LINCOLN, MA.-The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park presents Cal Lane: Crude. By combining domestic and industrial imagery and objects, Cal Lane breaks down function by exposing visual patterns. Lane applies decorative patterns such as lace to objects designed solely for function, such as steel I-beams, oil drums, wheelbarrows, shovels, and dumpsters. These masculine utilitarian objects are thus feminized and transformed from their original use to become beautiful objects often charged with politically meaning.

Cal Lane’s unique background as both a hairdresser and an industrial welder has informed her practice as a contemporary artist. She creates sculptures that are equally ornamental and tough. Using a plasma cutter or an oxy-acetylene torch, she incises intricate decorative patterns and designs into industrial cast-offs. By juxtaposing the domestic with the industrial, she subverts the original function of the steel object, and adopts a feminist strategy from the 1970s that validates domestic craft as a fine art.

For Cal Lane: Crude, Lane patterns I-beams, an oil tank, and oil drums stacked to construct a column. These heavy, rusty metal objects are transformed into transparent, delicate sculptures that reference maps, medieval tapestries, and architectural ornamentation. The title for the installation, Crude, not only refers to the original uses of the drums and tank but also comments on the consequences of our dependence on oil. The seductiveness of the artist’s sculpture is a foil to their political connotations.

Cal Lane was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and raised on Vancouver Island. She currently lives and works in Putnam County, New York.

The installation of Cal Lane: Crude is supported by the Nathaniel Saltonstall Arts Fund.