Press Release: Miss Black America

August 7, 2021 Abigail Ogilvy

July 21 - August 29, 2021

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.

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.

Press Release: Fresh Faces 2021

March 17, 2021 Abigail Ogilvy

Fresh Faces 2021
March 15 – April 26, 2021

Online Exclusive

Arielle Gordon Wilson was born in Ventura California, but was raised in the small town of Millville, Massachusetts. Here she attended Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational High school and graduated with a certificate in multimedia communications. During her time at BVT she focused on photography, graphic design, and interned in the design and print center for two years. Currently Arielle attends Massachusetts College of Art and Design undergraduate program studying ceramics and sustainability science. Arielle Gordon's work is built around her passion for community and engaging communities through art to strengthen and build relationships.

Catherine Falco’s artistic medium is dictated by the content of her work. As a consequence, she uses a wide variety of materials to create both 2D and dimensional works. She employs a personal vocabulary of symbols in her work. A red string represents a connection to a past lover and an overturned coffee cup is an expression of femininity and its potential for fragility. Through her art, she hopes to communicate her pain, as well as her potential for healing. She wants the viewer to look at her work and feel a connection between their own emotions and experiences and those which she visually represents. Although emblematic and veiled, her work brings deeply personal experiences to light and into a universal space.

Chunbum Park,The Three Muses, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 75 x 75 in. — Chunbum Park,*The Three Muses*, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 75 x 75 in.

Chunbum Park, also known as Chun, was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1991. He came to the United States in 2000 to study English and attend school. He graduated from Montgomery Bell Academy in 2009 and subsequently studied at various art schools and universities. In 2020, Park obtained his BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, where he began to explore the themes of eroticism and sexual fantasy. Currently an MFA Fine Arts Studio student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Park is delving into the topics of gender fluidity and the male gaze, which should involve varying amounts of self-gaze based on the ratio of masculinity to femininity of the male’s personality. Park has recently exhibited at the SVA Chelsea Gallery and was featured on Artsy.net for an online exhibit organized by SHIM. Park is also the founder of the Emerging Artists Collective, where he interviews other artists.

Clara Curbera was born in New York City in 1998, and is now based in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA in Studio Art from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she graduated with High Honors in the Art Department with a painting thesis titled Everybody Knows. She paints dark, altered images that seek to translate the world through a lens inspired by the popular culture aesthetics of 1980’s horror films and vignette-style American short stories. They emphasize the visceral feelings looming within a physical scene. Her paintings are created in direct conversation with photography and juxtapose the physicality of each medium to investigate its realism.

Elizabeth Kaiser is a printmaker and fabric artist living and working in central New York. Their work has to do with translating quick gestures through slow cooked print matrices and incorporating digital visual languages within handicraft techniques. They are currently focusing on fabric and fiber arts - knitting afghans, making sewn collages, and experimenting with constructing garments.

Grace Deal, Surf the Gulf, 2021. Acrylic and spray on vinyl. 60 x 48 in. — Grace Deal, *Surf the Gulf*, 2021. Acrylic and spray on vinyl. 60 x 48 in.

Grace Deal is a Brooklyn-based artist who was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. Through painting on the surface of stretched vinyl and concrete exteriors, Deal incorporates and memorializes logos, graphics, and manufactured imagery from her rustbelt upbringing into her work. Her work has appeared at the Dayton Art Institute and the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, Texas. She is the recipient of the City College of New York Dean’s Prize in Art, the Connor Merit Scholarship, and the Flaxman Endowed Art Scholarship. Her work has been mentioned in the Houston Chronicle, CityBook Houston, Houstonia Magazine, and Glass Mountain Magazine. Deal holds a BFA in Painting and a minor in Art History from the University of Houston and is expecting an MFA in Studio Art from the City College of New York in 2021.

