Napa, California
Paul Kos’s career as a major figure of Bay Area Conceptualism began during an extended visit to di Rosa, back when it was still a fledgling vineyard and Rene di Rosa, its owner and founder, was beginning to accumulate what would become the world’s largest collection of Northern California art. In 1968, Kos—then 26 and still in graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute—spent a good part of the summer grafting vines and building sculpture. The last piece he made there—a stack of salt blocks titled Lot’s Wife— marked a sea change in materials, intention, and content. It was deliberately ephemeral (the resident cows would later lick it into oblivion), used a natural material, and demonstrated an affinity for and engagement with the landscape itself…see the entire review in the print version of September’s Sculpture magazine.
