Sonia Romero (artist)

Sonia Romero (born 1980 in Los Angeles, California)^[1] is a Chicana, American artist known for her printmaking, mixed media linocut prints, murals, and public art based in Los Angeles. She is known for depicting Los Angeles, Latin American imagery, and Chicano themes in her work. Romero has had artwork commissioned by the Los Angeles County Art Commission, and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. ^[2][3][4] She is known for straddling the world of both fine art and public art, as her prints are often exhibited in galleries and she collaborates with civic organizations in producing public art, such as the public pool murals created with the Los Angeles Conservation Corp.^[3]

Biography

Sonia Romero is the daughter of two artists, Nancy Romero and Frank Romero, and the granddaughter of Frank Wyle and Edith Wyle, founders of the Craft and Folk Art Museum. She is a graduate of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, and she received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2002, where she studied printmaking.^[2][5][6] Her first solo show was in September 2006 at the Avenue 50 Studio, where she exhibited paintings, prints and mixed media especially block printing. Since then, she has been highly recognizable for her public artwork, such as the mosaic print installation at the MacArthur Park Metro Station.^[7]

From 2007 until 2014, she was artist-in-residence at Avenue 50 Studio. She is currently in residence at the Frank Romero studio in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles.

She currently resides and works in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Her own studio, She Rides the Lion, is located at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in Northeast Los Angeles.

Art

Romero's work is known for its clear crisp lines, use of iconography, and reflection of life in Los Angeles. Much of Romero's work is made in Los Angeles, embedded in, and reflects the city. She has stated in interviews that as a student she was drawn to printmaking because of its potential for mass communication, through the built-in ability for multiplying designs.^[8] Her work is considered part of the serigraph tradition. Her work integrates symbols associated with Chicano, Latino, and Hispanic cultures, but often also addresses contemporary issues. For instance, her 2014 piece, Bee Pile, included in the Estampas de la Raza exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art, brought together iconography from her ethnic background with mediations of honey bees to draw attention to Colony Collapse Disorder.^[8][2]

Dambrot of KCET, describes Romero's latest ongoing print series, "Revolving Landscape" as:

...the story of her whole life and career -- a story of a diversity of intertwined and overlapping influences, from her parents (both painters) to her neighborhood (North East LA) to her education (Rhode Island School of Design) that have each left indelible marks on who she is and what she is about. And that is, the fusion of those influences into a deeply personal, deliberately accessible modern traditionalism, expressing itself in the romantic, thorny, fabulist urban storytelling that has made her one of the brightest rising stars in the local visual-culture firmament.

— Shana Nys Dambrot, "Sonia Romero: From her Print Studio in North East LA, an Artist Depicts and Adorns her Imagination and the Public Life of a City"

Romero is also considered a favorite artist among the "indie art" community, with a popular Etsy store, She Rides the Lion (named after her studio), where she sells her prints.^[9]

Notable works

• Revolving Landscape, ongoing
• Monarch Cluster, 2015
• They Fly Through the Water, 2014 (Belvedere
• Bee Pile, 2014
• Fall, 2012
• Bison Skull Pie, 2011
• Urban Oasis, 2010
• The Water Cycle: Eternal Flow / El Ciclo Del Agua: Eterno Manantial, 2008

Exhibitions

• 2015 – Monarch Cluster
• 2014 – Chicano Dream - Chicano Artists from the Cheech Marin Collection (1980-2010), Musée d'Aquitaine^[10]
• 2012 – 2015 – Estampas de la Raza: Contemporary Prints from the Romo Collection (traveling exhibition), McNay Art Museum, Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Vincent Price Art Museum, National Museum of Mexican Art, North Carolina Museum of Art^{[11][12][13][14][15]}
• 2011 – Inner Landscape, Vincent Price Art Museum

Permanent collections

• McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas^[1]

References

External links

• Artist homepage