SALLY PAUL

Slits and Slots
October 3- October 24, 2020
Preview: Friday, October 2 4pm-8pm

Boogie Nights, acrylic on panel 12 in x 12 in 2020

Essex Flowers is thrilled to present Slits and Slots, a solo presentation of paintings by Sally Paul. Sally Paul’s lively grids are an unlikely marriage between geometric abstraction and craft. To create each work, paint is first squeezed, poured, dabbed, brushed and then cut-up, peeled, collaged, and finally woven as intimate, color-interactive compositions. Paul’s playful process yields a gestural grid, complete with errant bubbles, droops, and implied motion that animates the paint as it moves over and under itself across the painting surface.

Paul counts her parallel career as a Museum educator as an influence. While leading tours and viewing 19th and 20th Century quilts, questions about the quilting process captured her imagination: Was there a significance to each chosen fabric? Did multiple people piece and stitch each quilt, or was it the work of a lone maker? What caused the maker to deviate from a pattern? The mysteries remain, but what is clear is that quilts are works of art that display artifacts of a life lived. In a similar way, Paul’s titles give subtle clues that stitch in references to personal experiences that may have inspired each work.

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Sally Paul (B. 1974 Philadelphia, PA) has exhibited at 247365, and The Arsenal Gallery in New York City. As a Museum Educator, she has taught at the Museum of Modern Art, The American Folk Art Museum, International Center of Photography, The Bronx Museum, The Brooklyn Museum and The Queens Library Gallery. In addition, she has curated several exhibitions which were shown at the Colemman Center Art Gallery in the Museum of Modern Art, which featured her student’s work made during community partnership programs. She received a BFA from Pratt Institute and MA in Art Education from New York University, Steinhardt.