Gus Williams is from a family of house flipping hobos always looking for the next train to nowhere in particular. He currently is settled in the small town of Bristol, Maine, but throughout his life his family has spent more time fixing up and moving out than moving in. By the time he got to 12th grade he had already been in 14 different schools. The only reason Augustus has been in Bristol so long is his dad's distaste for all things less than perfection. This is his father’s curse, if you can find a problem in everything you will spend your time fixing anything. His father is the reason it was so easy for Augustus to get and keep a job in the world of skilled labor, but most importantly his father taught him how to create. To have the mentality that an idea doesn’t exist simply because you haven’t made it yet, and you don’t need to think something all the way through before you start it. He learned on the fly, not sitting on my ass thinking. He works instinctively using the tools he finds immediately around him and make them work. He takes unwanted and excess materials from different job sites and use their natural properties to create something unnatural to the eye but authentic to the limits of the material. He realized that in his process much like in life most solutions are within arm’s reach, you just have to use what you got.

Jacob Geiger is a Boston-based photographer and MFA candidate at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He obtained a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from Yale University and lived and worked in California prior to moving to Boston. He is interested in the somatic experience of being lost within images.

Jenny Olsen is an MFA 2D painting student at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She will be graduating in Spring 2022. Before entering MassArt, she worked full time and painted on her own. Her main medium is oil. Her work has transitioned from abstracts to figurative and to the interplay of abstracts and figures. She is currently exploring the sound and silence, and especially the operatic singing and its effect on coloring and lines in her work. Jenny was the “Best in Show” winner of the Cambridge Art Association’s National Prize Show in 2015. Art school is giving Jenny a fresh start and she is excited with the new possibilities.

Jessica Parker Foley, 'm Your Boyfriend Now, Nancy, 2021. Oil on panel. 48 x 96 in. (diptych) Now on view with the ICA at Maine College of Art — James Parker Foley, *'m Your Boyfriend Now, Nancy*, 2021. Oil on panel. 48 x 96 in. (diptych) *Now on view with the ICA at Maine College of Art*

James Parker Foley is a painter, naturalist, and educator living and working in Portland, Maine. She is an adjunct faculty member at the Maine College of Art, where she is also the painting technician. Her areas of research include landscape, pigments, printmaking, wildcrafting, and more recently, classic horror films. She earned her B.A. in Environmental Humanities from Sterling College in Vermont and her M.F.A. in Studio Art from Maine College of Art. She was the recipient of the 2020 Monhegan Artist Residency, which she will attend this summer.

Jillian Vaccaro received her BFA from Emmanuel College in 2014. Upon graduating she began her education career as a high school art teacher in Boston. She is a passionate educator who is committed to creating an environment where students feel valued, challenged, and are given the opportunity to explore artistic skill and experience personal growth. Jillian is currently enrolled at Massachusetts College of Art and Design where she is an MFA candidate for Interdisciplinary Studies. Jillian works across media describing memories from her past experiences. Growing up in a close family with her mother’s artistic influence, Jillian creates using familiar objects to share parts of her personal narrative through her art.

Keara McHaffie is a freshman at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She graduated from Walnut Hill School for the Arts in 2020 and studied Visual Art for the last four years. While attending Walnut Hill she fell in love with numerous mediums but painting always stood out the most. The goal within most of her paintings is to tackle serious topics in the world but approach them in a fun welcoming way to create a less intimidating environment. Having fun, experimenting, and learning new ideas through a vibrant process is what helps make her artwork stand out.

