New artist takes the Lux show-and-tell stage

Margaret Griffith is in the house! Griffith is the fourth of five resident artists participating in the 2015-2016 season at Lux Art Institute. She is living and working at Lux through April 23, and her exhibit will run through May 28.

Griffith begins with photographs of gates that she transforms into flowing, organic sculptures. The twisting and billowing pieces, made from waterjet cut aluminum and hand cut paper, are installed along the wall, suspended from the ceiling, and piled on the floor. The result is one of visual and conceptual floating, as a previously rigid and recognizable architectural detail becomes abstract in form and function.

In deconstructing and reconstructing a tangible object of residential living, Griffith both reexamines the function of the gate and explores its metaphorical role in creating divisions and boundaries in modern American society.

“It is important to me that the forms be stripped of functionality yet recognizable as urban structures that were constructed to protect and divide one space from another within a complex residential environment,” she said.

Griffith received her BFA in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1994 and MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 2001. She has exhibited throughout the United States, including solo exhibitions at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica and VERTIGO in Denver. Her work was recently featured as part of a group exhibition, “We Must Risk Delight: 20 Artists from Los Angeles,” at the 56th annual Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy. Griffith currently resides in Los Angeles.

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IF YOU GO: Lux Art institute is open 1-5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at 1550 S. El Camino Real in Encinitas. (760) 436-6611. luxartinstitute.org