Image: "Linkage" Materials: Manzanita, magic marker, bullets for building.

San Francisco artist and long-time UC Davis faculty member Gyongy Laky presents a Project Room exhibition of recent work. Laky has long been a national leader in the incorporation of natural and found materials in sculpture. Presented in conjunction with the Consortium for Women and Research Planning's 2005-2006 Women and The Environment year of thematic programming.

The Difficult Subjects of W:
War-Waste-Want-Women

Through material choices and subject selection Laky's sculptural, linear constructions of wood, wire, screws and nails engage subjects of particular and on-going concern to her. Her activism was encouraged early on during studies in art and design at UC Berkeley in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

As an environmentalist, her work often employs materials harvested from nature and agricultural sources with ocasional recycled elements incorporated. She is attracted to humble materials and simple, direct methods of hand construction that she associates with basic, grass roots, human ingenuity about making things. Laky has been a strong advocate for the establishment of an environmental sustainability curriculum in design and textiles at UCD.

Other themes of her sculptures and site-specific works touch upon various issues including gender-equity and her opposition to the war in Iraq. These subjects are usually presented through her language pieces. For the past several years Laky has dedicated much of her time to working on diversifying the faculty of UC systemwide and especially on promoting gender-equity in hiring. A free-standing word sculpture, "Slowly" (letters read as LAG or GAL), directly addressing her work in faculty hiring, is now in The Mint Museum's permanent collection. The first of a series about the Iraq war, "Globalization I" 2003, is in the collection of the Central Textile Museum of Poland.