Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Cal Lane
Topo Map 5

2011

About the Item

Cal Lane remembers her grandmother making cupcakes, then covering them with paper doilies and sifting icing sugar on their tops to create a decorative lace pattern. It is an accessible memory from her childhood that is revealing of the cultural inheritance she brings to her practice. In Lane’s series Powdered Tires, large car tires stand upright in the gallery that have been dusted with powdered sugar in latticed designs. The gentle impermanence and frivolity of the sugar seems to oppose the firm practicality and mobility of the tires, suggesting both utilitarian and domestic productions, and stereotypically masculine and feminine roles. Lane not only trained as an artist but also as a welder, and cultivated her skills for fabricating functional objects as an artistic technique. Contrasts are integral to Lane’s tactile 2- and 3-dimensional sculptures. There are elements of hard and soft, strong and delicate, masculine and feminine, art and craft, inside and outside, ancient and contemporary in her pieces. In Sweet Crude, Lane takes industrial objects, including oil cans, and incises them with ornate patterns. These cans are endowed with a completely new, aestheticized purpose. They manage to retain a sense of their former lives since they are identifiable for what they once were. The cans’ familiarity as functional objects and their uniqueness as an artistic medium make them accessible to a wide range of viewers. The cuttings depict power struggles between coupling mythological beings, urban street scenes and animal-studded landscapes, to name a few scenarios. Whole worlds are mapped out and carved from the metal surfaces of these cans. Splayed into cross-shapes, it is easy to discern continents and bodies of water in the tableaux. Up close, there are striking forms and details nestled in the red or black filigree: a pickup truck, a gunman, a maiden in profile.* These silhouetted people and objects reveal as much as they conceal, and they do not amount to a cohesive whole. Consider the exhibition’s title: The term “sweet crude” refers to the most sought-after form of petroleum. It is a vast understatement to say this is a resource that nations have fought to gain and to protect. In examining the power struggles of war or sex, a straightforward narrative is impossible. Clear allegorical expectations will not be met in the tangled tales Lane weaves. And the raw beauty of the objects confuses the complicated issues to which they are alluding. * The work that I am directly referring to is Oil Drum Map of the World #1, 2008, 70.5 x 79 inches, plasma-cut steel oil drum.
  • Creator:
    Cal Lane (1968 -, Canadian)
  • Creation Year:
    2011
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 43.71 in (111 cm)Width: 41.74 in (106 cm)Depth: 1.97 in (5 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Montreal, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU476123466
More From This SellerView All
  • Port-O-Potty
    By Zeke Moores
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    Text by Michelle Cantin-Reid The common object reconstructed through skilful assembly and technique; casted, welded, and chased metal forms; almost perfect doppelgangers of the or...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Sculptures

    Materials

    Aluminum, Stainless Steel

  • Gutter Snipes
    By Cal Lane
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    Cal Lane creates stunning works of art with steel and a blowtorch. The works in her oeuvre are riveting, creating relationships that straddle the line between ornament and function. ...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Sculptures

    Materials

    Metal

  • Untitled (10 Charm Bracelet, Mixed)
    By Colleen Wolstenholme
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    I have been taking impressions of pills and creating a pill archive where pills are cast in silver and/or gold since 1995. At that time I was given pills as an answer to something th...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Silver

  • Untitled (Owl)
    By Karine Payette
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    Karine Payette was born in 1983 in Montreal, Quebec, where she lives and works. Working primarily with sculpture and installation, she reproduces, for the most part, environments tha...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Metal

  • Dumpster
    By Zeke Moores
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    By Terence Sharpe Attacking the medium of sculpture from a position of almost anti-fine art clarity, Zeke Moores alters conceptions of how we relate to material and form. There is...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • To be a master (Precision knife)
    By Eddy Firmin
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    The first decades of the 21st century shaped the period of reconfiguration of the "world order", according to Pedro Pablo Gómez1, into three options: "rewesternalization, dewesternal...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Gold Leaf

You May Also Like
  • Hommage à Nadar
    By Arman
    Located in New York, NY
    Arman Hommage à Nadar, 1986 Bronze with black patina, sliced movie camera 22 x 9 x 12.63 inches AP from edition of 75
    Category

    1980s Contemporary Abstract Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Origins
    By Lilian R. Engel
    Located in New York, NY
    Alabaster on steel 12 x 12 x 14 inches
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Abstract Sculptures

