The art, the joy, the keeper: The hidden work behind Niki de Saint Phalle's beloved mosaic sculptures

Episode 30: Niki de Saint Phalle & Lech Juretko Transcript

Julia Dixon Evans: Mirror shards catching the sun. Bright, colorful mosaics. A giant golden egg in a hidden garden. Towering mythical creatures, bird-like statues and a jungle gym alligator. The influential French artist Niki de Saint Phalle lived in San Diego toward the end of her life. Her distinctive outdoor sculptures still dot the region. You've probably seen them even if you don't know her name. There's the Sun God at UCSD, the Nikigator and Balboa Park, Queen Califia’s Magical Circle in Escondido.

Lech Juretko: Sometimes Niki lover from Europe, they coming like five, 10 people especially to visit it.

Evans: But for one San Diego man, these sculptures aren't just public art, they became his purpose.

Juretko: And if you work with somebody like Niki for so many years, this is also becomes like your family.

Evans: Lech Juretko was Niki's longtime assistant from the time she moved to San Diego in 1994 until her death. Working on mosaics and outdoor sculptures, she transformed how he saw the world.

I'm wondering if before you met Niki, what you thought of art? Like did you think much about art and artists?

Juretko: No. No. Totally not. Zero. Yes, well, you know, I was going to museums in Europe once a while, but that's always, you know, the old stuff, the army helmets — this is like everywhere is the same.

Evans: But by Niki's side, he became a part of art history. He's retired now but still lights up when he talks about his time with Niki, and he comes out of retirement whenever he's needed to fix up one of her sculptures. And given how much kids play on them, these repairs are inevitable. It's both his job and his life's work.

Juretko: Otherwise would be boring. I mean, I retired and do what? Nothing. That's not a good idea.

Evans: Lech is undeniably dedicated to Niki's work, a testament to her magnetism and maybe even the power of her art. And now in preserving it, he's honoring her memory.

Juretko: I just cannot talk about stuff like this because it's just breaking me. She was the best person ever.

Evans: There's an intense curiosity and happiness in Niki's work in San Diego. A happiness hard won after a troubled past. We'll take you inside her tumultuous life and career and trace a path from rocky beginnings to the joyful, fantastical, larger-than-life art Niki de Saint Phalle created in and for San Diego. And we’ll tell the story of how she changed the life of one man and is still touching lives generations later.

Child: It's probably a crocodile or a snake mixed with a spider.

Parent: Yeah, every time we wait for the tram, this is where they like to play and so yeah, they love climbing on it and the colors.

Child: It's so cool because I love alligators

Evans: From KPBS Public Media, this is The Finest, a podcast about the people, art and movements redefining culture in San Diego. I'm Julia Dixon Evans.

[Theme Music]

Anthony Wallace: Can you describe where we are?

Evans: Well, we're in a business park in Santee. It's a warm day. Very industrial. And this is Lech's workshop where he runs his mosaic business. This is not your typical artist studio.

Wallace: Yeah, usually we go to cuter places.

Evans: What are you saying?

In a business park in Santee, traffic buzzes by on Highway 52 just steps away, and a near constant stream of small planes fly to and from a nearby airfield. Producer Anthony and I are trying to pick out Lech Juretko's workshop from a maze of identical-looking garages and driveways.

Yeah. OK, I think we're here.

Wallace: A lot of tools

Evans: Right inside, in the middle of the workshop, stands towering 2,000-pound Niki de Saint Phalle sculpture. It's called Grand Step Totem, and it looks kind of familiar to me.

Well, this is from Queen Califia’s, right?

Juretko: No.

Evans: It looks like it.

Juretko: This is one which was made first, but when we place it at Queen Califia’s, Niki said it's too big.

Evans: It looks like a giant totem, a huge, shining, golden mosaic face looming protectively above a woman and a child made of thousands of small multicolored pebbles. It's almost identical to the final version that ended up in Queen Califia’s Magical Circle.

That's amazing. So it's like one you made first, it was too big. But

Evans: It looks exactly the same.

Juretko: But that's Niki.

Evans: This one's about to head to Atlanta for a major Niki exhibition. But the last time it was on view, it was water damaged and missing some stones. So Lech is opening it up to fortify the foundation and repair the mosaic. So today, more than 20 years after Niki's death, Lech is still taking care of her work.

Juretko: My name is Lech Juretko. My company’s name is Art Mosaic, and I am the president of the company.

Evans: Lech is in his early 70s with wire-rimmed glasses and a graying goatee. He's wearing a T-shirt and jeans looking almost exactly the same as when I met him three years ago. When he shows us around, he distractedly tosses his keys in his hand. He's serious about the work, but he seems uncertain why we are making a fuss about him.

