“Oooh, take a look at this trash!”
Alicia Piller was giddily flitting round her Inglewood live-work studio holding up resin-coated balls of detritus, displaying off tiny fossil fragments, and pulling out plastic trays stuffed with random thingamajigs that had been organized by shade.
The assortment is all a part of her eclectic jewelry-making arsenal. She clusters recycled textiles, discovered objects, donated castoffs and gems to create handmade wearable artwork that she describes as “science bohemian.”
On this collection, we spotlight impartial makers and artists, from glassblowers to fiber artists, who’re creating unique merchandise in and round Los Angeles.
Piller juxtaposes opals, garnets and pearls with much less typical supplies corresponding to tile fragments, snakeskin, bits of lava from a visit to Iceland, and bullet casings, all sure along with strips of leather-based or vinyl. These days, she’s been working with 3-D printed waste that her associates, a pair of costume-based efficiency artists, began delivering to her in large rubbish luggage.
“I’m all the time desirous about some facet of recycling,” she stated, “seeing the worth in these items that we deem ‘trash.’”
One wall of her studio is lined with steel racks stacked with bins and bins labeled “clay,” “steel” and “scraps.” The room is cluttered, but curated.
“There’s somewhat little bit of hoarding mentality,” Piller laughed, “however I use it!”
1. Necklaces that includes seashells, gems and recycled printed plastic. 2. Alicia Piller shows her handmade ring. (Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Instances)
From her “managed chaos” come intricate, ornate, one-of-a-kind necklaces, earrings, brooches and rings. Whereas Etsy is her foremost retail hub, she beforehand offered her wearables at L.A.’s Craft Modern museum and the Houston Middle for Modern Craft. She’s additionally supplied aptitude for the likes of Phylicia Rashad, Jill Scott and Ciara.
Her creations give nods to nature, at instances skew extraterrestrial, and have Afro-futuristic undertones. One pendant evokes the ocean with its swirl of mother-of-pearl, spiral seashells and rivulets of pale grey leather-based organized above a chunk of bleached coral. A crystal-festooned collar necklace calls to thoughts a pair of Blue Morpho butterfly wings. And a jasper-studded pin resembles a Ghanaian masks at first look.
The undulating layers and microcosms that make up her jewellery’s signature “biomorphic” look prolong into her effective artwork observe, as properly.
Piller acquired an MFA from Cal Arts and now teaches sculpture as an adjunct professor at UCLA and UC Irvine. Her maximalist mixed-media paintings has proven at Observe 16 (the L.A. gallery that represents her), in addition to establishments throughout Southern California, together with the Brick and the Orange County Museum of Artwork. Each the Hammer Museum and the California African American Museum have her items of their everlasting collections. Subsequent summer time, she’ll unveil a brand new monument as a part of West Hollywood’s Artwork on the Outdoors public artwork program.
In her studio, a number of towering sculptures are ensconced in cardboard and bubble wrap, whereas others — works in progress — sit on plinths, lean towards partitions, or cling from the ceiling. There’s a stark distinction between these 9-foot-tall items and her smallest makes, a pair of one-inch publish earrings. However toggling from the large to the minute comes naturally to her.
Alicia Piller stands for a portrait in her studio.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Instances)
“It’s concerning the microscopic and the macro,” she defined. “I like having the ability to see the tiniest element, then letting it develop out into the cosmos. I’m desirous about these two scales continually and about the place we match between these scales.”
Whereas she addresses such weighty subjects as police brutality and local weather disasters in her large-scale works, making wearables offers consolation.
“The jewellery is rather more free-form and enjoyable versus the extra critical stuff that feels heavy to me,” she stated. “It’s not all the time stuffed with activism and all these concepts about humanity and the world. It’s extra of a joyous, much less nerve-racking activity.”
She added, “I additionally simply like to adorn myself within the issues that I make.”
This has been true since childhood.
Through the studio tour, the artist pulled out a chunk of brass wire bent to spell out her identify, a memento from when she was 12. She’s stored all method of adolescent mementos, corresponding to beads she customary out of tightly-rolled journal pages or colourful items of clay. Her future as an artisan was a foregone conclusion.
Photographs of Piller’s maternal ancestors line the sides of this textural necklace, which incorporates a pair of beetles at its heart.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Instances)
Rising up in Chicago, Piller and her mom carried out as clowns at birthdays and firm picnics. From ages 7 to 14, it was her job to create balloon figures for partygoers — sculpting expertise that will come in useful. She gained an appreciation for nature and anthropology from mother-daughter fishing excursions and common visits to the Subject Museum, which focuses on pure historical past. Her affinity for biology comes from her father, who attended medical college when she was younger.
“I had all these books round me that had the insides of our bodies,” she recalled, “so there was a fascination with the within.”
Piller went on to review anthropology and portray at Rutgers College, making jewellery in her spare time. Throughout breaks, she’d work at a Chicago bead retailer, the place she realized about world jewelry-making practices. After graduating in 2004, she moved to Manhattan, spending weekends hawking equipment and painted by hand clothes from a sidewalk desk. She later relocated to Santa Fe, N.M., the place she labored at a retailer promoting fossils, minerals and semi-precious stones.
“That’s after I actually understood that in all these supplies there’s a non secular facet, an vitality,” she stated. “There’s a magnificence within the fusion of all of those supplies collectively.”
Piller moved to Inglewood in 2019. Requested if L.A. has impacted her work the best way earlier cities had, she stated, “[My] storytelling, narrative facet has come to the forefront. There’s positively been a shift, by way of desirous about how an object can inform a narrative.”
For instance, enamored of Pasadena-born creator Octavia Butler, she started referencing the sci-fi legend’s writing and utilizing her likeness, each in sculptural type (as together with her 2024 piece “Mission Management. Earthseed.”) and in her jewellery. She additionally began incorporating pictures of different inspiring girls, together with her maternal forebears and the Cuban American sculptor Ana Mendieta.
1. Earrings that includes science fiction creator Octavia Butler, considered one of Piller’s many inspirations. 2. A necklace constructed from a crinoid fossil stem. 3. Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta sits on the heart of those necklaces. (Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Instances)
L.A. has formed her aesthetic in additional literal methods, too.
“An enormous a part of what I do is strolling and doing city hikes,” she stated, noting that she’s trekked by way of practically 20 nations. She’s walked from her studio to Watts Towers or westward to Torrance, accumulating issues she finds on the bottom alongside the best way and finally reworking them. For example, a pair of jewel-toned beetles she picked up made a perfect centerpiece for a regal bib necklace.
“There’s that facet of me that basically will get enthusiastic about taking a look at these objects, then creating my very own form of cosmology, my very own artifacts, if you’ll,” she stated. “I’m utilizing ‘excessive’ gems to ‘low’ plastic and elevating all of them, fusing them into one work that then creates this vitality, this energy.”
