“We Just Have This Feeling” About Artist Cheryl Louise Humphreys

via The Tappan Collective

I want to give artist Cheryl Louise Humphreys’ phone number to everyone I know—she may be the best texter you’ll ever meet. Her refined sense of symbolism in the tech era makes some seriously interesting—and wordless—communication, putting our reliance on familiar icons on display. For her first solo show opening at Paul Loya Gallery, I Just Have This Feeling, she removed text content from a phone and left only the shapes and the emotions. She knows the torture provoked by the three-dot, typing-in-progress bubble so well that she suspended its shape in Plexiglas. She then took the best conversations in her phone and turned them into stencils to press on paper. She calls these “friendship bracelets.” And because an emoji says a thousand words, she has drawn a bra decorated with a thousand fire icons that will leave you speechless.

But this does not make Humphreys an advocate of all technology. She is especially against time lost on one particular social media platform: Instagram. She even deleted the app from her phone. Bold move. As someone who dedicates a lot of thought and care to her work, Humphreys prefers designing visuals IRL to uploading images that you’ll quickly scroll past online. With a show coming up and her first visit to Art Basel, Humphreys has been busy. But when she’s not alone at the printing press, she runs the design studio Arms with her boyfriend Mike McMullen out of their Fairfax District abode—literally a labor of love.

“I’ll probably never go back on Instagram,” Humphreys says. When her show opens, I’m sure we’ll all post it for her.

Paul Loya Gallery is located at 2677 S. La Cienega Blvd., 90024

November 7 – December 19, 2015
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 7th, 6 – 9 pm

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