CULVER CITY, CA.- In Lana Shuttleworth’s new exhibition Cone Migration, opening at Bandini Art on September 8, the artist develops her metaphor of the safety cone as ubiquitous but unseen worker, finding both physical beauty and arresting social insight in the humble object.

Shuttleworth uses the polyvinyl from weathered traffic cones to make work that explores themes of migration and diaspora. Sometimes she digs into the surface of the material to carve relief pieces, or cuts and nails mosaics to form wishful landscapes far removed from the gritty roadside reality of the cones’ existence.

The reflective qualities of the source material gives these sweeping vistas an otherworldly quality, they seem to emanate gentle light, belying the workman-like method of their construction. Fantasies of freedom and spaciousness, they take up little space themselves; mounted into corners they occupy the peripheral vision to create a sense of being drawn into the center of the work.

The cones travel to destinations all over the city and move on once the job is done. Occasionally some go missing, at large in the world. As part of the show at Bandini Art, Shuttleworth will stage a ‘cone release’ with twenty specially marked cones incorporating log sheets that will then be tracked and mapped as part of the exhibition.