Press Release - Katrina Sánchez: Mending Joy

Katrina Sánchez

May 31 - July 16, 2023

Installation view: Mending Joy

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery proudly presents Mending Joy, the gallery’s first solo exhibition by fiber artist Katrina Sánchez. In the exhibition, Sánchez explores themes of joy, repair, and responsive choice through her signature tactile “magnified weavings” Mending Joy is a labor of love in which Sánchez has given herself time and space to prioritize finding joy despite past experiences and trauma related to the current political climate. Through this new body of artwork, she has given herself space physically to explore new concepts, textures, colorways, and visual language. The result is monumental, playful, interactive, and restorative.

The artwork on view emphasizes Sánchez’s embrace of power through choice. Vibrant weavings hang from the ceiling, walls, and dot the floors, set against a saturated wall gradient to fully encapsulate the viewer in an intentional unification of subject and canvas. Lush greens and neon pinks pull influence directly from the rainforests of Sánchez’s native Panama. Looking closely at the variation in knit structures, the viewer experiences a cadence of breath as the knit stitches open and close, imparting a sense of vitality on the entire room. In her new series of “poufs,” Sánchez offers a seat to the viewer, allowing an experience of strength and energy passed through these objects. The poufs have a liveliness to them, growing up from the ground and accelerating the artist’s intention of engaging a three-dimensional space through soft sculpture. While the magnified weavings are dimensional, the poufs push color and texture even further into space. These spheres of joy are made to be fun, pleasant, and functional; unique pieces that challenge the concept of traditional furniture.

Katrina Sánchez, Escalando Montañas, 2023. Knitted yarn, fiberfill. 42 x 80 in. Image courtesy of Da Nam.

The large magnified weavings on the walls and ceilings offer the viewer a sensory effect of playful confrontation: often the size of humans or larger, it is impossible to avoid interacting with them. Her current body of work is deeply influenced by her early small-scale fiber works, which involved mending clothing by weaving with needle and thread as a restorative practice to process lived experiences and trauma, including the aftermath of a school campus mass shooting. Sánchez considers stress and trauma to be universally shared experiences, as we all go through events that deeply challenge us. Her ambition with her work is to share playful, tactile works that offer optimism to viewers. Sánchez works with scale, texture, color, and touch to explore emotion and the relationships between our physical environments and ourselves.

Katrina Sánchez, Mending Joy, 2023. Knitted yarn, fiberfill. 25 x 30 in. Image courtesy of Da Nam.

Smaller weavings offer a platform for invention, where Sánchez experiments with new textures. Her newest mohair weavings seem to vibrate from across the room, looking hazy and grandly soft, tender and weightless. In a conscious effort to engage with a more sustainable material, a loose knit encapsulates a new type of filling: upcycled clothing. A closer inspection achieves a more intimate exchange as the artist allows visitors to physically engage with the work through the sense of touch.“I really enjoy when people can touch the Magnified Weavings I make,” says Sánchez, “sometimes, some spaces insist that people refrain from touching any of the artwork, but it’s often one of the first things I hear from people, ‘I just want to touch it!’ and I think it is really satisfying when they can. It's fulfilling that curiosity, sense of play and tactility. That for me is important for the work; letting the viewer indulge in that desire to feel and explore the work through another sense. It also breaks a barrier between myself as the artist with the viewer by enabling them to experience the work in a way like I do. The work is plush and flexible, it gets pushed and pulled and even sat on in the studio and it’s not very fragile so I feel like, why safeguard that experience for only myself or some people?”

Katrina Sánchez (b. 1995, Panama City, Panama) received a BA in Spanish-Hispanic Studies and a BFA in Fibers from the University of North Carolina (Charlotte). She exhibited her artwork at Spring Break Art Show LA (2022). She has exhibited her work most recently at venues such as bG Gallery (Santa Monica), Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (Boston), Goodyear Arts (Charlotte, NC), SOCO Gallery (Charlotte, NA), and the Mint Museum Randolph. Her work has been reviewed by Untitled Magazine, Artnet News, Hyperallergic, Art and Cake, and Whitewall Art. Sánchez lives and works in Charlotte, NC.

Community Spotlight: Art Installation with Jonathan Stangroom

We always feel so lucky to be part of the art scene in Boston. The city is simultaneously intimate and large enough that there are always new things happening, and the community is no different. As a small business in this particular art scene, we often rely on a network of people outside of our immediate team to collaborate on projects and produce exciting new exhibitions.

When it comes to delivering artwork to local collectors, installing our rotating exhibitions, or assisting us with the behind-the-scenes tasks, we have repeatedly turned to two incredible freelance art handlers: Jonathan Stangroom and Ibrahim Ali-Salaam. Today we will highlight Jonathan, who I personally met through my mentor Meredyth Moses, she too worked with Jonathan during her time as a gallerist. We often get compliments about our beautiful white walls - Jonathan and his team painted the gallery when it was first built!

Abigail Ogilvy: How did you come to be an art handler?

Jonathan in his studio (Image courtesy of the artist).

Jonathan Stangroom: In the mid-eighties I had been painting houses. I had friends with gallery representation and they recommended me for installing their work.

I got invited back to install for other artists. I figured it was fairly clean way to make a living and the gallerists would see me regularly and might consider seeing and showing my work. (That's sort of worked over the years.)

AO: What is the most rewarding part of your job?

JS: It's always nice to hang a show of good work. The galleries that I work for have terrific artists. My corporate clients have good, solid collections. My residential clients can occasionally have a surprise or two.

AO: What is your favorite piece of art that you've handled?

JS: A good question. I'm looking at the back of the artwork most of the time. This past year I moved a large collection of "Outsider" art for a friend's parents. There were several gems in that. (I'm a fan of "Outsider" art.)

AO: Can you talk a little more about your own personal art practice?

Jonathan Stangroom, Little Hotel on the Prairie, 2018. Oil on wood, tree cross section. 14 x 9 in.

JS: I'm a painter and a mail artist. Painter is easy. I paint stylized landscapes. Taking notes from "Rocky and Bullwinkle"/"Dudley Do-Right" and other cartoons. Monopoly houses populate these landscapes. Mail Artist is a bit more difficult. At present my everyday project is to send a post card documenting the change that I've found. The postcards are rubber-stamped and sent daily, (inspired by On Kawara who sent postcards documenting when he woke up). I have a list of about 200 correspondents who I send to in rotation. In the past I made direct image photocopies (putting objects on the platen, sometimes manipulating them during the copying process. I had a show of them in Hungary about 1992, we had a copier at the opening and copied everybody and everything in the place.

AO: What artists inspire you in your own artistic practice?

JS: I've already mentioned On Kawara. I love Indian miniatures, (I lived in India for a year in the 80's). As I said earlier, I'm a fan of "Outsider Art". "The Group of Seven" and Greg Curnoe from Canada are favorites. Philip Guston, William T. Wiley, Jim Nutt and all of the Chicago Imagists, H.C. Westermann (primarily a sculptor but I love the work), Fluxus artists. I look a lot. I paint like none of these.

AO: What do you do for fun?

JS: Oh boy... I've been known to enjoy a pint of Guinness at the Plough & Stars in Cambridge. I like BritComs and Melissa and I binge watch old series. I don't eat much, but like to eat well, (we cook). When I travel I visit museums. I like to walk.

Thank you Jonathan for being a part of our gallery team for almost seven years now! Looking to hire an art installer? Here is how to get in touch: jstangroom@aol.com

Check back soon for a feature on Ibrahim Ali-Salaam.

Press Release: Miss Black America

July 21 - August 29, 2021

Artist Lavaughan Jenkins in the gallery

Artist Lavaughan Jenkins in the gallery

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery proudly presents its first solo exhibition by Boston- based painter Lavaughan Jenkins. The exhibition, titled Miss Black America, is a powerful message that honors women past and present, embraces Blackness to address the marginalization of a group that is underrepresented in visual spaces, and is a demonstration of Jenkins’ personal resilience as an artist. As his career has developed, Jenkins has experimented with dimensional space, texture, and color. Heavily influenced by fashion, the resulting body of work is an explosion of dynamic patterns used to explore the intersection of race, womanhood, and the Covid-19 pandemic. The exhibition is named after a song released in 1970 by musician and activist Curtis Mayfield, and still the lyrics remain just as relevant today. The paintings themselves capture both the chaos of the past year as well as the hope for the future.

Gazing at the expressionless female figures central to Jenkins’ compositions, it is impossible not to wonder, who are these subjects that are able to command so much attention, display so much individuality and yet remain anonymous? Previously, each figure was a specific woman in the artist’s life who had personally impacted him in some way. In his recent paintings, there is a shift towards portraying women he has not met but who are making history for us, a remembering of the lives lost in the #SayHerName movement and a celebration of those alive and still fighting. As Jenkins describes, “I wanted to make paintings about them, praise them, share how I felt reading their stories.” That said, his personal history has still played an important role in developing this series. Jenkins and his mother spent a large part of the last year reconnecting with his grandmother and hearing her stories before she passed in July of this year. Embedded in the artwork are those conversations.

