Daily Inspiration

LATimes:

"Fading Scroll," a huge metal tapestry by El Anatsui that has graced the lobby of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Ahmanson Building for several months, has been jointly purchased by LACMA and the Fowler Museum at UCLA. The acquisition, made with support from the Broad Art Foundation, gives the two museums a major work by a leading African artist who was born in Ghana in 1944 and has lived and worked in Nigeria since 1975.

Like many of Anatsui's works, in museum collections around the world, "Fading Scroll" is constructed of metal castoffs. In this case, the artist has gathered thousands of liquor bottle wrappers and tops and stitched them together with copper wire.

The Fowler introduced Anatsui to Los Angeles last year in a critically acclaimed traveling exhibition. "Fading Scroll" will remain on view at LACMA until Nov. 2. Its next appearance will be at the Fowler in "Transformations: Recent Contemporary African Acquisitions," Feb. 22 to June 14.

You can click on the picture for a larger version. Coach Mom & I saw an entire exhibit of El Anatsui's work -- I think at one of the Smithsonian Museums -- and they are very fascinating, huge, powerful and fluid from a distance, incredibly detailed up close. Plus they're made of consumer refuse so they're recycling projects.