The completed "Bone Hut" sculpture
Laurie Hassold fashions unbelievable assemblage sculptures of organically inspired creatures. She is a wonderfully rare original artist, full of energy and an art professor to boot. To view some previous works exhibited at Eclectix in the AllGurlz show, click here.
Artist Hassold at work on a piece, Credit:The OC Art Blog
Below is a peek at her new work the “Bone Hut” ( formerly “Fossil Grotto”) and a slideshow of detailed step-by-step shots of it’s evolution. It will be on exhibit in the upcoming Art Shack show in Laguna Beach. Laurie graciously consented to a little interview with Eclectix.
What materials did you use to create this piece? Bones, steel, resin and clay …
What is your personal vision, the thoughts behind Bone Hut? There are implications of global warming, post consumerism, and the predatory nature of evolution which resonate as one’s eye meanders through this dwelling. Constructed of remains and human detritus of post-human extinction, the cave seems to be turning into some sort of altar, which may contain an item preserved from the former culture that hints at the appearance of the new occupants. This piece also explores dualities of Dead/Alive, Order/Chaos, Mind/Body. I’ve also started looking at it as an elaborate container for nothingness–obsessive ornamentation as an insecure, compulsive activity to validate one’s own existence. Ironically, all the neurotic layering in my work often ends up feeling incomplete to me–and ultimately the frenetic activity feels more like suffocation and death. This piece has given me new awareness into my process and the underlying motivation for my work, in that I feel the contrast between the empty interior and the overwrought exterior has become the message. It’s like an abandoned husk that once nourished some sort of life, but now stands dormant in a state of mute erosion. Of course, as a “husk” it has potential to become a dwelling for some new life form. In a way, it’s like a painter confronting the void of the white canvas–that limitless potential is as much about creativity and life, as it is about emptiness and death.
The hollow deadness of the thing gives me the same feeling I get when I go to the desert. My favorite spot is a dry lake bed in Anza-Borrego surrounded by the mountains… At full moon the dry cracked mud turns silvery gray and the black silhouettes of the surrounding mountains give you the feeling you’re being watched by some hulking timeless beings while standing in a bowl of moonlit sugar! There is no sound but the wind and if you lay on your back and stare up into the night sky riddled with stars, you start to feel like you are actually leaving your body and dissolving into the environment. For some reason I’ve always dug that feeling–of being insignificant in the face of nature. It transports me and literally incinerates my petty human problems.
Any fun/interesting/frustrating/mishaps/tidbits that occurred while making the piece? I started receiving gifts of little dead things…a dead rat from my cat Ninkie, a dead bird from a student at Orange Coast College, a dead mouse from a student at Santa Ana College, and many beef and pig rib bones from an IVC student who worked at Lucille’s BBQ! Also–an amazing artist and now friend, Sarah Perry, whose exquisite bone sculptures have been a huge inspiration to me, invited me out to her 5 acre property in the Antelope Valley. When she beguilingly suggested I bring a huge “tub”, I knew I was in for a very interesting day. She had me fill my tub with all sorts of bones from all of the dead animals strewn about her property in various states of decay! While cutting apart and drilling through these bovine leg bones that were to become the “legs” for my piece, I discovered that the decomposition process was not quite complete– which was pretty stinky!
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More on the “Bone Hut”: The installation includes simulated “glow worm drips” like the ones found in Waitomo Cave in New Zealand. You’ve probably heard about these fascinating critters, but if not, they secrete these gorgeous glowing strands of saliva which suspend from the ceiling of the cave and attract moths. The moths fly into the strands and get stuck and then are reeled back up to the worms who eat them alive–yummie! Also…I’ve placed a sort of relic inside the cave which has filigree spider-like legs and sports an adorned human brain. If the cave was built with fossils from post-human extinction species, it is possible the bones of those species were much larger than human, so the preserved human brain in the center references scale.
The Art Shack exhibit runs June 13th-Oct. 3rd, 2010 at the Laguna Art Museum
Related Links:
The OC Art Blog: Sneak Peak at new artwork- artist Laurie Hassold
EclectixArt: A Look a Laurie Hassold’s Art
A Flicker Set on Art Shacks -
YouTube video of the artists and art at Art Shack.
(This entry was originally posted on 5/20/10 and transferred here – as we are discontinuing our other blog site)
