FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Lacey Jane Roberts
The Master’s Tools (Decay Goes Both Ways)

May 3rd – May 31st, 2008

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, May 3rd, 6-9pm

llittle tree gallery
3412 22nd St @ Guerrero
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.643.4929
www.littletreegallery.com
info@littletreegallery.com

little tree gallery is pleased to present Lacey Jane Roberts in her first solo show with little tree gallery entitled The Master’s Tools (Decay Goes Both Ways). Lacey Jane Roberts will be presenting a 9 1/2’ tall by 11’ wide hand-woven barbed wire fence entrenched in silver yarn. The fence is highly organic; yarn spills out from different sections, engulfing the gallery in its web. A spinning wheel sculpture adds additional depth to this succinct and stimulating show.

The familiar pattern in a chain-link fence has an intuitive relationship with textiles. Material is as important as its construction. Combined, strength is formed. But strength is not what compels us entirely; there are also aesthetics and functionality. As a result of this, we have variety.

This is Lacey Jane Robert’s second fence and the two couldn’t be more different. Silver yarn surrounds each wire and pipe of this 9 1/2 foot tall barbed wire behemoth. Leaning at a precarious angle, the worn and tired fence bends forward as if atrophied. Through the middle is a wide gash. The violent hole is big enough for one to walk through. It is a fence in decline, battling for its survival. Conversely, the yarn has thrived. It feeds off the fence’s demise like a parasite. The yarn erupts from the piece and piles onto the floor. It slithers through the fence’s diamond shapes like a weed. And like a weed it has made an aesthetic and functional pattern. The result is an organic growth that forces life onto death.

A companion piece is an antique spinning wheel, painted a silver similar to the yarn. The sculpture is actually two pieces of one spinning wheel resting against each other. Unable to stand on their own, they cling together. Like a newborn horse taking its first steps, the sculpture is unsteady and its future is unknown.

Lacey Jane Roberts has shown extensively throughout the Bay Area and beyond, including the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art and Southern Exposure. She is a published writer and has presented her paper ‘Put Your Thing Down, Flip It And Reverse It: Re-Imagining Craft Identities Using Tactics of Queen Theory’ at various universities internationally. She has taught at California College of the Arts, where she also received her MA in visual criticism along with her MFA in textiles. She lives in San Francisco.

For inquiries and questions regarding the show, please contact J. Brent Large by phone at (415) 643-4929 or by email at info@littletreegallery.com.