Junkyards Are Gold Mines for Sculptor Leland Means

FACES

“I’ve always responded to old things,” says Leland Means, a Whittier-based sculptor who opens his first Los Angeles solo show at Santa Monica’s Ruth Bachofner Gallery on Saturday. Means’ work is based on old objects he finds at swap meets and junkyards. The sculptures aren’t made to represent those particular discoveries, however, but rather to remind the viewer of items that have particular personal meaning for them.

“I like when people say, ‘That looks like a . . . ,’ when it hits a chord for them,” says Means, 40, who noted that while a particular piece may be inspired by the shape of an antique toaster, for instance, it will have an obscure title like “Two-tone.” “Most people need to put a name on it or solve the piece in some way, and I like that. That’s why I don’t give it a name that sounds like what it looks like because then it stops them from figuring it out for themselves.”

In creating his polyester resin sculptures, Means, an alumnus of Claremont Graduate School who was previously a realist painter, says he first makes countless sketches from various shapes he has spotted while digging through a scrap yard, for instance.

“I look at those shapes and play with them,” he explains. “Often the shape is from an unknown object--something that’s been kicked around and used a lot, and I don’t always know what it was used for. So I mess with the shape until it gets a kind of patina of age to it, and that’s when it’s finished, when the surface starts to change. Things take on a real integrity when they have a history.”

Getting that “patina of age,” however, can be a lengthy process, Means says. “Jacob’s Spiral,” for instance, which was shown at the L.A. Convention Center during ART/L.A., took several months and was “about 16 different colors” before the artist felt it was completed.

“There’s some point where shapes go from being organic to . . . being obviously man-made, and right in the middle somewhere is the real interesting point. Things get a hell of a lot more interesting when you don’t know what they are,” he says.

“I don’t know if it’s an archetypal thing or what, but there are certain shapes that are just lodged in our heads somehow. When I was painting, I found that I was painting these objects that I really liked, but I felt like I was never doing justice to these really neat things. . . . Now I’m making the kind of things that I would paint.”

But moving from painting to sculpture was difficult for Means, who began his current body of work about two years ago, and has since been featured in a number of group shows including the recent international exchange, “Dialogue: Prague/Los Angeles.”

“I gradually began building the paintings out from the wall, and I called it ‘shaped painting,’ and then ‘painted objects,’ ” he remembers. “It was a year or two before I could pull them off the wall and really call them ‘sculpture.’ It was a real identity thing to finally use that word.”

Means’ work, which will be shown alongside a separate one-person exhibition by oil painter Michael Wood, will be on view through Feb. 16.

THE SCENE

UCLA Extension on Tuesday begins a winter class focusing on noted Los Angeles artist Edward Ruscha, who is currently the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

“Edward Ruscha and Los Angeles Art of the ‘60s” features five lecture sessions by art critic Jan Butterfield (executive editor of the Journal of Art) and culminates in an informal salon discussion with Ruscha and Henry Hopkins, director of the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, on Feb. 12.

The class will be held Tuesday evenings from 7 to 10 in Room 3273 of UCLA’s Dickson Art Center. The fee for the entire course is $230, and a single admission fee of $25 ($5 for students) is available for the Feb. 12 session. Information: (213) 206-8503.

A two-session Government Grantwriting Workshop using the California Arts Council’s Organizational Support Program grant application as a guide will be conducted this Saturday and Jan. 19 by ARTS Inc., an arts service organization.

Saturday’s session will be held at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, and the Jan. 19 session will be at Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts. At the second session, participants and grantwriting experts will break into small discipline-based groups to critique one another’s proposals (which are due to the CAC by Feb. 1) in a manner similar to the peer panel review system. The workshop fee is $25 for the first session, $35 for the second, or $50 for both. Registration is required by Friday. Information: (213) 627-9276.

Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery is looking for a development director to “help revitalize” the city-run Barnsdall Art Park gallery. A $10,000 grant toward that position has been given by the California Community Foundation. Interested applicants are asked to call Joe Austin, MUNI board president, at (213) 683-0643.

CURRENTS

The Southwest Museum has completed a second video disc of images from its historic photograph collection, making nearly 100,000 of the museum’s 125,000 photographs available for viewing in the reading room of the museum’s Braun Research Library. The majority of photographs in the museum’s collection are images of native peoples of California and the Southwest, although the Anglo and Hispanic history of the American West is also documented.

Meanwhile, the museum is seeking donations of books on American Indians, anthropology, archeology and the history of the West for a March 2-3 book sale and auction to benefit the Braun Research Library. Information: (213) 221-2164.

California State Summer School for the Arts has begun searching for the state’s top high school arts students to attend its annual summer arts institute to be held at Oakland’s Mills College July 13-Aug. 10. Four hundred “California Arts Scholars” will be chosen in the fields of visual art, theater, music, dance, creative writing and film/video. While at the institute, they will work and study with professional artists of national stature. Information: (916) 323-9614.

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San Diego County’s Palomar College is planning a “Great European Art Workshop,” visiting major European centers of art, crafts and architecture, from June 18-July 10. Accompanied by artists, teachers and art historians, tour participants can receive three units of college credit if desired. The trip will visit Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Venice, Florence, Siena, Orvieta, Rome, Pisa, Carrara, Nice-Antibes and Paris. Cost including air travel, private motor coach, lodging, art instruction and lectures and some meals, is about $3,000. Information: (619) 744-1150.

DEBUTS

“Photography: Eclectic Images,” a current group exhibition at Melrose Avenue’s Cure Gallery, features work by four artists who have never before shown in Los Angeles. Included are photographs of classical music masters by Jim Arkatov, photomontages exploring the boundary between advertising and art by Dennis Potokar and distorted photographs of animals by Scott C. Schulman.

Also included are photographs by L.A. artist David Snow of seven controversial visual and performance artists who have recently faced questions of censorship, including John Fleck, Robbie Conal and Rachel Rosenthal.

A portion of proceeds from “Eclectic Images” will go to the nonprofit organization Cancervive, and an additional portion of proceeds from Snow’s work will go to the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression. The show runs through Jan. 15.

Oakland-based sculptor Jeff Key has his first Los Angeles solo show at Santa Monica’s Walker and Walker Gallery through Jan. 19. Key’s work deals with archetypal themes of survival and describes evolutionary reactions and consequences that could be brought on by destructive environmental factors.

David Limrite has his first Los Angeles solo show--featuring large, texturized charcoal drawings on paper--at John Thomas Gallery in Santa Monica through Feb. 2. Limrite, who is based in Los Angeles, has previously had solo shows at galleries including San Francisco State University and the Riverside Art Museum.