Saturday, October 15, 2022, 8:00 pm
LERNER/HARRIS’ DOC ON PURIFOY’s DESERT ART-PARK
Here’s the premiere of prolific documentarian Jesse Lerner‘s marvelous exploration of Noah Purifoy‘s legendary sculpture-park in the desert around Joshua Tree. Jesse flies up from his Pitzer College duties to introduce this feature work, The Fragmentations Only Mean…,made with Sara Harris, that celebrates the storied career of this African-American assemblage artist from Watts, who retired from the California Arts Council in 1986, to spend the last 18 years of his life creating over 100 uncanny junk-sculptures in the high desert. Opening is a handful of shorts and performances about the SoCal landscape: Mission visionaries Bivoulab, with their immersive Virtual Reality piece Re-Turn to Zabrinski, Kelly Sears‘ Maximum Umbra, Laura Gabbert‘s Monument/Friendship Park, on the border wall, and Yash Pathak‘s live musical recitation to the Coast Daylight, the most beautiful train-trip in the US (SF to LA