ABSTRACT 
 
  
Title of Dissertation:  PLASTIC FANTASTIC: AMERICAN 
SCULPTURE IN THE AGE OF SYNTHETICS 
 
Danielle Eileen O’Steen, Doctor of Philosophy, 
2018 
 
Dissertation directed by:  Dr. Joshua Shannon, Department of Art History  
and Archaeology  
 
 
This dissertation considers the role of plastics as a sculptural medium in the United States 
in the 1960s and 1970s. At this time, artists were turning to synthetics in large numbers 
and with great enthusiasm, in spite of wavering public opinion on plastics in the U.S.  
I argue for the significance of this “plastics moment” for the arts by looking closely at  
the work of four artists: Donald Judd (1928–1994), Eva Hesse (1936–1970), De Wain 
Valentine (b. 1936), and Frederick Eversley (b. 1941). I position their sculptures in the 
social context of synthetics in twentieth-century America. In their distinctive practices, 
Judd, Hesse, Valentine, and Eversley each used plastics with a pioneer’s zeal: working 
with local industries, creating new means of production, and even developing formulas 
for the materials.  
 
Plastic Fantastic is an interdisciplinary text, engaging scientific and cultural histories in 
conversation with American art scholarship. I focus on the production accounts of the 
objects to understand how these four artists took on the challenge of synthetics, and 
consider the diversity of substances used, looking at sculptures in Plexiglas, Fiberglas, 
and polyester resin. Using a technical approach to art history, I expand the literature on 
artworks from this period, which often omits material details and overlooks plastics’ 
place at this crux of sculpture in the U.S. My dissertation illuminates the important 
innovations of Judd, Hesse, Valentine, and Eversley to understand this juncture in the 
1960s and 1970s, when American art found plastics. 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PLASTIC FANTASTIC: 
AMERICAN SCULPTURE IN THE AGE OF SYNTHETICS 
 
 
 
By 
 
 
Danielle Eileen O’Steen 
 
 
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the  
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment 
of the requirements for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
2018 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Advisory Committee:  
Associate Professor Joshua Shannon, Chair  
Associate Professor Emerita Renée Ater  
Professor Robert Friedel  
Dr. Karen Lemmey 
Professor Steven Mansbach  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Copyright by  
Danielle Eileen O’Steen 
 2018 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Disclaimer 
 
The dissertation document that follows has had referenced material removed in  
respect for the owner’s copyright. A complete version of this document, which includes 
said referenced material, resides in the University of Maryland, College Park’s  
library collection. 
Acknowledgments 
 
This dissertation has benefited from the support and assistance of many 
individuals in the course of my research and writing. I am most grateful for their time and 
help. I would first like to thank my committee, particularly my advisor Joshua Shannon 
for his thoughtful and attentive feedback and for setting an example of excellence in 
scholarship throughout my graduate career. Next, I am grateful to Renée Ater for being 
an important source of inspiration and for continuing to challenge me at every turn.  
I thank Steven Mansbach for his generous support of my work and his essential 
contribution to my committee. I am grateful to Karen Lemmey for her comments and 
encouragement, for inspiring many rich conversations on sculpture, and for her guidance 
during my fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Lastly, I thank Robert 
Friedel for his helpful feedback and his shared enthusiasm in the world of plastics. 
The following grants have been invaluable to my graduate work and dissertation 
research. From the University of Maryland, I am thankful for the George Levitine 
Fellowship in Art History (2012–2016), the Graduate School Summer Research 
Fellowship (2016), and the University of Maryland Museum Fellowship, hosted by the 
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2016–2017). I am grateful for receiving the 
Big Ten Academic Alliance Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellowship at the 
Smithsonian American Art Museum (2017–2018), which provided crucial support during 
the final year of writing my dissertation.  
While at the Smithsonian, my research benefited from the assistance of many 
colleagues: Amelia Goerlitz, Stacy Weiland, and Melissa Ho at the Smithsonian 
American Art Museum; Evelyn Hankins at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; 
 ii 
and Martin Collins and Carolyn Russo at the National Air and Space Museum. I am also 
grateful to the other fellows at SAAM for their feedback and support, especially Jennifer 
Noonan and Jenn Sichel.  
I am thankful for the help and kindness of colleagues at many museums, libraries, 
and archives throughout the course of my research: Anne Evenhaugen and Alexandra 
Reigle at the American Art and Portrait Gallery Library; Marisa Bourgoin at the Archives 
of American Art; Bart Ryckbosch at the Art Institute of Chicago; Odile Rousseau at the 
Centre Pompidou; Emily Orr at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Aimee 
Calfin at the Getty Research Institute; Rebecca Bruner and Jacqueline Protka at the 
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Kate Kraczon at the Institute of Contemporary 
Art, University of Pennsylvania; Thomas Norris at the Norton Simon Museum; Dawn 
Gorman Frank and Rebekah Morin at the Milwaukee Art Museum; John Spike at the 
Muscarelle Museum of Art; Genevieve Lipinsky at the Museum of Modern Art; Tal 
Nadan at The New York Public Library; Eileen Hansen and Brittany Bradley at the 
Oakland Museum of California; Kim Conaty, then at the Rose Art Museum; Mackenzie 
Kelly at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Betsy Anderson at the Smithsonian American 
Art Museum; Deborah Shapiro at the Smithsonian Institution Archives; and Michael 
Beiser, Tara Hart, Lawrence Hernandez, Majida Mugharbel, and Micah Musheno at the 
Whitney Museum of American Art.  
 Thank you to Alberta Mayo of the Frank Thomas Archives and Peter Kirby of 
the Harry Drinkwater Archives for sharing the photographs in their collections. I am 
grateful to Caitlin Murray, Jana LaBrasca, and Mette Carlsen at the Judd Foundation for 
their knowledge and support, and Tamar Margalit at the Museum of Modern Art and 
 iii 
Jaime Schwartz at Zwirner Gallery for generously facilitating my visit with a 
“Turnbuckle” by Judd. I thank collectors Jarl Mohn and, especially, Beau Ott, for sharing 
his research and collection with me. Finally, I am grateful for illuminating conversations 
with the following conservators: Roger Griffith at the Museum of Modern Art; Michelle 
Barger at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Ariel O’Connor at the Smithsonian 
American Art Museum; and Eleonora Nagy at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 
At a pivotal moment in my graduate career, I attended the Summer Institute in 
Technical Art History at the Conservation Center at the Institute of Fine Arts, which 
helped to set me on an important path towards honing my approach to this text. I am 
grateful to Michele Marincola and Sarah Barack for introducing me to the field of 
technical art history, my fellow attendees for joining me in pursuit of materials-based 
research, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for generously funding this program.  
Most importantly, I am ever thankful to Jamie Dearing, Dudley Del Balso, Fred 
Eversley, Doug Johns, and De Wain and Kiana Valentine for lending their time and 
recollections with me.  
This dissertation has benefited by the long-term support and input of many 
individuals at the University of Maryland, including Deborah Down, Quint Gregory, and 
Theresa Morse. I am also thankful to my fellow graduate students, particularly my PURD 
reading group that supported my first efforts at writing: Raino Isto, Eleanor Stoltzfus, and 
Grace Yasumura. I thank my friends and colleagues who have both supported and 
challenged me throughout this process, notably: Marin Sullivan, Jordan Amirkhani, and 
Cecilia Wichmann.  
 iv 
In thanking my family, I cannot help but first acknowledge an important 
coincidence. My topic on plastics often evokes a recollection of a famous scene in The 
Graduate, which is cited in my introduction. In my text, I do not mention that this film 
was edited by my late father, Sam O’Steen, at a critical time in his career. While my 
writing on plastics has no direct relationship to his work on this movie, I am grateful to 
share this cultural touchstone with him in honor of his memory.  
I am thankful for my family who has long supported me, including my  
in-laws—Nate, Marsha, Allison, and Jason—and especially my sister Molly and my 
mother Bobbie, who generously acted as my reader and editor in the final stages. Finally, 
I am endlessly grateful to my husband Mike, who has offered continual support, patience, 
and feedback throughout this entire process, and my two children Samuel and Rosalie, 
the beautiful bookends who marked the beginning and end of my dissertation writing and 
who continue to bring love and light into my life. Mike, Samuel, and Rosalie, I share this 
text with you.  
 
 
  
 v 
Table of Contents 
 
Acknowledgments        ii 
Table of Contents        vi 
List of Figures         viii 
 
INTRODUCTION The Pioneers of Plasticraft     1 
From Innovation to Proliferation      4 
Historical Precedence in Plastics      9 
Outline of the Dissertation      12 
On Scholarship, Language, and Plastics     15 
An Approach to Objects and Materials     18 
Framing Exhibition History       23 
 
PART I NEW YORK 
 
Chapter 1 Donald Judd        29 
On Judd Scholarship       32 
When Judd Found Plexiglas      40 
The History of Plexiglas, and Judd     44 
Composing the First Turnbuckle       46 
Turnbuckles and Transparency      52 
Judd’s “Company” and Procedures      57 
Tunnels after Turnbuckles, In Conclusion    61 
 
Chapter 2 Eva Hesse        64 
On Hesse Scholarship        68 
Fiberglas and Hesse’s Plastics Research      75 
On Doug Johns and Aegis Reinforced Plastics     78 
Repetition Nineteen III        82  
Accretion and Accession III       87 
Sans II          90 
Hesse’s Last Work, In Conclusion      92 
 
PART II  LOS ANGELES 
 
Chapter 3 De Wain Valentine       95 
On Valentine Scholarship     99 
Valentine’s Origin Story        101 
The Move to Los Angeles and the Fiberglas Works    103 
The Turn to Polyester Resin       107 
Valentine’s Casting Process       109 
On Color and Polyester Resin       116 
Pasadena Art Museum Exhibition      118 
A Polyester Resin Hiatus, In Conclusion     122 
 vi 
Chapter 4 Frederick Eversley       125 
On Eversley Scholarship        128 
Eversley’s Beginning and Background      131 
The Exhibitions of 1970        134 
Eversley at the Whitney Museum      136 
The Lenses and the Parabola       140 
Casting the Lenses        143 
Transparent Dyes and Opaque Pigments in the Lenses    146 
National Air and Space Museum Residency, In Conclusion   151 
   
CONCLUSION         157 
 
Bibliography          164 
 
  
 vii 
List of Figures 
 
INTRODUCTION  
 
Figure 1: Röhm & Haas Company display, Hall of Industrial Science, 1939 New York 
World’s Fair. Source: Gilbert Rohde Collection, 1930–1944, Cooper-Hewitt Design 
Archive, New York, NY.  
Figure 2: Alexander Calder, Sculpture for the Röhm & Haas Company display, Hall of 
Industrial Science, 1939 New York World’s Fair. Source: Katherine S. Dreier 
papers/Société Anonyme archive, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke 
Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  
Figure 3: A Plastic Presence, Milwaukee Art Center, January 30–March 8, 1970. 
Courtesy of Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI.  
Figure 4: Plastics and New Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of 
Pennsylvania, January 15–February 25, 1969. Courtesy of Institute of Contemporary 
Art, University of Pennsylvania.  
 
Chapter 1 Donald Judd         
 
Figure 5: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled steel, 
1964, 22 x 45 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches. Courtesy of Judd Foundation.  
Figure 6: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 58), 1968, Red fluorescent Plexiglas and stainless 
steel, 20 x 48 x 34 inches, Centre Pompidou, Paris.  
Figure 7: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 128), 1968, Amber Plexiglas and stainless steel,  
33 x 68 x 48 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.  
Figure 8: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 30), 1962, Cadmium red light oil on Liquitex and 
sand on Masonite with yellow Plexiglas, 48 x 96 x 3 inches, San Francisco Museum 
of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA.  
Figure 9: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 38), 1963, Cadmium red light oil on wood with 
violet Plexiglas, 19 1/2 x 48 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches, National Gallery of Art, 
Washington, DC. Photograph by the author.  
Figure 10: Art Studio, Judd Foundation, Marfa, TX. Photograph by the author.  
Figure 11: DDB Fabrication and Material Files, Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX.  
Figure 12: Letter to Judd from H.W. Gift, Rohm & Haas, 1965, DDB Fabrication and 
Material Files, Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX.  
Figure 13: DDB Fabrication and Material Files, Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX.  
Figure 14: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled 
steel, 1964, 22 x 45 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches. Photograph by the author.  
Figure 15: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled 
steel, 1964, 22 x 45 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches. Photograph by the author.  
Figure 16: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled 
steel, 1964, 22 x 45 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches. Photograph by the author.  
Figure 17: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled 
steel, 1964, 22 x 45 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches. Photograph by the author.  
Figure 18: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled 
steel, 1964, 22 x 45 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches. Installation photographs by the author.  
 viii 
Figure 19: Art Studio, Judd Foundation, Marfa, TX. Courtesy of Judd Foundation, 
photographs by Mette Carlsen.  
Figure 20: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled 
steel, 1964, 22 x 45 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches. Installation photographs by the author.  
Figure 21: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled 
steel, 1964, 22 x 45 1/4 x 30 1/2 inches. Photograph by the author.  
Figure 22: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 58), 1968, Red fluorescent Plexiglas and stainless 
steel, 20 x 48 x 34 inches.  
Figure 23: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 53), Orange pebbled Plexiglas and hot-rolled 
steel, 1964, 20 x 45 3/8 x 31 inches. Photograph by Rudy Burckhardt.  
Figure 24: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 58), circa 1970, Red fluorescent Plexiglas and 
steel, 20 x 48 x 34 inches, Private collection. Courtesy of David Zwirner, New York.  
Figure 25: Don Judd, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968. Photograph by Geoffrey 
Clements. Source: Leo Castelli Gallery records, Archives of American Art, 
Smithsonian Institution.  
Figure 26: Don Judd, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968. Photograph by Rudy 
Burckhardt. Source: Leo Castelli Gallery records, Archives of American Art, 
Smithsonian Institution.  
Figure 27: Bernstein 1969, Purchase orders, Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX.  
Figure 28: Purchase order, 1969, Donald Judd, Business, 1969–1977, Leo Castelli 
Gallery records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.  
Figure 29: DDB Fabrication and Material Files, Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX.  
Figure 30: DDB Fabrication and Material Files, Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX.  
Figure 31: Donald Judd, Untitled (DSS 128), 1968, Amber Plexiglas and stainless steel, 
33 x 68 x 48 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Object in 
storage, photograph by the author.  
 
Chapter 2 Eva Hesse  
 
Figure 32: Eva Hesse, Chain Polymers, Fischbach Gallery, New York, 1968.  
Source: Fischbach Gallery records, 1937–2015, Archives of American Art, 
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.  
Figure 33: Eva Hesse, Accession III, 1968, Fiberglas and plastic tubing, 30 x 30 x  
30 inches, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Eva Hesse, Sans II, 1968, Fiberglas and 
polyester resin, five units. (One unit each: Daros Collection, Zurich; Museum 
Wiesbaden, Germany; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Two units: 
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.) Source: Fischbach Gallery records, 
1937–2015, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.  
Figure 34: Eva Hesse, Accession III, 1968, Fiberglas and plastic tubing 30 x 30 x  
30 inches, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Eva Hesse, Accretion, 1968, Fiberglas, fifty 
tubes, each unit 58 inches in length, 2.5 inches in diameter, Kröller-Müller Museum, 
Otterlo, Netherlands. Source: Fischbach Gallery records, 1937–2015, Archives of 
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.  
Figure 35: Doug Johns, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, conservation lab,  
April 2001, and Sans II reenactment. Source: Sculpture by Doug Johns,  
accessed June 28, 2018, http://dougjohnssculpture.com/.  
 ix 
Figure 36: Business cards collected and annotated by Eva Hesse. Source: Eva Hesse 
papers, 1914–1970, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,  
Washington, DC.  
Figure 37: Robert Smithson at Arko Metal Products and Donald Judd at Bernstein 
Brothers Sheet Metal, Inc. Photographs by Gretchen Lambert. Source: John Perreault,  
“A Minimal Future? Union-Made: Report on a Phenomenon,” Arts Magazine 41,  
no. 5 (March 1967): 26–31.  
Figure 38: Eva Hesse with an unfinished latex sculpture. Source: “Fling, Dribble and 
Drip: Young Sculptors Pour Their Art all over the Floor,” Life 68, no. 7  
(February 27, 1970): 62–66.  
Figure 39: Hesse, Chain Polymers, Fischbach Gallery, New York, November–December 
1968. Source: Fischbach Gallery records, 1937–2015, Archives of American Art, 
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.  
Figure 40: Chopped strand mat, handled by Doug Johns. Photograph by the author. 
Figure 41: Lecture on Polymers, February 1967, organized by Experiments in Art and 
Technology. Source: Experiments in Art and Technology records, 1966–1993, 
Special Collections, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA. 
Figure 42: Plastics and New Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of 
Pennsylvania, January 15–February 25, 1969. Courtesy of Institute of Contemporary 
Art, University of Pennsylvania. 
Figure 43: Plastics and New Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of 
Pennsylvania, January 15–February 25, 1969. Courtesy of Institute of Contemporary 
Art, University of Pennsylvania. 
Figure 44: Plastics and New Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of 
Pennsylvania, January 15–February 25, 1969. Courtesy of Institute of Contemporary 
Art, University of Pennsylvania. 
Figure 45: Eva Hesse, Repetition Nineteen I, 1967, paint and papier-mâché on aluminum 
screening, 19 units (one missing), each 9 1/8 to 10 1/2 inches x 6 1/2 to 9 1/8 inches 
in diameter, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 
Figure 46: Eva Hesse, Repetition Nineteen, second of 3 versions, 1967, pen and ink on 
transparentized paper, 8 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches, The Museum of Modern Art,  
New York, NY. 
Figure 47: Eva Hesse, Repetition Nineteen III, 1968, Fiberglas and polyester resin, 
nineteen units, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.  
Photograph by the author. 
Figure 48: Eva Hesse, Repetition Nineteen III, 1968, Fiberglas and polyester resin, 
nineteen units, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.  
Source: The Museum of Modern Art. 
Figure 49: Eva Hesse, Accretion, 1968, Fiberglas, fifty tubes, each unit 58 inches in 
length, 2 1/2 inches in diameter, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. 
Figure 50: Eva Hesse, Accession II, 1968, galvanized steel, vinyl, 30 3/4 x 30 3/4 x  
30 3/4 inches, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI. 
Figure 51: Eva Hesse, Accession III, 1968, Fiberglas and plastic tubing, 30 x 30 x  
30 inches, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. 
 
 x 
Figure 52: Eva Hesse, S-104, 1968, Fiberglas, polyester resin, plastic, 10 x 38 x  
26 centimeters, Naomi Spector and Stephen Antonakos, New York. Eva Hesse,  
S-105, 1968, Fiberglas, polyester resin, plastic, 9.9 x 13.3 x 13.7 centimeters, 
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. 
Figure 53: Eva Hesse, Sans II, 1968, Fiberglas and polyester resin, five units. One unit 
each: Daros Collection, Zurich; Museum Wiesbaden, Germany; and San Francisco 
Museum of Modern Art. Two units: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 
Figure 54: Eva Hesse, Sans II, 1968, Fiberglas and polyester resin, 38 x 86 x 6 1/8 inches, 
unit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA. Photographs  
by the author. 
Figure 55: Eva Hesse, Seven Poles, 1970, reinforced Fiberglas over polyethylene over 
aluminum wire, installation view, Trio, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Center,  
New York, 1970. 
 
Chapter 3 De Wain Valentine  
 
Figure 56: De Wain Valentine, Large Wall, 1968, polyester resin, 91 1/4 x 94 x  
17 1/2 inches, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA. 
Figure 57: De Wain Valentine, De Wain Valentine: Recent Sculpture, Pasadena Art 
Museum, May 12–July 5, 1970. Photographs by Harry Drinkwater. 
Figure 58: De Wain Valentine, Untitled (Curved Slab), 1970, polyester resin, 84 x  
88 inches. Source: DeWain Valentine: Recent Sculpture (Pasadena, CA: Pasadena  
Art Museum, 1970). 
Figure 59: De Wain Valentine, Triple Disk Red Metal Flake–Black Edge, 1966, 
Fiberglas, 62 x 65 x 85 inches, Museum of Modern Art, New York. 
Figure 60: De Wain Valentine, Top, 1968, polyester resin, 14 5/8 × 15 3/8 inches, 
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. De Wain Valentine, Double 
Pyramid Rose-Violet, 1968, polyester resin, 13 5/8 x 28 1/8 x 26 inches, Honolulu 
Museum of Art, HI. De Wain Valentine, Circle Blue-Red Flow, 1970, polyester resin, 
17 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches. 
Figure 61: De Wain Valentine’s studio in Venice, California, showing the polyester  
resin being poured into the mold, 1975–76. Photograph by Cathy Weiner. Source: 
Tom Learner, Rachel Rivenc, and Emma Richardson, From Start to Finish: De Wain 
Valentine’s Gray Column (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 2011). 
Figure 62: Valentine pouring the catalyst into the barrel of resin. Photograph by Sean 
Valentine. Source: Tom Learner, Rachel Rivenc, and Emma Richardson, From Start 
to Finish: De Wain Valentine’s Gray Column (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation 
Institute, 2011). 
Figure 63: Valentine and two of his assistants, Nelson Valentine and Rob Janiger, in  
1976. Source: Tom Learner, Rachel Rivenc, and Emma Richardson, From Start to 
Finish: De Wain Valentine’s Gray Column (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation 
Institute, 2011). 
Figure 64: De Wain Valentine’s studio, 1970. Photograph by Harry Drinkwater.  
 
 
 xi 
Figure 65: De Wain Valentine, Circle Blue Smoke Flow, 1970, polyester resin, 69 7/8 x 
70 1/8 x 4 7/8 inches, Private Collection. Installed for De Wain Valentine: Works 
from the 1960s and 1970s, David Zwirner, New York, June 25–August 7, 2015. 
Photograph by the author. 
Figure 66: De Wain Valentine, Large Wall, 1968, polyester resin, 91 1/4 x 94 x  
17 1/2 inches, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA. Photograph by the author. 
Figure 67: De Wain Valentine, Untitled (Concave Circle), A Plastic Presence, 
Milwaukee Art Center, January 30–March 8, 1970. Courtesy of Milwaukee Art 
Museum, Milwaukee, WI. 
Figure 68: De Wain Valentine, Concave Circle, 1970, polyester resin, 70 1/2 ×  
72 1/2 inches, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI. 
Figure 69: De Wain Valentine: Recent Sculpture, Pasadena Art Museum,  
May 12–July 5, 1970. Source: Pasadena Art Museum Archives, Norton Simon 
Museum, Pasadena, CA. 
Figure 70: De Wain Valentine: Recent Sculpture, Pasadena Art Museum,  
May 12–July 5, 1970. Source: Pasadena Art Museum Archives, Norton Simon 
Museum, Pasadena, CA. 
Figure 71: De Wain Valentine: Recent Sculpture, Pasadena Art Museum,  
May 12–July 5, 1970. Source: Pasadena Art Museum Archives, Norton Simon 
Museum, Pasadena, CA. 
Figure 72: De Wain Valentine: Recent Sculpture, Pasadena Art Museum,  
May 12–July 5, 1970, installation in process. Photographs by Harry Drinkwater. 
Figure 73: De Wain Valentine, Cantilevered Planes, 1975, acrylic and daylight, room 
size: 12 x 52 x 19 feet, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA, 1975. 
Figure 74: De Wain Valentine, Circle Blue Green, 1972–2016, polyester resin, 76 x 76 x 
5 1/2 inches. 
 
Chapter 4 Frederick Eversley  
 
Figure 75: Frederick Eversley, 1970s. Photograph by Frank J. Thomas, courtesy of the 
Frank J. Thomas Archives. 
Figure 76: Frederick Eversley’s studio, 1970s. Photograph by Wayne McCall. Source: 
Roland Jacopetti and Ben VanMeter, Rescued Buildings: The Art of Living in Former 
Schoolhouses, Skating Rinks, Fire Stations, Churches, Barns, Summer Camps, and 
Cabooses (Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1977). 
Figure 77: Cover image, Art & Technology: A Report on the Art & Technology Program 
of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1967-1971 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles 
County Museum of Art, 1971).  
Figure 78: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, 1970, polyester resin, 20 3/4 × 7 5/8 ×  
7 3/8 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. 
Figure 79: Floor plan, Fred Eversley: Recent Sculpture, May 18–June 7, 1970. Source: 
Exhibition Records, Whitney Museum of American Art Archives, New York, NY. 
Figure 80: Frederick Eversley’s studio, Los Angeles, 2017. Photograph by the author. 
Figure 81: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, 1970, polyester resin, 20 x 20 x 6 inches, 
Collection of the artist. 
 xii 
Figure 82: Frederick Eversley, 1970s. Photograph by Frank J. Thomas, courtesy of  
the Frank J. Thomas Archives. 
Figure 83: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, 1970, polyester resin, 6 1/4 × 19 1/4 inches, 
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA. 
Figure 84: Frederick Eversley in his studio, 1978. Source: Dan Tooker, Contemporary 
Artists at Work, Sculptors (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Films, 1978), 
Filmstrip. 
Figure 85: Frederick Eversley in his studio, 1978. Source: Dan Tooker, Contemporary 
Artists at Work, Sculptors (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Films, 1978), 
Filmstrip. 
Figure 86: Lenses in Frederick Eversley’s studio, Los Angeles, 2017.  
Photographs by the author.  
Figure 87: Frederick Eversley’s business card, 1970s. 
Figure 88: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, circa 1971–72, polyester resin, Private 
Collection. Photographs by the author. 
Figure 89: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, 1974, polyester resin, 19 5/8 x 6 1/2 inches, 
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. 
Figure 90: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, 1974, polyester resin, 19 5/8 x 6 1/2 inches, 
detail, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.  
Photographs by the author. 
Figure 91: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, 1974, polyester resin, Collection of the artist, 
Fred Eversley: Black, White, Gray, November 2016–January 2017, Art + Practice, 
Los Angeles, CA. Photographs by the author. 
Figure 92: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, 1974, polyester resin, Collection of the artist, 
Fred Eversley: Black, White, Gray, November 2016–January 2017, Art + Practice, 
Los Angeles, CA. Photographs by the author. 
Figure 93: Frederick Eversley, Oakland Museum, February–March 1977. Courtesy of 
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA. 
Figure 94: Frederick Eversley, Oakland Museum, February–March 1977. Courtesy of 
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA. 
Figure 95: Frederick Eversley with his Lenses, 1975. Source: “Group Show: A Look  
at Different Artists, Their Works, Styles and Techniques,” Black Enterprise 
(December 1975). 
Figure 96: Frederick Eversley, Untitled, 1980, acrylic, 76 x 24 x 6 inches, Collection  
of the artist, Fred Eversley: Black, White, Gray, November 2016–January 2017,  
Art + Practice, Los Angeles, CA. Courtesy of Art + Practice. 
 xiii 
Introduction — The Pioneers of Plasticraft 
 
“When an artist tells you he works in plastic—and many do—the next question—if you 
want any information at all, has to be what kind of plastic. Uvex, acrylic, plexiglas, 
fiberglas, vinyl, lucite? And then you have to find out how he uses it.” 
— John Perreault, 19691  
 
 
For a brief period, starting in the mid-1960s, plastics found rebirth in the hands of 
American artists, at a time when the materials were at a crossroads in public 
consciousness. No longer lauded for the utopian promises and wartime values that fueled 
the industry’s beginning, plastics in the 1960s were synonymous with junk, considered 
mundane, disposable, and cheap. Plastics were “ubiquity made visible,” according to a 
1957 essay by Roland Barthes.2 The materials were found in every aspect of daily life, 
exhausting consumers, as Norman Mailer decried in 1963: “…everywhere we are 
assaulted by the faceless plastic surfaces of everything which has been built in America 
since the war.”3 A family of materials already complicated by their propensity towards 
abstraction, plastics were pariahs, without concrete identities, which had lost their 
connection to the history of innovation in the United States. In the midst of this cultural 
reckoning for plastics, many artists brought the materials into their studios, despite their 
retrograde status.4 As opposed to the historic triumvirate of sculptural materials—stone, 
                                               
1 John Perreault, “Plastic—Very Present,” Village Voice (December 4, 1969), 28. 
Perreault was reviewing the exhibition A Plastic Presence at The Jewish Museum in New 
York, November 1969 to January 1970, organized by the Milwaukee Art Center.  
2 Roland Barthes continued that plastics were in decline, as “the first magical material 
that consents to be prosaic.” Roland Barthes, “Plastic,” in Mythologies, trans. Richard 
Howard and Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 191, 195. 
3 Norman Mailer, “The Big Bite,” in The Penguin Book of Contemporary American 
Essays, ed. Maureen Howard (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 70. The essay was 
originally published in the May 1963 issue of Esquire.  
4 Throughout this dissertation, I will use “plastics” and “synthetics” interchangeably, in 
both referencing plastics as a family of materials but also in the implication of both terms, 
Introduction 1 
wood, and metal—plastics offered new properties for artists, such as transparency, optical 
play, and a range of new tactile surfaces. In the process of integrating plastics into their 
practices, these artists became innovators, producing a new lexicon of synthetic objects.  
“The new pioneer of plasticraft has invaded a domain,” declared critic Palmer 
French in 1967.5 He wrote that “…[the artist] is actually experimenting and, in some 
cases, innovating techniques and potentially useful modifications not hitherto explored in 
commercial applications.”6 French situated artists working in plastics as collaborators 
rather than outsiders to the industry. Even the plastics industry saw the value of artists 
engaging with synthetics. In a 1968 editorial in the trade publication Modern Plastics, 
Joel Frados claimed that artists were finding new directions for plastics, making artwork 
that was “fast becoming the most exciting expression of our times.”7 Frados continued: 
“Where’s the plastics industry in this revolution? Why hasn’t it used plastics to similarly 
blast through the limitations of shape and form that have too long restricted consumer and 
industrial product design?”8 Frados argued that it was the art community that would write 
the next chapter in America’s history of plastics. 
Starting in the 1960s, artists began honing their craft with particular types of these 
synthetic materials. As critic John Perreault noted in 1969: “When an artist tells you he 
                                               
as simultaneously and culturally referring to artificiality, imitation, invention, and 
manmade products, rather than the art historical use of “plastic” as it relates to modeling 
and three-dimensional artwork made with traditional sculptural materials.  
5 Palmer French, “Plastics West Coast,” Artforum 6, no. 5 (January 1968): 48. French 
was reviewing the exhibition Plastics West Coast at Hansen-Fuller Gallery in San 
Francisco in 1967. 
6 Ibid. 
7 Joel Frados, “Plastic for Art’s Sake,” Modern Plastics 45, no. 12 (August 1968): 77. 
The editorial cites Plastic as Plastic, the 1968 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary 
Craft in New York, as proof of artists’ innovations in plastics. 
8 Ibid. 
Introduction 2 
works in plastic—and many do—the next question—if you want any information at all, 
has to be what kind of plastic. Uvex, acrylic, plexiglas, fiberglas, vinyl, lucite? And then 
you have to find out how he uses it.”9 This specialized attention to plastics allowed artists 
to expand the potential of their materials, creating objects that strayed far from the 
manufactured, consumer products of plastics’ past, bringing a new awareness to an art-
going public. Perreault remarked on this phenomenon: “We have finally begun to adapt 
to plastic…and some of this has to do merely with the presence of plastic all around us, 
not to mention the fact that artists recently have done a lot to wake us up to it.”10 In 
essence, the rise of plastics as artistic materials in the 1960s and 1970s created a 
significant, if short-lived, “plastics moment,” binding artists though a new, shared visual 
vocabulary of chemical colors, transparent structures, and synthetic surfaces.  
The materials under discussion, grouped under the family name “plastics,” 
represent a widely divergent set of substances, mostly carrying brand names such as 
Plexiglas, developed by Röhm & Haas Company, and Nylon, invented by DuPont. This 
expansive landscape of matter also includes hybrid materials like Fiberglas, created by 
Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation by pairing glass fibers with polyester resin. This 
dissertation will look to a select corner of the larger plastics family, focusing on the 
materials Donald Judd, Eva Hesse, De Wain Valentine, and Frederick Eversley chose to 
bring into their artistic arsenal: Plexiglas, Fiberglas, and polyester resin, respectively. 
Each artist discussed in this dissertation pushed the boundaries of their plastics in their 
                                               
9 Perreault, “Plastic—Very Present,” 28.  
10 Ibid.   
Introduction 3 
novel approaches to fabrication (in the case of Judd and Hesse) and their inventive 
methods of casting and finishing (for Valentine and Eversley).  
I contribute to the extensive scholarship on sculpture from this period by looking 
at works by Judd, Hesse, Valentine, and Eversley through the lens of materiality and 
artistic practice rather than theoretical frameworks. In closely considering the methods of 
four artists working with plastics, this text offers an expanded view of their particular 
uses of Plexiglas, Fiberglas, and polyester resin, and of how the materials drove their 
artistic innovations. Integral to this dissertation are the odd characteristics of the 
substances in question, as each chapter addresses how the artists’ objects were made and 
behaved. In order to understand why their work is so important to the history of 
contemporary art, I recover these details through a close look at the process of making 
and the finer details of the finished objects. 
 
From Innovation to Proliferation 
From the beginning, the American public struggled to understand plastics as a 
new set of industrial materials with no easily identifiable sources. For instance, plastics 
could not be attached to one specific natural resource or production process. Rather, 
synthetics were developed through closed-door, laboratory-based innovations—an 
engineered, new resource for a modern era. Plastics, as a family of materials, are created 
by linking small molecules together in a long chain, or a polymer, through a process 
called polymerization.11 Polymers occur in natural substances as well, but in plastics the 
                                               
11 Polymer comes from the Greek words poly, meaning “many,” and meros, which 
translates to “parts,” referencing the chain-link structure of polymers. See: Science 
Introduction 4 
chemical structure is designed and adapted with different compounds to create a variety 
of products, often using only hydrocarbons.12 In essence, synthetic polymers are flexible, 
adaptable, and diverse—seemingly limitless in their variations. So, why are these 
materials still considered an all-encompassing entity, with “plastic” as a singular noun 
standing in for such a range of substances, such as polymethyl methacrylate (acrylic or 
Plexiglas), polystyrene (Styrofoam), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC)?13  
This misperception began when modern plastics first emerged in the U.S. in the 
1930s, when the conversations surrounding the materials emphasized man’s ability to 
create matter, pitching plastic as an abstract future rather than a particular present.14 An 
article in the March 1936 issue of Fortune magazine announced that plastics had 
displaced “the divine monopoly on primary substances,” and continued that synthetics 
                                               
History Institute, “Science of Plastics,” accessed May 14, 2018, 
https://www.sciencehistory.org/science-of-plastics. 
12 Examples of natural polymers include tar, shellac, amber, and latex, among other 
materials. While plastics are derived from hydrocarbons such as petroleum and natural 
gas, synthetic polymers may also include the addition of elements such as oxygen, 
chlorine, nitrogen, silicon, and sulfur. Ibid. 
13 Even in the 1940s, the use of “plastic” to describe a range of materials created a 
challenge for the industry. In a report on the Annual Fall Conference of the Society of the 
Plastics Industry, held in New York in November 1944, Colonel Willard Chevalier, 
publisher of Business Week, wrote that the industry had to educate consumers, as the 
“biggest difficulties in marketing plastics is the very word ‘plastics’” as a generic term. 
Willard Chevalier, “When Plastics Comes Home from the Wars,” Modern Plastics 22, 
no. 4 (December 1944): 129. Two years later, a report on the Society of the Plastics 
Industry’s National Exposition in New York in April 1946, stated: “Unfortunately the 
word plastics means only one material to too many people. They have not yet learned that 
cellulose acetate, polystyrene, phenolics, ureas and other materials are as different from 
each other as iron, steel, copper or lead.” “The Plastics Industry Has Come of Age,” 
Modern Plastics 23, no. 8 (April 1946): 132. 
14 I use the term “modern plastics” to distinguish between earlier iterations of the 
synthetic materials that appeared before the 1930s, which were more unstable products 
that are no longer popular today, such as celluloid developed in the mid-19th century.   
Introduction 5 
were “a tribute to the powers of man.”15 In 1940, Fortune magazine described the early 
years of the plastics industry, up until the 1930s, as “something like the world on the first 
day of creation.”16 Proclaimed the future of U.S. industry, plastics were secular 
substances imbued with spiritual significance.17 The early excitement of plastics’ 
potential drove the vast expansion of synthetics, with fervor likened to a material 
religion. In the 1940 article, the Fortune author described the wide reach of the industry, 
as no one company was capable of cornering the market: “The plastics industry, indeed, 
is something special in the way of industrial chaos.”18 Citing the 240 trademarks in 
circulation, representing approximately 14 types of plastics, the article casts the field of 
plastics—even in 1940—as a runaway train of exponential growth, and fiercely 
competitively for U.S. companies like Monsanto, DuPont, General Electric, and Union 
Carbide.19 And no wonder: the Fortune reporter writes that from 1935 to 1939, plastics 
production grew from 127 million to 247 million pounds of matter, with the finished 
objects valued at around $500 million.20  
                                               
15 “What Man Has Joined Together…”, Fortune (March 1936): 69.  
16 The same article illustrated the growing field of plastics as a fictional continent called 
“Synthetica,” which included “Rayon Island” and a country of Acrylic, with the capital of 
Plexiglas. Other synthetic nations—Petrolia, Alkyd, and Petrolia, among them—included 
a smattering of “cities” representing industrial brands that are no longer extant. “Plastics 
in 1940,” Fortune 22 (October 1940): 90, 92–93. 
17 Here I borrow from David Nye and his discussion of sublimity and an almost-religious 
veneration of technology and infrastructure in the United States. He writes: “The 
technological sublime is an integral part of contemporary consciousness…In a physical 
world that is increasingly desacralized, the sublime represents a way to reinvest the 
landscape and the works of men with transcendent significance.” David E. Nye, 
American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), xiii.  
18 “Plastics in 1940,” 94. 
19 Ibid. 
20 This figure does not include plastics in liquid form, which would bring the 1939 
calculation to more than 300 million pounds of material. Ibid., 89. 
Introduction 6 
During World War II, plastics took on an important role, as scientists used 
synthetics to develop more efficient materials for everything from the largest vehicles to 
the smallest detail on a soldiers’ uniform.21 The armed forces of the modern age were 
redesigned to be the carriers of a range of synthetic objects, while the wartime effort 
fanned the flames of the plastic industry’s growth, creating high demand for innovation. 
In the postwar era, plastics became at once the most accessible technology for Americans 
to understand, live with, and invest in, while at the same time the most threatening. By 
the 1940s, plastics were growing in prominence, as one 1942 article claimed the 
substances were “emerging as materials in their own right…[and] may one day become a 
dominant material, just as steel did in the immediate past.”22 It is with these grand 
ambitions that plastics entered the national landscape through marketing campaigns and 
industrial designers, who were tapped to make the presence of plastics in daily life more 
commonplace.23 With the end of the war, plastics producers were pressed to find a new, 
national need for synthetics, to keep their many factories around the U.S.—built for the 
war effort—active and growing. A report on a conference for the Society of the Plastics 
Industry in 1944 read that “the peacetime possibilities of plastics are virtually untouched” 
opening up a “broad field of new markets” to redefine and even solve the problems of the 
postwar era, at least in the eyes of the industry.24 To stay afloat, synthetics corporations 
                                               
21 For instance, a report on the U.S. Navy and plastics from 1945 claims that a battleship 
includes “around 50,000 plastic parts.” “Plastics at war—Navy,” Modern Plastics 22, no. 
5 (January 1945): 100.  
22 Joseph L. Nicholson and George R. Leighton, “Plastics Come of Age” Harper’s 
Magazine 185 (August 1942): 301.  
23 For instance, see: John Gloag, Plastics and Industrial Design (London: G. Allen & 
Unwin Ltd., 1945).  
24 Chevalier, “When Plastics Comes Home,” 129.  
Introduction 7 
sold plastics as the future of the American home, manifested in products like 
Tupperware.25 With great comfort in plastics came unbridled abundance for inexpensive, 
convenient, and disposable objects, transforming the materials of domestic life in the U.S. 
At the same time, artists were finding the value in using synthetics to create their objects. 
The November 1944 issue of Modern Plastics, for instance, included an article on 
plastics and sculpture, claiming that synthetics can “liberate” artists from traditional 
materials and that the substances “combine the colorful clarity of glass, the massiveness 
of stone, the permanence of marble, the mobility of clay, the warm surface of wood, the 
yielding rigidity of ivory.”26 In this context, plastics were presented as composed of the 
best qualities of other materials to support their potential for sculptural innovation.  
By the 1960s, several guidebooks for artists had even appeared, showing the 
rising interest in working with plastics. These texts outlined the methods for working 
with a range of plastic materials, in an effort to close the knowledge gap between plastics 
and more traditional artistic media.27 This period also marked a moment when the 
mention of plastics in popular culture took on a derogatory tone, such as in the 1967 
                                               
25 Jeffrey Meikle argued that the rise of Tupperware in the home in the 1950s marked the 
beginning of seeing “plastic as plastic,” which continues through the 1960s. Jeffrey L. 
Meikle, American Plastic: A Cultural History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University 
Press, 1995), 181. An article in the May 1950 issue of Fortune also claimed that the 
“greatest concentration of plastics around the average American is in the kitchen.” “A 
1950 Guide to Plastics,” Fortune 41 (May 1950): 110. For further reading: Alison J. 
Clarke, Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America (Washington, DC: 
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999).  
26 Jan and Ursula de Swart, “A Medium for Sculpture,” Modern Plastics 22, no. 3 
(November 1944): 103.  
27 See: Thelma Newman, Plastics as an Art Form (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 
1964); Nicholas Roukes, Sculpture in Plastics (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 
1968); Clarence Bunch, Acrylic for Sculpture and Design (New York: Van Nostrand 
Reinhold Company, 1972); and Newman, Plastics as Design Form (Philadelphia: Chilton 
Book Company, 1972).  
Introduction 8 
movie The Graduate, as the reference to plastics in this film marked the divide between 
an older generation still enthralled with its novelty and a younger generation convinced 
of its stagnation.28 With this history of plastics in mind, the widening use of synthetics by 
artists in the 1960s then seems remarkable. So, why were certain sculptors invested in 
seeking a new direction for plastics, at a time when the public was weary of the 
materials? These artists were returning to an early age of technological enthusiasm, and 
taking the helm from innovators before them. 
 
