JUNK DADA collaborative public sculpture inspired by Noah Purifoy 

Ten Columbus arts organizations have constructed large-scale letterforms inspired by the work of artist, designer, and social worker Noah Purifoy, whose work is on view in the Wexner Center galleries in the career retrospective Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada. Like Purifoy, the organizations used repurposed materials to construct assemblage sculptures; in honor of the exhibition, the letterforms spell out “junk dada.” See photos of the process—as well as the completed sculpture—here.

The Inspiration

A legend in California’s post-WWII art scene, Noah Purifoy (1917–2004) used the modest materials of everyday life to produce a wide range of sculptures of dazzling visual invention, embodying an aesthetic the exhibition’s curators termed “junk dada.” His career-spanning retrospective at the Wex—the show’s only presentation outside of Los Angeles—collects more than 50 of Purifoy’s works dating from the late 1950s to early 2000s. These works by Purifoy—the first African American to graduate from what is now CalArts, a founding director of the Watts Towers Arts Center in LA, and a founding member of the California Arts Council—are on view at the Wex through April 10.

The following community organizations contributed to the project:

J       Ohio Art League     400 West Rich

U     Wild Goose Creative

N     Ohio State Office of Student Life

K     Columbus Idea Foundry

D     Ohio State Department of Art: Sculpture

A     Ohio State Department of Art: Sculpture

D     MINT Collective

A     Milo-Grogan Presented by Milo Arts & 934 Gallery

Cosponsored by Unistrut Framing Channel & Fittings | Unistrut Service Company.