Julie Allen Exhibition
McKenzie Fine Art
This event has ended.
Julie Allen is well known for her skillfully sewn sculptures. Whether lingerie, shoes, and purses made from foil, wax paper, and candy, birthday cakes made from rubber balloons, or sweets and savories constructed from silk taffeta, marbles and embroidery thread, all of her work relates to childhood and family rituals. In this new body of work, Allen has created small-scale robot sculptures, meticulously hand-sewn and remarkably imaginative and humorous in construction. Many have moving parts and detachable sections, and throughout there is an amazing attention to detail.
Growing up in La Cañada, CA, near Pasadena, in the '70s and 80s, Allen learned sewing and quilting techniques from her mother, and knitting from her grandmother. Yet the play toys she preferred were all about construction: Lego and Tinkertoy, plus anything that had to do with science. Nearly half the families in her town were employed at the nearby NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so space exploration, especially the Viking 1 landing on Mars in 1976, and robotics in general, were of great interest to her community.
Also in the exhibition will be a 16-foot wide graphite on paper drawing, depicting from memory all of the objects and furniture from her paternal grandmother's home, where Allen spent nearly every weekend of her childhood and teenage years.
Media
Schedule
from February 12, 2009 to March 14, 2009