Much of Weber's visual art revolves around a recurring cast of characters. An animal often found in her work is the bear, which is linked to the Greek goddess Artemis. Her work most often focuses on the adventures of women, which sometimes take the form of half-human, half-animal hybrids with bodies cut from pornographic magazines, and other times, pale-faced, folksy ghosts known as "Spirit Girls".
The Spirit Girls was the name of Marnie Weber's six member drone-rock musical group. The Spirit Girls is also the name of Weber's multimedia conceptual project which used film, sculpture, collage, installation and performance to explore the after-life of the all-female rock band featured in four Weber films: Songs that Never Die , A Western Song , The Sea of Silence and Eternity Forever In the films, the Spirit Girls "are the specters of five adolescents, killed in their prime, who come back to the real world to 'express things they weren't able to express' while they were alive.
The opening of the final film in the series, Eternity Forever, was held at the Mountain View Mausoleum in Altadena, CA, built with a gallery for temporary art exhibits. The opening also featured the living Spirit Girls, who played their final concert to equally alive attendees. Known for her fantastical creations, artist Marnie Weber takes us through her multifaceted practice from her beginnings in music to her current work on sea witches. Her narrative-derived process, deeply embedded in the subconscious, is highlighted here in her studio visit.
Artist Marnie Weber is known for her fantastical creations combining performance, video, sculpture, music, costume and collage and blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy. Clowns are mostly appealing and Weber uses that appeal in complex, absurd and emotionally-involving sculpture and painted collages. The exhibition of 34 pieces by 27 artists mixes art of all shapes and stripes to form a freewheeling feast. Lively back-and-forths take on lives of their own as they inspire, challenge and satisfy โ often deeply and dramatically.
Five hours earlier I'd cought a ride with my bandmate, the sculptor Daniel Hawkins, up the winding precipitous incline to Zorthian Ranch, a definitively unfurnished art environment dating from the antebellum heyday of West Coast Assemblage.