Historical Precedence in Plastics  
Pioneers of a previous generation had been the first artists to work with plastics, 
notably Russian artists and brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner. Starting in the 
1920s, they used cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate to create their Constructivist 
sculptures, and had turned to the acrylic product Perspex by the late 1930s.29 The artists 
chose to work with transparent plastic substances to alleviate their artworks from the 
burden of mass and activate the space around their objects through the crystal clear 
                                               
28 In the film, the main character Benjamin Braddock, played by actor Dustin Hoffman, is 
given career advice by a middle-aged family friend at his college graduation party. The 
man says: “I want to say one word to you. Just one word...Plastics…There’s a great 
future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?” Meikle argued that the term 
“plastic” entered “the folklore of the baby boom generation” with this film. Meikle, 
American Plastic, 3. Buck Henry, the screenwriter for The Graduate, later explained in 
an interview: “I was trying to find a word that summed up a kind of stultifying, silly, 
conversation-closing effort of one generation to talk to another. Plastics was the obvious 
one.” Jay Boyar, “When ‘Plastics’ Became a Bad Word,” Washington Post, August 30, 
1992: G4.  
29 See: Elizabeth Rankin, “A Betrayal of Material: Problems of Conservation in the 
Constructivist Sculpture of Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner,” Leonardo 21, no. 3 
(1988): 287. Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy also began painting on plastic in the 
1920s and later incorporated Plexiglas into his sculpture. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Moholy-
Nagy: Experiment in Totality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 198, 201.  
Introduction 9 
materials. Both Gabo and Pevsner sought to create new forms freed from the weight of 
more traditional sculpture to represent a modern age and its technological culture.30 
Towards these ends, the artists engaged with industrial partners to source and learn about 
their materials. For instance, Gabo was introduced to Perspex in 1937, only two years 
after it was first presented to the public, when he met John Sisson in the Plastics Division 
of the manufacturer Imperial Chemical Industries in England.31 He began working with 
the material that same year.  
The Constructivist artists were not the only figures to experiment with plastics in 
the early days of the industry. American artists were also finding the substances through a 
direct dialogue with plastics manufacturers. For instance, artist Alexander Calder 
exhibited a work in Plexiglas as the center for the Röhm & Haas Company display at the 
1939 New York World’s Fair (Figure 1). Calder was the winner of a competition hosted 
by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Plexiglas producer Röhm & Haas, of 
Philadelphia and Darmstadt, Germany.32 The collaboration between Calder and Röhm & 
Haas marked an early confluence between the plastics industry and fine arts, and an 
important part of the agenda at the world’s fair.33  
                                               
30 Steven A. Nash and Jörn Merkert, Naum Gabo: Sixty Years of Constructivism 
(Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1985), 59. 
31 Martin Hammer and Christina Lodder, Constructing Modernity: The Art & Career of 
Naum Gabo (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 251. 
32 The contest and subsequent collaboration with Calder was the brainchild of industrial 
designer Gilbert Rohde, who had been hired by Röhm & Haas as technical advisor. The 
judges, arts patron Katherine Dreier, sculptor Robert Laurent, and Museum of Modern 
Art curator James Johnson Sweeney, declared Calder the winner in April 1939. The artist 
was awarded $800. “Plexiglass Sculpture Prizes are Awarded.” Pencil Points 20, no. 6 
(June 1939): 56–57. Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Rohm and Haas: A Century of Innovation 
(Philadelphia: Rohm and Haas Company, 2009), 62, 64. 
33 Fair organizers played an important role in elevating plastics, as the Department of 
Feature Publicity circulated a 10-page document on the presence of plastics at the fair, 
Introduction 10 
An abstract bust, Calder’s work was larger-than-life, towering over its visitors 
(Figure 2). Built with three colors of transparent Plexiglas—clear, purple, and red—in 
flat sheets cut into shapes and round rods in varying diameters, the sculpture introduced 
fairgoers to the physical and aesthetic presence of this new material. Light also acted as 
an ancillary medium, as round rods transmitted light from the illuminated circular base, 
bathing the onlooker in an ethereal glow. With this exhibit, Röhm & Haas created a 
visual agenda to sell their product that relied on Calder’s abstraction in Plexiglas, on view 
at the center of the corporate showcase. This early collaboration set the stage for the 
industry’s work with cultural institutions, designers, and artists for the decades to come. 
Upon first glance, the transparent sculptures by Calder, Gabo, and Pevsner—who 
were working with plastics at the same time—might appear to be the progenitors of much 
of the artwork discussed in this dissertation.34 For instance, the artists working in both the 
1930s and the 1960s were interested in the visual and structural possibilities of plastics 
and in collaborating with industrial partners. However, the similarities end there. When 
                                               
which would “offer America its first opportunity to see plastics used on a large scale—in 
art, in design and in practical applications.” “Plastics at the New York World’s Fair,” 
Department of Feature Publicity, New York World’s Fair 1939 and 1940 Incorporated 
records, 1935–1945, New York Public Library, New York, NY. 
34 Rosalind Krauss wrote in 1979: “No sooner had minimal sculpture appeared on the 
horizon of the aesthetic experience of the 1960s, than criticism began to construct a 
paternity for this work, a set of constructivist fathers who could legitimize and thereby 
authenticate the strangeness of these objects. Plastic? inert geometries? factory 
production?—none of this was really strange, as the ghosts of Gabo and Tatlin and 
Lissitzky could be called in to testify. Never mind that the content of the one had nothing 
to do with, was in fact the exact opposite of, the content of the other. Never mind that 
Gabo’s celluloid was the sign of lucidity and intellection, while Judd’s plastic-tinged- 
with-dayglo spoke the hip patois of California.” While Krauss rightly called for a move 
away from a linear narrative that would connect Gabo and Judd, in her ode to 
postmodernism, she further argued for a shift from the medium towards a linguistic 
framework, which did not appropriately address the role of materials in each artist’s 
work. Rosalind Krauss, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” October 8 (Spring 1979): 32. 
Introduction 11 
one looks closely at the specific details of production—the behaviors of the materials, the 
ways in which the artists worked with their plastics, and the outcomes of their labor—the 
artists only shared the choice to source and use plastics to accomplish their intended 
goals. Additionally, in the 1920s and 1930s, plastics were still the new substances of a 
changing, technological age, rather than materials exhausted by consumerism. In this 
dissertation, I focus in particular on the “plastics moment” of the 1960s and 1970s to 
understand what happens when artists find plastics again in this later period. 
 
Outline of the Dissertation 
As the first art historical study devoted to the use of plastics in sculpture of the 
United States in the 1960s and 1970s, this dissertation focuses on the particular 
innovations of artists working with synthetic substances. Ultimately, I complicate the 
assumption that “plastic” is a universal substance, rather than a family of disparate 
materials, by considering how the idiosyncrasies of particular materials drove the 
practices of four artists and contributed to a longer narrative of 20th-century innovation in 
America. The four subsequent chapters consist of individual artist case studies and works 
in plastics by Judd, Hesse, Valentine, and Eversley. This dissertation is not primarily an 
interpretive act. Rather, I focus on the material and technical aspects of objects, not as 
secondary to art historical interpretation but as method. First, I highlight how these artists 
worked with synthetics in practical terms and then I recover important collaborations and 
details of labor that allowed the artists to make these artworks. 
In the chapter on Judd, I look closely at his use of Plexiglas as a particular 
substance in his oeuvre, arguing for its unique presence among the many industrial 
Introduction 12 
materials he used. I focus on one series of experimental, floor-bound objects, nicknamed 
the “Turnbuckles,” which were composed primarily of Plexiglas and emphasized the 
visual prowess of the plastic. I consider the development and construction of these 
idiosyncratic works to show how Judd adapted his practice to use Plexiglas, as the plastic 
required a different approach to fabrication than his metal sculptures. I argue that the 
industrial materials used in Judd’s objects, such as Plexiglas and steel, were not 
interchangeable but rather took on distinct roles in the artist’s practice.  
For the case study on Hesse, I focus on her first four works in Fiberglas, which 
were shown at her solo exhibition at the Fischbach Gallery in New York in 1968. Just as 
the chapter on Judd allows me to expand previous discussions on how the artist worked 
with fabricators, in this text I recover the very presence of Hesse’s collaborators, 
particularly the workshop that produced her Fiberglas objects: Aegis Reinforced Plastics 
in New York. I present the history of Hesse’s work with Aegis as well as an in-depth 
discussion of how her plastic sculptures were made and how the artist shifted her 
methods of making to allow for collaborators and Fiberglas.  
The third chapter argues for Valentine’s great contribution to the field of plastics, 
as the artist developed his own formula for polyester resin that allowed him to cast 
objects on unprecedented scale. I trace the details of Valentine’s process of making his 
sculptures, to show the impact of the material on his studio practice. I also expand the 
limited scholarship on Valentine, which has primarily focused on his technical 
achievements, by considering specific works the artist made with his signature material in 
the context of his first solo exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1970.  
Introduction 13 
Finally, the case study on Eversley reclaims the artist’s unusual history, as he 
worked as an aerospace engineer before turning to sculpture and creating polyester resin 
objects. His training informed his studio practice and impacted the development of his 
centrifugal process of casting, which involved creating his objects by spinning the liquid 
plastic in a mold. The chapter delves into the Eversley’s procedures and laborious 
methods of casting and finishing, which are often omitted in the literature on the artist. 
Furthermore, I show how the artist’s research on the scientific principles of energy 
impacted his work, as seen in the optical abilities of his objects. 
While the first two chapters disrupt canonical readings in the scholarship of two 
established artists based in New York—Judd and Hesse—the following two case studies 
look at two more marginalized figures working in Los Angeles—Valentine and 
Eversley—in an effort to restore their important legacies and work in plastics. The 
chapters on Judd and Hesse also address two artists working with fabricators in different 
ways, to show the different models of industrial collaboration that existed among the 
artistic community in New York during this period. The case studies on Valentine and 
Eversley, on the other hand, focus on two figures who cast and finished their polyester 
resin objects by hand in the comfort of their studios, without the use of outside 
workshops. Valentine and Eversley each developed a distinct method of working that 
expanded the boundaries of their materials. By choosing these artists, among the many 
working in synthetics at this time, I present four different approaches to working with 
plastics, through fabricators as well as in the studio, while also addressing the different 
ways artists found synthetic materials through the industrial markets of two cities: New 
York and Los Angeles.  
Introduction 14 
On Scholarship, Language, and Plastics 
Over the last 20 years, several important art historical texts have expanded the 
scholarship on artists, their studio practices, and their uses of technologies and industrial 
materials in the 1960s and 1970s.35 This body of literature has brought more specificity to 
the methods of artists in this generation, expanding the broad claims made by curators 
and critics during this time about the impact of scientific models on young artists.36 
However, these texts rarely address the different personalities and processes for particular 
materials, continuing the misperception that “industrial materials” and “technologies” are 
interchangeable and demand equal labor and resources from artists. By looking at 
plastics, I aim to give this family of materials more texture and complexity in the art 
historical scholarship, and create an opening to talk about substances as individual 
threads or narratives that run through this period of sculpture in the United States.  
In addition to responding to the strong literature on artwork from the 1960s and 
1970s, I take to task the imposition of “schools” or “movements” on the objects in 
                                               
35 Notably: Caroline Jones argued that the 1960s marked a shift away from the solitary, 
mythical artist towards one who injects the “intrusions” of technology into form and 
practice. Caroline A. Jones, Machine in the Studio (Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press, 1996), 9. Pamela Lee looked at the ways artists used technology in the 1960s, not 
just as a new artillery of static materials, but as reference points to dialogue with the 
changing social structures of the 1960s. Pamela M. Lee, Chronophobia: On Time in the 
Art of the 1960s (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004), xix–xx. Julia Bryan-
Wilson considered how artists from this period modeled their studio practices on forms of 
labor borrowed from industrial America, arguing that the artists who identified as “art 
workers” used their practice as a platform to engage with the political and social 
turbulence of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: Radical 
Practice in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 
36 For instance, John Coplans wrote in 1967 that “the most dominant pressure upon the 
younger artist’s approach is a keen awareness and appreciation of the potency of science 
and the scientific mind.” John Coplans, “The New Sculpture and Technology,” in 
American Sculpture of the Sixties, ed. Maurice Tuchman. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles 
County Museum of Art, 1967), 21.  
Introduction 15 
question, in the use of terms such as Minimalism, Postminimalism, and Finish Fetish, 
among others. These designations often remove the works from their production and 
material histories, for the sake of group unity. Minimalism, in particular, is a misleading 
term in grouping a range of disparate artistic practice, first established through critical 
writings from the 1960s.37 Subsequent literature has then tied such sculpture to modes of 
rhetoric or displaced the specificity of substance for a discussion of the gendered politics 
of Minimalism.38 In order to work outside of the restrictive framework of “Minimalism,” 
I draw from texts that have intervened in the homogenization of geometric, abstract 
sculpture from this period.39 I also build from scholarship that considers the complex 
                                               
37 Michael Fried’s essay “Art and Objecthood,” published in the June 1967 issue of 
Artforum, unknowingly established Minimalism’s place in art history. In the text, he 
declared “literalist art,” particularly works by Donald Judd and Robert Morris, as reliant 
on the viewer and theatricality rather than the values of modern art to which Fried and his 
mentor Clement Greenberg adhered. Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” in Art and 
Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1998), 153. James 
Meyer cited Barbara Rose’s “ABC Art” article as an example of criticism that “did not so 
much subvert medium specificity as render it irrelevant.” James Meyer, Minimalism: Art 
and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 147. See: Barbara 
Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America 53, no. 5 (October/November 1965): 57–69. 
38 Certain texts have further removed materials from the conversation around 
Minimalism: Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977); 
Hal Foster, “The Crux of Minimalism,” in The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at 
the End of the Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 35–68; and Anna Chave, 
“Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine (January 1990): 44–63.  
39 Meyer has disrupted this canonization, arguing instead for the distinct practices of 
artists grouped under “Minimalism.” Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics. Also: Alex 
Potts distinguished the different ambitions of Minimalist artists’ theoretical writings. 
Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist (New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 2000), 178–310. Martha Buskirk argued that the turn to serial 
forms and fabrication did not remove authorship but actually strengthened the connection 
between the artist and their object. Martha Buskirk, The Contingent Object of 
Contemporary Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 3. Jo Applin upset Minimalism’s 
exclusionary status at the epicenter of 1960s sculptural practice. Jo Applin, Eccentric 
Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 
2012), 11. 
Introduction 16 
relationships involved in the use of fabrication, particularly with respect to Judd.40 
Similarly, “Postminimalism,” as an imposed label coined by critic Robert Pincus-Witten, 
grouped artists with very different practices, such as Hesse, Richard Serra, Lynda 
Benglis, and Keith Sonnier, in opposition to the rigidity of Minimalism based on “the 
eccentricity of the substances they used.”41 Rather than subscribe to these terms, I am 
interested in the intersections between artists and their materials, and how plastics created 
connections across art historical designations. 
Artists working in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s were also grouped by 
labels such as Light and Space, Finish Fetish, and L.A. Look, which included artists such 
as Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Helen 
Pashgian, and others. While some art historians have rejected the pejorative nature of 
these terms, the labels persist, as first used by critics and sustained by subsequent 
scholarship.42 Coined by John Coplans, Finish Fetish referred to both the atmospheric 
qualities and sleek, new surfaces of sculptures being made in Los Angeles at this time, 
without distinguishing variations of production, finish, or composition.43 L.A. Look was 
                                               
40 Notably, Joshua Shannon argued for the significance of both the artist’s labor in his 
early artworks and the work involved in his fabricated objects, paying particular attention 
to the history of Judd’s primary fabricator: Bernstein Brothers Sheet Metal Specialties. 
Joshua Shannon, The Disappearance of Objects: New York Art and the Rise of the 
Postmodern City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 150–186.  
41 Robert Pincus-Witten, Postminimalism (New York: Out of London Press, 1977), 16.  
42 Meyer argued that “Finish Fetish” narrowly stereotypes a broad group of work in the 
way that New York Minimalism was created to market particular artists. Meyer, 
“Another Minimalism,” in A Minimal Future?: Art as Object 1958–1968, eds. Ann 
Goldstein and Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004), 
37–38. “Light and Space,” for instance, is chronicled and historicized in the following 
text: Jan Butterfield, The Art of Light + Space (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993).  
43 Coplans wrote: “A sense of ambience manifests itself in the handling of subject matter, 
in the overall treatment (by the incorporation of aspects of the intensely reflective quality 
of California light) and in the relative newness of all surfaces (Los Angeles proliferated 
Introduction 17 
used by Peter Plagens, referring to “cool, semitechnological, industrially pretty art,” 
where plastics was the “mythical material” in offering properties not possible with more 
traditional materials and sparking technological intrigue for artists keen to experiment.44 
In my work on Judd, Hesse, Valentine, and Eversley, I work in opposition to the terms 
Minimalism, Postminimalism, and Finish Fetish, in order to expand the prescribed 
categories for sculpture made in the 1960s and 1970s, through the frame of plastics.  
 
An Approach to Objects and Materials 
In this dissertation, I focus on the process of working with plastics to reinsert the 
important history of making into the literature on sculpture from the 1960s and 1970s. 
Plastics commanded a particular presence in the studio. As one example, strong odors 
were often inescapable for artists who worked with plastics in this period, at a time in 
which ventilation and containment was rarely involved. Plagens described the visceral, 
odorous quality of polyester resin present in many studios in Los Angeles: “By 1968–69, 
the chemical smell of resin and a frozen drop at the nozzle of a 55-gallon drum were as 
                                               
within living memory)—for example, by the use of shiny, bright, new materials and clean 
surfaces.” Coplans, “Introduction,” Ten from Los Angeles (Seattle: Contemporary Art 
Council of the Seattle Art Museum, 1966), 9.  
44 Peter Plagens wrote: “The patented ‘look’ was elegance and simplicity, and the 
mythical material was plastic, including polyester resin, which has several attractions: 
permanence (indoors), an aura of difficulty and technical expertise, and a preciousness 
(when polished) rivaling bronze or marble. It has, in short, the aroma of Los Angeles in 
the sixties—newness, postcard sunset color, and intimations of aerospace profundity.” 
For Plagens, the artists who worked in this manner included Larry Bell, Craig Kauffman, 
Ed Ruscha, Billy Al Bengston, Kenneth Price, John McCracken, Peter Alexander, 
Valentine, Robert Irwin, and Joe Goode. He failed to include other important artists 
associated with this community, including Helen Pashgian and Eversley, among others. 
Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast (New York: Praeger 
Publishers, 174), 120–121.  
Introduction 18 
familiar Beaux-Arts studio decor as splattered floors and turpentine.”45 Valentine 
remembered his neighbor and contemporary Larry Bell coming by his Venice Beach 
studio to complain about the smell.46 Hesse’s fabricator and studio assistant Doug Johns 
even recalled filling the neighborhood around her Canal Street studio with noxious smells 
when creating her Fiberglas works.47 Not all plastics commanded such a visceral 
presence in the studio, such as in the prefabricated Plexiglas sheets purchased and used 
by Judd, and yet each of the materials addressed in this dissertation posed different 
physical challenges for the artists, which are often lost in the gloss of finished works. 
These details, such as smells, surfaces, and other tactile elements, distinguished plastics 
from other materials in this period, in the studio and in the exhibition gallery, and are the 
focus of the following case studies. This dissertation outlines the way these objects were 
made by exploring the dynamics between plastics and the artist as maker, through a 
technical approach to art history. 
The technical study of art history—also called technical art history—finds its 
roots in museums and exhibition practice, as it often involves the collaborative work 
between art historians, conservators, scientists, and other scholars to understand the 
materials and makings of objects in institutional collections. This methodology is 
attentive to the artist’s practice of making, pairing evidence left behind in the object and 
in the artist’s writings and contributions with historical background on the materials used, 
                                               
45 Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 120–121. 
46 Tom Learner, Rachel Rivenc, and Emma Richardson, From Start to Finish: De Wain 
Valentine’s Gray Column (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 2011), 10.  
47 Doug Johns, interview by the author, July 26, 2016, Topanga, CA.   
Introduction 19 
including technical information that could have been unknown to the artist.48 In using this 
approach, I draw from the tradition of material culture studies in American art history, as 
well as recent texts on the role of craft in modern art narratives.49 Technical art history 
also shares similar objectives with object-based theory or “new material studies,” in 
considering the complex lives of objects and materials. However, the two methods are 
distinct. The technical study of art history builds from investigative work on specific 
objects and materials, privileging evidence left by the artist. “New material studies,” on 
the other hand, considers the larger life and presence of the non-human object within 
political and social networks, despite the role of the maker.50 “New material studies” 
                                               
48 See: Maryan W. Ainsworth, “From Connoisseurship to Technical Art History: The 
Evolution of the Interdisciplinary Study of Art,” The Getty Conservation Institute 
Newsletter 20, no. 1 (2005): 4–10; and “A Matter of Teamwork: A Discussion about 
Technical Studies and Art History,” The Getty Conservation Institute Newsletter 20, no. 1 
(2005): 11–16. My introduction to this field came during my participation in 2013 at the 
Summer Institute for Technical Art History (SITAH), hosted by New York University’s 
Institute of Fine Arts and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which sought to 
engage Ph.D. Candidates in the methods of object-based and art technical research from 
2012 to 2016. The Harvard Art Museums has hosted the program since 2017, under the 
name Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art (SITSA).  
49 Jules Prown’s foundational essay argued for the relevance in American art history of 
material culture studies, which considered objects as active in providing evidence rather 
than passive as illustrations. Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to 
Material Culture Theory and Method,” Winterthur Portfolio 17, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 1. 
On craft, Glenn Adamson looked at the role of craft in modern art in order to blur the 
lines between fine art and craft through the guise of materials and making. Glenn 
Adamson, Thinking through Craft (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2007).  
50 Jennifer Roberts identified the “new material studies” as encompassing such 
interdisciplinary scholarship as Thing Theory, New Materialisms, Speculative Realism, 
Assemblage Theory, and Object-oriented ontology, as working through four keywords: 
agency, making, exchange, and matter. Jennifer Roberts, “Things: Material Turn, 
Transnational Turn,” American Art 31, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 65. For instance, Arjun 
Appadurai argued for the “social lives” of objects through the political context of their 
exchange and circulation as commodities. Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities 
and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural 
Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3. See also: Jane 
Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University 
Introduction 20 
texts emphasize the finished product rather than the implicit process involved in the 
works.51 Rather than interpreting artworks outside of the studio or the workshop, this 
dissertation considers the interactions between the artists and their artworks in order to 
understand how plastics shaped and informed their practices.   
This dissertation brings the physical practice of technical art history to the written 
page, using plastics as the framework in which to understand the specific contributions of 
four individual artists working in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.52 In each case 
study, I present the artists and their work through the ballet of making that was specific to 
the plastic used, in the following ways:  
• considering how plastics were used and adapted outside of industrial norms; 
                                               
Press, 2010); Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (Autumn 2001): 1–
22; Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (New York: Clarendon 
Press, 1998); and Bruno Latour, “A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans,” in 
Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Harvard University Press, 
1999), 174–215. Ann-Sophie Lehmann described this body of scholarship as part of a 
“material turn.” Lehmann, “Good Art Theory Must Smell of the Studio,” in Hiding 
Making—Showing Creation: The Studio from Turner to Tacita Dean, eds. Rachel Esner, 
Sandra Kisters, and Ann-Sophie Lehmann (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 
2013), 250. 
51 Lehmann wrote that these texts often only consider finished objects, ignoring their 
making or “‘prenatal’ life.” Lehmann, “Showing Making: On Visual Documentation and 
Creative Practice,” Journal of Modern Craft 5, no. 1 (2012): 10. Roberts argued for the 
significance of process, making, and “tacit intelligence,” where “making resides not 
solely in the mind of the craftsperson but somewhere in the kinetic interface between 
mind, body, tools, and materials.” Roberts, “Things, Material Turn,” 66. 
52 Several conservation studies on the study of plastics have been helpful as a starting 
point on a technical approach to these materials: Brenda Keneghan and Louise Egan, 
eds., Plastics: Looking at the Future and Learning from the Past (London: Archetype 
Publications, 2008); Thea van Oosten, Yvonne Shashoua, and Friederike Waentig, eds., 
Plastics in Art: History, Technology, Preservation (Munich, Germany: Siegl, 2002); 
Yvonne Shashoua, Conservation of Plastics: Materials science, Degradation and 
Preservation (Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2008); and Friedericke Waentig, 
Plastics in Art: A Study from the Conservation Point of View (Petersberg, Germany: 
Michael Imhof Verlag, 2008).  
Introduction 21 
• studying how the sculptures were produced, with or without fabricators; 
• exploring how an engagement with materials informed the objects’ composition;  
• following the lives of the objects, from the studio or shop to the exhibition space. 
I am interested in the “feedback loop” that occurred between the artists and their 
materials in creating a series of negotiations, rather than a purely hierarchical relationship 
between the artists and their subservient substances.53 In the cases of Judd and Hesse, this 
approach offers two alternative interpretations of fabrication as practice, lending more 
complexity to this method of working than has been previously discussed in scholarship 
from this period. Valentine and Eversley, then, offer two examples of artists adapting the 
tradition of casting to synthetics that relied directly on the labor of the artist.54 In 
addition, for Hesse and Eversley, this approach offers a new way to consider the 
discussions of identity as present in their works, complicating the “blind spots” of 
material-based scholarship.55  
 
 
 
                                               
53 Thank you to Jennifer Roberts for her discussion of this “feedback loop” at the 2017 
Summary Workshop for the Summer Institute for Technical Art History, Institute of Fine 
Arts, New York University.  
54 I owe thanks to Karen Lemmey for her thoughts on casting plastic sculpture in relation 
to the history of cast sculpture as well as the direct carving movement in the early 20th 
century.  
55 Huey Copeland identified the “blind spots” of material-based studies, as risking “the 
social reproduction of white supremacy” in overlooking the inherent bias towards bodies 
and objects from a Euro-American academic perspective. Huey Copeland, “Tending-
toward-Blackness,” October 156 (Spring 2016): 141. Copeland’s text was written in 
response to an October questionnaire that asked scholars to comment on “a decentering 
of the human in theoretical and historical writing across the humanities,” but was omitted 
from the special Winter 2016 issue on Materialisms due to an editorial oversight.  
Introduction 22 
Framing Exhibition History  
In each chapter, I pair a discussion of process and materials with a look at key 
museum and gallery shows for the artists in the 1960s and 1970s. This attention to the 
history of display is an important part of my methodology, as it further recovers the 
details of the artists’ plastic artworks. The exhibition histories, revived through archival 
photographs and documents, also reclaim the surfaces and colors of the works, often lost 
in the black and white photography so prevalent for installation photographs from this 
period.56 Reclaiming the specificity of color through exhibition images is an essential 
aspect of this project, as each of the four artists discussed created works with vibrant 
hues: Judd selected rich and fluorescent colors for his Plexiglas objects; Hesse harnessed 
the colorful iridescence of raw Fiberglas; Valentine added pigments to polyester resin to 
cast his solid fields of color; and Eversley used both transparent dyes and opaque 
pigments to create optical Lenses that were awash with color. In this text, I elevate color 
as critical to understanding why the artists chose their respective plastics. Color is 
essential to the history of these objects, which is most evident when considering the  
color photography that captured the many solo and group exhibitions focused on plastics 
in the 1960s and 1970s.57   
                                               
56 Potts addressed the “complex set of mediations” involved with photographs of 
sculptures, arguing that installation images from the 1960s and 1970s should be read as 
more than simply documents. Potts, “The Minimalist Object and the Photographic 
Image,” in Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension, ed. Geraldine 
A. Johnson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 181.  
57 David Batchelor wrote of the “extreme prejudice” against color in the history of 
Western art, as color has traditionally been marginalized in “the realm of the superficial, 
the supplementary, the inessential or the cosmetic.” David Batchelor, Chromophobia 
(London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 22–23. 
Introduction 23 
For instance, from 1965 to 1972, more than a dozen museums and galleries across 
the U.S. hosted exhibitions focused on plastics in art.58 These group shows set the stage 
for how these objects were both shown and received on a national scale. Through the 
exhibitions, the American public found a different side of plastics, through immersive 
environments, absurdist architectural forms, and unlikely monuments constructed by 
artists. Visually, the shows varied, as they each compiled artists working with a wide 
range of materials and approaches. A Plastic Presence, the largest survey of sculpture in 
plastics by 49 artists working in the U.S. and Canada, organized by the Milwaukee Art 
Center with stops at The Jewish Museum in New York and the San Francisco Museum of 
Art from 1969 to 1970, offered one example (Figure 3). While on view in Milwaukee, the 
exhibition showed many artists who worked with clear and opaque surfaces, which 
offered a version of plastic sculpture that appeared to privilege the raw states of plastics 
without commercial intervention. Plastics and New Art, an exhibition that also opened in 
1969 at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, presented a 
                                               
58 The exhibitions included: Plastics, John Daniels Gallery, 1965; Plastics West Coast, 
Hansen-Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, 1967; Plastic as Plastic, organized Museum of 
Contemporary Crafts (now Museum of Arts and Design), New York, 1968, and shown at 
the Arts and Industries Building, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and Oberlin 
College in Oberlin, Ohio between 1969 and 1970; Plastics: Los Angeles, California State 
College at Los Angeles, 1968; Made of Plastic, Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan, 1968; 
Plastics and New Art, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and shown at the Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute in San 
Antonio, Texas, 1969; Hard, Soft and Plastic, 1969, Wilcox Gallery, Swarthmore 
College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania; A Plastic Presence, organized by the Milwaukee Art 
Center (now Milwaukee Art Museum) and traveled to The Jewish Museum in New York 
and the San Francisco Museum of Art (now San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), 
between 1969 and 1970; Editions in Plastic, 1970, University of Maryland Art Gallery, 
College Park, Maryland; Works in Plastic, 1970, Trinity College Art Gallery, Hartford, 
Connecticut; Tony Delap/Frank Gallo/Eva Hesse: Trio, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Center 
in New York, 1970; and The Last Plastics Show, California Institute of Arts in Valencia, 
California, 1972. 
Introduction 24 
different perspective (Figure 4). Arranged as a sort of absurdist showroom of plastic 
objects, the sculptures in the show represented a greater spectrum of colors, presenting a 
wider range of the uses of the materials that did not rely on a seemingly pure state of 
plastics in white, clear or opaque shades.  
The exhibitions also varied in their approach to didactic material, with some 
shows making an effort to educate the public on plastics. Plastics West Coast at Hansen-
Fuller Gallery in San Francisco in 1967 offered visitors a glossary of terms, defining 
resins, acrylics, vinyl, and other types of plastics as well as laminating, fabricating, and 
vacuum forming as methods in production.59 For Plastic as Plastic at Museum of 
Contemporary Crafts (now Museum of Arts and Design) in New York in 1968, 
organizers included the scientific compositions and characteristics of synthetics as well as 
a historical survey adapted from a document by the Society of the Plastics Industry within 
the catalogue text.60 In a foreword for the exhibition Made of Plastics at Michigan’s Flint 
Institute of Arts in 1968, director G. Stuart Hodge even cited a select list of inventors and 
corporations as a short history of plastics.61 Several exhibitions also partnered directly 
with industrial companies. Plastic as Plastic was sponsored by Hooker Chemical 
Corporation, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, later exposed in the late 
1970s as responsible for the Love Canal disaster.62 A Plastic Presence paired up with 
Philip Morris and their plastics subsidiary Milprint for financial support, to the dismay of 
                                               
59 “Plastic Definitions,” The Hansen Gallery, Exhibitions Archives, San Francisco 
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA.  
60 Plastic as Plastic (New York, NY: The Museum of Contemporary Crafts, 1968), 7–8.  
61 Made of Plastics (Flint, MI: Flint Institute of Arts, 1968), 2. 
62 Andrew C. Revkin, “Love Canal and Its Mixed Legacy,” New York Times, November 
25, 2013, accessed June 22, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/booming/love-
canal-and-its-mixed-legacy.html. 
Introduction 25 
critics.63 Finally, the aptly-titled The Last Plastics Show at the California Institute of Arts 
in Valencia, California in 1972—which presented itself as the finale of these 
exhibitions—stemmed from a collaboration between the university, Hastings Plastics in 
Santa Monica, California, and Valentine along with artists Judy Chicago, and Doug Edge, 
who organized the show of 24 artists. With these sponsorships, the industrial companies 
neither required that artists be complicit in corporate activities nor insisted that the artists 
promote their materials. However, the very practice of working with plastics often came 
with an implied affiliation to the American industry. 
Ultimately, the curators of these exhibitions often positioned artists as future 
pioneers of the plastics industry. Milwaukee Art Center director Tracy Atkinson, who 
organized A Plastic Presence with the institution’s Director of Exhibitions, John Lloyd 
Taylor, stated what was at stake with this show: “Plastics have earned a bad name from 
all the flimsy toys, all those endless and deadly countertops and lighting fixtures, those 
boxes and appliance housings which split and shattered under normal use, not to mention 
the early, less-than-satisfactory ‘synthetic’ fabrics and leather.”64 According to Atkinson, 
it was the artists in the exhibition, which included Hesse, Eversley, and Valentine, who 
were making the greatest strides to correct this situation.  
                                               
63 Grace Glueck of the New York Times lambasted exhibition’s corporate arrangement 
with Philip Morris as it attached artists to “image-building for the plastics industry.” In 
this context, she declared a troubling future for museum exhibitions, as corporations were 
increasingly taking the lead as sponsors. In the article, Glueck quoted Jewish Museum 
director Karl Katz, who claimed the sponsor did not have any say in planning the $70,000 
exhibition: “We don’t have to take any corporate shows we don’t want. And there are 
never any strings attached.” Grace Glueck, “Building the Plastic Image,” New York 
Times, December 7, 1969: D28.  
64 A Plastic Presence (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Center, 1969), 6.  
Introduction 26 
These exhibitions introduced the public to a new generation of plastic sculpture 
made through a range of novel methods and techniques. This phenomenon allowed 
institutions to revel in the spectacle of the works and even capitalize on the commercial 
potential of plastic products.65 At the same time, critics struggled to make sense of the 
artworks, and often scoffed at the very presence of plastics in a museum setting. In a 
review of Plastic as Plastic, Hilton Kramer wrote that artists working in plastics are 
“primitives” rather than innovators, in comparison to the efforts of industrial designers.66 
He wrote: “Instead of a grand synthesis, they have achieved only a public display of 
divided loyalties.”67 Lucy Lippard, in a review of Plastics at the John Daniels Gallery in 
1965, saw the malleability of plastics as problematic, as the works were “made to order 
for the current idioms: polychrome ‘space sculpture,’ optical and hard-edge color 
paintings and constructions, and pop commentaries on commercial items.”68 Rather than 
a coherent movement, plastic works were troublingly flexible. She wrote: “The combined 
purity and luxuriance of color and surface, the luminescent, prismatic effects are 
                                               
65 For instance, the opening of A Plastic Presence at the Jewish Museum alone brought 
out more than 5,000 people, filling the three-story museum. Carl Katz, the Jewish 
Museum director, called it “one of the biggest openings we’ve ever had. A real maxi-
opening.” George Weissman, president of Philips Morris echoed this sentiment about the 
show: “This is all a new sensation for these people. It involves all the senses. They just 
don’t seem to believe this could be done with plastic.” John B. Forbes, “Business Flexes 
Plastic Art,” The New York Times, November 23, 1969: F14. The Jewish Museum also 
tapped into the public’s eagerness with the accompanying exhibition Plastic in Editions, 
from November 1969 to January 1970. The show offered smaller artworks in plastics that 
were for sale, with prices ranging from $4.50 to $1,000, by artists such as Claes 
Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Barnett Newman, and Larry River. Julie Baumgold, “Best Bets,” 
New York Magazine 2, no. 48 (December 1, 1969): 57.  
66 Hilton Kramer, “‘Plastic as Plastic’: Divided Loyalties, Paradoxical Ambitions,” The 
New York Times, December 1, 1968: D39.  
67 Ibid. 
68 Lucy Lippard, “New York Letter,” Art International 9 (May 1965): 53.  
Introduction 27 
frequently too much for those accustomed to less assertive materials. Like light itself—
neon, fluorescent or electric—plastic tends to take off on its own.”69 On A Plastic 
Presence, Chicago Tribune critic Thomas Willis wrote: “If plasticult belongs to all of us, 
these works seem to say, let’s do the best we can to find its inner poetry and logic.”70  
The critics presented an anxiousness with this “plasticult,” which would continue 
throughout discussions of the works from this period. Synthetics used as artistic materials 
would continue to baffle critics and bewilder the public. By looking closely at the case 
studies in the following chapters, I bring more specificity to the artists and objects that 
fueled this movement. In considering the practices of Judd, Hesse, Valentine, and 
Eversley, I argue that these figures were integral to a new wave of “plasticraft” in their 
innovative approaches to making sculpture as well as in the way they challenged the 
place of plastics in the arena of public opinion.  
 
*** 
                                               
69 Lippard, “New York Letter,” 53. 
70 Thomas Willis, “Bringing the Art of Plastics Into Focus,” Chicago Tribune, February 
8, 1970: G10.  
Introduction 28 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 
 “I have very ambivalent feelings about plexiglass and don’t like it too much as a 
material. In part it’s a sort of slippery and slightly disagreeable material.”  
— Donald Judd, 19711  
 
In a 1971 interview, Donald Judd professed having “very ambivalent feelings” 
about Plexiglas, calling it “a sort of slippery and slightly disagreeable material.”2 As a 
figure long attached to the development of minimal art in New York, whose fabricated 
work is often discussed as stark, cold, and impersonal, Judd’s comments here are 
unexpected and emotive. The quotation illustrates an essential aspect of the artist’s work: 
that in making his objects, he took on industrial materials that were unpredictable, even 
expressive. With no precedent in the history of sculpture, these substances were 
challenging for Judd, and his comment revealed the dynamic presence of Plexiglas in 
particular. At the time, this plastic—generically known as acrylic—was already integral 
to many of his geometric, fabricated objects, including three groups of floor-bound 
works, which are the subject of this chapter. Judd worked with pre-colored, prefabricated 
acrylic sheets, allowing him to introduce a wide range of colors to his objects. As seen in 
the interview, Judd considered Plexiglas apart from the metals he used, such as iron, 
brass, and copper, as well as hot-rolled, galvanized, and stainless steel. The plastic 
possessed a variety of abilities and was capricious, shifting color depending on the 
environment. Plexiglas has previously been relegated to just another one of Judd’s 
                                               
1 John Coplans, “An Interview with Don Judd,” Artforum 9, no. 10 (June 1971): 50. This 
interview was concurrently published in John Coplans, Don Judd (Los Angeles: Pasadena 
Art Museum, 1971). 
2 Ibid. “Plexiglas” is a brand of acrylic developed by Röhm & Haas Company in the 
1930s. Judd used this particular product, though not exclusively. However, I will apply 
the term throughout the text, as it is the language Judd used in medium descriptions for 
the works that are the subject of this chapter. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 29 
materials among many in discussions of the artist’s work. What I propose is a 
reconsideration of Judd’s materials as particular substances with disparate properties, 
parsing out the individual behaviors of Plexiglas, for instance, rather than grouping it 
under an overall categorization of “industrial materials.” I argue that Plexiglas impacted 
the artist’s process of collaborating with fabricators in a way that varied from his work 
with metals, resulting in early objects that were flexible, tentative, and even fragile in 
their construction.  
Plexiglas created a unique challenge for Judd’s primary fabricator, Bernstein 
Brothers Sheet Metal Specialties, whose expertise was in metalwork.3 In working with 
the plastic sheets, Judd and his fabricators designed objects that were experimental in 
their construction and emphasized the visual properties of the material. Together, they 
innovated, particularly in making a series of floor-bound objects, nicknamed the 
“Turnbuckle” works, which were rectangular structures composed of three lateral sides of 
Plexiglas held together with tension wires—adjustable with turnbuckles—attached to two 
metal ends and open to the floor.4 Judd made “Turnbuckle” objects first in opaque 
pebbled plastic, beginning with Untitled (DSS 53) from 1964 (Figure 5), before turning to 
transparent colors, starting with Untitled (DSS 58) from 1965 (Figure 6).5 In this chapter, 
                                               
3 An invoice dated November 3, 1964 in Judd’s archives, from the year he began working 
with Bernstein Brothers, included a list of the shop’s specialties, starting with: “Sheet 
Metal Work/Experimental Work/Of Every Description.” Bernstein 1964, Invoice folder, 
Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX.  
4 “Turnbuckle” is an informal term used by the Judd Foundation and David Zwirner 
Gallery, which currently represents the artist’s work.  
5 Judd made two pebbled Plexiglas “Turnbuckle” objects in 1964: DSS 53 and DSS 54, in 
orange and turquoise colors respectively. The second series in transparent Plexiglas are as 
follows, with corresponding colors: DSS 58, Red Fluorescent, three versions (1965, 1968, 
and circa 1970; DSS 82, Amber, 1966; DSS 83, Yellow Fluorescent, two versions (1966, 
destroyed, and 1969); DSS 190, Blue, 1969; DSS 234, Grey amber, 1970; and DSS 269, 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 30 
I focus on the “Turnbuckles” to show the complexity of Judd’s fabricated works. Rather 
than being static, homogenous industrial objects, these floor boxes were idiosyncratic in 
their design, elastic in their construction, and visually assertive in the cascading color 
streams that emitted from the plastic. With a close look at the development and technical 
construction of the “Turnbuckles” and an analysis of their visual prowess, I propose a 
more nuanced approach to Judd’s work with industrial materials, which did not always 
come with certainty or predictability.  
The chapter first addresses previous scholarship on Judd and its limited approach 
to how he worked with specific objects, followed by a short history of his introduction to 
Plexiglas and the artist’s work with Bernstein Brothers. The following sections look more 
closely at the construction of the objects and the role of acrylic, particularly in two 
“Turnbuckle” boxes: starting with the first work, Untitled (DSS 53), which used a 
pebbled, opaque Plexiglas (Figure 5), and then Untitled (DSS 58) that introduced 
fluorescent, transparent acrylic to the series (Figure 6). The rest of the text outlines how 
Judd brought plastic and steel together as he created a “network” to order and assemble 
his materials, which I explore through correspondence and purchase orders in Judd’s 
archives and accounts from conservators and the artist’s assistants. Finally, I end the 
chapter with a short discussion of a related, floor-bound series, starting with Untitled 
                                               
Green, 1972. All of the works use stainless steel end plates, except for one (DSS 58, 
version three, circa 1970). The works are all formally called Untitled. My “DSS” 
designation follows the catalogue raisonné, compiled by Dudley Del Balso, Roberta 
Smith, and Brydon Smith: Brydon Smith, Donald Judd: Catalogue Raisonné of 
Paintings, Objects, and Woodblocks, 1960–1974 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 
1975). Currently, the Judd Foundation is compiling an updated catalogue raisonné. 
Provenance of some works mentioned in this chapter are subject to change. I owe thanks 
to Jana La Brasca and Caitlin Murray of the Judd Foundation for their assistance in 
confirming these details.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 31 
(DSS 128) from 1968 (Figure 7), to offer a subsequent example of how Judd and 
Bernstein Brothers learned to work with Plexiglas and steel, as first found in the 
“Turnbuckles.”  
 
