New York-based artist Sam Wolfe Connelly opened his first solo show “Semiprecious” at Spoke Art gallery on Saturday, October 8th in San Francisco. Populated by wistful, delicate women with pensive, faraway eyes, “Semiprecious” is based around the amorphous narrative of being left by someone. Inspired by grave robbing and underground mining, Connelly’s drawings evoke a sense of nostalgic sadness, or the soft struggle of trying to remember a beautiful dream once you’ve awoken.
“The theme of the show is based on losing people and memories to the passing of time. When somebody leaves your life, when a relationship ends, they essentially become dead. You stop talking to them, they don’t exist anymore. All those memories that you had together, all the gems and the crystals of the relationship, get buried along with that person. Something so beautiful that you once had is now gone, in the ground, vanished, where nobody can appreciate it,” Connelly said. “What I’m doing with this show is digging it back up and bringing it to the surface, but it’s all sort of flawed and skewed. You’ve got all these facets, but you cant even tell if you actually felt that way or if it’s a false kind of beauty, a false sheen.”
Read the rest of my article for Hi-Fructose Magazine here.
I was very moved by his work and the meaning behind it as I feel that I can relate (unfortunately) to the feelings that these works convey.
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