Ann Weber

Ann Weber's artistic journey began with ceramics. After 15 years making functional pottery, she left New York City for California to study with Viola Frey at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. It was Viola’s totemic clay figures that inspired the scale of her work and she started working in cardboard in 1991. Cardboard allows her to make monumental, yet lightweight forms, and eliminate the cumbersome process of clay. Frank Gehry’s cardboard furniture was her initial inspiration. Her abstract sculptures read as metaphors for life experiences, such as the balancing acts that define our lives. “How far can I build this before it collapses?” is a question on her mind as she works. Ultimately her interest is in expanding the possibilities of making beauty from a common and mundane material.
By casting ordinary cardboard into bronze or fiberglass for public art projects, she illustrates that things are not always what they appear to be. Even in other materials it is easy to see the details of the former lives of cardboard boxes and individual staples. This humble origin is part of the innovation, charm and humor of the artwork.