When Erin Althea was growing up, she’d watch her mother, the artist Duane Smith, create kaleidoscopes of color out of metal and stained glass. She also developed a fascination with medieval designs, saying now that the flatness and angular aesthetic of that period’s “visual vocabulary is interesting to me.”
Today, this interest can still be seen in Althea’s work as an animator, a visual development artist, and a creator of brutalist sculpture and jewelry. That last one might sound odd, since stained glass is considered delicate and light, and Althea works with concrete and resin to mold elemental busts of women, menorahs, altar pieces, bookends, paperweights, planters, and more.
Althea chose her business name, Love & Quarry, because she wanted something that was “reminiscent of stonework” but was also “warm and welcoming and not intimidating.” In addition, she uses natural pigments to create an inviting color palette of blues, cobalt, and terracotta that balance the decisive lines of her creations.
As for the medium she has chosen, “The root of brutalism is raw concrete,” she says. “Something about working with this material and the rawness and roughness… appealed to me. I think I always wanted to work with stone, but didn’t really know how to make it work in a modern way. Concrete is a modern [material] that imitates stone.”
“Working with my hands and in a 3D format [utilizes] a different side of my brain and my craft and what I’m interested in.”
Althea came to this artform about a decade ago when she was asked to design paperweights for the posh LINE Hotel in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, which makes its home in a brutalist building from the 1960s. A 2008 graduate of Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design, she has also worked as an illustrator and fine art painter, and she says the visual development work for denim retail giant Levi Strauss & Co. prepared her for prop design—her first animation position at DreamWorks TV. Contacts she made through her freelance work led her into animation, and here her resume includes background painter for Fox’s Bless the Harts and background and prop designer for an upcoming pilot.
Not only does Althea’s sculptural work give her eyes a chance to rest after hours at the computer, she says it allows her some time to balance her thoughts. “Working with my hands and in a 3D format [utilizes] a different side of my brain and my craft and what I’m interested in. Even when I was in school, I always gravitated toward sculptural, [and] I’ve been incorporating sculptural pieces into my paintings. Making a meta-fictional story where the 2D and 3D pieces come together.”
Along with the opportunity to switch gears, Althea finds working with concrete meditative and says, “The making of the models, molding them, the casting, the sanding—there’s so much that goes into it. It’s not just exercise. I use every muscle … I put my feet into the mold and pull with my arms. It’s very physical.”
This pursuit also gives her a chance to work for herself. Most of her time in animation has been on studio projects where, she says, “There’s such a lack of authorship on the design side of things, and that can be really frustrating for artists. I find that if I put myself into something else, it helps me be a little bit more patient [when getting] notes. If there are changes or if it’s somebody else’s taste and I don’t necessarily agree with it, it’s easier to let go than if it’s something personal.”
Just don’t tell Althea that women can’t work with heavy machinery.
This is also why she’s drawn to concrete. She says with a laugh, “It does smash the stereotypes of women’s work and men’s work. And smashing gender roles is very appealing to me.”
