In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Wyoming-born conceptual artist Paul Kos.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
In this episode Emily chats with renowned conceptual artist Paul Kos. Paul shares stories from his upbringing in Rock Springs, Wyoming, his journey from aspiring diplomat to celebrated artist, and his influential years at the San Francisco Art Institute. The conversation covers his early inspirations, unique conceptual works—including the famous "Richmond Glacier" and "Chartre Bleu" stained glass TV installation—and his collaborations with art collector Rene di Rosa. Paul reflects on the role of accidents in his creative process, memorable exhibitions, and the Bay Area places that inspire him. Tune in to hear aboutt the life and art of Paul Kos, with insights into the evolution of conceptual art in Northern California.
About Artist Paul Kos :
Paul Kos, born in Rock Springs, Wyoming, is an influential American conceptual artist and educator. He is one of the founders of the Bay Area Conceptual Art movement in California and has been a leading artist and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area for over three decades. Kos's work often incorporates video, sound, and interactivity into sculptural installations, challenging conventional art media and subject matter. His major retrospective "Everything Matters" was held at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2003, and a second major survey of his work, "Equilibrium: A Paul Kos Survey," was held at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa in 2016. Kos's art is included in numerous public museum collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He has received numerous awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in video and audio.
Visit Paul's Website: PaulKos.net
More Info on Far Out at Di Rosa San Francisco CLICK HERE.
More Info on the People Make This Place exhibit at SFMOMA - CLICK HERE
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2025-0930 - AIA - EP057 - Paul Kos
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 1 0 2 0.5 FM every Friday at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Paul Kos: So I walked up to him and I said, if I play you in pétanque and I beat you, will you move the window after lunch?
And if not, and if I lose, I have American dollars, which were then nine francs to a dollar. So the dollar was really high then. And they said, of course.
Host Emily Wilson: That’s conceptual artist Paul Kos the guest on this week's art is awesome.
I am your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people [00:01:00] that I created this biweekly podcast to highlight their work.
Paul Kos a seminal conceptual artist grew up in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Paul went to Georgetown for a year planning to be a spy or a diplomat, but he decided to be an artist and came to the San Francisco Art Institute in the sixties. He got a BFA and an MFA. And went on to teach there for 30 years. Paul met Rene di Rosa, who hired him to work on his winery in Napa.
Di Rosa collected Northern California artists such as Joan Brown, Enrique Chaya, and Jay DeFeo, which was not what most people were doing at that time. In 1997, Di Rosa and his wife Veronica, made their private collection public and opened what is now known as the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art. Recently, a [00:02:00] satellite museum opened in San Francisco and Paul's work is part of the first show, Far Out.
His art is also currently on view at SF MoMA's People Make This Place: SFAI Stories. Paul's art has been shown around the world, including in Los Angeles, New York, China, and Germany. I met Paul at his apartment where he talked about how accidents give him the best ideas. Some of the pieces he's done such as sand that ran from the floor of one gallery to the floor below.
He showed me photos of his work and books and talked about growing up in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
Artist Paul Kos: I started doing drawings as a kid four years, so five years old. At six to nine years old, I would enter the Sweetwater County fair with drawings and get a blue ribbon or a purple [00:03:00] ribbon. So I was making art all this time. Although I can write with both hands, I still draw with my left hand. Then I went through years and years of doing small paintings and drawings.
The landscapes, mostly horses and landscapes 'cause that's what we had a lot around. My father had a horse and he was a doctor in town, but we had a little corral and, and I worked on a sheep ranch and we had horses, et cetera.
Host Emily Wilson: When Paul showed up at the Art Institute, he found that people did things a little differently.
Artist Paul Kos: I had a little small box, had probably 60 colors in it, the size of my finger, and I walked into the first class with a cardboard canvas, covered cardboard, and I walked in and everybody's canvas was four foot by six foot, or one guy had a nine foot or 10 foot painting that he was doing on the wall. It's the whole semester and I had Joan Brown and [00:04:00] she came up to me, this is my first class, she said, um, this probably won't do here.
Your brush is so small to paint. Why don't you go down to Bay City and buy quart cans and a three-inch brush and come back and we'll start. So I became a disciple of the Art Institute.
Host Emily Wilson: Paul got both his BFA and MFA in painting. He got interested in sculpture, but he wasn't allowed to switch his major.
Artist Paul Kos: I met an artist in the graduate program named Peter Guten, who has a studio here in the city, and he was doing really quite interesting work with fiberglass and resins and lacquer paint thinner sprayed.
And that interested me. And so I wanted to do that, but they told me they wouldn't graduate me. So I finally, uh, got my degree and then I moved to Napa.