Kester Messan is an artist and writer from Togo, West Africa. He grew up in Cambridge, MA where he cultivated his artistic self—one that is rooted in the power of storytelling. He is a student at Williams College where he is receiving his B.A. in Visual Arts. The deeply personal task of discovering, reclaiming, and permitting oneself to exist freely in the world is what has inspired Messan in his artmaking. In recognizing that the dissonance that he’s felt as a queer black man is rooted in the denial of his body, the expectations of the people around him, and the prohibition of the spaces that they inhabit together, Messan works to reclaim autonomy and create permission for himself. Through language, declaration, performance and various media, Messan asks, tells, and demands. His practice is largely research-based and is in contention with manifestations of colonialism and control that work to inhibit and marginalize people. He asks, what is the body? How does the body feel? How does it move and connect with other bodies? What can the body do? And what can be done to the body? Messan searches for the body in public spaces, in loops, choreographies, and in scripts. In hopes of creating community that is affirming, he disrupts those spaces, breaks those loops, reworks those choreographies, and rewrites those scripts. He realizes art as a means through which we might re-imagine the sleep we get, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the words we speak, the rooms we enter, the pictures we take, the stories we tell, and what we might look and feel like in them. Messan’s practice is committed to imagination and worldbuilding through art, as a means of reclaiming persona and transforming community.

Leslie Lyman, Comfort Taken, 2020. Archival pigment print. 24 x 36 in. — Leslie Lyman, *Comfort Taken*, 2020. Archival pigment print. 24 x 36 in.

Leslie Lyman is a student of history and has had a long been interested in the lives of women. She was an American Studies major at Smith College and earned her MFA at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in August 2020. Leslie uses mixed media with historical objects, historical techniques and photography to blend the past and present in order to explore the emotional labor of women. The mother of four children, her interests lie in the complex realities of today as seen from the generational history we all hold.

Luke Whittaker is an emerging artist currently living and working in Providence, Rhode Island with a studio at the Nicholson File Company Art Studios. Born in Toronto, Canada he was diagnosed with Leukemia at the age of five. In the midst of treatment, he moved to Darien, Connecticut and received treatment from Memorial Sloan Kettering. After a bone marrow transplant, radiation treatment and chemotherapy, he was rid of the cancer at the age of eight. He attended Darien High School, graduating in 2016, then went on to graduate, with honors, from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in painting. During his senior year he participated in RISD’s European Honors Program in Rome, Italy. Right now, he is working on developing his portfolio and challenging his own practice and applying to graduate programs.

Marissa Giampietro is a Burlington, VT based multimedia artist who graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, with a degree in Painting and Sustainability. Marissa’s work derives from realism, with a focus on found spaces or objects that together, form a narrative. Through papier mache, Giampietro construct’s life-sized figurative sculptures, which work to create a fun, eclectic, mismatched environment. Her work investigates the comfort of home and that which is unseen from the outside world. She is interested in the way we behave at home versus how we may present ourselves in public. Marissa explores narratives based on feminine aesthetics, media, and personal experiences. Through mixed media collage and sculpture, she desires to push the boundaries between sculpture and painting.

Michaela Salvo identifies as an American social justice artist. Her work can be in a number of different mediums, but her goal is always to bring awareness to what is going on in the world around her. She tackles many areas including The Pandemic, sexual assault and mental illness. It often appears to look surreal to some but for her and her subjects, her images are very real. She recently graduated with a B.A. in Art from Central Connecticut State University in 2020 and she is currently continuing my education in the UK at Kingston University. 

Molly Harrington is a sculptor and undergraduate student at Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a material focus on cast iron, ceramic, and paper. As an artist, she wants to provoke thought and interest in her media and the forms she creates - to tell stories and entice, intrigue, specifically through fantastical creatures and forms, mostly inspired by folklore, history and culture. Drawing inspiration from her own personal experiences as well as animal and plant life, philosophy, science, and psychology, her work takes these themes and interconnects them. Through these connections, she expresses a sense of age as well as emotion through material history, exploring the foundation of shifting and shaping materials to create 3D media. Her work at its core aims to be ancient. She is originally from Northeast Connecticut.

Rita Scheer is a painter/ printmaker working in the Providence area, where she is a Post-Bacc at Brandeis University. She has exhibited work online at www.uniqueuncertainty.com (2020), at www.areacodeartfair.com (2020), at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture (2019), and during the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts (2018 & 2019). She lives and works between Philadelphia, Providence, and Waltham.

