Paul Ruscha’s El Gran (Art) Garage
Artist and calligrapher Paul Ruschá came to Winslow with friends Allan Affeldt, Tina Mion, and Dan Lutzick to look at at a largely abandoned hotel called La Posada. From Paul’s LIFE MASK exhibit catalog:
“In 1994, when my friends Allan Affeldt and Tina Mion asked me to go with them to Winslow, Arizona to check out a hotel which they might want to refurbish, I said okay. We drove there from LA and arrived at night, when all we had were sleeping bags to use on the dusty floors of this long-ago-shuttered hotel named La Posada, designed by Mary Colter, an architect for the Fred Harvey company. At that time, it was owned by the Santa Fe Railway as their division headquarters, and I wondered how in the hell Allan and Tina were going to turn this turkey of a hotel into a bird of paradise? But they—along with founding partner and now Special Projects Manager, Dan Lutzick—did. And the hotel is still going strong, with all their rooms nearly filled to capacity.
Discovering El Gran Garage
When I first saw El Gran Garage, the interior house, along with the laundry room/ doghouse, had just been completed by Keith Mion (Tina’s brother) who was a master carpenter and had restored some of La Posada’s rooms. John Gross, El Gran’s previous owner, had commissioned Keith to build habitable structures inside his building, just across the street from La Posada. John lived there for several years but passed away in 2005. I then purchased the bowtruss building from John’s daughter, Clover, who lived in California. Later, I had Keith Mion build out two wing extensions to accommodate my office and a TV den. The main house is composed of glass-paned doors encircling the whole house, 450 panes in all. His 170-square-foot doghouse, I turned into a guest house with a shower and toilet. El Gran Garage is an 8,000 square foot industrial space which I love.
Inside El Gran
I display my Dinner for Dubya in an area which Dan encircled with old glass-paned doors from the defunct El Garces Hotel in Needles, California.
El Gran is also a great space for showing my collections. In 2014, I had a Day of the Dead event at El Gran and showed all of my favorite skeletal artworks by Sandra Yagi, Scott Siedman, Bruce Richards, Laura Hipke, John Scane, and Clive Barker. Also occasionally for Day of the Dead, Dan and Ann-Mary will open their house and studio, Snowdrift Art Space, and I contribute by doing the names of the guests deceased loved ones in calligraphy, and those names then go into the various crèches and tributes that Dan has assembled at Snowdrift. During the span of the Life Mask exhibition, El Gran Garage will be used to showcase other elements of my collections, to be seen in scheduled private tours.
I try to spend a couple of weeks a month in Winslow with our core group of friends: Al and Tina; Dan and Ann-Mary Lutzick; John Suttman and Joan Harden; and Brian and Lori Law.This group is always a welcome relief from the few friends I have in Los Angeles, which often take me a long time to reach because the town is so spread out.”
The Paul Ruscha LIFE MASK Exhibition
October 2024 – October 2025
From October 2024 – October 2025, Paul’s work was shown in our Winslow Studio Artists Gallery at Affeldt Mion Museum. The show is now closed, but here are the details:
LIFE MASK explores the many facets of artist Paul Ruschá, from his calligraphy and photography to his paintings and transformative creations made from everyday objects. Paul sees art in everything, including what many might disregard, like the random product stickers that cover every inch of his kitchen cabinets or the plastic packages he turns into sculptures through his photographs. Paul is an artist, a muse, a raconteur, and a collector, not just of art, but of moments. He sees to the depths of people in those silent gaps between conversations and brings them to life in the flourish of his calligraphy pen. He is the kind of man who will dance with reckless abandon and thrill in outrageous antics and clever turns of a phrase. His unselfconscious joie de vivre comes through in the art he makes as well as the art he collects and the stories he tells. Perhaps that is why he has been the subject for so many artists over the years.
An exhibition on the creative life of Paul Ruschá, entitled LIFE MASK, featuring his work as a calligrapher, photographer, painter, and his fascinating ability to create art out of things other people might throw away.
For Paul, there is no joy in life without art, whether creating or collecting.
If the name Ruschá sounds familiar, Paul is indeed brother to world-renowned artist Ed Ruscha. Paul has documented Ed’s work full-time for more than thirty years. But Paul is also an intensely creative and independent thinker with a lifelong curiosity to explore a vast array of mediums.
We hope, in this overview exhibit, to provide a glimpse into the artful creations of the extraordinary Paul Ruschá. Because Paul himself is a piece of art as much as he creates, you will also find a film about Paul in the gallery, or you can watch it here.
Click to see the Exhibition Catalogue!
