I wouldn’t call her use of materials obsessive, but her portraits, made from used skateboard decks, are odd, material-wise, and arresting. Like Rasmussen’s aluminum sculpture, her art is very California.
Guzyte’s genre is marquetry and as old as high-end furniture. In marquetry, bits of stone, wood, glass, or metal are cut thinly and applied to a surface to make intricate, colorful designs. Last year, I reviewed the work of Alison Elizabeth Taylor, who also specializes in marquetry. I look at marquetry as Italian. Today’s marquetry descends from the Studiolo in the Ducal Palace in Urbino, made from wood, and Florentine pietra dura furniture from the 1600s made with onyx, lapis lazuli, variegated marble, mother-of-pearl, and obsidian.