The Sketchbooks
by Monica Lloyd and Aneesa Shami
September 28 – November 14, 2020
*EXTENDED THROUGH DECEMBER 5, 2020
View in person by appointment only. Inquire about purchasing artwork by emailing info@thestudio203.org.
This exhibition is a collaborative project between Monica Lloyd and Aneesa Shami, a joint mythos that combines their personal histories and cultural observations. Using scraps of paper, magazine images and discarded book pages, the artists traded two sketchbooks between themselves for several months, responding to one another’s abstract imagery and unique processes. Blending their memories and experiences together formed a new, third voice that began to influence their individual practices. Curious to see how the sketchbook compositions could be expanded upon, both artists revisited their preferred mediums to create visceral experiences for the viewer out of rescued textiles and discarded paper.
*Please set video quality to 1080p for optimal viewing.
The Sketchbooks (myth)
During a time of illness, political unrest and social reconstruction, two women pieced together a joint mythos to make sense of the chaos around them. Combining their personal histories and cultural observations, the women formed new realities within the pages of two sketchbooks. Using their similar, yet unique, processes of creating, they gave new life to discarded materials, layering scraps of paper to create abstracted landscapes. The women continued pouring their anger, pain and confusion into their creations, watching figures emerge from lines of ink and torn paper edges to inhabit new planes of existence. The book pages could no longer contain these fragmented worlds, and spilled out into different forms, occupying three dimensions and transforming the womens’ own space.
by Monica Lloyd and Aneesa Shami
Photos by Cecily Brown
Exhibition Views of The Sketchbooks
Photos by Cecily Brown
About Monica Lloyd
Monica Lloyd is an artist and textile designer working in Los Angeles. Her work explores ideas of pattern and repetition through drawing, collage, and textiles. Lloyd graduated from Grand Valley State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 2013, and has shown her work in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Bloomington, Indiana, and Los Angeles, CA.
monica-lloyd.squarespace.com/
@monica_lloyd_studio
About Aneesa Shami
Aneesa Shami is an artist researcher based in Los Angeles using recycled materials to create fiber art. Her work references the sublime and world mythologies to evoke a sense of the collective unconscious in her imagery. Shami holds Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in both Fiber and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute. She was the Textile Arts | Los Angeles AIR at Helms Design Center in 2018, and was a Fellow for the Mildred’s Lane Attention Labs: Order of the Third Bird in 2015. Her work has been exhibited nationally in galleries and museums, including the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, CA and the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art in San Luis Obispo, CA. Aneesa Shami is also the co-owner and director of Studio 203, an artist-run space in Los Angeles that collaborates with artists to create exhibitions and host workshops and performances.
aneesashami.com@aneesashami