    Materials

    Alabaster, Steel

  • Son of Twilight
    By Linda K Schinkel and Theodore M Schinkel
    Located in Detroit, MI
    Inspired by a photographic image made by the artists from behind the Seljalandsfoss waterfall in Iceland, this work generates feelings of flowing love and emotion. Affection is conta...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Mixed Media

    Materials

    Metal

  • Widows and Maidens #6
    By Sherry Owens
    Located in New Orleans, LA
    Sherry Owens Windows and Maidens #6, 2019 Bronze, patina, crepe myrtle, dye, milk paint, wax 11 x 14 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches For over 30 years, sculptor Sherry Owens has used the sinewy crepe myrtle tree to tell her story of the Texas landscape, death, renewal, beauty, and of today’s growing environmental concerns. Remnants of personal stories, visions and observations in nature are the driving forces in her work. She believes that what we see and do in our daily lives leaves a mark on our planet. It is the direct impact of human activities on the natural world, which is visualized in her artistic practice. She creates connections with nature using crepe myrtle trees found along the side of the road. Each stick is hand-carved and cut to fit, then laid in place and secured with a small myrtle peg. What takes precedence in the laborious process is the importance of detail and evidence of the artist’s hand and her interaction with the materials. Sherry Owens is a native Texan, currently living and working in Dallas, TX. She received a BFA from Southern Methodist University. Recent Texas solo exhibitions include The Grace Museum; Cris Worley Fine Arts; Martin Museum of Art; Art Museum of Southeast Texas; and a two-person site-specific installation at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. She was also included in recent exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, TX and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LA. She has exhibited internationally in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Peru, and Turkey. Her work is currently on view in the Ground Zero 360 Remembrance Exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Abstract Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Widows and Maidens #5
    By Sherry Owens
    Located in New Orleans, LA
    Sherry Owens Windows and Maidens #5, 2019 Bronze, patina, crepe myrtle, dye, milk paint, wax 9 1/4 x 14 1/4 x 9 inches For over 30 years, sculptor Sherry Owens has used the sinewy crepe myrtle tree to tell her story of the Texas landscape, death, renewal, beauty, and of today’s growing environmental concerns. Remnants of personal stories, visions and observations in nature are the driving forces in her work. She believes that what we see and do in our daily lives leaves a mark on our planet. It is the direct impact of human activities on the natural world, which is visualized in her artistic practice. She creates connections with nature using crepe myrtle trees found along the side of the road. Each stick is hand-carved and cut to fit, then laid in place and secured with a small myrtle peg. What takes precedence in the laborious process is the importance of detail and evidence of the artist’s hand and her interaction with the materials. Sherry Owens is a native Texan, currently living and working in Dallas, TX. She received a BFA from Southern Methodist University. Recent Texas solo exhibitions include The Grace Museum; Cris Worley Fine Arts; Martin Museum of Art; Art Museum of Southeast Texas; and a two-person site-specific installation at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. She was also included in recent exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, TX and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LA. She has exhibited internationally in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Peru, and Turkey. Her work is currently on view in the Ground Zero 360 Remembrance Exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Abstract Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Grandfather's Land
    By Sherry Owens
    Located in New Orleans, LA
    Sherry Owens Grandfather's Land, 2021 Bronze, patina, crepe myrtle, paint, wax 30 x 46 x 18 inches For over 30 years, sculptor Sherry Owens has used the sinewy crepe myrtle tree to tell her story of the Texas landscape, death, renewal, beauty, and of today’s growing environmental concerns. Remnants of personal stories, visions and observations in nature are the driving forces in her work. She believes that what we see and do in our daily lives leaves a mark on our planet. It is the direct impact of human activities on the natural world, which is visualized in her artistic practice. She creates connections with nature using crepe myrtle trees found along the side of the road. Each stick is hand-carved and cut to fit, then laid in place and secured with a small myrtle peg. What takes precedence in the laborious process is the importance of detail and evidence of the artist’s hand and her interaction with the materials. Sherry Owens is a native Texan, currently living and working in Dallas, TX. She received a BFA from Southern Methodist University. Recent Texas solo exhibitions include The Grace Museum; Cris Worley Fine Arts; Martin Museum of Art; Art Museum of Southeast Texas; and a two-person site-specific installation at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. She was also included in recent exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, TX and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LA. She has exhibited internationally in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Peru, and Turkey. Her work is currently on view in the Ground Zero 360 Remembrance Exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Abstract Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

Recently Viewed

View All