Larry Bell was on the brink of new things in early 1969. Starting already in 1967, Bell had stopped working with the cube format and had begun to experiment with large sheets of untreated glass in larger, environmental arrangements, the first of which he exhibited in Vancouver in 1968. Bell discusses these recent developments in his interview and, specifically, their limitations, including the fact that the glass pieces were too large to fit in his vacuum chamber. In fact, at the time of the interview, Bell was impatiently awaiting delivery of a new, larger vacuum-deposition chamber. Photographs from a few months after the interview show the massive, cylindrical, drum-like device being delivered to Bell’s Market Street studio in Venice Beach. Just like Irwin and Kauffman, therefore, at the time of his interview Bell was involved with investigations that would, within a few months, open onto a new group of architecturally-scaled light and space environments.

+ Matthew Simms, The Los Angeles Tapes, page 19.