Linda Lopez

Linda Lopez’s ceramic objects almost appear to grow and propagate. Her squat, globular forms sprout rounded appendages and elaborate trellis-like crowns. The artist displays these objects in carefully orchestrated arrangements with a distinctly domestic atmosphere. In her work A Moment is Forgetfulness, a grouping of clay sculptures sits atop two slatted wooden pedestals reminiscent of everyday plant stands. The correspondence is purposeful: the artist looks to the structure and form of plants as inspiration for many of her ceramic explorations.
 
For Lopez, this way of working derives from her awareness of the power of language to animate the inanimate. Lopez grew up as the daughter of immigrant parents—her mother from Vietnam and her father from Mexico. Her mother’s imaginatively fragmented English in describing the world around her helped create for the artist a place in which everyday objects became magically alive. This in turn inspired Lopez to discover in her own domestic surroundings a visual language of expressive lines and rotund orbs.