SPACES: Sophronia Cook
"I feel an amount of freedom in my practice because i don't precious-size every step of the process. I let the materials guide me."
Sophronia, an LA-based artist, creates sculptural collages that blend textured objects and materials, inviting viewers to find beauty in everyday oddities. Having been raised on an orange farm in California, Sophronia was inspired from a young age to experiment with objects and ideas she found in her immediate surroundings. Let’s see what Sophronia’s been up to at her studio in Highland Park.
ST: Walk me through your studio. What are you working on right now?
SC: I'm taking photocopies of silk and printing them on vinyl. I was moving the silk in the light and now I want to start drawing with silicone. I think it’s my effort to try to paint but also feeling pretty unsure in painting. I want to imbue objects and images I love into the work without being obvious objects. So it’ll be like these four objects that im in love with and im making them and painting them over and over again but as I keep doing that they become more and more obscure. It’ll be like images that I find or see, or a friend will send me images from her walks.. and those images will influence it.
SC: These aluminum orbs are based off this image I've been painting. I’m not sure how they are going to be finished yet but I think they are going to end up sitting on these walnut soap dishes. The soap dishes are based off porcelain soap dishes I found.
SC: Ledger paper has been part of my practice for a while. I found this ledger paper from 1800s when I was in Barcelona. I use some of the lettering and information to actually create the images. It’s feedback. It’s a conversation between the object and the other things going on, the curves in the lettering that is cursive becomes shapes to respond to and build off of. I moved my sketching practice onto these and then they have inevitably become sculptures.
ST: How would you describe your practice?
SC: I think now I have a collage practice that combines many different materials. I have created an archive within my studio practice that I pull from to create different works. But I am trained in mold making, metal casting and printmaking organically and I think I can’t help but look at the works as mold making prints in some way.
ST: Let’s take a step back and talk about your childhood. You grew up on an orange farm in central California. Has that influenced your practice?
SC: Having the opportunity to grow up in a place that is isolated and not in a city was pretty otherworldly, influenced me a lot just in my imagination and what I want things to be like and how I want to make things feel. There were artists around but mostly it’s these certain memories and colors and textures I still pull from.
ST: I can feel your affinity for textures throughout your work. The wrinkles and scales are so tempting. I was relieved when I was able to touch everything at the Spy Projects show.
SC: Silk, abalone, lace, it’s all an obsession of textures and layering. There's a visceral satisfaction that I find which is funny because not seeing it in person just doesn't matter. It doesn’t seem interesting because you actually loose so much. You wouldn’t know each of these new paintings contains four layers.
ST: What is your process like working with materials such as resin, silicone, aluminum, car adhesive..steel? How much control do you have over them?
SC: I feel an amount of freedom in my practice because I don’t precious-size every step of the process. I let the materials guide me. There's a feedback happening between the art…of what a material will let you do and won’t let you do and how it reacts. You can’t actually control anything in it but I have enough years of working with material that I can kinda know what it'll let me do and the breaking point. And anything that it doesn’t is just a new way to work.
ST: You’re working with memories, abstract ideas, images and objects stored in your subconscious. What are some things that are sticking out to you right now?
SC: Things that aren’t supposed to be in spaces are the most interesting. Like the piping in the studio, is technically wrong but I enjoy it. I think its beautiful and funny. All the odd things that maybe you’re not supposed to be attracted to. I feel like that starts to come out in the work. I think there’s something really interesting about making something wrong or a little ruined, it makes room for new ideas and ways of making objects.
ST: Does the architecture of your studio inform your process at all?
SC: Every studio I've ever had is important and is feedback. The architecture of the space ends up informing something whether it’s directly or not. I love the tiling in here and I started casting the tiles in silicone and started slowly to incorporate it into the basis of things or maybe put it into paintings. That always happens. There's just a feedback loop. It’s constantly cannibalizing everything i’ve ever seen or taken in my life and spitting it back out to see what it looks like.
ST: What’s on your desk?
SC: My favorite watercolor paints. Tung oil for finishing the black walnut. Gloves, this vintage silk metal, a mold for a hook, a plaster cast i’ve been making, some bronze chicken feet, some of this film that I want to play with on the paintings, some ledger paper, an acetone bottle, a hammer, sculpture… and coffee.
ST: Do you have a dream space you’d like to present your work in?
SC: A really big greenhouse. I would want to do a whole resin or metal show in a greenhouse. And wherever I end up show these painting, I'd like to silicon the floor and paint the floor and rip the floor as part of the show.
ST: That sounds absolutely beautiful. You’ve got a lot of books in here. What are you reading right now?
SC: I’m reading Notes on Housekeeping by Lucia Berlin - she’s an amazing writer. I just finished reading Ninth Street Women which was good. It’s sort of like all the stories we never hear about abstract expressionists time. And I currently just started some essays by Gary Indiana.
ST: Ninth Street Women.. so good! What are you looking forward to most this year?
SC: I am working on an installation of new works with Long Play Contemporary that I am excited about. It opens in May.
Follow along for more of Sophronia here.
You can shop Sophronia’s Candle Feet at The Sunday Market.