Juretko: This is my workshop. This is my workshop. You can see the…

Evans: Lech’s workshop is spacious, tidy and impeccably organized, but it still feels jam packed and full of life. We could have spent hours exploring.

Juretko: You can come here and take a look. I've got at least 70 different types of glass. Stained glass, mirrors, all this kind of stuff.

Evans: Niki often sent her assistants far and wide for unique tiles and stones, Lech sourced materials in Tucson, Mexico and even Italy. If Niki had a vision, they made it happen. And a lot of that stuff is still here: mirror tiles, colorful round stones that look like M&M's, shimmering golds, polished stones like turquoise, travertine, agate and quartz.

Juretko: Some marbles here, some marbles over there. And then ceramic tiles.

Wallace: So these are all the ingredients that you need right here.

Juretko: Yeah.

Evans: Lech holds institutional knowledge of the intricacies of Niki's sculptures that could only come from decades of intimate work. But a career in the arts is not something Lech ever expected.

When you were younger, like what did you think? What did you want to be when you grew up?

Juretko: Nobody. I was born in communist Poland. What I could think about it? I never have a dream to go outside the border of Poland. Yeah.

Evans: He studied metal work.

Juretko: Which I never really liked the school, but you have to finish something.

Evans: But with few opportunities in Poland, he traveled and found work where he could, working on ships at sea or as a photographer. He and his wife and kids moved to Germany and from there they had a pathway to the U.S.

Juretko: We was accepted as a refugee by the government and we moved. They move us to San Diego.

Evans: Lech arrived in San Diego in 1986 and he made a living for his family by installing wallpaper, a skill he learned from his uncle. He was a practical, resourceful and patient worker. He was always up for trying something new and he could never have imagined that this work ethic would one day lead him to a famous artist. It would still be years before he met Niki, and by then she had already endured a lot.

Jill Dawsey: In a way, I feel like often we focus so much on her biography and I wanna focus on her artwork because it's so brilliant, but I will tell her life story because it's worth telling.

Evans: Jill Dawsey is an art historian and curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Dawsey: I don't pretend to be objective, but you know, I try not to overly romanticize the things I'm working on and, you know, just to be conscious of that. But I did really feel like I became a believer in Niki.

Evans: Niki de Saint Phalle was a revolutionary pioneering artist long before she arrived in San Diego. She was born in Paris to an American mother and a French father, and she was raised in New York. After a complicated childhood fraught with the trauma of sexual abuse by her father and physical abuse by her mother, she married young, at 18, and had two children. Niki and her family lived a bohemian lifestyle in Paris, but she had a troubled relationship with her role as a mother, and by age 22, she suffered a breakdown and was sent to a mental institution.

Dawsey: And as the story goes, you know, she begins making art there and her, I think really her, friends bring her materials and the doctor allows her to create art. And her early work involves a lot of small pieces, mosaic and collages.

Evans: By 1960, she left her husband and with him their children to fully dedicate herself to art. She joined the New Realism group and began to stand out in a sea of male contemporaries.

Dawsey: The way that Niki prioritized her career would not be questioned like all the other male artists who were in the New Realist group. For example, did they have children? Are we talking about, you know, if they were around? But also because Niki's work does deal with motherhood and it also does, this is part of that spectrum of joy and sorrow and rage. I think she felt confined, obviously, and wanting to, you know, really be able to take up space in the world in the same way men did.

Evans: The breakup of her family was a defining point in her life and work, and themes of motherhood and womanhood and childhood would continue to play into her art. Niki reconciled with her children and would even eventually work closely with her daughter Laura, who continues to champion her mother's work.

In the 1960s, Niki began a series she called the Tirs, or Shooting Paintings. She did these all over the world, including L.A., considered the first instance of performance art in Southern California. She built giant structures, attached found objects and bags filled with paint, and covered the entire thing with plaster. On performance day, with an audience that included celebrities like Jane Fonda seated behind her, Niki dressed in a sleek white jumpsuit would pick up a rifle, aim at the bags and shoot.

Dawsey: The bags of of pigment would explode dramatically and you'd have these works that resembled abstract expressionist paintings.

Evans: A Vogue cover girl at one point, Niki's style and beauty were often dwelt on by critics, Jill says. But her work had depth beyond whimsy and performance. Niki used art to explore social issues in new ways, like the AIDS epidemic, politics, religion, even sex work.

Dawsey: She was sorting out what does it mean to be a mother? What does it mean to be a woman, and what does it mean to be an artist? To sell your work? She's making work that is very radical. It's very experimental.

Evans: Niki's Nanas began to emerge in her work in this era. Round, outsized female forms suspended in motion, maybe dancing or leaping. The Nanas are Niki's loud, wild shout as a woman.

