Terrence (Terry) O’Shea was born in Los Angeles, studied at Chouinard Art Institute (which later became CalArts), and was part of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s and 70s. He is known for his work in polyester resin, which appealed to him as a medium because it could be machined like wood but also had the transparency of glass. He became expert at manipulating this challenging material, creating layered and polished forms that reflect, refract, and transmit light as if they had an internal glow. His work is thus intimately connected to that of other Light and Space and so-called “finish fetish” artists in Southern California in those decades. He made numerous resin blocks (approximately book-sized), combining his interests as a painter with the three-dimensional format of a sculpture, through the use of translucent dyes. This untitled block takes perfect advantage of the many properties of cast resin. It looks very different when seen face-on vs. from the side: from the front it looks like a miniature Abstract Expressionist composition, while from the side it looks like a tiny Color Field painting akin to work by Morris Louis.
O’Shea and his resin blocks have a unique history with LACMA. In 1966, O’Shea won the museum’s New Talent Award, which included a purchase for the permanent collection. O’Shea soon made a resin block sculpture specifically for LACMA, but by 1970 the acquisition had still not been finalized. Thus, at around 2am on May 28, 1970, O’Shea and two friends threw that sculpture into the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits. LACMA was completely unaware of this at the time. Some 17 months later O’Shea sent the museum a black-and-white photograph of the sculpture along with a letter. In this letter, O’Shea explained, in part:
On the night of May 28, 1970, I and two witnesses placed a sculpture in the center of the larger of the two tar pits in Park La Brea.
This action was undertaken in consideration of:
1. permanence of installation,
2. possibility for eventual retrieval of the piece,
3. increased significance of its physical presence.
The letter goes on to say that O’Shea considered the sculpture to be “in the possession of the museum” once it landed in the tar pit adjacent to LACMA, and that “the scope of the piece has gone beyond its physical properties and may truly be timeless.” He effectively created a work of conceptual art to replace the “disappeared” resin sculpture. In 1972 the photo and letter were formally accessioned into LACMA’s collection with the title Documentation of the Artist’s Act of Placing One of His Sculptures in the La Brea Tar Pit.