Susan Behrends ValenzuelaLas PrimitasOil paint on stretched canvas, laser cut acrylic, assorted beads and charms18 x 36 x 1.5 inches2022 Behrends Valenzuela has had an evolving relationship with photography. As a child, Susan felt confused by the idea of family photographs and constant documentation; the artist often frowned or covered her face in response, not understanding the importance of capturing these images. Las Primitas depicts the artist and her cousin, covering their faces in anticipation of a photograph. In her current artistic practice, the artist takes inspiration from family albums, re-contextualizing past moments by combining her family’s photographic representations with…

Victoria SherwoodGenerated to be noticed when love takes timeCeramic frame, monoprint, needle felted wool & colored pencil on paper5 x 5 x 18 inches2023 In an age where automation prevails, Victoria Sherwood’s drawings stand out for their emphasis on the hand-drawn process. Through trial and error, Sherwood reinterprets cultural symbols and references in a deeply personal and emotional journey. Generated to be noticed when love takes time is a testament to the artist’s commitment to the laborious process of drawing, and a reminder of the power of individual expression. Generated to be noticed when love takes time features a sketch…

Rachel GravesNo SurprisesOil on canvas30 x 24 inches2022 Rachel GravesTuesdayOil on canvas24 x 16 inches2022 In her series of portraits, Rachel has captured the essence of a generation by distilling their shared human experience and emotions onto the canvas. Inspired by the people she is surrounded by as a young adult in New York City, Rachel’s portraits portray the vibrancy and diversity of this generation. Through her portraits, Rachel invites us to reflect on our own experiences and emotions, while also celebrating the human connections that bring us together. Rachel GravesSave A HorseOil on canvas24 x 16 inches2022 This piece…

Briana PierreAvatarMixed media, acrylic, chalk pastel, and charcoal on canvas42 x 42 inches2020Everything is upside down in Pierre’s post-apocalyptic world. Fish can fly, trees eternally burn, and even the canvas has its own life while unstretched and without support. In the midst of it all, a cow stands upright, with a new sense of self. Having recently evolved, the creature can morph and self-regulate in any way they please. Still, the world continues to move despite the creature’s autonomy. Avatar gives us a glimpse into a future, one that is exciting, colorful, and full of possibilities. Briana PierrePea-CockyAcrylic on canvas20…

Paloma BritesUntitled series of glassworkdimensions variable2022 Glass has lit a fire under Paloma Brites. The medium, volatile in practice and delicate in form, allows her to test herself and her material. Brites’s series is the accumulation of practice, experimentation, growth, and determination. As she balances the danger of fire with the fragility of glass, Brites continues to evolve with her practice. Paloma Brites’ work appears in Open House: Object-making as a Therapeutic Practice.

They left, I came backMixed media collage and acrylic paint on canvas36×48 inches2021 Working with her family’s Jewish diasporic history, Hannah Rothbard also investigates the relationship between place and identity. Working with collage, she examines the phenomena of preserving one’s culture through ritual, shared experience, and objects. By cutting, pasting, and reassembling her work They Left, I Came Back, she speaks to the process of retracing one’s history through layers of fragmented memory. In this image, memory is trapped between the collaged bricks, like mortar, of a classic New York City building that holds rich familial history for Rothbard. Hannah…

Hurling into the Television Set is an Accidentoil on canvas36″ x 48″2021 Snake Staff MosesOil on cardboard6 x 152021 Body Braceoil on paper8.5″ x 11″2021 Boulderoil on paper8.5″ x 11″2021 John Payiavlas’ interests lies in the origin of meaning — how the world manifests itself through structures and how the constant refinement of these structures defines history. While they might suggest a sense of completeness, his work Hurling into the Television Set is an Accident engages with the cracks and nonsensical character of these structures. Growing up around abandoned industrial places, Payiavlas explores how humans move within these structures to…

Vienna 1994 IOil on Canvas34″x42″2021 Vienna 1994 IIOil on Canvas34″x42″2021 Manos en MatrimonioOil on Canvas12″x11″2021 Sonia Miklaucic’s portraits intervene in her past as personified by family photographs. Taking inspiration from a wedding snapshot in which her parents look into each other’s eyes, Miklaucic separates the couple into two individually painted portraits and reimagines a historical moment through the act of splitting. The resulting diptych magnifies the uncanniness that pervades the original moment, creating an intensely quiet and haunting scene that projects the future before its subjects realize what’s to come. Sonia Miklaucic’s work appears in Retro/Intro.

