Sommer Roman (b. 1981, Santa Clara, CA) maintains a diverse multi-disciplinary practice that spans sculpture, painting, and drawing, exploring themes of navigation, environment, home, play, survival and other ideas concerning the human experience. She is interested in the less sensical and more sensuous or sensory realms, which reveal alternate routes of being and of understanding one’s self and the surrounding world. She received her BA from UC Santa Cruz in 2004 and has since lived, studied, and worked in France, Long Beach, Washington, D.C., and now Santa Barbara, where she recently completed her MFA at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).
This past year, Sommer was the inaugural artist-in-residence at UCSB, which culminated in the spring with her solo exhibition, Passage. Other recent projects include: Left Coast: Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art, a group exhibition last spring at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; a two-person exhibition at Cal State Channel Islands; and Out of the Great Wide Open, a group exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) held in January 2015.
The smART Talks program serves to increase awareness of local artists through a series of three annual lectures by Santa Barbara-based artists. The series, begun in 1996, was created in honor of Helen Rosenberg, mother of Susan Rose, and grandmother of Julie Weiner, and honors artists who live and work in the Santa Barbara area.
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