at The Place, a San Francisco tavern and poets’ hangout. DeFeo also exhibited her jewelry at Dover Galleries in Berkeley, and was included in many group exhibitions over the next few years. Early in 1955, DeFeo was featured— along with Julius Wasserstein, Roy De Forest, Sonia Gechtoff, Hassel Smith, Paul Sarkisian, Craig Kauffman, and Gilbert Henderson—in a group exhibition, Action, independently curated by Walter Hopps in Santa Monica, where the paintings featured were installed around the base of a working merry-go-round. Later that year, DeFeo and Hedrick moved to 2322 Fillmore Street, into a spacious second-floor flat, where DeFeo was able to work on a larger scale. The Fillmore Street building—whose inhabitants at various times included the visual artists Sonia Gechtoff, Jim Kelly, Joan Brown, Craig Kauffman, John Duff, and Ed Moses; the poets Joanna and Michael McClure; and the musician Dave Getz—became a hangout for other artists, writers, and jazz musicians. The artist Billy Al Bengston remembers DeFeo as having “style, moxie, natural beauty and more ‘balls’ than anyone.” Hedrick, Deborah Remington, Hayward King, David Simpson, John Allen Ryan, and Jack Spicer founded The 6 Gallery at 3119 Fillmore Street, at the location of the King Ubu Gallery, which had been run by Jess and Robert Duncan. Joan Brown, Manuel Neri, and Bruce Conner would become associates of The 6 Gallery. DeFeo was present when Allen Ginsberg first read his poem Howl at the famous The 6 Gallery reading in 1955. In 1959, DeFeo became an original member of Bruce Conner’s Rat Bastard Protective Association. In 1959, DeFeo was included in Dorothy Canning Miller’s seminal exhibition Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, alongside Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Louise Nevelson, among others. Following this she had a solo exhibition in Los Angeles at the Ferus Gallery, started by Walter Hopps and Ed Kienholz. The Rose DeFeo’s best-known painting, The Rose (1958–1966) preoccupied her for almost eight years. Selected by Thomas Hoving for his book Greatest Works of Art of Western Civilization, this masterwork stands over ten and a half feet high and weighs more than one ton. As she worked on it, DeFeo built up and then carved away at the paint, in an almost sculptural process. In the end a starburst motif emerged with ridges of white paint radiating out to rougher textured gray material sparkling with mica. The