Jedediah caesar biography of william

In the movies, as well as real life, drug dealers ship opium and marijuana in plaster animals and kitsch statuettes. What’s to stop a serious piece of sculpture from being used for the same thing?

That’s what a young L.A. artist says he thinks must have gone through the minds of narcotics investigators when they -- or rather their dogs -- picked up a scent on a piece of his artwork being returned from a show.

Jedediah Caesar, whose work also will be part of the UCLA Hammer Museum show “Thing: New Sculpture From Los Angeles,” opening Feb. 6, is standing in the bright sun outside his studio in a warehouse-heavy area near Culver City. He’s looking at his strangely shaped sculpture “Animal Life.”

“This was supposed to be full of drugs, apparently,” he says.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department won’t say much about the matter, despite repeated calls from The Times. This is how Caesar tells the story:

Caesar, 31, a 2001 graduate of UCLA’s master of fine arts program, says he was driving to his studio Dec. 15 when a call came on his cellphone from the Whittier-based Sheriff’s Department narcotics bureau. According to Caesar, the detective asked to know what was inside “Animal Life,” which had been shipped back from the New Art Dealers