Liza Lou

Santa Monica: Smart Art Press, 2000. 3rd printing. Softcover. New. New copy. 3rd printing. 64 pages, Softcover, 7 x 6 3/4 inches, 2000. ISBN #188919512x. This jewel-like book documents Kitchen and Back Yard, Lou’s extravagant domestic environments made entirely of tiny glass beads—millions of them! In Kitchen, the walls, floors, stove, refrigerator, cabinets, tables, dishes, water in the sink, and even the debris in the dustpan are brilliantly encrusted. Even more mammoth in scale is the 600-square-foot Back Yard, with its quarter of a million beaded blades of grass, its beaded fruit trees, rose garden, clothesline, barbecue grill, and picnic table laden with food. Hallucinatory, witty, and sublime, these suburban dioramas are a breathtaking testament to one woman’s dazzling mission. Essays by Peter Schjeldahl and Marcia Tucker.