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Based in the Czech Republic for several years, LaMonte originally came from the United States on a Fulbright grant to further her knowledge of Czech glass-casting techniques. A quest to utilize the advantages of cast glass for making large-scale sculptures led her to the little village of Pelechov , north Bohemia , where she gained in-depth knowledge of the mold-making and casting processes. "Vanitas" refers to a type of still-life painting popular during the Renaissance that symbolized mortality and the transitory nature of the material world. The wealth suggested by these fancy dresses is ultimately meaningless in the face of death. But mirrors and dresses also represent vanity and the vagaries of fashion. However, like the draped, limbless sculptures of antiquity, the female forms beneath the dresses bring to mind concepts about physical beauty that persist to this day. Using a painstaking dual-casting technique to produce the imprint of a human body beneath the dress, LaMonte's sculptures are a tour de force. Impression embodies a sense of occasion and pride; chest lifted, the figure looks poised to make a grand entrance with a trail of fabric fluttering in her wake. The relaxed pose of Graceful lends classical Hellenic form to a sleeveless A-line evening gown. And Fluted Dress, a form-hugging strapless dress with a shirred bodice and three layers of ruffles on the skirt, reveals the figure beneath down to the navel. Like ghosts, the animated dresses are unable to cast reflections in the mirrors that surround them on all sides. Instead, there are faces in the mirrors, greeting the viewers' gaze with exaggerated expressions, or dramatically obscuring their features with their hands. The faces in some of the mirrors don't register fully when viewed straight on, but reveal themselves in a cinematic flash as the viewer walks by, with a negative image seen just before and after this brief moment of lucidity. Imperfections in the surfaces of some mirrors evoke the fallibility of human memory, which seems an ongoing theme . In the cellar's backroom, a solitary candle signals the way to a darkened space where seven mirrors rest on a long, black table. Viewers pass by the sleeping faces of a mother, father, three young children and a set of grandparents. In this somber and silent space, they could be a family soundly sleeping -- or a personification of dormant memories, perhaps of individuals at different stages in life waiting to be revived. Exiting this space, a group of three mirrors hang opposite the dress of a young girl with a sailor collar and knife-pleated skirt. In between the dramatically ambiguous faces of a man and a woman is a masked face that jarringly interjects a sense of tragedy. As elsewhere, there seems to be a narrative unfolding that is tantalizingly beyond easy interpretation. A heightened sense of drama and artifice unfolds in a room off the main space. A series of tabletop mirrors shows a man and woman in Kabuki-like masks alongside a man covering his face but peeking between the fingers, as children sometimes do when watching a scary movie. A fourth mirror shows a young girl who seems to be asleep, though a play to her mouth hints that she may be just feigning it. A girl's dress, titled Fragment, reveals no human form beneath and is flat in back, as if taken off at the end of the day and laid on a bed. The surfaces of two of the mirrors are deeply folded, like draped clothing, while the other two have deep faults across the glass, perhaps referencing the warping of memory over time. Rich in multiple layers of meaning and possible readings, this installation is also one of great beauty and technical bravura. With her strong conceptual orientation, LaMonte imbues her gorgeous glass sculptures with a fascinating, multifaceted reflection on the transitory nature of identity and memory.
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