Portrait of a Conversation

“Some truths are easier to share than others. Joy, pleasure, excitement; these feelings and similar sentiments are embodied and exchanged across dinner tables, sporting events, collegiate corridors, after parties, and at the heights of intimacy. Other emotions are undoubtedly harder to lay bare, and are instead bottled, burned, or both. Though artists are perhaps known to be expressive individuals, they are not all born into this behavior. For some, like painter, poet, and mixed media artist, Connie K. Sales, openness blooms only through flowers that must first break through dirt.

With mental distress and insecurity shaping Connie’s adolescence, the artist would often draw pictures and write letters only to tuck them beneath her shirt until she felt the coast was clear enough to discard them. The words, colors, and characters that escaped six-year-old Connie’s heart lived short lives not far from it before being trashed or set aflame.

Over the course of the coming decades, Connie would work to overcome toxic personal relationships, a challenging mental health diagnosis, and a rare autoimmune disease, Neuromyelitis Optica, that would gradually require her to use a wheelchair. She would come to learn self-advocacy by way of navigating a complex and often corrupt medical system, finding her voice and, in the process, being forced to listen to it. In doing so, Connie created space for artmaking that demanded not only preservation, but public engagement and embrace. Pieces such as “Empowerment” with its eye-popping pink background and haunting bronze abstract figure, are a testament to Connie’s growth toward self determination and a refusal to be dismissed.

In her latest exhibition, Portrait of A Conversation, Connie K. Sales continues on her journey of voicing herself through her art as Artspace’s 2026 Universal Access Artist in Residence. Within this collection, visitors will encounter both earlier productions, as well as newer works made throughout the course of the month-long residency. What binds them all, however, are the paper tearings of journal entries and notebook sketches dating back over twenty years, informing or collaging them into the paintings and digital renderings. So while these archives no longer live beneath Connie’s clothing, they remain tucked beneath newer, stronger layers of artistic armor, visible to those who dare and care to come closer.

Portrait of A Conversation, the exhibition’s title piece, depicts large-scale figures with multiple pencil-sketched eyes peering in many directions. The effect is an abstracted gaze that leaves the viewer unsure as to whom is engaging whom. To further complicate the exchange, both sets of feet are positioned forward and seem to rise from the page in an attempt to break the fourth wall and converse with the audience. According to the artist, the uncertainty and hesitation illustrated in the painting mirror personal experiences she has had when those around her have cast glances but seemed fearful to engage with a disabled person.

Several of Connie’s collectors have returned to the artist to let her know that, instead of hanging their pieces in visible places throughout their homes, they have carefully placed them in the backs of closets or at the bottoms of sock drawers. And yet, Connie feels no shame around this. In fact, she is moved by the gesture, understanding that her work creates containers for her own histories and space for others to share in their vulnerabilities. Some who find connection to her art, it seems, would still rather hold those reflections close to the chest.”

– Alexandra Jane, Artist Programs Manager