Amidst the car culture and surf culture of Los Angeles, Wallace Berman lived a more rustic, Beat vibed existence, zigzagging from Topanga to Beverly Glen to Larkspur and San Francisco.  His body of works contains sculpture, photography,  film to early forms of mail-art.  His interest in mysticism, and in the power of typography as symbols, can be seen in the Kabbalah imagery layered into his work:

In 1957, Berman had his first gallery show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.  After two weeks it was shut down for alleged obscenity, and the artist was arrested by the LAPD.  In his subsequent career Berman avoided the formal confines of the art world.  In 1955 he created a pioneering mail art publication called SEMINA, and in 1960 he opened the Semina Gallery on a houseboat near his home in Larkspur, California.