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14: Building the Gallery
- University of Arizona Press
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136 14 Building the Gallery An artist is an architect who works in two dimensions. An architect is an artist who works in three dimensions. —De Grazia1 de Grazia’s mosT exTravaGanT building, the one he considered his best work, was yet to come—the more than 16,000-square-foot Gallery in the Sun, a “40-room complex . . . comprised of three buildings . . . connected by a wall enclosing a large vegetated courtyard ,” which he built in six stages beginning in 1960.2 His love of Arizona inspired its design; he said he wanted “to get the feeling of the Southwest. I wanted to build it so that my paintings would feel good inside of it.”3 He designed the whole complex with rudimentary sketches that he adapted as he went along, but at one point he also made a clay model that he placed on a fifteen-by-fifteen-inch piece of wood. One time a county building inspector came out to check on construction. It turned out De Grazia had gone to the university with the inspector. He showed the inspector the clay model and a couple of sketches. They had a couple of drinks. Then they had a couple more drinks. Before long the inspector signed the necessary papers. Then he had a couple more drinks and headed back to town.4 Visitors enter the gallery through a door framed, like a mine shaft, by three railroad ties. “The door [itself] is a copy of the door at the Yuma Prison. I like jails, but I like them better when the doors are Building the Gallery 137 left open.”5 He had a metalsmith make the gate look old by burying it in a pit with water, mud, and salt to age it over time. Colored glass marbles inset in the irregular door embellish it.6 He built the foyer like a mine tunnel, saying he liked tunnels, a reminder of his days in Morenci. In the foyer are exposed wooden beams called “vigas” and very small windows filled with colored glass. Straight ahead is a tiled lobby with a sitting area, a beehive fireplace, and built-in adobe benches. Filtered skylights diffuse light, and three narrow vertical windows face north into a courtyard. To the right is a gift shop. Behind the shop is another minelike door heading into offices and storage space. Marion vividly described her impressions: Walk through the tunnel. At first the prison gate and the tunnel with its darkness has blinded your eyes. And then at once there is a comfortable feeling, a friendly feeling. The gentle light from the skylights becomes a part of you. The many impressions of visitors become a kaleidoscope of many impressions. Many, many pleasant impressions. Creativity prevails. The building itself is a work of art.7 To the left of the main entrance are three galleries. Niches and alcoves hold pottery and sculptures. Walls are painted in desert colors or left natural with a plastering of mud and straw. “A wall out of mud is beautiful and satisfying,” De Grazia said, “but a wall of mud and straw is a union of materials that are in complete harmony and produce an aesthetic feeling, long to be remembered. To me this is the great Southwest. The mud wall is masculine—physically strong and durable. The straw is feminine—delicate as a thread. Its color is sun and gold.”8 In Marion’s words: No money. Put up your walls from the earth. Tamp it. Form it. It is a shelter. From a shelter to a gallery is a long way, a long, long, long way. A lonely way.9 On some walls De Grazia used plaster with rough gravel, heavy on the cement and not much lime, to produce a severe texture. Then, as he had done with the houses and other structures he had built, with the plaster still wet, he painted with at least three colors, sometimes [44.200.196.38] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:06 GMT) chapTer 14 138 six, to soften the walls. “The result,” he said, “is that they come alive. They sing and exude beauty.”10 The floors are made of a variety of materials—concrete and red lime, burnt adobe, flagstone, and slices of cholla branches. “On some of the gallery floors, I use mud, on others, jumping cholla cactus. The cholla, cut about four inches long, is sanded and sealed with wax. The tops of some of the...