Sovern, with support from Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Presents
Navigating the Heart in 2025
A multimedia exhibition curated by Rosalyn Myles
featuring Calethia DeConto, Leslie Foster, Rosalyn Myles, and Ana Rodriguez
This exhibition celebrates diverse expressions of love, self-acceptance, and the impacts of modern technology and social media on our perceptions of romance.
Our hope is to spark conversations about love, connection, and our current epidemic of loneliness. We invite the community to witness, investigate and embrace a more expansive appreciation of our human connections. This thought-provoking exhibit also addresses the essential theme of self-love and encourages visitors to reflect on their own definitions of romance and relationships. Navigating the Heart is an opportunity to engage with issues of over-connectedness while celebrating the excitement and mystery associated with love in all its forms.
featuring Calethia DeConto, Leslie Foster, Rosalyn Myles, and Ana Rodriguez
This exhibition celebrates diverse expressions of love, self-acceptance, and the impacts of modern technology and social media on our perceptions of romance.
Our hope is to spark conversations about love, connection, and our current epidemic of loneliness. We invite the community to witness, investigate and embrace a more expansive appreciation of our human connections. This thought-provoking exhibit also addresses the essential theme of self-love and encourages visitors to reflect on their own definitions of romance and relationships. Navigating the Heart is an opportunity to engage with issues of over-connectedness while celebrating the excitement and mystery associated with love in all its forms.
Catalog
Ana Rodriguez is an artist born and based in Los Angeles, California. Through her paintings, she explores the intricate relationship between pattern and design, interior spaces, decorative motifs, embroidery, traditional Mexican pattern that she recalls from memory, and the relationship between household decorations, and interior decorations such as, curtains, sofa patterns, wallpaper, flooring, clothing, sarapes, and Mexican embroidery. Drawing inspiration from her own memories and images of the multiple homes she and her family lived in, Ana’s work transcends physical objects and delves into the realm of the subconscious. Her canvases are a visual representation of her identity (as a first generation Mexican American), human psyche, and relationships between objects of ritual found in the home as symbols of identity and tradition. Through her art, Ana aims to evoke a sense of familiarity and emotional resonance between her viewers, inviting them to reflect upon their own personal narratives and relationship to constructed space and identity.
Untitled
Acrylic and oil on canvas
40" x 30"
2025
$3,500
Acrylic and oil on canvas
40" x 30"
2025
$3,500
Untitled
Acrylic and oil on canvas
30" x 24"
2025
$2,750
Acrylic and oil on canvas
30" x 24"
2025
$2,750
Untitled
Acrylic and oil on canvas
2025
$2,750
Acrylic and oil on canvas
2025
$2,750
Untitled
Acrylic and oil on canvas
24" x 20"
2022
sold
Acrylic and oil on canvas
24" x 20"
2022
sold
Untitled
Acrylic and oil on canvas
40" x 30"
2024
$3,500
Acrylic and oil on canvas
40" x 30"
2024
$3,500
Untitled
Acrylic and oil on canvas
40" x 30"
2025
$3,500
Acrylic and oil on canvas
40" x 30"
2025
$3,500
Untitled
Acrylic and oil on canvas
24" x 30"
2022
$2000
Acrylic and oil on canvas
24" x 30"
2022
$2000
Untitled
Acrylic on paper
10" x 9"
2025
$1250
Acrylic on paper
10" x 9"
2025
$1250
Leslie Foster, Artist Statement: As an artist, I’m particularly interested in combining time-based media, installation, and object-making as a way to create pocket universes in which Black, queer folks are able to push past our waking lives and step, if only for a moment, into contemplative ecologies built through dream logic. These spaces are homes to speculative rituals that I create in an attempt to explore the beautiful illegibility of the Black, queer experience. In these spaces, the pleasure, possibility, and future of the Black imaginary serve as a place of refuge and solace.
“Nyxontology,” a term I coined, quantifies the emergent property formed by three foundational elements of our dreams: the re-exploration and mutability of memory; the elongation and malleability of time; and the semi-permeable boundaries of the self, the other, and the unknown. This dream logic allows for the creation of rival geographies, spaces in which the non-linear logics of Black, queer thought slip sideways into alternate topographies that challenge Eurocentric geographies of confinement.
