Stevie Love
The Crass and the Cosmic
Antelope Valley College Art Gallery
January 15 - February 22, 2024
Stevie Love lives surrounded by nature in an adobe house that she and her husband made by hand on the north-facing slope of the San Gabriel Mountains high above the Western Mojave Desert. Her paint-sculpture hybrids are inspired by intense energy, joy, nature, visual culture, and being open to experiment.
Love’s philosophy builds on the early Modernists’ belief in artmaking as a spiritual practice and extends it into everyday contemporary life, and to that end she is practicing metaphysics in the studio. She professes an addiction to acrylic paint for its ability to make three-dimensional sculptural forms, and her tools include squeeze bottles and pastry tubes. The addition of faux fur and faux gems brings a funky sense of surprise and humor. Esteemed writer and critic, Peter Frank, characterized the work as “the crass and the cosmic”.
Love’s work has been featured in private and public spaces across the U.S., and in Asia, and Europe, and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA, and the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA.