DiJulio Art

In 1965, the four founders of Drop City, Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, Richard Kallweit and Clark Richert, art students and filmmakers from the University of Kansas and the University of Colorado bought a tract of land about four miles from Trinidad, in southeastern Colorado. Their intention was to create a live-in work of “Drop Art,” continuing a concept they had developed earlier at KU.

Drop Art (sometimes called "droppings") was informed by the "happenings" of Allan Kaprow and the impromptu performances, a few years earlier, of John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Buckminster Fuller, at Black Mountain College.

Inspired by the architectural ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Steve Baer, the residents of Drop City constructed domes to house themselves, using geometric panels made from automobile roofs and other inexpensive materials.

“Steve Baer has to get credit for what’s considered important about Drop City: the architecture – especially the use of car tops chopped off of junked cars with an ax to make buildings. At a junkyard in Pueblo, the guy points to 20 acres of junked cars and says, “Take all you want! Ten cents per top!” There were six of us and we probably got 100 tops that day. What did I do in Drop City other than work on domes and deal with other Droppers? Played chess with Gene, or should I say learned chess from Gene, made a few paintings, and made the film “Sicilian’s Defense.” Charlie DiJulio

In 1967 the group, now consisting of 10 core people, won Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion award for their constructions. Soon the community grew in reputation and size, accelerated by media attention, including news reports on national television.

The peak of Drop City’s fame was the Joy Festival in 1967, which attracted hundreds of hippies, some of whom stayed on. The complex now had eight domes and geometric buildings constructed.

By the end of 1968, most of the original founders and occupants of the community had decided to move on. In Boulder, CO the artists’ cooperative, "Criss-Cross" was founded whose purpose was to function in a “synergetic” interaction between peers (no bosses) to create experimental innovation.