Host Emily Wilson: Paul met art collector Renee DeRosa there, and started working on his vineyard DeRosa, [00:05:00] who eventually made his collection public as the Diosa Center for Contemporary Art.
Asked Paul to make a floating sculpture for the lake and a flagpole that had a spring, so it bent in the wind. Paul also made his first conceptual art piece there.
Artist Paul Kos: He had jersey cattle on the property. And so what I did was make a piece out of salt blocks, which cattle use. So I just used a red, white and yellow salt block, red, the iron yellow, the sulfur and white, the iodine salt blocks, and I bought salt blocks and drilled a hole through 'em and stuffed them up.
Here is a photo of it. I can show you, I think here. And called it Lot's Wife. The cattle proceeded to lick it away and he tried to get a rent a giraffe from the zoo to see if they could come and lick the top blocks, but it wasn't necessary. 'cause as they licked the bottom, these would slide [00:06:00] down. And so he was happy. But just to show you how salt affects the earth still to this day for about a 10 foot diameter. Nothing grows because it melts ice and it kills plants.
Host Emily Wilson: Paul talked about how Tom Marioni, a curator at the Richmond Art Center, started the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco. Paul had his first show there in 1969.
Artist Paul Kos: I blocked the gallery entrance to the gallery with 10,000 pounds of ice and no one could enter.
You had to go through a side door to get in. But I thought it was this July and it would melt, and eventually because the sidewalk landed toward the street, it would eventually loop, be like a glacier. It's called the Richmond Glacier, and it would move down the sidewalk. But the firemen came about an hour after the opening and with their hatches chopped it into pieces right away, they said, you can't block to me, one of the means of [00:07:00] egress, it's gotta have to be two to a museum for people to get out in case of a fire. And so they, and unfortunately I didn't have a, a movie camera at the time with me because it was a great performance. They're in their suits and axes and chopping 10,000 pounds of ice.
Host Emily Wilson: Paul talked about creating one of his most famous pieces, Chartres Bleu, stained glass windows made of TV sets. He ran into a few stumbling blocks.
Artist Paul Kos: finally in Chartres, I found the, the right one. I asked him if I could build and they said, well, you have to go ask the pre is there to metier for permission. I went to their office and they said, well, we'll give you an answer in two or three weeks. We'll find out. I said, but I'm only in Paris another couple days, and they said, I'm sorry, but you have to wait.
Host Emily Wilson: Paul told the proprietor of the apartment he was staying in about his troubles.
Artist Paul Kos: He said “un moment.” He went to the phone. He said, let's go [00:08:00] on the subway right away. I will do the talking. You don't have to talk.
We went to the head of the art,the head person, and the reason he knew him, he made. Book bindings, leather book bindings for diplomats to take his gifts to different countries. So he knew all these upper class people. When they traveled, they'd come to him to get a gift. And so the Pray for Art Maier called the Cathedral and said, give Paul cost permission to build a scaffold in front of the window he chooses.
Host Emily Wilson: On a Friday. Paul told them where he wanted the scaffolding. When he came on Monday, they had a different idea.
Artist Paul Kos: I got back and they decided I'm an American. I don't know the best window in the cathedral. So they chose another window. It's squares, but it's the blue is more beautiful blue, I guess. And so they thought it'd be much better, [00:09:00] but I said, I can't, you don't understand.
The reason I'm doing this piece has to be three to four rectangles. I said, could you move it now? And they said, oh, maybe in a week or two. But I, sorry. But
Host Emily Wilson: Paul noticed that the workers were playing petanque. If you know Paul, you know he loves the game.
Artist Paul Kos: So I walked up to him and I said, if I play you in petanque and I beat you, will you move the window after lunch?
And if not, and if I lose, I have American dollars, which were then nine francs to a dollar. The dollar was really high then, and they said, of course. So we played, I lost, but they were so impressed that I played the game. They moved it right after lunch,
Host Emily Wilson: Paul realized he couldn't do video, but over two days he took photos of each pan at different times a day, and he turned that into a video.
Artist Paul Kos: In the end found that the one that was the clearest and best might be a certain time of day based on the sun. [00:10:00] And with that, I came back to California with these slides and in by then I had Utah Street here. So in my studio downstairs, I set up a four by five bellows. With a slide at the end and an $18,000 video camera.
Now, I borrowed a really good video camera, and as the sun, California sun now coming through the slide, I could manipulate the F stop to go from dark to light. So it's a 12 minute, six minutes to noon, from noon to dusk, slowly and all. 27 panes, and then eventually the Minneapolis Art Center decided we'll do the piece.
They bought 27 monitors, television sets, and half inch reel to reel, which lasted about a month, and then they have to get new tapes and make 'em again.
Host Emily Wilson: Together. Paul and his [00:11:00] wife artist, Isabelle Sorrell, built an underground chapel at di Rosa Chartres Bleu. He showed me a photo.
