OPEN HAND - 1963
The sculpture depicts a young girl wearing a long dress. She stands upright on a pedestal in the middle of a square pool of water. One arm hangs at her side, the hand raised away from the body. The other hand is lifted to waist height and on it rests a bird – a dove or pigeon. The sculpted head tilts very slightly to one side. The face, which is stylistically reminiscent of Millard Sheets, is smiling. Its eyes look up and out to the viewer.
The figure is posed as if she has been arrested in action and is holding her breath so as not to disturb the bird. The delicacy of her fingers and her winsome facial expression invite the viewer into a moment of shared quietness. They also, however, stand in marked contrast to the sculpture’s columnar body, which has something of the solidity and lumpiness of a sack of potatoes.
A bulge at knee height suggests that the figure is standing with one foot forward. However, her shoulders and hips remain horizontal. In this way, like an Egyptian statue, the figure holds a tension between stasis and motion.
While the plants behind the sculpture obscure the shape of i head in Shulman’s photograph, an image found in the TVS digital records appears to depict a maquette or Open Hand or the sculpture itself before installation. Titled Child and Bird, the image shows that the sculpted head lacked a cranium. Indeed, in a manner reminiscent of the Marvel character Groot, her head is ‘exploded.’ [1]
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Gibraltar Savings and Loan Association
3701 S. La Brea Ave, Baldwin Hills, CA 90016
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1963
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William L. Pereira
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Bronze
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5ft. tall
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Unknown
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Gibraltar Savings and Loan Association
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Gibraltar Savings and Loan failed in 1989. The Pereira building was demolished before 2014 and the site is now occupied by part of the Baldwin Hill Center strip mall stores. The fate of Open Hand is unknown.
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Top: Julius Shulman photography archive, Job 3588: William L. Pereira and Associates, Gibraltar Savings (Los Angeles, Calif.) 1963.
Bottom: TVS digital records.
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Open Hand was the first job that Tom Van Sant undertook for William Pereira, whom he had met in 1962 through his friend Ann Buck, “a valued employee” of the Pereira office. [2] Van Sant would go on to work for Pereira on more than a dozen projects and, in 1965, he would marry another Pereira employee, Executive Assistant Kathleen J. Bowen.
It’s fanciful of course, but I wonder if Tom met Ms. Bowen just as he began to sculpt Open Hand?A photograph from the time suggests that something of her facial proportions and open-hearted look seem to have found their way to the statue. (Or, like Pygmalion, did Van Sant fall for the face he sculpted?)
"Gibraltar Savings & Loan will open its new Baldwin Hills branch office at 3701 La Brea Blvd. on Jan 2 [1963]. The building has an atrium-styled public lounge area surrounding a central pool with a sculpture designed by Tom Van Sant, and a skylight above.”[3]
“Among the highlights of the new building, designed by William L. Pereira & Associates, will be a large reflection pool and garden in the main lobby.”[4]
[1] Rather than Stan Lee influencing this work, it’s more likely that Van Sant’s sculpture influenced the animators! Groot of the 1960s looked very different from the baby-faced character who now inhabits the Marvel Universe.
[2] Jo Lauria, Oral history interview with Tom Van Sant, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2008.
[3] “S&L to Open its Branch in Baldwin Hills,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 16, 1962, pg. M7, Accessed Nov. 29, 2023.
[4] “Savings Firm Plans Branch Office in Baldwin Hills Area,” Los Angeles Times, Aug 5, 1962, pg. O24, Accessed Nov. 29, 2023.
