John Wells estimates he’s adopted about 10,000 “orphans.” He doesn't have an exact number so don't ask him. 10,000 is his best estimate. . There are three ladies, all over seven feet tall, several dozen pornographic collages, as many as 3,000 paintings and more. John owns, runs, curates and is the Process Museum in Tucson, Arizona. Those examples are indicative of about a third of John’s collection, those he considers “orphaned.” The museum/ art orphanage is in a nondescript portion of an office complex off I-10 and access is by word-of-mouth only.
Lots of art gets orphaned, sort of. Artists die and their art gets left behind without a home. Sometimes dumpsters are involved. One very well known example of “orphaned” art is the Vivian Maier collection of photographs made famous in John Maloof’s documentary Finding Vivian Maier. Maier was a relatively unknown street photographer when she died in 2009. Her work is now considered on par with some of the greatest male and female photographers of the genre: Joel Meyerwitz, Mary Ellen Mark, Helen Levitt and Garry Winogrand. Two years before her death, in 2007, Maier’s entire creative output was auctioned for unpaid storage bills. The work was left behind by Maier perhaps but not orphaned.
A brief technical note on use of the word “orphan” (John’s preferred word). The U.S. Copyright Office defines “orphan” as work where, “a user’s ability to seek permission or to negotiate licensing terms is compromised by the fact that, despite his or her diligent efforts, the user cannot identify or locate the copyright owner.” So, technically what we’re talking about is more like artwork that is abandoned and then unofficially adopted by a collector, John Wells in this case.
John Wells has approximately 10,000 pieces of abandoned art in his collection at the Process Museum on S. Kolb Rd. in Tucson, Arizona. There is no complete inventory or database, according to John. The museum comprises about 58, 000 square feet of a 78,000 square foot office space John bought in 1978 for his Wells Johnson Company, a maker of aspiration and infiltration instruments for medical use. John originally imagined this former Anaconda Copper headquarters as all business use. When it wasn't, the Process Museum was born.
Fun Museum visiting, enter here
On a tour you can easily meet Wells Johnson employees fetching their coffee and working in cubicles. The entrance to the museum is marked by a rust metal obelisk of a sign, stark steel pierced with vertical lettering. The lobby includes no reception area or gift shop but rather a stunning sculpture of gold metallic grape stakes mounted vertical, The Genetically Modified Forest, by Sean-Paul Pluguez. Pass through a couple of generic glass doors and enter a maze of hallways and office spaces all devoted to the passion of John Wells.
John in person is affable and avuncular. He always seems upbeat and more than willing to show and tell his collection. He is frequently fascinated by it and the artists it represents as evidenced by his frequent use of the word. One of his earliest encounters with art was a painting of two children consumed by flames. “It was so outrageous and wrong, it really got my attention, it was really offensive, it was so stupid and it hooked me.” It was Rufino Tamayo’s Children Playing With Fire. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind.” John thought he could become an architect in college but he says calculus got in the way and he switched to business. His passion though has always been fine art.
John moved to Tucson in 1969 and began collecting art “modestly” in the mid 70’s through Dinnerware Gallery, an artist’s cooperative once found on Congress St.
John’s has doubled and redoubled his collecting since those days. Tucson was then still a nascent destination location for art and culture inflected with indigenous and Spanish heritage plus progressive politics.
Today, John boasts what is likely the largest collection of work by the artist Michael Cajero, a multimedia artist who specializes in expressivism realism. Humans, animals and objects several twists south of Thomas Hart Benton. John has devoted an entire second building to Cajero's work, over 5,000 pieces, he said. John counts Cajero as, “...the most important artist to come out of the region, way beyond anyone else...in Tucson, ever.” These works will likely not be orphaned or abandoned thanks to Cajero’s family, John said.
John also spoke of a spouse who invited him to take some work by her infirm husband, a painter, to lighten their apartment living. (John asked me to keep the artist anonymous.) On arriving at the residence, John was informed the family home was closing escrow within a day and would he care to have yet more of the artist’s work. John says he now owns about 3,000 pieces by the artist. He rotates different pieces for display at the museum.
Down a different wing John ushers visitors into a small office space converted to a gallery setting. The work is by a local artist who went by the name of Moline O’Tucson. One whole wall includes acrylic paintings of old West figures rendered in paint-by-numbers style, a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Tombstone, Arizona.
About 20 years ago, a local dumpster diver spied someone launching collage work into a dumpster, not an uncommon fate for unwanted work after an artist dies. With a bit of research the unnamed dumpster diver discovered John's existing collection by the same artist and contacted him. Would John like to rescue these 60 samples of Moline O’Tucson’s collage output for his collection? John happily paid $1500 for the lot, no dumpster diving required. John’s Moline O’Tucson gallery now includes an entire wall of cut and pasted pornographic collages, tableaux of female body parts. The artist was reportedly rarely able to share this series while alive.
Art orphange or rescue resource?
Sculptures too are sometimes abandoned or left behind. John related the case of Invisible Voice, three enormous cactus fiber constructions he adopted. The sculptures appear as disembodied dresses, yellowish costumes , uninhabited by female forms. They are the work of Yukari Eda and were featured in a show at the University of Arizona Graduate and Alumni Gallery in 2012. John said the work was left behind by the artist when she returned to her native Japan after the exhibition.The work was offered to several local museums but all declined to accept the work. A curator asked John if he could take the work, he said. I find the pieces, now each on its own dolly, tucked into a short leg of hallway off a main exhibition space.
I reached out to Ms. Eda to learn about her work in Tucson but did not hear back before deadline.
John’s collection will probably not be “orphaned” but details are sketchy. He’s 84 and he has some requests about his collection but talk of “legacy” stops the collector a bit short: “That's’ a challenge,” he says. “I’m 84 and I have children and I think the collection is probably their worst nightmare. I would like the art owned by living artists (to) all be returned to them. My family will take a few pieces,” and then his voice trails off. For anyone making or collecting art where it goes after you end is always the question. So many choices but few consequences at least for the dead.
My own art could well be “orphaned” or left behind. (I have a heart procedure scheduled for later this summer). My collected works won’t require more than a roomy SUV including cargo space. Maybe less. Somebody take them, please.
In my studio I like to live by this adage about making my art, “fulfillment and satisfaction regardless of final disposition.” In other words, not worrying about where my work will eventually end up, just enjoy the process. I can’t quite embrace witnessing a bonfire of my work from my deathbed but... My wife frequently blanches at the thought of posthumously managing my modest output. I’ll certainly leave her John Wells contact information however, at his age it's likely John’s heirs would be her better resource.
Sometimes a solution comes from the most unlikely source. In the final paragraph of Mary Karr’s book, The Art of Memoir, the author writes, “None of us can ever know the value of our lives, or how our separate and silent (scribbling) may add to the amenity of the world, if only by how radically it changes us, one and by one.” [parentheses added]
What I take from Ms. Karr’s admonition is to remember that my work is ultimately just for me. And doing it may change me in profound ways to the benefit of my family, friends and cardiologists.