SECOND SKIN 

February 17 - March 23, 2024
Opening Saturday, February 17th 6–8pm

Sarah Brook Gallery is pleased to present “Second Skin,” a new body of work by Cheryl Humphreys, an artist who employs an expansive approach to printmaking, mining its material and metaphorical possibilities.

Torn by hand, dyed in vats, pressed with ink or found objects, Humphreys performs a number of processes on paper. She activates its permeable surface, testing the paper’s resilience with line, color and pressure– motivated by the transformative possibilities of printmaking more so than by its staid tradition of serial image making.

Humphreys gravitates towards a meditative range of color: the prints she pulls are nuanced monochromes of soft violets, greens, ochres, earthy blues or terracotta. In New Blue Son, symmetrically arranged squares and diamonds alternate across a grid to form a kaleidoscopic pattern. The artist often presents her editions together, positioned edge to edge like tiles, so that their tessellated fragments cohere into one whole, softly geometric, color field composition. A varying depth of field is created in the way Humphreys layers ink over dye, forming dark squares that anchor her compositions as distinguishing lines and paper edges radiate outward.

A hallmark of Humphreys practice is collecting. Scraps of paper, envelopes, and kitchen ephemera serve as raw material for her chance printmaking operations, quilting, or collage experiments. Recently she started employing woven produce bags as an object for mark-making, inking, arranging, and embossing a bag onto her print matrix, playing with its emptied, net-like form. The bags conjure natural or bodily imagery, breasts or a far-off shoreline. They serve as sketchier, illusionistic passages which balance solid swathes of chroma. The resulting optical effect is entrancing; there’s something meditative in slowing down to see how Humphreys makes a band of color leap forward or recede.

Through the repetitive actions of her printmaking process – rolling an inked brayer, wiping a plate, hanging prints to dry, cleaning the press, smoothing its felt top – Humphreys embodies acts of domesticity and care. Her practice could be performed as a physical approximation of cleaning the home or doing the family’s laundry, yet this labor amounts to a dozen or so visual permutations, methodical and exploratory. Works for Second Skin emerged post-partum after the joyful birth of Humphreys’ son, Cy, and finds the artist shedding an old life to enter her work anew. What she carries forward is an iterative approach to image making, a newfound boldness  that relies on a fastidiousness and devotion to materials; a commitment to the artist archetype as MOTHER. She pushes her form to test our visual acuity, reminding us of the auratic pleasure of looking.

Cheryl Humphreys (b. 1986, Ithaca, NY) received her BFA from Otis College of Art & Design in 2008. She has attended residencies at Otra Vox, Los Angeles, CA and Pocoapoco, Oaxaca, Mexico and has solo exhibitions at Sarah Brook Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Otra Vox, Los Angeles, CA; and Paul Loya Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Group exhibitions include the Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA; Ace Hotel, Brooklyn, NY; and other spaces locally and internationally. Humphreys currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Our Favorite Days are Different, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
44 x 44, 48 x 48 inches








Routine Dream, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
44 x 44, 48 x 48 inches

A Different Kind of Romance, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
44 x 44 / 48 x 48 inches








Still Motion, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
44 x 44 / 48 x 48 inches

New Blue Son, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
36 x 36 / 40 x 40 inches








I Would Do Everything I Did Again and Again, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
36 x 36 / 40 x 40 inches

Somewhere in Between, 2023
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
28 x 42 / 32 x 46 inches

Pull, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19.5 inches

Pin, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19.5 inches

Peer, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19.5 inches

Pucker, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19.5 inches

Pinch, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19.5 inches

Place, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19.5 inches

Peel, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19.5 inches

Poke, 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on paper
21 x 16.5 / 24 x 19.5 inches

New Blue Son (Study), 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
12 x 12 / 14.5 x 14.5 inches

I Would Do Everything I Did Again (Study), 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
12 x 12 / 14.5 x 14.5 inches

Still Motion (Study), 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
12 x 12 / 14.5 x 14.5 inches

Our Favorite Days are Different (Study), 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
12 x 12 / 14.5 x 14.5 inches

A Different Kind of Romance (Study), 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
12 x 12 / 14.5 x 14.5 inches

Routine Dream (Study), 2024
Monoprint tessellation, ink on hand-dyed paper
12 x 12 / 14.5 x 14.5 inches