Shoebox Alumni Spotlight: Dave Lovejoy
- shoeboxartsla
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
When Art Saves Lives
Dave Lovejoy once created an installation called "Bounce"—fifteen five-foot-wide red rubber balls suspended in the light atrium of a downtown LA bank building, the longest one hanging 86 feet down.
Years later, someone brought him a gift and told him this: they had been standing at their open window in that building, considering whether the fall would be enough to end their life, when a huge red rubber ball lowered into view, distracting and delighting them.
"I will never create a more meaningful work," Dave says.
This is what happens when an artist builds not just for galleries but for life itself—when someone who thinks of himself as "more craftsman than artist" creates work that literally saves people.
The Puppet Master's Lesson
Dave's origin story starts with a high school art teacher who was also a puppeteer. While demonstrating painting techniques, the teacher would sit at his workbench in the back, pulling clay from a bag and forming puppet heads, hands, feet—not looking at references, just imagining what he wanted them to look like and making them.
"The clouds parted and angels sang," Dave remembers. "In art, I had only ever been shown a thing and then tried to copy or emulate it. It had never really occurred to me that my imagination could be the sole source."
That moment launched him into clay, though now he works primarily in assemblage and site-specific installations. The lesson stuck: imagination as source, hands as vehicle, no permission needed.
Building Worlds in Little Tokyo
Dave's studio is the Los Angeles Makery in Little Tokyo, and his typical day sounds like controlled chaos: moving furniture, managing material flows, installing plumbing, building pedestals. They run three galleries with a steady cycle of patch/paint/hang.
"My creative time is usually in the evenings, when I'll head to my workbench & tinker with ideas."
His assemblage process is pure play: start with materials, find a box or frame, then "get out some bins of materials and start pilfering through." He might discover that part of an old sewing machine fits perfectly into the mouth of a bottle, or find wood scraps that match a frame's finish. "I basically tinker like that until I get an idea. I don't draw it out or design it beforehand, I just start putting things together."
This is someone who trusts the process completely—and why wouldn't he? Decades of experience have taught him that he can figure it out. "When I started off, I felt I had to prove myself. Now I feel secure that I can do what I say I can do."
Joseph Cornell's Blue and Other Influences
Dave's influences read like a master class in wonder: Joseph Cornell (he stole that deep ultramarine blue background), the Museum of Science and Industry from childhood visits, LA architecture, mentor Patrick Dougherty who taught him "the magic of building with sticks."
Then there's the Andres Serrano piece from the mid-80s—"made to be ugly and controversial and was both praised and berated by the art world. It showed me that the art world is not about art, and I can do anything I want if I do it well."
That's the kind of permission we all need, isn't it? The art world is not about art. Do what you want. Do it well.
Cornell's playfulness shows up in Dave's work through hidden elements and moving parts. "I often have things that move or are hidden within my work, because of him." The ultramarine blue appears too, borrowed with full acknowledgment and zero shame.
More Craftsman Than Artist
Dave's refreshingly honest about his approach: "I am more craftsman than artist. I don't explore themes or concepts, and I don't work on a body of work in linear fashion."
On his workbench right now: a lamp, similar to others he made over a decade ago. He's made over a dozen of these lamps but doesn't think of them as a body of work. Within a year, he'll work with clay, wood, found objects, raw willow, paint, carpentry—whatever the project demands.
"Rather than a project, I find the potential of a project most exciting. When I'm writing a proposal, or imagining the thing I want to build in the space they want to activate." He loves the problem-solving, the move from maker to designer.
Building Through Loss
Dave's artistic voice went into hibernation while he cared for his late wife through chemo and dialysis. Now, a year and a half since her passing, he's "able to enjoy being creative again."
He doesn't dramatize this or mine it for meaning. Just states it simply: creativity hibernates during crisis, returns when space allows. This is what actual resilience looks like—not bouncing back, but moving through.
Google Canada and Rubber Ball Salvation
Dave felt he'd "made it" when Google Canada hired him for site-specific work on all four floors of their new technology center in Toronto. Professional validation, check.
But the most meaningful moment? That rubber ball installation, the stranger's gift, the life saved by art appearing at exactly the right moment.
Two different kinds of success. One pays the bills. One saves souls.
Community as Scaffold
Jerry Saltz once said (and Dave paraphrases): "Don't worry about what turns me on, I'll be long dead before you make anything worthwhile. Make work that turns your friends on."
Dave takes this further: "Success is often pictured as a ladder, scratching and fighting to get to the top. My community is building a scaffold, which is extremely difficult to do alone, but a solid structure that can lift everyone, if built together."
A scaffold, not a ladder. Community that lifts everyone instead of competition that elevates one. This might be the most important distinction any artist can make.
Dave's Shoebox connection goes back to the beginning—Kristine and Tony Pinto helped him promote the opening of Broadway Arts Tower, where he designed the interior and has a photomural on the back. Early support that helped launch something bigger.
The Stop and Go of Making
About the challenges of professional art-making, Dave is characteristically direct: "It is a lot of stop and go. Sometimes proposals take a year or more to come to fruition, sometimes they go away, sometimes they come back and you start from scratch."
His navigation strategy? "I say a bad word, and then do the thing I need to do to advance it to the next step."
Perfect. Say the bad word. Do the thing. Repeat.
For motivation during difficult periods: "Clean the studio. Just by putting things away and straightening up, I inevitably come upon something that I had an idea for, or something that I started and set aside."
What's Next
Dave has a possible willow project on the horizon (nursing an injured knee until he can harvest), a design trade show booth to mock up, and this fall he's curating an exhibition of Los Angeles assemblage art.
The Makery keeps growing. The community keeps building their scaffold together.
His advice for emerging artists cuts straight to the heart: "Be a person in your community who contributes something. Reach out to artists you admire, not to ask favors, but to express the reason for your admiration. Go to your friends' openings, not to shmooze the gallerist, but to swell their crowd. Do your own thing and get good at it."
Contribute. Appreciate. Show up. Get good.
In a world obsessed with personal branding and strategic networking, Dave's approach feels revolutionary: just be useful to your community. The rest follows.
Sometimes the most profound art comes from someone who insists he's more craftsman than artist, building scaffolds instead of climbing ladders, making work that appears in windows at exactly the moment someone needs to see a red rubber ball instead of empty space.
Follow Dave's work and the LA Makery at https://www.makery.la/ @losangelesmakery http://www.lovejoyart.com/ @lalovejoyart. His upcoming exhibition of Los Angeles assemblage art opens this fall—watch for details on a show that promises to celebrate the kind of found-object magic that only LA can produce.
