February 14 - March 22, 2003 

Opening Reception: Friday, Febraury 14, 2003, 6:00 – 8:00pm

Nora Auston’s stuffed and sewn soft sculptures are efforts towards turning shared cultural ideals into a kind of manageable product.  Choosing shapes that are iconic of certain social beliefs and repeating that particular form, Auston attempts to underscore and mimic the way histories and values are produced and consumed.  She manages to do this in a unique and humorous way using materials such as vinyl, turmeric, batting, muslin and satin.  In pieces such as California (3 shapes of my state), Auston takes the ubiquitous shape of the state and transforms its significance and associated narratives by creating multiples of it in black vinyl and scattering them on the floor like throw-pillows.  In another piece entitled Bivouac, Auston questions the precarious nature of our existence in wilderness through the repetition of abstracted bird forms piled into a sandbag-like wall.  Auston has exhibited her work in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and the U.K. She received her MFA from UC Davis in 1999.