Summer 2025 Exhibitions / San Luis Obispo Museum of Art

Trish Andersen: Little by Little

Deanna Barahona: Stars Love Being Alone

San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, SLO, CA

Summer 2025

In her first immersive installation of this kind, artist Trish Andersen transforms SLOMA’s Gray Wing into a vibrant landscape of color and texture. Made up of 200 circular forms—some suspended from the ceiling, other tufted forms on the ground below—this space becomes a meditation on strength in numbers, collective action, and the quiet power of repetition. The work invites us to consider how small parts can build something greater—how patience, presence, and persistence can shape a joyful and unified whole.

As an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Dalton, Georgia, “The Carpet Capital of the World,” Trish Andersen’s initial attraction to the process of tufting was a means to reconnect with and explore her roots. Years after attending the Savannah College of Art and Design and moving on to live and work in Brooklyn, New York, she began using the medium as an examination of the notion that a thing or a way of being can run in our blood. Andersen works with fibers gathered from the field, from sheep, and from the factory floor. Her materials are varied—sleek and wild, soft and coarse, vibrant and muted. She proves that there is room for contrast and complexity – and fun in her practice. As she reminds us, boundaries—cultural, geographical, or interpersonal—inevitably blur, and the results are often quite unexpected.

In Stars Love Being Alone, artist Deanna Barahona shares a deeply personal story about home, memory, and migration. Many of the images use excerpts from her father’s old notebook, filled with English lessons, grocery lists, job applications, and love notes to the artist’s mother. Found tucked away in a box, the notebook gives a glimpse into her father’s life as a young immigrant from El Salvador. For Barahona, it became a symbol of care, sacrifice, and the quiet effort it takes to build a new life in a new place. For this body of work, she came up with the term “Cosmic Pop” to capture how she shares Latine stories in a bold and colorful way, using popular images to both honor her culture and reimagine what pop art can be.

Barahona’s art is full of bright colors, glitter, photos, ceramic tile, and cartoons. She draws inspiration from family parties, the decorations in her childhood home, and everyday objects like Valentine’s stickers or leftover balloons. New works made for this exhibition include images from important rites of passage and cultural events. Her work honors the stories found in ordinary things and ordinary moments—especially the ways Latine families preserve culture and connection through gatherings, language, and small acts of love. Her art celebrates the messy and beautiful ways families hold onto love and culture across time and distance. Through her eyes, even a birthday balloon or a piece of wrapping tape becomes a symbol of care, history, and pride. Through these pieces, Barahona invites us to see beauty in the details and to reflect on what we carry, remember, and leave behind.

https://sloma.org/