Art made of coffee filters at LAX Airport

Drink up! A new art installation at Los Angeles International Airport is made out of used coffee filters and will be on view in the art display case in the Customs Hall of Tom Bradley International Terminal through March 2013.

Detail from Passage by Sophia Allison and Leanne Lee. Photo by Kelly Barrie, Panic Studio LA

The work is titled Passage and is by Los Angeles-based artists Sophia Allison and Leanne Lee, who have sewn together dried, used coffee filters and mixed with them delicate drawings made on rice paper.

Installation view of Passage. Photo by Kelly Barrie, Panic Studio LA

Here’s the explanation of the work:

Passage references a ritualistic domestic action: making coffee. Water passes through ground coffee and filters, staining the ghost image of the process into the paper. Allison and Lee dried and ironed flat the used filters, then stitched them into clusters reminiscent of floral and vegetative landscapes. Adding to the juxtaposition of organic and inorganic, of ritual and daily activity, the artists incorporated cityscape drawings on rice paper which were stained with watercolor and coffee.  Informed by traditional Korean symbols and motifs, these drawings were reconfigured by cutting, tearing, and sewing the images into the clusters of coffee filters.  As actual geographies, locations and landscapes shift and fluctuate – physically, mentally, and metaphorically –the materials that comprise this work are non-permanent and fragile. As a modular construct, Passage can be repositioned infinitely, becoming site-specific and speaking to the temporal nature of life.

 

 

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