Shana Nys Dambrot
Sculptor Mark Lere is fresh from the Grand/LATTC Metro station downtown, where this past weekend he reinstalled his piece Who, What, Where?, first installed some 20 years ago when the A Line originally opened. In a series of objects and sandblasted texts, Lere arrays figures, symbols, and words using the fluid forward and return motion of travel as a metaphor for how we go through life, aiming to give riders a moment of pause to think about where they’re coming from, and where they are going—a particularly apt motif for the pursuit of education the Los Angeles Trade Tech College represents. Over his long career, Lere has worked and shown alongside other acclaimed figures from the world of abstract sculpture, land art, material invention, and energetic, earthy minimalism, with several of his public works still holding space all across the region and beyond.
Mark Lere at Grand/LATTC Station (Courtesy LA Metro)
L.A. WEEKLY: When did you first know you were an artist?
MARK LERE: I grew up on a farm in North Dakota and when I was around 8 my family moved to Denver. On a field trip to the museum, I saw some kinetic sculptures and thought how great it was that someone could make these objects and show them. This really inspired me to expand my interests in drawing and 3-dimensional space. I liked drawing and had a facile hand early on and realized I wanted to be an artist. One of my earliest artworks was a “scatter/puzzle type” artwork that was called the County Line. It consisted of 200 pieces of neon stretched out over a county line when turned on looked like the little dots and dashes one sees on a map – a literal creation of the mapping lines in 3-dimensional form—illustrating the illustration, you might say.
What would you be doing if you weren’t an artist?
I love to fabricate and invent different things, so my studio is like a laboratory, much as if I had decided to become an engineer or scientist. My father left farming (flax seed and sheep) to become a part of the space program working on Moon launches and Voyager, as well as the Space Shuttle. I have an interest in physics and how things work, so if I wasn’t an artist, I probably would have gone into something scientific. Ultimately it is all an explorative, creative process with different forms, so being a sculptor is essentially no different than being an inventor.
Mark Lere at Grand/LATTC Station (Courtesy of LA Metro)
Did you go to art school?
I realized in undergraduate school that I needed to leave Colorado and move to New York or Los Angeles to pursue being an artist. I was fortunate to be accepted to the University of California, Irvine for graduate school, where I majored in sculptural installation. It was a new art program with no tenured faculty and freedom to create and explore ideas in an open atmosphere. I was able to interact with Chris Burden, Alexis Smith, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Tony Delap, Ed Bereal, and Vija Celmins, among others. It was a catalyst for so many of us, including mentorship from art writers such as Melinda Wortz.
Why do you live and work in L.A.?
Some of my earliest friends in the area were artists like Smith, Kauffman, Bruce Nauman, Richard Jackson, Carole Caroompas, Roger Herman, Jill Giegerich, Peter Lodato, and Lavi Daniel, to name a few. I took over Nauman’s studio space in Pasadena when he moved to New Mexico and was there for years, and then moved to different parts of town including Santa Monica and two different studios in Downtown L.A. Los Angeles is such a dynamic community, and to live here without worrying about the restrictions of weather and not having a lot of money. When I moved here it was such a burgeoning art scene full of excitement and an inclusive melting pot. It felt like the art scene had endless possibilities and it continues to be that way today.
Mark Lere: The Metro Machine, epoxy terrazzo artwork, 900-square feet (detail)
When was your first show?
I had my first solo show in 1980 at the Riko Mizuno Gallery, Los Angeles and then subsequently several major presentations, with the Margo Leavin Gallery. Both dealers were open to new ideas and the ability to experiment with the installation in their spaces. My first museum show was a large interior and exterior installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles in 1984-85.
What artist living or dead would you most like to show or work with?
I follow the projects by Anish Kapoor and Anselm Kiefer, so I would value the opportunity to spend more time with them. I admire the work of Martin Puryear and New York artist Barry Le Va (both whom I know as friends and have been in group shows with them). It would have been great to have talked with Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, and Duchamp in the past. I have spent time with several of the Italian Arte povera artists whose works I also follow.
Do you listen to music while you work? If so, what?
I generally listen to classical music in the studio, more as background; it is relaxing. Mostly I have the television or computer going with some programs—sports, politics, news, travel, etc.
What is your most recent project?
My interdisciplinary approach to public works deals with each specific site in terms of the architectural setting, use of the location, the function of the space, and interactions of people “activating the site.” I value these opportunities to create artworks with a responsibility to contribute to and interact with the public, and the physical and mental worlds we live in. The L.A. Metro Trade Tech College location relates to a Moment in Time, the “Moment of Being There” as people are getting on or off the train for short periods of time—coming and going.
Mark Lere at Grand/LATTC Station (Courtesy of LA Metro)
There are four aluminum elements (handmade in my studio) at the Metro site: “@” sign puzzle, as in, “Are you there?,” an hourglass form, a cloudlike/smoke figure that draws attention to the built-in speakers on the poles of the Metro Station with a tongue-in-cheek reference to “Smoke-screen,” and a cartoon-WOW shape; referencing the “Notion of Surprise!” The Grand/LATTC Metro installation provides an environment for the travelers to quickly wonder and ponder the moment, and if there is confusion or contradiction to what they experience, that is okay also.
I find public work to be creatively challenging in approaching a location and engaging the parameters and three-dimensional experiences of the project. The collaborative nature of working with city officials, architects, landscapers, consultants, and the stakeholders of each community adds to the process. Over the years my works incorporate elements of humor and irony, contradictions in materiality, fluid thinking, questions on historical references, language, and poetic license.
I enjoy playing with hidden relevance—inside-out irony—the obviously unobvious, as architect Wulf Boettger has noted about my work. His comment that my artistic environments within a space or installations are “narrative science” is an interesting interpretation of my thinking process. Bringing all these sensibilities to a site with the combination of different elements further develops an ongoing dialogue, interaction, and connection with each public installation that may or may not relate to earlier or later projects.
Mark Lere: Spiral Landscape, Westlake
The LATTC Metro Station is a refurbishment and evolution of a 20-year old piece. Is there an example of an early project that is continuously being reexamined?
One of the first public sculptures I created over 20 years ago is a landscape/earth spiral at the entrance to an industrial park in Westlake, CA. It has been carefully maintained by the developers, which I so appreciate. It is on a list of sites to see in the area with Japanese tourists who stop by for photo ops on their tour buses. Most recently a fashion photographer found the work and did a series of fashion shots with a well-known model. It has become an Instagram hit which is so interesting to me how the site is now activated in a new way. It has taken on another meaning and experience for the viewers. The work feels alive and relevant today continuing an artistic dialogue and interaction.
Several other public installations are still on view throughout the region including a work in Pasadena, one at the Warner Plaza, at USC School of Architecture, and the Santa Monica Civic Center Building, among others.
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Mark Lere: Tilt Puzzle Plaza (2007). Sculpture garden in Woodland Hills, CA. Made of steel, stone, and concrete.
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