User:Gracepolk/sandbox

“I came to (Venice Beach) in ’59 right out of art school because it was cheap,” says the artist, born in Chicago in 1939. He followed friends like Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Ken Price, and Craig Kauffman to the beach. “He was the first and youngest person to crash the art scene of that era,” says Ed Ruscha. The two met in the late 1950s at the Chouinard Art Institute (now part of CalArts), where Bell went from 1957-1959 with the intention of becoming a Disney animator. He found representation at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, together with Ed Ruscha, Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston.

Speaking of his glass boxes, Ed Ruscha noted that they "demanded real commitment and surprised everyone.”

"Hewn from remaindered bits of glass salvaged at the Burbank frame shop where he worked while studying at Chouinard, Bell’s sculptures set the artist apart from his contemporaries. After the Sidney Janis Gallery sold one of his early cubes to Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Pace Gallery in New York offered him a solo show, along with representation, as did Ileana Sonnabend, then based in Paris," according to Michael Slenske.

His inclusion in the Tate Gallery’s “Three Artists from Los Angeles” exhibition in London in 1970 (alongside Irwin and Doug Wheeler,) further cemented his stature as one of the era’s preeminent practitioners—on the West Coast and beyond. He even made the cover (in a photo by his friend Dennis Hopper) of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the iconic Beatles’ album.