Beadwrangler Special Feature
June 15, 1998

Return to current Surfing           Return to The Junction

Liza Lou Beaded Environments Exhibit

This month I went surfing off the web to Santa Monica. The Bead Society of Los Angeles hosted a viewing of the Beaded Environments of Liza Lou on Saturday, June 13th. I had been reading about her beaded kitchen for over a year and had seen photos of it on the web. The web site belongs to a different gallery than where the exhibit is and does not include photos of
the beaded backyard.

http://www.hooked.net/~chg/lizawr.html

Nothing had prepared me for the effect of the actual display. Everyone says "Oh my God," and remains open-mouthed for a few minutes while the size and the impact of the beads sinks in. There is a full sized kitchen, (larger than many I have cooked in) and a real backyard completely done in beads.

Every surface, including the stove and the inside of the oven, the curtains and the cereal boxes, the broom and the dust bunnies are beaded.  As an additional bonus, Liza Lou herself was there to speak to us about her work and its meaning and why "she set out to bead the world." She is a wonderful person, quite friendly, open and honest about her work, its evolution and why she does it.  She does not think of herself as the "bead lady" although she must be the single best customer for Checz bugle beads in the world. Beads are her medium for her art, a way to give homage to women's work in the home past and present. And the endless patience required to keep a sparkling kitchen ties in with the patience required to bead. A tribute kitchen that it is forever sparkling clean, including the blue beaded water that runs out of the beaded faucet into the beaded suds around the beaded dishes in the water. One that includes spoofs of pornographic images of women in the "dirty" oven complete with the pie on the pearly rack.

And then there is the yard. When Liza realized that to bead the yard all by herself would take her 20 years, she enlisted the help of the community and many volunteers helped her bead the millions of blades of beaded glass.  Each blade is on a short wire and is twisted when done, then imbedded into the papier mache yard surface one by one on square blocks. It is all very ingeniously engineered so that it can be taken apart for traveling the USA.  Most of the objects such as the picnic table and benches are made of papier mache then beads are glued on top of the stiff paper surface. The Webber barbecue pot is a real one. The peyote stitched garden hose is not a hose but some beaded cord. The lawn mower is also papier mache. By the time she got to beading the yard, Liza became aware of the shipping weight problem involved in beading the real objects as she did with the real kitchen stove. So most everything has a papier mache or chicken wire armature under the beads to facilitate packing and moving the installations. The eight foot high tree can be dismantled branch by branch for crating.

The whole story of the community effort and Liza Lou's philosophy are narrated in a video describing the process. It is amazing to see even the security guard outside the door of the museum beading blades of grass.   Los Angeles Times critic Kristine McKenna calls this video "A splendid introduction to an artist whose devotion to her work produces environments so dazzling they verge on the miraculous."

If you are interested in ordering a copy of the video, you can send a check for $30.00 plus $3.00 shipping and handling to:
Liza Lou
Box 366
Topanga, CA 90290

If you live anywhere within driving distance of Santa Monica, CA you can see the exhibit at:
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave., Building G1
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Open Wednesday through Sunday at 11 a.m. Take the Cloverfield exit from I 10 and Michigan is the first street north of the exit. Don't miss this exhibit if you like beads or amazing art.

Happy surfing and beading.

Sylvia