Installation Goes According to Foam

Stephen Hendee is a professional accidental artist.

Equipped with a razor-sharp X-Acto knife and a belief that art should bloom as randomly as nature, Hendee, 33, fashions caverns out of styrofoam that resemble a natural grotto and the graphic matrix of your PC.

His latest work and museum debut, “Presence Control” at the Laguna Art Museum, is an art installation that visitors can actually walk through. It’s a 1,200-square-foot structure that towers 10 feet high and emanates soft blue, purple, green, yellow and red light like a crystal.

From the looks of this web-like chamber of black-tape lines and multifaceted foam fragments bending and folding from floor to ceiling in the museum’s lower level gallery, it’s hard to imagine the physical and mental dexterity that created this cave-like maze.

It’s similar to doodling. For every piece of foam Hendee cuts by hand, a spark of spontaneity triggers another geometric form until thousands of such pieces make up “Presence Control.”

“The process is at times so random because I want the randomness to be a quality in my work,” Hendee said. “I don’t plan, and I have to hand-fit every single piece into place.”

Hendee is putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle. He has only a vague idea of what it will look like; he doesn’t know how one shape will connect to another. So he lets chance take its course.

“What I’m building is extremely painstaking,” he said. “I don’t sketch it or outline what I’m going to do beforehand. If I did, there wouldn’t be any excitement or risk in making the art. The planning process is boring.”

Part of his method is to immerse himself in the arduous construction of his installation while keeping an eye on flaws.

The New Jersey-based artist, who grew up in Irvine, thrives on momentary epiphanies and intuition. He improvised for three weeks on the installation made especially for the museum. Racing against time, he labored as long as 10 hours a day, turning the museum into his temporary studio.

“I gambled that I had enough time to make such a complex structure,” Hendee said. “I’m trying to create art that’s a magnificent spectacle for people to view, but I don’t have a blueprint or perimeters for it. I come up with it as I go along.”

The world Hendee has created, accompanied by an eerie soundtrack, has corridors that seem to run in frenzied directions much like circuit pathways or fissures in the earth.

In fact, Hendee had earthquakes and technology in mind when he created “Presence Control.” California’s apparently constant state of flux fascinated him.

The primary materials he uses--foam core, (styrofoam encased in sheets of heavy paper) electrician’s tape and wood--are well-suited to the fast-paced, fleeting age of technology. They’re cheap, portable and disposable.

In “Presence Control,” with the foam pieces expanding like branches or shells, Hendee attempts to mimic the similarities and contrasts between nature and an artificial world. He sees haphazard patterns in both.

“I try to mirror the spontaneity of nature in my work and at the same time deal with the complexity of technology, which has a life unto itself,” Hendee said. “As humans, we tend to create complex environments without nature.”

The finished product is often as much a surprise to the artist as to the host.

“Part of how he works is that you don’t know what you’re getting until he’s done,” said LAM’s exhibitions curator Tyler Stallings, who met Hendee three years ago when the artist was showing at a Los Angeles art gallery.

“So the risk is that he could do something completely different than what we expected.”

This exhibition is the first time Stallings has allowed an artist 24-hour access to the museum.

“Hendee’s work is created very organically,” Stallings said. “When you’re in a state of creativity like Hendee is, you’re vulnerable, and getting distracted may derail your groove. So I tried to create a situation as if he were in his own private studio.”

In Hendee’s makeshift world, the walls are not solid and seem to warp or alter the longer they’re viewed. Sometimes the finished sculpture looks like fragments of a column buckling and cracking under the weight of a collapsing floor above.

“When you look from the upstairs down, it appears hollow and unfinished like a backstage to a sci-fi film set,” Stallings said. “But when you get downstairs, your perception will shift, because it seems you’ve entered a whole other world. So he’s representing two realities.”

The harsh reality, however, is that Hendee’s elaborate environmental sets are as temporal as sandcastles that vanish with the rising tides.

“After this show, the pieces are torn down,” Hendee said. “It bothers me but that’s what I have to face. Everything is disposable, including my art. It’s difficult to see it destroyed after all that work.”

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SHOW TIMES

“Presence Control,” Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. Hours: Daily, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $4 to $5. Closed Wednesdays. Free Tuesdays. Ends July 8. (949) 494-8971.]