From GEORGE HERMS with LOVE

A leading figure of the California Assemblage Movement, GEORGE HERMS’ life has been one of constant exploration. His work is created with ‘LOVE’ - love for the discards of society, things that people carelessly “trash”. George assembles beauty and form from this detritus. He embarked upon a career as an artist after seeing a show of Wallace Berman’s work at the Ferus Gallery. Berman became a mentor to Herms; George’s first exhibition in 1957 was a “secret exhibition” attended only by Berman and Walter Hopps (co-founder, with Ed Kienholz, of the Ferus Gallery, and curator of the exhibition George Herms: Hot Set, at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, March 5 through May 14, 2005).

George’s life-long friends are legion; Edmund Teske and Kenneth Patchen are just some of those to whom he pays homage in his work. One of the early pieces included in our exhibition is entitled to tennis star Walter Bentley (1973). Herms has also been profoundly influenced by Jazz, which reveals itself in “beat” in his work. His recent Dodo Marmarosa series (2003) is a group of wall mounted assemblages done to commemorate the great jazz pianist.

In his Academic Collage series (1982-83), created during his year as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, George used trunk lining, old cloth, Italian magazine clippings and layers of old posters stripped off crumbling Roman walls to create collages that serve as a journal for his experiences. They convey the flavor, the environment, the “streets”, the color - the rhythms of Rome.

The “Rose Patch” of 2003 will include Venus Rose, Neptune Rose and South Dakota Rose, three small sculptures created with old licence plates, metal cans, jar lids and mysterious automotive remnants. The Bead Game (1999), a tawdry voluptuous tondo, dominates one wall. An old golf cart becomes Rocket United (1994).

A combination of playful good humor, insightful wit and all-encompassing warmth infuses Herms’ work. He aptly signs all his work with a ‘LOVE’ stamp and there is a great love that shines through - love for the people, the places, the things that have touched his life. For George, art-making is his way to show his love to the world.

As he said in a joke to the Art History Fellows at the American Academy in Rome, “I’m doing what you are reading about. LOVE, GH”

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