Made to order

The renowned installation artist was maneuvering her car along Interstate 15 on her way back to Los Angeles from her home in the Mojave Desert, and her 20-month-old toddler was loudly vocalizing for her attention from the back seat.

The much-in-demand artist has opened two New York shows this year: a mid-career retrospective at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and “Andrea Zittel: Small Liberties” at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria.

In addition, she teaches two nights a week at the University of Southern California, juggles the demands of a young son, and commutes three hours each week from L.A. to her homestead and “testing grounds” in the small desert community of Joshua Tree, northeast of Palm Springs.

Today, however, Zittel is in Spokane as the final speaker in the 2005-06 Visiting Artist Lecture Series, “Work and Order/Nature and Home.”

The series, featuring three cutting-edge contemporary artists, is sponsored by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Eastern Washington University and Spokane Falls Community College, with additional support from the Sahlin Foundation.

For almost 15 years, Zittel has investigated the gray areas between freedom and security through creating “inhabitable sculptures” in the form of furniture, clothing and dwelling units.

These experimental models for contemporary life are what she calls “systems for living.”

In 2001 she was among the artists profiled on “Art: 21,” the PBS series that introduced viewers to artists “who are defining the creative spirit of the United States at the start of a new century.”

EWU art professor Lanny DeVuono has been fascinated with Zittel’s career for years.

“I first came across her work at a mid-1990s Whitney Biennial Exhibition where she was showing a kind of modular interior living piece,” said DeVuono.

“Several years later I saw a room full of her ‘uniforms’ at the Andrea Rosen Gallery. These were dresses designed to sort of streamline the daily business of dressing for work.”

DeVuono said it was around that time that she began to feel that Zittel’s work “stems from a desire to organize – to create order in our chaotic world – whether it is for living spaces, interior decoration or how one gets ready for work.”

She said she found that idea “very resonant with the times.”

“I honestly don’t know if Zittel is deliberately parodying this desire for order in society at large, or not,” said DeVuono, “but her works end up being as funny as they are beautiful and thought provoking.”

Zittel, 40, said she has “always been interested in human need for order.”

Born in Escondido, Calif., in 1965, she attended San Diego State University, completing an undergraduate degree in art in 1988. She went on to earn a master of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990.

“When I moved to New York after grad school,” Zittel said, “my interest in order in small spaces became a practicality. I lived in cramped, contained spaces that weren’t mine and I wanted to create a more personalized space.”

Her subsequent “Living Units” were simple, compact systems that support everyday activity, including areas to eat, sleep, socialize and store minimal belongings.

Since then she has gone on to create a long series of experimental domestic and external structures including:

“ A-Z Cellular Compartment Units – a series of interlocking capsules which transform a one- or two-room apartment into a dense network of chambers.

“ A-Z 2001 Homestead Units – inspired by the tradition of 1940s homestead cabins in the high desert, these less than 120-square-foot units are compact, contain the essentials to shelter and protect the body, and break down into transportable panels which can be erected by two people in only a few hours.

“ A-Z Food Group Prep Station – houses all the components needed to make food in luxury while being liberated from hours wasted on preparation.

“ A-Z Travel Trailers – movable living spaces with identical dark green metal exteriors, but with interiors that could be customized to meet the “life, values and whimsy” of the owner.

“ A-Z Escape Vehicles – stationary silver constructions people escape into and never leave home.

One of Zittel’s most recent miniature mobile living spaces is the “A-Z Wagon Station.” Several of these units are featured in the “Small Liberties” show at the Whitney.

The Wagon Stations are “capsules you can live in outside,” said Zittel in a 2004 online interview with New York writer and curator Cheryl Kaplan.

It is “like a vacation home done in the smallest imaginable comfortable, livable space,” the artist added. “A station wagon seemed the right size – that’s why they’re called ‘Wagon Stations.’ They’re 7 feet long and 4 feet wide, the front is curved and hinged, opening to an awning. Inside there’s a bed, shelf and camp stove.”

Zittel continues to examine and pare down the essentials of contemporary life.

“The conceptual emphasis in all my work is the fine line between freedom and restriction,” she said, “and how restriction can often be liberating.”