Dawsey: The period in which she's creating the Nanas, although they are expressing this kind of defiant joy, they're complicated. You know, they are, as I was saying, these kind of curvy fertility goddesses that are very athletic and acrobatic and take up space. They kept getting bigger, you know, they become monumental.

Evans: The Nanas are my favorites, and I can see echoes of them in her San Diego public works, like Queen Califia and Sun God, exaggerated shapes and colors and a strange kind of triumph. I love the way Niki's art is not just difficult or just joyful. It makes room for horror, motherhood and hope to coexist and to not be afraid to invite everyone in.

As she got older, Niki faced even more hardship. She lost two people close to her: her longtime romantic and creative partner, Jean Tinguely, and her studio assistant. Her health also declined as she suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and serious lung problems, possibly worsened by the dust and fumes from the resins and fiberglass she used in her art. Her doctor recommended a coastal climate, so in 1994 she arrived in San Diego, sick and emerging from grief.

After the break, how Lech and Niki's paths crossed and how Niki left a mark on him and San Diego. Stay with us.

[Music]

Evans: In the 1990s with his wallpaper business in full swing, Lech found work at the La Valencia, the iconic pink luxury hotel in La Jolla. It was connections he made there that led him to Niki de Saint Phalle, a meeting that would forever change his life. He was recommended to do a small construction job for Niki's new home, a little remodeling, a little wallpapering and a little painting.

Juretko: Well, you do whatever makes money. If you've got family, they need to eat. And Niki, I give her estimate and she told me, OK, then do it. She left for two months, I believe, to Europe, and when she came she was like, oh, I love it. And then she asked me, OK, then, do you wanna work for me or with me as a sculpture? I didn't know really who Niki is. I hear about, she's a artist, but you know, I don't have any background about this, but I like challenges and I said yes.

Evans: Thanks to Niki, Lech traveled the world. She sent him to learn mosaic and glasswork in Europe. And from that point on, Lech, a refugee with no art background, was all in.

Juretko: Niki was like a sponge. She swallows everybody who works for her and she likes the work. She just gives you more and more and more.

Evans: Their process, of course, began with Niki.

Juretko: First, Niki has the idea in her head, what she wanna do.

Evans: They'd usually then render a small-scale model and with that discuss and source materials. Once Niki saw everything together, they'd adjust, shop for different things as needed, and finally start to build. Lech worked on about a hundred sculptures with Niki and her team — some installed in San Diego, others shipped around the world. Niki worked tirelessly and relentlessly even when quite ill in and out of the hospital.

She churned out major works, barely sending one off into the world before moving to the next

Juretko: Niki never stopped working. She was workaholic. I was thinking, I am workaholic, but she doubled me.

Evans: When you started working with Niki, I mean, she moved here because she was ill. Did she seem sad? Did she seem, did you ever notice like that she started to get happier?

Juretko: I am macho man, don't ask me this stuff. Yeah, but first of all, she was a fighter. She was sick. She got arthritis and this and that. She always fighting with this. She always want to do her art. She wanna be healthy enough that she can use her hands and move. The worst part for her was that she cannot breathe anymore.

Evans: Maybe this fighter, the one Lech knew, was shaped by everything she had endured throughout her life. Niki died suddenly in 2002 at age 71.

Juretko: It was, big shock for me too. If you know person for so many years, you get close to. I was living here and nobody close to me was dying, and she was the really first person who died. But after you know, the lives go on, you have to finish it.

Evans: Lech and the team had to put the finishing touches on Niki's final works without her, including Queen Califia's Magical Circle.

Dawsey: It's just really amazing to think that she's expressing her desire to create public sculptures that everybody can enjoy, sculpture parks, and that today, we actually have these things. She's gone, but these things still exist and it's so special that we have it here in San Diego.

Evans: San Diego has the largest concentration of Niki's public works and the only sculpture garden in the United States. But some of the tiles are cracked and pebbles have fallen out. And without dedicated caretakers, like Lech, keeping up with maintenance, public art like Niki's is at risk. And keeping her kid-friendly art behind glass in a museum was never part of the plan.

Dawsey: I think one of the most radical things about her is that she included children among her audience members and really thought about having the broadest audience possible.

Evans: The beauty and whimsy of Niki's works tap into that childhood love for pretend play and physical, tactile exploration. I was first introduced to Lech by the folks at the Mingei International Museum when he helped prepare the Nikigator for a temporary relocation. Weighing over 5,000 pounds, the Nickgator is part alligator and part folkloric serpent covered in thousands of brightly colored pebbles, marbles and tiles. It's one of Lech's favorites.

Juretko: Oh Nickgator, I think I like the most. Why? Because it's close to me when I go there. They do keep good maintenance. And always it's nice to see kids playing with.

