Besides seeing art, I started THINKING about it, too. This began initially with my going to see the Watts Towers--a kind of urban folk art built by an immigrant worker named Simon Rodia over a period of 32 years on the small wedge of land he owned in the midst of sprawling LA. This in turn led to my meeting a Black artist named Noah Purifoy and to our having a series of conversations which made a strong impact on me. Eventually all this thought crystallized around an article I read in U.S. Camera written by David Vestal and entitled Recipe for Seeing. It made a distinct impression on me--so much so that I dissected it line by line, then interpolated these nascent thoughts of mine into it in the appropriate places, calling the resulting treatise Photography ad infinitum. The principles embodied in this amalgamation of ideas ultimately served as the foundation for my career as an artist.
