Biographies
The Young Turks were some of the pioneers of an early move by artists into warehouses and commercial buildings in the downtown Los Angeles area in the 1970s.
The artists profiled in the documentary — which was shot between 1977 and 1981 — were not the only artists moving downtown at the time. They were friends that filmmaker Stephen Seemayer knew well enough to capture at work and at play.
Some brief biographical information on the artists profiled in "Young Turks":
BOB & BOB, a perfor-mance art duo whose observations on American culture are laced with humor and irony.
LINDA FRYE BURNHAM, a poet and songwriter, and publisher of High Performance magazine.
JAMES CROAK, a large-scale sculptor who lived in a fire station at the heart of downtown L.A.'s Skid Row.
WOODS DAVY, a sculptor whose elegant yet precarious works mix man-made and natural elements.
ERIC 'RANDY' JOHNSEN, the "Action Critic," who never met a painting he didn't want to destroy.
MARC KREISEL, a mixed-media conceptual artist and owner of the legendary punk-rock dive Al's Bar.
RICHARD NEWTON, a performance artist and filmmaker whose work is inflected with surrealism, poignancy and humor.
JON PETERSON, a painter and sculptor whose "bum shelters" around Skid Row com-bined art and function.
MONIQUE SAFFORD, a conceptual artist and photographer who incorporated the literary with the visual.
JOHN SCHROEDER, who combined fossils and other remnants of life in moving, poetic assemblages.
STEPHEN SEEMAYER, a multimedia artist known for performances involving fire and a human fetus.
COLEEN STERRITT, whose sculptures' decorative, colorful surfaces belie their menacing structure.
ANDY WILF, an expressionist painter whose personal demons infused every canvas.
More Information
Click on an artist's picture above for links and articles about their work.
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