PAST EXHIBITIONS
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ADORNED SELF
JULY 15 - AUGUST 12, 2023
- Alli Conrad
- Sabrina Piersol
- Anabel Juárez
- Kelly Shami
- Mirjam Vreeswijk
- Erin Wright
- Sow & Tailor is proud to present the group exhibition Adorned Self, on view from July 15 to August 12, 2023. An opening reception will be held on July 15 from 2-5pm.
- Adorned Self is our first group exhibition of the summer, showcasing six emerging women artists of the same generation, whose work explores themes such as nature, sensuality, gender, and ornamentation. They share a unique perspective as artists who grew up in the 1990s: an epoch characterized by multiculturalism, globalization, self-reference, environmentalism, and technological advances. With these cultural, social, and political shifts, came new forms of self-fashioning. Adorned Self explores ornamentation as an act, both outward and internal, that opens the self to enlivenment; how we fashion ourselves in order to attract others, make a statement, or express individuality. The artists probe the way our internal landscapes are expressed and communicated onto the world, even in things as banal as a tattoo, jewelry, makeup, or a luxurious fabric. Adornment can also be entirely internal - achieved through cultivating deep self love.
- Despite the diversity of practices, career trajectories, and points-of-view, the artists are bound by commonalities, formally and otherwise. Using realism, Erin Wright and Alli Conrad paint intimate, up-close, and cropped portraits of seemingly mundane objects, like kitchen tiles or folds in women’s clothing. Both present these objects without the humans who own them; preferring to allow the viewer to fill that absence with their imagination. Both Sabrina Piersol and Anabel Juárez have a deep connection to the natural world and reinterpret landscapes and flora through paintings and sculptures. They capture both the resilience and fragility of the earth and the individuals who inhabit and shape it. Mirjam Vreeswijk and Kelly Shami play with an intense color palette, creating compositions that are simultaneously powerful and vulnerable. In Shami’s work, delicate flowers, recalling genitalia, are pierced with silver jewelry as are a pair of perfectly pedicured feet. In Vreeswijk’s work, up-close depictions of silk lace are both sensual and mechanic.
- Erin Wright (b. 1990, Memphis, TN, USA) is a painter and professor of architecture at Woodbury University. She studied fine arts at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 2012) and architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles (M. Arch, 2016). Wright's paintings, which are colored by the classic still-life genre and appear digitally produced, depict intimate and ruinous relationships between objects and characters that are not present. Through her compositions, Wright explores ideas such as indifference and presentation, examining every detail equivocally. Groupings and relationships between objects are rendered non-hierarchically, becoming blatantly arbitrary with uncanny relationships to their surroundings and contexts.
- Wright has participated in numerous exhibitions at Wedge Gallery, Burbank (2022, 2018); Field Projects, New York (2022); Spring/Break Art Show, Los Angeles (2022); New York Design Week, New York (2021); Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn (2020); Showhouse Jay, Antwerp (2020); 327 Livermore, Los Angeles (2019); Maple Street Construct, Omaha (2018); and Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2017). Her work has been featured in ArtMaze Magazine, New American Paintings, AD Magazine, and The New York Times. Wright’s work is part of the NexAir and Wynn Infiniti corporate collections.
- Wright has participated in numerous exhibitions at Wedge Gallery, Burbank (2022, 2018); Field Projects, New York (2022); Spring/Break Art Show, Los Angeles (2022); New York Design Week, New York (2021); Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn (2020); Showhouse Jay, Antwerp (2020); 327 Livermore, Los Angeles (2019); Maple Street Construct, Omaha (2018); and Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2017). Her work has been featured in ArtMaze Magazine, New American Paintings, AD Magazine, and The New York Times. Wright’s work is part of the NexAir and Wynn Infiniti corporate collections.