Artist Paul Kos: So this is this stained glass window.
It's full scale, 27 televisions, each turned on their side vertically, and they're the life of Christ. But from his birth to his death, not his death, just. The life of Mary mostly it's at the end of a tunnel in the Roman numerals of the stations of the cross. It was flooding that year in Napa Valley, the rivers, so the architect's tunnel had a curve like this, and so Isabel painted the Noah's Ark using the, the proportions in the Bible, 300 cubits by 50 by 30. Not like Walt Disney, but it would look like this, like a kayak, which is very seaworthy. And so there it is. And then Isabella and I were married in the chapel, and Rene was [00:12:00] my best man.
Host Emily Wilson: Last month, di Rosa opened a satellite museum in San Francisco's, Minnesota Street Projects. Paul has work in the inaugural show, far out Northern California art from the DeRosa Collection Paul's piece in the show equally. Three is a broom with a wire and two bells that stands by itself.
Artist Paul Kos: Renee bought that broom and lent it to the Oakland Museum for a show, and it fell over.
One weekend, the janitor came in and she picked it up and thought, oh, somebody left the broom on the floor, and so just kind of put it in her cart. And wrote her name, Juanita, on the broomstick, carved it in. A day or two later, I got a call from Oakland Museum saying, your piece has been stolen. We can't find your piece.
We don't know what to do. And I said, but it's not mine. It's di Rosa’s. You have to call him. They did. And then they found it in her cart. They asked Rene, [00:13:00] do you want us to remove the name? And he said, oh no, leave it. It's a good thing.
Host Emily Wilson: This is three questions. It's the part of the show. We're asked the guests the same three things. When did you know you were an artist? What's some work that had an impact on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Paul Kos: When I was six years old, pretty much that's it. I mean, I was drawing quite a bit by then, and that looked like a horse. Looked like a horse. A mountain looked like a mountain.
Tom Marioni for sure, because he recognized the kind of work then that I was doing, and others similarly, and gave us all our first [00:14:00] shows there. There's also a gallery here in San Francisco, Reese Paley Gallery, and they gave myself, Howard Fried, Bruce Nauman and Terry Fox and Terry did the basement one year instead of the upstairs gallery.
And so when they offered me a show, I said, I'd like to use the basement and one piece upstairs. They said, okay. I drilled a small hole in the floor of the first of the ground four gallery, and I put one ton of sand on top of the hole. Dry sand, very, very dry, small grain, certain size, grain. And I had a very small tube and as it became, it was like a giant volcano.
And if you were to go downstairs, you would see this little little trace of in the light sand coming down, building a cone larger and larger and larger. Until finally it stopped when the volcano [00:15:00] couldn't fall anymore. Unless somebody slammed the door, a truck went by and made the street bounce or something, then it would be a micro avalanche that would go down.
And that piece really was interesting for me 'cause I used the space. Houston, a new material, and I had just come back from Death Valley. I went down with Abe and we were down there camping and I brought back some of the. Sands from Death Valley. 'cause I thought they were so interesting and I put them on the coffee table we had at the time, and it must have been a small hole.
And the next morning I noticed again the accident, this part of the sand. Went through. So when I got the first chance was the Reese Paley Gallery. I did that piece.
I can't really confine it that way. So I'm gonna say di Rosa Art Preserve [00:16:00] definitely has influenced me a lot. Going up there, working up there. And I worked in a winery for. A year I worked at the Army Navy Surplus Center in town. I worked at OSA for dollar 65 an hour. And a Craig Mon Sota in the morning at 10 and three in the afternoon.
Another Craig Mon Sota, incredible spaces. 'cause in a way I missed nature and Wyoming. I, it was too far. DeRosa was one, Tom Mariani's Wednesdays, and my studio is the other one because it gives me ideas just by being there, hanging out with materials. Sometimes I don't have an idea and it just sometimes two materials to have a sympathetic vibration and that's it.
So I get lucky or don't.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you so much to our [00:17:00] guest Paul Kos. You can see the broom he talked about at far out at the San Francisco di Rosa Museum at the Minnesota Street Projects through October 4th. You can also see Paul 's work in the exhibition at SF MOMA, exploring the history of the San Francisco Art Institute, People Make This Place that's on view through next July.
Please follow the show and leave a rating and join us next time when the guest will be artist Julio Cesar Morales. He has a solo exhibition at San Francisco's Gallery, Wendi Norris and a survey of his work is at the Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis.
Art Is Awesome. Is a biweekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and [00:18:00] edited by Charlene GoTo of GoTo Productions. It's carried on KSFP, LP 1 0 2 0.5 FM San Francisco on Fridays at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM. Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod with Incomp Tech Music.
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