As a Graduate Art student at Art Center, Lynn Aldrich experienced a creative paradigm shift after realizing “that fine art was something philosophical and critical of the status quo and yet something that could be beautiful and pleasurable and generous to the viewer.” That philosophy has consistently to informed her body of work, constructed from the ephemera of domestic life (from Brillo pads to garden hoses), over the course of her twenty-plus year career as a celebrated sculptor whose work has shown in museums around the world and is featured in the permanent collections of both LACMA and MOCA.

Traces of Aldrich’s grad school epiphany can be found throughout the retrospective exhibition currently on display in Art Center’s Williamson Gallery. Ever since the show opened in October, viewers and reviewers have been both perplexed and captivated by the work’s unusual combination of accessibility and complexity.

For anyone seeking to better understand how and why Aldrich mined the poetry and paradoxes hidden within a curtain of hanging rain gutters or a cluster of wall-mounted lampshades, Aldrich does her best to explain the intention behind her work in the above video. Perhaps most revealing is the footage capturing Aldrich installing several of the show’s centerpiece works, a process that took over two weeks to complete.

Lynn Aldrich: Un/Common Objects is on view at the Williamson Gallery, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena, (626) 396-2200, through Jan. 19. Closed Mondays.