Semaj Campbell, Untitled, 2020. Photograph. 26 x 24 in. — Semaj Campbell, *Untitled*, 2020. Photograph. 26 x 24 in.

Semaj Campbell is a Brooklyn, NY native. Semaj studied psychology and studio art at Trinity College, graduating in May 2018, and is now currently pursuing his MFA at Lesley University (Boston, MA). Semaj is currently an educator and coach at Avon Old Farms, in Avon, CT. Inspired by the works of Gordon Parks, Deanna Lawson, Latoya Ruby Frazier, Angelica Dass, Chi Modu and Bruce Gilden, Semaj seeks to reimagine the black gaze through his personal narrative. Semaj challenges the historical prejudices, racism, and false narratives, that have haunted the depiction of black figures in society throughout generations. His photographs seek to provide a voice for everyday people who have been oppressed and suppressed, and ultimately discarded out of society’s forefront.

Shabnam Jannesari is an Iranian artist and a MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She incorporates drawing and painting to explore a nostalgia of distant intimacies in her life. She illuminates the plight of the Iranian woman, censored by an overreaching patriarchy. Jannesari’s paintings expresses her personal story, but they also reflect on the suppression of women across Iran. Jannesari’s carefully composed figures empower the complex realities of Iranian female identity.

Sierra Caley is currently investigating new concepts during her MFA candidacy at Massachusetts College of Art and Design Time and space for experimentation and play remain constant, essential elements in her studio practice. While the work is impressionistic, it is important for the sculptures to operate in the world of objects. Sculptures require a viewer in motion and are never completely visually available. She is drawn to this elusive and mysterious characteristic of sculpture. The confrontation of her interpersonal relationships facilitated a visual exploration of abstract forms and structure. Her practice orchestrates under the permission of her intuition to develop a body of work that focuses on texture, form, scale, and color. She engages with ceramic and glass as a process of healing and lend it to an intuitive practice; reacting to the form as it is created and allow for each element to affect the next. She considers the process of extruding, stretching and bending material as potent metaphors for the tension and complexity that encompass her state of being. The transformative nature of ceramic and glass moving from a soft malleable state into something rigid, permanent and delicate attribute to her exploration of relationships.

Sonja Czekalski is a contemporary interdisciplinary artist. Her current work embeds itself in the fourth wave of American feminism, using fiber arts and hand-paper making to reclaim the craft, body, and voice of the web of women who raised her. She is currently enrolled at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Massachusetts where she is an MFA candidate for Interdisciplinary Studies. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Art Education with a concentration in painting from Rhode Island College in 2017. Sonja has pursued a career in secondary art education and is eager to continue her teaching at the post-secondary level. Sonja has been included in various group shows and exhibitions including a “Best in Show” at the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative. Sonja is an artist member at the historical Hera Gallery in Wakefield, Rhode Island, and a contributor to Witches Magazine.

Tiffany Doggett earned her BFA in Photography from Cornell University and her master’s in art teaching from Massachusetts College of Art in December 2020. Her evolution into felted paintings springs from her obsession with light, but also from her own photographs of special places. These images start as wide open vistas, get smashed into a tiny digital screen, then scaled up again using into fiber. What happens in each translation? What does the image gain or lose in each iteration? These are questions Tiffany is still exploring! The artist lives in Groton, MA and is currently teaching 7th grade art.

Ula Grabski is 19 years old and grew up in Haverhill, MA. She graduated high school in 2019 and went on to study art at Northern Essex Community College. Ula hopes to receive her associates degree in Liberal Arts in January 2021. Her strongest interest is in painting, and she hopes to expand all her knowledge of art. This includes progressing with her own creation, learning about marketing and selling her work, and making connections. Her dream is to be able to support herself by doing something she loves, which would be painting. Currently, Ula has become involved with a local gallery called “The Switchboard,” learning all about the backend of what it takes to run a gallery.

