Lisa Lapinski

A onetime philosophy student who's willing to get her hands dirty, Lisa Lapinski makes elaborate sculptures that embody a kind of cognitive dissonance. "Nightstand" (2005), a room-size construction that debuted at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, reconfigures traditional Shaker furniture to suggest the frenzied psychedelia of religious ecstasy found in Shaker gift drawings. The piece, her most ambitious to date, took more than a year to complete; to acquire the skills necessary to build it out of walnut, Lapinski entered a woodworking program at a junior college outside of Los Angeles. "The retired engineers felt sorry for me, because it took me so long to catch on," she recalled, "but I can build my own kitchen cabinets now." Critic Bruce Hainley has credited Lapinsky, who received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2004, with "providing new thought about what sculpture might be."