Artist: Katherine Mao

Size: 20” x 24”

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Instagram:

Artist Statement: This painting reflects the theme of Wear and Tear by capturing the quiet traces of everyday life, a rumpled bed, overgrown plants, and worn objects that speak to someone’s presence. Even without people, the room holds memory. It shows how we leave behind marks, not through grand gestures, but through small, unnoticed acts that shape the spaces we inhabit.

Not for sale

Artist: Kaayla Lee

Size: 8” x 9.5”

Medium: Graphite

Instagram:

Artist Statement: “Fidget” was created to convey the behaviors we do that go unnoticed to ourselves. The scratching and touching of our skin that can silently soothe anxiety. Or the picking of mosquito bites and scabs to make our skin smooth. But we’re too preoccupied with the tasks of daily life to notice irritated flesh or the dead skin under our nails. The wear and tear of our body comes into our mind after the fact, when we decide to look at ourselves and we seem the same but a bit different.

$75

Artist: Zhu Gaocanyue

Size: 18” x 24”

Medium: Photography, framed archival inkjet print

Instagram:

Artist Statement: This is a photo of a ceiling in my friend's apartment 3rd floor, a floor being empty for years. I used flash to explore these rooms and was drawn by how the texture of the building provides the beauty of abstarct.

$200

Artist: Zhu Gaocanyue

Size: 18” x 24”

Medium: Photography, framed archival inkjet print

Instagram:

Artist Statement: An old memory, an abandon home,

$200

Artist: Eliza Louro

Size: 5” x 9”

Medium: Hand-Built Ceramic Vessel

Artist Statement: Topaz takes shape through fire and touch, its cracked glaze and shimmering copper details record that process of its creation. Created through Raku firing, the vessel holds the scars of its making, scored seams, pinched feet, and smoke-marked glaze tell the story of change. Embodying how a human hand and elemental force can transform the earth into objects.

$150

Artist: Samuel Fisch

Size: 48" x 20”

Medium: anthropic stone and petrified garbage

Artist Statement: This piece is a mirror into the future looking back at fossil layers of our civilization during the anthropocene, when we live.

$6400

Artist: Lynn Martinez

Size: 8” x 8”

Medium: Oil on Wood Panel

Artist Statement: The crash depicted in this painting serves as a representation of not only a moment of violent destruction but as the endpoint of a long, inevitable process of deterioration. The painting captures that final instant when years of wear become unmistakably visible, turning invisible tension into a twisted, crumpled form.

$300

Artist: Paola Silva

Size: 8 x 15 per piece, 15 x 24 inches total

Medium: Ink on paper

Artist Statement: Between irony and abjection lies the World Wide Web, in a pictorial language insidious and covert, where images are copied so often that they quickly compress, decay, and rot. Usually, this visual “rot” is undesirable; the more imperceptible the pixels, the better. But my wish is to revert this assumption. I find pixelation, decay, and low-fidelity images beautiful, for their imperfection renders them more into archaic artifact. Therefore, I consider the pixels the “remains”, the ashes of a photograph and a moment, their loss of quality is the treasure itself. The pixel denotes time, history, and terror; the pixelation obscuring the image makes the image, paradoxically, more real. I made these three drawings based on pixelated internet images that, at one point or another, incited great fear in me, despite their subjects being ordinary: like medical photographs of newborn babies, salamander embryos, Sims 2 iconography, and human fetuses. Using a stippling technique, my wish was to emulate the look of a “pixel” with a traditional approach. I believe the stippling also makes the subjects appear as ghosts. As the maneuver of stippling involves a tear, a constant stab to the paper surface, the images I was portraying had the same effect on my memory: a constant violence that, when zooming in, was no more than a cluster of dots.

Not for Sale

Artist: Lawrence Weiss

Size: 14”x17”

Medium: Oil stick, acrylic paint and collage on paper

Artist Statement: An attempt to healing the condition of loneliness

Artist: Sheryl Chen

Size: 11x14x11 (W x L x H)

Medium: Multimedia: Cardboard, ready-made MyLittlePony toy figures, Barbies, ready-made toy furniture, Ipad screen, audio.

Artist Statement: I will create a cabinet box out of cardboard that visitors can open and close. Inside, 3-5 ponies and dolls are assembled in a crowded room filled with toy furniture as if they are watching something through a large keyhole cut-out on the wall. An Ipad screen is positioned in that keyhole cut-out, on which assembled footage plays: videos of my little-self playing with the dolls, edited in a nostalgic manner. Audio through the Ipad plays muffled ambient noises of childrens' laughter and white noise. The dolls (hair frizzy, heavily played with) sit in semi-darkness, reflecting on their past lives when they were loved and cared for. See the image attached for a sketch of my concept.

Since I was 6, my toy collection grew from one MyLittlePony doll to boxes and shelves of plastic dolls, miniature furniture, and accessories. I'd create stories out of each doll, paint their faces, and brush their hair until they became worn with love. As I grew old, I played less with my dolls and my collection collected dust in the corners of my room. Now, I take their dusty presence in my room for granted. I want to pay a tribute to my toys by personifying them and their emotions, telling a story of love while also depicting the bittersweetness of growing up and casting childhood away.

Not for Sale

Artist: Anjali Patel

Size: 20”x20”

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Artist Statement: Fractured Expectations is an acrylic painting that explores the cultural pressures placed on women, the burden of constantly trying to meet impossible expectations while feeling like you’re never quite enough. Through bold reds tied to traditional wedding attire and henna, the piece reflects the deep-rooted cultural significance and the weight of roles women are expected to fulfill: to settle down, yet pursue a career, but not just any career, care for others, maintain perfection, but not try to much, all without complaint.

This work is personal, yet universally resonant. It speaks to the quiet struggle of trying to please others to avoid judgment, even when it comes at the cost of self. The writing in the background carries the emotional labor and silent exhaustion. The swirling marks across the canvas reflect the casual remarks, subtle jabs, that accumulate and occupy mental space. What may seem like an insignificant moment is carried on through anxious thoughts and years to come.

Lines wrapping around the arm represent the feeling of being bound and controlled, while the tape over the lips symbolizes the silence, the inability to speak up without consequence. These elements come together to create a visual storm of memory, anger, and vulnerability. The pressure is suffocating, though the attempt to break the expectation continues, eventually fracturing, hopefully breaking them.

Not for Sale

Artist: Messiah Walker

Medium: Audio

Size: A series of audio works 2-3 mins audio works, totaling 20mins.

Artist Statement:

White Room is a series of audio works that center around my experience during the Covid 19 pandemic. These works portray my experiences during quarantine, as well as simultaneously transitioning from high school to college. This narrative is told through the lens of the psychological concept the "white room effect," where isolation and sensory deprivation can have a negative effect on one’s psyche, leading to feelings of disconnection from reality, and questions of identity. Through a mixture of both archived and newly created audio files, these works capture the feeling of isolation and disorientation, as well as a search for identity.

– Messiah