Charles Clary

Charles Clary layers colored paper to build up variegated textures and sinewy shapes into large scale installations. His constructions appear ever-expanding, overwhelming exhibition spaces like replicating viruses or reverberating sound waves. The pieces may look like they’re highly orchestrated precision-cut sculptures, but Clary favors a more organic creative philosophy: “It’s all intuitive. It’s just one layer playing off another, playing off another,” he says. “But I do try to make the viewer wonder whether they’re handmade or if industrial equipment is used, so I have to be very clean with my cuts.”

Alyson Shotz

New York City artist Alyson Shotz replicates nature as many of us experience it—interfaced with technology and filtered through culture; tamed, trimmed, and patented. Working in a variety of media, from large-scale installations to digital photography and painting, Shotz is intrigued by the notion of nature as “purely a human construction.” Some of her artworks are artificial versions of living things like trees, plants, and flowers. In one of her installations, bamboo reeds are made of wrapped cotton swabs, pools and droplets of water are suggested by mirrors, insects and flowers merge in suspended swarms of glossy petal and wing shapes, and house plants are equipped with their own rubber feeding tubes and wheels for easy transport.

Lisa Solomon

Lisa Solomon is a california artist who comes from a long line of crafters. She creates imaginative drawings from a bevy of mixed media, including thread, wire, charcoal, watercolor, ink, satin, felt, and the wall, as well as paper and canvas. Her work is inspired by childhood themes, found objects and the differences in masculine and feminine attributes. It's simple and sweet at first glance, but underneath layers of thread and transparent swatches of fabric, the domestic imagery can feel unsettlingly intimate.