Lynn Aldrich’s Hardware Hieroglyphs
Los Angeles artist Lynn Aldrich, with the help of Michelle McCreary, the Brehm Center’s Administrative Assistant, installed three brightly colored art works in Fuller’s David Allan Hubbard Library. Her work appears in major galleries and museum collections, and this visual high-vibes installation at once enlivens the library’s energy while resonating with neighboring PMAC and the Pacific Asia Museums.
Lynn Aldrich’s sensibility forges a distinctive visual signature. She is playful, but never facile. When Lynn forages in the local hardware store, she is alive to possibilities that we would overlook. The artist beholding of utilitarian gear becomes a process of bricolage, piecing together random objects to create a new narrative.
THREE WORKS
In the foyer, upon entering the library, multiple segments of garden and cut plastic tubes of jewel-tones—emerald, sapphire, aquamarine, and jawbreaker purple—greet visitors. Aldrich’s “Downpour Acid Rain” illustrates what LA Times Critic Christopher Knight dubbed as Aldrich’s “Hope Depot aesthetic”. Aldrich appropriates commonplace materials to communicate her version of “hyper-desire”, a longing that will not be assuaged with consumption and distraction. Viewers who take the time to examine the art piece may initially enjoy the vibrant colors and shapes, and then wonder if the reptilians’ markings on the hose are perhaps a clue? If she is referencing water clean and polluted, is the price of an Urban Eden the snake in the garden? Every plastic object of convenience displaces space for a natural one. The manufacturing and consumption of these tools of convenience ironically damages the creation it is geared to serve.
Aldrich’s second piece is a freestanding sculpture made from sheets of plastic patio roofing panels cut into shapes like Gothic church windows. Titled “Seeking Sanctuary”, it also invites touch. Yet if you do touch, the edges, like the implicit commentary, are sharp.
A third piece, titled “Luminary #12 (Skylight)” faces the viewer at eye level from the exhibit wall. Aldrich sculpted layers of sanded modeling compound into a smooth concave surface, painted the sphere sky blue, then placed it in a super-sized pleated lampshade. The artist’s use of utilitarian gear becomes a process of bricolage, piecing together common objects to create a new narrative. Thus Aldrich again transforms ordinary home improvement elements into an elegant sculpture that offers the eye an oasis.
Aldrich’s Christian commitment inspires her to seek the Word of God in text, image, and creation. She, in turn, appropriates and mediates hardware to serve as symbolic narratives, prophetic hieroglyphs for those who have eyes to see creation anew. A fellow doctoral student and colleague, Dohan has just informed me he would like my input on creating a center like the Brehm in Korea. He approaches “Downpour Acid Rain” for the first time. Standing to me, he glances at the installation, and asks respectfully as both inquiry and acknowledgement, “This is art?” Seeing my nod, Dohan ponders again the garden hose segments. When asked what he sees on his second longer look, Dohan murmurs, “A quest for the transcendent.”