“My work makes use of ‘the stuff of everyday life’,” says artist Sonya Michel. Her solo exhibition, opening March 18th, 2026 at the Sandy Spring Museum, features a variety of colorful, mixed-media artwork executed between 2018 and 2026. Ranging from 12” x 12” to as large as 60” x 48”, the pieces in “Still Seeing My Way,” primarily on canvas, incorporate materials such as acrylic paint, paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, textiles and wood. 

 

Art was a first love for Michel, but she set it aside to build a career in women’s history and Gender Studies. She returned to making art upon retirement in 2016, and over the decade has woven her love of abstract expressionism, feminist art, fiber art, history, and materiality into her craft. The works on view touch on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and climate change, and reveal her inspiration from Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Rauschenberg and Joan Mitchell.

 

“There is,” Michel concedes, “inevitably, a certain tension in my work. By engaging in current events, or transforming waste into art, I allow that some of my pieces are not conventionally beautiful, and this is intentional. By refusing to aestheticize reality, I engage with the lived experiences of the world around us. Some viewer discomfort is, therefore, to be expected.”

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This is Michel’s second large solo exhibition. Her first,  “Seeing My Way,” was held at the Touchstone Gallery in Washington, D.C., in 2020. Currently she belongs to the Maryland Federation of Art and participates in group shows at their Circle Gallery in Annapolis. And this is Michel’s second collaboration with the Sandy Spring Museum. In 2024, she co-curated the exhibition “A Paean to Paper” with fellow artist Holly Stone. 

 

The current exhibition, “Still Seeing My Way,” located in the museum’s Community Gallery, runs through April 16th, 2026.