SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE - 1962

Ten mosaic vignettes are arranged symmetrically in two rows above the building’s front entrance. The mosaics are set against black granite and depict people working. While the imagery is now indistinct, it is possible to identify a woman operating a switchboard, a man with a movie camera, a farmer with a cow and bale of straw, and builders and architects conferring. Other figures appear to be a linesman, a scientist, and men operating machinery to smelt ore and drill for oil.

  • Home Savings and Loan Association

    1801 N. Long Beach Blvd, Compton, CA 90221

  • 1962 or 1958

  • Sheets and Underwood (Millard Owen Sheets & Sidney David Underwood)

  • Glass mosaic

  • Unknown

  • Unknown

  • Howard Ahmanson/Home Savings and Loan

  • Extremely poor. The building was damaged by fire and has been empty since c. 2019. It is prey to graffiti and the building owner has applied varnish to the mosaics, which is peeling.

  • Top and Middle: Janet Owen Driggs

  • The Compton Home Savings and Loan was constructed, and the Sheets Studio worked on the building, in 1958. However, Sources of Knowledge is consistently dated to 1962 in Van Sant’s self-penned resumé. [1] Might Van Sant have misremembered the date, or been commissioned to make an additional artwork in 1962? Both options are possible.

    In 1958, Howard Ahmanson’s Home Savings and Loan Association was the largest company of its kind in the United States. Describing himself as “such a pig when it comes to collecting Sheetses,” Ahmanson commissioned Millard Sheets to create a visual identity for Home Savings and Loan. From 1952 to 1991 the Sheets Studio designed for at least 168 Home Savings locations.[2]

    “These are not your standard bank buildings,” wrote architecture theorist Aaron Betsky in 1991, “but imposing travertine marble palaces adorned with stained glass, sculpture and mosaics that depict the ideal life to be had in Southern California. The marble box tells you that this is a safe, dependable place to store your money, while all of the art gives you a picture of what you are saving for.”[3]

    Historian Adam Arenson identifies the Sheets Studio team for the Compton Home Savings and Loan as “Millard Sheets, Susan Lautmann Hertel, Larry Ross, [and] Alba Cisneros.”[4]

    While little is currently known about this specific Van Sant artwork, some insight may be gained by considering the working practices of the Millard Sheets Studio. An influential artist, educator, and architectural designer, Sheets provided vision and direction for projects and hired artists, designers, craftspeople, and architects to work with him to make the mosaics, murals, furnishings, tapestry, stained glass, sculpture, and more, with which his projects were populated. As described by Arenson, the work of the Studio’s employees “was publicly regarded as Millard Sheets Studio work, without much room for individual credit.”[5]

    [1] Tom Van Sant, “Tom Van Sant Resume­_August 2013,” Van Sant Digital Record, Van Sant Family Collection.

    [2] Adam Arenson, Master Inventory of Millard Sheets Studio and Home Savings Art and Architecture-Published Version August 2018. https://adamarenson.com/. Accessed 11/16/2023.

    [3] Aaron Betsky, “Marble Palaces of Home Savings Remind Us What the Money's for,” Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1991, pg.WS J2.

    [4] Adam Arenson, Inventory of Millard Sheets Studio and Home Savings Art and Architecture, 2018. https://adamarenson.com

    [5] Adam Arenson, Personal Blog, “S. David Underwood, Sheets Studio Architect,” posted 10/30/2012. https://adamarenson.com

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