Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), in partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, announces a new installation by Los Angeles-based artists Sophia Allison and Leanne Lee at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The installation, titled Passage, is composed of coffee filters, which were used, dried, and sewn together, and delicate drawings on rice paper. Using these materials to create, deconstruct, and reconstruct speaks to the notion of process, change, and reinvention. The site-specific installation is on view in the art display case in the Customs Hall of Tom Bradley International Terminal through March 2013.
Passage references a ritualistic domestic action: making coffee. Water passes through ground coffee and filters, staining the ghost image of the process into the paper. Allison and Lee dried and ironed flat the used filters, then stitched them into clusters reminiscent of floral and vegetative landscapes. Adding to the juxtaposition of organic and inorganic, of ritual and daily activity, the artists incorporated cityscape drawings on rice paper which were stained with watercolor and coffee. Informed by traditional Korean symbols and motifs, these drawings were reconfigured by cutting, tearing, and sewing the images into the clusters of coffee filters. As actual geographies, locations and landscapes shift and fluctuate – physically, mentally, and metaphorically –the materials that comprise this work are non-permanent and fragile. As a modular construct, Passage can be repositioned infinitely, becoming site-specific and speaking to the temporal nature of life.
Allison received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and works in mixed media including sewing, sculpture, and installation. Lee received her BA in Studio Art from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She is known for her paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations.
