Ericka Lopez

Tierra del Sol Gallery presents “Erick Lopez:
Continuous Touch” A Solo Exhibition of Works Curated
by jill moniz
March 11 – April 29, 2023

Tierra del Sol presents Ericka Lopez: Continuous Touch organized by jill moniz. This exhibition marks two firsts: Lopez’s first solo in the gallery and moniz’s first curatorial effort with Tierra del Sol despite her longtime collaboration with gallery.

Continuous Touch hints at Lopez’s practice of the learning of material through her hands. The title also points to the scientific understanding that this kind of touch activates brain function and heightens emotional wellbeing and communication. Lopez is blind and feels color through touch and texture. moniz features Lopez’s color field hook rugs – reminiscent of Sheila Hicks’s large and small fiber works– and organically contoured ceramics to highlight her expertise with material and her ability to communicate feeling through powerful aesthetic compositions.

Texture is a signature element across all media in Lopez’s work. Her continuous touch brings dimensionality to her dense fiber works that while two dimensional, feel like sculpture, hue-saturated ceramic coil pots and her beaded paintings. Her works are an invitation to step into her world of making transformative art. moniz organizes the gallery with this aspect of her in mind, creating a tableau of materials shaped by feeling – emotional and physical – as an immersive space of multi-sensory aesthetic experiences.

Lopez reminds us of the joy of touching to create, receive and to know. moniz hopes to translate Lopez’s passion for continuous touch into a new way to connect personal stories to a shared public engagement through art. She reads Lopez’s work as social practice, engendering collective, participatory action of building literacy with diverse and divergent making, inspired by other ways of seeing.

moniz relates to Lopez’s art practice through a passion for investigating materials and through the shared space of being women of color in the art world. Despite challenges and obstacles, Lopez uses her practice to amplify her voice and to refuse being unseen. With moniz, their work expands opportunities for understanding, inclusion and deeper, richer interactions with marginalized people and art.

Lopez’s artworks have been featured in several group exhibitions at Tierra and her beaded works are currently in the Loyola Marymont Here Comes the Sun: 7 Artists from Tierra del Sol. moniz is artistic director at Transformative Arts in downtown Los Angeles.

Ericka Lopez: Continuous Touch opens March 11, 2023 with a reception from 6-9 pm at Tierra del Sol Gallery in Chinatown, Los Angeles.