VA - A Thorn in the Crown without an Echo

A thorn in the crown without an echo, brings together the work of three artists whose practices explore spirituality, dreams, and collective creativity. Opening Sunday, January 19, 2024, at Selva from 6–11 p.m., the exhibition features Carbon Anderson, Eva M. Nelson and Sarah Viviana Valdez, with guest DJs Zarla and Cube.

Carbon's silk paintings, created with foraged and natural dyes—goldenrod from highway medians, maple leaves through fences, St. John’s wort from ditches—reflect an enmeshed landscape of living things and industrial extraction. These works become allegories of resistance, where the resilient heart of nature ruptures the constraints of the built world. Eva's intricate pencil drawings layered over watercolor backwashes weave ethereal patterns and secretive grids into explorations of the everyday connecting to the private self. Sarah's watercolors, crafted from pigments she mixes, delve into mythology and collective memory through gestural storytelling.

Each artist’s work is marked by moments of restraint, where images extend a symbolic language—a collection of correlations woven into their own fabric of time. Yet, they pull away into distinct worlds. Together, their practices unify, seeing everyday life as the open air without an echo—images always in motion. The show runs until January 29, 2024, with a soon-to-be-announced closing reception to celebrate its final reflections. 🌱💧💚