Is This Serenity?Pan pastel on paper12″ x 18″2021 Rather than put internalized emotions on full display, Amalia Medeiros uses mystery as a material in her body of work, which ranges from analog photography to painting to pan pastel drawing. From a distance, her work appears soft and inviting and asks us to draw close. Once we arrive, however, the work shifts as new images and associations shimmer in and out of view, like the powder-blue faces in her series Is This Serenity? The drawings require a certain amount of trust, challenging us to question what we believe we are seeing….

Bear Creek Redwoods (Santa Cruz, CA / Awaswas Ohlone)acrylic on canvas 92×48 inches2021 Little Yosemite (Sunol, CA/Ohlone)acrylic on canvas72×42 inches2021 In their work, Catherine Wang McMahon explores relationships and structures that exist outside of oneself. Both the pandemic and environmental disasters inspired them to get outside and discover a deepening connection to the natural world, one that they celebrate in their large-scale vertical landscapes. McMahon’s depictions of the lands around their home are soothing and softened, with bright colors that capture nature in its ideal state: undamaged and whole. They invite the viewer to enter and appreciate this fast disappearing world….

Figure 1Ceramic17x8x82021 Figure 2Ceramic14.5x10x102021 Figure 3Oil on canvas20 x 162021 Sophie Lewis not only considers figuration a powerful agent for self-exploration, but also an epistemological framework to reflect on the trans-generational trauma resulting from the violation of bodies throughout her family’s history. By creating curvaceous abstract ceramics and nude figurative paintings with intense emotions, she reclaims her relationship with the body and draws the viewers into an existence that is at once universal and particular.  Sophie Lewis’ work appears in Retro/Intro.

I’m So Angry It Hurts 2020, Embroidery Floss on Monk Floss (9” x 9”) Too Many Bad Days 2021, Punch Needle, Glass Beads on Monk’s Cloth, 9” x 9” Get Well 2020, Embroidery Floss on Monk’s Cloth (9” x 9”) OOPS I’m Happy, 2021 Punch Needle, Glass Beads on Monk’s Cloth (9” x 9”) Cut The Head Off The Snake, 2020 Punch Needle, Glass Beads on Monk’s Cloth (9” x 9”) Another Morning Comes, 2021 Punch Needle, Glass Beads on Monk’s Cloth  (9” x 9”) Isabella Kurkulis puts her introspection on display, offering raw emotional sentiments that have been delicately…

UntitledPhotography series printed on clear acetate sheets/ smooth matte paper12″ x 9″2021 AstingentAfrican Black Soap and hair, sculptureApprox 3.5″ by 2.75″ 2021 Melonie Knight explores how the body is situated within an environment. Her sensuous works invite the viewer to ruminate on often-overlooked objects like bedsheets, bathtub water, and African Black soap. These experiential interactions between body and object are explorations into what Knight terms “home-ness.” Her multi-media approach to art — from audio to painting to installation — allows her to explore multiple aspects of being, as well as the experience and exploitation of Black women. Melonie Knight’s work appears…

Safe and SoundInk on Canvas144″ x 48″2021 Whisper of the EarthVideo3:332022 Ari Kim reconciles with her past through figurative paintings. While acknowledging that retrieving forgotten memories can be painful, she believes that pulling them to the surface to examine their hurt and reconcile with the past is where honesty and comfort intersect. Her monumental, three-panel self-portrait depicts multiple bodies in contorted and constricting positions within the confined space of the canvases, yet the emotionless figures exude a sense of serenity. Such somatic dynamics echo our conflicting relationship with memory. Ari Kim’s work appears in Retro/Intro.

Unresolved FeelingsOil pastels and oil on canvas16 paintings, 10 x 10 inches2021 Isabella Crespo expresses strong emotions with bright colors and expressive lines. Exploring immediate responses to grief, the artist follows her intuition and creates a potent statement about the individuality of feelings. Among her twelve small paintings, Unresolved Feelings carries a powerful reminder of the ephemerality and impermanence of time. Each piece is inimitable, irreplaceable, and associated with the artist’s personal emotion and experience as unique as individual moments of time.  Isabella Crespo’s work appears in Retro/Intro.

