Soo Sunny Park's Unwoven Light installation at Rice Gallery is unapologetically pretty. It's a glistening, iridescent canopy of shimmering pinks, purples, blues, greens and yellows that resembles anything from a fish's scales to a spider's web wet with raindrops. Despite the apt comparisons, this creation is anything but organic. Unwoven Light is composed entirely of chain-link fence and coated Plexiglas that Park has exhaustingly shaped and welded together to create a network of abstract, bulbous shapes suspended from the ceiling. In fact, it took the artist and her assistants two weeks to make just one distinct unit -- specifically, seven hours of welding to brace the fencing, 100 hours of tying the wire that holds each Plexiglas piece in place, and still more time cutting the Plexiglas shapes to fit into the chain-link cells. In all, there are 37 such units -- 17 newly created for the installation and 20 recycled from a past work -- that create patches of light throughout the gallery from floor to ceiling. However laborious its creation, Unwoven Light seems effortless, with light doing most of the work. See Soo Sunny Park's installation 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Through August 30. Rice Gallery, 6100 Main. For information, call 713-348-6169 or visit ricegallery.org. Free.
Mondays-Saturdays. Starts: May 8. Continues through Aug. 30, 2013