In 1981, in a letter to DeAppel in Amsterdam, I compared FAR to both bridge and mirror. FAR reflects the artists who make up its board at any given time, and as a bridge, it has always been a platform between the artist and the community, even while the artist is a member of that community.
In 1977, Claire Copley, Connie Lewallen and I directed art galleries, and we found ourselves experimenting with artists who did not wish to inhabit a neutral white space with frames surrounding what were called "pieces."
We decided that the representation of art had to evolve along with the art. It was a time for experimentation and fermentation, and we were involved in a search for an appropriate production model. PS1 and the Clocktower had been established in NYC, and we asked ourselves whether parts of that model might work in LA. LA's culture was very different than NYC's, and we found ourselves addressing the diffuse character of the city as well as the maze like nature of overlapping art communities in LA. Funding for art making is always elusive, and at that time, there were no granting avenues for alternative performance, event, onsite, or conceptual work. FAR addressed the need by consolidating and targeting funding efforts for each production.
After beginning in a space, downtown, we decided to become itinerate, cutting overhead, and putting our resources into the appropriate venue for each production. Events now took place throughout the city. I felt strongly that community participates in an event to the degree it produces it, and so I emphasized a transparent process of development, production and critique. In those first years many, many people wholeheartedly followed a course of conceptualization, development and critique through each project.
In 1981 I wrote to DeAppel, "our commitment is to ensuring that important ideas and works have adequate and pertinent exposure in LA. Those works and ideas have no one style nor philosophy. We look for work we don't know."
Constance Lewallen, Former Board Member
FAR was the child of two galleries - ours, Thomas Lewallen, and Claire Copley's. The galleries shared an interest in conceptual art and other non commercial forms and it became clear to us that, since we were more or less operating on a nonprofit basis, we should formalize that status. We were idealistic and had little notion of how to proceed, but proceed we did. One of our first FAR "productions" was John Baldessari's film (perhaps his only), Colorful Inside Jobs, which premiered at the old art deco movie theater on Lincoln Blvd in Venice. We paid for it with our credit cards until we could raise the funds. Baldessari hired a painter to cover the walls, floor and ceiling of a small, specially constructed room with each of the primary colors, one a day. He shot the film in time lapse so that each paint job was accomplished in a few frenetic minutes. The piece could be seen as a critique of traditional genres, such a "action" painting, but, true to form, Baldessari softened the blow with a good dose of humor.
Other projects ensued - a beautiful James Lee Byars book that Morgan edited; a group show Morgan and I organized for HallWalls in Buffalo consisting of small, easy-to-transport works by LA conceptualists (David Askevold, Dorit Cypis, Raul Guerrero, et al). The catalogue was a stack of large index cards containing the necessary information and statements by each artist.
These are some of the projects that remain vivid in my memory. Claire and I soon moved away from LA, and Morgan pursued other interests, we but we are gratified that FAR lived on.
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