Christo's Umbrellas: October 1991, Southern California

Thanks to my art history professor at Los Angeles City College, I got turned on to the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1991. At that time, Christo was building his monumental installation "The Umbrellas" in California and Japan. Here are a few of my photographs of the California event from October 1991.

True story: on the Saturday I was there, we were driving up the Grapevine, a long steep incline that south-bound Interstate 5 makes from the pancake-flat Central Valley into the Tehachapi Mountains on its route toward Los Angeles. At some point on the huge ascent, the clutch on my old Datsun pick-up truck burned out. We pulled off the road and call for a tow, and easily found a mechanic who could take us to a garage in nearby Lebec for repairs.

We rode in the tow's cab with the driver on our way to the mechanic's, chugging up the Grapevine with my Datsun in tow. I asked the driver what he thought about the Umbrellas. “Well, I don't know if I'd call it art,” he drawled through a bushy mustache in a thick Oklahoma accent; “You give me a painting of John Wayne or an Injun... now that's art.”

See my photos of Christo's Gates in New York City, 2005:

• Gates in Central Park, New York City: before the snow 
• Gates in Central Park, New York City:  after the snow 
• Gates in Central Park, New York City: night time

(Indian photo: Flickr user Buddha's Ghost)