Valentine Bonner (they/he) is a genderfluid printmaker and painter living in Portland, Maine. They are currently enrolled in Maine College of Art as a junior in the printmaking major, and their current work explores food, cooking, and the human form. They are especially interested in working towards the normalization of transgender bodies in art and media.

Yuchi Jou, Breast Faucet II, 2020. Stoneware. 7 in. — Yuchi Jou, *Breast Faucet II*, 2020. Stoneware. 7 in.

Yuchi Jou grew up on the small island of Taiwan, where she was taught not to challenge the ideas imposed by this patriarchal society. She began to think differently about her role as an Asian woman and her identity when she came to the United States. She immersed herself in the Western educational system and began to think more critically about notions she was brought up believing. She realized that women are capable of taking control and having their own voice. Therefore, her art practice explores gender in relationship to society, politics, culture and history. As an Asian woman and an immigrant, she often thinks about the ways in which she creates a dialogue about the relationship between male and female and the power dynamic between genders. She strives to reconcile her Taiwanese identity and her own voice in the art world through her artistic practice.

Zhiqian Wang is an interdisciplinary artist whose works range from paintings, sculptures, performances, installations, to conceptual experimentation. She see her works as a means to facilitate the conversation beyond the boundary of languages, and to bring both philosophical and poetic investigations into the notion of conceptual art. Born in Guangzhou, China and as a young Asian female artist, she has noticed that there is an expectation in the western sphere of contemporary art for artists with minority status to talk about their “identity”. However, Wang believes that expectation is, in fact, a discrimination toward minority artists. She is pursuing the freedom to transcend the parameters of expectations.

Zoe Cronin is a senior at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and will graduate in May with a BFA in Art Education. She is an interdisciplinary artist predominantly working in weaving and textiles. Zoe spent the Fall 2019 semester studying in India where she participated in a block printing and natural dyeing workshop in Bagru, outside of Jaipur, Rajasthan. She is also a passionate gardener and cranberry bog enthusiast.

Team Update from Abigail Ogilvy Gallery

September 17, 2020 Abigail Ogilvy

From our Founder, Abigail Ogilvy:

We were so thrilled to officially re-open our doors to the public on September 2nd. The gallery has new social distancing measures in place, limiting our capacity to 5 visitors at a time, hand sanitizer at the doorway, and free masks for anyone who may have forgotten to bring one. Visitors can safely scan the QR code to find more information about our current show, making it an entirely touch-free visit. Life will be different moving forward across all sectors, but we will always find ways to adapt and adjust accordingly so that we can continue to support our artists.

Kaylee Hennessey, Assistant Director, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery

I am also very excited to share some updates in terms of our team at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery. In May of this year, Kaylee Hennessey joined us full time as our Assistant Director. Kaylee has been working with AOG part time since 2018 while she attended MassArt, receiving a BFA in Art History with a minor in Fibers. After graduating with Academic and Departmental Honors, Kaylee joined the staff at the brand new MassArt Art Museum (MaaM) and was instrumental in launching their first exhibition featuring a large-scale installation by Joana Vasconcelos. Kaylee brings a wide range of experience to our team along with a passion for supporting the Boston arts and our local institutions. In addition to her busy schedule, she also co-founded House of Venus, “a domestic, avant garde, and revolutionary exhibition experience that pushes for the introduction and breakthrough of young talent.”

Alexi Fee, Gallery Associate, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery

In early September, Kaylee and I welcomed Lexi Fee as our newest Gallery Associate. Lexi will focus on marketing strategy and client relations, bringing her experience from working at the Fine Art Works Center, Boston Women’s Fund, Artechouse, and Rice Polak Gallery. She received her BA from George Washington University, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a double major in English & Creative Writing, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Lexi is currently pursuing a Masters in Arts Administration at Boston University.

