Margaret Griffith

“My trajectory is the reinterpretation of our urban and residential landscape through abstraction.”

A native of Winston‐Salem, North Carolina, Margaret Griffith attained a BFA in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1994 and an MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2001. She has exhibited throughout the United States, including solo exhibitions at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica and VERTIGO in Denver. Her work was featured as part of a group exhibition, “We Must Risk Delight: Twenty Artists from Los Angeles,” at the 56th annual Venice Bienniale in Venice, Italy.

Residential Gate as Metaphor

Margaret Griffith’s work reinterprets our urban and residential landscape by reimagining a most tangible structure ‐ the residential gate ‐ as a metaphor for impermanence. Her large‐ scale paper and metal sculptures begin as photographic images of gates found throughout her Highland Park neighborhood neighborhood in Los Angeles. Her paper installations are hand‐drawn, cut, and then installed in a variety of ways: on the wall, suspended from the ceiling, and in piles on the floor. Her metal sculptures are hand‐bent sheets of aluminum that are water jet‐cut from computer drawings. They are formed into organic and twisted pieces that are installed on the wall. Griffith also includes an audio piece, interviews with neighbors about their history, background, reasons for having a gate and what the gate means to them, as part of her installations.

Residency: Permanence as Fiction

During her residency, Ms. Griffith will continue her exploration of permanence as fiction by constructing a series of water jet‐cut and hand‐bent sheet metal sculptural forms. Based on gate and fence patterns including those found around San Diego County, the twisting and billowing pieces will be installed floor to ceiling. Ms. Griffiths will also introduce a variety of metals in her work, using copper, brass and aluminum together for the first time.