Naomi Alessandra Schultz

Artist Statement

As an interdisciplinary artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, I consider my practice as a way of sticking my fingers into the porous affective space between things. My practice reckons with the myriad ways in which bodies and objects encounter one another—sometimes resulting in deep affinities or new hybrid conglomerations, and other times revealing disquieting power dynamics. I share these layered visual stories utilizing a variety of tools including painting, drawing, sculpture, assemblage, and language. Most often, my work takes form in large-scale water media on paper.

Recent work engages absurdist conversations and amalgamations at the junction of “The Wild” and the human-built infrastructural landscape: a place where witchy hybrids take root. These works draw on vital materialist thought, grappling with the idea that ‘things’ have an agency all their own, a power that works upon humans and one another to achieve mysterious, unexpected, and sometimes treacherous or enchanting aims.

Biography

My work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the Bay Area and beyond, including at the deYoung Museum, Marin MOCA, College of Marin Fine Arts Gallery, Diego Rivera Gallery, Walter and McBean Galleries, Art Works Downtown, and more. In June of 2025, my work will be shown alongside a roster of up-and-coming Bay Area artists in an exhibition at Root Division in San Francisco that I am also co-curating.

I received my MFA from SFAI in Studio Art with a Painting Emphasis in 2022, graduating with honors as part of the school’s final graduate cohort. In 2020, I was the recipient of the esteemed Pirkle Jones Visual Artist Support Program Grant, given to one Marin-based artist each year.

Recent artist residencies include Vermont Studio Center in April 2024, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) in October 2023, and, in 2017/2018, a year-long residency at Art Works Downtown in San Rafael.

Art Medium(s)

Watercolor, Sculpture, Fiber