While all aspects of 2020 have been unexpected, having a strong team has been crucial for reaching our mission of supporting our artists’ careers . With a global pandemic happening around us, we will end the year having hosted 10 exhibitions: 5 at the gallery, 2 New York art fairs, and 3 online exhibitions. I am incredibly proud of my nimble and hard working team for all that they do — they make all of this possible.

We look forward to continuing to share our artists’ work with you!

-Abigail Ogilvy
Owner & Founder, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery
September 2020

Artist Spotlight: Daisy St. Sauveur

May 13, 2019 Abigail Ogilvy

One of our favorite things about contemporary art is getting to know the artist behind the work. While the work itself tells a story, the artist’s background further paints the picture of where they came from and how they got to where they are today. We sat down with our artist Daisy St. Sauveur to learn everything about her - from growing up in New England to navigating her artistic career:

Abigail Ogilvy: Tell us a little more about your background.

Daisy St. Sauveur: I grew up in Cohasset, Massachusetts- it's a tiny ocean town in the South Shore. My mom is a graphic designer/painter, and my dad works in music. I knew I wanted to be an artist my whole life, but until 2015 I thought I would study illustration (I was obsessed with anime and cartoons growing up!). I ended up declaring as a printmaking major at MassArt and I've been studying it ever since.

AO: So what was your initial spark to be an artist?

DSTS: Since my mom is an artist, I was lucky enough to be introduced to art at a very young age. We would see all kinds of artists- from Miyazaki to Thiebaud- I was introduced to many different styles at a young age. Making art was the one thing I could focus on when I was growing up (I probably went through five sketchbooks a year!). There was definitely a period of time in middle school when I was fascinated with anime, and I think that interest inspired a lot of the shapes and colors I currently use.

AO: How did you choose your medium?

DSTS: While I was a freshman at MassArt, I wandered into a student printmaking show one rainy morning. The work was so fresh and interesting, it was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Being the impulsive person I am, I decided on the spot that I would study printmaking instead of illustration. Print allows me to work in a layered, collage-like way, and I can easily make variables and play with the piece until I'm satisfied.

I've also started painting a lot more- primarily acrylic. Painting has taught me patience, I can't be as impulsive with it, but I've learned a lot about creating unique shapes and spaces.

AO: What is your creative process like? When you begin a new work do you have a vision of the end result?

DSTS: I always have a vague idea of what I want a piece to look like but I never know for sure. I'll start with a sketch and then realize 'You know what? I'm bored I'm gonna scribble on this.' Or I'll cut it up, collage it, paint over it, etc. I love to push my artwork as far as I can. I try to make things as chaotic as possible while staying along the lines of the original composition. Whenever I mess up, I'll paint a big square or scribble over it- kind of like white out. I always like the pieces I "mess up" better than the ones that go exactly as planned.

AO: We love that organic chaos in your work! With that in mind, what themes do you pursue?

DSTS: Recently I've been interested in branding and advertising. The idea of interruption seems to be a common theme in my work lately. I love working with pop culture, social media, and the visual relationship between architectural and organic forms. As a young artist, my experience is a little different from those who grew up in the 90s. The 2000s fascinate me, and I take a lot of my subjects from that era.

AO: What are you currently working on?

DSTS: Right now I'm working on a series of screenprints that have advertisement-like interruptions. One of the pieces I'm most excited about features a pink and yellow jungle-like pattern with a vintage Sandals Resort ad in the middle of it. I really want to explore that frustrating feeling of interruption and obstruction. I'm constantly being bombarded by commercials- from Youtube and Instagram to the radio, billboards, or even airplanes. What would it be like if fine art had advertisements too?

AO: Are there any artists that inform your work?

DSTS: There are so many artists I love, but my favorites are Jonathan Lasker, Henri Matisse, Nona Hershey, Cy Twombly, Takashi Murakami, Ricardo Bofill, David LaChapelle, and Leroy Neiman.

Check out Daisy St. Sauveur’s work at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery on view through June 16, 2019!