All day I’ve been thinking about Liz Lou. Maybe it’s because her art involves such a passionate, superhuman commitment in time and labor. My own fits of art are so half-assed and meager.
“Liza Lou has often been trivialised as the “bead lady”. Her art is distinguished by the thousands of tiny threaded and glued beads that cover every millimetre of her life-sized sculptures and environments. There are those who would see Lou’s work as a kind of extreme and cranky craftwork, an obsessional but minor art. Her most famous piece is a full-scale kitchen, whose counters, cupboards, sink, dishes, tap and even the gushing water are all picked out in chains and whorls of beads. There has been a beaded trailer home and a backyard, every blade of grass a spike of beads. Beaded blankets, beaded portraits of all the US presidents, a beaded toilet bowl with beaded stains, beaded saints, a beaded suicide. When can it ever end? It started when she was in college. If Lou could she’d bead the world.”
I would probably spray the world gold, because it takes less effort. Read more about Liza Lou here.
Oh my GOD. That’s kind of dark and amazing at the same time. I love it.
Wow, that is dedication!
“She was blindfolded and in her best dress. Poor Liza Lou.” LOL…damn the exhibition finished on the 8th. Those beaded Presidential blankets really lifted my skirt!
I hope I can get to see The Kitchen and The Backyard some day. I guess I’ll have to put it on my “bucket list” once I can come up with a more tolerable name for the list.