Artist’s statement:

50 miles North of San Francisco you’ll find a small piece of land hanging off of the coast. This is Point Reyes and this is where I grew up. The natural beauty is overwhelming and the community is tightly knit. The surrounding environment is isolated, rural, and offers a sense of separation from the rest of the world. It holds memories and elicits feelings that cannot be felt anywhere else. It’s a special place– in an elusive way.

My friends and I would spend whole days getting salt encrusted, disappearing into thick fog, swimming until our bones ached–essentially running rampant–no one really knew where we were or what we were doing. 

Through sculpture and painting I elucidate the feelings, memories, and moods that have been experienced here. These recordings function as an act of preservation in the midst of change and the passing of time.

I am remaking memories as an act of tending to and connecting with the past. I employ oil paint and bright colors to translate feelings of bliss, chaos, youth, community, tenderness, and an underlying sense of loss.

These works function to demonstrate the congruencies between the natural world and the emotional world. Through these works the viewer is suspended in a moment, in a memory, in a sensation, in water, and in time.

— Sophia Spindell