Alice Konitz

Yesterday night, I attended Alice Konitz’s presentation regarding her sculpture. Basically, the talk consisted of her going over each of her selected pieces and sharing her creative process and inspiration for each one. I noticed that she draws a lot of influences from California’s desert landscape and also from the local places that she frequents. For example, one of her pieces, the general form of a camping trailer, is made of plexiglass so that light would filter through and one would be able to see the landscape through and from within the structure. Her work also reveals a fascination with architecture, as shown through her taco stand, which is an abstract representation of an actual taco stand and she emphasizes economy in that piece by making it from paper, and keeping the structure simple. She also created a glass prism-like structure that she referred to as a “kaleidoscope”, which combines landscape and architecture.

I asked her about the use of goldleaf in her piece called “Portable Curtain” and why she chose that particular material. To her, gold is a “fake material…that pretends to be what it is, but is also perfect in what is is.” Also, it appears that often she uses materials that she has at the time, and creates a piece depending on the space she is provided. There seems to be no boundary or rule as to what she creates or why she creates it, and she is randomly inspired by the daily structures she sees, one of which is a donut shop near her house.

Konitz also creates films that revolve around her sculpture. She made a series of pieces called “Owl Society”, some of which are in the related film. It was difficult to hear the actors’ dialogue because of the poor audio, so unfortunately, I was not able to fully comprehend the meaning of the movie. However, I noticed that the characters’ costumes included a circle motif that mirrored that of her sculpture that was featured in the film, and the movie seemed to revolve a theme of obscurity.

I had always thought that art is meaningful as long as it carried some sort of societal implication, but Konitz showed how art can simply be an intimate reflection of the artist’s personal life.