Neo-Dadaist, performance and conceptual artist James Lee Byars was born April 10, 1932, in Detroit, Michigan. He studied art and philosophy at Wayne State University, and attended the Merrill Palmer School for Human Development, both in Detroit, 1948-1956. For a one-day thesis exhibition in 1955, Byars displayed large, spherical stones in his family's house, from which he removed all furniture, windows and doors. In 1956, Byars rented a sod farm to exhibit his abstract figure sculptures at midnight under a full moon. The sculptures were viewed from sleds pulled over the snow. In 1957, Byars received a one-year travel stipend from neighbors who admired a garden he designed for his Detroit patron. Byars used ...