Visiting Artist: Cal State @ Bakersfield, California

Route 66- The Messenger What We Lost, 2014 Scavenged tires off of highway, Wood, Steel, Scrounged tin cans, license plates

About 25 years ago I did one of my first visiting artist projects at Cal State at Bakersfield Ca.this year was the 75 anniversary of John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath. Cal State at Bakersfield was having visiting artist come in and make art related to Steinbecks book. I thought it would be interesting to participate in this project. Joyce Kohl remembered me from my previous visit and thought it would be interesting to have me back again. The Campus seemed vaguely familiar and I immediately recognized the patio sculpture plaza where I built my piece 25 years ago. Joyce and I spent part of the drive in beside the road picking up blown out tires on the highway for the Raven portion of the sculpture. The piece I designed for the project is a Route 66 sign with the numbers covered with rusty tin of the kind that was discarded by the people displaced by the depression who were traveling to California. The back of the sign is scrawled with with the message No Okies. This is to remind people of discrimination against these honest hardworking people who were trying to make a better life. 

This trip was a whirlwind of work to complete the piece from start to finish in a five day time frame. We installed the piece on Campus the last day. 

I received an email from Joyce after the piece had been up a while that some people were offended by the no Okies sign. It was not I intent to offend but to make aware of this part of history that is fading away. It is my goal that by creating conversation about these events we can prevent them from happening again....

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