Sonjie Feliciano Solomon | The Shirley Project Space
An artist finds beauty and balance in Imperfect Practice
Enjoy a moment of zen with Imperfect Practice, Sonjie Feliciano Solomon’s solo exhibition currently on view at The Shirley Project Space.
Solomon’s intricate wood carvings, billowy textile works, and undulating paintings address universal challenges – the pain of loss, the stresses of work and familial obligations – and respond with nuanced serenity. “Every artist finds their studio therapeutic, but I’ve realized that’s my content—it’s therapy,” Solomon said at a recent artist talk with fellow Brooklyn artist and friend, Scott Albrecht.
“I make things based on what’s happening in my life,” she said of her practice. “For me, the studio is where I process my life.” The mother of three, Solmon said that motherhood informs her artwork. Elements in nature – clouds, water, light – things we focus on when we try to “calm ourselves,” are often abstractly represented in her work.
Solomon discussed with Albrecht her various bodies of work throughout the years. She describes herself as a material-based artist. “Both Scott and I have design backgrounds,” she noted. “We don’t have traditional painting backgrounds. I always say, ‘I use paint, but I’m not a painter. I use wood, but I’m not a woodworker.’ My practice is lots of different materials based on what I’m interested in for a period of time.”
Her earlier work includes three-dimensional monofilament mirrors that reflect and capture light, shifting as the viewer walks around them. She also created water paintings on plexiglass during a particularly difficult time. “This was the year that my mother was dying,” she recalled. “I kept painting this misty, melancholy, black window, that look[ed] like rain coming down.” She gradually began adding “points of light in the distance” to the compositions, like beacons, to indicate that her mother’s presence would always remain a constant in her life.
Following another difficult period, Solomon began working in wood. “I was able to get back into the studio and started banging on wood because that’s therapeutic,” she said. Faint straight lines representing paths we lay out for ourselves and our families are juxtaposed with twisting grooves and layered elevations that suggest unexpected change and obstacles. As Solomon carved the circular wooden pieces she was “loosely thinking about these paths and these trials and tribulations we have.” The works helped her find new perspective. The wooden disks can be rotated and repositioned. “If you can reorient yourself and change the way you look at whatever life’s given you, you can see it in a different way.”
Solomon initially received a BS in Business Administration from Georgetown University and worked in advertising before receiving a BFA in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design. While at RISD, Solomon took a quilt-making class where she worked with translucent silks and organza. She challenged herself to make a three-dimensional quilt and laid out an intricate sewing pattern using a 3D design program. This was how she began creating her incredible, cloud-like textile works that are meticulously sewn together, square by square, into a honeycomb-like structure that supports itself vertically but collapses flat and can be folded or rolled up when not on display. “To me it references Spanish Moss in trees, or clouds, these things in nature that we stare at because we need to feel calm,” she said. Solomon’s ethereal textile works complement her most recent work, rhythmically patterned paintings.
For this new series of works on paper, Solomon started with white monochromatic pieces that “visualize the rhythm of the breath… that airy breath that we take when we are learning meditation,” she explained. She started the series last summer when her father was ill. “I’ve had to rely on meditation or mindfulness practices to stay calm,” she said.
While working on this series, the artist found that she was reading about meditating more than she was actually practicing it, but it began “coming out in [her] artwork.” Composed with spray paint, stencils, and airbrush, the minimal works are stripped of all physical and tangible components. “All that’s in the paintings is light,” Solomon notes. “The light is illuminating this invisible rhythm or breath.” The pulsating paintings eventually evolved into “waterscapes, landscapes, and skyscapes,” she adds. “We all look to nature as a calming, grounding presence.”
Solomon recently left her position as an exhibition designer at the Brooklyn Museum –a position that she’d held for seven years – to focus on her art practice. She plans to continue her latest painting series and work on larger, immersive textile installations. “I feel because of life – working, having a family – my art practice has been imperfect,” she said. “I rely on my art practice, that’s my therapy time, but it’s also very difficult to be as consistent as I wish. It’s the thing that makes me feel most human.”
Learn more about the artist at sonjiefs.com.
Sonjie Feliciano Solomon | Imperfect Practice
The Shirley Project Space, 609 Washington Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
On view May 14 – June 25, 2025
Curate a show with Ms Solomon and Jos Prol! The 3-D and 2-D work!