ART ABOUT TOWN
however, she is extricating a tired, run-down machine from the oven. The cupboards are packed – not with food , but tubes and pipes. She seems happy and completely oblivious. In another piece, Off, the housewife stands in front of an open refrigerator holding a bottle of milk; the refrigerator is loaded with rotten food. When you look closely, two sly, satirical details of this disturbing tableau surreptitiously emerge: The cord to the icebox lies unplugged on the floor while the housewife herself has a small crack in her front tooth; the smile is blemished. The tech revolution doesn’t go unmocked either. In Wired, a wrinkled arm dominates a busy digital-wire background, the hand holding a cellphone with a selfie image capturing a partial view of a face. A single troubled eye looks out toward the viewer. Disturbing, humorous, apocalyptic, entertaining, the dance goes back and forth. Lipton’s conclusion is unmistakable: our collective soul is dying. But maybe we will just ignore the chaos, our inevitable destruction and death, like lemmings walking off a cliff. CRAFT AND FOLK ART MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES Windfall By Box Collective (May 29-September 4, 2016) Words Kay Whitney
Demonstrating ongoing support for environmental responsibility, the Craft and Folk Art Museum exhibit Windfall By Box Collective, is a collection of work embodying the standards of green design. The 15 pieces of furniture, sculpture and domestic objects on display were fashioned from some of the thousands of trees that fell between November 30th and December 1, 2011 during the San Gabriel Valley windstorm. Most of the works are made out of wood from fallen trees collected at the Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanic Gardens. Ten members of Box Collective are represented: Robert Apodaca, Casey Dzierlenga, Harold Greene, David Johnson, RH Lee & JD Sassaman, Samuel Moyer, Andrew Riiska, Stephan Roggenbuck, Cliff Spencer and William Stranger. The Los Angeles-based group of furniture makers is committed to sustainable design and production. Their mission is to emulate the era when value was placed on fine craftsmanship, long-lasting materials and sound design. Employing reclaimed materials that would otherwise be discarded, they dumpster-dive and upcycle wood, scrap, glass, metal or paper products. The pieces in the Windfall exhibition are stripped of extraneous detail and express their composite materials. The most sculptural piece in the show is Riiska’s window installation, Marshmallow Box Garden, made from a single piece of bark-cov-
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