El Disco

Emerging from Los Angeles in 1987, amid the rising tide of UFO sightings and the flourishing psychic culture of the 1980s, El Disco began as a three-artist collaborative focusing on reality-based Fortean phenomena and a plethora of anomalous events. The American Southwest had long been considered ground zero for unexplained aerial sightings, with its vast deserts and mysterious lights capturing the public imagination. Within this landscape, El Disco positioned themselves as the artistic voice of this distinctly American mythology. Over their many years together, artists Joe Clower, Steve Thomsen, and Tennyson Woodbridge documented hundreds of events across the West—both factual and presumed—building an archive that speaks to humanity’s eternal fascination with the enigmatic while simultaneously creating a visual anthropology of America’s relationship with the UFO. Their work stands as a testament to a uniquely American paradox: a culture simultaneously defined by pragmatic innovation and yet boundless mystical curiosity.

Joe Clower, (b. 1937 Norfolk, VA – d. 2024 Denver, CO) received his BFA in 1963 from the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, and his MFA in 1967 from the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.  While at CU Boulder he became connected with many of Colorado’s new wave of artists as a member of Boulder’s Armory Group and later the Criss-Cross artist co-operative. Clower has exhibited his work nationally since 1964, including exhibitions in New York City, NY; Los Angeles, CA; San Diego, CA; Chicago, IL; Seattle, WA; and throughout Colorado. His museum exhibitions include the Denver Art Museum, MCA/Denver, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kansas City Art Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, Center on Contemporary Art Seattle, The Harwood Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Alaska State Museum, in addition to numerous University institutions around the country. His work is in the public collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Eli and Edythe Broad Collection, the National Gallery of Australia, Security Pacific Bank, Warner Brothers Records, and many private collections.

Steve Thomsen (b. 1953, Los Angeles, CA) has been a central figure in the West Coast avant-garde art and sound-art scenes for over 35 years. He co-founded the Los Angeles-based art collective World Imitation in the late 1970s, leading to the formation of Monitor, an experimental art/music band active in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He later co-founded the bands Solid Eye (1992) and Swan Trove (1995) while continuing to produce collage-based chapbooks and releasing solo works on cassette and CD. In 2015, the Neurec label released Skeleton Works, a five-CD retrospective of his visual and sound art. His work has been exhibited nationally in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Tokyo, with notable presentations at The Box and Track 16 in Los Angeles and The Brooklyn Museum in NY. Thomsen now resides in the southwestern U.S., where he explores mine shafts and caves for phosphorescent formations and geological curiosities.

Tennyson Woodbridge (b. 1963, Long Beach, CA) is a multidisciplinary visual, conceptual, and performance artist. He earned his BFA in Studio Art from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his MFA in Painting from the University of California, Los Angeles. Woodbridge has exhibited in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Orange County, and Palos Verdes, California, as well as internationally in Havana, Cuba. His work has been shown at Cirrus Gallery, the Paley Center for Media, the Palos Verdes Art Center, the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, and UCLA’s Dickson Art Center. He has participated in artist residencies in Saxnäs, Sweden, at Ricklundgården, producing large-format in-camera panograph series capturing the Scandinavian solstice light. In 2021, he established his studio in Vallejo, California, where he continues to create, perform and facilitate visual arts.