Liz Larner in "Los Angeles" - Season 8 | Art21

[Liz Larner] Clay is just this kind of amazing
material

in that it has all these different states.

And it's, you know,
very loose and pliable.

It can be unwieldy, especially when
you're working with a lot of it.

[chuckles]

— It's a little skinny.

— Hmm.

[Liz Larner] And then, you know, it dries out,
the water leaves it, it be—

it just becomes, like, this dust.

[drilling]

And you have to get it into the kiln,
you fire it, and it vitrifies

and becomes very hard and stable.

It's so interesting that dust becomes this
material that is, like,

probably one of the hardest things to degrade.

— A little bit more.

— OK.

— Push it in there.

— All right.

— I'm going to need this—uh-oh.

I grabbed it too hard.

[Liz Larner] The kind of idea behind many
of these works is that they're broken.

It's a rupture, and every
rupture is different.

So the terms are, like, kind of both
poetic terms and geologic terms,

so a subduction is when two plates,
um, overlap each other, so these—

there's these forms called subductions,
and then the one on the wall over there,

that is a caesura, and that's a poetic term
that means a break in one poem.

The thing for me about sculpture
is that it's the most physical form of art

while still retaining this aspect of the poetic
totally.

And so the physical reality of instability,
something that we all have to deal with,

is part of these works.

The land is very important in California.

It's what brought people out here.

It was the end of the frontier.

It's like the myth of America kind of ended
in California.

— Ready for some digging?

I grew up about 60 miles northwest of Sacramento.

My father was mostly a rice farmer,

although we also grew wheat and barley
in the winter and tomatoes and beans.

— Ooh!

Good catch.

When I was 12 and my sister was 11,
he sat us down and said,

"Girls, you think either of you want to run
this ranch?"

We were like, "No."

[laughs]

But I think about that now like,

"Wow.

I just, like, said that when I was a kid,
and it changed my whole life, basically."

I was an undergrad, and philosophy was my
declared major.

I decided to just apply to art school.

I got into CalArts as a third-year photographer.

At the end, when I got out, I realized that
I didn't really want to make pictures of things.

I wanted to make things.

I decided to stay in L.A.

You know, it was a slower pace.

It was easier
to live here and make work as a young artist.

I—of course I thought about moving to New
York

and just realized that I wanted to experiment
and explore,

and I didn't want to have a lot of attention
on me.

I guess the idea of an artist being someone
that can change their mind,

that that's kind of what you're required to
do,

is to follow your ideas and not just do the
same thing over and over again,

that's part of what I found really exciting
about being an artist.

So this is “Planchette”,

And what a planchette is-is it's that little
piece

on a Ouija board that is heart-shaped, usually.

I'm not really thinking you can contact the—

the dead by touching this,

but I love that idea of everyone's hands being
on this object,

and that's supposed to be able
to evoke spiritual communication.

I just think that—I just love that idea.

I don't really like to tell people what to
think about things.

I like to give them things to think about
that aren't spelled out,

that hopefully just come from the physical
itself.

That's—that's a reason to make sculpture
right there.

So these pieces are called the “Guests”,
and, um, the idea with them is that

they don't have any place in particular
that they have to be, like on a base or on

a wall.

But then they are really defined 'cause
they're, like, super mathematical.

And one of the hardest things to do with this
was just to get it so that they would never

bind, you know,

that I could move it in any direction and
it would stay fluid.

I have little hooks for them, too, So you
really can wear them.

[Woman] Really?

[Liz Larner] Yeah.

[Woman] Have you done that?

[Liz Larner] Yeah, I did do that.

We did a fashion show with them.

[Woman] You did?

Larner: It was really fun, yeah.

— OK, I don't think I'll be using this one.

— It's copper.

How about pink?

— Mmm, keep the pink.

[Liz Larner] Every pigment that I get, I make a
small sample of it...

— Lot of green and blue.

[Liz Larner] And so I have this kind of huge palette…

— No, too harsh.

[Liz Larner] And it really has to do with looking at the
form,

and it's kind of thinking of it as a character.

It has a certain presence within it that
I want to try to bring out in the color.

—Right.

[Liz Larner] I'm really interested in technique,
but I don't want to stabilize a technique

or get into just having the technique
become the art.

I want the ideas about what's happening
physically to be what the art is about.

We call them cubes 'cause there's really no
other words,

but when I made those pieces,
each of the bars were the same length.

But they're curved, so is that a cube?

I don't even know if that technically is—
could be considered a cube.

And then the way that the color is applied
does not reinforce the form,

so you see all these other forms within the
form.

The work is pretty solid, but it seems
as if it's falling over or,

um, lifting up or going to move.

Something that I try to do is to not use the
same methods,

but work with the same ideas.

So that's why "2001," it's a similar kind
of idea in terms of color,

but it comes from a really different method.

"2001," uh, the idea for that was to make
an animation as a sculpture,

and so I really did make an animation.

It was a sphere turning into a cube,
and a cube turning back into a sphere.

And then, in the computer,
I pushed them all into one space.

There's no repetition as you're moving around
it.

You get a sense the thing is rotating,
even though it is actually still.

I believe right now we're in a time where
reality

and illusion are kind of always together,

and I think that the reality of this work
is its illusion,

and you're constantly having to understand
the form

and then re-understand the form

and re-understand the form and re-understand
the color because it's changing on you.

You know, if I keep using the same techniques,

then it's going to become more permanent,
and I don't want it to be permanent.

I want it to be about impermanence,

so I have to keep changing the way I do it,
otherwise it—it—it gets too etched in—

into the fabric of perception,
and it becomes too stable.

One of the things, you know,
when I started finding out about geology and

just, like,

the first rule of geology is "rock fall down,"

which I thought was so great, you know,

that it's just this cycle of from mountaintop
to sea bottom

and then back up, and that's kind of, like,
your Geology 101, first day.

[Birds chirping]

"Public Jewel" was commissioned
by the GSA for the Federal Plaza in Denver.

— This is her last name.

— Oh, thank you.

— Thank you.

[Liz Larner] I first didn't realize that I was
going to have to do multiple stones.

I thought I might find one stone and, of course,

that wasn't possible,

so then I realized I needed to make
what I'm calling the agglomerate boulder.

And that was kind of the great realization
'cause then I could get stones from all over

Colorado.

It was funny to me to just even understand
that,

you know, stones seem so permanent,

but there were many stones that would not
be able

to make it even 5 years out here on the plaza.

— Ok, can you just switch them real quick?

That's better.

[Liz Larner] It's a history that's in each stone, you know?

They're each like a little time capsule
if you know how to look at them.

In this piece, of course, the rocks are being
held up high, kind of above your head.

It's a weight.

It's a palpable weight,

and I think people will think about that
when they walk into those buildings.

[Overlapping chatter]

[synth music]

Larner: Geology in geologic time and individual
human time is so different.

[synth music]

Our lives are so short compared to geologic
eras.

♪

— Ready for the kiln.

[Beeping]

Larner: I've always felt that, like,
being an artist, you shouldn't get too much

into production,

like, it shouldn't become this thing that,

you know, you have to do,

but you should retain that freedom to, like,
take a break and reflect.

I plan on downsizing the studio.

— I'll sit in the shadiest one.

I feel really lucky.

We have a 2 1/2-year-old,

and I just want to spend some time with him
while he's really young.

I want to find some spaciousness and

some tenderness in my life

and bring that back when I come back to work
again.

[Distant goose honking]

[soft electronic music]