On Judd Scholarship 
Judd remains inextricably tied to the history of Minimalism, despite his insistence 
in interviews that he did not subscribe to this category of sculpture as a group or 
movement.6 Yet critics were eager to make sense of his non-representational, geometric 
work that used new methods of production and industrial materials. Minimalism, still the 
chosen label, initially took on a variety of names, such as Object Art, ABC Art, and Cool-
Art, with critics situating Judd as a trailblazer.7 In 1965, Barbara Rose used the phrase 
“‘object’ sculpture” to describe work by Judd and Robert Morris, which she deemed “a 
thoroughly conceptual art,” particularly as the work was made by fabricators.8 The 
                                               
6 In 1990, Judd addressed his distaste for “Minimal Art” as a denomination: “I hate it of 
course, and I’ve said that and written that many times. There are lots of reasons for 
disliking it. One of the least, to begin with, is that it was simply a derogatory publicity 
label…The main objection is that it makes a group out of something that was not a group, 
out of several people who were definitely not a group. This is a simplification. It is false 
art history...” Angeli Janhsen, “Discussion with Donald Judd,” in Donald Judd (St. 
Gallen, Switzerland: Kunstverein St. Gallen, 1990), 50.  
7 Notable examples of such criticism: Richard Wollheim, “Minimal Art,” Arts Magazine 
39, no. 4 (January 1965): 26–32; Irving Sandler, “The New Cool-Art,” Art in America 53, 
no. 1 (February 1965): 96–101; and Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America 53, no. 5 
(October/November 1965): 57–69. James Meyer’s scholarship on the distinct practices of 
artists such as Judd, Robert Morris, Carl Andre, and Sol LeWitt, has advanced a more 
judicious understanding of this period of sculpture, though the description “minimal art” 
is still attached to Judd’s work. Meyer puts forth a “genealogical approach” that traces 
the rise and canonization of minimal art, which is a first important step for all literature 
on Judd to distinguish his practice from colleagues similarly help captive under 
“Minimalism.” James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 2001).  
8 Rose, “Donald Judd,” Artforum 3, no. 9 (June 1965): 34. James Mellow also described 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 32 
following year, critic Hilton Kramer wrote that Judd’s objects marked a move towards 
“cool, cerebral esthetics,” where the artist was a “designer” creating “constructions made 
to order.”9 Critics writing on Judd struggled to categorize his innovation, and in the 
process omitted the nuances of his objects. 
The first extensive description of Judd’s materials came in 1965, on the occasion 
of the show 7 Sculptors at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. 
For the catalogue, artist Robert Smithson wrote an essay on Judd, which began: 
Donald Judd has set up a “company,” that extends the technique of 
abstract art into unheard-of places. He may go to Long Island City and 
have the Bernstein Brothers, Tinsmiths, put “Pittsburgh” seams into some 
(Bethcon) iron boxes, or he might go to Allied Plastics in Lower 
Manhattan and have cut-to-size some Rohm-Haas ‘glowing’ pink 
plexiglass. Judd is always on the lookout for new finishes… This new 
approach to technique has nothing to do with sentimental notions about 
“labor.” There is no subjective craftsmanship, Judd is not a specialist in a 
certain kind of labor, but a whole artist engaged in a multiplicity of 
techniques.10 
Published the year after Judd started working with Bernstein Brothers, this essay 
described the artist’s cottage industry, enumerating a long list of suppliers and fabricators 
and depicting him on the move, crisscrossing the area, from Long Island City to the 
Lower East Side, to source his materials. While Judd later discounted Smithson’s 
position, the text is instructive in outlining the radical nature of Judd’s practice in 1965.11 
                                               
Judd as “taking a distinctly conceptual approach to the making of art.” James R. Mellow, 
“Hostage to the Gallery,” The New Leader (March 14, 1966): 33.  
9 Hilton Kramer, “Art: Constructed to Donald Judd’s Specifications,” New York Times, 
February 19, 1966: 23.  
10 Robert Smithson, “Donald Judd,” in 7 Sculptors (Philadelphia: Institute of 
Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1965), 13. For Caroline Jones, 
Smithson’s tone reflected his approval of Judd’s practice, “as if intoxicated by the alien 
poetry of these proprietary terms.” Caroline Jones, Machine in the Studio (Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1996), 269.   
11 Judd commented: “I don’t romanticize technology like Robert Smithson and others. I 
think generally you are forced into more modern technologies, but the technology is 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 33 
Smithson cited Judd’s network of suppliers, including Allied Plastics, to bring specificity 
to the artist’s process and industrial products, mentioning the “‘glowing’ pink” or Röhm 
& Haas Company-branded “Red Fluorescent” sheets that were used in the first 
transparent “Turnbuckle” box, Untitled (DSS 58) from 1965, discussed later in this 
chapter. Smithson also called this work the “pink plexiglass box.”12 However, Smithson’s 
colloquial, even satirical, inventory perpetuated detachment between the artist, his 
fabricators, and products.  
Since this early moment in the literature on Judd, subsequent scholarship has 
frequently treated the artist’s objects as little more than illustrations of his theoretical 
foundations.13 These texts often overlook particular materials, with a few exceptions.14 
                                               
merely to suit one’s purpose. It’s not something mysterious or something that sanctions 
the work.” Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 45. To Lucy Lippard, Judd stated: 
“Smithson loves to confuse art and science and I’m opposed to such things.” Donald Judd 
Interviewed by Lucy Lippard, 1968, Box 36, Folder 40, p. 101, Lucy R. Lippard papers, 
1930s–2010, bulk 1960s–1990, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 
Washington, DC. For more on Judd’s comments about Smithson over the years: David 
Raskin, Donald Judd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 142, n. 30. 
12 Smithson might have seen Untitled (DSS 58) at the “Plastics” exhibition at John 
Daniels Gallery, March 16 to April 3, 1965. Smithson, “Donald Judd,” 16. 
13 Raskin, in the first monograph on the artist, advanced an understanding of the objects 
by using “scale” as a framework, eschewing literalist or phenomenological readings that 
marooned the artist in a limited Minimalism framework. This approach is applicable 
across substances, but Raskin did not address the making or abilities of distinct objects. 
Raskin, Donald Judd. In the catalogue for Judd’s major retrospective at the Whitney 
Museum of American Art in 1988, Barbara Haskell’s essay traced the artist’s theoretical 
foundations and background in empiricism, with cursory attention to the accompanying 
images of artworks. Barbara Haskell, Donald Judd (New York: Whitney Museum of 
American Art, 1988). Anna Chave, in her important text on Minimalism as a display of 
masculine, aggressive, even “brutal” power, did not extend her argument to consider 
Judd’s objects. Anna Chave, “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power,” Arts Magazine 
64, no. 5 (January 1990), 44. For an oppositional approach to Chave: Raskin, “Specific 
Opposition: Judd’s art and politics,” Art History 24, no. 5 (November 2001): 682–706. 
14 Alex Potts distinguished between the visual effects of Judd’s materials, situating the 
“tinted perspex” or colored Plexiglas that charged the interiors of Judd’s objects in 
contrast to the metal surfaces. Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 34 
An approach to Judd’s substances is further complicated by the artist’s own writings, 
which neither specify differences or hierarchies between materials nor privilege the 
visual qualities of matter. In his essay “Specific Objects,” long labeled, despite his 
objections, as Judd’s manifesto, the artist described the state of three-dimensional art in 
the mid-1960s, which involved a direct use of industrial substances.15 He wrote: 
“Materials vary greatly and are simply materials—formica, aluminum, cold-rolled steel, 
plexiglas, red and common brass, and so forth. They are specific. If they are used 
directly, they are more specific. Also, they are usually aggressive. There is an objectivity 
to the obdurate identity of a material.”16 In this list, Judd did not privilege aluminum over 
brass, or Plexiglas over steel, stripping the products of their individual abilities. Though 
in the text, the artist talked broadly about the current trends in artwork, rather than about 
his objects, the language allowed for a cursory, even superficial reading of industrial 
materials, as a broad school of substances.  
Judd’s writings are often central to critical readings, emphasizing his words over 
his objects.17 Certain texts contend with this “gap,” between Judd’s claim that substances 
are inert—”simply materials,” as written in “Specific Objects”—and the visual 
                                               
Modernist, Minimalist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 304. Joshua Shannon 
also addressed the significance of Judd’s early work with materials such as asphalt pipes 
and galvanized iron. Joshua Shannon, The Disappearance of Objects: New York Art and 
the Rise of the Postmodern City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 165–169.  
15 Judd explained that “Specific Objects” was not his manifesto, but rather a 
commissioned report on current artwork. The essay was published in Arts Yearbook in 
1965, though Judd wrote the text the year before. Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 
43–44. 
16 Donald Judd, Donald Judd Writings (New York: Judd Foundation, 2016), 143.  
17 For instance, Hal Foster considered “Specific Objects” as representative of the artist’s 
work, rather than his objects. Hal Foster, “The Crux of Minimalism,” in The Return of the 
Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 
59.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 35 
experiences of his works, but still struggle to account for the two aspects of Judd’s 
practice.18 In this chapter, I take another path, one which allows Judd’s writings to offer a 
broader view of the artist’s work, instead of treating “Juddist” scripture as sacrosanct.19 
Ultimately, I build from the previous scholarship that consider Judd’s objects through the 
intrusions of technology, fabrication, and collaboration, without being restricted to the 
artist’s written parameters for sculpture.20  
Additionally, I draw from the literature on Judd and color, which looks closely at 
the individual behaviors of the artist’s objects and has offered productive discussions of 
the presence of Plexiglas and of different types of metals. Rosalind Krauss’s 1966 essay 
“Allusion and Illusion in Donald Judd” is often cited as the first text to address the visual 
spectacle of Judd’s objects, as she claimed the works allowed for an experience of 
unexpected “beauty” that was hardly reductive, removed, or polemical, as described by 
                                               
18 Robert Slifkin discussed the schism between Judd’s proposed “aesthetics of 
credibility” and the “illusionistic effects” of his materials, relating that “credibility gap” 
to 1960s anxiety around technology and conflicting perspectives about the war in 
Vietnam. Robert Slifkin, “Donald Judd’s Credibility Gap,” American Art 25, no. 2 
(Summer 2011): 69–71.  
19 The approach to Judd’s writings as scripture is further emphasized by the 2016 edition 
of the artist’s texts, which is a cloth-bound book the size of a personal bible. Judd, 
Donald Judd Writings. Gregoire Muller writes about “orthodox Juddean ideas” and how 
his writings have been accepted fully without considering the impact and “consequences” 
of the works. He wrote: “To put it bluntly, it seems that much of the world has been 
living off of Judd’s mental energy while often remaining surprisingly blind to the visual 
clarity of the works themselves.” Gregoire Muller, “Donald Judd: Ten Years,” Arts 
Magazine 47, no. 4 (February 1973): 35–36. In 1995, Pepe Karmel described a panel at 
the Whitney Museum held the year before, entitled “Donald Judd Reconsidered”: “Judd’s 
reputation as high priest of Minimalism seemed to have placed an interdiction on 
discussion of his work: it could be described but not interpreted.” Pepe Karmel, 
“Recalling The Critic Who Was A Sculptor,” New York Times, February 10, 1995: C25. 
20 Notably: Shannon, The Disappearance of Objects, 150–186. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 36 
1960s critics.21 Though Krauss did not address details of materials or colors in Judd’s 
work, she considered the opportunity to talk about the aesthetics of the objects as distinct 
from Judd’s writings, a practice followed by subsequent scholars.22 Color does not fit 
comfortably into prescribed notions of Minimalism as gray, monochrome, and cold, with 
masculine connotations—well suited to the black-and-white photographs that have told 
much of Judd’s story in the 1960s—as color has long been considered secondary, 
feminine, and superficial in the history of Western art.23 However, Judd’s use of color 
was emphasized early in his career, as seen in discussions around the artist’s solo 
exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1968. For the show’s catalogue, 
William Agee wrote that Judd was unique to his contemporaries for his “rich, vibrant and 
personal use of color,” a reflection of the colorful objects that filled the show.24 Critics 
commented widely on the display of color in the exhibition, which took place on an 
entire, open floor of the museum. Critic Elizabeth Baker described a show “full of color 
                                               
21 Rosalind Krauss wrote that “one is totally unprepared for the extraordinary beauty of 
the sculptures themselves.” Rosalind Krauss, “Allusion and Illusion in Donald Judd,” 
Artforum 4, no. 9 (May 1966): 24. On Krauss’s shifting position on Judd: Raskin, “Judd’s 
Moral Art,” in Donald Judd, Nicholas Serota, ed. (London: Tate Publishing, 2004), 79–
80. 
22 In a 1991 essay, Yve-Alain Bois reflected on his personal encounters with Judd’s work, 
which included “a kind of gratitude towards the artist for having revealed the aesthetic 
potential of what are not terribly noble materials: who can deny that, before Judd, 
galvanized iron bore the stigma of being amongst the ugliest and most drab of industrial 
materials?” Yve-Alain Bois, “The Inflection,” in Donald Judd: New Sculpture (New 
York: Pace Gallery, 1991), n.p. 
23 David Batchelor, “Everything is Color,” in Donald Judd, ed. Nicholas Serota (London: 
Tate Publishing, 2004), 65–75. Also: Batchelor, Chromophobia (London: Reaktion 
Books, 2000), 22–23. 
24 William C. Agee, Don Judd (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1968), 9. 
Agee returns to the topic of Judd and color in: Agee, “Donald Judd and the Endless 
Possibilities of Color,” in Donald Judd: Colorist, ed. Dietmar Elger (Ostfildern-Ruit, 
Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2000), 33–51.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 37 
and slithery reflections coming off satiny surfaces,” which caused a “dematerialization” 
in the objects due to “light, reflection, surface thinness or transparency” and the “knife-
sharp” edges that “usually reflect or refract or, with certain plastics, fluoresce.”25 In his 
review, James Mellow wrote that he was unprepared for the emphasis on color in the 
exhibition, as his “previous assumption—which I now find is incorrect—was that color 
was a secondary consideration.”26  
The conversation on Judd and color was not revived until some 30 years later, 
primarily surrounding several exhibitions that addressed this aspect of the artist’s work.27 
The focus on color was most likely galvanized by Judd’s last essay written before his 
death: the 1993 text “Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in 
Particular.”28 In the essay, Judd initially declared: “Material, space, and color are the 
main aspects of visual art,” inextricably connecting color and material as the essential 
stuff of art objects.29 The lengthy discussion traced the history of color in painting, 
                                               
25 Elizabeth C. Baker, “Judd the Obscure,” ArtNews 67, no. 2 (April 1968): 45, 61.  
26 Mellow, “‘Everything Sculpture Has, My Work Doesn’t: My Work Doesn’t,’” New 
York Times, March 10, 1968: D21, D26.  
27 For texts on Judd and color: Dietmar Elger, ed., Donald Judd: Colorist (Ostfildern-
Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2000); Batchelor, “Everything as Color,” in 
Donald Judd, Nicholas Serota, ed. (London: Tate Publishing, 2004), 65–75; and 
Marianne Stockebrand, ed., Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works (New Haven: Yale 
University Press, 2014). The exhibition “Dan Flavin/Donald Judd: Aspects of Color,” at 
the Menil Collection from November 1998 to January 1999, also addressed color in 
Judd’s work.  
28 This essay by Judd was written on the occasion of the Sikkens Prize awarded to the 
artist on November 27, 1993. He fell ill and was unable to deliver the lecture, passing 
away on February 12, 1994 in New York. It was first printed as: Judd, Some Aspects of 
Color in General and Red and Black in Particular (Sassenheim, Netherlands: Sikkens 
Foundation, 1993). It was also published in the Summer 1994 issue of Artforum. 
29 Judd wrote: “Color, like material, is what art is made from. It alone is not art…Other 
than the spectrum, there is no pure color. It always occurs on a surface which has no 
texture or which has a texture or which is beneath a transparent surface.” Judd, “Some 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 38 
sculpture, and architecture and included a call to recognize the primary significance of 
color in artmaking. Judd wrote that color was always essential and the idea of his works 
as “only white or gray was a notion of the academy,” certainly referencing stereotypical 
readings of Minimalist art.30   
David Batchelor, in particular, has addressed the relevance of industrial colors in 
Judd’s work, returning color to discussions about minimal art.31 Batchelor claimed Judd’s 
colors pulled from “painting-in-the-world” as his vibrant, synthetic colors mirrored the 
surfaces of modern, urban life, which offered the artist an alternative to the traditions of 
color theory.32 This literature has expanded the scholarship on Judd, color, and his use of 
materials, but rarely connects these elements to process and fabrication. My chapter 
builds from this important scholarship to offer a new, visual approach to Judd’s work, 
paired with a thoughtful discussion of Plexiglas and its presence in particular objects. In 
                                               
Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular,” in Donald Judd Writings 
(New York: Judd Foundation, 2016), 833, 855. 
30 Judd, “Some Aspects of Color,” 850. 
31 Batchelor likened the colors of minimal art to Pop Art, in that both used “found 
colours, commercial colours, industrial colours, and often bright, vulgar, modern colours 
in bright, vulgar, modern collisions with other bright, vulgar, modern colours.” Batchelor, 
Chromophobia, 12. In an unpublished text from 1994, Lippard furthered this position, 
writing: “In both Minimalism and Pop, the commercial fabrication process, the industrial 
materials, the bright colors, the plastic and metallic glitter were an affirmation of the real 
world, of life, and of popular culture…” Donald Judd, circa 1956–1976, 1994, Box 10 
Folder 39, p. 2, Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of American Art.  
32 Batchelor wrote of the phenomenon of color in modern life: “Most of the colours we 
now see are chemical or electrical; they are plastic or metallic; they are flat, shiny, 
glowing or flashing (or they are broken, switched off and as if they were never there). 
These colours are intense but also ephemeral; they are vivid but also contingent. And 
they are ubiquitous: always everywhere allied to commerce and the street. As such they 
are always also impure, and largely indifferent to the protocols of traditional colour 
theory.” Batchelor argued that Judd’s objects did no depict or evoke specific elements of 
the city but rather embodied “the colours and surfaces of the city.” Batchelor, 
“Everything is Color,” 70–71, 75.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 39 
looking at one particular body of work—the “Turnbuckles”—I address how Plexiglas 
introduced radical, visual displays rich with color at Judd’s major exhibitions, how access 
to acrylics informed the objects, and how Judd establish his own production “company” 
creating a link between different suppliers and his fabricators to support his 
unprecedented way of working with the plastic. 
 
When Judd Found Plexiglas 
The objective of this chapter is not biographical but rather addresses a material 
encounter between Judd and Plexiglas, which began in the early 1960s and continued to 
the end of his career. Plastic was prevalent in the artist’s works and was especially 
important in introducing transparency, reflective surfaces, and a full spectrum of colors, 
from saturated, dark hues to brilliant, fluorescent tones. Plexiglas was outspoken when 
used as the primary surface, as in the “Turnbuckle,” declaring itself as visual spectacle. 
Plexiglas first appeared in Judd’s early paintings in the form of a found object: a yellow, 
plastic “O” letter implanted in the middle of Untitled (DSS 30) from 1962, the only figure 
on a field of cadmium red light pigment on Liquitex and sand on Masonite (Figure 8).33 
This work belongs to a group of highly-textured paintings from the early 1960s that 
married cadmium red light with sand, wax, and objects like the asphalt pipe that 
protrudes through the center of Untitled (DSS 29).34  
                                               
33 Marianne Stockebrand, “Catalogue,” in Donald Judd, ed. Nicholas Serota (London: 
London: Tate Publishing, 2004), 169. Judd’s records include a receipt dated July 2, 1962 
from Commercial Plastics for yellow vinyl measuring 21 by 50 inches. The destination of 
the material is unknown, but it might represent another attempt to use plastic. DDB 
Fabrication and Material Files, Box 2, Folder 6, Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX.  
34 For a thoughtful discussion of this object: Shannon, Disappearance of Objects, 161.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 40 
Plexiglas was then used in an early floor-bound object, Untitled (DSS 38), 1963  
(Figure 9), one of the wooden, rectilinear structures painted in the electric hue of 
cadmium red light that were included in Judd’s solo exhibition at the Green Gallery in 
New York in 1963 installed directly on the floor.35 Untitled (DSS 38) is reminiscent of 
steps or a scalable structure and includes a custom-cut, violet-colored Plexiglas strip 
attached to the interior of a diagonal step across the square object. While the plastic gives 
the illusion of a view into the interior, the darkly colored Plexiglas is rather opaque and 
reflective, receding as ornamentation in contrast to the charged, red color and diagonal 
grain of plywood visible beneath the painted surface.  
At this early moment in Judd’s career, color was primarily expressed in paint, 
particularly with the artist’s preferred hue: cadmium red light. In a 1971 interview, Judd 
stated that cadmium red light allowed him to emphasize a work’s shape, claiming it was 
“the only color that really makes an object sharp and defines its contours and angles.”36 
In this explanation, Judd omitted cadmium’s history in the tradition of painting, rather 
emphasizing a new, specific purpose for the color: to accentuate shape with the utmost 
clarity.37 In Untitled (DSS 38), the artist used the precise edges of Plexiglas to further 
                                               
35 Three versions of this work were made in 1963, 1969, and 1975. Judd claimed to have 
been the first artist to show objects directly on the ground: “The absence of a base, as far 
as I knew, was completely my idea.” Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 44. He later 
expounded: “Nothing had ever been placed directly on the floor…Since now it is 
common for work to be placed anywhere in a room, it is impossible for people to 
understand that placement on the floor and the absence of a pedestal were inventions. I 
invented them. But there is no history.” Judd, “Some Aspects of Color,” 839.  
36 Judd discussed his choice of cadmium red light: “If you went down to cadmium red, 
medium or deep, the form would be fuzzy so the only point about the color was its 
capacity to define the form with clarity.” Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 43.  
37 Cadmium was a metallic pigment developed in the 19th century, used by modernist 
painters, such as Henri Matisse. On this history: Inge Fiedler and Michael 
Bayard, ”Cadmium Yellows, Oranges, and Reds,” in Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 41 
delineate the object, while also attempting to introduce transparency. In these early 
objects, Judd was interested in creating opportunities to see a work’s interior, by using 
Plexiglas or even incorporating physical holes, such as the semi-circular cut-outs along 
the top surface of Untitled (DSS 41). 
In March 1964, three months after the Green Gallery show that included the 
cadmium red objects, Judd turned to fabrication, hiring Bernstein Brothers, located three 
blocks from his loft on Third Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets.38 He also turned to 
metal and plastic as his primary materials, rather than wood, in his search for a “thinner, 
more shell-like surface,” so as to create objects that could be easily read as “hollow,” 
freeing his works from the weight of traditional sculpture.39 Judd described his decision 
to work with fabricators as part of his search to find the best “technique” to realize his 
structures, seeking those who had expertise in using metal and plastic.40 Early on, Judd 
                                               
Their History and Characteristics, Vol. 1, Robert L. Feller, ed. (Washington, DC: 
National Gallery of Art, 1986), 65–108.  
38 For a history of the shop, see: Shannon, The Disappearance of Objects, 170–173. 
39 Judd explained the switch to metal, as wood was too absorbent and had a thick surface, 
saying he wanted a “thinner, more shell-like surface” that would create interior space. 
Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 44. While participating in a 1966 symposium for 
the Jewish Museum exhibition “Primary Structures,” Judd stated: “I intend my pieces to 
be hollow. The sheet metal is obviously only so thick, and everyone knows how thick it is 
so that you are aware of this big space inside.” “Primary Structures” Symposium, The 
Jewish Museum of New York, May 2, 1966, Box 2, Folder 5, p. 17, Lucy R. Lippard 
papers, Archives of American Art. 
40 In defending himself against Mark Di Suvero, who claimed that “my friend Don Judd 
can’t qualify as an artist because he doesn’t do the work,” Judd responded: “The point is 
not whether one makes a work oneself or not. The point is that it’s all a case of technique 
that makes the thing visible, so that I don’t see in the long run why one technique is any 
more essentially art than another technique. And there are presumably an infinite number 
of techniques. I don’t see why someone shouldn’t go out and find the one that it suits 
him…” “Primary Structures” Symposium, p. 5–6, Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of 
American Art. Judd recalled Di Suvero later apologized for his remarks. Donald Judd 
Interviewed by Lippard, p. 125, Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of American Art. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 42 
explained that his fabricated objects did not always turn out the way he expected. In 
1966, he stated: “Even if you can plan the thing completely ahead of time, you still don’t 
know what it looks like until it’s right there. You may turn out to be totally wrong once 
you have gone to all the trouble of building this thing.”41 There was a learning curve in 
this relationship, as the craftsmen at Bernstein Brothers became accustomed to Judd’s 
specifications at the same time he was developing a new visual language.42 In an 
interview from 1968, Judd defended his use of industrial processes by arguing that mass 
producing his objects improved the techniques of the craftsman, stating: “It would be the 
same object. In fact if they had to build say 30 of them, they’d get a lot better at it than 
they were now. The work would get better, for one thing.”43 Then, in 1971, he described 
his work with craftsmen as using “an old-fashioned technique—basically a late 19th-
century metal-working technique.”44 Over these years, Judd emphasized his investment in 
the expertise of his fabricators and recognized what was needed to refine and hone a 
particular work: steady and frequent collaboration.  
 
 
 
                                               
41 Bruce Glaser, “Questions to Stella and Judd,” Art News 65, no. 5 (September 1966): 
60. The article stated that the interview was adapted from a broadcast on WBAI-FM New 
York in February 1964, on a program “New Nihilism or New Art?” produced by Glaser 
that originally included Dan Flavin, who was omitted from the printed text.  
42 Judd complained that the first major piece made by Bernstein, Untitled (DSS 50) in 
painted galvanized iron, was not to his specifications: “They made the oval piece. It’s not 
too well-made because they didn’t realize how I wanted it. Bernstein made it as he would 
have made a ventilating duct.” Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 44. 
43 Donald Judd interview, May 1968, conducted by Margot Willett, Archives of 
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 
44 Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 45. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 43 
The History of Plexiglas, and Judd 
The “Art Studio,” a former grocery store in Marfa, Texas, was one of Judd’s 
working spaces later in his career. The studio, which remains preserved from the time of 
his death in 1994, includes a table covered with Plexiglas samples (Figure 10), visually 
representing the initial step of choosing colors and materials before fabrication. In this 
context, Plexiglas is removed from his objects, represented in the small squares arranged 
on the table, one substance among many in his studio. However, in practice, Judd was not 
simply incorporating a generic “plastic” surface, but utilizing sheets of acrylic, a 
synthetic material with inherently unique visual abilities, available in a variety of colors, 
and manufactured with a high, glossy finish. 
Plexiglas was first launched in 1936 as a cast acrylic sheet product developed by 
Röhm & Haas Company of Philadelphia and Darmstadt, Germany. The material, 
generically known by its chemical name polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) but more 
commonly called acrylic, quickly found wide appeal for industrial and military use as a 
lighter and more durable stand-in for glass.45 Plexiglas is made by injecting the plastic in 
a liquid state into a mold of glass sheets on either end, and then immersing it in water for 
polymerization. The resulting hard plastic possesses a glossy, reflective surface like glass, 
as the material is a direct, positive impression of the glass mold, but with the durability of 
a synthetic substance. In short, Plexiglas is the progeny of glass, born from its surface 
with similar reflective and visual properties. To make tinted sheets, color is added to the 
initial, liquid substance, making the hue inherent to the plastic, a quality favored by 
                                               
45 Sheldon Hochheiser, Rohm and Haas: History of a Chemical Company (Philadelphia: 
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 59. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 44 
Judd.46 Initially developed as Plexiglas from Röhm & Haas, acrylic sheets were also 
available from a variety of companies by the 1960s, known by trade names such as 
Perspex from Imperial Chemical Industries and Acrylite from American Cyanamid 
Company.  
Cast acrylic sheets are lightweight and durable and have the unique ability to 
conduct light from one edge to the other, passing through the lens-like, slick surface. A 
1945 corporate text from Röhm & Haas described this effect as “edge-lighting” or “light-
piping,” where light transmitted from edge to edge and emanated from “any surface that 
is interrupted by sanding, machining, carving, engraving, or even painting.”47 In Judd’s 
work, this phenomenon often created a physical outline that circumscribed the object, as 
if a drawn line of pure matter, where the edges are brighter than the flat surfaces of the 
material. Acrylic was not the only material that imposed its visual idiosyncrasies in 
Judd’s work, as certain metals such as brass and galvanized steel also used reflective 
surfaces and contrasting patterns to bring a variety of effects to the objects. However, 
acrylic’s transparency and wide ranges of colors made it ever-changing in Judd’s work, 
varying greatly depending on the light conditions, the space, and the juxtapositions of 
other materials.  
Judd actively researched Plexiglas, as evidenced by the pamphlets and materials 
in his archives (Figure 11). He even corresponded with Röhm & Haas, as seen in a letter 
                                               
46 Judd stated: “I think it would be best of all if the material had its own color which was 
intrinsic and not applied. But there isn’t much color of this sort to work with. So far, the 
only thing that really has a lot of color is plastic.” “Primary Structures” Symposium, p. 3, 
Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of American Art. In 1971, when asked why use 
Plexiglas, Judd stated: “It has a hard, single surface and the color is embedded in the 
material.” Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 45. 
47 Chemicals for Industry (Philadelphia, PA: Röhm & Haas Company, 1945), 118.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 45 
dated February 16, 1965 (Figure 12) from H.W. Gift, a representative in the Plastics 
Department. Gift responded to Judd’s inquiry from that month, writing that Röhm & 
Haas did not fabricate objects, revealing Judd’s initial interest in working directly with a 
plastic company.48 The letter lists the standard sizes—96 by 96 and 48 by 96 inches—
corresponding to and most likely determining the 48-inch length of the “Turnbuckles” 
using transparent acrylic, produced the same year of this exchange, in 1965.  
 
Composing the First Turnbuckle  
Before making the transparent plastic “Turnbuckles,” Judd first created two early 
floor boxes using pebbled acrylic, or the Röhm & Haas product “Flair Patterned 
Plexiglas,” advertised for its rippled, “stained glass effects” (Figure 13).49 Judd ordered 
the plastic sheets for the first of these objects, Untitled (DSS 53) (Figure 5), in August 
1964, five months after he began working with Bernstein Brothers.50 Measuring 22 
inches off the ground and almost four feet long, the work was fabricated for the artist 
with three slabs of orange-pebbled Plexiglas on the long sides and top of the rectangular 
structure, leaving the work open to the floor. The sculpture is designed with an odd scale, 
as the work sits too low to the ground to evoke furniture or design objects but is sizable 
enough with large, uninterrupted sheets of Plexiglas to evoke architectural structures. A 
                                               
48 DDB Fabrication and Material Files, Box 3, Folder 1, Judd Foundation Archives. 
49 Flair Patterned Plexiglas was listed in a Röhm & Haas Company brochure in Judd’s 
archives. DDB Fabrication and Material Files, Box 2, Folder 4, Judd Foundation 
Archives. 
50 For the “Turnbuckles,” the steel and Plexiglas were often ordered separately. For 
Untitled (DSS 53), the Plexiglas was purchased on August 22, 1964, and the steel was 
purchased on October 2, 1964. The steel plates were then refabricated on February 19, 
1968. Smith, Donald Judd: Catalogue Raisonné, 120.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 46 
mechanical construction with no inherent function, the work is held together by tension 
wires running through the piece and attaching to hot-rolled steel plates on each end, 
bringing together two materials with widely different properties. Even with the pebbled 
Plexiglas, the wires are still dimly visible (Figure 14), offering a reified view of the 
hardware inside without revealing the interior system. In using this textured, opaque 
plastic sheeting, Judd made the surface distinctive, but was also able to obscure the 
interior, perhaps to conceal the design in this first, rough stage, as he was working out the 
“Turnbuckles” with Bernstein Brothers. He made only one other work with the pebbled 
Plexiglas: Untitled (DSS 54), which used a turquoise-colored material for a slightly 
smaller box with the same structure, before (and perhaps, more confidently) turning to a 
fully transparent acrylic for the remainder of the “Turnbuckles.”51  
Untitled (DSS 53), as the first “Turnbuckle,” was owned by fellow artist Dan 
Flavin and remains in the Flavin’s family collection. The “Turnbuckle” creates an odd 
relationship between the two materials used, where the plastic sheets and steel end pieces 
continue to be two very distinctive substances, united in Judd’s composition. The bluish 
and silver streaked steel plates (Figure 15) retain the marks of their making, including 
lines from the material being milled and the blue and purple marks of welding—
specifically, the visual evidence of heat touching the metal—coming through the outer 
surface along the edges and in the center where the turnbuckle wires were attached. The 
steel plates betray their industrial process, particularly in the hot-rolled metal rather than 
the more uniform stainless steel of later works. In great contrast, the plastic sheets are 
                                               
51 Untitled (DSS 53) measures 20 by 45-3/8 by 31 inches, while Untitled (DSS 54) is 20 
by 44-1/4 by 30-1/2 inches. The subsequent transparent “Turnbuckles” correspond more 
to industry standards, following readymade sizes available in Plexiglas (see page 41). 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 47 
untouched and consistent, with no seams or interruptions throughout the distinctively 
rippled, dull surface of the patterned plastic (Figure 16), with a trace of the casting 
process visible only in the diagonal markings left behind on the milled edges of  
the Plexiglas.  
The “Turnbuckle” offered a physical and visual conversation between two 
materials that Judd coerced together, not for function or utility but for visual 
experimentation, creating awkward interactions seen in the gaps that can form between 
the metal and plastic, even when composed (Figure 17). These disjunctive details are not 
flaws, I would argue, but rather fragile, important moments that show Judd—at an early 
stage in his career as a sculptor working with fabricators—struggling to create a union 
between two substances not designed to come together. The “Turnbuckles” brought 
complexity to Judd’s oeuvre of fabricated objects because of their delicate nature and 
tentative balance of objects marrying two very different materials. Judd’s 
experimentation in these works is best exhibited in the way the boxes were composed and 
continue to be installed.  
Untitled (DSS 53), like the subsequent “Turnbuckles,” is actually a delicate, rather 
vulnerable object, requiring practiced hands to put it together. Due to the balance of 
tension between the Plexiglas sheets and the steel end plates, the components are always, 
and were meant to be, stored separately, so each time a “Turnbuckle” is installed, it 
requires a team of installers to ensure the integrity of each section and of the object as a 
whole, as I witnessed when it was placed on view at the David Zwirner gallery in 2018.52 
                                               
52 Thank you to Tamar Margalit at the Museum of Modern Art and Jaime Schwartz at 
David Zwirner for generously arranging my visit to see this work, and to the art handlers 
at Zwirner for sharing their time and knowledge.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 48 
The process begins with each of the sections laid out carefully and then slowly brought 
together, first around the base in a delicate horizontal stacking of plastic beside metal 
(Figure 18). For each “Turnbuckle,” the Plexiglas was suspended without screws or pins 
but using a series of devices, including welded tabs on the edges of the steel plates that 
loosely hold the plastic sheets and cables with turnbuckles, which were attached through 
metal brackets welded to the interior of the steel (Figure 19).53 In three photographs 
showing the installation process (Figure 20), the turnbuckle wires are connected before 
the top piece is laid down, typically by arranging the perimeter of sides pieces on a table 
with an open hole in the center, allowing an installer to crawl up through the center to 
access the cables. The wires are connected loosely at first, to allow for the top piece to be 
slipped in carefully to keep the plastic from flexing through the choreography of art 
handlers. The installers then continue to slowly fit the pieces together while the wires are 
more firmly tightened on the inside of the box until the metal components are able to 
fully hold the plastic sheets in place, as seen in an image of the work’s composed interior 
(Figure 21). The work is then lowered to the ground for final installation, keeping tension 
on the metal side pieces in the process.  
My contemporary account of putting together Untitled (DSS 53) is consistent with 
historic descriptions as well. One of Judd’s assistants, Jaime Dearing, recalled the 
acrobatic skill of installing a “Turnbuckle.” He described the process as starting by 
setting up the metal ends and the two Plexiglas sides to attach the turnbuckle wires, 
requiring “some moment of pure balance,” then cleaning the interior one last time and 
                                               
53 The number of turnbuckle cords varied. Bernstein Brothers created some steel plates 
with four brackets and others with five brackets to attach the wires.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 49 
leaving the two, top wires slack before bending the top piece and “snapping it into 
place.”54 For Dearing as well as contemporary installers, the final step would be reaching 
into the open bottom to tighten the wires without bending the plastic.55  
The “Turnbuckle” is a strange example of an industrially fabricated object, as its 
rudimentary design is engineered to bring together two disparate materials but it is not 
finite as a closed system of mechanics. Rather, the floor box is a work composed based 
on careful touch, requiring the labor of practiced hands, keeping it at the mercy of human 
error each time it is put together as it changes upon every installation. Essentially, the 
“Turnbuckle” is never exactly the same piece twice, as opposed to other fully fabricated 
works by the artist that are not adjustable. The “Turnbuckles” could even be considered 
more ephemeral than other Judd objects as they are contingent on the circumstances, 
labor, and space for their final appearance and offer a more vulnerable side to the artist’s 
use of industrial fabrication.  
Rather than a fixed object, Judd intended the “Turnbuckle” to be a new portable 
kind of sculpture, at a time when the artist was beginning to exhibit more widely. In an 
interview, Judd described this function: “The floor boxes with plastic sides and top 
started out in a practical way. I wanted them to be portable, and shippable—a knock-
down piece. Thus they are designed to be taken apart.”56 Their flexible construction made 
them more delicate, as the Plexiglas sheets bent more easily than the steel end plates. The 
objects could also be easily manipulated in his studio and on site for an exhibition, 
                                               
54 Jaime Dearing, email to the author, May 17, 2017.  
55 Thank you to Jaime Dearing, Mette Carlsen of the Judd Foundation and Eleonora Nagy 
of the Whitney Museum for sharing their experiences in installing these objects.  
56 Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 49–50. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 50 
making them more malleable than a fabricated object that emerged fully composed from 
the workshop. Dearing remembered that the works would even arrive from Bernstein 
Brothers to Judd’s studio in pieces, for his assistants to put together.57 Judd was particular 
about all the components, including the appearance of the tension wires, but he was not 
attached to the specific hardware used. Dearing purchased turnbuckles and wires on 
Canal Street in New York as well as in other cities, if he needed to find a replacement 
while installing an exhibition.58 The “Turnbuckles” were adjustable forms that Judd 
continually returned to, as evidenced by the spare end pieces still present in Judd’s studio 
in Marfa (Figure 19). 
The “Turnbuckle” objects were also represented in Judd’s four major solo 
exhibitions in the 1960s and 1970s, which were all titled “Don Judd”: Whitney Museum, 
1968; Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands, 1970 (which traveled to Folkwang 
Museum in Essen, Germany, and Whitechapel Art Gallery in London); Pasadena Art 
Museum, 1971; and The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1975. Yet the objects were 
often mislabeled in exhibition catalogues.59 Or the works were represented by the same 
                                               
