Cal Lane

Shovel, 2012

Metal shovel
56 ^1/2 × 8 in
143.5 × 20.3 cm

 

 

Gutter Snipes I, 2011

Aluminum coated steel sewer pipe
72 × 240 × 58 in
182.9 × 609.6 × 147.3 cm

 

 

Pantie Can , 2012

Laser cut Metal Oil Canaster
10 × 8 × 5 in
25.4 × 20.3 × 12.7 cm

 

 

Land Mine, 2011

Steel ammunition box
43 × 72 × 6 in
109.2 × 182.9 × 15.2 cm

 

This Canadian born, one time hair dresser, always found herself thinking in opposites.  She was a tomboy who could hold a welding tool as easily as a pair of hair shears.  Cal Lane's work is a beautiful example of found object art.  She uses found objects that are made of steel, and then carves delicate and lacy patterns into the steel drum, shovel, pipe, dumpster, i-beam, whatever.   Her work is often times about the transformation from a masculine, utilitarian object to something ornate and feminine.

 Despite being turned into lacy, complex, beautiful carvings, there is still something hard, cold, and dangerous about Cal's work.  I know you are not supposed to touch art in a gallery or museum usually, but her work has a unique deterrent-- tetanus!  

My favorite piece of the ones I posted is Gutter Snipes.  I'm a sucker for the large scale piece or the teeny tiny.  this piece has a really unique shape.  I like that she kept the arc of the pipe.  It is a really unusual form.  The detail and craftsmanship that went into the work is insane because of the great size.  Who sees a sewer pipe and thinks of fairies?  Is the gutter snipe a real mythological creature like the Lockness monster or Sasquatch? 

Okay turns out I was a little off...  I thought guttersnipes were fairies, turns out its much more Dickensian than that.

guttersnipe [ˈgʌtəˌsnaɪp]

n

1. a child who spends most of his time in the streets, esp in a slum area

2. a person regarded as having the behaviour, morals, etc., of one brought up in squalor

[originally a name applied to the common snipe (the bird), then to a person who gathered refuse from gutters in city streets]

guttersnipish  adj