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Text by Sophie Lynch

For the exhibition Veiled Hoods and Stains, Cal Lane combines delicate lacework and discarded steel car and truck hoods to create two series of related works. Traditionally used as a symbol of purity to adorn clerical robes, or to evoke fragility and femininity, lace both reveals and conceals. For her Veiled Hoods (2014), Lane uses a plasma cutter as her needle and thread to cut elegant lace patterns in the steel hoods, connecting the history of labour-intensive craft to the mass production of the contemporary automotive industry. Lane’s painstaking process, which …