57 “I don’t remember Bernstein ever supplying hardware or putting the pieces 
together. They just delivered the metal and plexiglass panels. (Usually still with 
protective material adhered to the panels).” Dearing, email to the author, May 17, 2017. 
58 “Especially in these pieces, he cared a lot about how the wires and turnbuckles looked. 
Because they represented structural integrity—they loomed large in meaning. 
Surprisingly, he cared less about the turnbuckle placement and type. Sometimes 
turnbuckles were in the middle, sometimes non-equidistant, sometimes attached to the 
metal wall itself. There were 2 or 3 different ways of wrapping the wire ends. The wire 
varied in size and type as did the turnbuckles. Wire and turnbuckles were sometimes lost 
or damaged and needed replacement at a new venue—Europe, Briton [sic], USA, etc. 
yielding differing hardware types and color. Of course, all hardware must match within a 
single piece.” Dearing, email to the author, May 10, 2017. 
59 Color is often listed incorrectly, as seen in a 1966 catalogue that describes Untitled 
(DSS 58) as “pink” instead of Red Fluorescent. Eight Sculptors: The Ambiguous Image 
(Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1966), n.p. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 51 
two black-and-white images typically used for the whole series, such as a photograph of 
Untitled (DSS 58) (Figure 22), showing the object cropped tightly and floating on a dark 
background without color, as well as a photograph of Untitled (DSS 53) (Figure 23) from 
Judd’s 1964 exhibition at the Green Gallery.60 Although the “Turnbuckle” works were 
involved in these major shows, the photographs in the catalogues often diminished the 
specificity of their visual impact. This phenomenon perpetuated the idea that Judd’s 
works were interchangeable, even with regards to the uniquely colorful and vibrant 
Untitled (DSS 58), the first transparent “Turnbuckle.”61  
 
Turnbuckles and Transparency 
In 1965, Judd turned to transparent acrylic for the “Turnbuckles,” first using a 
Red Fluorescent Plexiglas in Untitled (DSS 58) (Figure 6). As opposed to the pebbled 
Plexiglas, the transparent sheets opened up the object’s interior, revealing the 
infrastructure of the piece. Judd described the works: “None of the plexiglass boxes have 
a bottom, so in the clear ones the floor can be seen through the box. This opens the box 
up. The whole scheme has to do with defined ends and open body; this has been a sort of 
                                               
60 For instance, an image of Untitled (DSS 58) was used in the text for the 1971 Pasadena 
Art Museum exhibition, though the work included (plate 21) was Untitled (DSS 83), 
made with Yellow Fluorescent (not “fluorescent orange” as cited). Coplans, Don Judd, 
43. The catalogue has an inserted “errata and addenda” page at the front with the many 
amendments, including color corrections. In 1973, Judd wrote that there were “64” 
mistakes in the Pasadena exhibition catalogue. Judd, “Complaints, Part III,” Arts 
Magazine (March 1973): 31. 
61 On the problems and limitations of minimal art and photography: Potts, “The 
Minimalist Objects and the Photographic Image,” in Sculpture and Photography: 
Envisioning the Third Dimension, ed. Geraldine A. Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1998), 181–196.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 52 
steady idea.”62 Like the pebbled version, the transparent object was left open to the floor, 
with three lateral sides of transparent acrylic attached by two steel ends. The first of the 
transparent acrylic “Turnbuckles,” Untitled (DSS 58) was a spectacle of synthetic color. 
Three versions of this work were made in 1965, 1968, and circa 1970, the first two with 
stainless steel ends and the last with another form of steel.63 In the objects, the Red 
Fluorescent Plexiglas created a show of delectably gaudy, syrupy, saccharine color, 
where the edge-lighting encircled the work with a glowing outline.64 As seen in three 
different photographs of the third version of Untitled (DSS 58) in a recent exhibition, the 
plastic emits a wide range of colors, from hot pink to deep, electric orange to a darker, 
more magenta hue (Figure 24), depending on the light conditions.65 The plastic sheets, 
layered together in space, send streaks of colored light along the gallery floor. The metal 
plates are merely vehicles, containing the volume of color along with the visible tension 
wires, to allow for a deep wash of chemical color, unsullied by adhesives or seams. In 
another image (Figure 6), the 1968 version glows with a rich, opulent light. The effect is 
unexpected for acrylic, a substance that does not embody life or spirituality in its 
                                               
62 Judd also stated that the pebbled Plexiglas boxes were first used to conceal the interior, 
while he refined the design. “Once I got the design of the wires better I was able to make 
the boxes of transparent plexiglass.” Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 50. 
63 The DSS catalogue raisonné documented two versions of Untitled (DSS 58), but a third 
object in the series has recently been identified by the Judd Foundation, dated circa 1970 
and using either hot or cold rolled steel, which has yet to be confirmed for the 
foundation’s current catalogue raisonné project. 
64 I observed this range of visuals as I placed contemporary sheets of Plexiglas no. 2085 
against a window and watched the color change throughout the day, with the edges 
glowing like brilliant ember at dusk, on September 26, 2017. 
65 The range of color calls to mind a quotation from Josef Albers’s 1963 Interaction of 
Color, which Judd includes in his 1993 essay “Some Aspects of Color in General and 
Red and Black in Particular”: “If one says ‘Red’ (the name of a color) / and there are 50 
people listening, / it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. / And one 
can be sure that all these reds will be very different.” Judd, Donald Judd Writings, 842.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 53 
industrial veneer. Yet in Judd’s work, the object possesses an ethereal presence, giving 
substance to light, akin to stained glass.   
The phenomenon of Untitled (DSS 58), as a modern marvel, was not lost on 
Judd’s contemporaries, who sought to describe the work’s spectacle of color and light. 
Smithson, in writing on the “pink plexiglass box” in 1965, described an artificial, 
crystalline form, built from tension, where “every surface is within full view, which 
makes the inside and outside equally important.”66 Lucy Lippard previously owned the 
1968 version of Untitled (DSS 58), buying the object after its appearance in the Whitney 
Museum exhibition with money she received from a Guggenheim Fellowship.67 She once 
described the work’s color and effects as “Mercurochrome,” referring to a popular topical 
antiseptic in the 1960s, generically known as merbromin, which came in a red solution 
that stains the skin vibrant colors when used.68 Lippard’s evocation of this medicinal, red 
                                               
66 Smithson, “Donald Judd,” 16.  
67 Lippard’s archives include a full account of her experience with the artwork. She 
purchased the work in 1968 and sold it in 1975, as she recalls: “And I bought a Don Judd. 
The year I got the Guggenheim—I got $7,000 for a Guggenheim, which seemed like an 
absolute fortune. I was making about three or four [thousand dollars] at the time…But I 
bought a Don Judd, again, for a thousand bucks or 800 or something, early on… I sold it 
when I went to Spain.” Oral history interview with Lucy Lippard, March 15, 2011, 
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. In December 14, 
1975, she wrote Judd a letter to tell him she sold the piece to finance her writing ventures, 
agreeing to send his 15% artist’s rights portion. Lippard sold the work to a collector 
through art consultant Elaine J. Johnson and gallery owner Paula Cooper. In 1994, 
Lippard wrote in a draft text for a Judd symposium: “I owned pink box for a while; 
probably liked it for all the wrong reasons. My Kid ran into it with trycicle [sic] so when 
I sold it so I could take time off to write a novel, the plexi was all replaced.” Donald 
Judd, circa 1956-1976, Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of American Art. In 1987, 
Paula Cooper sold the object to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where it currently resides.  
68 In conversation with Judd, Lippard connected Plexiglas to cadmium paint: “Because 
the pink box in a way is a kind of expansion of that whole idea of the cadmium red, isn’t 
it? Because I think light edges do the same sort of thing—merchurochrome [sic].” Donald 
Judd Interviewed by Lippard, p. 93, Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of American Art. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 54 
liquid speaks to the electric color and fluid, bodily effects of the fluorescent plastic 
sheets, as if molten color was suspended in space. In an interview, Lippard described the 
work: “It was a pink plastic box where the edges of the Plexiglas had sort of a Day-Glo 
tinge. It was a beautiful thing.”69 Before she acquired the work, Lippard also called 
attention to the “Turnbuckle” while interviewing Judd on the occasion of his 1968 
Whitney Museum exhibition, with Whitney curator William Agee interjecting:70  
Lippard:  Why were the ends on that steel? Mainly to keep it tighter? 
Or —? 
Judd:  No, because I wanted steel ends, solid ends. I could very 
well make a plain plastic box. Then it could be all glued 
together and so forth. This can’t be because the ends are too 
heavy.  
Lippard:  And then the ends were the reason for the axis thing rather 
than you planned on the wires inside? 
Judd:  No, I planned on the wires. It was, you know, thought of 
like it is. Plain plastic boxes seemed too simpleminded.  
Lippard:  Yes. You’ve never done one, have you? 
Agee:   They’re too pretty almost, some of them.  
Lippard:  Well, it would begin to look like a display item too. This 
made it sculpture.  
Agee:  The steel ends, too, seem to give it an anchor, give it more 
of a definition than an all-plastic box. 
Lippard:  Also it makes it harder to define and it does make it more 
complex the whole thing.  
Judd:   It would be too light, too.  
Agee:   All plastic would just seem to levitate.71 
The discussion addressed Judd’s choice of materials, as well as the impact of the object in 
the Whitney’s galleries at the time of the interview. Elements of the objects come forth, 
such as the balance between the physical beauty of the colored plastic and the need to 
                                               
69 Oral history interview with Lucy Lippard, Archives of American Art. 
70 In the interview, Lippard mentioned Untitled (DSS 58) on three occasions, first to ask 
if anyone owned the piece, before she acquired the object. Donald Judd Interviewed by 
Lippard, p. 82, 83, 93, 102, and 103, Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of American Art.  
71 Donald Judd Interviewed by Lippard, p. 103, Lucy R. Lippard papers, Archives of 
American Art. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 55 
emphasize that the object is sculpture (not a “display item,” a reference to consumer 
products), as well as the contrast between heavy steel and light plastic, where the 
Plexiglas would “levitate” if left alone. These descriptions offered a more thorough visual 
analysis of the object that is specific to the individual abilities of the two materials.  
This assessment of Untitled (DSS 58) continued in the photographs from the 
Whitney exhibition, despite the black-and-white photography. In one image (Figure 25), 
the “Turnbuckle” gleamed under the spotlight as a prism lit from within, casting light in 
long, angular streaks on the hard floor. Against the foreboding gallery architecture with a 
honeycombed Brutalist ceiling and dark, stone floors, the object glowed like a piece of 
discovered ore, with a halo of light that brightened the interior through the transparency 
of the side panels, with even the stainless steel ends illuminated.72 Here, as with other 
photographs from this period, the images captured the full visual content of the galleries, 
which asserted themselves as much as the artworks, particular with the juxtaposition of 
the Plexiglas against the floor.73 A different image of the same installation (Figure 26) 
dampened the effect but revealed the edge lighting on the top panel, which gleamed as if 
demarcated by a bright outline. In the photographs, Untitled (DSS 58) was constantly 
changing, revealing that the work as a “fabricated” object is hardly but static and lifeless.  
                                               
72 In 1984, Judd writes about his problems with gallery installation practices: “Almost all 
art for thirty years has been shown in white plasterboard galleries, vaguely derived from 
modern architecture…The lighting is always bad, created by spotlights so that the work 
will look precious, the saleable jewel.” Judd, “A Long Discussion Not About Master-
Pieces but Why There Are So Few Of Them: Part II,” Donald Judd Writings, 393.  
73 Thank you to Karen Lemmey for sharing her observances of these photographs. 
Dearing also mentioned the particular challenge of flooring when installing the 
“Turnbuckles” for Judd’s exhibitions, along with other environmental factors. He 
recalled: “They were tricky to get right—many issues arose regarding the needs and place 
of assembly (level floors, rugs/no rugs, lighting, orientation, stone floors, parquet floors, 
ugly floors, etc).” Dearing, email to the author, May 10, 2017. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 56 
Judd’s “Company” and Procedures  
Judd’s fabrication process was not linear. His practice did not involve one order 
or one interaction between the artist and the workshop per object. Rather his works were 
produced through a network of correspondence and an exchange of purchase orders (or 
“POs”), creating a flurry of handwritten paperwork—often prepared by his assistant 
Dudley Del Balso—that represented the many hands involved in each artwork.74 Today, 
the Judd Foundation retains stacks of these orders, which include small sketches, 
descriptions of works, or requests for individual parts.75 The orders for the “Turnbuckles” 
in particular show how frequent correspondence and a community of vendors was needed 
to make these objects. These works were often identified by a sketch of the end plate with 
holes marking the positions for the tension wires (Figure 27), accompanied by shorthand 
notations that stand for materials, such as “S/S” for stainless steel and “#2085” for Röhm 
& Haas-branded “Red Fluorescent” Plexiglas. When it came to the “Turnbuckle” objects, 
the works were not fully assembled by Bernstein Brothers, but rather Judd and his 
assistants ordered components separately. One purchase order from Judd’s studio 
                                               
74 Meyer described the “circuit of production” that drove Judd’s collaborative making. 
Meyer, “The Minimal Unconscious,” October 130 (Fall 2009): 143.  
75 Richard Bernstein, son of Bernstein Brothers proprietor Edward, discussed the process 
for the purchase orders: the document would first be stamped by a shop technician, often 
José “Joe” Otero, and then approved by Judd’s assistants, such as Dudley Del Balso. The 
order would be stamped the year and the piece number, so “89-72” would reference 1989 
and object no. 72. “Judd Foundation: Oral History Project,” September 13, 2005, p. 36, 
Judd Foundation Archives, Marfa, TX. Two events changed Judd’s organization: the 
artist joined Leo Castelli Gallery after Green Gallery closed in July 1965 and the gallery 
became involved in some of the purchase orders; and Del Balso was hired by Judd in 
April 1968 as his office manager, after working with him while assisting Agee on the 
Whitney Museum retrospective in 1968. Thereafter, she started a system of organizing 
purchase orders and archiving material. Jeffrey Kopie, “Chronology,” in Donald Judd, 
Nicholas Serota, ed. (London: Tate Publishing, 2004), 251, 254.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 57 
requests three sets of end plates, while another asks for Plexiglas sheets for two separate 
“Turnbuckles” in yellow fluorescent (#2086) and blue transparent (#2069) colors (Figure 
28), most likely destined for Untitled (DSS 83) and Untitled (DSS 190).76 These 
documents were important in tracking the sources for Judd’s objects, but the purchase 
orders were more than simply paperwork. The order forms were the bridge between Judd, 
his fabricator, his suppliers, and his gallery, as the artist and his assistants managed the 
production of his objects from the studio. His “Turnbuckles,” in particular, were not just 
ordered, processed, and delivered, but required a system to organize the movement and 
replacement of parts and pieces.  
Judd’s records include invoices from several plastics suppliers (Figure 29), for 
materials sold to Bernstein Brothers or directly to the artist. These documents show that 
Judd sourced plastic from Lower Manhattan: he purchased materials from Allied Plastics 
Supply Corporation on 75 Cliff Street (which later moved to 895 East 167th Street, 
Bronx, NY) and Commercial Plastics & Supply Corporation on 630 Broadway. He also 
worked with companies in Long Island City: he ordered supplies from DBL Plastics Inc. 
on 43-38 36th Street and Cadillac Plastics Company on 14-51 Broadway.77 These 
companies sold acrylic sheets broadly, which included Plexiglas and Acrylite products, as 
                                               
76 For instance, there are two purchase orders signed by Del Balso, dated July 10, 1969, 
ordering two sets of Plexiglas sheets for two Turnbuckles in yellow fluorescent (#2086) 
and blue transparent (#2069) colors respectively: four sheets measuring 19 ¾ by 48 
inches and two sheets measuring 34 x 48 inches. The same day, another purchase order 
(#69-6) requested three sets (six total) of stainless steel (“S/S”) end plates measuring 20 
by 34 inches to be sent directly to Castelli Gallery. Donald Judd, Business, 1969–1977, 
Leo Castelli Gallery records, circa 1880–2000, bulk 1957–1999, Archives of American 
Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.  
77 DDB Fabrication and Material Files, Box 2, Folder 4, Judd Foundation Archives. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 58 
enumerated by a written list prepared by Del Balso and amended by Judd with product 
numbers and colors for the two brands (Figure 30). 78 
Röhm & Haas’s Plexiglas colors are identifiable as four digit numbers, while 
Acrylite, produced by American Cyanamid Company, uses three digits, a dash, and then 
a final number. For Plexiglas, Judd purchased nos. 2085 (Red Fluorescent), 2086 (Yellow 
Fluorescent), and 2069 (Blue Transparent) for his works. For Acrylite, Judd bought nos. 
539-6 (Green), 420-4 (Amber), and 625-5 (Blue) sheets for his objects.79 While certain 
colors are checked in pencil by Judd, it is unclear whether he had a preference between 
the two acrylic brands, though Dearing recalled that the artist’s choices were based on the 
“color, sheen, density, and thickness” of the different types of acrylic.80 Whatever the 
reason, the document reveals the meticulous organization of Judd’s studio to differentiate 
between the qualities of color offered by two American suppliers, as part of a 
concentrated effort to get to know the plastic substance. Together, the purchase orders 
from Judd’s studio and the checklist of acrylics show what was involved with Judd’s 
process of fabrication: research on and collaborative working with several different 
industries to manage the circulation of materials.  
This paperwork also reveals that components for the artist’s works were 
occasionally replaced, particularly when the materials were damaged or mishandled. As 
                                               
78 DDB Fabrication and Material Files, Box 2, Folder 4, Judd Foundation Archives. 
79 The Plexiglas and Acrylite colors all appear in purchase orders in Castelli’s records: 
Donald Judd, Business, 1969–1977, Leo Castelli Gallery records, Archives of American 
Art. Conservator Eleonora Nagy warned that Judd’s colors for Plexiglas are not 
consistent with contemporary product numbers as the chemical compositions have 
changed. “Judd Foundation: Oral History Project,” p. 47, Judd Foundation Archives. 
80 On Judd’s preference for acrylic brands, Dearing remarked: “Don cared more about the 
color, sheen, density, and thickness than about the brand, price, scratch resistance, or 
availability.” Dearing, email to the author, May 10, 2017. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 59 
such, Judd preferred that familiar hands handled his objects when possible, as 
correspondence over the artist’s 1971 exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum shows that 
he insisted the museum pay for Dearing and a representative from Bernstein to oversee 
installation.81 Over time, Judd became more inflexible about repairs, as he struggled to 
maintain the integrity of his works after repeated damage in exhibitions.82 He drafted a 
letter in 1969 about the burden of fixing objects, which had created onerous busywork for 
him, his studio, and his dealer, Leo Castelli, to manage insurance claims and repairs.83 
Even today, the question arises as to whether components of the artist’s objects may be 
simply replaced, with conservators insisting on maintaining the original marks and 
technologies of his fabricators whenever possible, as representatives of a historic moment 
in object making.84 In essence, due to Judd’s unusual use of temperamental industrial 
materials, the activity around an object persisted long after its production, as the artist 
struggled to keep the integrity of his surfaces.  
                                               
81 Donald Judd exhibition, May 11 to July 4, 1971, Pasadena Art Museum Archives, 
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California.  
82 Judd enumerated the damage done by shipping companies and institutions in a 1973 
essay: Judd, “Complaints, Part III,” 31.  
83 In the letter, dated December 18, 1969, Judd wrote: “Due to the tremendous amount of 
time I have spent on insurance claims I am only willing to lend my works of art to 
institutions who will be directly liable for any damages incurred during the exhibition or 
in transportation.” Donald Judd, 1965–1973, Box 12, Folder 58, Leo Castelli Gallery 
records, Archives of American Art. 
84 In 1968, Lippard asked Judd what a collector should do if the Plexiglas in an object 
“gets scratched up badly,” and Judd responds: “Throw it away and get a new 
set…Replace the Plexiglas.” Donald Judd Interviewed by Lippard, p. 127, Lucy R. 
Lippard papers, Archives of American Art. Today, conservators state that Judd’s 
components should not simply be replaced with contemporary parts, but should be 
retained when possible to maintain the original technologies of his fabricators, as 
documents of a moment in object making. On this issue: Eleonora E. Nagy, Bettina 
Landgrebe, and Shelley M. Smith, “Treatment of Donald Judd’s Untitled 1977: Retention 
of the original acrylic sheets,” Objects Specialty Group Postprints 18 (2011): 113–125. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 60 
Tunnels after Turnbuckles, In Conclusion 
In this chapter, I have looked closely at the “Turnbuckle” as an object that 
brought two incongruous industrial materials together in visual and mechanical balance, 
driven primarily by the parameters of Plexiglas. I conclude by looking at what came next: 
another series of floor pieces made with Plexiglas and steel that Judd began developing in 
1968. This group of objects started with Untitled (DSS 128) (Figure 7), constructed with 
amber-colored Plexiglas and stainless steel, which was followed by five related works 
made between 1968 and 1969.85 Designed with Plexiglas sheets wrapped around a steel 
core, the work represented Judd’s next step in finding a way to bring plastic and metal 
together as structural and visual partners.  
The object is constructed with three lateral sides of Plexiglas, open to the floor, 
which surrounds a steel core that tunnels through the structure. These “tunnel” objects are 
very different than the “Turnbuckles.” They are larger—Untitled (DSS 128) is 33 inches 
high and more than five-and-a-half feet long—and rely on exterior hardware rather than 
tension wires for the construction. The fabricated metal core includes picture frame steel 
plates on either end, connected by the narrow, rectangular tunnel that runs horizontally 
through the object. Instead of using tension, the Plexiglas sheets are attached to one 
another using stainless steel pins along the lateral, top edges, and connect to the metal 
core with stainless steel screws at each corner. The hardware is fully visible and hard to 
ignore, as the pins and screws protrude from the sleek edges of the plastic. The Plexiglas 
                                               
85 The full series of the Untitled “tunnel” works: DSS 128, Amber, 1968; DSS 134, 
Green, 1968; DSS 144, Blue, 1968; DSS 145, Yellow, 1968; DSS 155, Red Fluorescent, 
1968; and DSS 158, Yellow Fluorescent, 1969. A similar work, dated 1973 in the 
collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, uses the same structure but with 
brass instead of stainless steel.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 61 
is used more as decoration than as structure in these works. As I have already shown, the 
“Turnbuckles” were temperamental and challenging objects to handle. The “tunnels” are 
the steady, second act, designed to avoid the complications of the “Turnbuckle” structure.  
The “tunnel” objects were also developed as fully fabricated works, as an undated 
document from Bernstein Brothers described the process of making them at length.86 
Bernstein Brothers had more control over the production of these sculptures, perhaps due 
to their growing comfort working with Plexiglas. The “tunnels” and the “Turnbuckles” 
are similar in their design as solitary, floor-bound objects and in their emphasis on color 
with large, unadulterated swathes of plastic. However, in Untitled (DSS 128), the steel 
core interrupts the plastic, where the Plexiglas is visually and physically subservient to 
the metal structure.87 Though the later works were not collapsible like the “Turnbuckles,” 
the plastic is similarly stored in pieces (Figure 31) to prevent the massive sheets of 
Plexiglas from sagging under their own weight.88 When seen separately, the bare plastic 
used for Untitled (DSS 128), for instance, is bright, vibrant, and uniform. However, when 
the larger works are assembled, the acrylic is muted in juxtaposition with its metal 
counterpart, a compromise for the sake of a more intact, fabricated form. 
The “tunnels” were primarily collected by museums, as they appeared at a crucial 
point in Judd’s career. Untitled (DSS 128) was made in anticipation of the 1968 solo 
exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which acquired the work that year. Two works made 
                                               
86 According to the document, after the steel core is welded and “electropolished,” the 
plastic is slid into welded brackets and attached using stainless-steel screws and pins. 
Donald Judd, 1965–1973, Leo Castelli Gallery records, Archives of American Art.  
87 One review of the Whitney Museum exhibition in 1968 described the object as “a 
silver coffin imbedded in a warm, wet volume of honey.” Baker, “Judd the Obscure,” 45. 
88 Thank you to Eleonora Nagy for sharing her thorough guidelines for storing and 
installing Untitled (DSS 128) at the Whitney Museum.  
Chapter One — Donald Judd 62 
in 1969, Untitled (DSS 144) in blue Plexiglas and Untitled (DSS 145) in yellow Plexiglas, 
were acquired by the Walker Art Center and the Art Institute of Chicago, respectively, 
situating these objects as representatives of Judd’s legacy. In contrast, the “Turnbuckles” 
were acquired by private collectors, with only one in a public institution today.89 As such, 
these objects have long been overlooked, particularly as they relate to the “tunnel” works.  
In discussing these sets of objects together, I offer two important sides of Judd’s 
artistic practice. In the “Turnbuckles,” the artist privileged the experimental and 
idiosyncratic aspects of Plexiglas for delicate, temperamental boxes built through tension. 
For the “tunnels,” Judd emphasized the strength of the structure, using exterior hardware 
and relegating Plexiglas to the role of visual embellishment rather than the primary 
building block. Together, the floor boxes present Judd’s varying approaches to 
fabrication. The objects Judd designed were never fixed, especially as he worked out the 
engineering details, and the artist would often be challenged by the integration of varying 
materials, such as Plexiglas. Even as he lamented the plastic’s pitfalls—as “slippery and 
slightly disagreeable”—Judd continued to seek out the synthetic substance, creating 
objects by adapting traditional fabrication methods to his designs.90 The “Turnbuckles,” 
in particular, shed a light on how Judd worked with Bernstein Brothers, his gallery, his 
suppliers, and his assistants on these objects, as they collectively took part in his 
circulation of materials and contributed to the artist’s complex process. 
 
*** 
                                               
89 Untitled (DSS 58), 1968, is at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Another work, Untitled 
(DSS 234), 1970, is a promised gift to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  
90 Coplans, “Interview with Don Judd,” 50. 
Chapter One — Donald Judd 63 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 
 
“…if you use reinforced fiberglass clear and thin the light is there by its nature and the 
light does beautiful things to it. It is there as part of its anatomy.”  
        —Eva Hesse, 19701  
 
 
On November 15, 1968, Eva Hesse opened her first solo sculpture exhibition—
entitled Chain Polymers—at the Fischbach Gallery on 57th Street in New York. The show 
marked her debut in the city and signaled her working relationship with Fischbach 
Gallery, at a time when she was also included in several major group exhibitions.2 At the 
center of Chain Polymers were four sculptures in Fiberglas installed in the main space of 
the gallery: Repetition Nineteen III, Accretion, Accession III, and Sans II (Figures 32–
34). Repetition Nineteen III, Accretion, and Sans II were composed of multiple cast 
parts—cylinders, tubes, and boxes—displayed either with irregular spacing or in grid 
form. The works established contact with different spaces in the gallery, with Repetition 
Nineteen III (Figure 32) arranged sporadically on the floor in 19 units, Accretion (Figure 
34) propped against the wall in 50 components, and Sans II (Figure 33) covering 35 feet 
of the 39-foot gallery wall, hung in a long horizontal strip.3 Accession III (Figure 32) was 
                                               
1 Cindy Nemser, “Eva Hesse,” in Conversations with 15 Women Artists (New York: 
HarperCollins, 1995), 188. This interview was first published in the May 1970 issue of 
Artforum. The 1995 version represents the full, edited transcript, though the text differs in 
part from the initial draft, which reads:  “…if you use [Fiberglas] clear, you use it thin, 
well light does beautiful things to it…It is part of the anatomy structure…” Typescript of 
Interviews, Eva Hesse papers, 1914–1970, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian 
Institution, Washington, DC. 
2 In addition to opening Chain Polymers, Hesse was included in major group shows in 
1968: Anti-Form at John Gibson Gallery in October through November; and 9 at Leo 
Castelli curated by Robert Morris at Castelli’s 108th Street warehouse in December, 
where she was the only woman artist represented. Elisabeth Sussman, “Eva Hesse: 
Sculpture 1968”, in Eva Hesse: Sculpture, eds. Elisabeth Sussman and Fred Wasserman 
(New York: The Jewish Museum, 2006), 9.  
3 Bill Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture (New York: Timken Publishers, Inc., 1989), 184. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 64 
the monumental anchor of the exhibition. The thickly cast and open Fiberglas cube was 
covered from edge to edge with 28,000 hand-drilled holes filled with clear vinyl tubing 
facing inward.  Like a sea anemone, the work filled a minimal structure with a lush 
interior of plastic. Constructed with unpainted, raw Fiberglas, the objects were delicate, 
almost vaporous, and iridescent under the gallery lights, blending and receding into the 
space’s pale tiled floors and bare white walls. 
These four sculptures—Repetition Nineteen III, Accretion, Accession III, and  
Sans II—represented the artist’s first collaboration with fabricator Doug Johns at Aegis 
Reinforced Plastics in New York. Working with Johns at Aegis was especially important 
to the history of Hesse’s work, beginning with the Chain Polymers exhibition, though her 
work with outside workshops is often relegated to a footnote.4 Johns at Aegis crafted the 
four Fiberglas artworks to be the focus of her exhibition, making pieces that strayed from 
the gloss and polish of Fiberglas commercial objects by relying on the imperfections of 
the unfinished, rough material—filled with air bubbles, rough ridges, and uneven 
textures—to create the wide range of visual effects.  
The scholarship on Hesse has long overlooked the specific role of Fiberglas in the 
artist’s practice. Instead, the literature on Hesse has emphasized the artist’s hand in her 
work, treating her materials as extensions of her body. This chapter recovers Hesse’s 
working relationship with Johns and Aegis Reinforced Plastics. I look closely at the 
technical construction of the first four Fiberglas works to underscore the significant role 
of fabrication in the production of her objects, in order to challenge gendered narratives 
                                               
4 For instance: Anne Wagner, “Another Hesse,” in Three Artists (Three Women): 
Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner and O’Keeffe (Berkeley: University of 
California Press, 1996), 323 n.130.        
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 65 
that have privileged male artists engaging with industrial partners in the 1960s. In the 
text, I do not address Hesse’s intention or her specific, personal presence in the works. 
Rather, I consider the artist’s objects as “acts of negotiation” as Hesse learned to adapt 
her process to the plastic, the results of which were presented at the 1968 Fischbach 
Gallery exhibition.5  
This approach allows for an expanded understanding of “fabrication,” a term that 
references the process through which artworks were made for artists by industrial 
workshops. Just as Judd’s involvement with the construction and processing of his 
objects was varied and complex, as seen in the previous chapter, Hesse’s engagement 
with Aegis evolved to become more and more collaborative, and her presence in the 
process fluctuated depending on the artwork. In short, both Judd and Hesse offer 
examples of how fluid and flexible the relationships between artists and fabricators were 
in this period, and how they shifted depending on the material used and the requirements 
of the artist.  
In recovering this history of Hesse’s work with Aegis and Johns, I hope to inform 
future interpretations of the artist’s objects with regards to the varying role of labor in her 
objects. My research in this area also comes with some urgency, as today Hesse’s 
Fiberglas sculptures are no longer luminous and pearly white, but brittle and yellowing. 
Museums exhibiting these works can only guard and protect the objects as they degrade.6 
                                               
5 I adapt this phrase from Wagner, who discussed Hesse’s speech and diaries as “acts of 
representation” rather than confessional texts. Wagner, “Another Hesse,” 203. 
6 In anticipation of the artist’s retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of 
Modern Art in 2002, the museum hosted a roundtable in 2000 in New York to discuss 
conservation issues concerning Hesse’s sculptures and whether the artist’s aging work 
should be reenacted. Chad Coerver, ed., “Uncertain Mandate: A Roundtable Discussion 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 66 
The aging of Hesse’s Fiberglas works was recently illustrated when Johns, her fabricator, 
recreated a section of Sans II (Figure 35), on the occasion of the artist’s retrospective at 
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2002. Hung besides Hesse’s aging Sans II, 
the contemporary copy revealed the plastic’s original brightness, sheen, and pearly white 
color, which filled the Fischbach Gallery exhibition in 1968. Sadly, the works are now 
known more widely in the deteriorated state, while their initial, glowing transparency is 
largely forgotten. 
In this chapter, I reclaim the surfaces of these sculptures to offer a better 
understanding of why Hesse was drawn to Fiberglas and what impact the works had 
when they were shown in 1968. In a 1970 interview with Cindy Nemser, Hesse remarked 
on the optical effects of raw Fiberglas: “Color is whatever comes out of the material and 
keeps it what it is. The light—I’m not too concerned with it, because if you use 
reinforced fiberglass clear and thin the light is there by its nature and the light does 
beautiful things to it. It is there as part of its anatomy.”7 Hesse was interested in 
exploiting the natural and visual abilities of the plastic by choosing to work with the 
material in a way that was unexpected, and even outside of the artist’s control. She 
struggled to adapt to Fiberglas. In turn, she created a model of working with the plastic 
that relied on collaboration and experimentation with Aegis Reinforced Plastics and the 
use of handmade molds in the fabrication process to bring uncertainty to the finished 
                                               
on Conservation Issues,” in Eva Hesse, ed. Elisabeth Sussman (San Francisco: San 
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 291–311.  
7 Nemser, “Eva Hesse,” 188. While “fiberglass” is used in some texts as a generic name 
for the material, in this chapter I use the term “Fiberglas” exclusively, as it references the 
proper brand for the material first developed by Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 67 
product. Her explorations of Fiberglas and its potential would come to inform the rest of 
her career, until her untimely death in 1970.  
The following text first considers the previous literature on Hesse that has focused 
on the hand of the artist in her practice. As a result, the different ways she worked with 
her materials have been overlooked in discussions of her sculptures, while her use of 
fabricators has been disregarded as a mere detail in her process. The next section 
addresses the history of Fiberglas and Hesse’s own research into plastics through classes 
offered by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), found in the organization’s 
archival records. The chapter then looks at the details of Hesse’s turn to Fiberglas, her 
work with Johns, and the history of Aegis Reinforced Plastics. The final sections outline 
the individual production of the four Fiberglas works shown in 1968—Repetition 
Nineteen III, Accession III, Accretion, and Sans II—building from a recent interview I 
conducted with Johns as well as Hesse’s and the Fischbach Gallery’s archival papers and 
my personal encounters with the artworks. The chapter ends with Hesse’s final piece, 
Seven Poles, which was made for Fiberglas producer Owens-Corning Fiberglas 
Corporation and offers a way to contextualize Hesse’s experiments with and the 
trajectory of her innovation in plastics.  
  
On Hesse Scholarship 
In considering the works in Hesse’s Fischbach exhibition as fabricated plastic 
objects, I depart from much of the previous scholarship on the artist. Discussions of 
Hesse’s process have long been wrapped up in identifying the impressions of her hand 
and the trace of her body, as it relates to the tragedy of her tumultuous life and early 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 68 
death from a brain tumor.8 This mythology has created what James Meyer calls a “virtual 
cottage industry” of writings based on analyzing how Hesse the woman relates to Hesse 
the artist.9 These texts often use her diaries as ciphers, claiming that they hold secrets of 
the artist and her work.10 Even scholars who argue against a biographical approach to the 
artist are pressed to address Hesse’s personal life.11 As a result, her story has been 
repeatedly documented, from her childhood in Hamburg, cut short in 1938 when she fled 
the Nazis with her family at age two, to her turbulent transition to New York, which led 
to her parents’ divorce and to her mother’s suicide, and finally to her brief marriage to 
artist Tom Doyle.12 Her story culminated with her nearly two-year struggle with a brain 
tumor that ended her life on May 29, 1970. I refer to, rather than belabor, these 
                                               
8 This attention to the myth of Hesse began soon after her death, particularly when 
Artforum published her last diaries in November 1972 on the occasion of a major 
exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. Robert Pincus-Witten, “Eva Hesse: Last Words,” 
Artforum 11, no. 3 (November 1972): 74–76.  
9 James Meyer, “Non, Nothing, Everything: Hesse’s ‘Abstraction,’” in Eva Hesse, ed. 
Elisabeth Sussman (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 62. 
10 Among the other texts that sustained the myth of Hesse soon after her death: Lucy 
Lippard, “Eva Hesse: The Circle,” Art in America 59, no. 3 (May 1971): 68–73; Pincus-
Witten, “Eva Hesse: Post-Minimalism into Sublime,” Artforum 10 (November 1971): 32–
44; and Nemser, “My Memories of Eva Hesse,” Feminist Art Journal 2, no. 1 (Winter 
1973): 12–13.  
11 Wagner, for instance, argued for a more complex approach to Hesse’s work, but in the 
process laboriously dictated the explicit details of the artist’s life. Wagner, “Another 
Hesse,” 191–282. Even Lippard, who rallied against an emphasis on Hesse’s biography 
over her work in her seminal on the artist, discussed the artist’s work as an extension of 
her body. She wrote: “Because of Hesse’s total absorption of herself in her work, one 
reads the work as one reads the person, not in a gossipy or personally associative so much 
as in an archetypal manner; in that sense this interpretation could be arrived at by 
someone who did not know the artist at all.” Lippard, Eva Hesse (New York: New York 
University Press, 1976), 17. 
12 For a history of Hesse’s youth: Fred Wasserman, “Building a Childhood Memory: The 
Diaries of Eva Hesse’s Early Years,” in Eva Hesse: Sculpture, eds. Elisabeth Sussman 
and Fred Wasserman (New York: The Jewish Museum, 2006), 96–131. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 69 
biographical touchstones to address how, Hesse, the woman, is often at the center of 
discussions of her work, overshadowing the role of fabrication in her practice.13  
Hesse’s turn to Fiberglas grew out of her ongoing interest in industrial materials.14 
She was part of a community of artists in New York in the 1960s and 1970s who found 
promise in unlikely substances, new technologies, and collaborative methods of working. 
Her involvement with other artists of her generation were fruitful, particularly in her 
approach to seriality and materials, though she was later deemed a “Post-Minimalist” or 
“Anti-Form” artist, limiting discussions of her work.15 For instance, like many of the 
figures associated with minimal art, Hesse sourced items from the hardware stores on 
                                               
13 Anna Chave argued for an attention to Hesse’s biography, claiming it is integral to her 
work and to understanding the gendered environment that informed the artist: “…she 
made her art out of her illness, which substantially defined her identity as a woman and 
(to a lesser degree) as a Jew, as one of the disempowered and despised.” Anna Chave, “A 
‘Girl Being a Sculpture,’” in Eva Hesse: A Retrospective, ed. Helen A. Cooper (New 
Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), 112. Unsurprisingly, Chave and Wagner have 
situated themselves on opposing sides of the scholarship on Hesse. See Wagner’s 
response to Chave: Wagner, “Another Hesse,” October 69 (Summer 1994): 49–84. And 
Chave’s rebuttal to Wagner: Chave, “Response to ‘Another Hesse,’” October 71 (Winter 
1995): 146–148.  
14 Arguably, Hesse’s interest in industrial materials began in 1964 when the artist was 
invited, with then-husband Tom Doyle, for a residency in Germany. The artists were 
hosted by German industrialist and collector Arnhard Schiedt to work in his empty 
factory building in Kettwig-am-Ruhr for a year in exchange for artworks. Hesse was 
immediately drawn to the industrial setting and soon began picking up scraps of wire, 
rope, and other objects left by the workers. In these initial experiments with such 
materials, she made reliefs and small sculptures by mixing the leftover machinery with 
plaster. Hesse later called the arrangement “an unusual kind of ‘Renaissance patronage.” 
Nemser, “Eva Hesse,” 178. 
15 Pincus-Witten, who coined “Postminimalism,” clustered artists such as Hesse, Richard 
Serra, Lynda Benglis, and Keith Sonnier who could be identified by “the eccentricity of 
the substances they used.” Pincus-Witten, Postminimalism (New York: Out of London 
Press, 1977), 16, 18. In April 1968, Robert Morris wrote “Anti Form,” an essay that 
identified a shift for artists towards substances that spawned “investigations [that] move 
from the making of things to the making of material itself.” Morris, “Anti Form,” 
Artforum 6, no. 8 (April 1968): 35.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 70 
Canal Street near her studio and worked with, or at least considered, several 
manufacturers and suppliers, as evidenced by the stacks of business cards in her records 
(Figure 36).16 However, despite her interest in engaging industrial culture, Hesse was 
later set apart from artists who turned to similar sources to produce their sculptures. 
Artists such as Judd and Robert Smithson were defined by their industrial links, as both 
men were even captured in a 1967 Arts Magazine article in strong, fraternal poses with 
their fabricators (Figure 37).17 Despite her relationships with some of the same 
fabricators, particularly Arko Metals in New York, a shop used by Smithson, no such 
photographic documentation exists for Hesse, rendering that labor mostly invisible in the 
literature on her work.18 The closest equivalent to the Arts Magazine story is a 1970 
article in Life that included Hesse among other artists using industrial materials, such as 
“ladles and buckets, goggles and gas masks.”19 However, instead of showing her in a 
confident pose with her fabricators, Hesse’s portrait in the article depicted her peeking 
out from behind an unfinished latex sculpture (Figure 38), as if engulfed by her piece. 
                                               
