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PaperCity Houston July_August 2021_rev

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The artist with Home Grown, 2021 It's unusual to have a dual degree in furniture design and science. JL: I've always had a fascination with the natural world and the question of where we come from, and where we are going. In college, geology intro classes were eye-opening — it's part of our deep history in the way that everything is interconnected. Your designs are original and provocative JL: This idea of painting over the surface and hiding the structure away, it's a journey of doing something that's wood based, seeing the natural grain of the material. It collided with my growing understanding of industrialized materials, where people are engineering all the properties to have control over their physical environment. For me, THE EXPLOSION OF JOYCE LIN (continued from page 68) REBECCA SHERMAN CHATS WITH JOYCE LIN: there's almost a horror aspect of it. There's also humor to your work. JL: In my early work, I made toy kinetic chairs to challenge the assumption that furniture is static. In geology, what we assume is static is not. Even rocks are slowly moving. Everything is slowly moving from one state to another. Chairs are related to the human body — even how we talk about a chair: It has a back, arms, legs. It's my way of almost turning the work into a character. Dirty work. JL: I've been interested in dirt for a while — conceptually, as this idea of something beneath our feet, a realm that we consider nature, but it's also something we might consider disgusting. When things die, we use dirt to cover them up. But things also grow out of it. The natural matrix of death and creation is beautiful. In my newest work, Home Grown, the bottom grows up from the dirt into this opaque surface so you can't tell what's inside. 1-800 Get Pink JL: It's a chair I made at the end of 2020. It was a reaction to social media at the time. I was doing a lot of rounded chair forms that are painted or gilded. But what is actually inside those things? So, there are exposed areas where you see what's really underneath. Inspiration. JL: Just going about everyday life, I'll see something like exposed pavement on the road and be inspired. I'm fascinated by construction. For a while, they spent a year repaving my entire road, and I was like 'Oh my god, there's a whole world under our feet.' facebook.com/papercitymag @papercityhouston @papercitymag FOLLOW US ONLINE PAPERCITY PAPERCITYMAG.COM

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