Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome is a protective sphere made of triangle tiles. The lightweight, efficient and stable design incorporates patterns found in the natural world and illustrates a vision of a modern utopia for the postwar generation. Though his designs often went unrealized, Fuller’s proposals continue to have practical applications today: the dome makes for a pretty good US military radar station; it also makes for a nice cereal bowl.
“I was trying to make people realize what they were using,” says artist and designer Kelly Lamb. Over some distinctly LA coffee— made with almond milk, sprinkled with a blend of aromatic spices and Moon Dust—poured into one of her signature porcelain bowls resembling Fuller’s iconic architecture in the kitchen of her sprawling Frogtown studio, she explains the influence the designer and theorist has over her own practice. Like Fuller, she often uses elements of sacred geometry in her highly polished works, visualizing concepts of infinity and consciousness in her public sculptures, dining tables, terrariums and tools for personal rituals.
One corner of the main room is taken over by a large pile of darkly luminescent, charred geometric objects piled up haphazardly and spilling all over. The piece is called Semi-precious. The roughly polished gemstone-like orbs in shades of rubbed cobalt, burgundy and bronze are the product of a present to Lamb. “I was gifted this amazing Raku kiln, which uses an ancient Japanese technique of glazing. You turn the kiln to 1,800 degrees and take the top off and then you get the pieces out and bury them with combustible objects which the heat ignites, creating the different glazes. I’ve been putting personal objects in the kiln and burning them,” Lamb explains. The process can also be used to guide someone along an energy change by, say, burning an ex’s shirt. “It’s a sweeping of the energy which then remakes it into another object. Then we throw it on the pile.”
Lamb’s most popular and accessible piece in circulation is Geo Birdhouse, a delicate glazed porcelain birdhouse produced with firm Areaware. Like the rest of the tableware she designs, it is made in the shape of a geodesic dome—the same hexagonal scaffolding honeybees build in order to store the honey they harvest. Through the commercial arm of her practice, KL Studios, Lamb has also designed elements of some of the East Side’s most well-known neighborhood restaurants and bars, including modern Mexican restaurant Malo; the wood-paneled, romantic, smoky wine bar El Prado; and the green room of the nearby Echo nightclub. She has also created artist campaigns for Ferragamo and Coca-Cola.
This commercial design work affords Lamb more freedom and resources to funnel into her artistic practice: upcoming commissions include the public art for a real-estate development project in Miami; the project after that is a public commission for the City of West Hollywood. At the same time, her utilitarian objects for the home carry a conceptual substratum: for her September 2015 show at the MOCA Grand store project space, she presented Domesticated Animals, an installation of ceramic animal totems and a sculpture made from a sheet of brass incorporating hooves and bees, reminding viewers that humans are domesticated animals taming the environment and fellow animals that surround them. The work incorporated mirrored plexi; the mirrors are not for self- examination so much as they are for contemplation—a deeper, more substantial kind of reflection.