Biola University
The Story Behind the Work
Installed in 2021 as part of the renewed vision for Bardwell Hall, Water Tangle occupies a prominent place at the center of Biola's creative community, positioned directly in front of the newly renovated building.
Southern California artist Lynn Aldrich’s work focuses on the dual ordinaryness and mystery of existing in time and space in the physical world. She frequently references natural phenomena by using materials “common to a suburban-based, do-it-yourself, consumer society,” placing and grouping these materials in ways that reveal metaphors inherent to their existence.
She writes, “Living in Los Angeles, a sprawl of glamorous banality, seems to be an advantage to the awareness of changes occurring in our global society. L.A. hangs tenuously on the edge of a continent, a metropolis symbolic around the world of a mythological urge toward paradise. Our fair weather landscape abounds in Eden-inspired gardens, yet we seek escape from real time and space through the powerful distractions of the movie industry and computer simulation technology. Excess, spectacle, and artificiality collide with my longing for a deeper ground of being.” Aldrich’s work questions our intertwined relationships with our contemporary consumer culture and the natural world around us.
