A real working-class artist, Ruben Ochoa

Ruben Ochoa’s East L.A. studio, housed in a nursery that’s been vacant for years next to a Mexican restaurant, is a rustic affair — more of a shell than a building, really, with chicken wire covering several holes in one wall and a port-a-potty installed in the back.

“It has one working light,” he says with a laugh, gesturing to several fluorescent bulbs overhead. “All these are just fake. Two power outlets. I can power the light, but then when I power the machine, that light flickers.”

The machine — a squat, metal box with several spool-shaped rollers on top — is a rebar bender, and the only piece of major technology visible, save the laptop that’s open on one of the tables. Most of the floor space is taken up by a piece called “three the hard way” — three arcing metal poles on which are suspended rough chunks of seemingly uprooted concrete — that’s destined for the collection of the Miami Art Museum. In the lot behind the studio looms an immense piece made for a solo show opening at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art in March:  11 individual pallets suspended 10 to 16 feet off the ground on spindly, wavering rebar legs, like a throng of enormous, swaying spiders.

Ochoa, who has a soft-spoken, slightly bashful manner but a broad smile and a quick laugh, betrays a clear affection for the building as he and Cam La, his partner and a central member of his team, show me around.

To read my Arts & Books section report from the studio of this up-and-coming SoCal sculptor, click here.

--Holly Myers

Photo: The artist, and new work. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Naomi Hawthorn]

"Real Working Class" as opposed to what? Fake working class? Does a person's "class" make them a better artist? The "lower" the class the more "authentic" the artist? Why are artists' biographies included in articles like this when they're "working class"? Is it a big surprise that a good artist comes from the "working class"? Are good artists usually from the "upper class"? And what is this class issue anyway? Sounds like classicism to me.

[Donald Frazell]

More like racism, just becuase he is Latino. He isnt working class, as he needs his family to actually make the works, and blew wads of money on Otis and then a useless MFA. He obviously doesn't work, so not "working' in any class.

These are playthings, and items built to titilate non working class people with false fronts of life among the blue collar, to pretend for a moment their lives actually mean something, and are "tough" and "real". Its fantasy for the effette. Sculptors have been using rebar and welded and twisted works since david smith and even before, Picasso and many did themselves, not using tougher family as they were too "soft" spoken, and otherwise. Oh, so sensitive! LOL!

art collegia delenda est

[Donald Frazell]

If you want real fantatic working class art, simply take the Blue Line down to Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, Nuestra Puebla. Done completely by one man with found and donated construction items, into real art, of mankind, nature and god. This is pseudo intellectual silliness. He is a token, to make the fine young white folks of the ethnic contemporary artscene feel liberal. As nothing is more ethnic than it, tender young white children they are. Saw enough of their playthings and therapy yesterday, yech.

It is time to put childish things aside. Pres. Obama

art collegia delenda est
Save the Watts Towers, tear down the Ivories

[fil]

If the artist is utilizing content that reflects a subject should that not be a topic of discussion?
Great to see good artists being written about at all.
Thanks Holly.

[None]

I would like to applaud the LA Times for doing an artist profile. On a day that most of the country is focused on the personalities behind the movies, it's nice for the Times to show use that there are people behind the art we enjoy.

thank you!

[Cate]

An artist's social or economic class shouldn't matter, but this profile of Ruben Ochoa shows he has class.

[Donald Frazell]

Seems more like a chubchub with no real energy, his uncles palletes one anothers rebar? Wow, impressive. Probably went to home depot for help, he is obviously rather lazy, parents do sometimes excuse their kids as 'artistes', makes them feel better, as being Special. As in olympics.

there is not work here, no form, just twisted mtal holding whole pallets, not even made into shapes like a real artist would, making something from waste which has been done for a hundred years. . Its just waste on display up in the air, the back lot here at work looks similar, just alot more. We work.