16 Eva Hesse papers, 1914–1970, Archives of American Art. For instance, Hesse is often 
discussed as responding to Sol LeWitt, her close friend and colleague, and his serial 
approach to sculpture, as evidenced by the recent text: Veronica Roberts, ed., Converging 
Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt (Austin, TX: Blanton Museum of Art, 2014). Building 
from his consideration of Minimalism as a series of practices rather than a movement, 
Meyer argued for Hesse’s influence on the artists making minimal art and vice versa. 
Meyer, “Non, Nothing, Everything,” 70. 
17 John Perreault, “A Minimal Future? Union-Made: Report on a Phenomenon,” Arts 
Magazine 41, no. 5 (March 1967): 26–31.  
18 Smithson even recalled the importance of Arko Metals in her practice: “She went to the 
same fabricator that I did, Arko Metals…I had a lot of pieces made there, and the Arko 
guy used to talk about her all the time.” Lippard, “Out of the Past,” Artforum 46, no. 6 
(February 2008): 241.  
19 “Fling, Dribble and Drip: Young Sculptors Pour Their Art all over the Floor.” Life 68, 
no. 7 (February 27, 1970): 62–66. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 71 
Despite the lack of photographic evidence, Hesse did engage industrial workshops, 
especially when she decided to bring Fiberglas into her practice.   
Hesse’s sculptures using Fiberglas have long been misunderstood as handcrafted 
by the artist rather than fabricated. Marcia Tucker wrote in 1969, in the catalogue for the 
exhibition “Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials” at the Whitney Museum of American 
Art in New York: “…because [Hesse] is concerned with creating personal forms, she 
must use only materials that she can make herself.”20 Despite Tucker’s claim, Johns, not 
Hesse, fabricated the artist’s sculpture in the show: Expanded Expansion from 1969, 
constructed of rubberized cheesecloth hanging off reinforced Fiberglas poles.21 Then, in 
1971, not long after the artist’s death, Robert Pincus-Witten also described her use of 
Fiberglas as allowing for “the mark of the hand.”22 These accounts obscured the physical 
role of the plastic in Hesse’s process and the different demands of the synthetic material 
on her practice.  
Fiberglas, for instance, behaved very differently than latex, another material 
important to Hesse that has drawn connections to the artist’s hand and body in its 
evocation of flesh. Two opposing sides of her practice, latex involved painstaking craft 
                                               
20 Marcia Tucker continued: “The plastic, fiberglass, rubberized cheesecloth and gauze 
from which her pieces are modeled are neither cast nor moulded. They are made by 
putting the raw material on the floor and shaping it, adding layers until the proper 
substance is attained.” This description fails to address the variant processes for the 
different materials in Hesse’s practice and the role of fabrication. Marcia Tucker and 
James Monte, Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials (New York: Whitney Museum of 
American Art, 1969), 30.  
21 Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 212. 
22 Pincus-Witten, “Hesse: Post-Minimalism,” 42.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 72 
from the artist while Fiberglas required the expertise of an outside fabricator.23 This 
important distinction between Fiberglas and latex has been lost in discussions on Hesse’s 
process, in part because the aging plastic works now match the fleshy tones of the latex 
objects, leading both materials to be read as relating to the artist’s body.24  
The Fischbach Gallery show not only highlighted her sculptures in Fiberglas but 
also included four sculptures in latex in a smaller, adjacent room: Schema, Sequel, 
Stratum, and Sans I (Figure 39).25 The juxtaposition of the two materials in the exhibition 
showed their equally important but distinct roles in her practice. Fiberglas and latex also 
appeared in Hesse’s objects around the same time: she began working with latex in the 
fall of 1967 and Fiberglas in 1968.26 Even the title of her exhibition, Chain Polymers, 
called on the chemical composition of both Fiberglas and latex as polymers made of up 
large molecules repeating and linked together in a long chain.27 Beyond the chemical 
makeup of Hesse’s objects at Fischbach, the sculptures themselves acted as oversized 
representation of polymers, with Sans II and Accretion in particular collecting in long, 
flexible chains along the gallery wall. However, Hesse’s show demonstrated the 
                                               
23 Conservator Martin Langer discussed Hesse’s laborious process of making the latex 
works, which required building up many layers by hand. Coerver, ed., “Uncertain 
Mandate,” 295–296.  
24 For Chave, the bodies or body parts that Hesse’s works evoke read of pain, flayed 
skins, and dismemberment. I attribute much of this reading and conflation of the works in 
Fiberglas and latex to Chave’s experience of the sculptures after a period of aging and 
yellowing, as she writes in the early 1990s. I doubt she would have attached such 
imagery to the Fiberglas sculptures in their original, iridescent condition. Chave, “A ‘Girl 
Being a Sculpture,’” 101–103.  
25 The side gallery also included drawings and test pieces displayed in glass and metal 
pastry cases. Lippard, Eva Hesse, 98.  
26 Sussman, “Letting It Go as It Will: The Art of Eva Hesse,” in Eva Hesse, ed. Elisabeth 
Sussman (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 28. 
27 See the Introduction, page 4, footnote 11.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 73 
differences between the hard, pearly, translucent Fiberglas works in the main space 
(Figure 32), and the soft, honey-colored latex sculptures in the adjacent room (Figure 39).  
While the scholarship on Hesse has long conflated the latex and Fiberglas works, 
critics reviewing the Fischbach Gallery show actually addressed the unique visual 
spectacle of the plastic objects. These reviewers called out Fiberglas as a distinctive 
presence in the exhibition and Hesse’s work as new and groundbreaking, even when they 
betrayed their uneasiness with the synthetic substance. John Perreault discussed Hesse’s 
plastic works as “displaying an ‘accidental’ variety of subtle colors and translucencies” 
from the raw materials: “It’s the kind of show that makes one nervous: all that unfinished 
fiberglass, all that mush.”28 More positively, Anita Feldman wrote that “Hesse’s concerns 
seem to revolve around what objects and materials do—to light, to space, to themselves, 
and to each other,” describing Repetition Nineteen III as cylinders made of “delicately 
gritty, translucent material.”29 James Mellow described Repetition Nineteen III as “knee-
high vase forms in translucent fiberglass,” adding that “the manner in which the forms 
filled up with light created an additional distinction.”30 Throughout these reviews, critics 
commented on the odd visual display of Hesse’s plastic objects as distinct from the latex 
works. Emily Wasserman’s most explicitly paid attention to the material’s details. She 
discussed Accretion, for instance, as the “the not-quite-transparent tubes, in a range of 
shadowy tints (barely grey, pink, or blueish),” Sans II as possessing “light-catching 
lumpiness,” and Accession III and its plastic tubing as having “a rippling, even silky 
look,” “a faint purple cast to it,” and “a dappling surface which catches and reflects light 
                                               
28 Perreault, “The Materiality of Matter,” The Village Voice (November 28, 1968): 19.  
29 Anita Feldman, “Reviews: Eva Hesse,” Arts Magazine 43, no. 2 (November 1968): 58.  
30 James Mellow, “New York Letter,” Art International 13 (January 1969): 53–54.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 74 
like some kind of synthetic fur—made from the skin of a plastic anemone!”31 
Remarkable in these accounts is the attention to the Fiberglas objects as iridescent, almost 
kaleidoscopic structures with ever-changing surfaces. The reviews addressed Hesse’s 
materials in a manner lost in later scholarship. Like chameleons, the raw, unpainted 
Fiberglas objects reacted to light and space, unsettling the critics’ assumptions of what 
plastic objects could be.  
 
Fiberglas and Hesse’s Plastics Research  
Fiberglas was still a relatively new product when Hesse began working with 
Aegis Reinforced Plastics. The producer of the material, Owens-Corning Fiberglas 
Corporation, was founded as a joint venture between Corning Glass Works and Owens-
Illinois Glass Company in 1938. Prior to their merging, both companies had been 
experimenting with producing glass fibers: Corning Glass was developing new forms of 
insulation and Owens-Illinois was working on air filters and architectural bricks made 
from glass.32 They joined forces to produce glass textiles, initially used for electrical 
equipment.33 Fiberglas was finally discovered after a laboratory accident in the early 
1940s, when a technician spilled polyester resin on the glass cloth.34 When the mixture 
dried overnight, it produced a much stronger substance with exponentially greater 
                                               
31 Emily Wasserman, “New York,” Artforum 7, no. 5 (January 1969): 60.  
32 Michael Lamm, “The Fiberglass Story,” American Heritage of Invention & Technology 
22, no. 4 (Spring 2007), accessed June 1, 2018, 
http://www.inventionandtech.com/content/fiberglass-story-0. 
33 Samuel S. Oleesky and J. Gilbert Mohr, Handbook of Reinforced Plastics of The 
Society of The Plastics Industry, Inc. (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 
1964), 119.  
34 Ibid. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 75 
capabilities. Subsequently, polyester resin became the key component of Fiberglas, 
turning the glass material into a plastic product.  
The plastic is first made by splitting molten glass into thin filaments and weaving 
them together to produce different kinds of textiles, including woven cloth and twisted 
rope. The glass fabric is then dipped in or brushed with liquid polyester resin as 
reinforcement and cured until rigid. The resulting “alloy” is stronger than its parts and 
unified in appearance, since the fibers disappear into the resin.35 The plastic is desirable 
for its resistance to acids, alkalis, moisture, and mold, as well as the fact that it does not 
decay, burn, shrink, or expand. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation continued to 
develop the material, particularly different glass textiles such as chopped strand mat, the 
foundation for all of Hesse’s Fiberglas sculptures.36 Introduced in 1947, the chopped 
strand mat fabric (Figure 40) is created by laying fibers on top of one another in a random 
arrangement, making the material strong in all directions and able to conform to 
compound curves and complex shapes.37 
By the 1960s, Fiberglas was easily adaptable for artists, as the glass cloth could be 
placed in a mold and then brushed with resin to create solid yet lightweight surfaces, akin 
to papier-mâché in process but with a plastic finish. However, working in Fiberglas 
typically required the use of fabricators who had been trained by the industry, knew the 
                                               
35 The glass fibers disappear into the resin because the refraction of light is similar for 
both materials. As the resin ages, the “relationship becomes muddied,” accounting for the 
yellowing color in the works today, according to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 
conservator Michelle Barger. Michelle Barger, interview by the author, March 30, 2016, 
San Francisco, CA. I would like to thank Michelle Barger for sharing with me her 
important and singular research on Hesse and her materials.  
36 Johns, interview by the author, 2016.   
37 Oleesky and Mohr, Handbook of Reinforced Plastics, 119.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 76 
chemistry, and could contain the toxic material in their workshops. Still, Fiberglas did not 
require a particular environment, so Hesse’s works could be produced in any space, first 
at Aegis Reinforced Plastics and later in her studio, under the direction of Doug Johns. 
Today, the applications for Fiberglas are wide, from commercial furniture and recreation 
equipment to pipes and large-scale infrastructure, yet the standard process for molding 
the material is unchanged. Unlike other plastics that rely exclusively on industrial 
molding and extruding, Fiberglas still often insists on craft, where even manufactured 
products require a specialized hand to apply the layer of resin to the glass textile.  
While artists in the 1960s were primarily turning to fabricators to make their 
Fiberglas objects, Hesse’s interest in plastics did not begin with Aegis. Her notebooks 
include lists of plastics suppliers and notes from reading texts such as Modern Plastics 
Encyclopedia.38 She also conducted her own research through classes offered by 
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). Founded in 1966 by Billy Klüver, 
Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman, and Fred Waldhauer, E.A.T. organized lectures and 
events to assist artists working with new materials and act as an “intermediary between 
the artist and the new technology located in industry,” as Klüver wrote in 1969.39 Hesse 
was especially engaged in E.A.T. lectures on plastics and attended a lecture on polymers 
conducted in February 1967 by F.H. “Stretch” Winslow of Bell Labs, where Klüver 
worked as an engineer.40 This talk occurred more than a year before Hesse began 
                                               
38 Writings and Work Notes, Eva Hesse papers, 1914–1970, Archives of American Art. 
39 Billy Klüver, “Experiments in Art and Technology,” Members Newsletter, The 
Museum of Modern Art, no. 3 (January–February 1969): 4. Klüver notes the number of 
members—artists and engineers—jumped from 300 to 4,000 between 1966 and 1969.  
40 In an E.A.T. response form, Hesse expressed interest in attending the lecture on 
Polymers by Winslow as well as Casting, Molding and Controls, and Acrylic Materials, 
all in February 1967. Lecture Series Response Forms, Artists, Experiments in Art and 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 77 
working with Aegis. In two photographs from the lecture (Figure 41), Hesse is first seen 
sitting in the crowd, with her hands folded together and tucked under her chin, leaning 
forward in a concentrated pose, while another image shows Winslow lecturing on 
polymers and standing in front of technical diagrams projected on the wall.41 These 
photographs illustrate Hesse’s interest in learning to work with plastics, which would be 
followed by her hiring Aegis the following spring. 
 
On Doug Johns and Aegis Reinforced Plastics  
It is impossible to understand the story of Hesse and Fiberglas without knowing 
the role of Doug Johns and Aegis Reinforced Plastics in her sculpture. Hesse’s work with 
Johns has been mentioned in monographs and exhibition catalogues on the artist’s work, 
but the details of their partnership is often overlooked.42 However, the non-teleological, 
trial-and-error process of Hesse’s sculptures required a mixture of both Johns’s expertise 
and Hesse’s desire to push the boundaries of Fiberglas production. With Fischbach 
covering expenses, Hesse began working with Aegis Reinforced Plastics in the spring of 
1968, when she traveled to the old Bethlehem Shipyard in Staten Island to meet with 
                                               
Technology records, 1966–1993, Special Collections, The Getty Research Institute, Los 
Angeles, CA. For further reading on Klüver, Bell Labs and E.A.T: Douglas Davis, Art 
and the Future: A History/Prophecy of the Collaboration between Science, Technology 
and Art (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973).  
41 I owe thanks to Marcie Begleiter for pointing me in the direction of this photograph at 
The Getty Research Institute.  
42 For the most thorough accounts of her move to fabrication: Lippard, Eva Hesse, 106, 
126–128; and Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 172. Sussman also discussed the role of 
collaboration in Hesse’s sculptures and her work with Johns at Aegis: “As Hesse’s and 
Johns’s collaboration continued, she convinced him to work outside of the factory and to 
use fiberglass in ways that he had never envisoned.” Sussman, “Letting It Go,” 34.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 78 
Johns, at the recommendation of fellow artist Robert Morris.43 It took several months 
before Johns would start work on Hesse’s objects, as Morris insisted Aegis finish his 
planned sculptures first.44 Hesse’s relationship with Aegis and Johns began with the 
Fiberglas sculptures in preparation for the Fischbach Gallery show, in order of 
production: Repetition Nineteen III, Accretion, Accession III, and Sans II.45 In 
commissioning these four works from Aegis, Hesse entered a world dominated by her 
male counterparts, with little room for female artists. Lucy Lippard, who later wrote the 
first major monograph on Hesse’s work and career in 1976, recalled that the artist was 
anxious about the shift towards using fabricators: 
“Moving out of the studio this way was a major step for her, and she went 
to Aegis with some trepidation; this was a real factory, utterly male-
oriented, and she expressed fear of ‘all those men with their great big 
sculptures.’ But it was necessary in terms of the professionalism she 
sought so determinedly and she hoped more professional craftsmanship 
would keep her pieces from disintegrating.”46  
Hesse wrote in her notebook in September 1966: “I must learn to have my work sent out. 
Not for work theory, but for permanence.”47 A close confidante of Hesse’s, Sol LeWitt 
recalled: “Eventually she abandoned the latex in favor of fiberglass, because she was 
                                               
43 Doug Johns and Alison Rowley, “The Fourth Dimension,” in Encountering Eva Hesse, 
eds. Griselda Pollock and Vanessa Corby (Munich: Prestel, 2006), 89. A ledger from 
December 31, 1968 listed that the gallery paid Aegis $1,600 in two payments. A memo in 
the gallery’s records on Hesse stated: “Fischbach Gallery paid for the fabrication, 
including materials and labor, or works made in fiberglass at Aegis.” Artist Files, Eva 
Hesse, Fischbach Gallery records, 1937–2015, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian 
Institution, Washington, DC. Lippard also cited that Richard Serra was working with 
Aegis at the same time as Hesse, and the two artists would take the ferry to Staten Island 
together. Lippard, Eva Hesse, 115, 126.  
44 Johns recalls that he made approximately 42 pieces for Morris. Johns, interview by the 
author, 2016.   
45 Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 172, 174, 182, 184.  
46 Lippard, Eva Hesse, 127.  
47 Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 12.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 79 
convinced that the fiberglass would last. She wanted it to last. And she certainly didn’t 
have the attitude that she would mutely sit by and watch it disintegrate before her eyes.”48 
Despite Hesse’s intention, the Fiberglas works had already begun to age by the mid-
1970s, like their latex counterparts.49 Johns claimed that Hesse was aware of the life-
expectancy of the raw Fiberglas and said: “She thought about it and I have a very clear 
memory that it amused her; the deterioration was part of the concept. My interpretation 
of this is that it was her conscious decision to bring the fourth dimension—time—into her 
sculpture.”50 This variance of opinion might be the result of Hesse’s changing 
relationship with her material, as she may have initially turned to Fiberglas for longevity 
then accepted the plastic’s inevitable decay after gaining experience with the substance. 
Despite her expectations or objectives, the artist chose to work with fabricators and rely 
on a skilled hand in her use of plastics.  
Unlike many other industrial fabricators at this time, Aegis Reinforced Plastics 
was founded in order to serve artists in New York. The two principle employees, Doug 
Johns and Robert Castoire, had previously worked at Orbiform, a company that made 
commercial plastic products such as globes for Rand McNally.51 Johns and Castoire had 
the idea to start Aegis when Robert Morris walked into Orbiform one day and inquired if 
the company could fabricate his artworks. Orbiform’s owner at the time declined to help 
                                               
48 Coerver, ed., “Uncertain Mandate,” 297.  
49 Even as early as 1976, Lippard was writing about the varying colors of the separate 
parts of Sans II, as the five sections were living and aging in four different collections, 
with different conditions. Lippard, Eva Hesse, 129.  
50 Johns and Rowley, “Fourth Dimension,” 93. 
51 Johns, interview by the author, 2016. Specializing in plastics, Orbiform was a 
subsidiary of Dyna-Graphic Displays in Brooklyn, which produced exhibits, displays, 
models and maps, among other items. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 80 
the artist, so Johns and Castoire left to start Aegis in order to work with Morris, among 
other sculptors.  
Aegis worked with an array of artists, producing a wide range of Fiberglas works, 
as seen in the group exhibition Plastics and New Art at the Institute of Contemporary Art 
at the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. The show included three works fabricated at 
Aegis, for Morris, artist Stylianos Gianakos, and Hesse. First was Morris’ Untitled from 
1967 (Figure 42, right foreground), a gray, square box composed of four pieces with an 
open top that dropped down into the center along diagonal lines at each corner. The 
sculpture was larger in scale than many of the sculptures in the show, forcing visitors 
walking by to squeeze between the wall and the work. Then came Stylianos Gianakos’s 
Untitled No. 6 (Figure 43, left background), a flattened, vertical dome that flared out to 
three legs, as if a shell left behind by a massive creature. Smooth and shiny, the object 
read as plastic but was unmistakably organic—part animal and part architecture—with a 
tan-colored, skin-like surface pulled taut in a hard shape. Finally, Hesse’s Repetition 
Nineteen III (Figure 44, center left)—on view after its appearance at Fischbach Gallery—
was crowded together on the concrete floor, as an arrangement of 19 Fiberglas cylinders 
in cloudy white plastic with irregular surfaces and uneven bottoms, organic in shape with 
the utmost rigid surface. Arranged as part of some absurdist showroom of plastic objects, 
these Fiberglas works were united only by material and fabricator, representing the 
expansive landscape of objects and oddities possible in the fibrous plastic.   
In addition to their range of production, Aegis was also a company that adapted to 
the changing city by taking residence in a variety of industrial spaces: first, in an old 
shipyard on Staten Island, then a car dealer’s basement, and finally an abandoned 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 81 
brewery.52 While Aegis emerged at a moment of great urgency for plastics in the arts, the 
firm was short-lived. The company folded in 1969, at which point Johns moved in with 
Hesse to work full time in her studio, making or assisting in the fabrication of 17 works 
until the artist’s death in 1970.53 
 
Repetition Nineteen III 
Hesse’s relationship with Aegis and Johns began with Repetition Nineteen III, 
which was the result of several stumbling blocks. The Fiberglas work was part of a series 
that started with Repetition Nineteen I, a group of 19 cylinders made of aluminum wire, 
papier-mâché, Elmer’s glue, Dutch Boy white diamond gloss paint, and polyester resin. 
Squat and smaller than the vessels in Repetition Nineteen III, the objects looked like 
dented or squashed cylinders in varying shapes and sizes with opaque white surfaces that 
were arranged with no particular orientation. This serial disorder is seen in a series of 
photographs of the sculpture in four different configurations in Hesse’s studio (Figure 
45). This work was important to Hesse, as it was depicted on the promotional card for her 
Fischbach Gallery show, even though it was not included in the exhibition. After 
Repetition Nineteen I, she looked to expand the series into different materials, processes, 
and textures. First, she considered fabricating the vessels in metal at Arko Metals and 
covering the objects in Sculp-metal, according to a sketch (Figure 46), which would have 
resulted in an usual combination of fabricated objects and hand-worked surfaces. She 
                                               
52 Johns, interview by the author, 2016. Their business card from their time in Staten 
Island described Aegis as “manufacturers” and “consultants,” with Robert Castoire as the 
company president. Eva Hesse papers, 1914–1970, Archives of American Art. 
53 Barrette wrote that Johns and Hesse were also romantically involved. Barrette, Eva 
Hesse Sculpture, 13, 172. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 82 
instead made test pieces in latex for a possible Repetition Nineteen II, which included 
cords protruding from the center of false bottoms. Finally, Hesse turned to Fiberglas and 
Aegis to fabricate what would become Repetition Nineteen III.54 The shapes and surfaces 
that emerged from this first collaboration created striking, iridescent forms with no 
precedent in Hesse’s practice at this point. Repetition Nineteen III marked an important 
moment in which the artist begin to allow the material—Fiberglas—to inform the 
structure of the work, as seen in her unique process of making at Aegis.  
Initially, Hesse gave Johns a sketch of 19 “buckets” to be made in Fiberglas.55 
After about a month, he presented her with 19 cylinders with straight walls and uniform 
surfaces. According to one account, Hesse was “very disappointed,” as she confided in a 
friend that they looked like “garbage pails” and that she felt conflicted about 
relinquishing control of her production process.56 In preparing the next version—what 
would become Repetition Nineteen III—Hesse discovered the solution. Instead of simply 
supplying instructions, she brought Johns papier-mâché structures to use as molds. With 
                                               
54 Lippard, Eva Hesse, 106.  
55 Johns and Rowley, “Fourth Dimension,” 89. 
56 Gioia Timpanelli, a writer and friend, recounted she was with Hesse the day she 
arrived home to find the “industrially perfect buckets” outside her loft: “…[Hesse] was 
very disappointed, saying that they looked like ‘garbage pails’ and that they had to be 
remade. She turned and said to me that was why she had to be there when the work was 
being done… She wanted to be able to give instructions and to be able to come back and 
find them done.” Coerver, ed., “Uncertain Mandate,” 298. This work, entitled Small 
‘Repetition Nineteen II’ (regular set), did end up at Fischbach, but was described as 
rejected by Hesse and not for sale in the gallery’s records in a document was compiled on 
March 24, 1970. Eva Hesse, Fischbach Gallery List of Unsold Work, Fischbach Gallery 
records, 1937–2015, Archives of American Art. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 83 
the molds, Johns produced the final pieces: oddly-shaped, translucent cylinders with 
imperfect surfaces, completed in July 1968.57  
Johns began the process of making the cylinders by draping Fiberglas sheets over 
the molds while they were hung upside down and then brushing on the liquid resin to 
conform to the shape. He then tucked the excess material in a series of folds, creating the 
bottom of the vessel, and hand-trimmed the thinner material left at the top. The resulting 
circular structures had thin and transparent walls with a thicker base, composed of the 
folded sheets of Fiberglas that created hollow pockets capturing the light (Figure 47).58 
While Johns covered the molds in wax and parting compound to keep them from 
sticking, the newspaper in the papier-mâché still attached to the Fiberglas. Hesse and 
Johns spent a full day pulling off pieces of paper, which left behind a network of bumps 
and bubbles.59 Finally, Johns applied a layer of resin after the works were cleaned, which 
made the cylinders iridescent, with a bluish color that responded to light. He recalled: 
“You put it under a light and the light just glowed.”60  
                                               
57 Hesse reused the aluminum wire mesh molds from Repetition Nineteen III in the 
sculpture Area. Ten of the sections were covered with latex, sewn together with wire, and 
hung off the wall to trail along the floor. Barger, “A Delicate Balance: Packing, 
Handling, and Installation of Ephemeral Works by Eva Hesse,” Journal of the American 
Institute for Conservation 47, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 33. Hesse intended for Area to be 
parallel to Repetition Nineteen III, but she only used ten sections because of a deadline 
for an exhibition. Robin Clark, “Repetition Nineteen, Area, and Tori,” in Eva Hesse, ed. 
Elisabeth Sussman (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 230.  
58 Thank you to Museum of Modern Art conservator Roger Griffith for sharing this point 
and the photographs of the bases.  
59 Johns recalled: “I had my workers clean out all the little chips and stuff like that but 
there was a lot left over, so she and I went through and cleaned them and cleaned them.” 
Johns, interview by the author, 2016.   
60 Johns continued: “It was this gorgeous thing, not a hint of yellow, like it is now.” 
Johns, interview by the author, 2016.   
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 84 
Hesse was ambivalent about the cylinders’ striking appearance. According to 
Johns: “…she thought they were too beautiful, they were just gorgeous. She was so 
excited that they were so beautiful but so disappointed that they were so beautiful.”61 The 
objects’ original effect is lost in documentation from the Fischbach Gallery exhibition 
(Figure 32), as the vessels are shown dissipating into the pale gallery surroundings. 
Subsequent photographs commonly circulated of the work by the Museum of Modern 
Art, which purchased the sculpture soon after the Fischbach exhibition in 1969, show the 
work yellowed and set on a warm, wooden floor (Figure 48), emphasizing the aging 
Fiberglas’s ability to mimic puckering skin. This photograph is misleading because, when 
installed at the museum today, the work actually continues to engage with light, emitting 
a bluish color.  
Johns’ fabrication process, using Hesse’s molds, resulted in a range of 
orientations for the vessels. The cylinders in Repetition Nineteen III took on individual 
personalities, as if short creatures haphazardly arranged in a crowd and seated unevenly 
on the ground.62 One vessel, for instance, bends slightly in an S-curve, while another is 
wrapped with ripples running in vertical bands along the surface. One contorts in the 
middle as if holding a larger object, and some have large air bubbles, like craters poking 
space inside the plastic. While the shapes of Repetition Nineteen III vary, the forms are 
unyieldingly rigid, fixed in place with the cured resin. I emphasize the differences 
between the cylinders to show the narrative of experimentation that played out between 
                                               
61 Johns, interview by the author, 2016.   
62 Lippard wrote, about Repetition Nineteen III: “Like schoolchildren in uniforms, or 
prisoners, or young trees in a nursery, they carry within them their exuberant 
individuality.” Lippard, Eva Hesse, 109.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 85 
the forms, as if representing Hesse’s exchange with Fiberglas. Each variant object arose 
from the production process set forth by Hesse and Johns, who allowed the material to 
change as the work was put together.  
In acknowledging the details of its making, Repetition Nineteen III can now be 
seen as the result of an unusually fluid fabrication process that married the marks of 
Hesse’s molds with Johns’ plastic handicraft. The two materials involved—papier-mâché 
and Fiberglas—even merged, further blurring the distinction between where the artist’s 
hand ended and Johns’ began. In this relationship, the plastic was allowed to find a 
purpose it was never invented for—one that celebrated raw, uncontrolled surfaces and 
imperfect results. Johns recalled: “That’s the real appeal to what Eva had because we 
used the properties of the material rather than looking for a shape that’s molded. We 
looked for the properties and took advantage of the flaws, the disadvantages.”63 With 
Johns’s help, Fiberglas became her collaborator. Hesse’s statement for Chain Polymers 
referenced her interest in letting the material evolve beyond her control:  
I would like the work to be non-work. This means that it would find its 
way beyond my preconceptions. What I want of my art I can eventually 
find. The work must go beyond this. It is my main concern to go beyond 
what I know and what I can know. The formal principles are 
understandable and understood. It is the unknown quantity from which 
and where I want to go. As a thing, an object, it accedes to its non-logical 
self. In its simplistic stand it achieves its own identity. It is something, it is 
nothing.64  
Here Hesse suggested releasing control of the finished product of her work, submitting to 
both the fabrication process and unexpected outcomes possible with her materials. Using 
phrasing such as “find its way beyond” and “go beyond what I know,” the artist 
                                               
63 Johns, interview by the author, 2016.   
64 Statement, Eva Hesse, June 1968, Artist Files, Eva Hesse, Fischbach Gallery records, 
1937–2015, Archives of American Art. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 86 
challenged her sculpture to realize “its own identity,” taking it out of the realm of 
traditional studio work, as “non-work,” “thing,” and “object.” While the importance of 
materials is not specifically addressed in this statement, Hesse’s process with Johns 
revealed that working with Fiberglas was what gave her variability in surface, effect, and 
outcome. The sculptures made for the Fischbach Gallery show became Hesse’s statement 
for Fiberglas: that the plastic would not conform to her expectations but was rather 
complicit in informing the works. 
 
Accretion and Accession III 
Accretion and Accession III were the next two Fiberglas works produced by 
Johns, and were fabricated quite differently and with more regularity than Repetition 
Nineteen III. Accretion (Figure 49), for instance, was composed of 50 hollow tubes, each 
measuring 58 inches each and two-and-a-half inches in diameter, which were remarkably 
identical. The units were made by wrapping a tube first with parting paper and then with 
a uniformly cut piece of Fiberglas cloth.65 Then the cloth was coated in resin and cured, 
at which point the mold was removed and another coat of resin was applied to create the 
iridescent surface akin to Repetition Nineteen III. The major difference in this work was 
the mold, as Aegis used a readymade object for the shape rather than papier-mâché forms 
crafted by Hesse. While the components of Repetition Nineteen III were unique in shape 
and texture, the pieces of Accretion were uniform and fabricated, as if Hesse was 
becoming accustomed to a more conventional form of plastics fabrication. For Accretion, 
                                               
65 Barrette described that the pieces in Accretion were “regular” and could be made 
quickly, so the “workmen at Aegis” were involved in the sculpture’s fabrication, rather 
than just Johns. Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 182.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 87 
the artist also introduced unpredictability in a different way: she leaned the units against 
the wall in varying intervals, which could be expanded for the space. 
As the third piece Hesse made with Aegis, Accession III was similarly produced 
to be more consistent and identifiably fabricated. The idea for the Fiberglas work came 
when Johns saw Accession II from 1968 (Figure 50) in Hesse’s studio and proposed a 
plastic version. Accession II was made in collaboration with Arko Metals in New York, 
the first fabricator Hesse employed. A galvanized steel cube pierced by holes that were 
then filled with black vinyl tubing, Accession II had an interior that was dark and 
alluring.66 The sculpture invited the viewer’s touch and was even damaged when shown 
in the exhibition Directions I: Options at the Milwaukee Art Center in 1968 when a 
museum visitor tried to climb inside.67 In constructing the piece, Arko fabricated the cube 
and Hesse filled the 30,670 holes by hand with tubing in January 1968.68 In Hesse’s 
notes, she defined the term “accession” with regards to her work as “increased by 
something added,” such as bringing two materials together through a combination of 
fabrication and craft.69 Accession III (Figure 51), made of Fiberglas with clear, vinyl 
tubing, was constructed in a similar fashion, pairing a manufactured object with 
exhaustive labor.70  
                                               
66 The first of the “Accession” series, Accession I, 1967, used a rectangular, aluminum 
box that was perhaps a found object, already filled with holes. Barrette, Eva Hesse 
Sculpture, 138.  
67 Lippard, Eva Hesse, 103.  
68 Ibid. 
69 Writings and Work Notes, Eva Hesse papers, 1914–1970, Archives of American Art. 
70 It is unknown where Hesse sourced the tubing, but a ledger from Fischbach shows that 
the gallery paid World Plastic Extruders based in Moonachie, New Jersey on two 
occasions, perhaps for the tubing for both Accession II and Accession III. Artist Files, 
Eva Hesse, Fischbach Gallery records, 1937–2015, Archives of American Art. The 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 88 
First, Johns made two test pieces to give Hesse a sense of what was possible in 
the Fiberglas and vinyl pairing (Figure 52). He then built the structure using a collapsible 
wooden cube as a mold on which to layer sheets of Fiberglas until it was a half-inch thick 
and very solid.71 It would take Aegis several months to complete the piece, as they had to 
bore 28,000 holes into the plastic with a hand drill using a perforated radiator cover as a 
guide.72 The holes were made in rows to the very edge of the structure and then filled 
with tubing, creating a tight and compulsive network of exterior ridges from the vinyl 
stitched through the cube. Whereas the interior of Accession II was soft and supple, 
Accession III’s clear vinyl inside was stiff and more jewel-like. The two plastics—the 
Fiberglas and the clear vinyl—were also more integrated in appearance than the steel-
and-black-vinyl Accession II, allowing Accession III to glow under the gallery lights as 
evidenced by installation images from the Fischbach Gallery show (Figure 32).73 Hesse 
grappled with the aesthetics of Accession III: “…it becomes a little too precious, at least 
from where I stand now, and too right and too beautiful. It’s like a gem, like a 
diamond…I’d like to do a little more wrong at this point.”74 In this statement, the artist 
reflected on the object evolving beyond her expectations, as she had to come to terms 
                                               
business card for World Plastic Extruders also appears in Hesse’s archives. Eva Hesse 
papers, 1914–1970, Archives of American Art. 
71 Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 174. 
72 Barrette wrote: “Hesse helped with the threading but was not otherwise involved with 
the fabrication.” Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 174. Johns still retains the hand drill in 
his collection. Johns, interview by the author, 2016.   
73 Barrette observed that Accession III produced a very different effect than the other 
“Accession” works with “dark, dense interiors.” The Fiberglas box “holds light instead of 
absorbing it.” Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 174. 
74 Nemser, “Eva Hesse,” 184. This quotation is different in the Artforum version of the 
interview. In Artforum, Hesse stated: “…it is a little too precious from where I stand now. 
It’s too beautiful, like a gem, and too right. I’d like to do a little more wrong at this 
point.” Nemser, “An Interview with Eva Hesse,” Artforum 7, no. 6 (May 1970): 60. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 89 
with the aesthetics that could emerge from fabricating an object in Fiberglas and vinyl. In 
Sans II, the next work made by Aegis, Hesse sought to return to a more unpredictable 
form of plastics production, as seen in Repetition Nineteen III.  
 
Sans II 
Sans II, the final Fiberglas work in the show, moved away from the rigid 
fabrication of Accretion and Accession III by returning to Hesse’s handmade molds as the 
basis for construction. If Repetition Nineteen III marked the beginning of Hesse’s 
collaboration with Johns, Sans II represented the apex of their work together for the 
Fischbach exhibition, as the later work is a marvel of collaborative production.75 More 
than 35 feet long and over three feet tall, Sans II is composed of a long string of open-air 
boxes or windows, in two registers (Figure 53). A massive undertaking, the sculpture was 
made in smaller distinct units that were then joined by Fiberglas strips on the back. The 
work’s foundation was plaster casts made by Hesse of two rectangles stacked together, 
delineated by a raised seam down the middle. Johns used the casts to create two 
polyurethane molds, which he covered with Fiberglas sheets and brushed with resin. 
After curing the plastic, he pulled the piece out of the mold and trimmed the excess fibers 
by hand. What was left was an undulating landscape of uneven edges that were highly 
expressive, as the result of both Hesse’s molds and Johns’ Fiberglas casting process. 
When Sans II appeared after its Fischbach Gallery debut in the “Annual Exhibition” at 
the Whitney Museum of American Art later in December 1968, after the museum had 
                                               
75 Barrette and Lippard both discussed Sans II as the work in which Johns and Hesse 
collaborated seamlessly. Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture, 184. Lippard, Eva Hesse, 128.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 90 
purchased two sections, a Time review described the work as “a row of 30 glistening 
clear fiberglass half-box forms, whose intentionally sloppy casting endows them with a 
bubbly effervescence.”76 
The work created a series of interiors, like windows looking into solid masses of 
plastic, which caught light through corrugated surfaces and air bubbles and errant fibers 
of glass that were left visible through thinner sections (Figure 54). The luminescent 
effects of Sans II would have been apparent at the Fischbach Gallery show, as Johns’ 
recent reenactment revealed the translucent effect of the original forms (Figure 35). 
Unlike the other serial pieces in this group, Sans II was initially shown with all of its 
units attached, dominating the wall of the gallery. The monumentality of this work has 
since been lost, as Sans II is no longer a complete work. The sculpture was separated into 
five sections and sold to four collections after the Fischbach Gallery exhibition, and have 
each aged and yellowed differently in response to their particular surroundings.77  
 
 
 
                                               
76 “Floating Wit,” Time 93, no. 1 (January 3, 1969), 44. 
77 The Whitney Museum of American Art was the first to purchase two sections in 
December 1969. Two other sections went to Museum Wiesbaden in Germany and Daros 
Collection in Switzerland. The last section was given to Hesse’s dentist, Norman Messite, 
to pay off a bill. After changing hands again, the piece was gifted to the San Francisco 
Museum of Modern Art in 1999. Hesse had planned to make a sixth section for the 
Whitney but could not because of health reasons. Scott Rothkopf, “Sans,” in Eva Hesse, 
ed. Elisabeth Sussman (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 
239. All five sections have reunited for three exhibitions since the 1968 Fischbach show: 
“Eva Hesse: A Retrospective” organized by the Yale University Art Gallery in 1992; 
“Eva Hesse” organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2002; and “Eva 
Hesse: Sculpture” organized by the Jewish Museum in New York in 2006. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 91 
Hesse’s Last Work, In Conclusion 
Fiberglas afforded Hesse a new form of physical independence that became 
important at the onset of her illness, as her increasing reliance on fabrication also 
paralleled her physical deterioration. The initial signs of her sickness appeared in 
September 1968, but by October she had finished the Fiberglas pieces for the Fischbach 
Gallery show, just before Aegis shut down. By early 1969, Johns moved into her studio 
and on April 18, Hesse was admitted to New York Hospital for an operation on her  
brain tumor. However, she did not stop working, relying more and more on Johns and  
student studio assistants to realize her sculptures, as seen in her final work Seven Poles 
from 1970 (Figure 55).78  
The sculpture marked Hesse’s first official collaboration with the plastics 
industry, as it was created for “Trio,” an exhibition hosted by Owens-Corning Fiberglas 
Corporation at their Fiberglas Center on Fifth Avenue from May through September 
1970. Organized by James F. Fulton and his industrial design firm Fulton & Partners Inc., 
the show included Hesse along with highly-polished geometric sculptures by Tony Delap 
and realist, painted figures by Frank Gallo. Hesse’s sculpture, in stark comparison, was 
more haphazard and odd as a series of fabricated objects. In the work, seven oversized 
“L” shapes stood together in a jumbled arrangement as if absurdist limbs, lifted up by 
nylon threads hung from the ceiling. Composed of aluminum wire wrapped around sheets 
of polyethylene, the structures were covered with pieces of Fiberglas and made entirely 
                                               
78 As Hesse recounted in the Nemser interview, she found having other constructing her 
sculptures “a little difficult at first” but as she became sick and more comfortable 
working with others, she would “let more happen and let myself be used in a freer way.” 
Nemser, “Eva Hesse,” 184–185. Her student assistants at this time included Bill Barrette, 
Martha Schieve, and Jonathan Singer. 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 92 
by her assistants based on a model by the artist.79 Although a third brain operation kept 
her from installing the work, she approved the result through photographs while in the 
hospital, before her death on May 29, 1970. A commission from Owens-Corning, Seven 
Poles was supposed to travel to the corporate headquarters after the exhibition, though 
the company reneged the deal when they were not satisfied with the installation.80  
Seven Poles came after Hesse’s period of great discovery with Fiberglas, at a 
point when she had already relinquished control of her production due to her illness. The 
work, as such, is awkward, as a strange combination of hand-worked surfaces, rendered 
by her assistants, and rigid plastic. Fiberglas, in Seven Poles, was not allowed to shine on 
its own, but was rather constricted by the wrapped aluminum wire visible through the 
plastic surfaces. In contrast, Hesse’s early works in Fiberglas, discussed in this chapter, 
represented a breakthrough moment in her career, marking the moment she first turned to 
the plastic material as a way to expand the visual and structural abilities of her forms. The 
four works shown at Fischbach Gallery emerged from this period of important 
experimentation for Hesse, as she learned to collaborate with Johns and negotiate 
Fiberglas as a new substance in her arsenal. Most importantly, Repetition Nineteen III, 
Accession III, Accretion, and Sans II offered Hesse the opportunity to find her own 
approach to fabrication through the use of molds and the intrusion of her own labor in the 
process. For the Fischbach Gallery exhibition, Hesse placed Fiberglas and all of its 
                                               
79 Lippard, Eva Hesse, 178–179. Barrette recounted that Johns consulted with Hesse on 
planning the sculpture, but then was not able to continue working on the piece after the 
artist’s health further declined. Barrette and Singer finished the artwork. Barrette, Eva 
Hesse Sculpture, 238. 
80 After seeing a model of Seven Poles, Owens-Corning offered Hesse $4,000 for the 
sculpture, but rescinded the offer when they saw the work in the exhibition. Coerver, ed., 
“Uncertain Mandate,” 307.  
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 93 
idiosyncrasies squarely at the center of her practice, putting forth a new narrative for 
plastics, told through the sculptures she left behind.  
 
