Cal Lane

Sculptor and welder Cal Lane seeks contradiction in her use of media and message.  In her series “Industrial Doilies” the juxtaposition of industrial and domestic, masculine and feminine, ornament and function forge new meanings and formal interplays.

Functional objects such as shovels, wheelbarrows, oil cans, and I-beams, otherwise viewed in an industrial context, are subverted and elevated to the status of high art when transformed by plasma cutter and oxyacetylene torch into lacy sculptures, and occupying space in prestigious art galleries and sculpture gardens.

It is in the burning away of negative space that the remaining linear tracery of signs, symbols, and imagery – themes of religion, war, oil, and sex are revealed, questioned, and transformed by light and shadow.

Cal’s provocative recycled forms amaze and delight.  She says of one example of her more political New York work entitled “Filigree Car Bombing”, “I focused on creating a tasteless relationship of images... The crushed steel of the car is cut into fine lace creating a drapery of disruption and sadness, a conflict of attraction to fancy work and the attraction to a horrific image.”

Cal Lane obtained her MFA with a major in Sculpture at State University of New York and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.  She has exhibited nationally and internationally and received a number of awards including a Canada Council Grant and the Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship. 

Raised on Vancouver Island, Cal currently practices her art in New York.  She says of her work, “I have always been interested in embracing the very thing that repels me in order to understand it: I prefer to make sense of things or in order to suspend (or pass) judgment.”

This Visiting Artist’s talk is sure to be a crowd pleaser.  See you there!

Professor Ellen McCluskey