Inglewood Public Library

101 W Manchester Blvd, Inglewood, CA 90301

1972

Charles Luckman and Associates

Cast concrete

Library stair tower: 25 ft. x 50 ft.

Tom Van Sant was the Civic Center Art Coordinator for the Inglewood City Center project as well as one of its artists. “The whole mall’s décor costs $185,000 with $75,000 in matching grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities.” [2]

The City of Inglewood

Extant in Situ. Good condition. Some discoloration at the base of the Library stair tower. Inglewood's public art consultant secures graffiti protection and removal.

From top right:

The Written Word (1972), detail of the Christian creation with figures of god and Adam that can be seen at the base of the Library Stair Tower, above. Photograph by Helen Lessick. Courtesy of Helen Lessick.

Inglewood Public Library under construction, 1972. Unknown photographer. Courtesy of Inglewood Public Library

Brochure created by the City of Inglewood for the opening of Inglewood Library and Civic Center.

“People like to be identified with successful projects and, if the Civic Center mall turns out to be as aesthetically interesting as its plans indicate, it’ll be the most popular gathering place for miles around.

That’s the prediction of City Councilman R. Gary Smith, who has been appointed the city’s unofficial art critic by Mayor Merle Mergell. Smith’s artistic craftsmanship revolves around a potter’s wheel, but he’s also interested in making certain that the city’s public projects appeal to as wide a range of art tastes as possible.

‘We can’t please everyone with what we are doing in the mall,’ said Smith, ‘but we’ve received no criticism so far and that’s something’.

...Tom Van Sant...is sculpting the history of man into the concrete stair tower which stretches four stories high at the library’s southern end...each panel will show man’s development in the specific, impressionistic and in the abstract sense.

Set into the polystyrene waste molds are images and words from the Bible, the Koran, the Kamasutra, Zen Dao, the Dead Sea Scrolls, writings of Freud, Jung, Einstein, Gandhi, Copernicus, Lincoln, Jefferson, Emerson, Mark Twain and such contemporaries as Mao Tse-tung, Hitler, the Beatles, and Picasso.

...the whole mall’s décor costs $185,000 with $75,000 in matching grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities.”[2]

 “For The Written Word Tom Van Sant envisioned the skin of the cast concrete building as the canvas for the work and thinking of visual artists, and devised a concrete casting system to pour his art into place. An example of the then-new National Endowment for the Arts Art in Architecture program, the artist worked with architects Charles Luckman and Associates to incorporate his art in three distinct locations in 1972. Building themes of global writing and communication, Van Sant developed The Written Word in discussions with Tony Sheets, a young artist and the son of muralist Millard Sheets. Van Sant so valued Sheet’s contribution that he cast Sheet’s name into the artwork, just below his signature on the Waddingham Lecture Hall.”

[1] Tom Van Sant, quoted on “The Word is Art in Inglewood,” prepared by the City of Inglewood Office of Public Information, c. 1972.

[2] Mary Ann Lee, “Fountains and Art Displays: Showcase Mall Takes Shape in Inglewood Civic Center,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1972, pg. CS1.