Evans: The sculpture gets climbed on a lot. My kids once climbed on it a lot. And outside on a sunny day at Balboa Park, kids are definitely enjoying the Nikigator.

Child: Mom, can you help me get on? Get on, I want to get on his face. I wanna get on here.

Evans: What do you like about it?

Child: All these little teeny tiny bits. Oh, and marbles.

Child: And I like to play on it because it has the underbody thing and it's made outta rocks. Rocks are my favorites.

Parent: I feel like so much art is beautiful, but it's on walls and you can't touch it, and this is something he gets to experience and look at and feel and, you know, probably taste because that's what toddlers can do.

Child: And I know it took like a lot of hard work for them. Those people who already died that made this, I hope they have hope for us that we could make something like this too.

And you make something, you can call it Mackenziegator!

Evans: Mackenzie's right. These sculptures did take a lot of hard work.

Juretko: Mosaic is expensive because it's piece by piece and hand by hand, and it has to cost money because the time each sculpture, just the design is like five, 600 hours for one person, each of them.

Evans: And maintaining the work has a cost too. In the decades since Niki's death, her sculptures have seen plenty of wear and tear. And it falls on craftspeople like Lech to repair them, so they can be enjoyed by generations to come. But there are challenges. Some of Niki's sculptures have been vandalized. Lech says he's running outta some of the stones and there isn't always investment in maintenance.

Juretko: If city is on a budget, then that's the last stuff they're gonna put money on it. But here in San Diego, nobody do nothing. The Queen Califia, this is one and only one in the world like this, nowhere else stuff like this is existing.

Evans: The City of Escondido, which manages Queen Califia's Magical Circle, has no money in its current budget for maintaining public art, something arts leaders are working to change. The City of San Diego and other groups that manage Niki's art set aside more, but it's not always enough. There's often visible damage and sometimes that pains Lech.

Evans: And how do you feel when you, you go to a sculpture and you see that it's damaged and needs something?

Juretko: I don't go, simply. What? To go to see more damage or more bed looking? It's like, you know…

Evans: Upstairs from Lech's vast workshop, above the tubs of extra tiles and mosaics, is a small loft apartment.

Evans: Do you actually live here?

Juretko: Actually, that's my bedroom.

Evans: Nice.

Juretko: And I always love, in my dreams, to have a place that I can walk down to work, no traveling.

Evans: Lech shows us all the photos, posters and artwork by Niki he keeps on the walls. His cozy home is almost like a museum. Even with a career spent surrounded by art, Lech never considered himself an artist and is quick to downplay his craftsmanship.

Evans: You don't think that what you do is art?

Juretko: No. No. It is art, but this is not my art. I mean, it's art for the person I'm doing for, but that's not art. No, because everybody can learn this and they just gonna do it. It's nothing fancy.

Evans: It's pretty, it's pretty fancy.

Juretko: Yeah. Yeah, because looks hard, but eventually, you know, when you start learning and you're doing day after day after day, it's just normal. It's like another work.

Evans: Lech lost his son in a tragic motorcycle accident eight years ago, and he still finds it difficult to talk about him, but he showed us art his son made like a mosaic using some M&M's marbles, just like Niki's.

Juretko: He was inspired, that's for sure. He makes some other stuff like mosaic with different screw heads, different colors. I mean, that's come up with this kind… that's not me. That's him. I thought he, again, he was inspired by Niki art. Without me working with Niki, he would never know about this.

Evans: And she's still inspiring his family. Just like those kids on the playground, Lech's grandchild also recently expressed interest in learning mosaic. Niki had a magical way of moving people, getting under their skin, through her friendship, her story and her art. Lech sometimes struggles to find words or the willingness to get emotional to fully express what Niki meant to him.

Is there something that you want people to know about her that they wouldn't think of?

Juretko: I don't know how to say this in English. She was just good person, and people might not know just looking on the art, but she was definitely very big with big heart, good person.

Evans: How would you say that in Polish?

Juretko: Niki była kobietą o bardzo dużym sercu. Duże serce, big heart.

[Music]

Evans: A special thank you to Lech Juretko and Jill Dawsey for their help with this episode. Thank you to all the kids and families we spoke with at the Nikigator, and thank you so much for listening. If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a rating or comment. It makes a real difference and helps stories like these reach more people. We really love your feedback and we even read it out loud to each other.

Next week on The Finest, more from our new live music series. We're bringing you highlights of a concert from the patio of the KPBS studio and we'll introduce you to North County indie act Topeka Clementine, and the stories behind their songs.

The Finest is a production of KPBS Public Media. I'm your host, Julia Dixon Evans. Our producer is Anthony Wallace, who also composed the score. This episode was written and researched by me and Anthony. Our audio engineer is Ben Redlawsk, and our editor is Chrissy Nguyen.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.