- Sabrina Piersol (b. 1995, Greenwich, CT, USA) is a painter and art educator based between Southern California and Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. Piersol studied classics and studio art at Colorado College (BA, 2017) before receiving her MFA from the University of California San Diego in 2023. She was the recipient of numerous awards including the Anderson Ranch Study Grant (2021, 2016), the Eva C. Keller Scholarship (2016-17), the Craig Herst Art Prize Scholarship (2016-2017), and the Rhode Island School of Design Annual Art Award (2015). In her painting practice, Piersol draws influence from Sapphic poetry, the natural world, and early 20th century painters. In her “landscape-informed” paintings, the artist implements organic forms while also toying with pure abstraction. Piersol aims to make the work accessible to viewers through the familiar. Her organic and bold paintings raise questions around desire, temporality, nature, and speculative extrapolation.
- Piersol has had numerous solo and two-person exhibitions at the University of California, San Diego (2023, 2021); Permanent Storage Projects, Los Angeles (2019); Weber Rations, Los Angeles (2018); and 802 N Nevada, Colorado Springs (2017). She has participated in group exhibitions at Techne Art Center, San Diego (2023); Friend of a Friend, Denver (2022); the University of California, San Diego (2022, 2021); False Cast Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); Good Company Art, Los Angeles (2019); Permanent Storage Projects, Los Angeles (2017); Museum of Broken Relationships, Los Angeles (2017); and Weber Rations, Los Angeles (2017). Her work has been featured in High Country News, HereIn Journal, Fugue Literary Magazine, and Leviathan Magazine.
- Anabel Juárez (b. 1988, Michoacán, MX) is a Los Angeles-based artist. She specialized in ceramics at the California State University, Long Beach (BFA, 2013) and studied fine arts at the University of California, Los Angeles (MFA, 2017), where she was the recipient of numerous academic scholarships. Her creative practice includes several bodies of work that often utilize primordial ceramic techniques like coil building for their construction and are defiant in their physicality and conceptual underpinning. The Garment Series is a body of work that embodies monochromatic, monumental female gowns, allowing for Juárez to explore societal ideas of femininity. The Floral Series, which includes a range of colorful sculptures, often references plants indigenous to México and California to draw connections between Juárez’s native and adoptive land. With this body of work, she contemplates resilience and the intertwined relationship between fragility and strength. In her practice, Juárez expresses the physicality of engaging with clay and the materiality of ceramics while challenging the preconceived notions of the ceramic objects.
- Juárez has had solo exhibitions at the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, Long Beach (2022); Five Car Garage, Santa Monica (2020); and Lefebvre et Fils Gallery, Paris (2018) and their presentation at Material Art Fair, Mexico City (2018). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions at Guerrero Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); K11 Musea, Hong Kong (2022); American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona (2022); Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey (2022); The Mistake Room, Los Angeles (2022); Anat Ebgi for Dallas Art Fair, Dallas (2022) and Felix Art Fair, Hollywood (2022); The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Claremont (2022); The Pit, Palm Springs (2021); Galleria Mascota, Mexico City (2021); La Loma Projects, Los Angeles (2021); and Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles (2021); and Typer Presents Gallery, Los Angeles (2021), to name a few. Juárez has been selected for various residencies including the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts Visiting Artist program in Montana (2021), the Center for Contemporary Ceramics residency at the California State University, Long Beach (2017), and the Lefebvre et Fils residency in Versailles, France (2016). Her work can be found in private collections and the permanent collection of the Sèvres Ceramics Museum in Paris. Juárez’s work has been featured in Artforum and Hyperallergic.
- Mirjam Vreeswijk (b. 1997, Gorinchem, NL) is a Dutch painter based in Utrecht. She studied at the HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht (BFA, 2018) and specialized in painting at the Frank Mohr Institute at the Hanze University, Groningen. Her paintings draw attention to the many layers of consciousness rippling through both the surface and the subject. In her artistic process, Vreeswijk begins with collages of objects that appeal to her, such as shiny ribbons, designer shoes, or pictures from books on decorative objects from the seventies. From this archive of material, she intuitively builds compositions. First, they are built as models and secondly, they are developed on canvas. Her initiative approach gives the paintings a surrealistic feel that embodies elements of product photography, still lives, and landscape paintings.
