Linda Stein offers sculptures that evoke artifacts of bygone civilizations. Her brilliant metal objects are a voyage of discovery, actually derived from our own world. The secret narratives of these found objects are literally embedded in the works. Stein wants them to appear as though discovered in their current state, but transformed from their original, more mundane, purposes. She makes the surfaces of her constructed works come alive with the vivid color range of metals fully explored. Sculptural constructions feature word fragments, found objects, and occasionally sounds emitted through mechanical devices. Stein's production includes wall panels, mysterious boxes, and talisman-like objects.

With her complex sculptures, Linda Stein comments on the power and variability of objects. Detritus, no longer deemed useful, are rescued from a discarded state and given new empowerment. Stein leads her viewers to rediscover the wonder and enchantment of everyday fragments that are embedded like jewels into the metal surfaces she creates. Some of the found objects have prosaic origins - like small mechanical devices (parts of a clock, for example), drawer knobs, or engraving plates. But they are combined to create a new reality, a powerfully fresh identity provided by Stein's imagination. Always there is a sense of mystery, an alchemical process that changes the commonplaces into something wondrous. And a glyphic language emerges from a close examination of these sculptures - a broken narrative that needs to be deciphered.

While at some distances these wall friezes of polished metals and active surfaces may dazzle, it is only on careful inspection, from a more intimate distance, that their secret narratives are revealed. These puzzling forms include phrases, words, and a rich array of objects with multiple associations. Personal narratives for the artist are undoubtedly incorporated, but Stein also opens up the possibility of narratives derived from the viewer's experience of the work. Like artifacts that will remain as a record of our age, these sculptures await excavation. Through them, the viewer dreams and imagines - bringing poetry to the prosaic.