Wendell Brown, the homeless poet laureate of Brentwood who died last year, now has a permanent home in the spot he had occupied for years doling out poems and compliments to passersby.
Brentwood community leaders and friends of Brown’s gathered on the patio of the Douglas Emmett building at 11021 San Vicente Boulevard Sunday to unveil the posthumous sculpture in memoriam Brown, a decades-long beloved fixture of the community despite his status as a black and homeless veteran in affluent, at times insular, Brentwood.
The piece, commissioned by the Brentwood community for sought-after Los Angeles sculptor Jonathan Bickart, is as symbolic as it is lifelike. Brown’s face and right arm jump off a wall as his hand rests with pen in hand atop his poem, “Brentwood, Don’t Change.” Fragmented from the shoulder down, his heart falls to pieces into the shape of Vietnam, with an amethyst – Brown’s birthstone – in the province where Brown experienced trauma as an American soldier; his broken heart shining onto the street.
“When a group of us heard of Wendell’s passing, we were all so devastated and we got together and said, wouldn’t it be great if someone could recreate Wendell to sit out here forever,” Lauren Rojany said at the ceremony. “When we all drive by in the morning and we’re expecting him to be there, he will be there. So, I went to Jonathan [Bickart] and told him what was going on and he was absolutely thrilled and blown away by this idea: that not only had a community come together but over a homeless man in Brentwood. Not your everyday story. This was a man who truly didn’t do much for the community except remind us about our humanity and how important it was to smile at a stranger and say hello when you walk by.”
A Vietnam veteran, Brown emerged from the war a changed man, suffering from depression and addiction thereafter. While working as a bricklayer in 1983, Brown had a flashback of a woman he watched being slaughtered after she helped him hide from Viet Cong soldiers. He fell off his ladder and dislocated his back. He had been afraid to work since that accident and had been on the streets ever since.
In 1991, after receiving psychological help and 90 days of treatment, Brown came to Brentwood. He found local fame with verses and rhymes in tow, attracting praise from actresses Roseanne Barr and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Brown was buried at Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery in his birthplace of North Little Rock.
“This is so powerful. I know Wendell really would have just loved this. He loved the people of Brentwood,” said Willie Vines, Brown’s brother, after the unveiling Sunday.
Many of Brown’s other family were in attendance, too, awe-struck at the impact their Wendell had on this community.
Brown’s niece Candace Montgomery was flooded with memories of her uncle reciting poems mid-conversation, “but it was always about what you were talking about. He had a very God-given talent. And he always handed us poems,” she recalled.
“Until last year when [Brentwood] had that memorial for him, I didn’t know that he affected so many people’s lives. It’s really amazing to me the difference one person can make with just a word, or a poem, and how much it can change the attitudes of everybody. I think it’s something we take for granted and that we need to think more of.”
In the days leading up to the unveiling, with the piece at about 99 percent finished, Bickart was asked what he was expecting from the unveiling, an event a year in the making. He surmised the young artist in him – the ego – was most concerned with recognition as an artist and that the piece would be valid and well liked.
“But in my recent years I’ve been removing myself from all of that, and other than I got to enjoy my clients crying when they got to see it, all I’d really expect from it is the people who knew Wendell get some sort of memorial or representation of what they remember as the special times he brought to that community. And the unveiling will be the day where they get to reconnect with who and what he was,” he said.
For Bickart, an artist with an anti-war and civil rights position, the Wendell Brown commission symbolized more than just a pay-it-forward memorialization. It could be a political and civic statement, too, about the issues of race, class, mental health, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“As an artist, this is very personal. Looking at his face I feel like I won the portrait lottery. And he’s got this deep, amazing, soulful face like Miles Davis. And I just felt like there’s many of my clients that I got to sculpt whose accomplishments weren’t that interesting looking, and I feel like I got the exact opposite. Wendell visually had a presence that was engaging as well.”
Known for his large public art commissions, Bickart’s work is recognized across Los Angeles from the 14-foot monument of Colonel Griffith J. Griffith at the entrance to Griffith Park, to the bronze bust at the Rivera Country Club, and most recently the ” G.W.Carver for LAUSD at Carver Middle School in South L.A.
“There’s people who when you look at them have a disconnection to who and what they are, and there’s other people who read like book,” Bickart said. “And looking at [Brown] he looks like he lived through some of the things that he obviously had.”
Viewers might also notice a mysterious split earlobe.
“[His face] definitely showed signs of age and history to it, and there was some wuthering that was a little dark and sad, but all of it layered over a really positive openness. Especially when he talked to people, he had a big smile.”
Influenced by portrait sculptors Jean-Antoine Houdon and Daniel Chester French, Bickart used one particular L.A. sculpture, his favorite in the city, as inspiration for the Brown sculpture.
It’s called “Corporate Head” by Terry Allen and Phillip Levine at the Ernst & Young Building downtown and depicts a bronze man carrying a briefcase with his head stuck at the bottom of the skyscraper.
“It’s a piece I love in L.A., and I wanted something different, and I like the penetration of form and things emerging from walls,” Bickart said.
As head of the sculpture department at the Brentwood Arts Center for 10 years, Bickart had run into Brown several times during his time on the Westside. With him, it was always a kind word, compliments to the ladies, a “God bless you.”
“You kind of wonder what you can do to make a difference,” Bickart considered. “Here, this piece covers many elements of one, to be the type of change you want to see. I know Brentwood feels the same way too. Twenty years ago with O.J. Simpson was not what they wanted their community to be remembered by. And Wendell speaks a way different story.”
Correction: October 16
A previous version of this article stated that crowds gathered in front of Pharmaca on San Vicente Boulevard, which is right next door to the Douglas Emmett building.
The Brentwood Homeowners Association did not commission the statue; the Brentwood community did.
