A look at: Cal Lane

November 16, 2022
  • Cal Lane

    Originally hailing from Nova Scotia, Canada, Cal Lane  has worked out of Putnam Valley, New York, where she lives with her family for the last 20 years. Lane’s multi-disciplinary body of work explores the paradoxical implications of gender and associated cultural traditions and expectations, as expressed through found objects and materials.

     

    Lane is perhaps best known for her steel pieces into which she plasma cuts intricate, lace-like patterns. The juxtaposition of steel, a traditionally masculine and industrial material used in objects like oil drums, shovels, car hoods and barbells with the patterns of lace, associated with femininity and domesticity, provides viewers an opportunity to examine their personal assumptions about gender. Lane’s preoccupation with this topic has its roots in her background as both a hairdresser and later, a welder. Her love/hate relationship with steel has given her license to subvert its popular meanings while celebrating its tensile strength, as she does her best to push the limits of how much it can be altered. 

  • Shovels, 2016 Plasma cut steel and wood (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Ancestral Weights, 2022 China, steel (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Bike 1, Bike 2, 2022 Steel (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    CAL LANE, SHOVELS, 2016

  • Plasma cut steel
    Cal Lane, Panties (white, pink, red), 2024, plasma cut steel
    Lane pushes the boundaries of exploration of gender further into the related areas of family, the significance of community and the often weighted layers of legacy that we grapple with through the things we use and collect. 
     
     In addition to her steel dumbbells cut with lace patterns mounted on an upholstered bench, she also created dumbbells whose weights were fashioned out of plates from heirloom china sets, as well as exercise bicycles whose steel frames were cut with as many lace patterns as possible without them disintegrating.
  • Lane’s practice is informed by a continuing reach into crafts and patterns that are historically associated with femininity and domesticity, played out in materials that bear the weight of masculine cultural signifiers. Using humor and irony, she blurs the distinctions between these gender binaries, inviting us to embrace a more nuanced constellation of identities and meanings associated with familiar objects.