Installation (Tree), 2020plaster, wire, LED light, photographssite specific installation, dimensions variable Xiaoli Zhou uses a combination of sculpture, photography, and installation to represent gender-based discrimination. Her sculptural miniatures within the larger installation create two distinct views to consider the piece. Particularly, The Body 3 resists the male gaze by utilizing a decapitated body with a twisted arm. She disrupts our interpretations of the female body and thoughts about gender stereotypes and how these ideas can be morphed and shaped into various aspects of one’s identity. The black and white images audaciously confront the viewer with the starkness of objectification. These…

From left to right Feast, 2020Video projection/performance Beads, 2020Video projection3:37 Rhiannon Thomas’ video work, Feast, is a short but powerful loop. The artist eats themself again and again, subsisting more and more on their own flesh. Made during quarantine, the video loop presents a confrontation with themself, born of isolation and reflection. Their video work deals in simultaneous fascination and discomfort of their audience.The cinematic, gothic background highlights the macabre interaction. Thomas plays with identity, appearance, and disruption, and Feast is a meditation on all three. They confront the camera, unafraid of our judgement. Feast is an intimate reckoning with…

Scarcity, 2020site specific installationdimensions variable Pricila Modesto explores splintered memory and materials in her multimedia participatory installation piece, Scarcity. Modesto installed three-dimensional ceramic tiles inside of a plastic pool to encourage interaction; the viewer can walk across these stones as if they are walking on water itself. Modesto encourages her audiences to meditate and reflect upon the disparate materials that constitute one’s everyday life, especially those often taken for granted. Clean water, a life-giving source, is not always guaranteed. She simultaneously explores the materiality of different substances, with clay and water cohabitating. Modesto considers her time in Lisbon in this…

From left to right: Sunset Pier, 2020acrylic, charcoal on canvas55″ x 60″ Shopping District, 2020chalk, charcoal, oil pastel on paper48″ x 84″ Chinese Restaurant, 2020acrylic, charcoal on paper35″ x 60″ Victor Li’s Shopping District is a memory made physical as he reimagines his hometown in response to the 2020 quarantine. Li reflects on these once lively public spaces becoming abandoned and quiet. Layers of image and medium build onto each other, reassembling a time and place that is both familiar and strange. The buildings recede into abstracted swatches of color, pixelated as though the setting is being built around us….

Fall, 2020acrylic on canvas20 ” x 20″ In Dora Duan’s atmospheric painting Fall, from her series The Season, Duan explores fragmentation as a generative and creative exercise. Fall encourages the viewer to imagine and synthesize their own narrative as the construction of the space reads like a cut out of a larger scene. The wilting flowers, muted tones, and somber milieu evoke personal memories for the artist while encouraging the beholder to consider what emotions can be teased out from the piece’s limited scope. Duan’s myopic, cropped scene presents an intimate yet vague impression of autumn. By splintering space, the…

Missed Connection, 2020digital media7″ x 13″ Niagara, 2019intaglio4″ x 7″ sofi cisneros uses the notion of fragmentation to intersect the cyclical themes of love and vulnerability to represent a sense of self and identity. She creates works of art that highlight an acceptance of these themes, creating a dichotomy between the norms that she was born into and how she attempts to deconstruct these controlling forces. A work of intaglio, an engraving technique, Niagara accepts this deconstruction and fragmentation by embracing saturation and specific shades over bare spots. Her ability to control the viewer’s attention allows memories to be controlled,…

From left to right: SiN: Suck It In, 2018clay, ceramic paint, wire, cloth, string3″ x 0.25″ x 0.13″each (for fingers) Monarch, 2017photograph, paper, wire, oil pastel, marker22.5″ x 26″ With a delicate touch, Adrian Beyer’s Monarch utilizes layers of burned and marked pages to form a nest of butterflies.  His creative process is sparked by conflict, yet close examination reveals the care with which Beyer constructs his work. Monarch deals with information, and Beyer heightens our awareness of both the destruction and connection that comes from an inundation of knowledge and ideas springing forth like startled butterflies. His installations feature…

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