Palos Verdes Art Center / Beverly G. Alpay Center for Arts Education is pleased to announce Ann Weber: Let the Sunshine In, a solo exhibition of monumental, sensuous, and anthropomorphic sculpture – made from discarded cardboard boxes. The exhibition will open with an artist reception September 14th, six to nine p.m., and remain on view in the Main and Walker Galleries through November 16th. On view will be works from the last 15 years, including new standing and wall sculptures making enthusiastic color choices.
Based in Los Angeles, Ann Weber creates large-scale forms exploring the themes of relationships, community, and sustainability. Her method of joining cardboard strips together serves as a symbol of the artist’s lifelong commitment to bringing people together. After years of making functional pottery in New York, she relocated to California. She turned to cardboard for its lightness, inspired by Frank Gehry’s cardboard furniture. Each sculpture is crafted from foraged boxes and animated by the printed colors, texts, and logos. In the 21st century, the proliferation of cardboard shipping detritus has amplified the meaning of the material she has been utilizing since 1991.
The title of the exhibition, Let the Sunshine In, suggests an optimism that is challenging to embrace in these turbulent times. The artist proposes that beauty and pleasure are an integral part of life and that positivity can be a radical act.
Ann Weber was born in 1950 in Jackson, Michigan, and earned her BA in art history from Purdue University in 1972. After living in Upstate New York and New York City, Weber moved to California to pursue her MFA at the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, where she studied with Viola Frey. She was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2018. Weber’s work has recently been exhibited at Wönzimer Gallery in Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Long Beach Museum of Art; Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles and Catalina Museum of Art & History.
She has held residencies at the de Young Museum, San Francisco; American Academy in Rome; ICA San Diego/North and International School Beijing, among others. Her cardboard sculptures have been cast in bronze and fiberglass for public art projects in Phoenix, Denver, Sacramento and Emeryville, California.
