“Every bit of my work reflects storytelling. Using symbols to represent emotions, people, and moments, I have developed a visual language to discuss the trauma of domestic violence, emotional therapy, and loss.” - Alanna Austin

Upcoming Solo Exhibition

Artifact Impermanence

Opening August 10th || Leyden Jar Gallery

“This work came to be a means of speaking to the research I have allowed and indulged myself with to be able to understand my own cultural origins pushed aside in my own upbringing.  Having a mixed background of Greek, Turkish and Spanish, the rich culture that I have been born to has been forgotten and left aside as means of rejecting a cultural narrative.  It isn’t to be spoken about nor is it to be celebrated as much as it’s meant to be buried.  Utilizing layering with paper and screen printing combined with the found artifact, I set forth on creating a self portrait.  With the quilting squares comes my own self discovery and appreciation of the background I come from.  I bring together a tradition that is known, the act of sewing my grandmother taught me and pieces of my past that are relics of the known, woven in with layers of unknown secrets and lies I have been surrounded by.  This work is a self discovery as it begins to weave together the things I can still learn and the things I celebrate about being both from a family with history and a history from the depths of genetics I have yet to fully tap into still.  The live flowers symbolizing the life I’ve led of continuing to embrace what can be learned, but the continued wilting that will take place to mean the time I’ve had is impermanent and often these artifacts are long since buried and beyond reach.