- She has participated in group exhibitions at Gallery Kabinett, Busan (2023); Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (2023); Sow & Tailor, Hong Kong (2023); Kunstliefde, Utrecht (2023); On The Inside, Amsterdam (2023); Galerie Fleur & Wouter (2021); Museum Belvédère, Leeuwarden (2019); Show Off, Rotterdam (2019); KunstRAI, Amsterdam (2019); Kersgallery, Amsterdam (2018); Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam (2018); and De Pastoe Fabriek, Utrecht (2018). Vreeswijk has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Galerie Fleur & Wouter, Amsterdam (2023) and Rijnstate kunstcollectie, Arnhem (2021). She was the recipient of numerous awards including the Kunstliefde Award (2022), Talent van het Jaar (2020); Galerie Ron Mandos Public Choice Award, Best of Graduates (2018), and was nominated for the Buning Brongers Prize (2018) and the Kunst aan de Dijk Prijs (2018). In 2022, she received the Mondriaan Fund’s Artist Start Grant. Vreeswijk’s work can be found in the Stichting Kunstcollectie KPMG, Amstelveen.
- Kelly Shami (b. 1991, Hackensack, New Jersey, USA) is a first-generation artist of Syrian and Lebanese descent based in New York City. From 2007 to 2009, she participated in the printmaking program at the School of Visual Arts, where she also pursued her fine arts studies (BFA with Honors, 2013). In her practice, Shami references elements from her cultural background and memories of her father’s office in New York’s Jeweler’s Row. Her paintings feature iconic piercings popular in the early aughts, such as a belly button pierced with a barbell stud, mixed with pendants and talismans native to the Middle East, such as the nazar, an amulet that protects against the “evil eye.” Her work frequently incorporates the flower motif, particularly a pierced one; this stands as a symbol of care and impermanent beauty and is both decorative and protective. Shami’s paintings are full of lush textures and masterful detail.
- Shami has had solo exhibitions at Long Story Short Gallery, Paris (2023) and New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles (2022-3). She has participated in several group shows at New Image Art Gallery, Mexico City (2023); Alchemy Gallery, New York (2022); O'Flaherty's, New York (2022); Middle East Archive and Ya Habibi Market, New York (2022); and Untitled Space, New York (2021). In 2009, Shami was the recipient of the Art Administrators of New Jersey’s Emerging Artist Award. Her work has been featured in many publications, including GQ Middle East, Vogue Italia, and Flaunt Magazine.
- Alli Conrad (b. 1995) is a Chinese American artist based in Los Angeles who specializes in simplified realism oil paintings. Conrad describes her work as nostalgic and romantic. In her artistic process, she sources historical photographs and contemplates their relationship to time and how they play with fiction and non-fiction. Conrad extracts figures, specifically unknown women, found in the photographs. She is particularly interested in their body language, silhouettes, and outfits. For Conrad, an outfit’s fabric and folds are very much alive, vocal, in motion, and a container for an indirect emotion. In her canvases, she zooms in and crops the “effortless” folds in the clothing as well as the subject’s hands, examining how they adapt, modify, and move. Through the absence of her faceless characters, Conrad is drawn towards the clues and stories held in both clothing and hand gesture - elements she believes are “just as alive as humans" creating an endless possibility of narratives (any way to incorporate somewhere?).
- In 2023, Conrad had her first solo show at Août Gallery in Beirut. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions at WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong (2023); Vain Projects, Hong Kong (2023); Shit Art Club, Los Angeles (2022); Arushi Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Arushi Arts, Los Angeles (2020); and Superposition Gallery, Los Angeles (2019). Conrad has had several mural projects throughout Los Angeles at UCLA (2021); Full Service Coffee Co. (2021); Arc Capital Partners (2020); and Jade Enterprises (2019). In 2022, she was selected to participate in the RAMA Residency in Lisbon, Portugal. Conrad’s work has been featured in Cultured Magazine, Women’s Wear Daily, Overstandard, and Notch Magazine, to name a few.
