Studio Solenne is thrilled to present Measures of Time, a group exhibition in our home gallery featuring artists Cassandra Mayela Allen, Lauren Cohen, Lauren Anaïs Hussey, Ficus Interfaith, Michele Mirisola, Rita Salt, Studio Solenne, and Lucy Murray Willis.

At different points in our lives, time seems to move differently. Sometimes it stretches, and sometimes it disappears. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this as my daughter grows. I catch myself trying to slow things down, to sit with her a little longer and really take in who she is right now. Does time move any slower when we consciously observe it? Or, years from now, will this chapter feel like it passed faster than all the rest?

There is a tension between the desire to be fully present and the awareness of the ticking clock. This exhibition grew out of that in-between space: the space between presence and pressure.

Across the works on view, time is measured, remembered, rebuilt, and reimagined in personal ways. One artist builds a floral terrazzo clock that marks the months of the year. Another looks to the celestial ceiling of Grand Central Terminal to transform a childhood landmark into a clock of her own. Paintings of seasonal blooms become a way to slow down and experience change alongside a growing child. And a memory vase preserves the small, seemingly insignificant trinkets collected by a child over two years as markers of a fleeting phase of life.

Time is held in fabric and clay, as well. Quilts map the lives of New York’s migrants through fabrics and photographs of the spaces they inhabit. They hold stories of joy, resilience, displacement, and reinvention. Ceramic castles explore the duality of fantasy and confinement, evolving from drawings into sculptures during a period of personal and spatial rebuilding. Time may erode, but it also makes room for renewal. There are painted quilt fragments that draw on Civil War era quilt patterns and palettes, allowing harmony and conflict to exist side by side in works that feel both incomplete and ongoing.

Throughout the exhibition, time is both the subject matter and the process. The works ask the viewer to consider how we measure time, how we feel it passing, and how we try to hold onto it.