In an upcoming show at La Boutique, visual artist and sculpturist Mary Button Durell presents Flash: New Works, her first public exhibition in eight years.

Durell creates translucent and abstract sculptures that resemble natural structures from the aquatic, celestial and cellular worlds. Her delicate and complex pieces are reminiscent of asteroids, cocoons, constellations, honeycombs, and sea sponges and may give the appearance of more solid materials in the right light. The gossamer aspect of these sculptures reflects Durell’s fascination with repetition and the gauzy properties of light, which the sculptures aptly exploit to create visual complexity and elicit curiosity.

To construct her whimsical sculptures, Durell uses only translucent tracing paper and wheat paste that she interleaves to create density and a palimpsest that visually illustrates the juxtaposition of diametric themes that appear in her work.

The process Durell follows is painstaking—she has to paste everything together by hand and cell-by-cell. In her new work she combines her painstaking sculpturing technique for the first time with bright color, applying neon orange and blue acrylic paint to her two and three-dimensional structures.

The opening reception for Flash: New Works by Mary Button Durell will be June 8, 2012 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at La Boutique. Work by Durell can be seen at La Boutique through August 2012.

For more work by the artist visit www.postera.com/marybuttondurell

• Tag: La Boutique, Mary Button Durell, nature, sculpture