The Dropout Piece

Lee Lozano was among the most celebrated conceptual artists of the 1960s. So why is she buried in an unmarked grave in Grand Prairie?

A A A Comments (2) By Robert Wilonsky Thursday, Dec 9 1999

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"The effects of the treatment accumulated over time, and she didn't want any more to do with it," van Liere says. "It stopped."

About three months before her death in October, Lee moved from Baylor Hospital into the Health and Rehabilitation Center in Oak Cliff, a nursing home and mental-health facility. There, she stayed to herself, hiding behind her closed door. Mike Felton, the center's director, recalls she had no visitors. He, like most who came in contact with Lee, knew nothing of her days as an artist in New York. To him, she was simply a dying patient.

Mark Graham

Lee Lozano, circa 1971

Without a map and a guide, you will never find the final resting place of conceptual artist Lee Lozano.

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"She was a mystery," Felton says. "But if you drop out of sight and disappear from a high profile, she must have wanted it that way."

Lee apparently did have one visitor: a priest, though Felton can't say exactly with whom she spoke, since the center has at least six church groups that come through to visit with patients. Van Liere says he does not know how Lee came to be buried in an unmarked county grave, only that she decided upon such a resting place after visiting with a priest at the center -- at least, that is what he thinks.

Felton says that after her death on October 2, Lee was taken to the medical examiner's office, which finally took the body to Southland Memorial Park.

Van Liere insists the unmarked grave was Lee's idea. No one, it seems, has plans to purchase a headstone.

"The Dropout Piece" is complete.

Additional reporting for this story was provided byDallas Observer staff writer Christina Rees.