Three Generations, Same Wall

So I’m standing—back against some kind of white box column—in a gallery that’s humming and realizing: all these faces and textures and loops of color across the walls are having a long, heated conversation, and I’m the accidental eavesdropper. This isn’t just some reverential “women’s art exhibition”. It’s loud, messy, full of risk—Oak trees, riotous masks, feathery stitched creatures, piles of upcycled joybombs. Three women from one lineage. And the art is straight-up talking to itself. Or, really, to each other over ninety years of making, refusing, starting over—and wow, I’m invited into all that.​

Because here’s the actual scene: There’s Sophia, who in 1929 was painting her own face in a self-portrait at age fifteen. There’s Aleka, building masks, embroidering wild colors, collaging with tin cans and toys, making goddess figures out of whatever’s at hand. And Miranda-, full of volcanic textile energy, making art out of the stuff most people throw away. The whole show is a time machine (IYKYK), except everyone’s dancing on the timeline instead of sitting still.​

Photos courtesy Los Angeles Makery

Art as Family Weather

The best part? The art is not afraid to admit where it comes from. Sophia setting up a ladder in her dining room studio, Aleka doing homework at the top like a watchtower. One painting, three generations shuffling around it in real time, with turpentine fumes as the essential chord. Craft, color, and recycled mess as a way of arguing with HIStory. Sophia welded iron sculptures when she was the only woman in the room; Aleka left painting for three-dimensional collage just to stop inheriting the weight of giant canvases. I get the sense they all want less stuff, but can’t help making more.​

Miranda (the youngest) described growing up literally breathing art, like creativity is genetic. “Me and my family, we dance with the void and together bring form to the formless,” she says. Yes. That’s the real “artistic pressure”—not expectation, but oxygen.​

Photos Courtesy Los Angeles Makery

Women Artists: Past, Present, NOW

Here’s a slice of history I keep coming back to—and no, it’s not a textbook thing, it’s embodied, sweaty, full of teeth. Sophia had to “fight like hell” just to be seen. Art history didn’t notice women artists until the 20th century, and when it did, it was because they screamed themselves into existence, not because anyone invited them in. Aleka’s teacher literally said there were “no great women artists” and thought they’d quit in twenty years. Her mother sent her a list of Renaissance women artists out of pure rage. (Hero move.)

That fight is still here, but Miranda insists: There's a kind of permission now. Not just anger, but excitement—upcycled trash art, weirdness, ecological rebellion, color not as ornament but as lifeforce. Spy more genitals in contemporary galleries, you know? That radical joy. Miranda’s work claims the space for “chaos and celebration. Release. Authenticity, resonance. Freedom.” Not as hashtags, but as lived experience thrown on walls for all to see.​

Photos Courtesy Los Angeles Makery

The Thread Across Generations

I keep thinking how the wild color is the language—in paintings, stitches, mask-ribbons, plastic flowers. Each of them absorbed color as a child just by living with the art. Houses filled with Mexican textiles, Greek weavings, Balinese masks, playfully chaotic rooms. There’s a running joke about maximalists who hate clutter, and every generation rebels just a little (smaller work! foldable pieces!) but ends up spilling into the next with bigger visions and wilder shapes.​

Also: “Women’s work” (not the polite kind) runs under and through everything—collage, embroidery, sewing, recycling. This isn’t domestic, it’s magic. Decoupage from 12th century China, patchwork from every grandmother’s sewing box. Aleka says she wants to tilt the scales toward a gentler, balanced, and colorful planet, and she’s doing it literally one bead at a time.​

Photos Courtesy Los Angeles Makery

What Actually Matters: Keeping the Magic Alive

One line that haunts me (in the good way): Miranda wants to “keep this enigmatic and passionate artistry alive”—not just for herself, but for the next kids, next freaks, next cosmic makers. That idea that every painting sold by family artists becomes seed money for children's future creative adventures is more radical than any grant program I’ve heard of.​

Here’s the unvarnished truth: Art history is still catching up. Society still drags its feet. But three generations of women in one show—faces, textures, powder explosions of color—remind anyone willing to look that real transformation only happens when you keep the work moving forward, even if you’re covered in dust, even if your only audience is your kids doing homework on top of a stepladder.

Photos Courtesy Los Angeles Makery

Why This Exhibition Sticks With Me

• No explanation needed. It’s joyful, a little chaotic, occasionally heartbreaking, always powered by women who literally kept painting, gluing, welding, and sewing, no matter who told them not to.​

• The walls talk, and the conversation is not finished. Each generation shows up with their own weird materials and rites—future floor wax, ancient decoupage, upcycled trash, handmade beads—and throws down another round.

• If anyone asks “Why do women artists matter?” here’s my answer: because they never stop making, and in making, they grant all of us a little more permission to be loud, tender, and alive.

  
  

(Wow. Sitting in my car, stream of conscious recording this on my phone between errands. Art makes history real. That’s it.)

There is a closing celebration this Sunday Oct 26 • 1–4pm I highly recommend you don't miss it! @losangelesmakery 260 S Los Angeles St, Los Angeles, California 90012

Photos Courtesy Los Angeles Makery