Winslow Garage

Winslow Garage is pleased to present “Be the Snake,” a site-specific, mixed media installation by Los Angeles
artist Carolyn Mason. Embracing the context of the garage as a place where utilitarian materials abound and pipes and fittings are left exposed, Mason combines mass produced items with the handmade to create hybrid forms both fantastical and potentially ominous. In her imagining of “the secret lives of materials” Mason creates richly tactile objects with delicate beauty and other worldly oddness that seem to possess a strange intelligence of their own.

Mason’s materials and processes are reflective of her childhood and make visible her mother’s love of sewing and upbringing on a sheep farm, as well as, her father’s career as a manager of a textile factoy and skill as a home mechanic. Starting her creative process by collecting everyday supplies used to build, plumb, clean, provide warmth or serve as decoration, Mason explores the potential of her materials and combines them to make surprising new forms.

Carolyn Mason was born in Walnut Creek, CA and lives and works in Los Angeles. Among the venues she has exhibited are d.e.n. contemporary art, Los Angeles; the London Design Festival; the Los Angeles World Airport; Loyola Marymount University, and The José Drudis-Biada Art Gallery at Mount Saint Mary’s University. Mason has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Banff Center for the Arts. She received her MFA degree in Sculpture from Mills College in 2005.