CCA News
Alexandra Grant Spreads Words of "Love" and More
Posted on Tuesday, October 26, 2010, by Samantha Braman
In summer 2008, the artist Alexandra Grant (MFA 2000) was invited to participate in the newly relaunched Watts House Project (WHP), an ambitious undertaking spearheaded by the internationally renowned artist Edgar Arceneaux. She hoped her design would attract attention, but little did she know quite how much she'd receive, and how international it would be!
WHP is an artist-driven, collaborative redevelopment of the residential city block across the street from Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles. It focuses on finding creative solutions to everyday problems facing this low-income community, relying on the participation of local artists, architects, and residents to help make it happen. Originally founded by Rick Lowe (of Houston's Project Row Houses) in 1996, WHP was rekindled by Arceneaux in 2008 with the support of a residency from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Grant worked with Arceneaux to incorporate WHP as a nonprofit and became its founding board chair. Arceneaux is now executive director.
Grant says: "I realized that the scope of WHP was much bigger than a single artist project, and that we could create a scalable model, using our experience with my project as the 'guinea pig,' to build the organization." Her proposal for WHP was Love House, an oversize sculpture of the word "love" placed on the roof of the Cerant family home on 107th Street. Her intent was to visually represent the greater ideas behind WHP—that artists can put love (literally) on a neighborhood, using art as a catalyst for social change. She chose the word "love" for its strong meaning and openness to the widest possible spectrum of issues and criticisms.
"Love makes us all equal and is something we all know or desire. Moneik Cerant, the mother in the family, asked me early on in the process how I knew there was so much love in the house. The truth is that I didn't at first, but I did sense that my love symbol could act as a lightning rod to generate media interest and help WHP raise funds. I am also interested in creating win-win exchanges, where a symbol or logo benefits a nonprofit organization that seeks to jump-start issues of design and civic planning."
Grant's design, with its distinctive "un-font," was subsequently made into a necklace and a loopy pink neon sign, both of which were included in the 2008 Colette store in Paris, curated by the French designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte; the store was featured (with a special mention of Grant's work) in the New York Times Fashion section and at TeenVogue.com. The necklace can be purchased online at thelovenecklace.com or the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art store.
Love House will come to fruition through a collaboration between Grant, the Cerant family, WHP, and SW-SH Architects Roberto Sheinberg and Arnold Swanborn. It is currently in the design phase, with the architects addressing the pressing needs of both the family and the community. Since Grant became involved with the Cerants, the family has adopted two children, so they now have six kids and only three bedrooms. It is Grant's hope that the project will generate sufficient funds for them to build an additional room onto the house. "We're not sure about the final form of the Love House sculpture," she says, "but it won't be at the scale in the Photoshopped image!"
Growing up, Grant moved frequently between cities and countries, and language has always informed many different aspects of her life (she is trilingual, fluent in English, Spanish, and French). She says she has always been interested in the power of language to connect people and places. "I remember the feeling of arriving in a new country where I didn't know the language, and learning how to 'read' meaning through context and the way words are spoken. Mastering a new language takes many years, especially the emotional dimensions of humor and metaphor. I think the experience of living in translation—and understanding what is gained and lost in translation—is what originally got me curious about how text can function as image."
Nearly all of Grant's paintings, drawings, and sculptures use words as their basis. Her chains of words are written backwards and forwards, in various sizes, in all three of her languages. But they are always written in the same "un-font," as Grant calls it, a kind of handwriting that registers as universal—not easily identifiable as that of an adult or a child, a woman or a man.
"I want to create a practice where all the things I know to be true can coexist, even if they are contradictory. For me, art making is a platform for research and intellectual curiosity. I see my role as that of a daily laborer who works toward an accretion of small gestures; as a connector of things that wouldn't normally touch; as a translator between languages and forms; as a teacher; as an alchemist (to draw doors where there aren't any); as one consistently questioning assumptions; as a mind at play; and as infinitely lucky."
Grant credits Stephen Goldstine, CCA's graduate director at the time she was a student here, for giving her the leeway to build her own curriculum, sparking her ability to be successful and confident. She worked with a wide array of other mentors as well, including the architect Mabel Wilson and the architectural historian Mitchell Schwarzer. Her private tutors included the playwright John O'Keefe.
"There was very little pressure to perform for the 'art world,' and I felt free to really focus on what interested me. I had a truly interdisciplinary experience, and I developed a genuine, autonomous way of working that wasn't about intangibles like success. At CCA I learned to care about the issues that I still care very much about today. My work continues to evolve, but all of the essential aspects—research, studio work, valuing intellectual exchange, organizing around certain core principles—were formed at CCA."
Grant has a solo show up now at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles, and her work is currently on view in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art.
Her recent exhibitions include the solo show MOCA Focus (2007) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the group exhibition Four Projects at Haunch of Venison, New York (2010).