Olivia Booth

A Glass Economy, 2020
Paper, paint, chalk, plastic, glass
Two drawings 8x4 ft

Artist Statement
Notes on the work for this show: How opaque and reflective our glass world is right now, and how much more “dark , salt, clear, moving, utterly free”* it could be when we return. We’d be better off returning to a billet or boro economy after this pandemic is over, an economy in which the unit of exchange is glass, either billet (the glass blocks that get melted down to be cast into forms) or borosilicate tube (the glass lampworkers use to create forms) so that the currency is in itself filled with endless potential for form. Neither billet nor boro is a limp stand-in for action, but a latent expression of action; and recycled action no less! I like the play on associations of bills and borrowing these words bring up and I like how there is no dearth of bling to either material. They are by no means austere. So these drawings of sparkling glass billets and boro tubes of various shapes and sizes, with some quotes and notes sprinkled in, are a rough early campaign for A Glass Economy. *pinched from Elizabeth Bishop’s “At the Fishhouses”

Olivia Booth
A Glass Economy, 2020
Paper, paint, chalk, plastic, glass
Two drawings 8×4 ft

Olivia Booth
A Glass Economy, 2020
Paper, paint, chalk, plastic, glass
Two drawings 8×4 ft

Olivia Booth
A Glass Economy, 2020
Paper, paint, chalk, plastic, glass
Two drawings 8×4 ft

Biography
Olivia Booth lives, makes art, and teaches in Los Angeles and has done so since 2000. Her work could most recently be seen at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, Goldfinch Gallery in Chicago, Pilchuck Gallery in Seattle, and Queens Gallery here in LA. Before that her work was shown at LAMAG, Sculpture Center, The Finley, LAMOA at the Armory Center for the Arts, The Pit, MAK Center for Art and Architecture at The Schindler House, Mandarin Gallery and Mark Foxx, and has been written about in Art Forum, The New York Times and the LA Times among other publications. She received her MFA from Art Center College of Design in 2003 and her BFA and BA with honors from Cornell University before that. At the heart of Booth’s practice is the question of clarity and transparency; what the two have to do with one another and what they can tell us about how to live in, or, conversely, use the world around and within us.