Sand Backpack

Take another look. This object is not what it seems. Marilyn Levine has sculpted, in stoneware clay, a hyper-realistic semblance of a worn leather backpack. Resting on a pedestal in the gallery, it is easily mistaken for the real thing. Levine is best known for her convincing sculptures of shoes, battered luggage, gloves, handbags, golf bags and leather jackets hung from hooks. Sand Backpack and works like it date from the 1970s and are characterized as California Funk. But Levine's intent was serious. She understood that these old things were metaphors for life, for elapsed time and for all that had happened along the way. In this metaphoric sense, her sculptures are evidence of a person's existence.