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Artist Talk: Liza Lou at OCMA
End Date: September 21, 2025
Start Time: 3:00 PM
Orange County Museum of Arts, 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa, CA
2025-09-21
2025-09-21
America/Los_Angeles
Artist Talk: Liza Lou at OCMA
Los Angeles-based artist Liza Lou is widely known for introducing beads as a contemporary fine art medium. Lou’s persistent experimentation has challenged hierarchies and helped to redefine previously marginalized terms such as craft, labor, the feminine, and the decorative. Reviewing her groundbreaking Kitchen (1991–1996) at the New Museum in New York, Roberta Smith wrote, “…this radiant piece effortlessly annihilates any barriers between art and craft, [and] proves unequivocally… that quality is where you find it and will not be denied.”¹
In the two and a half decades since Kitchen, Lou’s oeuvre has expanded to include numerous room size sculptures, including Back Yard (1996–1998), a 500-square-foot work comprised of 250,000 pieces of beaded grass; Trailer (1998–2000), a forty-foot-long mobile home with a glittering film noir interior; and Security Fence (2005), a chain link and razor wire fence enclosure covered in silver-lined glass beads that both attracts and repels, transforming a symbol of confinement.
In 2002, Lou was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and moved to KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where she operated an art studio and women’s advocacy program from 2005–2020. Here, Lou explored the capacity of beads to stand in for the paint medium in a body of Minimalist woven works. For example, The Waves (2013–2017) comprises an installation of over one thousand woven white cloths which cover gallery walls from floor to ceiling. Through the process of weaving, each cloth is “painted” with the residue of natural oils from the artist and her assistant’s hands. In 2020, Lou returned to her solo practice in Los Angeles and began a series of abstract, gestural oil paintings on woven, glass-beaded cloths. To create these works, Lou used a hammer to shatter the beads surrounding her brushstrokes, revealing the intricate threads beneath (The Clouds, 2016–2021). Lou’s most recent works are highly gestural, abstract paintings, created through the slow and meticulous application of glass beads on canvas. Impasto brushstrokes are transformed into bead-laden visual explosions, recalling the joy and freedom of Lou’s earlier work while expanding the traditional definition of painting. Lou’s work was featured in OCMA’s exhibition Color is the First Revelation of the World.
Join Liza Lou in conversation with OCMA CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman as they discuss endurance, labor, repetition, and the intersection between fine art and craft.
Orange County Museum of ArtsEvent Description
Los Angeles-based artist Liza Lou is widely known for introducing beads as a contemporary fine art medium. Lou’s persistent experimentation has challenged hierarchies and helped to redefine previously marginalized terms such as craft, labor, the feminine, and the decorative. Reviewing her groundbreaking Kitchen (1991–1996) at the New Museum in New York, Roberta Smith wrote, “…this radiant piece effortlessly annihilates any barriers between art and craft, [and] proves unequivocally… that quality is where you find it and will not be denied.”¹
In the two and a half decades since Kitchen, Lou’s oeuvre has expanded to include numerous room size sculptures, including Back Yard (1996–1998), a 500-square-foot work comprised of 250,000 pieces of beaded grass; Trailer (1998–2000), a forty-foot-long mobile home with a glittering film noir interior; and Security Fence (2005), a chain link and razor wire fence enclosure covered in silver-lined glass beads that both attracts and repels, transforming a symbol of confinement.
In 2002, Lou was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and moved to KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where she operated an art studio and women’s advocacy program from 2005–2020. Here, Lou explored the capacity of beads to stand in for the paint medium in a body of Minimalist woven works. For example, The Waves (2013–2017) comprises an installation of over one thousand woven white cloths which cover gallery walls from floor to ceiling. Through the process of weaving, each cloth is “painted” with the residue of natural oils from the artist and her assistant’s hands. In 2020, Lou returned to her solo practice in Los Angeles and began a series of abstract, gestural oil paintings on woven, glass-beaded cloths. To create these works, Lou used a hammer to shatter the beads surrounding her brushstrokes, revealing the intricate threads beneath (The Clouds, 2016–2021). Lou’s most recent works are highly gestural, abstract paintings, created through the slow and meticulous application of glass beads on canvas. Impasto brushstrokes are transformed into bead-laden visual explosions, recalling the joy and freedom of Lou’s earlier work while expanding the traditional definition of painting. Lou’s work was featured in OCMA’s exhibition Color is the First Revelation of the World.
Join Liza Lou in conversation with OCMA CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman as they discuss endurance, labor, repetition, and the intersection between fine art and craft.
