Noah Purifoy: Desert Elder

I do not wish to be an artist – I only wish that art enables me to be.
– Noah Purifoy, 1963

The sacred elder of the Mojave Desert art scene is Noah Purifoy (1917 – 2004). Purifoy was a southerner born in rural Snow Hill, Alabama. He was raised in a pre-war South rife with racial tension and an implied threat of violence toward the black community. His ticket out was his artistic talent, curiosity and intelligence leaving behind an influential body of sculptural work here in the southern California desert.

In 1943, Purifoy graduated from Alabama State Teachers College with a bachelor’s in social science. After graduation, he taught woodshop classes at Tuscaloosa high school before enlisting in the Navy where he served until 1946. After his service, Purifoy went back to school – earning a masters’ degree from Atlanta University in social work. His formal education was not over. In 1956, Purifoy earned a BFA, Bachelor of Fine Arts, from Cal Arts (then called Chouinard) in Los Angeles.

Purifoy would spend the next three decades in the city of Los Angeles working, teaching and maintaining a rich art practice. He first worked in the public policy space, most notably for the California Arts Council, where Purifoy initiated programs such as Artists in Social Institutions, which brought art instruction to inmates in the California state prison system.

In 1964, Purifoy co-founded the Watts Towers Arts Center, and even served as its first director. Purifoy knew the impact of social unrest on the black community and used his art to send up a flare – a marker – to illuminate the impact of civil unrest and social upheaval of the time. After the 1965 Watts neighborhood riots, Purifoy collected the melted debris left behind to create an important series. This assemblage work was included in a group exhibition called 66 Signs of Neon which traveled internationally. His work is included in important collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Smithsonian Archives and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. The largest collection is here in the desert.

Purifoy settled in Joshua Tree in the 1980’s and spent the last 15 years of his life creating large scale assemblage works using the castoffs of modern society. His land, now the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Museum of Assemblage Sculpture, is a flat 10-acre desert plot dotted with his work – set against majestic views of the mountains that ring the Joshua Tree National Park. Taking the refuse of the modern world and re-ordering it as sculpture, Purifoy’s presence is still felt as an important desert touchstone.