Sally Scopa

Region: Pacific Coast

My work celebrates the material qualities of surfaces, both architectural (cement, adobe) and natural (soil, sawdust), as sources of information accessible through close looking. Combining painting and sculpture, I construct novel relationships between painted surfaces and sculpted forms such that they read as equal partners in structuring space. My work challenges the notion that surface is merely “superficial.” Rather, surfaces are points of contact between people and things, bearing traces of our engagement with the world even as that engagement appears to recede with increasing digitization and virtualization.