Two Santa Monica artists with two very different styles and approaches to art will take part in a group show called “Come IN! Les Femmes” that starts Thursday at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum across the road from LACMA in Los Angeles.
Amy Jean Boebel and Gwen Samuels are among 25 women designers hailing from different design disciplines who have been invited to transform the museum’s space with their work through September 8.
Jean Boebel, who is based at Santa Monica Art Studios at Santa Monica Airport, will be displaying her latest aluminum wire sculpture entitled “Noesis” while Samuels will display her innovative handcrafted buildings, which exemplify women’s fashion as architecture.
Jean Boebel said her installation was going to be constructed mostly on site out of charcoal wire mesh, a material commonly known as aluminum screen.
“I have one of the back corners of the museum so I can suspend my piece from the lower ceiling,” Jean Boebel said. “Since the exhibition is all women artists, I am creating an unusual interpretation of a feminine icon that will include music and a visual component. I want the viewer to experience the piece from both the inside and out.”
Samuels, also based at Santa Monica Art Studios, is a mixed media artist, decidedly inspired by architecture and design, who amalgamates women’s clothes to resemble buildings, objects, and decorative patterns.
“The artwork I am showing at the A+D Museum is called ‘Metropolis’ and is made up of one-of-a-kind hand-stitched cut out shapes, grouped by size, to resemble blocks of buildings on a city street,” Samuels said. “The images that I use function as details on a building facade from a distance. Upon closer inspection the details become recognizable shapes and the hand stitches hold it all together.”
Samuels said she snapped digital images of architectural details, objects, landscapes and people, then prints them on transparency in a repeat pattern and hand-stitches them together.
“The images are fragments and details, with shape-shifting miniaturization that creates my own visual reality,” she said. “Loose threads hang randomly from the edges signifying a work in progress. The work is hung unframed, with pins slightly off the wall, casting shadows interacting with the light.”
The opening reception for “Come IN! Les Femmes” on Thursday, July 12 will run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the museum, located at 6032 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Admission is $10 general, $5 students, and free for A+D members.
For more information, visit http://aplusd.org.
