Material Language: Adobe and Palms

Saturday, March 9
3:30 PM
RSVP

Bubbling Wells – Historic Hot Springs Ranch
14250 Yerxa Rd, Desert Hot Springs, CA 92240
Entrance is on the intersection of San Gorgonio St and Yerxa Rd

Use your hands to get acquainted with the structural, sculptural, and poetic potentials of these organic materials with Maria Maea, whose mythical sculptures are woven from plants, and Ronald Rael, who is pioneering earthen architecture using 3D printing. Through discussion and practice, Maria and Ron will facilitate an intimate introduction to these raw materials. *Grounds are on dirt and multiple levels, dress appropriately with comfortable shoes.

Maria Maea is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice involves a highly intimate relationship between body and materials. Her sculptures, often body size, are assemblages of organic and inorganic materials drawn from a variety of spaces—including her home garden, urban lots, and the Los Angeles River—each of which carries a history of its own. By working with palm fronds, flowers, seeds, and concrete, the artist arranges sites of invocation that are both highly personal and universal to those who see themselves and their stories in those common materials.

Ronald Rael is a designer, activist, trained architect, author, and Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture at the University of California Berkeley. His research interests connect indigenous and traditional material practices to contemporary technologies and issues and he is a design activist, author, and thought leader within the topics of additive manufacturing, borderwall studies, and earthen architecture. Rael is the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary, an illustrated biography and protest of the wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico, and Earth Architecture, a history of building with earth in the modern era to exemplify new, creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet.