Double Vision: Doorway

2019 Lucas Artist Program Visual Arts Fellow, Lead Pencil Studio is the 2026 recipient of Montalvo Art Center’s Marcus Commissioning Prize. Annie Han (b. 1967) and Daniel Mihalyo (b. 1970), the artistic duo who founded Lead Pencil Studio, were selected for their proposal to create Double Vision: Doorway, a public sculpture that explores an architectural threshold and opening that is commonly encountered in two-dimensional doorways.

This 12 foot tall sculpture is rendered as though it exists somewhere between a photographic double exposure and a translucent building fragment shot with 3d bi-chromatic film. Its two overlapping structural forms are constructed with multiple layers of wire filigree and offset from each another. The choice of a rectilinear form is an outgrowth of the architectural voids explored in Lead Pencil Studio’s ongoing body of work.  

The sculpture is made with small stainless-steel rods welded together to form translucent shapes that appear like pencil strokes suspended in space. Differentiated by varying densities, the final collaged form is a mirage-like image– not unlike what is seen with 3d anaglyph film (3d film viewed with red/blue glasses).   

Visitors are invited to step through this threshold and consider the views that it offers. Montalvo’s property is anchored by an impressive and imposing villa built in the Italian Mediterranean Revival style and its counterpoint, a formal garden in the Italian style with a pavilion that is known as the Love Temple. Deliberately sited in this garden, Double Vision: Doorway challenges us to reconsider Montalvo’s landscape, its historical structures, and its neoclassical sculptures such as Adam and Eve with a fresh and critical eye.    

This work is on display on the left side of the Italianate Garden near the Love Temple.

Photos by Paul Gallo