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Talk about a woman's work never being done—it took artist Liza Lou five years to finish Kitchen, an installation piece that recreates, in life-size, a typical 1950s suburban kitchen with one striking difference from June Cleaver's workspace. Kitchen is a 168-square-foot beaded mosaic, created from about 20 million colored glass beads that Lou individually affixed to everything from dustpans to cereal boxes—and of course, the kitchen sink.
Kitchen highlights the beauty of the mundane and calls attention to the unseen and often unappreciated labor that goes into housework. Among her other works, Lou has also beaded a suburban backyard scene—complete with individual blades of grass—and created beaded portraits of American presidents, which were displayed at the Smithsonian.
Kitchen will receive its first showing in Northern California as part of Domestic Odyssey, a new exhibit opening March 6 at the San Jose Museum of Art. The exhibit features sculpture, photographs and paintings that truly hit home, mining objects and scenes from everyday life to explore issues of gender, class and culture and using domesticity as the central metaphor.
The museum hosts an opening night party on March 6 that features entertainment by a variety of performing artists, including San Francisco dance/theater company Kunst-Stoff, soprano Marisa Lenhardt and DJ Achilles Plunger. Musician Mark Deutsch will play sitar and bazantar (a five-string acoustic bass of his own invention).
Clothing design by Galya Rosenfeld and a video installation by Aaron Wolf Baum, Ph.D. will also be featured. Cocktail snacks from local restaurants and caterers will accompany libations from a hosted bar. Guests are encouraged to wear adventuresome attire.
The museum also offers a chance to get insights into the exhibit straight from some of the artists at a gallery talk on March 7.
"Domestic Odyssey" runs March 6July 3 at the San Jose Museum of Art, 110 S. Market St., San Jose. Opening-night party March 6, 810 p.m. Tickets are $15 nonmembers, free to museum members. Gallery talk March 7, 1 p.m. Free admission; reservations required. For more information, call 408.291.5386.
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