He spent one year at Phoenix College before returning to L.A. to attend the Otis Art Institute, where he studied under the painter Charles White.
[5][3] He also directed the Watts Towers Art Center,[1] until he moved to New York City in 1980 at the encouragement of his friend David Hammons.
There he was introduced to Linda Goode Bryant, the founding director of Just Above Midtown Gallery (JAM) whose roster included other artists who had made the same move to New York City from Los Angeles, among them Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger, and Houston Conwill.
: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980", curated by Kellie Jones, Concholar showed an installation of a suitcase Charles White had given him he had left and found at Just Above Midtown Gallery, stuffed with Cocholar's personal bills, magazines, his afro pick, and ticket stubs to different museums in L.A.
[6] Jillian Steinhauer of Hyperallergic called the piece, "a microcosm of the entire show," an exhibition that she described as "so good — so well-curated, so full of fantastic art, so revelatory — that it was worth bringing to New York no matter what.