Lily Clark channels the sublime beauty of water in sculptural fountains
Wallpaper* Future Icons: LA-based Lily Clark is influenced by physics, Light & Space artists, and the California landscape
Throughout history, humans have tried to tame water through aqueducts, dams, channels, and levees. But no matter how sophisticated the engineering, the unruly substance almost inevitably goes where it wishes. Perhaps this tension is why Los Angeles-based artist Lily Clark’s work is so captivating: She’s able to masterfully capture the sublime beauty of water in meditative and architectural fountains, sinks, and installations. 'I’m always learning from water and am humbled by it because it’s such a challenging medium to get a hold of,' Clark says. 'Water always misbehaves.'
Lily Clark: designing with water
Clark, who trained as a graphic designer at the Maryland Institute College of Art, started working with water about six years ago while she was living in New York City. At the time, she became preoccupied by fluid dynamics after seeing an exhibition by the artist Tauba Auerbach that referenced the scientific discipline. At the same time, she was thinking about the atmosphere, landscape, and geology of Los Angeles, where she grew up. She blended these influences in table top fountains that quickly grabbed the attention of magazine editors. When she returned to L.A. in TK, she steadily began to shift the majority of her work to water features.
There is a deeply Californian sensibility to Clark’s sculptures. The narrow sluices in her Comb fountain are scaled-down versions of the 440-foot-tall spillways on the Pine Flat Dam, while its minimalist white forms reference Rudolph Schindler’s homes around Silver Lake, a reservoir in her childhood neighbourhood. Loop — a fountain with curved shapes borrowed from streamlined Art Deco design and a vessel for ikebana arrangements — continually cycles water between its two tiers and is a metaphor for the large-scale infrastructure that moves water from the Sierra Nevada mountains to coastal cities.
Despite Clark’s heavy-duty references, the overall effect of her sculpture is subtle and nods to Light and Space artists of the 1960s who explored perception. Just as Helen Pashgian contained the ephemeral properties of light in her prismatic cast-resin spheres, Clark’s sculptures are vessels for the physicality of water: how reflections glimmer on its surface, how its characteristics shift depending on the material it flows across, and how it has the strength to erode stone.
Lately, Clark has been experimenting with how different materials can help her choreograph water in new ways. Her stone sculpture for the TikTok-viral photographer David Suh’s studio is reminiscent of Isamu Noguchi’s Water Stone; both are cleaved from basalt, with rough-hewn and polished surfaces and a thin veil of water that glistens down the side.
In a commission for Piaule, a boutique hotel in the Catskill mountains, she collaborated with the artist Lachlan Turzcan on a site-specific installation with a steel vessel that captures rainwater and tips over once it’s full. Now, she’s developing a stone-and-resin composite that will be extremely hydrophobic (meaning it repels water) in order to achieve laminar flow, a phenomenon in which moving water appears still, like an optical illusion. '
In the past, I was really interested in controlling water in an infrastructural, linear way,' Clark says. 'I'm a little more interested now in finding an organic middle zone between the way water wants to move and the way it can be manipulated.'
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Diana Budds is an independent design journalist based in New York
-
Los Angeles’ best fine-dining restaurants
LA boasts a creative food scene driven by some of the world’s most innovative chefs. Browse the Wallpaper* guide to the city’s best fine-dining restaurants
By Kevin EG Perry Published
-
First look at Maison 3, an eclectic new Parisian bar for sleepless nights
Maison 3 is an enigmatic space with a sensual atmosphere brought to life by the French studio Les Beaux Jours Architectures
By Fabienne Dupuis Published
-
Chanel heads to Hangzhou, China for a poetic Métiers d’Art 2025 show
This evening in China (3 December 2024), Chanel travelled to Hangzhou’s much-mythologised West Lake, a Unesco World Heritage site, for a show that highlighted the extraordinary craft of the house’s artisans
By Jack Moss Published
-
Josh Egesi on his designs and evolving culture: 'Design is a form of cultural documentation'
Nigerian designer Josh Egesi tells Wallpaper* about the creativity behind his studio, design approach, his country's cultural revolution, and venturing into surfboard design
By Mazzi Odu Published
-
Panorammma's design work is a combination of fictional worlds
Wallpaper* Future Icons: Mexico City-based design studio Panorammma is the practice of 29-year old Maika Palazuelos
By Francesca Perry Published
-
Olivia Bossy's sculptural furniture is inspired by everyday moments
Wallpaper* Future Icons: based in Sydney Olivia Bossy turns visuals and ideas into sculptural furniture
By Rosa Bertoli Published
-
Rio Kobayashi turns traditional furniture making on its head
Wallpaper* Future Icons: how Austrian-Japanese designer Rio Kobayashi reinvents traditional furniture through diverse influences and collaborations
By Rosa Bertoli Published
-
Rino Claessens’ modular furniture experiments with ceramic design
Wallpaper* Future Icons: Rino Claessens turns his love for ceramics into experimental large-scale modules and compositions
By Jasper Spires Published
-
Inside Seongil Choi's experiments with materials and form
Wallpaper* Future Icons: Seoul-based Seongil Choi works across a variety of materials, with experimental approaches at the heart of his work
By Rosa Bertoli Published
-
Parti Studio swing between architecture and design through research and experimentation
Wallpaper* Future Icons: London-based architecture practice Parti made its lighting design debut this year
By Sujata Burman Published
-
Giles Nartey translates African rituals into bold design objects
Future Icons: Giles Nartey's boundary-pushing work combines teaching, research and design
By Shawn Adams Published