OCTAVIA’S HAZE GALLERY
498 HAYES STREET
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 94102
PHONE: 415.255.6818 / FAX: 415.255.6827
WWW.OCTAVIASHAZE.COM
ARTIST’S RECEPTION: Join gallery director, Sky Alsgaard, and owner, Eric Melampy, to celebrate the work of San Francisco based artist, Laura La Forêt Lengyel, and the new ownership and direction of Octavia’s Haze Gallery, a Hayes Valley fine art and glass gallery.
WHEN: Thursday, February 3, 7:30 to 9:30 PM.
WHERE: Octavia’s Haze Gallery
498 Hayes Street @ Octavia Street
WHAT: ORIGINS- Earth works on paper and canvas by Laura La Forêt Lengyel. Through Feb. 27, 2000. Gallery Hours: Tuesday -Sunday, Noon - 6 PM. Inquiries: 415-255-6818. For more information go to www.octaviashaze.com.
BIO: LAURA LA FORÊT LENGYEL
American, b. Bridgeport, CT. BA in Art, Mills College, Oakland, CA, 1967. Gallery Owner & director: Gallery West, Inc., Mendocino, CA, 1968-73. Studios in Mendocino to 1978, Marin County to 1993 and currently in San Francisco's SOMA district. Sculpture, bronzes, painting, drawing, printmaking, mixed media constructions. Lecturer, exhibit organizer, published art writer. Founder of THE BREAST PROJECT: An Artist comments on an American Obsession. California Society of Printmakers, Board Member.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Laura La Forêt Lengyel, San Francisco's original body printer, will talk briefly about her work and will demonstrate her unusual painting methods. The artist refers to her unique works as Monopressings, an experimental printmaking process that has captured the attention and imagination of the national and international media and collectors. Her related performance works and prints are featured on TV, in print and on the net.
Lengyel's form of taking impressions from the human body started as a part of THE BREAST PROJECT in her SOMA studio in 1995. Conceived out of a need for expression, the artist was addressing issues such as women's health care, society's exaggerated breast fetish and augmentation myth by painting women's nude torsos. She invented these printmaking methods also out of need for a non-toxic printing method, having suffered lung ailments from artists' materials and working in a polluted industrial warehouse studio.
The collection has grown to over 300 pieces, including works produced during public performances. Her first public demonstration was in SF's North Beach at Enrico's in 1995 where she painted and printed 3 models while a group of artists and supporters dined on lunch.
The selected works at Octavia's Haze Gallery will feature prints that use colors and materials found in nature. Capturing Lengyel's awe and respect for the natural world, some works resemble the pigments found in the ground, plants and rocks. Some pressings are made with metallic inks she formulated especially for this process. Her latest works, which she refers to as mud pressings, are made with actual dirt from the Mendocino forest floor. She mixes various tones of the earth with a binder, applies it to her models and then presses them onto specially treated canvas. There is primordial aura surrounding her latest works that touches upon mortality, society and a shared history.
Laura La Forêt Lengyels' body prints are statements about the possibilities of making art with the natural bodies of real people. An artist with a classical orientation, she offers another view of the human body, as a canvas and print surface. Her methods mimic traditional printmaking techniques yet produce surprising images and textures.
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