She is called “Source Figure”
You would barely notice her if you weren’t looking for her but I’d heard about her years ago and I went looking for her.
She stands 40 inches tall, a cast bronze sculpture with copper patina created by Mexican-American sculptor Robert Graham around 1992. She stands upon a pedestal, at the base there are 3 crabs. The pedestal is at the center of a pool of water that cascades down the a set of steps.
She is located in downtown Los Angeles right across from the Central Library.
A Black Woman nude sculpture, located atop a set of stairs in the central of Los Angeles, named Source Figure.
I was unable to find much written about her. No Artist notes or commentary about why here, why her. Why did the Artist choose this name?
Nothing. Which in a way I love because it does what art does…
It invites our own creative insight, thinking, discussion and interpretation.
*Below I’ll share my impression AND…I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts, impressions in the comments below.*
When I first came upon her, I admit I wished I had a bronzed shawl to cover her exposure. She seemed small amidst the towering, erect buildings surrounding her.
She seemed vulnerable, all alone on the pedestal, her nudity cast a shadow of an auction block, echoes of past emotion from bronzed women being sold.
Gazing upon her tears started forming.
As I looked upon her face however, it was not downcast, nor in pain. Her eyes are closed, her gaze is inward like she’s in meditation. Her hands are cupped, palms up and positioned near her womb.
I noticed that I wanted to place a narrative upon her, but She had something else to share with me. After all I am the one who’d come looking for her. So I sat down nearby.
It was the middle of the afternoon. People on lunch breaks moving through the plaza that connected their offices. Talking on phones, listening to music, caught in their thoughts about what’s next in their day.
And we just watched them, She and I – Source Figure and me.
I could say, look at this dwarfed figure so small the “source” of all these buildings around her, it was a weight, an obligation, an imprisonment, a confinement.
She kept asking me to keep looking deeper.
I noticed – her almost serene expression. Eyes closed but the way her golden patina copper caught the light, she almost glowed. She had a radiance.
She faces the doors of the public library, a tall art deco building built in 1920, a national monument filled with a type of “knowing.” The Source Figure stands in connection to that, directly opposite.
Perhaps her inward glance is of deep internal knowing. A knowing that is not derived from the external physical world with its concrete monuments of illusory power.
She is within a pool of water, life itself, an amniotic cosmos, the greatest natural resource on our planet, the very thing we need to survive, our beginnings within our mother’s womb.
Her size just under 4 feet, she is power, not size.
The three crabs at her feet perhaps the earthly form of this knowing and power of three sister moons.
Her body strong, tone, taut, unashamed in her full feminine form.
There’s an erotic nature to her. The curves of her body a juxtaposition of all the very tall erect office buildings surrounding her.
She, fully her in form, unfazed, steeped in a consciousness called Source. The aperture, her cupped hands pours forth. She is the gift, the Creatrix of life.
You would barely notice here if you weren’t looking for her. But sometimes its easier to move when no one is watching.
She invites me into her reality.
Into a knowing that is deeply feminine, erotic in nature and found through an inward glance so strong that the skyscrapers are like ant hills in her sight and wisdom.
Revealed,
Golden,
True power.
Sourced within,
Prolific in her creation.
She is Source Figure.
PS: Here is one of the only articles I’ve found about her: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-07-ca-1562-story.html
I would love to hear what this evokes for you. Leave me some comments below, I personally respond to everyone.