“Nyxontology,” a term I coined, quantifies the emergent property formed by three foundational elements of our dreams: the re-exploration and mutability of memory; the elongation and malleability of time; and the semi-permeable boundaries of the self, the other, and the unknown. This dream logic allows for the creation of rival geographies, spaces in which the non-linear logics of Black, queer thought slip sideways into alternate topographies that challenge Eurocentric geographies of confinement.
Untitled (Period)
leather, twine, polyvinyl butyral, rose tea, video (04:53)
2022
NFS
Untitled (Period) is an exploration of the strange and intimate, the otherworldly and erotic. Created collaboratively through conversation, materials exploration, and play, Leslie Foster and Felli Maynard use sculpture, nature, and video, to create a moment of Black, queer futurity, savoring a world of pleasure and decadence, that for now, lives in whispers but grows new geographies that push past the boundaries of our imaginations.
The sound element is the poem,
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
By Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
leather, twine, polyvinyl butyral, rose tea, video (04:53)
2022
NFS
Untitled (Period) is an exploration of the strange and intimate, the otherworldly and erotic. Created collaboratively through conversation, materials exploration, and play, Leslie Foster and Felli Maynard use sculpture, nature, and video, to create a moment of Black, queer futurity, savoring a world of pleasure and decadence, that for now, lives in whispers but grows new geographies that push past the boundaries of our imaginations.
The sound element is the poem,
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
By Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Étude Abstracted
Glass print of video still
23" x 23"
2021
$5,000
Étude Abstracted is an amalgam of stills from Étude #3 used to create an abstracted iteration printed on glass. Étude #3 is one of an ongoing series which combines an intimate exploration of color theory with an examination of sensuality and the body as landscape with collaborators Lizzie Rose and Avery St. Germain. Étude #3 can be viewed in the video compilation section of exhibition.
Glass print of video still
23" x 23"
2021
$5,000
Étude Abstracted is an amalgam of stills from Étude #3 used to create an abstracted iteration printed on glass. Étude #3 is one of an ongoing series which combines an intimate exploration of color theory with an examination of sensuality and the body as landscape with collaborators Lizzie Rose and Avery St. Germain. Étude #3 can be viewed in the video compilation section of exhibition.
Rosalyn Myles, Artist Statement: I am a multidisciplinary artist. I use found objects, photography, fabric, wood, and text
to construct collages and installations that shine light on our untold stories. Utilizing various forms of expression, I aim to highlight social and political issues that are emerging from the discourse of modern culture. I am mining society's lesser-known stories about women and our shared experiences as people of color in these United States. Bearing witness to the often ignored concerns that plague our cities and disenfranchised people all over the diaspora.
As a contemporary artist, I am interested in exploring the conversations taking place in this new normal.
How can we as a people move forward and find better ways of navigating the future?
to construct collages and installations that shine light on our untold stories. Utilizing various forms of expression, I aim to highlight social and political issues that are emerging from the discourse of modern culture. I am mining society's lesser-known stories about women and our shared experiences as people of color in these United States. Bearing witness to the often ignored concerns that plague our cities and disenfranchised people all over the diaspora.
As a contemporary artist, I am interested in exploring the conversations taking place in this new normal.
How can we as a people move forward and find better ways of navigating the future?
Come to Me
Mixed media on canvas
43 × 28 inches
2024
$3500
In " Come to me," we witness a woman's journey to bring a new love into her life.
Utilizing her beautiful garden filled with flowers and herbs mixed with the wisdom and teachings of her ancestors, she creates a potion that will bring love , light, and healing into her spirit.
Mixed media on canvas
43 × 28 inches
2024
$3500
In " Come to me," we witness a woman's journey to bring a new love into her life.
Utilizing her beautiful garden filled with flowers and herbs mixed with the wisdom and teachings of her ancestors, she creates a potion that will bring love , light, and healing into her spirit.
