Planting a Seed
In the last years of his life, Los Angeles assemblage artist Noah Purifoy moved to the California High Desert and began making hundreds of sculptures on his property.
The sculptures were made from discarded items, including some pieces that were salvaged from burned buildings from the uprising in South Los Angeles.
Purifoy’s outdoor sculpture garden was one of our early excursions, and with the help of Tanya and Todd, we continued our ceremony there.
Nearby Noah Purifoy’s sculpture, “Ode to Frank Gehry, 1999,” we used an abalone shell to dig a shallow hole where we added pieces of coral and turquoise, two of the four gemstones on Drew’s bola tie, which was made by Navajo artist Albert Nells. On the piece, Nells included coral, Mother of Pearl, turquoise and jet — a kind of petrified coal — on the jewelry to represent the four winds and four elements, fire, water, land and sky.
We placed two baby Joshua Trees in the ground, then Tanya led the ceremony in the shadow of Purifoy’s structure.
Photo by Todd Beattie
She placed anointing oil our wrists for abundance, gave us mica and eggshell for prosperity, our marriage and our friendship; sage for its spirit; copal for its wisdom; and myrrh for its ancient guidance. We added the herbs to the ground and the Joshua Trees, which will grow tall as our own love will grow over the years.
And finally we thanked Noah Purifoy, whose imagination — and vision of a world that finds beauty in discarded and forgotten things — changed our lives.
