[2] The prolific Herms has also created theater pieces, about which he has said, "I treat it as a Joseph Cornell box big enough that you can walk around in.

"[4] Often called a member of the West Coast Beat movement, Herms said that Wallace Berman taught him that "any object, even a mundane cast-off, could be of great interest if contextualized properly.

During World War II, Herms was sent by his parents to the College of Engineering at Berkeley, which he left after approximately six weeks when "the football season was over."

Reportedly, Herms decided to become an artist when a transient sat down next to him in a Sacramento bus depot and said, "There's the makers, the takers, and the fakers.

"[9][5] During the late 1950s, Herms resided in a number of different cities in California, including Berkeley, Larkspur and Hermosa Beach before returning for a short period of time to Topanga in 1961.

[7] Herms participated in major group exhibitions in the 1990s, including "The Denim Jacket Show" at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (1990); "Novel Ideas" at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach (1990); "Crossing the Line: Word and Image in Art" at the Montgomery Gallery at Pomona College in Claremont, California (1990); "Artist's Artists" at Long Beach Museum of Art in Long Beach, California (1990); "Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, George Herms and Jess" at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York (1991); "California Artist's Books" at The Armory Center in Pasadena, California (1991); "Poem Makers: Wallace Berman, George Herms and Jess" at L.A. Louver Gallery in Los Angeles (1992); and, "Sight, Vision: The Urban Milieu #3 (Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, George Herms, and Jess") at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco (1992).

[7] In 2011, Herms was the focus of a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles entitled "Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown).

[14] George Herms has had public art commissions, including "Clock Tower Monument in Unknown" at the MacArthur Public Art Program in Los Angeles (1987); "Moon Dial" in Beverly Hills, California (1988); and, "Portals to Poetry" in Citicorp Plaza in Los Angeles (1989).

[7]: 58  Herms also received the 1998 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Award and a Fellowship at the Getty Research Institute in 2000.