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EXILE
1999
23" x 16" x 16"
Grapevine, nails
Photo: Lee Fatherree
IN THE CROWD
1999
11"x24"x24"
Finished Pine, vinyl-coated steel nails
Photo: Lee Fatherree
TYPICAL APPLICATION
1999
19"x28"x28"
Apricot prunnings, vinyl-coated steel
nails, concrete screws
Photo: Lee Fatherree
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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Gyöngy Laky, San Francisco textile sculptor, is a Professor at the University of California, Davis. She is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and was one of the first textile artists to be commissioned by the Federal Art-in-Architecture Program. She completed undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and founded the internationally acclaimed Fiberworks, Center for the Textile Arts, there in 1973. Her work is in several permanent collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian's Renwick Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum, the American Craft Museum (now Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design) in New York and others. She exhibits her work nationally and internationally.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Most of my sculptures, over the past several years, reference my concern for environmental issues. They are primarily composed of orchard debris, park trimmings and street tree prunings-collected from the many tons of cuttings which are available each year as growers and gardeners trim and discard (or often burn) the branches of nut and fruit trees and as we maintain our parks, streets and gardens. I am interested in making a small dent in changing attitudes about the environment and our relationship to it. I want to propose the question of what is waste and what is not. I refer to my work as architectural structures and use age-old forms of human ingenuity about building things by hand. Some work is for the wall, some free-standing and some occurs in site-specific outdoor situations.
COMMENTS ON THE FIBER FIELD
As we enter this century, artists are stitching with thorns, carving logs, braiding hillsides, drawing with sticks, writing poems on leaves and growing sculpture. I am drawn to this type of work and feel I am a participant in a quiet, but significant art movement. Are artists working in these ways, with these materials, preparing for a fresh attitude toward nature for the 21st century? Will this work help break down the distinctions and barriers that have long allowed us to think of nature primarily as our resource? Might such works reveal ecological conditions and cause us to question the character of human intervention? The outdoors has long been a source of inspiration to artists, but the present explorations suggest a new relationship, entreat a lighter hand, acknowledge a greater interdependence and propose a more profound respect.
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