20 ⎯⎯⎯ 20.2030 Hyperion Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Lorena Garcia, Landscape Architect
In. Memorial.
In response to Viva’s text, In. Memorial. is a series of vases as street objects for people to present tributes to their memories, beloved ones, or historic events.
The project is composed of five pieces made by using a technique called coiling -- an ancient method to shape clay into vessels. The gestural contours and freewheeling, robust shapes are inspired by organic outlines of human body and nature, reflecting the influence of Valentine Schlegel among other ceramists from the 1950s.
These vases are an invitation to the community to rest their memories in the city, placing flowers to honor their lives and universal feelings concerning public tragic events. The installation is accompanied by a visual piece in which Lorena, starting from Viva´s experiences, navigates through her own map of memories, along with visions of vases splashed throughout the urban grid, and following the hypnotizing tunes by Cameron Stallones/Sun Araw.
To my grandmom. To all the people who have lost their lives due to the pandemic and police brutality. RIP.
Bio
Lorena Garcia is a landscape architect and educator. Founder of PUENTEALAMEDA, an international landscape architecture firm based in Los Angeles and Madrid that explores creative and collaborative designs which address the complexity of natural processes, with projects as Reina Sofia Museum Master Plan (Madrid, Spain), Hotel Kamaroti (Sifnos, Greece), MediaLab-Prado Gardens (Madrid).
As a designer, she studies experimental forms of representing the landscape through collages, which she has published in multiple independent zines over the years. Recently, Lorena took up ceramics and has begun to play with the medium to explore new potential urban objects.
She moved to Los Angeles in 2012. Currently she is lecturing at the Landscape Architecture Department in the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona, and at the Madrid School of Design (Spain).