Born
in rural Louisiana, Jesse Lott is a longtime resident of Houston. Over the
years his community-oriented philosophy has contributed to the formation of
Project Row Houses, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Car Museum,
and Midtown Art Center.

This
array of fourteen basketball players represents the 1986 NBA Finals matchup
between the Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets. Working with Lott, Rhonda
Rhodes and Kimberly and Booker Lakes, members of Lott’s Artists in Action
group, assembled these figures while watching the championship series,
sometimes improvising the players’ uniform numbers. Each figure is crafted
using Lott’s signature “El Pinatero Method,” in which cardboard and paper are
rolled and shellacked onto supportive wire armatures. Larry Bird (33), Robert
Parish (00), and Kevin McHale (32), dubbed Boston’s “Big Three,” and Hakeem
Olajuwon (34) and Ralph Sampson (50), who were nicknamed Houston’s “Twin
Towers,” are among the star athletes easily recognized by their jersey numbers.