Frank Gehry had an exhibition of cardboard furniture
at LACMA in LA in 1972. There was a photo of the exhibit in the LA Times, along with an impossible to ignore need to
see it. It wasn't an understood or defined need. The furniture was 90 miles away in a borrowed
car with a 17 year olds' new driver's license and friends that stared blankly at the suggestion. They would be glad
to go for a concert, but for furniture? And the furniture was so worth it: cardboard that was far outside the realm of the
conventional.
Concrete as an obsession: Concrete has no class connotations, is strong, organic, bold, immense, inorganic,
polished, coarse, able to span bridges and to be shaped into tiny objects. Overpasses, sidewalks, buldings, furniture, sculpture,
jewelry.
Nomadism: intentional and as a twig in a storm-tossed sea. Themes of restlessness, upheaval, disruption and also
of adaptability and challenge. Change...the desire for fullness, new experiences, and an all-encompassing, overwhelming desire
to bring physicality to an idea of a specific three-dimensional object. Design as the theme: clothing, flowers, furniture,
sculpture, mosaics. An ongoing struggle between function and non. It's critical to have function in this world of
unnecessary junk and it's an extreme feeling of freedom to create something that does not have to function. Minimalism
->Universality->
Childhood memories of meticulously drawing small details of tiny interlocking parts. It was so incredibly satisfying
both to do it, and to see the results when they were finished. Each tiny part in its own perfect place on the path to mosaics.
They're solid and fragile, natural and artificial, a statement about the resiliency and the strength of the
earth. Mosaics are so much color and light. They can tell a story that might need to be told, if only for the maker's
sanity. It can be a way of working out the frustrations, new thoughts and ideas that are bursting out of one's skin. It's
the fitting together of the small pieces to find as close to the perfect whole as can be imagined in that particular time
and place.
Pushing boundaries, experimentation leads to the discovery of bottomless pits and soaring light. Intimate knowledge
redefines an inherent concept of freedom and drives life that has had to learn to appreciate every small miracle.
