And Another One's Gone...

I learned on my drive home that my carpool partner's boyfriend played the organ today at the memorial mass for artist Robert Graham. For some reason, I'd missed the news that Graham passed away on 12/27/08. 

I first took note of Graham when I did research for a paper about commissioned art for the 1984 Summer Olympics held in LA. Graham sculpted the figures for the entryway for the LA Coliseum: ---> 

Graham also designed the sculpture of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the official memorial in Washington D.C.  I happened to be visiting there shortly after the memorial was dedicated and when I visited the site I was delighted to learn that Graham was the artist.

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Graham was commissioned to design the doors for the Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in downtown LA where his memorial was held today: 

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Some know of Graham because he had a very famous wife...

...actress Angelica Houston.

But it was in the mid 90s when I read a small article in Interview Magazine about the artist Robert Graham that I realized who he was.  Here's a snippet: 

Feeling what he calls "a sense of unrest inside of me following L.A. riots," Graham hired seven former gang members to assist with a commissioned sculpture project at his Venice Beach studio. The Mexican-born artist says he was looking for "a spirit of experiment" and "an instinctive understanding of what it means to make a work of art, that it involves a kind of magic." After making more than three thousand limited-edition Graham torsos based on his public sculpture Source Figure, no two of which are identical, the full-time apprentices are now operating both the business and creative ends of the project on their own. "I'm just passing down to others something that I know; it's my responsibility," says Graham.

I was very moved by this gesture. I admired Graham's altruism and above all, his humanity. Yet another person who made the world a better place to live in. He was an artist and a visionary and a generous soul.

Rest in Peace, Robert Graham.