Fred Eversley, Sculptor Who Fused Art and Science, Dies at 83
Fred Eversley, who fused art and science to create captivating parabolic sculptures, died on March 14 at the age of 83. A spokesperson for David Kordansky Gallery, which has represented the artist since 2018, told Hyperallergic that he died unexpectedly following a brief illness.
Eversley emerged on the Southern California art scene in the late 1960s, alongside artists including Larry Bell, DeWain Valentine, and Peter Alexander, whose luminous sculptures, crafted from industrial materials, captured the unique qualities of West Coast light. Although he is associated with the Light and Space Movement, the title under which these artists came to be known, what set Eversley apart from his colleagues was his overriding interest in the scientific basis behind his artwork, rather than any sort of spiritual or transcendent underpinnings.
Installation view of Fred Eversley: Reflecting Back (the World), 2022–23, Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California (photo Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Born in Brooklyn in 1941, Eversley showed an early interest in science, using a turntable and pie plate filled with jell-o to create parabolic forms. He studied electrical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon), where he was the only Black engineering student. He moved to Los Angeles in 1963, where he worked as an engineer for Wyle Laboratories designing acoustic laboratories for NASA. Frustrated by racist housing policies, he settled in Venice Beach, one of the few integrated neighborhoods on the city’s Westside. He spent much of his career in Venice, and before becoming an artist, he would help neighbors like Judy Chicago and Larry Bell with their engineering problems.
After a debilitating car accident in 1967, he left engineering and began experimenting with resin in the studio of artist Charles Mattox, creating his first sculptures, transparent cylinders of colored resin sliced at various angles. In 1969, he moved into the Frank Gehry-designed studio of the late painter John Altoon, and the following year, he cast his first full parabolic lens in polyester resin, a form he would continue to explore for more than five decades.
“His life was running parallel to the art world and suddenly it truly intersects at precisely the moment and the place where artists were also becoming more interested in the questions that he had been interested in as an engineer,” Whitney Museum of American Art curator Kim Conaty said in a 2019 interview.
Installation view of Fred Eversley: Cylindrical Lenses, September 13–October 19, 2024 at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (Photo Jeff McLane, courtesy David Kordansky Gallery)
At the suggestion of Robert Rauschenberg, he reached out to New York dealers Betty Parsons and Leo Castelli, who both declined to offer him shows, though Parsons did purchase some works. A fortuitous meeting with curator Marcia Tucker led to a solo show at the Whitney Museum in 1970, followed by exhibitions at OK Harris Gallery in New York and Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago.
Eversley was not overlooked; his work resides in the collections of over 40 museums. However the level of fame that some of his contemporaries achieved proved elusive. The deep scientific foundation of his works distinguished him from other Light & Space artists, all of whom were also White, and his hard-edged abstractions didn’t fit comfortably within the boundaries of Black Art Movement of the 1960s and ’70s.
Over the past decade or so, that began to change. In 2018, David Kordansky became the first and only gallery to represent him. In 2022, the Orange County Museum of Art opened a new building with a concise retrospective, which expanded on his 1976 solo show at the same institution. He created his first outdoor cast resin sculpture in 2023, a commission for the Public Art Fund, a towering magenta parabolic monument in Central Park titled “Parabolic Light.” “PORTALS,” his largest public artwork, composed of eight monumental steel cylinders, was unveiled in West Palm Beach late last year.
Installation view of Fred Eversley: Reflecting Back (the World), 2022–23, Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California (photo Yubo Dong, ofstudio)
Despite their technical and scientific basis, Eversley’s sculptures are all about changing perception, and the relationship between the viewer, the artwork, and the world as it is reflected and refracted, themes he never tired of exploring through countless variations.
“Eversley’s virtuosity is matched by an understated wit,” wrote Hyperallergic Reviews Editor Natalie Haddad in 2021. “The correspondence between the parabolic lens and the eye can conjure associations with surveillance or panopticism, underscored by the layering of our own reflections with the distorted views and reflections of others.”
Eversley was forced to leave his Venice studio in 2019 when his landlord refused to renew his lease, moving full time to his Soho studio in New York, which he had occupied since the late 1970s.
“He had a distinct clarity of vision that was unique and never wavered,” curator Cassandra Coblentz, who conceived the 2022 OCMA show, told Hyperallergic. “He approached his work with tremendous integrity and for decades he remained persistent in his dedication to honing his craft. I was always struck by the delight he took in exploring the subtlest nuance that would push his vision forward.”
Installation view of Fred Eversley: Cylindrical Lenses, September 13–October 19, 2024 at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (Photo Jeff McLane, courtesy David Kordansky Gallery)
🔗 Source: Original Source
📅 Published on: 2025-03-19 23:52:00
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