A Note to the Viewer This book is divided into three separate parts: The photographs, the photographic chronology and the text. The advantages of this format is to give you, the viewer, at least three options. You can proceed chronologically from the beginning of the book to the end, thereby grasping the artist s full intent to inform, entertain and intrigue. Or you may casually thumb through the book spotting only those details that give meaning to each piece. Or you may flip the pages rapidly just to get a bird s eye view of the content. Or perhaps, you may discover some aspects of the book that we overlooked altogether. Nevertheless no matter what option a viewer chooses to take, it is our desire that each of you get so close to the piece that you see the smoke from its breath as it comes alive. Noah Purifoy April, 1997 Born in Snow Hill, Alabama, in 1917, sculptor Noah Purifoy lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California, where he died in 2004. First director of the Watts Towers Art Center in the 1960s, Purifoy dedicated himself to the found object creating artwork made entirely from junked materials and to using art as a tool for social change. In 1989, Purifoy moved his practice to the Mojave Desert, creating a ten-acre Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture on the desert floor. The Noah Purifoy Foundation maintains and preserves Purifoy s museum and legacy. Recent group exhibitions include Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in Painting and Sculpture: 1950 1970, J. Paul Getty Museum; Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960 1980, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and MoMA PS1, New York; and Civic Virtue: The Impact of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Watts Towers Arts Center, Watts Towers Art Center, Los Angeles. In Spring 2014, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will present a traveling Noah Purifoy Retrospective.