, uh, condition report.
28:43We had aerial mapping, and then we started working on conserving the work.
28:51We had hoped that, um, grant would lead to, um, uh, a conversation between the conservation folks and our folks.
29:05Because these kind of artist-built environments don't necessarily conform to the parochial requirements of conservation.
29:18Let's put it that way.
29:22Let's put it that way.
29:22And, um, um, and that conversation was unsuccessful, but we, um, integrated all of their, uh, work into our practices.
29:40And it really changed the way we looked at the work, um, and how we, you know, prepared to, uh,
29:46conserve the work.
29:48And it was very helpful to us. Extremely helpful.
29:51And we continued to, uh, to use their perspective combined with the spirit of NOAA.
30:02In the meantime, we got another board member who was a senior conservator of the Watts Towers.
30:10And she said to me that when she began working at the Watts Towers, she was a classically trained conservator,
30:18that she had to kind of forget about everything that she learned and work in a very different way, uh,
30:26with the towers.
30:29So, you know, the past three years we've been, uh, conserving pieces.
30:34We, the smaller works were, some of them were conserved by the students from UCLA, which was a great experience
30:40for them as interns and for us to get that work back into shape.
30:46Um, and we continue to work on the site. We, we've developed a, um, a long-term plan for, um,
30:54for maintenance.
30:58We have, uh, it took us a long time to find a structural engineer who was, um, uh, sensitive to
31:09the kind of site that we are.
31:10All right. Um, and that structural engineer was actually the structural engineer for the Watts Towers, as it turns out.
31:19Uh, so that's, you know, we, we're taking the suggestions that were made by the conservatives very seriously.
31:28Um, and it's been, we're, we're not a mom and pop operation anymore.
31:34We've organized Noah's papers and indexed them. Um, and that has allowed us to share his work with scholars and
31:44curators.
31:44And the bottom line is that we have nothing to sell. So our kind of financial situation is very precarious.
31:53It's like the Rauschenberg foundation or, you know, they can sell a piece and, you know, we don't have, we
32:00don't have that, um, ability to do that.
32:04So we're pretty much at the mercy of foundations and individual donations.
32:09Yeah. Um, yeah, you mentioned the guests already, uh, you know, looking in the future, um, key goals of the
32:19museum.
32:20Um, yeah, I mean, people go there. It's my recommendation. It's a fantastic experience.
32:28And, uh, yeah, donate and, um, yeah.
32:32We're open 365 days a year from sunrise to sunset.
32:36Exactly. You can go whenever you want.
32:39You can go whenever you want.
32:40And Joshua Tree is a very wonderful place to visit because there's a lot of things to do there.
32:46And it's not far from Los Angeles.
32:48Not far from LA.
32:49The one thing I want to say is that Noah's influence is huge.
33:00His ideas and practice, uh, were very groundbreaking and actually still are groundbreaking to this.
33:08And his, um, and you can see a lot of, um,
33:13Um, it's very easy to kind of connect Noah with some other more, uh, known folks like Boyce, for example.
33:22Uh, they're kind of cut from the same cloth.
33:26Uh, and the ideas about community and education.
33:30We started an education program, uh, to bring kids from South Central out to the site.
33:37We created a curriculum that's based on the, the state educational guidelines for, um, performing arts and visual arts.
33:47We've partnered with the local, uh, native tribes and have integrated the story of the land into our, uh, curriculum.
33:58Uh, and given those kids, many of them would have never left South Central.
34:03Uh, a different history to look at.
34:09The history of Noah, the history of, um, self-determination of civil rights and aesthetics all kind of woven together.
34:18Uh, and I would imagine that they see the world very differently now when they go and when they come
34:28back.
34:28Uh, and that was based on Noah's interest in education.
34:32And the first time, the first school we brought out to the desert was Markham Middle School,
34:38which is where 66 signs of neon was exhibited.
34:43So there's that historical connection, you know, too.
34:47Cool.
34:49Hey, Joe, thank you so much for taking the time.
34:53You're welcome.
35:04Let's have breakfast.
35:06Let's have breakfast.
35:21Let's have breakfast.
35:28You
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