Wings and Friends with Lanny Bergner: Group show

Lanny Bergner is a full-time mixed media installation, fibre and sculptural basketry artist who maintains his studio near Anacortes, Washington., USA. Lanny describes his practice as using hands-on processes such as coiling, fraying, twisting, wrapping, gluing and knotting to transform industrial mesh, wire, silicone, and monofilament into organic constructions. Inspired by the natural world in all its wonder, he creates biomorphic forms that appear to have grown into being. Lanny is a friend of Timeless Textiles Gallery, having exhibited here with his solo exhibition, Life in the Universe, in 2016.

Wings is a body of work that Lanny created from 2019 until July 2021. Each piece was constructed from stainless steel and/or copper mesh and was “flame-painted” with a butane or propane torch. The colours on the mesh were achieved by heat alone; no chemical patinas were used in the heat-treating process.

The structure, semi-transparent iridescence and the linear veining of insect wing inspired Lanny’s fashioning of wing-like forms from stainless steel mesh.  The centrepiece of this exhibition will be an installation of over 200 large-scale bee wing forms suspended with monofilament from ceiling to floor. The bee wing imagery particularly references environmental concerns regarding colony collapse disorder, which has affected bee pollinators Worldwide.

At Timeless Textiles Gallery, the 2024 exhibition, Wings: Lanny Bergner and Friends will comprise Lanny’s insect wing inspired sculptures accompanied by the works of 22 artists. The works will be installed to create spaces inhabited by forms inspired by nature.