*** 
 
 
Chapter Two — Eva Hesse 94 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 
“I think my sculpture grew out of the availability of polyester resin as a material.”  
 
“I’m really interested in them much more as fields of transparency and as fields of 
transparent color than sculptural shapes.”  
        —De Wain Valentine, 19701 
 
In the early 1970s, De Wain Valentine became known for his large-scale, highly 
polished, cast polyester resin sculptures in large walls, slim columns, and freestanding 
discs. These works were often dense yet transparent, plastic yet painterly, and marvels of 
engineering while at the same time delicate, hand-made objects. Of the many artists in 
New York and Los Angeles working with polyester resin in the 1960s and 1970s, 
Valentine also had the strongest impact on the development of the plastic industry. He 
remains a self-taught innovator and an active member of the artist community in Los 
Angeles, starting with his arrival in 1965 and continuing to this day.2 In the late 1960s, he 
took on a challenge that would come to define his career. He sought to cast sculptures in 
monumental sizes using polyester resin, a casting plastic that changes from a liquid to a 
solid state without outside heat or apparatus using a catalyst to spark a chemical reaction 
to harden the material.3 Polyester resin could be molded into any shape or composition, 
but was initially designed to be used only for small items. Before Valentine, in the mid-
1960s, the industry standard only allowed for single pours of resin up to 50 pounds at a 
                                               
1 John Coplans, “An Interview with DeWain Valentine,” in DeWain Valentine: Recent 
Sculpture (Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1970), n.p. Valentine’s name varies 
among different publications, but I use the spelling according to the artist—De Wain 
Valentine—and retain the other variations throughout his literature.  
2 Valentine worked in his studio in Venice, California from 1967 to 1991, and is now 
based in Torrance, California.  
3 This process is called polymerization. See the Introduction, page 4, footnote 11. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 95 
time for objects, using small, shallow molds.4 Any larger and the polyester resin would 
crack due to the heat produced while curing the plastic.5  To combat these limitations, 
Valentine worked directly with the industry and developed a formula that allowed him to 
cast massive objects with large, continuous pours of the plastic, what he later called his 
“single-pour casting technique.”6 Through his tireless, trial-and-error experiments over 
two years, he developed a new product: “Valentine MasKast Resin No. 1300-17.” Soon, 
he was creating 5,000-pound casts, such as Large Wall from 1968 (Figure 56).  
While previous writing about Valentine has primarily focused on the artist’s 
technical achievements, this chapter argues that his contribution to sculpture is not solely 
based on his practical role in the development of polyester resin. Rather, I underscore 
what drove Valentine to concoct his own formula for the plastic: his aspiration to create 
plastic objects that were monumental in scale but could still act as vessels for colorful, 
dynamic, and even ephemeral visual effects. To this end, I discuss both Valentine’s 
working process and the impact of these large-scale works. This text looks more closely 
at the physical presence of his sculptures and the labor involved from the studio to gallery 
floor, particularly with regards to the artist’s first major solo exhibition in Los Angeles at 
the Pasadena Art Museum in May 1970.7  
                                               
4 Spectacular DeWain Valentine Mass Casting Resin for the Modern Artist (Santa 
Monica, CA: Hastings Plastics, 1970), 10.  
5 Tom Learner, Rachel Rivenc, and Emma Richardson, From Start to Finish: De Wain 
Valentine’s Gray Column (Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 2011), 8.  
6 Henry Hopkins, Fifty West Coast Artists (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1981), 
118. 
7 Peter Alexander was originally scheduled to show alongside Valentine, a change noted 
by curator John Coplans in a memo. Memorandum, John Coplans, April 6, 1970, Folder, 
DeWain Valentine, May 12 – July 5, 1970, Pasadena Art Museum Archives, Norton 
Simon Museum, Pasadena, California.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 96 
At the time, the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum) was an 
important venue for area artists, and had reopened with a new building just the year 
before.8 Valentine’s show was a visual, spectacular declaration of the artist’s pioneering 
casting process and included four large-scale objects made with Valentine MasKast 
Resin. In one space, the artist installed three polyester resin circles in a staggered 
arrangement. All named Untitled (Concave Circle) (Figure 57), the works had concave 
surfaces on the side and were seven and a half feet in diameter, twelve inches thick at the 
bottom, and tapered to six inches on top.9 The circles ranged in visibility from dense 
plastic at the edge to thin and transparent at the center. Freestanding and monolithic, the 
objects seemed delicate as they teetered on their edges with no outside support, but were 
incredibly heavy at 1,700 pounds each. The circles were accompanied by a blue-tinted, 
curved wall, or Untitled (Curved Slab) (Figure 58), measuring approximately seven feet 
tall by seven feet wide.10  
The sculptures were heavy and large as they weighed thousands of pounds, and 
yet the artist intended the artworks to harness “transparent space,” producing effects that 
                                               
8 Valentine exhibited work at the museum during a brief and vibrant period for the 
institution. In 1969, the year before the artist’s exhibition, the Pasadena Art Museum 
reopened with a new building and major gifts by artists, including Valentine, but fell into 
financial difficulty in 1974 and was acquired by collector Norton Simon who changed the 
name to the Norton Simon Museum in 1975. The new direction of the Norton Simon 
Museum was no longer indebted to Los Angeles artists. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, 
Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s (New York: A John 
Macrae Book/Henry Holt and Company, 2011), 228–229.  
9 DeWain Valentine: Recent Sculpture (Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum), 1970, n.p. 
In a later interview, Valentine mentioned that the discs tapered to six inches at the top so 
they would not roll. Dorothy Newmark, “An Interview with DeWain Valentine, Sculptor 
of Plastic,” Leonardo 4, no. 4 (Autumn 1971): 377.  
10 The exhibition also included four drawings made with chart tape on mylar. DeWain 
Valentine: Recent Sculpture, n.p. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 97 
were spatial and fleeting for the viewer.11 In the catalogue for the exhibition, Valentine 
explained: “I’m really interested in them much more as fields of transparency and as 
fields of transparent color than sculptural shapes.”12 Valentine meant for his objects to 
transcend the weight and structure of large-scale sculpture. However, the visual effects of 
the works were only possible because of the solid, cast polyester resin and its unique 
abilities of transparency.  
This chapter offers a more expansive portrait of Valentine’s path to polyester 
resin and his creative output from the late 1960s to the early 1970s than has previously 
been published, building from a recent interview I conducted with Valentine. The first 
section addresses the limited, previous scholarship on the artist, which has primarily 
consisted of exhibition-related texts. The chapter continues by looking at the artist’s 
unusually early exposure to plastics as a child, followed by details of his move to Los 
Angeles from Colorado and his early, large-scale Fiberglas works. The text then lays out 
Valentine’s turn to polyester resin, which allowed him to explore the interior space of 
sculpture using a translucent material, as he moved away from Fiberglas. In the next 
section, I outline Valentine’s development of a casting process for monumental objects 
and how the material affected his studio practice. The remainder of the chapter considers 
the effect of the works outside the studio and reconstructs the artist’s solo exhibition at 
the Pasadena Art Museum in 1970, using material from the museum’s archives as well as 
important color images by photographer Harry Drinkwater. The text concludes with 
Valentine’s hiatus from polyester resin in the mid-1970s and the ephemeral, 
                                               
11 Coplans, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” n.p.  
12 DeWain Valentine: Recent Sculpture, n.p. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 98 
environmental pieces that followed, underscoring the significance of his work in plastics 
in the early 1970s.  
 
On Valentine Scholarship  
When critics were first confronted with the phenomenon of Valentine’s massive 
plastic works, they quickly singled out the artist as a “master” of polyester resin. Fidel 
Danieli wrote in 1969 that the artist was “the world’s most advanced master in this 
medium.”13 Peter Plagens, an early champion of Valentine’s work, remarked in 1971: 
“De Wain Valentine gives the most muscle and spectacle of all the many area artists 
casting resin; he does what obviously ought to be done with the material, exploiting its 
capacities for purity, color, transparency, and mystique.”14 Plagens then wrote in 1974 
that Valentine’s turn to polyester resin on a large scale “established him as the technician 
par excellence in the material, casting two-ton jewels of weight and light.”15 This 
perception of Valentine as a master of the craft of polyester resin focused on the impact 
of scale: namely, what happened when the plastic was used to create such large objects. 
Another reviewer described the artist’s work as craft: “It is not surprising that DeWain 
Valentine continues to win wide acclaim as a sculpture-craftsman, working in difficult 
materials and extending the medium ever beyond the material’s limits.” As a result of this 
repeated attention to Valentine’s technical achievements, the artist eventually became 
                                               
13 Fidel Danieli, “DeWain Valentine,” Art International 13, no. 9 (November 1969): 38.  
14 Peter Plagens, “Five Artists, Ace Gallery,” Artforum 10, no. 2 (October 1971): 87.  
15 Plagens, Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast (New York: Praeger 
Publishers, 174), 122. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 99 
“relegated to a kind of period curiosity,” as critic Randy Kennedy wrote in 2011.16 In 
2012, Plagens wrote again on Valentine that his sculptures had fallen into “a kind of  
art-critical crack” that created “a gauze of technological curiosity” obscuring the art 
historical relevance of the work.17 This gap has also been impacted by the limited 
scholarship, as the only sources on the artist until recently amounted to a few  
exhibition catalogues.18 
In 2011, Valentine’s contributions to this period of American sculpture were 
reexamined through Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980. This initiative 
comprised a large group of exhibitions in 2011 on the history of Los Angeles artists, 
which highlighted important figures such as Valentine who have garnered less scholarly 
attention than their contemporaries.19 The Getty Conservation Institute presented the 
most in-depth look at the artist’s practice and use of polyester resin, with the exhibition 
From Start to Finish: De Wain Valentine’s Gray Column.20 The Getty exhibition 
catalogue remains the most substantial text thus far on the artist, his background and his 
                                               
16 Randy Kennedy, “Reputation and Monolith, Both Stand Tall,” New York Times, 
September 18, 2011: AR74.  
17 Plagens, “De Wain Valentine and the Profundity of Pleasure,” in Colorado’s Valentine 
(Fort Collins, CO: University Art Museum, Colorado State University, 2012), 6. 
18 Notably: Thomas H. Garver, DeWain Valentine: Recent Sculpture (Vancouver: Fine 
Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia, 1969); and DeWain Valentine: Recent 
Sculpture (Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum, 1970).   
19 Spearheaded by the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute, Pacific 
Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980 included participation from more than 60 
institutions across Southern California. Among the exhibitions: Pacific Standard Time: 
Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970, at the J. Paul Getty Museum at 
the Getty Center; Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface, at The Museum of 
Contemporary Art San Diego; and Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–
1980, at the Hammer Museum.  
20 This exhibition and its accompanying publication have been instrumental to my 
understanding of Valentine’s work in plastics.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 100 
technical approach, with a particular emphasis on conservation issues around his works. 
Other recent shows have also contributed to the limited texts on Valentine, in the wake of 
Pacific Standard Time, with a focus more on the artist’s biography and exhibition 
history.21 This chapter builds from these recent texts but offers a more comprehensive 
approach to Valentine’s work than has previously been published, in both expanding 
upon the artist’s use of polyester resin and considering the visual impact of the works 
outside the studio.  
 
Valentine’s Origin Story 
Valentine’s knowledge of polyester resin started long before his sculptural work. 
The artist experienced an unusually early exposure to plastics as a child, allowing him to 
start experimenting with the materials at a remarkably young age.22 Valentine first 
encountered synthetics while growing up in Fort Collins, Colorado, thanks to surplus 
from a nearby military plant. During World War II, Colorado was the site of many 
aircraft and shipbuilding factories, as the land-locked state was deemed to be a safe 
distance from the coastal cities and possible enemy attacks.23 Valentine recalled that 
around 1945, the military lifted supply restrictions on Plexiglas and a nearby factory gave 
                                               
21 The exhibitions include: From Start to Finish: De Wain Valentine’s Gray Column, J. 
Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, 2011–2012; Colorado’s Valentine, 
2012; De Wain Valentine: Works from the 1960s and 1970s, David Zwirner, New York, 
2015; and DeWain Valentine, Almine Rech Gallery, London, 2015.  
22 While in previous chapters I am wary about drawing direct connections between 
biographical details and artistic practice, such as in the case of Eva Hesse, my reliance on 
Valentine’s background here looks particularly at his exposure to plastics as a child, 
rather than at links between his work and his personal life and relationships.   
23 Thomas J. Noel, Colorado: A Historical Atlas (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma 
Press, 2015), 201.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 101 
extra materials to his junior high school’s industrial arts teacher for students to use in 
class.24 The following year, Fiberglas and polyester resin appeared at his school as well, 
as scraps from the Navy, which had begun using the materials to build ships in Denver.25 
He first used acrylic and resin to make synthetic jewels at school and in his home oven,  
as an extension of his childhood pastime collecting gemstones throughout the  
American West.26  
During the war years, from 1941 to 1945, Valentine lived in 41 different states 
with his family, as his father pursued construction work with military contractors.27 In 
1945, he spent time in Lander, Wyoming, where his father was working on an Air Force 
bombing range. After bombing sessions, Valentine would hunt for agates and jades native 
to the area, collecting and polishing them.28 Retrospectively, he attributed this early 
interest in gemstones to his attraction to “transparent colored space.”29 When his family 
moved back to Fort Collins in 1945, Valentine assisted his parents at his family’s car 
                                               
24 De Wain Valentine, interview by the author, July 28, 2016, Torrance, CA.  
25 He explained the surplus was sent to the nearby schools because resin “didn’t keep.” 
Valentine, interview by the author, 2016. He attributed two teachers for introducing him 
to plastics: John Warner, industrial arts teacher at Lincoln Junior High School, and Perry 
Knight, shop teacher at Lincoln and Fort Collins High School. Linny Frickman,  
“Colorado’s Valentine: A Journey from Fort Collins to Venice Beach,” in Colorado’s 
Valentine (Fort Collins, CO: University Art Museum, Colorado State University,  
2012), 13. 
26 Valentine baked polyester resin in ceramic molds to make jewelry in his family’s oven, 
upsetting his mother by filling the house with toxic fumes. Frickman, “Colorado’s 
Valentine,” 13. Ace Gallery Beverly Hills, “De Wain Valentine: Early Resins, 1968–
1971,” Press release, 2010, accessed March 17, 2017, http://acegallery.art/wp-
content/uploads/2015/06/VALENTINE_BHPR.pdf. 
27 Frickman, “Colorado’s Valentine,” 10. Robin Clark, “Fields of Transparency,” in De 
Wain Valentine: Works from the 1960s and 1970s (New York: David Zwirner, 2015), 12.  
28 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 6.  
29 Valentine remarked: “I guess I was always interested in that kind of transparent colored 
space. The outside surface of a jewel is stunning, of course, but I was always mesmerized 
by the inside, the light come from beyond.” Ibid. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 102 
dealership, Valentine Motor Mart, painting and finishing cars, and worked with Fiberglas 
again when the company began selling boats.30 He later spoke of having an “immediate 
affinity” for the material.31  
Valentine’s direct connection to the military-industrial complex, as his first 
supplier of plastics, gave the artist important exposure to the range of materials being 
developed for the war and to the government as a major source of synthetics in the U.S.32 
Where most Americans encountered plastics for the first time through consumer products 
and advertisements, Valentine began tinkering with the materials left behind from 
military factories near his hometown. Thus for the artist, plastics were always substances 
meant for innovating on a large scale, rather than for trivial domestic items. 
 
The Move to Los Angeles and the Fiberglas Works 
Plastics ultimately motivated Valentine to move to the West Coast. After 
receiving his MFA at University of Colorado, Boulder, where he studied briefly with 
Richard Diebenkorn and Clyfford Still, both visiting artists in his department, Valentine 
taught drawing, design, and introductory art courses and created sculptures in Fiberglas.33 
He recounted mixing the noxious plastic with more traditional artistic materials: “I was 
                                               
30 Frickman, “Colorado’s Valentine,” 11–12. 
31 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 7. 
32 I first discovered this connection while attending a conversation between Valentine and 
Tom Learner, head of modern and contemporary art research, Getty Conservation 
Institute, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC on July 16, 2013. I attribute my 
interest in the links between plastics, the arts, and the military to this discussion.  
33 Valentine, interview by the author, 2016. The artist received his BFA at the University 
of Colorado, Boulder in 1958 and his MFA at the school in 1960. Valentine remarked 
that Diebenkorn “turned me on to color” during his studies. Clark, “Fields of 
Transparency,” 13.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 103 
always the one who was stinking up the place, covering plaster of Paris with polyester or 
casting polyester into a void in a piece of ceramic.”34 In 1965, his works attracted the 
attention of Jack Hooper, a visiting artist from UCLA, who invited Valentine to come to 
Los Angeles and teach students how to work with plastics.35 Moving to California with 
his wife and three children, Valentine taught a class on plastics at the UCLA Extension 
Program for two years until beginning to pursue sculpture full-time in 1967.36  
When Valentine arrived in Los Angeles in 1965, plastics were part of the local 
culture thanks to the nearby military and aerospace industries. Though the city had 
shifted away from wartime industrial production, the region’s economy still relied on 
contracts from the military-industrial complex, driving the development of technologies 
and materials.37 In particular, Southern California was a hotbed of aerospace activity, 
which not only affected the automotive and surfing cultures in Los Angeles but spurred 
the growth of suppliers of industrial materials like synthetics.38 In an interview, Valentine 
                                               
34 Interview with DeWain Valentine, October 1979, Jan Butterfield papers, 1950–1997, 
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 
35 Valentine, interview by the author, 2016. Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start 
to Finish, 7.  
36 He held other related jobs during this time, which included teaching at a private girl’s 
school in the area and instructing art collectors’ wives how to use plastics and weld 
metal. Valentine, interview by the author, 2016.  
37 Wesley Marx, a California-based conservationist writer, wrote in 1968 during 
Valentine’s early years in Los Angeles: “Postwar California is, to a great degree, a 
creature of the national security economy. An amalgam of defense and space contracts 
supports an extensive aerospace establishment, and this establishment dominates the 
state’s activities in manufacturing, employment, and university research.” Wesley Marx, 
“One-Eyed Technology,” in The California Revolution, ed. Carey McWilliams (New 
York: Grossman Publishers, 1968), 37.  
38 For instance, aerospace engineers were involved with developing hot-rod cars, as well 
as surfboards. This confluence, in addition to the growth of the local industries, is 
mentioned in: Peter J. Westwick, “Introduction,” in Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace 
Century in Southern California, ed. Peter J. Westwick (Berkeley, CA: University of 
California Press, 2012), 8.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 104 
claimed that his work was influenced by “the sophistication of the technical industry 
here—the space industry, the aircraft industry and maybe even the initial growth of art” 
in the city, and his practice as “growing out of crafts specifically, rather than out of a 
European tradition.”39 The artist was pursuing his work at a time when plastics 
production still relied heavily on commercial craft standards, with little precedent in fine 
art studio practice.  
Local shops supported the artist’s growing interest in plastics, such as Hastings 
Plastics Company that opened in 1957 in Santa Monica. Owned by Norry Hastings, a 
World War II veteran and one of the founders of the Southern California Society of 
Plastics Engineers, the company became a major supplier for artists in the 1960s, 
working with Valentine as well as his contemporaries such as Peter Alexander, Judy 
Chicago, Fred Eversley, and Craig Kauffman.40 The community of artists working with 
plastics learned about the materials from their suppliers as well as from each other, 
particular in Venice Beach where so many artists lived and worked, as the area offered 
inexpensive studio space and acted as an incubator for artists interested in sharing ideas 
and techniques.41 Valentine moved into his studio in Venice in 1967, where he remained 
                                               
39 This comment was not included in the published interview in the artist’s Pasadena Art 
Museum exhibition catalogue. Transcript of Valentine interview with John Coplans, June 
26, 1970, Folder, DeWain Valentine Catalog Copy, Pasadena Art Museum Archives, 
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California.  
40 Ed Schad, “Noble in Resin: Hastings Plastics, Legendary Maker of Sculptures for L.A. 
Artists, Closes After 55 Years,” L.A. Weekly, January 5, 2012, accessed June 26, 2018, 
http://www.laweekly.com/arts/hastings-plastics-legendary-maker-of-sculptures-for-la-
artists-closes-after-55-years-2173530. The shop operated for 55 years until it moved in 
2011 and was renamed Santa Monica Plastics, run by former Hastings employees Eric 
and Claudia Warren. 
41 Venice was originally developed between 1892 and 1904 by Abbott Kinney, who built 
Italian villas and man-made canals that he filled with gondolas from Italy to be a 
destination for the wealthy and a cultural center for both the arts and sciences. By the 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 105 
until 1991.42 With Larry Bell as his next-door neighbor, Robert Irwin across the street, 
and Doug Wheeler and John McCracken nearby, among many others, Valentine worked 
amid a vibrant community of artists who shared material knowledge and support in a 
studio that gave him the space to expand the scale and size of his objects.  
For Valentine, there was also more opportunity for an artist working in plastics in 
Los Angeles than in New York. He commented in a 1976 interview: “I used to go to New 
York, and I’d take slides around to the galleries, they’d hear “plastic” and— pshew!—it 
was all over! In 1962, 63, talking to Leo [Castelli] about plastic was like spitting in his 
eye!”43 At first, Valentine worked with Fiberglas, making sculptures that were painted 
and lacquered with bright, industrial colors like candied red, such as Triple Disk Red 
Metal Flake—Black Edge, 1966 (Figure 59). The artist made the work by attaching 
individual cone shapes at their bases to create “flying saucer” forms and then linking the 
forms together in an accordion-like chain. Teetering on their edges, the sculptures evoked 
abstract motors or generators with sleek finishes. These Fiberglas works were exhibited 
widely in group shows in Los Angeles and New York, notably: “A Summer Show” at 
Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles in 1966; the survey “Sculpture of the 60’s” at the Los 
Angeles County Museum of Art in 1967; and the Annual Sculpture Exhibition in 1966 
                                               
1950s, the area was considered a “slum” and offered artists inexpensive studios and 
residences. Franklin Walker, “Abbot Kinney’s Venice,” in Los Angeles: Biography of a 
City, eds. John & Laree Caughey (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977), 
235–239.  
42 Jan Butterfield, The Art of Light + Space (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), 193.  
43 Marietta Warner Siegel, “Aesthestic Uses of Transparency in Sculpture: A Theoretical 
and Creative Investigation (Volumes I and II)” (PhD diss., New York University, 1980), 
142–143. Valentine also mentioned that artists such as Larry Bell and Craig Kauffman 
contributed to his move to California, remaking that “these guys think more like I think 
rather than New Yorkers.” Valentine, interview by the author, 2016. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 106 
and 1968 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which acquired the related 1967 
Fiberglas work Five Red Discs in 1968.44 The Fiberglas sculptures introduced Valentine 
to the public and the art community. At the same time, he began to cast polyester resin 
objects on a small scale, such as spinning top shapes, prism forms, and tabletop circles 
(Figure 60), before turning exclusively to polyester resin starting in 1968.  
 
The Turn to Polyester Resin  
In 1970, Valentine stated: “I think my sculpture grew out of the availability of 
polyester resin as a material. Another aspect is that it was possible for me to work the 
material in my studio without going to an industrial situation to have it fabricated, thus I 
could work at any scale.”45 Polyester resin allowed Valentine to retain control of his 
production in the comfort of his Venice studio. As a result, his process was reliant on his 
own labor and the help of his assistants from the careful measuring of substances to the 
hours of tending the curing objects and, finally, to the finish.  
Valentine described his move from Fiberglas to polyester resin as a shift from 
emphasizing the exterior orientation of sculpture to accessing the unseen interior of 
objects. In interviews, he referred to the Fiberglas works as “shells” or “skins” that 
obscured the inner space of sculpture. In 1971, he remarked on the Fiberglas works:  
“The most important thing that struck me about these pieces was the fact that they were 
shells. I became very conscious of their interior space. The next logical step was to reveal 
                                               
44 Additionally, the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired, Top, 1968, a small cast 
resin object in the shape of a spinning top. The 1968 exhibition included Large Wall, 
which the artist later gave to the Pasadena Art Museum in 1969.  
45 Coplans, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” n.p. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 107 
this space by using a transparent material.”46 The same year, he explained that the 
Fiberglas works caused him to become “very much aware that most sculpture previously 
was dealing in terms of shell, whether it was cast bronze, carved wood, or carved 
stone…Sculpture for the most part really relied on being a shell.”47 He reiterated in a 
2011 text that “most sculpture is a skin; your eyes stop at its surface and you only see the 
outside.”48 Valentine’s continual comments on the surface qualities of Fiberglas 
sculpture, and his use of terms such as “shell” and “skin,” illustrate what was at stake for 
Valentine in turning to polyester resin. With this material, Valentine could create mass to 
represent the very effect of being interior space while continuing to work with plastics, 
rather than turning to more traditional, and more costly, substances such as glass.  
While Valentine cites materials such as bronze, wood and stone in his 
observations, his realization of the “shell” or “skin” of sculpture comes from his work in 
Fiberglas. As explained in the previous chapter on Eva Hesse (see Chapter Two), 
Fiberglas is strong and durable as well as thin and lightweight, which made it very 
popular among artists. In short, Fiberglas was attractive because of its shell-like qualities, 
the very characteristics that moved Valentine to seek a new material. Landing on 
polyester resin, which would become his signature substance, Valentine found a plastic—
a close cousin to Fiberglas, which uses polyester resin to hold together glass fibers—that 
                                               
46 Newmark, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 379–380. 
47 An Exhibition of Five Recent Works by Larry Bell, John McCracken, DeWain 
Valentine, Ron Cooper, Peter Alexander, (Edmonton, Canada: The Edmonton Art 
Gallery, 1971), 37.  
48 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 12. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 108 
allowed the artist to focus on interior space through cast matter, in stark contrast to the 
shiny surfaces of his Fiberglas works.49  
 
Valentine’s Casting Process  
Unlike Fiberglas which had almost limitless potential with regards to scale—
Triple Disk Red Metal Flake–Black Edge is more than five feet high and seven feet long, 
for instance—polyester resin was subject to industrial restrictions when Valentine first 
started casting objects. As mentioned above, before Valentine’s innovations, the use of 
more than 50 pounds of the substance in a single object was impossible as the material 
would overheat and crack. In his search for a method to cast larger objects, he turned to 
plastics professionals, starting with his polyester resin supplier Hastings Plastics. In 1966, 
Valentine had a chance encounter at Hastings with Ed Revay, a resins representative from 
Pittsburgh Plate Glass, who agreed to work with the artist to develop a new product.50 
Revay provided polyester resin samples to Valentine before they were available on the 
market, either by bringing them to the artist’s studio or leaving materials for Valentine to 
pick up at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass plant in Torrance, California.51 Then Valentine 
completed research and development on the materials through trial and error in his studio, 
measuring out gram-by-gram the amount of catalyst needed for different quantities of 
resin, anywhere from one gallon to a 55-gallon drum.52 
                                               
49 Valentine first tried making discs out of vacuum-formed Plexiglas, a material used by 
colleagues such as Craig Kauffman, but the material was too costly. Newmark, 
“Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 379. 
50 Valentine, interview by the author, 2016.  
51 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 3, 8.  
52 Valentine, interview by the author, 2016.   
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 109 
By 1968, Valentine had developed “Valentine MasKast Resin No. 1300-17,” a 
product he then chose to distribute in collaboration with Hastings Plastics, along with the 
accompanying “Valentine 1300-17 Catalyst.”53 The 1970 brochure published by Hastings 
Plastics used the artist’s name as a brand, claiming on one page that the reader can “Cast 
Valentine Sculptures Weighing 500 to 10,000 Pounds,” as if Valentine’s works were 
trademarked objects to be replicated. Described as “a low viscosity, low exotherm,  
clear liquid resin with a very slight bluish tint which disappears on hardening,” this 
plastic product enabled users to create objects weighing up to 10,500 pounds in single 
pours, though an enclosed table in the pamphlet only gave details for casting up to  
1,480 pounds.54  
With “Valentine MasKast Resin No. 1300-17” in hand, Valentine began casting 
massive objects, such as large, tapered “Slabs,” curved walls, and five varieties of 
freestanding circles. A 1973 article outlined the five different types of circles Valentine 
produced between 1969 and 1973, starting with casts using a single color: the double 
concave circles; the circles with one side flat and the other concave; and the circles with 
one side flat and the other convex.55 Then, Valentine made circles using two different 
color resins in the same mold: two-toned works with one side concave and the other 
                                               
53 Hastings Plastics president N.M. Hastings explained the process of developing this 
product in a company brochure: “To achieve this significant break-through, DeWain 
Valentine had to spend many hours experimenting and many dollars, because, a success 
of this type is always built on early failures, and failures in use of this resin in large 
masses is irretrievable and costly. Now that he has worked out most of the product and 
use problems, DeWain Valentine, in collaboration with Hastings Plastics Company, is 
releasing his special resin and techniques to other artists and industry.” Spectacular 
DeWain Valentine Mass Casting Resin, 10.  
54 Ibid., 10, 11.  
55 John Lloyd Taylor, “De Wain Valentine,” Art International 17 (September 1973):  
22–24.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 110 
convex; and finally the flowing color circles, where the two colors are separated by a 
wavy line.56 In these works, Valentine experimented with polyester resin’s visual abilities 
through different thicknesses, structures, and colors, all enclosed in massive, freestanding 
circles. The sculptures Valentine produced in this period were complex in their balance of 
incredible bulk with lightness of expression, creating what the artist called “fields of 
transparent color” that were spatial and fleeting for the viewer.57  
When the artist began using his Valentine MasKast Resin, he adapted his studio 
practice to accommodate this new scale of working. For instance, the material came in 
barrels that could only be moved by forklift and required Valentine and his assistants to 
wear white safety suits and masks against its toxicity (Figure 61). Polyester resin 
essentially turned Valentine’s Venice studio into an industrial laboratory, though one in 
which each piece was hand-cast and polished to a pristine finish. First, he began with the 
mold, typically made from particleboard secured with wooden beams and clamps, among 
other materials.58 More complex forms, such as curvilinear shapes, were created using 
Fiberglas molds built from polyurethane foam models, thereby relying entirely on 
synthetic materials to generate his forms.59 To keep the objects from attaching to the 
molds, Valentine would cover the interior of the structures with a polyvinyl alcohol 
                                               
56 Taylor, “De Wain Valentine,” 24.  
57 Coplans, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” n.p.  
58 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 27. In 1971, he discussed 
commissioning a company to made molds for him, some out of steel plate and some in 
Fiberglas. Newmark, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 378. Another text described 
Valentine using boxes built of wood and Masonite for mold making. Garver, Valentine: 
Recent Sculpture, 6.  
59 Kurt Von Meier, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” Artforum 7, no. 9 (May 1969): 
56.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 111 
separating agent as the first step before introducing the liquid resin.60 These molds, in 
particleboard or Fiberglas, would be reused for multiple pieces. The casts would each 
produce a series of related objects, all using Valentine’s signature resin formula.  
The artist described the process of casting polyester resin as “sort of like jello—
self-cooking art” as the liquid plastic mixed with a catalyst hardens at room temperature 
through an exothermic reaction, once poured in the mold.61 This feature of polyester resin 
meant that casting was time sensitive, so the artist would have to keep a consistent pace 
between each step. For Valentine, the process began by pouring the catalyst and color—
using a paper cup, as shown in one photograph (Figure 62)—directly in the resin drum 
and then mixing the liquid by inserting a propeller blade attached to a motor and running 
the propeller for about an hour.62 The resin would then be lifted by forklift and filtered 
through a stainless steel strainer—one previously used to remove impurities in airplane 
fuel—into the mold (Figure 61), taking another hour.63 A work such as Large Wall, 
weighing 5,000 pounds, would require 10 barrels of resin, each holding 55 gallons or  
500 pounds.64 After the final barrel was poured into the mold, Valentine and his assistants 
would babysit the work for 18 hours as it cured, releasing the clamps a little at a time 
until the mold was removed and the raw material was ready for finishing.65 Due to the 
                                               
60 Von Meier, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 56.  
61 Ibid., 55. 
62 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 26.  
63 To regulate the flow of resin, Valentine would use compressed air inserted in the upper 
valve of the drum, creating pressure to force the resin out. Ibid., 9, 24, 26.  
64 A memo from 2005 on Large Wall confirms its weight at 5,000 pounds. Memorandum, 
Michelle Deziel, Assistant Curator, Norton Simon Museum, June 24, 2005, Object file, 
De Wain Valentine, Large Wall, 1968. P. 1969.121, Pasadena Art Museum Archives, 
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California. 
65 This time estimate is based on documentation of Gray Column, 1975, which is of 
comparable size to Large Wall. Valentine typically had two or three assistants working in 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 112 
heat that would be generated by the chemical reaction between the resin and the catalyst, 
Valentine placed the molds on a forklift near the back door of his studio: if pieces 
overheated, burned or smoked, he could then push them into the alley.66 Throughout the 
curing process, the plastic would make cracking noises—”like pine logs burning in a 
fireplace,” according to Valentine—keeping the artist attentive to the risk of 
combustion.67  
This blind casting process led to some tense moments for Valentine, particularly 
when producing Large Wall (Figure 56), his largest pour at the time of its making in 
1968. The wide, monumental plinth, around eight-feet-high and cast with a tapering top, 
weighed 5,000 pounds and almost broke its mold.68 Valentine remembered that after he 
had poured in nine barrels, the mold, made of two-by-fours and heavy particle board, 
began to crack under the hydraulic pressure of the liquid resin. He recalled: “I thought, 
‘Oh boy, I’ve got a polyester skating rink in my studio if this breaks!’”69 As his story 
goes, Larry Bell, his studio neighbor in Venice, appeared at this very moment to 
complain about the smell emanating from Valentine’s studio and was enlisted, along with 
several other men, to help stabilize the mold. Bell had some large, solid wooden beams 
that they used, along with pipe clamps, to squeeze the structure together and reseal the 
                                               
his studio, including Chris D’Arcangelo, Rob Janiger, and Keith Anderson. Learner, 
Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 9, 10, 24.  
66 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 9. Valentine, interview by the 
author, 2016. 
67 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 9.  
68 Originally called Untitled (Large Slab), Large Wall has had its current title as of 
December 21, 1998. Art File Report, October 28, 2011, Object file, De Wain Valentine, 
Large Wall, 1968. P. 1969.121, Pasadena Art Museum Archives, Norton Simon Museum, 
Pasadena, California. 
69 Valentine, interview by the author, 2016. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 113 
mold.70 Valentine soon learned how to steady the works in spite of the hydraulic pressure, 
using other materials such as steel and Fiberglas and bracing his particleboard molds with 
“hundreds and hundreds of C-clamps.”71  
The heavy labor came after the molds were released, which revealed the rough, 
matte surface of the raw polyester resin. Valentine and two or three assistants spent days 
and sometimes weeks sanding and finishing the pieces using an automobile body fender 
grinder and sandpaper (Figure 63) and then classic car wax.72 The objects were polished 
to remove any explicit marks of making. However, the imperfect, human labor of the 
artist and his assistants left behind subtle undulations on the surface like wide water 
ripples, as the polyester resin retained its “liquid origins” when hand-polished in this 
way.73 This effect can be seen in one of the large circles from 1970 on view in 
Valentine’s studio (Figure 64). Even a minor warbling of the plastic would distort the 
visitor’s view through the objects, but without marring the clear optics of the works. 
Scratches or scuffs, on the other hand, were not tolerated. Valentine spoke of the 
                                               
70 Valentine, interview by the author, 2016. 
71 He used reverse-roof, triangulated frames to brace the large wooden and particleboard 
mold. Regarding C-clamps, he described his process: “Every place there was a leak I’d 
put a new C-clamp. It was all empiric, all trial and error.” Ibid.  
72 Learner, Rivenc, and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 10. Valentine explains that the 
finer grit of the sandpaper today no longer requires the use of car wax. Valentine, 
interview by the author, 2016. Reportedly, “a few hundred pounds of resin came off” 
during the sanding and polishing process. Kennedy, “Reputation and Monolith,” AR74.  
73 On the occasion of a 1969 exhibition at the Fine Arts Gallery, University of British 
Columbia, Thomas Garver described the “liquid origins”: “Thus unlike plastic or glass 
that is polished by machines that produce a perfectly flat surface, the Valentine slabs tend 
to bulge or wave in a manner that suggests the liquid origins of the work. Further, this 
gently undulating surface, while in contrast to the precision of shape, is in precise 
agreement with the content or interior of the piece, for the resin is never entirely 
transparent or colorless and is frequently filled with a curious colloidal glow, like 
unfiltered water, a result of reaction between catalyst and resin.” Garver, Valentine: 
Recent Sculpture, 10. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 114 
sculptures’ “ultimate surface,” where any abrasions in the plastic would obscure their 
visual effects.74 The artist explained: “It has to be as perfect as possible, because if there 
are scratches or ripples, all you see are the ripples or scratches. I don’t want you to just 
look at the surface. I want you to ignore the surface as much as possible. So you look at it 
and through it and in it and beyond it.”75 The final stage of finishing, therefore, was 
imperative and onerous, as Valentine sought to completely eliminate the marks of his 
casting process entirely by hand. 
Despite their weight, the completed objects were unexpectedly fragile: Valentine 
once likened polyester resin to marble in delicacy.76 The works’ fragility came from the 
material’s tendency to scratch or chip easily. The artist remarked: “I have a strange, 
perhaps romantic, feeling that this is part of their poetry—you know, something that is 
large in scale and highly refined yet extremely delicate and easily subject to 
destruction.”77 In some cases, minor damage to a work required Valentine to refinish the 
surface, which meant an irreversible loss of material, thereby slightly changing the shape 
of the object.78 The emphasis on visibility was so important to Valentine that he would  
repeatedly treat and polish his works even when they were on view. For the show at the 
                                               
74 Exhibition of Five Recent Works, 38. 
75 Valentine, interview by the author, 2016.  
76 Newmark, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 379.  
77 Coplans, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” n.p. 
78 With regards to refinishing, the artist remarked that sustaining the surface was more 
important than retaining mass: “You can just resand the surface if it gets scratched up, 
and then repolish—almost infinitely, until the material is finally worn away.” Von Meier, 
“Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 56. This opinion is not, however, held by museums 
that intend to maintain the original surfaces, despite the aging of the polyester resin. The 
issue is addressed in the Getty Conservation Institute publication, particular with regards 
to “orange peel” patterning or “grow-outs,” which are the characteristics of polyester 
resin aging, due to the material’s slow movements over time, like glass. Learner, Rivenc, 
and Richardson, From Start to Finish, 4. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 115 
Pasadena Art Museum, for instance, Valentine came to the galleries each week to tend to 
the sculptures to ensure they were in their ideal condition, extending the artist’s work 
outside the studio.79  
 
On Color and Polyester Resin  
Despite the laborious process of casting and finishing, polyester resin gave 
Valentine the opportunity to create his monolithic fields of colored space without 
compromising the visible interior of the object. Valentine introduced color to the 
sculptures early in the process, mixing different artist pigments into the resin with the 
catalyst, while the liquid plastic was still in its steel drum.80 He adjusted each batch 
depending on the color, as some pigments slowed down the catalyst.81 At this point the 
color became inherent to each batch of resin, making the different hues continuous 
throughout the objects. Valentine used multiple colors for certain works, such as Circle 
Blue Smoke Flow, from 1970 (Figure 65). These circles included two colors divided by a 
wavy line made by titling the mold after pouring in the two colors. Typically, though, 
Valentine used solid hues. In every instance, the color was not applied, as in his Fiberglas 
sculptures, but integrated into the material. The artist’s use of pigments in casting plastic 
tested the traditional place of color in sculpture as secondary to substance. In the 1970 
catalogue, he explained:  
                                               
79 For the exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum, Valentine agreed to return to the 
galleries every week with his assistants to polish the works throughout the run of the 
show. Memorandum, Registrar, May 12, 1970, Folder, DeWain Valentine, May 12 – July 
5, 1970, Pasadena Art Museum Archives, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California.  
80 He also added ultraviolet filters to stabilize the color. Valentine, interview by the 
author, 2016. 
81 Ibid. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 116 
“I keep finding direct relationships in the new pieces to painting: they are 
not really painting nor really totally sculptural—they are some kind of 
marriage of the two. The color to me is ultimately important, especially 
the way the transparency and the color work together. That somehow isn’t 
what I think of as a specific interest of classical sculpture. My sculptures 
are physical things, with physical color imbedded within the sculptural 
process rather than color painted on the surface.”82   
Valentine sought to blur the boundaries between painted surface and object, as well as 
painting and sculpture.83 Large Wall, when included in the 1968 Annual Exhibition at the 
Whitney Museum of American Art, was even described by one critic as “a polyester slab 
in translucent mauve that seems to emulsify a Jules Olitski painting, or make of it a 
precious window.”84 Valentine also chose different colors for different effects, as he 
stated in 1969 that red and yellow pigments were not as effective in diffracting light—
rather, they absorbed light—whereas blue and purple pigments allowed for more 
“prismatic” effects.85 These sculptures became color studies on a large scale, interrupted 
only by the occasional air bubble suspended in the plastic, as seen in one detail of Large 
Wall (Figure 66).86 
The color effects of these works are often lost in the photographs from the period, 
even when the images are in color. Documentation of Untitled (Concave Circle) from 
                                               
82 Coplans, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” n.p. 
83 In a 1971 exhibition text, John Lloyd Taylor argued this point: “The illusionistic 
qualities of Valentine’s sculpture are not dissimilar to the illusionism of color in painting, 
and in this regard it is conceivable to think of his work in terms of both painting and 
sculpture. Yet the work maintains a definite physicality with real color; they are indeed 
solid volumes, but volumes of colored air into, through and beyond which one is visually 
drawn.” Taylor, Directions 3: Eight Artists (Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Center, 
1971), n.p.  
84 Max Kosloff, “New York: Whitney Annual: Sculpture, Whitney Museum,” Artforum 
7, no. 6 (February 1969): 64.  
85 Von Meier, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 56.  
86 Valentine explained that bubbles are the result of “local overheating.” Newmark, 
“Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 379. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 117 
1970, for instance, shows great variation in the color of the plastic. A large example of 
the double-concave circles, the work measures six feet in diameter and two feet thick at 
its base, tapering to a narrow center before widening again to 21 inches at its top, and 
weighs 3,500 pounds. Untitled (Concave Circle) is forbidding in its mass and creates 
arresting optical illusions through its violet, transparent interior. In photographs from the 
exhibition A Plastic Presence (Figure 67), Untitled (Concave Circle) acted as a wide-
angle lens, distorting and shrinking visitors to the show in side reflections, flipping the 
images of other figures standing close to the object, and showing the room awash in red 
jewel-like colors. In contrast, a recent photograph (Figure 68) reveals the work’s sleek, 
sharp surface and rich violet color with neon pink hotspots where spotlights hit the 
plastic.87 Neither of the photographs accurately documents the work’s vibrant display of 
colors, as one contemporary account describes “tonalities of deep and pale violets, blues, 
reds, pinks, and at its most transparent conditions, subtle rose-greys.”88 Untitled 
(Concave Circle) exhibits ever-changing color, which is inherent to the experiential 
qualities of Valentine’s large-scale polyester resin sculptures that has so often eluded 
photographs of the works.  
 
Pasadena Art Museum Exhibition 
The role of color was especially prominent in the documentation of Valentine’s 
works shown at the Pasadena Art Museum exhibition in 1970. As seen in the Los 
                                               
87 The sculpture was included in two stops of A Plastic Presence: Jewish Museum, New 
York, November 19, 1969 through January 4, 1970; and Milwaukee Art Center, January 
30 through March 8, 1970. The work was acquired in 1970 by the Milwaukee Art Center 
(now the Milwaukee Art Museum). 
88 Taylor, “De Wain Valentine,” 23.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 118 
Angeles-based photographer Harry Drinkwater’s images of the show (Figure 57), the 
artist’s three circles—thick and transparent—displayed energetic and even prismatic 
effects in their staggered arrangement. Individually and in close proximity to one another, 
the circles appeared layered, as if overlapping washes of color constantly shifted for the 
viewer. A critic later described the circles as exhibiting “complete objectlessness—pure 
physical color volumetrically suspended in space—when viewed from within several 
inches of the surface.”89 Each work was made of translucent polyester resin with distinct, 
solid colors, described by the artist as “deep violet-red,” “light lavender,” and “deep red 
at the periphery varying to a peach color at the center.”90 All cast from the same mold and 
using the same polyester resin, the circles differed in their colors but shared in their 
impact on the exhibition space. 
Fresh from the studio and balancing on their edges without support, the objects 
appeared like artificial boulders or megaliths arranged ritualistically for the public, as if 
part of a silent ceremony, while introducing thousands of pounds of plastic into the 
museum. However, the translucency of the material also gave the circles the illusion of 
being portals through which to reencounter the exhibition space. This unusual dynamic 
created an awe-inspiring installation where the impact of the sculptures was not limited to 
the sheer size and mass of the cast matter. The hand-worked surfaces, for instance, 
created warbled and rippling views of the gallery, while the reflections on the polished 
floor gave the heavy objects the appearance of floating (Figure 57). Based on other 
photographs showing visitors interacting with the objects, the sculptures were most 
                                               
89 Taylor, “De Wain Valentine,” 23. 
90 He also described Curved Wall, shown in an adjacent space, as “clear blue-violet” in 
color. Newmark, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” 377.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 119 
groundbreaking in their dynamic interiors that created elaborate visual play. Images of 
children intermingling with the sculptures on view showed the effects of the works on the 
space (Figure 69), with layers of reflections, ghostly likenesses, and an almost cinematic 
interweaving of visual echoes. In Valentine’s exhibition, the sculptures encroached on the 
visitors’ space in a new way, creating an experiential encounter with plastics. 
Other photographs of the exhibition give further evidence of the visual spectacle, 
particularly when visitors moved around the objects. In one image (Figure 70), an older 
visitor, clutching her purse, peered into a circle, while her companion loomed large 
behind the object, captured in the distortion of the plastic surface, warping any sense of 
distance, scale, and space. These effects were not lost on critics, one of whom wrote that 
the sculptures “become shifting, never ending patterns inhabiting the plastic dimensions 
in almost hypnotic intensity.”91 Another reviewer described the works as offering the 
“visual illusion of huge orbs,” encouraging viewers “to take turns standing behind them 
where they seem to float in a fortune-teller’s crystal,” as if they were mystic objects with 
enchanted abilities.92 In a different image (Figure 71), a visitor, beset with bags and 
standing very still, is framed at the center of one large circle with her hand slightly 
extended. The woman inhabited the circle as if suspended in a sphere—one effect of the 
double concave shape, to appear volumetric rather than reductive. She reappeared in a 
fuzzy, disembodied reflection through the lens of another circle closer to the 
photographer. As seen in the images by Drinkwater (Figure 57), the circles not only 
                                               
91 Betje Howell, “Andy Warhol Art in Pasadena Display,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 
May 17, 1970: F8.  
92 William Wilson, “Other Exhibits of Pasadena Museum,” Los Angeles Times, June 1, 
1970: E8.  
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 120 
warped the space around the public, but also immersed them in the rich colors of the 
works. This chromatic effect was recently displayed in an arrangement of circles at David 
Zwirner in New York in 2015 (Figure 65) that called to mind the Pasadena Art Museum 
installation, where the visitors standing behind the works appeared suspended in the 
plastic substance, as if submerged in an oversized fishbowl.  
As evinced by the photographs and accounts of the Pasadena Art Museum 
exhibition, Valentine’s polyester resin circles were not simply feats of engineering. They 
were human-made phenomena that appeared like giant gemstones excavated from the 
earth and polished to their potential, akin to the stones Valentine collected as a child. 
However, rather than geological, the objects were synthetic, creating prismatic 
experiences only possible when polyester resin was cast on a human scale. Valentine’s 
work with polyester resin aimed to transcend the physical weight and encumbrance of the 
plastic, to emphasize its qualities—transparency, visual effects—rather than its mass. Yet 
it was the thickness, density, and shape of the plastic that made Valentine’s “transparent 
color fields” compelling, unlikely, and engaging. In fact, Plagens wrote in 1975 that the 
objects “moved away from physicality via physicality itself.”93  
The heft of the objects might have gone undetected by visitors, as the weights of 
the works were not mentioned in the exhibition catalogue. However, photographs of the 
installation process (Figure 72) offer a reminder of the objects’ sheer mass and scale. As 
these images show, the human interaction with the works was not limited to the 
exhibition. Upon leaving the studio, the sculptures required continued labor, as seen in 
                                               
93 Plagens, De Wain Valentine (La Jolla, CA: La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, 
1975), 3. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 121 
the efforts of the large group of art handlers placing the objects. These photographs assert 
that, despite their visual effects, the circles were not ephemeral or fleeting objects but 
works of solid, cast matter.  
 
A Polyester Resin Hiatus, In Conclusion  
By 1975, Valentine had turned his attention elsewhere and stopped casting 
polyester resin objects. Previously, he had spoken about the burden of working with resin 
on such a large scale. In the catalogue for the Pasadena Art Museum exhibition, he stated: 
“Rather than the medium being plastic, it is really transparency. Polyester at this time just 
so happens to suit my interests. I would almost be relieved if I found another means to go 
about pursuing my involvement with transparent color fields.”94 The works that followed 
similarly engaged light and transparency, first with his immersive installations that grew 
out of his prior work in plastics.  
As early as 1969, Valentine shared plans to create a polyester resin structure one 
could enter through a ladder or trapdoor, to be fully immersed in the plastic.95 He was 
interested in further expanding the boundaries of the material. Valentine even redesigned 
his studio to be a “laboratory” for experimentation with white walls, white tile floors, 
white furniture, and skylights, as well as a separate space to install environmental 
pieces.96 His exhibition at La Jolla Museum Of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, California 
                                               
94 Coplans, “Interview with DeWain Valentine,” n.p. 
95 Garver wrote in 1969: “Valentine now has plans to construct resin monoliths, either as 
circles or cubes, into which one will enter (possibly by ladder or trapdoor) to experience 
the plastic euphoria from all sides.” Garver, Valentine: Recent Sculpture, 12.  
96 Butterfield discussed the transformation of his studio into a “laboratory.” Butterfield, 
Art of Light + Space, 193. In the 1970s, he also constructed a separate room in his studio 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 122 
in 1975, for instance, was devoid of the polyester resin works, but rather showed his 
Cantilevered Planes, 1975 (Figure 73). The work was composed of acrylic sheets 
installed in vertical succession and edge-lit to give the appearance of floating lines of 
light drawn in space. This installation still relied on plastic as the medium, but obscured 
the acrylic components to highlight the visual abilities of the substance, rather than its 
mass. Unlike in the large-scale cast polyester resin objects, the material of this later work 
was no longer the visual focus but merely the vehicle for an experience.  
Valentine’s works that came after the mid-1970s similarly engaged light and 
transparency, first with his room-based installations, followed by large-scale 
constructions in layered picture frame glass, among other works. The artist did not return 
to casting polyester resin until 2014, after a renewed interest in his work following 
Pacific Standard Time. He has exhibited new circles in recent years, such as Circle Blue 
Green, reaching more than six feet high and cast in 2016 from a 1972 design (Figure 74). 
Now working out of his studio in Torrance, California, Valentine has returned to the 
shapes and substances that declared him the “the technician par excellence” of polyester 
resin.97 The new works have also joined the series of recent shows that have reintroduced 
audiences to the artist’s plastic objects and have reestablished the timelessness of his 
sculptures. His monoliths still read today as extraordinary explorations of light, 
transparency, and color made possible through Valentine’s development and use of his 
own formula. Only in taking control of the production and the chemistry of polyester 
resin was the artist able to free his materials from the confines of industry standards, and 
                                               
to experiment with environmental work. Cara Montgomery, “Los Angeles Report,” Arts 
Magazine 47, no. 7 (May/June 1973): 53.  
97 Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 122. 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 123 
allow plastics to fulfill a new potential: one of complex, rich aesthetic experience rather 
than merely surface, shell and skin. 
 
*** 
Chapter Three — De Wain Valentine 124 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 
 
“I am involved with using art as a phenomenon as opposed to using art as a language, and 
as such I am dealing with real energies, forces, space, time, and matter.”    
        — Frederick Eversley, 19761 
 
 
As an artist working with polyester resin in Los Angeles, Frederick Eversley was 
unique in his centrifugal process of casting. Eversley created his objects by spinning 
liquid plastic in a circular mold until it cured, thereby expanding the tradition of cast 
sculpture. The artist has, since 1968, been known for his geometric forms that emerged 
from this process. An engineer by training, Eversley stood apart from artists of his 
generation for his unusual background. From 1963 to 1967, he worked as an engineer for 
Wyle Laboratories in El Segundo, California, testing equipment for NASA missions at 
the height of the Space Race. In 1967, he left his position to become a full-time artist, 
working in Venice, California, and developing methods of casting polyester resin that he 
continues to use to this day.  
Eversley’s signature and most innovative series of works, the “Lenses,” which he 
began in 1970, have loomed large in his practice. The artist made the Lenses using a 
range of colors in variations of the same form: a circular work with one flat side and one 
curved, parabolic side.2 All of the Lenses were made by casting the liquid substance 
using circular motion. A portrait of Eversley from the 1970s (Figure 75) showed the artist 
posed casually, leaning against the wall of his Venice studio beside one of the translucent 
Lenses. The color of the sculpture was lost in the black-and-white photography, but the 
                                               
1 Frederick Eversley, Frederick Eversley (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of 
Art, 1976), n.p. 
2 Eversley described this series as “transparent, three-color plano-concave cylindrical 
paraboloidal lenses.” Ibid.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 125 
image spoke to the vibrancy of the work. As shown, the parabolic center of the Lens 
made the object highly interactive with the space around it, condensing Eversley’s 
reflection and distorting the architecture of the studio through the highly-finished 
transparent plastic. The Lens picked up streaming sunlight as if conducting energy, while 
it sat on a tall pedestal of clear acrylic plastic, giving the work the appearance of floating 
in space, despite the heft of cast polyester resin. In fact, for Eversley, his objects were 
intended to harness energy. In 1976, he claimed he was “using art as a phenomenon” in 
his work with “real energies, forces, space, time, and matter,” where his transparent 
Lenses, in particular, had the appearance of “possessing their own internal source of 
energy.”3 When displayed, the Lenses were conductors of light, at once like optical 
implements and precious gems as well as finely crafted, hand-cast sculptures. 
This text will closely consider Eversley’s techniques and approach to casting 
polyester resin, particularly as seen in the Lenses, as the objects are rarely addressed in 
the limited art historical scholarship on the artist. By focusing on the process and 
materials used in Eversley’s practice, I provide a more textured history of the artist’s 
innovations, showing that his objects are the result of meticulous planning and labor, 
which is often forgotten in the works’ finished, polished state. I underscore what was  
so groundbreaking about Eversley’s method of working, as he discovered how to 
transform plastic by casting through motion, creating objects with no precedent in the 
history of plastics.  
I begin the chapter with a summary of the previous scholarship on Eversley’s 
work, which has privileged his role as an African American artist coming of age in the 
                                               
3 Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 126 
1970s, at a time that fueled important discussions around the history and the future of 
Black art in the United States. Previous literature has focused on Eversley’s inclusion in 
particular exhibitions, as well as his first solo exhibition, which opened at the Whitney 
Museum of American Art in 1970. I propose an approach to Eversley’s work that looks 
beyond the artist’s mere presence in certain shows by concentrating on what made his 
work in plastics so innovative. I start by closely examining the artist’s Whitney Museum 
show, using the institution’s archives. I expand the scholarship on this exhibition by 
showing how it first presented the public with Eversley’s unique approach to plastics in 
both his construction of the objects and his intention set forth in the catalogue.  
The subsequent text considers what happened after 1970: notably, the 
development of his Lenses. I offer an in-depth discussion of Eversley’s process of 
making these works through recent interviews I conducted with the artist. This section is 
followed by an overview of the installation and reception of Eversley’s first major survey 
organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1976, where he presented a large body 
of the Lenses. Finally, the chapter concludes with Eversley’s return to the aerospace 
community in 1977, as he became the first artist-in-residence at the newly opened 
National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. 
Building from the Smithsonian’s records, I delve into the history of this residency during 
which Eversley struggled within an institution that, from the beginning, underestimated 
his requirements for creating plastic objects outside his studio. This chapter brings to 
light these moments in the early years of Eversley’s career to understand why his works 
are so often removed from the context of their labor and specialized plastics craft.  
 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 127 
On Eversley Scholarship 
 
Much of the literature on Eversley has considered his identity as an African 
American artist in the 1970s, as he is frequently discussed within the boundaries of 
important exhibitions representing Black artists during this period.4 His works, in these 
contexts, are often represented as symbols rather than as specific objects. In 2006, art 
historian Kellie Jones wrote: “Eversley’s presence begs a question: does his multiple 
positions as black person, engineer and artist, whose work represented the intersection of 
aesthetics and scientific properties, modulate our thinking about the place and importance 
of this work?”5 In her discussion on the strong current of abstract art by African 
American artists in the 1960s and 1970s, Jones situated Eversley by claiming his 
significance in creating “a certain type of visibility” in exhibitions for Black artists.6 
Jones included Eversley in an important chapter in African American art history without 
dictating that his objects needed to engage with more explicitly figurative or narrative 
                                               
4 See: Kellie Jones, “‘It’s not enough to say “black is beautiful’”: Abstraction at the 
Whitney, 1969–1974,” in Discrepant Abstraction, ed. Kobena Mercer (London: Institute 
of International Visual Arts, 2006), 162–164; Jones, “To the Max: Energy and 
Experimentation,” in Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964–1980 
(New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2006), 14–34; and Darby English, 1971: A 
Year in the Life of Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). Throughout this 
text I will use the capitalized terms “Black” and “White,” following Bridget Cooks, 
whose choice of terminology reflects the “social realities” around language that have 
informed the history of African American art. Bridget R. Cooks, Exhibiting Blackness: 
African Americans and the American Art Museum (Amherst: University of Massachusetts 
Press, 2011), xv.  
5 Jones, “To the Max,” 32. 
6 Jones wrote: “Some types of activism were more situational and pressed the point about 
black creativity and the existence of black abstractionists through a certain type of 
visibility, through participation in group exhibitions of black artists and at the level of 
content. Activism by Al Loving, Fred Eversley and Daniel LaRue Johnson can be viewed 
in this light.” Ibid., 26–27.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 128 
motifs on race. Her approach to Eversley engaged with other important writings that also 
addressed the role of Black artists and abstraction at this time in American art.7 
Prior to Jones, the literature on Eversley consisted primarily of exhibition-related 
texts, with little emphasis for the art historical significance of the artist’s work.8 Darby 
English more recently expanded the discussion on Eversley as a Black artist whose 
practice of working in abstraction in the 1970s was a challenge both to a White, 
mainstream modernism and more representational, African American narratives.9 English 
offered a rare but brief analysis of the artist’s plastic objects, lending specificity to 
Eversley’s sculptures.10 My text benefits from the important scholarship by Jones and 
English that has brought Eversley’s work to light, even though the artist is primarily 
considered through the framework of historic exhibitions, with little attention to the 
details of his studio practice and approach to materials. 
In particular, Eversley is often discussed in the context of his solo show at the 
Whitney Museum in 1970, which opened amid the political tensions between the 
institution and the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC).11 In 1969, the BECC 
                                               
7 On the challenges faced by African American artists making nonobjective artworks, 
particularly from the 1960s to the 1980s: Dawoud Bey, “The Black Artist as Invisible 
(Wo)Man,” in High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967–1975, ed. Katy Siegel 
(New York: Independent Curators International, 2006), 97–99, 102–104, 106–109.  
8 Most notably: Eversley, Frederick Eversley (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara 
Museum of Art, 1976).  
9 “Through their modernist work on canvas, in plastic, and on the cultural field more 
generally, these artists opened a field of differentiation within a cultural territory 
otherwise captured by the political formalisms of ‘blackness.’” English, 1971, 11. 
10 Ibid., 119, 177–178.  
11 Jones discussed exhibitions by African American artists at the Whitney Museum 
during this time as the result of a political push applied at the end of the 1960s to demand 
more presence of Black artists and workers by the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition 
(BECC), in part as a reaction to the Harlem on My Mind exhibition at the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art in 1969. Jones, “It’s not enough,” 155–180. On April 24, 1969, the 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 129 
challenged the Whitney Museum to better represent African American artists and the 
institution responded: between 1969 and 1975, the museum put on 12 shows with Black 
artists, which included 11 solo shows and one group exhibition, Contemporary Black 
Artists in America in 1971.12 Eversley’s exhibition was the third show included in this 
important roster of African American artists, though reviews from this period often linger 
on the visual display of the objects, with only scant mention of his race.13  
This literature on Eversley has recovered important background on the artist’s 
exhibition, but has not addressed his major body of sculpture that came right after 1970 
and marked an important development in his studio practice: the Lenses. Recent 
exhibitions have brought more attention to Eversley’s approach to polyester resin and to 
the radical, visual effects of his objects, including the Lenses, yet without addressing his 
                                               
BECC met with Whitney Museum staff, who agreed to the following points: “1. Stage a 
major exhibition of ‘Black Art Works.’ / 2. Establish a fund to buy more works by black 
artists. / 3. Show at least five annual one man exhibitions, in the small gallery off the 
lobby, of black artists. / 4. Have more black artists represented in the ‘Whitney Annual.’ / 
5. Consult with black art experts.” Benny Andrews, “The B.E.C.C. Black Emergency 
Cultural Coalition,” Arts Magazine 44, no. 8 (Summer 1970): 19.  
12 The solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum were as follows: Al Loving (December 
19–January 25, 1970); Melvin Edwards (March 2–29, 1970); Fred Eversley (May 18–
June 7, 1970); Marvin Harden (January 5–February 4, 1971); Malcolm Bailey (March 
16–April 25, 1971); Frank Bowling (November 4–December 6, 1971); Alma Thomas 
(April 25–May 28, 1972); Jacob Lawrence (May 16–July 7, 1974); Jack Whitten (August 
20–September 22, 1974); Betye Saar (March 20–April 20, 1975); and Minnie Evans (July 
3–August 3, 1975). The museum opened the group show “Contemporary Black Artists in 
America,” from April 6 to May 16, 1971. Also part of the group exhibition, Eversley was 
the only artist to exhibit artworks in plastic, according to the checklist. Robert Doty, 
Contemporary Black Artists in America (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 
1971), 56. For a full account, see: Susan E. Cahan, Mounting Frustration: The Art 
Museum in the Age of Black Power (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).     
13 Henry Seldis described the show as a “sensual experience,” further claiming, 
problematically, that the artist’s identity is not present in the work: “Like other black 
artists in America, Eversley knows anger and frustration. But he has not chosen to make 
it the theme of his art.” Henry J. Seldis, “Eversley Show in New York,” Los Angeles 
Times, June 8, 1970: E10. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 130 
“multiple positions” outlined by Jones.14 While this chapter focuses in particular on the 
artist’s practice and the role of polyester resin in Eversley’s process, I argue for the 
significance of the artist’s innovations while also acknowledging that there is still further 
work to be done on the racial politics that affected his involvement with exhibitions and 
the larger artistic community. I hope that my close analysis of Eversley’s studio practice 
and work in plastics will inform future scholarship that sees the artist’s technical 
contributions to sculpture as relevant to the political and cultural histories of African 
American art and art in general in this period. 
 
Eversley’s Beginning and Background 
More than any of his contemporaries, Eversley was uniquely positioned at the 
intersection of the aerospace industry and the artist community in Los Angeles. Born in 
Brooklyn, New York in 1941, Eversley had a penchant for science that was supported at 
an early age. His father, Barbadian by birth, was also an engineer, and his mother, a 
teacher, came from a historically prominent African American family.15 Attending 
                                               
14 Jones, “To the Max,” 32. Eversley’s work has recently found new attention, in part due 
to exhibitions involved with “Pacific Standard Time” in 2011, such as Now Dig This! Art 
& Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980 at the Hammer Museum. In the catalogue, Jones singles 
out Eversley as the most “visible” Black artist working in a Minimalist style in the 
exhibition. Jones, Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980 (Los Angeles: 
Hammer Museum, 2011), 21. Two solo exhibitions in 2017 also looked closely at 
Eversley’s practice, with a particular focus on the Lenses: Fred Eversley: Black, White, 
Gray, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, CA, and Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA, 2017; and 
Fred Eversley: 50 Years an Artist, Light & Space & Energy, Muscarelle Museum of Art, 
Williamsburg, VA, 2017.  
15 His father, Frederick W. Eversley Jr., worked as an engineer for Republic Aviation for 
more than 20 years before becoming one of the most prominent Black contractors in New 
York. Ronald Smothers, “F.W. Eversley Jr., Contractor, Dead: Head of Large 
Corporation With Minority-Group Ownership in the 60’s and 70’s,” New York Times, 
January 4, 1983: D18. The artist’s mother, Beatrice, descended from the Syphax family 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 131 
Brooklyn Tech High School, Eversley went on to study electrical engineering at Carnegie 
Institute of Technology (now the Carnegie Mellon University), completing his degree in 
1963. He initially planned to study bio-medical engineering at the University of 
Pennsylvania School of Medicine, but instead took a job at Wyle Laboratories, best 
known for its aerospace research for NASA and the Department of Defense.16 Eversley 
worked at the company until 1967 as a senior projects engineer, testing instrumentation 
systems for NASA and its Gemini and Apollo programs by exposing equipment to 
extreme conditions that might occur in space, using “high intensity energy.”17 Landing at 
                                               
that traced its lineage back to slaves working at Mount Vernon, including Maria Carter, 
the child of Martha Washington’s son, George Washington Parke Custis. Rebecca Sheir, 
“Family Tree: From George Washington to the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington,” 
WAMU, October 10, 2014, accessed March 6, 2018, 
https://wamu.org/story/14/10/10/exploring_the_deep_roots_of_an_influential_slave_fami
ly/. 
16 Eversley ended up at Wyle through unusual circumstances. After graduating college, 
he planned a trip to Mexico to study mural painting and, to fund his travels, he contacted 
Frank Wyle, the president of Wyle Laboratories, whose son was Eversley’s fraternity 
brother. He offered to work at Wyle for six months to a year in exchange for an advance 
for his trip to Mexico. Wyle agreed and Eversley arrived in California to start his new job 
in 1963. Greg Cook, “How Fred Eversley Went From NASA Engineer to Cosmic Artist 
in ‘60s LA,” The ARTery, March 8, 2017, accessed March 6, 2018, 
http://www.wbur.org/artery/2017/03/08/fred-eversley. 
17 Eversley described his job description: “Employed as Senior Project Engineer—
Instrumentation Systems at Wyle Laboratories, El Segundo, California. Supervised the 
design and construction of high intensity acoustic and vibration test laboratories at NASA 
facilities in Huntsville, Alabama, and Houston, Texas; Wyle Laboratory facilities in El 
Segundo and Norco, California and Huntsville Alabama and facilities for the German and 
French government aerospace agencies. Also instrumentation systems for the control and 
monitoring of speed rail (metroliner) and nuclear blast simulation facilities.” Eversley, 
Frederick Eversley, n.p. He explained: “I was designing test facilities to simulate the 
environments that the components would be encountering in space, primarily in the field 
of high intensity acoustics. The most important aspect of all of these projects was that 
they all involved high intensity energy (acoustic, shock, vibration, heat, light, radiation, 
etc.), and how to generate it, control it, and measure it and its physical effects.” Linda 
DeBerry, “Harmonic Convergence: An Interview with Fred Eversley,” Crystal Bridges 
Member Magazine 6, no. 2 (August 2017): 7. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 132 
Wyle at the height of the Space Race, the stakes were high, as he recounted: “I spent four 
years working crazy hours beating the Russians to the moon.”18  
Arriving in Los Angeles in 1964, Eversley initially faced racial prejudice from 
landlords while looking for a place to live. He finally settled in Venice Beach, which he 
described as “the only beach community where Blacks were accepted.”19 Eversley 
became friendly with the artists working in the area, including Valentine, Larry Bell, 
James Turrell, Robert Irwin, and John McCracken, among others, and often helped them 
with technical challenges.20 Then in January 1967, Eversley was in a major car accident, 
severely breaking his leg, leaving him on crutches for 13 months. Friend and artist 
Charles Mattox offered to let Eversley stay in his studio in exchange for help with his 
kinetic sculptures. During this time, Eversley left Wyle and never returned to 
engineering, instead pursuing a new path as an artist. Soon after Eversley moved into the 
studio, Mattox left for a teaching job at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and 
Eversley took over the space. In 1969, his neighbor, artist John Altoon, died, and 
Eversley was given his studio by Altoon’s widow. The studio, a former laundromat 
redesigned by architect and local resident Frank Gehry, had a workshop in front and an 
exhibition area in the rear (Figure 76). It became the epicenter of Eversley’s experiments 
throughout the 1970s, and he continues to work in this space today. 
                                               
18 Marilyn Holstein, “Meet the Master of the Lens,” SoHo Life (November 2012): 14. In 
July 1969, the Apollo 11 crew became the first to land on the moon. On the Space Race: 
Martin Collins, Space Race: The U.S.-U.S.S.R. Competition to Reach the Moon, (San 
Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 1999). 
19 Holstein, “Meet the Master,” 14. 
20 Eversley recalled: “In spare time that I had and on weekends, I’d hang out with my 
neighbors, including [artists] Larry Bell, Jim Turrell, Ed Moses, Bob Irwin, as well as 
John McCracken, John Altoon and Charles Mattox. And as an engineer, I would help 
them do little things, technical things.” Cook, “Fred Eversley Went From NASA.”  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 133 
The Exhibitions of 1970 
Between 1969 and 1970, Eversley began to garner attention for his sculptures, 
which found a range of audiences in different contexts. For instance, during this time he 
participated in three significant and distinct group exhibitions: one that addressed the 
collision of artists and new technologies; another that attempted a comprehensive survey 
of “Black art”; and a third that considered the rise of plastics in American sculpture. First, 
he was included in the Art and Technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum 
of Art, implemented between 1966 and 1971, in which curator Maurice Tuchman paired 
artists with scientific organizations and industrial corporations in the Los Angeles area 
for collaborative projects.21 In the catalogue, companies and artists are equally 
represented. The book’s cover image is a patchwork of portraits of artists and corporate 
CEOs. All those represented appear to be White men, except for Eversley (Figure 77), 
with women artists completely excluded.22 In light of this bias, Eversley’s involvement in 
the exhibition is noteworthy, as well as the fact that he was uniquely positioned to 
participate because of his engineering background. However, his proposed project with 
Ampex Corporation was left unrealized, as it was still in the “research stage” when the 
catalogue was published.23  
                                               
21 See: Anne Collins Goodyear, “The Relationship of Art to Science and Technology in 
the United States, 1957–1971: Five Case Studies,” (PhD diss., University of Texas at 
Austin, 2002,” 334–402. 
22 Women were omitted from this program despite female artists’ involvement with 
scientific communities and Tuchman’s admission that he received proposals from women 
for the exhibition. Maurice Tuchman, Art and Technology: A Report on the Art & 
Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1967-1971 (Los 
Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971), 19.   
23 Eversley was paired with Ampex Corporation, which specialized in audio/visual 
recording and data systems. His proposal, for a “matrix of translucent liquid crystal 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 134 
Around the same time, Eversley was included in the important group exhibition 
Dimensions of Black in 1970 at La Jolla Museum of Art, in La Jolla, California. Growing 
out of a class project at University of California, San Diego, the show proposed a history 
of Black art, from African roots and slave art to European modernist appropriation and 
the Harlem Renaissance, with a small section on “Contemporary Black Art” that included 
Eversley.24 In the context of this show, Eversley’s abstract works were compared to 
process-oriented objects from the African continent, a connection that omitted any 
specific discussion of his use of plastics.25  
In yet another context, Eversley’s work with synthetics was championed. He 
participated in the major traveling exhibition “A Plastic Presence,” which debuted at the 
Jewish Museum in November 1969 and marked Eversley’s first exposure in New York.26 
In February 1970, he returned to New York and, as he recalled, had a stream of 
                                               
imagery” to be sprayed on plastic or silk, was unrealized at the time of the exhibition. 
Tuchman, Art and Technology, 101. 
24 Affiliated with the University of California, San Diego, the show began with an “Afro-
American Cultural Traditions” class that proposed an exhibition as a class project. More 
than 100 students worked on this show and curator Jehanne Teilhet, along with three 
Black and three White students, traveled through 30 states as well as Haiti and Jamaica in 
planning the show. Jehanne Teilhet, “Introduction,” in Dimensions of Black, ed. Jehanne 
Teilhet (La Jolla, CA: La Jolla Museum of Art, 1970), iv-vi. Dates of the exhibition were 
February 15 to March 29, 1970. 
25 In the text: “Eversley’s pieces in cast resin reveal total involvement in the media and in 
the process of creation. The precision of the concentric color rings and the clarity of 
casting seen in his finished pieces are the result of lengthy controlled process and 
technical orientation. The processes are removed from the piece itself because you can’t 
tell what it will look like until it is completely done. The creation is almost an act of faith 
reminiscent of the bronze-casting processes of Ife and Benin.” Deborah Butterfield, 
“Contemporary Black Art,” in Dimensions of Black, ed. Jehanne Teilhet (La Jolla, CA: 
La Jolla Museum of Art, 1970), 132, 134.  
26 Organized by the Milwaukee Art Center, the show traveled to The Jewish Museum, 
New York and the San Francisco Museum of Art, from 1969 to 1970.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 135 
encounters with dealers and curators that would change the course of his career.27 Most 
notably, Eversley visited the Whitney Museum and asked to meet with curator Marcia 
Tucker, who showed great enthusiasm for his work and offered to curate his first solo 
exhibition later that spring.28  
 
Eversley at the Whitney Museum 
Eversley’s show at the Whitney Museum, from May 18 to June 7, 1970, featured 
12 cast polyester resin objects displayed on pedestals in the small lobby gallery on the 
first floor of the building.29 These works represented Eversley’s first major series: three-
layer, three-color cast resin cylinders, cut and sliced in a variety of arrangements, 
including Untitled, 1970, later acquired by the museum.30 This sculpture offered a sense 
of the other objects’ visual display in the exhibition, as they were all made with the same 
three colors that were signature to this series: “an outer layer of violet, a middle layer of 
amber and an inner layer of blue.”31 Appearing like thick stained glass, the work’s shape 
                                               
27 In one day, he recounted meeting several important New York art dealers: first, Betty 
Parsons, who purchased two works for her private collection; and then, Leo Castelli as 
well as Ivan Karp, of O.K. Harris, who would later give Eversley a show at his satellite 
space Hundred Acres. Holstein, “Meet the Master,” 16.  
28 Ibid. 
29 Jones discussed the optics of the museum using such a paltry space to show the work 
of African American artists. Jones, “It’s not enough,” 172. The space, now part of the 
Met Breuer under the auspices of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is currently a gift 
shop.  
30 According to the Whitney Museum’s records, the institution brokered sales of 
Eversley’s works, selling seven pieces to outside buyers by June 1970 and acquiring one 
sculpture for their collection while also taking commission. Fred Eversley: Recent 
Sculpture, 1970 May 18–June 7, Exhibition Records, Whitney Museum of American Art 
Archives, New York, NY.  
31 Eversley, Fred Eversley: Recent Sculpture (New York: Whitney Museum of American 
Art, 1970), n.p. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 136 
bends reflections in the cut sections, warping space through layered color, with crystal-
clear visibility throughout the perimeter of plastic. Two photographs of the sculpture 
(Figure 78)—one with a violet background and bright spotlights and another with a white 
background and diffuse lighting—reveal the wide range of color effects in the work. 
Whereas the first image depicts the sculpture streaked with lines of colored light, giving 
way to a deep purple base, the second image shows the object’s three layers of color as 
suspended entities, with the center, turquoise hue glowing brightest, as if the center of a 
gemstone. In this early group of objects, Eversley used the three colors and casting 
process as the control in his experiments, and created variables between the structures by 
sawing away pieces of the cylinders, consistently and scientifically working through the 
objects—a process he would continue with his Lenses. 
In creating his cut cylinders, Eversley cast the polyester resin by spinning the 
plastic inside a large pipe on a horizontal axis, using a lathe in Mattox’s studio.32 For 
Untitled, in the Whitney Museum’s collection, Eversley began with the cast cylinder, 
which he then sawed diagonally to create a deep cut in the front and a shallow slice in the 
back, leaving a U-shaped divot and a knife’s edge at the top. Small in scale, at less than 
two feet high, the three-colored polyester resin object created a range of views, visible 
through the fine, hand-worked finish that appears machine-rendered, with all traces of 
process removed through sanding. In these sculptures, the labor needed to manipulate 
polyester resin in this manner was invisible. It comes as no surprise then that previous 
discussions of this exhibition have rarely addressed the specificity of Eversley’s objects, 
                                               
32 Cook, “Fred Eversley Went From NASA.” 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 137 
particularly since the artist himself described these artworks as “visual phenomena” and 
“fascinating toys.”33 
In the statement Eversley included in the catalogue that accompanied the Whitney 
Museum show, the artist set forth his intention for the shifting visual qualities of his 
objects, with this opening line: “The crux of the problem of writing a statement about my 
work is that I am dealing strictly with visual phenomena.”34 Rather than representing 
fixed imagery, Eversley explained that his objects and their “internal space and colors 
constantly change in relationship to ambient light, viewing angle, environment and the 
spectator’s frame of mind.”35 Eversley not only relied heavily on the viewer and shifting 
perspectives, but also encouraged a tactile experience with his sculptures: “The intent of 
my work is to create beautiful and fascinating toys with which one can amuse oneself for 
hours.”36 This expectation for the objects is surprising, especially in the context of a 
museum exhibition where the visitors were certainly not asked to handle or play with the 
delicate, plastic objects. In his approach, Eversley sought to create more accessibility to 
his objects, offering a form of abstraction that did not shun social context but rather 
situated the sculptures as a focal point for human interaction.37 While his objects were 
                                               
33 Eversley, Fred Eversley: Recent Sculpture, n.p. 
34 Ibid. 
35 Ibid. 
36 He expanded this point further: “My pieces should be lived with for a long time, and 
hopefully played with, picked up, moved around, combined with other objects, viewed 
under all kinds of light and from every possible perspective angle.” Ibid. 
37 Eversley explained in 1976: “I am attempting to use phenomenon as a means of 
focusing the spectator into perceiving the complex nature of reality, both physical and 
social, and through these perceptions of forming new kinds of subjective meaning and 
higher awareness…To my way of thinking this is the primary goal of the marriage of art 
and technology.” Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 138 
reliant on the handiwork and expertise of the artist, Eversley also intended the works to 
thrive beyond the artist’s own presence. 
The Whitney Museum’s installation seems to have been at odds with Eversley’s 
intentions. While no photographs of the show remain, a floor plan (Figure 79) in the 
institution’s archives reveal that the works were arranged in tight clusters in the small 
gallery, creating a claustrophobic environment.38 In this layout, the sculptures were 
crowded together in a small, windowless space and in fixed grids. The works would have 
felt further removed from visitors as they sat on tall Plexiglas pedestals, which would 
have conducted light and brightened the installation.39 One critic, reviewing the show, 
wrote that the works “seem to float on their transparent stands,” as if beyond this world.40  
Another reviewer also wrote of the striking presence of the works, that “the play 
of light gives them a certain translucent beauty,” but then criticized the objects, claiming 
they were overtly commercial rather than fine art: “With it all, there is something 
‘interior decorator’ about them, some ‘store-bought’ quality that robs them of the true 
weight of art. Some of the pieces resemble expensive vases or ashtrays. There is no 
question but that Eversley has talent, but the plastic medium seems to interfere with it.”41 
As was true for many of his contemporaries, Eversley’s plastic sculptures often 
confounded critics, who did not see the works as handcrafted objects but rather described 
them as commercial items, as was also seen in the chapters on Judd and Valentine. The 
                                               
38 Floor plan, Fred Eversley: Recent Sculpture, 1970 May 18–June 7, Exhibition Records, 
Whitney Museum of American Art Archives, New York, NY. 
39 Exhibition records cited the use of Plexiglas pedestals, measuring four feet high. Fred 
Eversley: Recent Sculpture, 1970 May 18–June 7, Exhibition Records, Whitney Museum 
of American Art Archives, New York, NY. 
40 Seldis, “Eversley Show in New York,” E10. 
41 John Gruen, “All That Smoke,” New York 3, no. 23 (June 8, 1970): 69. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 139 
public was similarly flummoxed by these works. In 1971, when Eversley showed 
sculptures at Hundred Acres, a “minigallery” run by Ivan Karp of O.K. Harris, the gallery 
encountered visitors who mishandled Eversley’s works, operating beyond the artist’s 
stated intentions for his audience to have tactile experiences with his objects.42 One letter 
explained that a sculpture was damaged when an employee found “an elderly European 
man rolling the piece from side to side,” adding: “He was most apologetic.”43 Despite 
such misunderstandings, Eversley’s great debut at the Whitney Museum in 1970 would 
be followed by a productive period of experimentation with plastic casting, as the artist 
began studying parabolic shapes for what would be his next and most important body of 
work: the Lenses. 
 
