Conversation WITH JOHN OUTTERBRIDGE : ‘This Is a City That Has Not Realized Its Own Uniqueness’

Sculptor JOHN OUTTERBRIDGE left his post as director of the Watts Tower Arts Center in 1992 to concentrate on his own assemblage art. But he left behind neither community service, nor thoughts about community. Outterbridge, 61, often welcomes school children at his studio and residence in South Central Los Angeles, where he is working on “Five Pieces with Sticks and Rags,� inspired by the giant culverts used in Metro subway construction. This fall he and Betye Saar, another Los Angeles artist, will represent the United States at the Brazil Bienal in Sao Paolo.

He spoke with KAY MILLS, author of “This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer� (Plume, 1994).

Question: You’re among the judges picking the team to design and build a commercial and housing complex at the former Pepperdine University campus at 81st and Vermont Streets in Los Angeles. The winner hasn’t been announced yet, but I wonder if you’d speak, as an artist and a person active in the community yourself, about what you especially wanted the design to offer the people of that area?

Answer: I was more interested in hearing from the presenters how that space would be used and how they would deal with such a small parcel of land for affordable housing and the mixed-use concept. Any team that can effectively use space that small has got to have talent.

The most important aspect of the design competition was to see it come together in such a way that community people could have input themselves. People recognized the need for affordable housing, but people were concerned about concepts that would stimulate the need for jobs. We see shopping centers introduced all the time; the developers come in and carry out the project and then they’re gone. Many people were interested in a development idea that would result in longevity in the way of jobs, in the way of enhancing the economic temperament of the region.

Q: Were there particular services or shops that people wanted to see in the complex?

A: There are many entrepreneurs, or street vendors, in the area now and some of those people discussed needing housing and needing to be accommodated as entrepreneurs. People spoke of needing a bank in the area. Since First Interstate has motivated the process (of developing the site), people in the community might encourage them to do a branch office.

Q: Are there areas of the city where you think that the art and architecture really speak to the community?

A: Well, Los Angeles for me has been a very exciting experience. It’s so untrained and so expansive a piece of metropolitan geography. When I first came here in 1963, I had no idea that Los Angeles was as diverse in people and scale as it was. Some of the most innovative architectural notions that I’ve experienced in moving around the country are in Southern California, especially Los Angeles.

But I still think that this is a city that has not yet realized its own uniqueness. It has a diversity of languages. It has an audacity about it by being so closely attached to the fancifulness of Hollywood. When I first came to L.A., I thought about how reckless at times the development schemes could be when they were bringing down certain well-established cultural landmarks without giving them any due consideration. For example, when I first started to go to Downtown Los Angeles, I was fascinated with a little transportational mode called Angel’s Flight (a short cog railway up the hill from Downtown and Bunker Hill). When that was brought down, I thought that the City of Angels had broken the wings of an angel by breaking down that little transportational mode.

For another example, people from around the world visit Los Angeles and always want to visit the Watts Towers. For a long time that site was deserted. Of course, it has a very energetic restoration program now. The monument is owned by the state of California. It has been elevated to national and international prominence, but the caretakership from the city and the state could be much more energetic to make sure that the site develops as fast as it can. It has been for a long time this region’s cultural heritage ambassador.

Q: I’d like to talk to you about the fate of arts education in the city. What do school cuts do to a community’s appreciation of its surroundings or its artists’ work?

A: I think that a society that does not truly understand the importance of the arts is a society that has poor regard for its future. In primary education, art can be and should be one of the prime motivating factors for young people, in that the processes used to teach art are the very processes that nurture the individual, the inward individual.

The act of creativity is the very motion that gets anything worthwhile done. We can never lose, I feel, the need to keep art as close to the initial education process as possible.

The arts sometimes give language to young people who simply would not have language that speaks to life, that speaks to life potentials. Should we subtract the arts from our culture, we wouldn’t have very much left at all.

Q: If you had one message that you could deliver through this conversation to Mayor Riordan on the importance of the arts, what would you say?

A: I would say to the mayor to be mindful of the importance of the city’s cultural institutions and to encourage as much support of those institutions as can be rendered at this time, because this is one of the most exciting and diverse metropolitan areas in the country--it’s vibrant with expression, and that expression needs to be shared with all the citizens.

This is a city also that needs a lot of management; it’s a beautiful city but it’s gotten very, very sloppy about its streets. We have people from many other parts of the world who cannot imagine the debris that is piled up in the streets and along the curb in this city, and I think that if I was a new mayor, I would certainly get on the business community to keep their immediate environment at least clean.

Some consciousness within the city about its own aesthetic presence is a very important thing to be nurtured from official city chambers.