It's time for another new artist

I wrote that headline because I wanted a way to use the word "time" in introducing a new artist.

Introducing a new artist could be routine for a gallery such as Gallery 54. That is unless you understand that art and artists is what this gallery is all about. So every introduction of a new artist becomes a highlight 

Recently, Gallery 54 welcomed Leonie Lacouette and an initial collection of her elegant clocks. One of the first things other gallery artists, and more importantly, customers will recognize is that Lacouette “reconciles the strict geometries palette of colored patinas on the copper and nickel that predominate her designs.”

Her clocks are “created from a basic language of circles, squares, ovals and rectangles. The clocks are not only beautiful, but often playful. A recent description of one of her clocks describes the “otherwise hidden movement of the pendulum” swinging back and forth, “revealed by a perfectly circular hole punched through the face of the piece to create a dynamic (and unexpected) game of 'hide-and-seek'”.

Lacouette has been making clocks for 25 years. It started for her as a practical way to make a living, at the same time “using the aesthetic training she'd received in art school.” She explains that she needed a clock for her studio and saw an ad for clock mechanisms. After ordering five, she made one for her studio and the rest to sell. They sold quickly and the clocks hanging in Gallery 54 readily illustrate,

why.

Hailing from Manhattan, she recalls that “everything was go-go-go, always accumulating more stuff-stuff-stuff, having lots of things. It feels great,” she says, “to have something simple and beautiful, a style that I can call my own.”