(San Gabriel, CA) – Artists & Makers Studios is pleased to present Sandra Low’s exhibition of artworks entitled, “Cheesy.” Known for her surreal, satirical paintings and drawings, the works in this exhibition depict melted cheese and other greasy foods as symbols of American consumer excess and contamination. Detailed and lushly painted, Low smothers aspirational symbols of middle-class prosperity with a high-fat dose of the absurd and social critique.
Low turns aquariums, tea parties, and the 6th St. Bridge into cheese-filled tsunamis. Slathered in gloppy American cheese, fantasies of Western middle-class prosperity are rendered simultaneously gilded and debased. These “Cheesy Paintings” also allude to environmental and cultural contamination—referencing a yellow peril paranoia that became more relevant with the pandemic and “kung flu” epithets. The paintings reference art history, the nature of representation, and paint as a medium: pictures of cheese that look like paint and paint that looks like melted cheese.
Through her off-kilter, slightly untethered worldview, Low’s drawings and paintings playfully skewer the world around herself and her own life. Sandra Low works in the San Gabriel Valley area and is a professor of painting and drawing at Rio Hondo College in Whittier. She is a recipient of the California Community Foundation’s Fellowship for Visual Artists and the 2026 City of Los Angeles Independent Master Artist Project Grant.