Another noticeable shift in Jenkins’ work is the addition of cotton fields into the backgrounds of select paintings, alongside others layered with vibrant patterns inspired by the latest couture stylings of Gucci and Valentino. Jenkins’ artwork is deeply rooted in the history of fashion. He admires designers such as Virgil Abloh who brought t-shirts and sneakers to couture status, specifically in Black culture. “The t-shirt and sneakers was a uniform for me,” Jenkins reflects, “and Virgil [Abloh] put that into runways and museums – yet the idea originated in a cotton field.” The remaining patterns are an eruption of stripes, dots, leopard print, and more, intentionally mismatched because that was how he was feeling at the time. While bright colors can often be associated with happiness and optimism, the artist was more frequently reflecting on the darker moments of 2020 and channeling them into the patterns. With the backgrounds speaking so loudly, suddenly some of the emotional weight was removed from the figures and focused elsewhere.

Lavaughan Jenkins, Hold us together (cotton field), 2021. Oil paint on paper. 30 x 22 in.

Lavaughan Jenkins, Hold us together (cotton field), 2021. Oil paint on paper. 30 x 22 in.

This body of work served as a way for Jenkins to navigate the triumph, celebration, mourning, anger, and every important emotion felt this past year. He embraces the importance of allowing oneself to acknowledge it all. As we celebrate these women, we also come to terms with the hard work that still needs to happen.

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Lavaughan Jenkins is a painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He was raised in Pensacola, Florida and currently creates his work in Boston, MA. He received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2005. Since that time, Jenkins has become a recipient of the 2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize awarded annually by the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston. In 2016, he was named Emerging Artist of the year at Kingston Gallery in Boston, MA, Jenkins is a recipient of the 2015 Blanche E. Colman Award and in 2002 received the Rob Moore Grant in Painting. He has exhibited his work most recently at venues such as Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (Boston), The Painting Center (NY), Suffolk University Gallery (Boston), and Oasis Gallery (Beijing). Jenkins donates annually to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design Auction which supports student scholarships.

Artist Spotlight: Daniel Herr

Daniel Herr, White Nights, Oil, chalk pastel, and collage on canvas, 56 x 56 in. Image courtesy of Lindsay Comstock.

Daniel Herr is an abstract painter whose expressive brushstrokes and vibrant colors combine to create dynamic landscape imagery. Originally from California, Herr has done numerous residencies internationally, completed his MFA at Boston University, and is currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His nomadic lifestyle lends itself to his artwork’s focus on place, where one comes from, and where one feels at home. His memories and experiences with places provide reference to his work. This is specifically visible in his piece, White Nights, currently on view at Abigail Ogilvy gallery until October 28th.

Herr reflects back to when he created the painting, “There was a bridge I used to walk across at night to my apartment in Cambridge from my studio in grad school. I loved the idea that I could wake up, walk over the river to go to work, walk back at night.” The nighttime view was mostly mundane institutional buildings, but at night they seemed to have a magic to them. The river was frozen solid all winter, and as he passed over the bridge Herr kept thinking about Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh, and the idea of creating his own personal version of the painting.

Daniel Herr. Brooklyn, NY. Image courtesy of Lindsay Comstock.

In regards to titling his pieces, he adds whimsy to his work by using what he describes as “absurd phrases”.  These phrases usually have a narrative quality to them, mirroring the story like aspects of his pieces. He explains, “I like the idea that the picture can tell a story, even if not a beginning, middle, and end. It's more like a title to a poem: it references something specific that the poem isn't saying directly.” Indeed, his art is a visual poetry: expressive, emotional, and sometimes ambiguous. Embracing this ambiguity, he describes his paintings as similar to multiple exposures, superimposed on top of each other.

He continues to expand on the energetic feeling of his paintings in what he is currently working on by creating a series of medium-scale paintings based on watercolor and quick sketches.

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Daniel Herr received his MFA from Boston University in 2011 and his BA from the University of California, Davis in 2004. Herr has completed artist residencies around the world including the Molten Capital residency at Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile, Estudio Nónmada in Barcelona, Spain, and the Artist Colony residency at the Inside–Out Art Museum in Beijing, China. Herr’s work is now apart of the Inside–Out Art Museum’s permanent collection as well as having been exhibited in the United States and Chile. Daniel Herr lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Herr is currently part of a group exhibition at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Nocturne, on view from 10/3 to 10/28.