The Lenses and the Parabola 
Like many of his contemporaries in Los Angeles, Eversley was initially drawn to 
polyester resin as a material that allowed him to cast and finish transparent objects in the 
comfort of his Venice studio, without the need for specialized equipment.44 For the 
Lenses, he shifted the casting to a vertical axis—as opposed to the horizontal orientation 
                                               
42 Grace Glueck, in a review of Eversley’s show at Hundred Acres, on 456 West 
Broadway, described the aim of the “minigallery” that opened May 1969: “Its aim is to 
show the oeuvre of contemporary artists who work in intimate or table-top scale, a 
dimension for which most avant-garde galleries are not adjusted.” Grace Glueck, “Art: 
Highlights of Downtown Scene,” New York Times, December 11, 1970: 56. 
43 Letter to Fred Eversley, July 10, 1972, Hundred Acres gallery records, 1970–1977, 
Archives of American Art, Washington, DC.  
44 Eversley cited glass and acrylic as the only other transparent materials available to him, 
both of which required particular equipment: “Polyester is virtually the only material that 
gives you both transparency, and the ability to do the whole thing without pressure 
chambers or kneeling ovens. So you have much more freedom.” Frederick Eversley, 
interview by the author, December 11, 2017, New York, NY.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 140 
used in the cut cylinders—by attaching a mold to a potter’s wheel (Figure 80). He then 
spun the liquid plastic until the material hardened, creating circular objects with thick 
walls that were flat on one side and concave and parabolic on the other.45  
The parabola is a mathematical figure that, for practical purposes, appears as a 
bowl shape with walls almost parallel to one another that slope to meet at a center point; 
it occurs both in nature and in manmade objects. Eversley explained that “the parabola is 
the ideal physical shape for concentrating and reflecting energy,” with past applications 
found in devices such as satellite dishes and radar antennae.46 For his 1976 exhibition, 
organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Eversley wrote a statement—a four-page 
declaration of purpose addressing his perspective on the function of his artwork, the 
trajectory of his objects, and the role of energy in his forms—that also explained his 
fascination with the parabola. The shape appealed to him as a source of exploration for 
the following reasons:  
1. The purity and elegance of the form, 
2. Its widespread, multi-disciplined applications, 
3. Its inherent ability to concentrate in both lens and reflector modes, all 
forms of electromagnetic and acoustic energy to a single focus, 
4. The fact that I could find little evidence of artistic study and use of this 
primary geometric shape.47    
                                               
45 Eversley described the process in technical terms: “I discovered that I could generate a 
concave cylindral [sic] paraboloidal shape naturally by centrifically casting the liquid 
plastic around a vertical axis, thus employing the resulting centrifugal and gravitational 
accelerations to form the concave surface.” Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
46 Susan Price, “Behind the Studio Doors: The Venice Art Walk Offers a Glimpse at 
Where the Artists Work,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, May 24, 1987: 34. 
47 He further cited past applications: “The parabolic shape is found to exist in a wide 
range of natural forms and physical phenomena: trajectory of projectiles; cables carrying 
a uniformly distributed load along the horizontal—such as in suspension bridges; parallel 
beam light, acoustical and microwave reflectors; parabolic sand dunes created by wind 
action; the parabolic shape of graphical representation of many physical phenomenon in 
the fields of fluid and aerodynamics.” Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 141 
Following this interest, Eversley launched a study of the parabola by casting his polyester 
resin objects. As two sources, he cited a 1687 theory by Isaac Newton, called “Newton’s 
Bucket,” which entailed rotating liquid on a vertical axis to create a parabola, as well as a 
19th-century and early 20th-century method of spinning liquid mercury to create telescopic 
mirrors.48  
While the artist drew from his knowledge of scientific history in his exploration 
of how to create a parabola, he also found inspiration in his engineering experience: 
specifically, a particular instrument he encountered while working for Wyle Laboratories. 
He recalled: “The first time I saw the effect of the parabola was on the handmade lens for 
the Hasselblad they took on the early space flights.”49 Starting in 1962 with the Sigma 7 
mission, Swedish-made Hasselblad cameras were continually used by NASA, as well as 
throughout the U.S. Space Shuttle Program until its conclusion in 2011.50 Eversley 
recalled that one aspect of his job at Wyle was to test all the equipment, including what 
he described as “that very expensive piece of glass”: “I had seen this, actually held it in 
my hand, and it was incredibly beautiful…it was a perfect parabola.”51 Like the 
                                               
48 DeBerry, “Harmonic Convergence,” 9. On Newton’s Bucket: Jens M. Knudsen, Poul 
G. Hjorth, Elements of Newtonian Mechanics: Including Nonlinear Dynamics 
(Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media, 2002), 142–145. On liquid mirror 
telescopes: David Leverington, Observatories and Telescopes of Modern Times 
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 90–95.  
49 Eversley, interview by the author, January 12, 2017, Los Angeles, CA.  
50 Astronaut Wally Schirra purchased a Hasselblad camera from a store in Houston to 
bring on the Sigma 7 mission in October 1962, introducing the space program to the 
cameras. See: Jennifer Levasseur, “Pictures by Proxy: Images of Exploration and the 
First Decade of Astronaut Photography at NASA,” (PhD diss., George Mason University, 
2014), 110–135. Also: Adam Mann, “The Best Space Images Ever Taken By Apollo 
Astronauts with Hasselblad Cameras,” Wired (July 20, 2013), accessed March 5, 2018, 
https://www.wired.com/2013/07/apollo-hasselblad/. 
51 Eversley, interview by the author, January 12, 2017, Los Angeles, CA. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 142 
Hasselblad lens, Eversley’s objects were also visual devices, generating images and 
reflections through the depth of the polyester resin. In all, the artist built his Lenses to 
evoke a rich and ongoing history of scientific principles and instrumentation, through the 
language of plastics.  
 
Casting the Lenses 
The first group of Lenses, made between 1970 and 1974, were cast using multiple 
layers of color, such as Untitled, 1970 (Figure 81). Here Eversley developed the method 
of working that he would continue to hone throughout his career. The artist began by 
adding colored, synthetic dye to the clear polyester resin and catalyst and then pouring it 
into the circular mold made with a found cylinder sealed to the top of the mechanized 
potter’s wheel (Figure 80), which spun the entire time the plastic cured.52 Eversley 
adjusted the speed to determine the height of the walls: the faster the speed, the more 
curvature he could create in the center.53  
Just as Eversley varied the shapes of his cut cylinders, in the Lenses he created an 
assortment of forms based on the same circular molds. The different orientations are seen 
in a 1970s portrait of the artist posed with five objects using similar pigments but slightly 
different shapes: either closed in the center or with apertures (Figure 82). For instance, 
some objects had a circle cutout in the center, such as Untitled, 1970 (Figure 83) made by 
limiting the amount of resin in the mold to create the opening when spinning the material. 
                                               
52 Eversley, interview by the author, December 11, 2017, New York, NY. 
53 Eversley explained: “The speed creates the curvature, which creates the depth. So, the 
faster the speed, the higher the curvature. Depending on how much material you pour in, 
you end up with either a parabola, or you keep spinning it fast enough, and you get a hole 
in the middle.” Ibid. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 143 
In casting, the turntable spun for an extended period of time, from four hours for smaller 
works to three days for the largest objects, and continued until the object had completely 
hardened and shrunk away from the mold.54 When introducing layers of color, Eversley 
created a control for each hue by pouring a small amount of the tinted liquid plastic into a 
paper cup to monitor the resin. He knew to add the next color when the control material 
“start[ed] to gel,” to get distinctive layers.55 Introduced too early, the second color would 
swirl together with the first.  
A multimedia educational kit on “Contemporary Artists at Work” from 1978 
featured Eversley and showed staged photographs of his process.56 In the series of images 
(Figure 84), the artist is first depicted calculating the ratio of catalyst to resin, then 
pouring the mixed substance into the mold, and finally removing the hardened plastic 
object with a vacuum cup. The finished work, emerging rough and opaque, was then 
ready for polishing. In creating the Lenses, Eversley used a range of implements to 
navigate and hand-polish the flat and parabolic surfaces (Figure 85).57 The significance of 
this process of sanding and finishing cannot be overstated. In working with the parabolic 
shape, Eversley chose a form that necessitated the artist to sand and polish everything by 
hand, in a series of acrobatic moves as he worked around the shape over the course of 
                                               
54 Eversley, interview by the author, December 11, 2017, New York, NY. 
55 Ibid. 
56 Dan Tooker, Contemporary Artists at Work, Sculptors (New York: Harcourt Brace 
Jovanovich Films, 1978), Cassette recording, Filmstrip, Visual material. Henry Hopkins, 
director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Los Angeles critic Peter 
Plagens were consultants to this published and circulated educational project.  
57 “A parabolic surface, by definition, has to be completely hand polished…it would be 
much more difficult to get successful outcome if it was done commercially, or in some 
sort of a factory…A parabolic surface is the most difficult surface to polish.” Eversley, 
interview by the author, December 11, 2017, New York, NY. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 144 
weeks of intensive labor. Through this process, Eversley obscured his own efforts to 
ensure the visual effects of the works would not be marred through the marks of making.  
Two Lenses in Eversley’s studio (Figure 86) show the transformation of the 
objects, from rough and untreated to transparent and fully polished. One particular 
challenge of this process was the sticky, top surface of newly cast plastic, as material left 
open to the air was full of air bubbles and tacky, like molasses, making it especially 
difficult for Eversley to maintain the parabolic shape.58 Since this process required such 
meticulous care, the artist never turned to outside workshops or factories to finish his 
works. The polyester resin, when cast and finished in this manner, was still delicate and 
easily prone to damage. On Eversley’s behalf, Hundred Acres gallery even drafted a 
document in the early 1970s for the artist’s collectors to understand how best to care for 
the objects, which included applying polishing wax by hand, rather than with a cloth.59  
The Lenses were made in two sizes: 20 and 40 inches in diameter. For the 20-inch 
works, he used the potter’s wheel to spin the plastic. For the 40-inch Lenses, he worked 
with two large-scale turntables he purchased at auction for 50 dollars apiece. He later 
discovered that these very turntables were used to cast some of the first generation of 
                                               
58 Called “oxygen inhibition,” the top layer is exposed to oxygen that inhibits the resin 
from hardening. Eversley explained: “That means that the first eighth of an inch of the 
resin, at least, is like thick molasses. It’s horrible.” Eversley, interview by the author, 
December 11, 2017, New York, NY. 
59 The document reads: “1. Polish out slight scratches with Classic Car Wax Plexiglass 
Polish using a soft, clean flannel cloth. 2. Wax with Classic Car Wax (wax) using clean 
fingers for application and removal of wax. 3. Both Classic Car Wax Plexiglass Polish 
and Classic Car Wax can be obtained by any large automotive supply store. 4. It is 
important that the sculpture be lifted directly up when moving location. The sculpture 
should not be slid around. Simple cleaning should be done by hand, not cloth!” “Cleaning 
Instructions for Fred Eversley Sculpture,” Hundred Acres gallery records, 1970–1977, 
Archives of American Art. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 145 
atomic bombs in the United States, creating a reencounter for Eversley with the 
industrial-military culture of Los Angeles.60  
 
Transparent Dyes and Opaque Pigments in the Lenses 
Eversley presented his objects as a continuation of his knowledge of engineering. 
His letterhead and business cards (Figure 87) even included “Engineered Aesthetics” as 
his company line, a clever nod to his approach to artmaking. As engineered objects, the 
first group of multicolored Lenses glowed with bright, layered hues through large, 
distorting, transparent surfaces rendered with incredible clarity. The Lenses are slippery 
in their reflections, but are also visually striking, with dewy, deep colors that evoke 
transparent candies. As evidenced in one work, Untitled circa 1971 to 1972 (Figure 88) 
the object is composed of a series of layered, colored rings, from rose at the periphery to 
deep orange, a subtle blue, and a hint of pale yellow at the very center. The sculpture is 
receptive to its surroundings as the parabolic curves in the center create echoes of 
reflections. At the same time, the physical perimeter of the object is unclear.  
Critics from this period remarked on the curious experience of visiting the 
objects, as solid pieces of plastic with extraordinary abilities. One reviewer wrote: “…the 
pieces have curious light-gathering qualities that in one astonishing case produce an 
illusion of a sphere that simply isn’t there. One reaches to touch it, and it disappears: a 
form defined completely by light.”61 Another reviewer echoed this account of the Lenses’ 
                                               
60 Eversley, interview by the author, January 12, 2017, Los Angeles, CA. Also: DeBerry, 
“Harmonic Convergence,” 10.  
61 Benjamin Forgey, “Polished Spheres Catch and Hurl Light,” The Washington Star 
January 9, 1976: C3.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 146 
transformative effects: “Some create the mirage of containing eclipses, others seem to 
become big weightless orbs of color. All act as a wide-angle camera lens, distorting the 
surrounding world into imagery out of fantasy painting.”62 Hand-polished to a fine finish, 
the transparent Lenses were fantastical, even futuristic. In a 1970 letter to critic Barbara 
Rose, Eversley wrote that another artist, Paul Brach, had likened his cast polyester resin 
objects to “moonrocks,” claiming his works are “what everyone wishes the moonrocks to 
look like, instead of the dull, grey, dust they are.”63 The Lenses were chromatic 
phenomena, yet made of inert matter. 
Around the middle of the decade, Eversley began using opaque pigments with his 
Lenses, rather than transparent dyes, as for example in Untitled of 1974 (Figure 89).64 
The objects were cast in the same molds as their predecessors, but were tinted with black, 
white, grey, and peach pigments rather than with vibrant colors. Eversley found opaque 
pigments through an encounter with artist John McCracken, his studio neighbor. He 
recalled that McCracken, who had been using black pigment in his own Fiberglas works, 
gave Eversley a spare can of the material, which remains in the artist’s studio today. As 
Eversley recounted, McCracken offered him the pigment after they had discussed the 
criticism Eversley received for not making “Black art.”65 After a year of the can sitting in 
his studio, he finally used it to fix a Lens with muddied color. Then, after making several 
                                               
62 William Wilson, “Art: The LAICA Growing Up with Illusions of Grandeur,” Los 
Angeles Times, October 3, 1976: R68.  
63 Letter from Eversley to Barbara Rose, April 23, 1970, Fred Eversley: Recent 
Sculpture, 1970 May 18–June 7, Exhibition Records, Whitney Museum of American Art 
Archives, New York, NY. 
64 In a 1976 catalogue, he stated that he began using opaque pigments in 1975 but the 
text’s chronology listed 1974 as the start date. Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
65 Cook, “Fred Eversley Went From NASA.” 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 147 
black Lenses, he turned to white pigment—apparently after a White studio assistant joked 
that the artist should make works for White people—and finally to gray colors to bring 
the two together for a seemingly “biracial” object.66 In first turning to black and then 
white and gray pigments, Eversley responded to critics who faulted him for not 
representing the African American experience in his abstract work. Although a tongue-in-
cheek retort, the black Lenses, as Eversley insists to this day, were not made to explicitly 
comment on issues of race.67 Rather the opaque Lenses allowed him to engage with the 
topic of race and representation on his own terms, even while he looked to scientific and 
celestial inspirations. 
For instance, in 1976, Eversley described the opaque works as representations of 
cosmic principles: “Concepts such as stars expanding their energy and becoming black 
holes, white dwarfs, and neutron stars are important components of modern cosmological 
studies.”68 As opposed to the transparent Lenses, the opaque works paired reflective 
surfaces with limited visibility through the plastic, acting as a mirror for the viewer rather 
than a transparent frame through which to see the space around. For example, in Untitled, 
1974 (Figure 90), the Lens is jet black and dense with an incredibly thin center—
rendered and sanded by hand with the utmost care—which shows the movement of the 
casting process through a galaxy-like swirl of pigment frozen in the center of the 
plastic.69 The work balances solid mass with delicate transparency, with a reflective, 
                                               
66 Cook, “Fred Eversley Went From NASA.” For another source on this story, see: 
Frederick Eversley, interview by L. H. Shockey Jr., 2012, Conservation Records, 
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.  
67 Eversley, interview by the author, December 11, 2017, New York, NY. 
68 Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
69 Thank you to Ariel O’Connor, Objects Conservator, Smithsonian American Art 
Museum, for sharing her knowledge and observations of this artwork.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 148 
polished surface that creates cascading reflections into the concave interior of the piece 
and an outer ring that thins, appearing like liquid mineral at the edge.  
The effects of the opaque, cast polyester resin objects varied greatly, as Eversley 
continued to experiment with the form. Another black Lens (Figure 91), thick in color at 
the perimeter, for instance, softens to a cloudy layer of pigment and then opens to even 
greater transparency at the center, offering a clear view of the space around. In contrast, a 
peach-hued Lens (Figure 92), saccharine in color, is thick with pigment until the open 
hole at the center, made by spinning the polyester resin to expose the core. The color is 
also varied, with a tan outer edge and a yellow inner ring with an iridescence at the very 
center, at the thinnest part of the sanded plastic.  
The relationships between Eversley’s Lenses became clear in 1976, when he 
showed 45 works dating from 1968 to 1976 at his first survey exhibition at the Santa 
Barbara Museum of Art, offering the most in-depth look at his polyester resin objects to 
date.70 In a checklist for the exhibition, the Lenses and other objects are described in 
shorthand, as a cast of characters for Eversley’s artistic output over eight years. This list 
included descriptions for Lenses, such as “Full lens,” “Small hole,” and “Rear slice,” 
accompanied by colors, such as “transparent black,” “opaque black,” “pearlescent,” and 
“3 color.”71 The document gives a sense of how Eversley had been working out particular 
shapes and techniques in his continued work on the parabolic form.   
                                               
70 Seldis, “Art: Optical Magic Turns Us Inward as We Look Out,” Los Angeles Times, 
May 23, 1976: 76. In January 1976, Eversley also exhibited 12 Lenses, made between 
1971 and 1976, at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. “Frederick 
Eversley,” catalogue, The National Academy of Sciences, Eversley Artist File, B.C. 
Holland Gallery records, 1942–1991, Archives of American Art, Washington, DC.  
71 The checklist for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art exhibition includes descriptions for 
objects, from 1968 to 1976: “Flat rim,” “Full lens,” “Small hole,” “Front slice,” “Rear 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 149 
While there are no extant photographs of the exhibition in Santa Barbara, there 
are images from its installation at the Oakland Museum (now the Oakland Museum of 
California) that show both the transparent and opaque Lenses, in 20-inch and 40-inch 
sizes, arranged in staggered rows on transparent Plexiglas pedestals (Figure 93).72 
Situated in a brightly-lit room with pale wall panels, the transparent Lenses in the show 
interacted with the opaque works, picking up echoes or floating apparitions. Critics 
responding to the show focused on the opaque black, white, and gray works and their 
dizzying effects, as Henry Seldis wrote: “Approaching one of these, you will suddenly 
see your reflection flip from an upside-down position to a regular mirror image. Such 
effects and the psychological properties of their colors make these latest pieces even 
more subtle and mystical than the earlier transparent work.”73 Critic Laurie Glass 
commented: “Standing directly in front, one sees oneself inside a larger self inside a 
room—inside the world, inside the galaxy, inside the universe, or so one begins to 
sense.”74 She concentrated on one black pigment Lens, an object that was “visually 
impenetrable at the thick edges, but which thins to the barest of gray haze towards the 
center,” making “a stellar pronouncement in its own section of the night.”75 These 
evocations of celestial bodies and galactic forces were clearly a reflection of Eversley’s 
                                               
slice,” “Round back,” “Double parabolic wall,” “Round parabolic wall,” “Parabolic 
wedge,” “Curved wall,” “Full cath.”, “Thin cath.”, “Crown,” “Concave cath.”, “Double 
parabolic cath.”, “3 sided circular wedge,” “Long circular wedge,” and “3 color, 3 layer.” 
Release of Objects, Frederick Eversley, Exhibition File, Santa Barbara Museum of Art 
Archives, Santa Barbara, CA.  
72 Organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the survey also traveled to the 
Newport Harbor Art Museum, December 1976 to January 1977, and the Oakland 
Museum, February to March 1977.  
73 Seldis, “Art: Optical Magic,” 76. 
74 Laurie H. Glass, “Fred Eversley Retrospective,” Artweek (March 26, 1977): 16. 
75 Glass, “Fred Eversley Retrospective,” 16. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 150 
catalogue statement, which described the opaque lenses as “black holes, white dwarfs, 
and neutron stars.”76 One work in the exhibition (Figure 94) even showed the swirling 
patterns of the centrifugal process, further emphasizing the heavenly, otherworldly 
qualities of the sculptures.  
In the Oakland display, the sculptures were presented as rare gems, examples of 
an unknown natural history, or earthbound, celestial bodies. The objects on their clear 
pedestals appear to hover off the ground as if harnessing sources of energy, seemingly 
weightless despite their mass. Eversley used these transparent pedestals throughout his 
career, as seen in a photograph of the artist posed with a series of Lenses (Figure 95).77 
Eversley’s use of clear stands also emphasized the high finish of the objects, where the 
details of the artist’s craft—in all its messiness—were completely hidden from the public 
eye, and from critics. 
 
National Air and Space Museum Residency, In Conclusion 
Throughout this chapter, I have outlined Eversley’s process of casting polyester 
resin objects to show how his objects were made through meticulous craft honed by the 
artist, which is often omitted in interpretations of his sculpture. I have also situated 
Eversley’s studio as the center of his experimentation, which shifted in 1977. That year, 
                                               
76 Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
77 This attention to a transparent support evokes the work of his contemporary Larry Bell, 
whom Eversley has cited as an influence. In 1970, Eversley attributed his “fascination 
with pristine surface, internal space and reflections” to Bell. Eversley, Fred Eversley: 
Recent Sculpture, n.p. In 1980, he cited being influenced by Bell and Robert Irwin “who 
were employing the elements of light, transparency, reflection, pristine surface, color and 
internal space to create beautifully seductive objects.” Peggy Loar, “Interview: Frederick 
Eversley,” Ocular 5, no. 2 (Summer 1980): 43.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 151 
the artist left his workspace to become the first artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian 
National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, DC, which ultimately posed 
the greatest challenge to his methods of making. While he intended to use the opportunity 
to expand his research on the opaque Lenses, the residency instead shifted the course of 
his practice.78 No longer in the comfort of his studio, Eversley was faced with the 
limitations of working with polyester resin in the context of an institution that was not 
prepared to support the artist’s specialized process of plastics casting.  
The museum, which had opened the previous year on the National Mall, initiated 
the residency program to connect artists with the museum’s collection and its history, as 
well as the public. The selection committee consisted of NASM director Michael Collins 
and curator of art James Dean, as well as representatives from the National Endowment 
for the Arts and directors Joshua Taylor of the National Collection of Fine Arts and Al 
Lerner of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. As Eversley recalled, Lerner 
nominated him, though two other artists were approached first: Robert Rauschenberg and 
Richard Diebenkorn.79 Dean, who had spearheaded the NASA art program from 1963 to 
1974, was Eversley’s Smithsonian representative for the project.80 Dean explained the 
                                               
78 Eversley, interview by the author, December 11, 2017, New York, NY. 
79 Before accepting the position, Eversley contacted both artists, who each encouraged 
Eversley to take the residency. Eversley recalled that Rauschenberg was leaving for India 
to work on a print series and Diebenkorn was retiring and chose to remain in his studio 
instead. Eversley, interview by the author, January 12, 2017, Los Angeles, CA. 
80 While the Director of Educational Media at NASA, Dean was chosen to create a new 
program inviting artists to respond to particular events, working with Hereward Lester 
Cooke, curator of paintings at the National Gallery of Art, as an advisor. Dean and Cooke 
selected the first group of artists in 1963, and in 1974 Dean transferred the collection of 
artwork to the new National Air and Space Museum and became the museum’s first art 
curator. James Dean and Bertram Ulrich, NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration (New York: 
Harry N. Abrams, 2008), 8, 12. Also: Goodyear, “NASA and the Political Economy of 
Art, 1962–1974,” in The Political Economy of Art: Making the Nation of Culture, ed. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 152 
position, in an article in The Washington Post, announcing the appointment: “We want 
his presence in the building. We want him to talk to people, do his work, and consider 
flight and space craft. We want him to consider what they have done to man.”81 As 
Eversley recalled, he was originally asked to work in a glass-walled room in the museum 
fully visible to the public, but negotiated instead for a studio in the basement—a space 
called “Room P710.”82  
Eversley’s original contract for the position stated that the artist would use the 
opportunity “to study the permanent collection of the NASM, to visit other centers of 
flight and space activity, and to respond to this experience, while at the NASM, by 
creating original works of art in whatever medium and technique Artist chooses.”83 From 
the beginning, complications arose, as Eversley’s given residence was being renovated 
during his time in Washington, disrupting the artist’s schedule, and NASM did not have a 
proper workspace for Eversley at the start of the position.84 By December, Dean had 
                                               
Julie F. Codell (Cranbury, NJ: Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp., 2008), 191–206; 
and Goodyear, “Art, Technology, and the American Space Program, 1962–1972,” 
Intertexts 3, no. 2 (Fall 1999): 124–146. 
81 Paul Richard, “The Space Museum’s Latest Craft: It’s Art, by Sculptor Frederick 
Eversley,” The Washington Post, December 8, 1977: E9.  
82 Eversley, interview by the author, January 12, 2017, Los Angeles, CA. 
83 In the first contract, the residency, originally set for November 1, 1977 to June 30, 
1978, stipulated that a Smithsonian representative would ultimately select one sculpture 
made during the residency to bring into the museum’s collection, and that Eversley would 
have the opportunity to exhibit work at the museum, neither of which would come to 
fruition. Agreement, dated October 27, 1977, Artist-in-Residence, Frederick Eversley, 
Dean, NASM, Smithsonian Institution, Contracts Office, Records, 1953–1990, 
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, DC. 
84 During the position, Eversley resided at the Barney House Studio, 2306 Massachusetts 
Avenue, NW, a mansion on Embassy Row owned by the National Collection of Fine Arts 
at the time. The building now houses the Embassy of Latvia.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 153 
canceled the artist’s contract and new dates were set for Eversley to start in July 1978.85 
However, problems persisted. In May 1979, Eversley wrote a memo to the deputy 
director of the museum, Melvin Zisfein, outlining in detail the challenges of his 
residency, which at that point had lasted for 19 months.86 In the letter, Eversley claimed 
that a proper workshop was never provided, as he had spent much of his time setting up 
the studio from scratch in Room P710.87 When the artist had finally finished building his 
studio in the museum, his work was further delayed when he discovered that his 
ventilation ducts were connected to the museum’s central system, potentially exposing 
the public to Eversley’s fumes, making casting plastic impossible.88 After meeting with 
the staff at NASM about this dilemma, Eversley decided to switch gears completely and 
work with precast acrylic to create an entirely new body of work.89 The new objects that 
                                               
85 The new dates were set from July 1, 1978 to June 30, 1979, with the same terms of his 
previous contract. Agreement, September 12, 1978, Artist-in-Residence, Frederick 
Eversley, Dean, NASM, Smithsonian Institution, Contracts Office, Records, 1953–1990, 
Smithsonian Institution Archives. 
86 The document includes a four-page letter, as well as a three-page addendum on the 
history of his residency and a two-page proposal for an extension of his time at the 
museum. Letter to Melvin Zisfein, May 25, 1979, Artist-in-Residence, Frederick 
Eversley, Dean, NASM, Smithsonian Institution, Contracts Office, Records, 1953–1990, 
Smithsonian Institution Archives.  
87 He elaborated: “Thirteen (out of the last 19) months of my time (figured on a full-time 
basis) have also been spent on the project. Essentially, all there is to show for this major 
expenditure of time and money is a well-planned, well-executed, well-stocked workshop 
studio.” Ibid. A handwritten memo by Dean confirms Eversley’s points, as he wrote: 
“Studio really never was setup. Oven not hooked up until April and air compressors in 
May.” James Dean, Memo, June 18, 1979, Artist-in-Residence, Frederick Eversley, 
Dean, NASM, Smithsonian Institution, Contracts Office, Records, 1953–1990, 
Smithsonian Institution Archives. 
88 Eversley, interview by the author, January 12, 2017, Los Angeles, CA. 
89 Ibid. A final contract outlined the comprise, wherein Eversley would remain an artist-
in-residence until April 1, 1980 and the museum would purchase two artworks for their 
collection for $5,000 each. Letter from Elbridge O. Hurlburt to Frederick Eversley, 
August 25, 1979, Artist-in-Residence, Frederick Eversley, Dean, NASM, Smithsonian 
Institution, Contracts Office, Records, 1953–1990, Smithsonian Institution Archives. 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 154 
emerged from his initial acrylic experiments at NASM were stacked, laminated pieces, 
made by attaching individual cut sections of the prefabricated plastic, using glue or 
screws, in a staggered arrangement that cascaded in arches and spirals on a gallery wall 
(Figure 96). The new pieces evoked the structure and movement of aircraft and reacted to 
the light like their polyester predecessors, but did not possess the visibility or dynamics 
of the Lenses, nor did they rely on Eversley’s craft of casting. He worked on this series 
until 1982 when he returned to polyester and continued to work in both materials.90  
The Smithsonian residency, in its failures, was a testament to the significance of 
Eversley’s studio, where he established a process that required specialized labor. As a 
result, his casting experiments ceased until he was able to return to Los Angeles.91  
The schism that grew between NASM and Eversley during his time in Washington, 
regarding practical requirements for the artist, could be explained by a fundamental 
misunderstanding by the institution of the nature of his plastics production. At this 
juncture in Eversley’s career, his sculptures were misinterpreted as plastic baubles or 
fetishes rather than the products of hard labor, an interpretation that would continue in the 
subsequent literature on his objects. It is for this reason that I have sought to bring more 
specificity to the details of his craft and the optical abilities of his Lenses, honed through 
his treatment of polyester resin. 
Eversley’s work in plastics began after an unusual trajectory, as his turn to 
sculpture came after his time as an aerospace engineer. Yet his training allowed him to 
                                               
Ultimately, Eversley would sell two Lenses to the museum in April 1980, ending 
Eversley’s commitments to NASM. 
90 Eversley, interview by the author, January 12, 2017, Los Angeles, CA. 
91 Eversley maintains studios in Los Angeles and New York, but he still creates his 
sculptures exclusively in California.  
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 155 
tap into a history of scientific principles in order to develop his centrifugal process of 
casting and his polyester resin objects, thereby expanding the tradition of cast sculpture. 
By emphasizing Eversley’s technical and artistic achievements, I contribute to the limited 
scholarship on the artist with a more comprehensive understanding of his impact on the 
development of American sculpture in creating nonrepresentational, geometric work on 
his own terms. His works were not tokens of abstraction but were the vehicles for a new 
form of plastics innovation, driven by the particular labor of the artist. 
 
*** 
Chapter Four — Frederick Eversley 156 
Conclusion 
 
“It is somewhat ironic that my principle sculptural medium polyester resin, is a 
petrochemical product (derived from gas and oil), the energy source in shortest supply.” 
        — Frederick Eversley, 19761 
 
The focus of this dissertation is timely, as the news media today is teeming with 
information about the specificities of synthetics: in particular, the urgent need for 
conservation efforts to remedy the growing epidemic of plastics pollution in the oceans 
and around the world.2 While the current conversations around these materials are 
specific to 21st-century developments, the roots of these issues can be found in the 1970s, 
where this text ends. At this time, the U.S. consumer was already weary of the constant 
and inescapable presence of synthetics in domestic life, but a changing political climate 
further accelerated plastics’ decline in the realm of public opinion.3 In short, the period of 
plastics innovation that spurred the practices of Judd, Hesse, Valentine, and Eversley 
starting in the 1960s, with its optimism of embracing “new materials,” gave way to an era 
of pessimism that began around the 1970s.  
This decade brought a series of events that greatly impacted the perception of 
synthetic materials. First, a growing environmental movement raised awareness of the 
world’s limited natural resources and the impact of petrochemical products, like plastics.4 
                                               
1 Frederick Eversley, Frederick Eversley (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of 
Art, 1976), n.p. 
2 For instance: Livia Albeck-Ripka, “87,000 Tons of Plastic And Counting in Pacific,” 
New York Times, March 23, 2018: A8.  
3 On the shifting opinions of plastics in this period: Jeffrey L. Meikle, American Plastic: 
A Cultural History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 242–276.  
4 On the federal level, this movement included the founding of the Environmental 
Protection Agency in 1970 as well as the passage of important legislature, including the 
Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the Endangered Species Act in 
1973.  
Conclusion 157 
Then 1973 brought the oil embargo against the United States led by the Organization of 
Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in response to American support of Israel 
in the immediate aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.5 In the wake of the embargo, 
between October and December 1973, the price of crude oil rose by about 130 percent by 
the barrel, doubling prices for consumers.6 While the embargo ended by March 1974, the 
crisis that ensued became a nationwide, cultural phenomenon, which had long-lasting 
effects on the public perception of oil and foreign resources, as well as plastics.  
In 1976, Eversley even contributed his own perspective on this shifting climate. In 
the catalogue that accompanied his 1976 survey organized by the Santa Barbara Museum 
of Art, the artist used part of his four-page statement to address the need to reassess the 
nation’s energy resources, from his own perspective and research on the issue with 
regards to his artistic production. As befits this period, Eversley was concerned that the 
world’s supply of petrochemicals would run out, which stands in contrast to today’s focus 
on the environmental impacts of such materials. He wrote:   
“The most disturbing impression gained from any study of energy 
phenomena, in both a social and physical sense, is the present and ever 
growing energy shortage. We are witnessing an end of an era of cheap and 
abundant energy and all the social mores that this implied…Since it is 
projected that the world energy demand will triple in the next 25 years, it 
is obvious that major attention must be focused onto this problem.7 
                                               
5 On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the eve of Yom Kippur, the 
holiest holiday in the Jewish tradition. By October 19, President Richard Nixon had 
approved sending $2.2 billion in weapons to Israel and that same day OPEC announced a 
boycott on shipments of oil to the U.S. in retaliation. For further details on these events: 
Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: 
Touchstone, 1991), 600–608.  
6 Ruth Schwartz Cowan, A Social History of American Technology (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1997), 246.  
7 Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
Conclusion 158 
He continued this discussion with a surprisingly candid confession about his role in this 
political situation. While he deemed solar energy “the most likely long range solution to 
the energy crisis” and the most direct influence on his sculpture, he acknowledged the 
impact of his own use of polyester resin: “It is somewhat ironic that my principle 
sculptural medium polyester resin, is a petrochemical product (derived from gas and oil), 
the energy source in shortest supply.”8 In this text, Eversley brought a necessary self-
awareness to the realities of artists working with plastics. While Eversley was among the 
artists who continued working with plastics in the decades that followed, he also 
inadvertently offered one of several potential explanations for why the larger surge of 
artists working in plastics waned after the 1970s.  
There are two possible reasons for this declining interest in plastics from 
institutions and artists as it relates to the overall focus of this dissertation. First, one 
source for the shift in opinion is the energy crisis of 1973, which was followed by another 
shortage in 1979 due to events around the Iranian Revolution that again sent shockwaves 
through the U.S., greatly impacting the American consumer.9 An opinion piece in the 
New York Times in 1979, for instance, made the direct connection between oil and 
plastics, eerily anticipating today’s crisis of synthetic materials amassing in the sea:  
“In America today, an ‘ocean’ of petroleum byproducts is being gulped by plants 
manufacturing millions of disposable plastic knives, forks, plates, and scores of other 
products which once were made from replaceable resources such as wood.”10 The article 
                                               
8 Eversley, Frederick Eversley, n.p. 
9 Yergin, The Prize, 678–687.  
10 The article continued: “In 1978, some 733,000 tons of disposable plastics were used 
and discarded. That’s more than 1.5 billion pounds, or the equivalent total weight of 10 
Conclusion 159 
continued to link the wave of disposable items to the 1970s oil crises, as a call for 
consumers to become more aware of the impact of their use of plastics.11  
Secondly, another source for this change stemmed from the growing realization, 
by artists and the industry, of the dangers of working with plastics, in relation to the 
increasing awareness for safety issues in light of the environmental movement.12 I do not 
claim with certainty that the shifting conversations about plastics in the 1970s had a 
direct impact on the four artists who are the subject of this dissertation, especially since at 
least two of them—Judd and Eversley—continued to work with their plastic substances 
through this period, even in light of Eversley’s statement. Rather, I briefly outline this 
history to suggest the possible impact of such political events on the artistic community.  
In addition, by the early 1970s, artists began to voice their weariness with the 
prevalence of plastics. The presciently titled exhibition The Last Plastics Show at the 
California Institute of Arts in Valencia, California in 1972, for instance, ultimately 
marked the beginning of declining interest in synthetic sculpture. The show began as a 
collaboration between Norry Hastings, proprietor of Hastings Plastics in Santa Monica, 
and Paul Brach, the Dean of Fine Arts at the California Institute of Arts, who together 
                                               
million average human beings—in one year!” Robert C. Lohnes, “Back to Wood. Back to 
Paper,” New York Times, June 6, 1979: A27.  
11 Lohnes posited: “…most of our disposable plastics find a market because they are 
convenient. Is it more convenient to eat off a plastic plate, or to make a significant 
contribution to ending the gasoline shortage?” Lohnes, “Back to Wood,” A27.  
12 In a review of the exhibition Finish Fetish: LA’s Cool School at the Fischer Gallery at 
the University of Southern California in 1991, William Wilson wrote about the decline of 
artists using plastics because of the materials’ toxicity: “By the ‘70s the material was 
proven seriously toxic. Artists stopped using it but not before it provided a mordant 
metaphor of a pretty environment that is pure poison.” William Wilson, “A Study in 
Plastic in ‘Finish Fetish’,” Los Angeles Times, March 22, 1991: F19. The exhibition 
included works by Valentine and Eversley.  
Conclusion 160 
chose three artists—Valentine, Judy Chicago, and Doug Edge—to organize the show of 
24 artists, which also included Eversley.13 Valentine recalled: “Paul Brach, who was the 
head of Cal Arts at that time, asked me if I would curate a plastic show. I was very sick of 
being in shows about plastic because it was art that I was interested in, not just plastic. 
That was just a means, so I said okay, but I’m going to call it the last plastic show.”14 
Here Valentine revealed his own exhaustion with the focus on plastics in exhibitions and 
in Los Angeles, even at a time when he was still casting his own work. I touch on this 
exhibition in order to emphasize the significance of what came before: the period of 
optimism for synthetics that has been at the center of this text.  
Throughout this dissertation, I have looked closely at the production of sculptures 
in the 1960s and 1970s as a way to understand this moment of plastics enthusiasm, which 
drove artists to develop novel approaches to these materials. Through the lens of plastics, 
I have also offered a new way to consider artwork from this period, as emerging from 
distinct movements of innovation where artists created their own models for fabrication, 
collaboration, and craft that were driven by the requirements and capabilities of 
synthetics substances. In my approach, I do not presume the political “innocence” of 
plastics or take on a positivism perspective towards this family of materials, as Eversley’s 
comments anticipate the necessary, shifting climate for petrochemical materials in 1976. 
Rather, I undertake this study of synthetics to bring more specificity to the presence of 
plastics in the studios of artists and their exhibitions in this period. Ultimately, I argue 
that art historical discourse should be more mindful of the many lives of the art object, 
                                               
13 The Last Plastic Show (Valencia, CA: California Institute of Arts, 1972), n.p. 
14 De Wain Valentine, interview by the author, July 28, 2016, Torrance, CA. 
Conclusion 161 
the idiosyncrasies of materials, and the labor involved in the studio or in the fabricator’s 
workshop. These details can provide a more holistic understanding of the art object. 
My approach has important implications for subsequent scholarship:  
• First, the material idiosyncracies of the artworks in question can now be the 
building blocks with which to construct future interpretations, as essential rather 
than peripheral details. 
For instance, considerations of Eversley’s work must take into account the significance of 
his process, as his long history of working with polyester resin was guided by his interest 
in casting through motion with a liquid substance.15  
• Second, a close look at the particular methods of making can free the artist from 
the confines of established narratives.  
By looking at Hesse’s work with Fiberglas, for example, I offer an alternative path for 
interpretation, which asserts the significance of both handicraft and fabrication processes 
in her sculpture. This approach upends prior and long-held claims that Hesse “must use 
only materials that she can make herself,” as written by curator Marcia Tucker in 1969.16 
• Finally, this method can be applied retrospectively and outside the boundaries of 
this dissertation.  
My treatment of the work of Judd, Hesse, Valentine and Eversley can be used with 
regards to figures such as Naum Gabo, as a close look at the artist’s methods of making 
would allow for a materials-based interpretation of his work, liberated from the burden of 
ideological and theoretical approaches. 
                                               
15 See Chapter Four, page 142, footnote 44.  
16 Marcia Tucker and James Monte, Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials (New York: 
Whitney Museum of American Art, 1969), 30.  
Conclusion 162 
As a first step towards these larger objectives, this dissertation has brought more 
material specificity and complexity to artworks by Judd, Hesse, Valentine, and Eversley, 
whose studio practices and methods of making have been explored in detail throughout 
this dissertation. The first two chapters opened up new ways of considering the role of 
fabricators and collaborators in the work of Judd and Hesse, whose sculptures have been 
written about at length, though without much attention to the construction of their works. 
Then, the case studies on Valentine and Eversley brought more attention and specificity 
to the innovations of two lesser-known artists, whose distinctive works in polyester resin 
expanded the traditions of cast sculpture and transformed the artists’ studios into sites for 
plastics experimentation. This focus has allowed me to elevate the role of plastics as a 
group of substances that challenged artists in ways that were distinct from the other 
industrial materials being used in this era, in both New York and in Los Angeles.  
These four figures emerged from a generation of artists whose work, I hope, can now be 
explored past the boundaries of this text, in order to understand their impact as pioneers 
of plasticraft from coast to coast.  
 
*** 
Conclusion 163 
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