Ken Price-throwing small bumps (off the hump), Alfred, NY, 1958.Ken Price-riding small bumps, Malibu, CA, 1961. (1st seen on AB's)
Before joining the Otis group , he had been something of a Beach Boy Dadaist, a surfer-turning-artist who , like most other Otis potters, had "no idea what it meant to be an artist because there weren't any of them around." The closest thing to artists and art were surfers and surfing, whose finest moments, as with any sport, had given Price a glimpse of grace achieved through the efficient mastery of relative simple means: a waxed board, a wave, a little wind, a distance to cover. If nothing else, being an artist meant attaining, then preserving indoors, the sense of freedom, control, and even elegance Price had experienced outdoors, riding waves at the beach. Edward Lebow, Ken Price, The Menil Collection, Housten Fine Art Press, 1992.