Untitled (dropper)
Banner fabric print
12" x 36"
2025
$275
Banner fabric print
12" x 36"
2025
$275
Purple Flora
Banner fabric print
18" x 36"
2025
$350
Banner fabric print
18" x 36"
2025
$350
Hands
Banner fabric print
16" x 24"
2025
$275
Banner fabric print
16" x 24"
2025
$275
Mystic Dance
Matte color giclee print on archival paper
16" x 20"
2025
$400
Matte color giclee print on archival paper
16" x 20"
2025
$400
Dark Pink Flora
Banner fabric print
24" x 36"
2025
$375
Banner fabric print
24" x 36"
2025
$375
She
Banner fabric print
24" x 72"
2025
$500
Banner fabric print
24" x 72"
2025
$500
Green Flora
Banner fabric print
24" x 36"
2025
$375
Banner fabric print
24" x 36"
2025
$375
Her
Banner fabric print
18" x 36"
2025
$375
Banner fabric print
18" x 36"
2025
$375
Untitled
Matte black and white giclee print on archival paper
8" x 12"
2025
$175
Matte black and white giclee print on archival paper
8" x 12"
2025
$175
Purple Okra
Matte color giclee print on archival paper
13" x 16.5"
2025
$275
Matte color giclee print on archival paper
13" x 16.5"
2025
$275
Calethia DeConto is a lens-based artist known for imagery that explores a conscious relationship with nature, personal rituals in healing, sensuality, and metaphysical intuition. Her photographs and short films have been exhibited in solo and group shows across the United States. She uses her lens to study and honor the natural world, capturing found objects, feminine forms, and organic shapes that reflect rituals to create a unique cosmology. Working across collage, cyanotype, experimental film, and photography, DeConto bridges the tactile and ephemeral, revealing a deep connection to place, memory, and transformation.
Growing up in a constantly shifting landscape, she developed an awareness of temporality and spirituality at a young age. These themes thread through her work, where intuition, energy, and the unseen play a central role. By layering textures, silhouettes, and light, she creates images that feel both intimate and expansive, inviting viewers into a dreamlike space of contemplation.
Growing up in a constantly shifting landscape, she developed an awareness of temporality and spirituality at a young age. These themes thread through her work, where intuition, energy, and the unseen play a central role. By layering textures, silhouettes, and light, she creates images that feel both intimate and expansive, inviting viewers into a dreamlike space of contemplation.
Mapping the Emotional Weather of Memory and the Space Between
Unique Cyanotypes and Thread, 2025
INDIVIDUAL PIECES:
Empress Dream, Unique Cyanotype, 2019 14.5x10.25 inches
Gaia, Unique Cyanotype, 2019, 10.15x5 inches
Infinite Rituals, Unique Cyanotype, 2019, 10.5x8 inches
Hold On To Your Magic, Unique Cyanotype Collage, 2019
Sirene Portal, Unique Cyanotype/Van Dyke, 2019
Freedom To Choose, Unique Cyanotype, 2018
Inquire for Pricing
Unique Cyanotypes and Thread, 2025
INDIVIDUAL PIECES:
Empress Dream, Unique Cyanotype, 2019 14.5x10.25 inches
Gaia, Unique Cyanotype, 2019, 10.15x5 inches
Infinite Rituals, Unique Cyanotype, 2019, 10.5x8 inches
Hold On To Your Magic, Unique Cyanotype Collage, 2019
Sirene Portal, Unique Cyanotype/Van Dyke, 2019
Freedom To Choose, Unique Cyanotype, 2018
Inquire for Pricing
Light Warrior III
Hand Painted Archival Inkjet Print, Open Edition
12.5" x 19"
2017
Sold
Hand Painted Archival Inkjet Print, Open Edition
12.5" x 19"
2017
Sold
Sovern LA is an intersectional community center and gallery, located in LA’s West Adams district, focused on supporting Black and Indigenous women and gender expansive people of color. Fueled by a passion for justice, equality, and creative expression, Sovern is driven by the collective determination to center healing justice, challenge systemic barriers, empower artists of color, and amplify their impact for collective wellbeing. By building a community that uplifts and celebrates diverse voices, we aim to reshape the art world in Los Angeles and beyond, creating a more inclusive and equitable space where artists and communities can thrive together.
