Sisters Carolie and Laura Parker maintain parallel studio practices in the city of Los Angeles for over 30 years, a proximity which has encouraged several overlapping themes in their work. Each has a keen but unique interest in language, and while this is literally expressed in Carolie’s poetry, it is more loosely expressed in each sister’s visual work. Laura’s multi-panel photo-installations hint at lyrical structures of image association and juxtaposition. Oblique relationships form between image fragments that conjure a playfully abstract ‘sentence structure.’ Black and white and color panels subtly respond to each other, creating tensions through an almost musical logic. In Carolie’s paintings, a “grammar” of shapes form correspondences in a sort of abstract choreography. The repetition of geometric motifs within a layered structure evokes the popular Medieval format in collections like The 1001 Nights, where themes reoccur in slight variations from story to story.
While Carolie has focused on painting, sculpture and is a published poet, Laura has pursued photography, installation and video animation. Carolie received a BFA from the University of California, Irvine, and an MA in Comparative Literature from University of California, Los Angeles. Laura Holds her BFA from the University of California Los Angeles, and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts. They have traveled together extensively, leading to a series of ephemeral collaborations, and as sister-artist-neighbors, they regularly edit and critique each other’s work. Both sisters have shown with galleries, museums and artist run spaces in the United States and abroad.
lauraparker.com
BIO, LAURA PARKER:
For almost three decades, Laura Parker’s photography, animation and installations have been compelling viewers to question perceived notions of time and space. She has shown and lectured about her work at museums, galleries and alternative spaces across the United States and abroad. Venues include: dnj Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin; De Beyerd Center for Contemporary Art, Breda, Netherlands; PS Amsterdam, Netherlands; Kontor Projects, Copenhagen, Denmark; Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA; Rayko Gallery, San Francisco, CA and the Torrance Art Museum, in Torrance, CA. She earned her BFA, Magna cum Laude from UCLA and her MFA from CalArts, Valencia. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she dedicates herself to both analog as well as digital processes. Laura has been sharing her enthusiasm for the lense-based arts at various colleges and universities across Southern California. She currently teaches photography at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA.
“Her poems are suggested by the social landscape of Los Angeles, a fairly reckless experiment in rearranging the natural world to serve human needs. Whether breathing fire or air, the poems issue from this freewheeling approach to building place, combining random methods of composition with more formal structures. Mirage Industry draws on the author’s practice in the visual arts, her background in comparative literature and her experiences teaching humanities and art history in central Los Angeles.”