YOUTH ARTIST IN RESIDENCY

Our artist in residency provides a platform for two emerging youth artists to deepen their practice while receiving the practical knowledge, mentorship, and professional connections needed to foster a holistic and sustainable artistic career.

  • BIPOC artists in Los Angeles continue to face systemic barriers to entering and sustaining careers in the arts. Access to opportunities is often determined by networks, institutional affiliation, and insider knowledge rather than artistic merit alone. For artists who are self-taught, first-generation, low-income, or who did not grow up with access to museums, galleries, and arts education, there is often no clear pathway into the professional art world. Even art school graduates leave without the practical knowledge, mentorship, and professional connections needed to build sustainable careers. Our residency addresses this gap by providing the scaffolding that is often missing: mentorship, professional development, visibility, and access to networks that are typically difficult to navigate without insider support.

    • Legendary L.A. artist Dale Brockman Davis

    • Trailblazing gallerist, Dominique Clayton

    • Visionary Artistic Director, Nicole Shostak-Sabourian

2026

THE ARTISTS

Aanii Tate

Aanii Tate (Diné and white, she/her) works across printmaking, digital media, and fiber arts. Her art challenges settler colonial ways of display and is rooted in themes of land remembrance and sisterhood. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, creating art with her two older sisters. She moved to Los Angeles in 2021, and recently graduated from USC, majoring in American Studies and Ethnicity (Dornsife) . She is passionate about arts education, community organizing, and arts resource redistribution.

Alyssa Newsham

Alyssa Newsham (b. 1997, New Orleans) is based in Los Angeles. She is a self taught artist and is influenced by her Creole culture in stories told to her, folklores, and ancestral traditions that she aims to keep alive. She cast her characters in which she sees through the movements of her materials that exaggerate the hidden details that she seeks to accentuate in her work. She creates an assemblage of found objects and fabrics along with many other forms of mediums that are heavily, yet delicately textured. The tales of each of her pieces coexist with vibrant colors and breed a sense of wonder. There’s a mystery to each of their stories which heightens her curiosity. The forgotten, neglected, and lost treasures that collect dust and debris are compacted with a chain of narratives that are waiting to be resurrected and adored.

2025

THE ARTISTS

Zoë Solis

Zoë Solis is a Mexican-American interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, CA, whose practice reflects a curiosity of home- and the people, places, and things she identifies with the concept. Using painting, pastels, and ceramics, Solís’s work explores figures, still lifes, and landscapes in which there is a visceral connection. The foundation of her practice rests upon her work with oil pastels, she has translated the skills from this medium into large scale oil works that reflect themes of love and loss. In 2024, Solís graduated with a BA in Art History from UCLA. Zoë is also currently experimenting with air dry clay sculptures incorporating other materials such as acrylic paint and resin — tools that ensure the archiveability of the structures.

Daeton Abalos Oclarays

Daeton Abalos Oclaray is an interdisciplinary artist born in Hawai'i and raised between West O'ahu and Seattle, currently based in Los Angeles. His practice spans oil painting, charcoal drawings, and archival video, often extending into installation and material experimentation with surfaces such as raw canvas, linen, and found textiles. Drawing from his Filipino and Black American heritage, Oclaray's work reflects on his family's layered histories of migration, labor, and belonging. Through recurring imagery of domestic interiors and exteriors, floral motifs, and familiar objects, he explores how environments shape identity and memory, blurring the boundaries between figure, landscape, and pattern. Oclaray received his BA in Studio Art from UCLA in 2025, where he was also active in cultural programming and community organizing through the Cultural Affairs Commission.

THE WORK

Sovern's first annual Youth Residency program provided a platform for two participating youth artists, Zoë Solis & Daeton Oclaray, along with the opportunity to receive mentorship and direction in support of building a holistic and sustainable art career. 

 Over the course of three months, artists were encouraged to explore and experiment while refining their practice and receiving studio feedback. Each artist received a $7,000 stipend for studio time, materials, transportation, etc. plus mentorship, and network building.

The residency concluded with a show and artist panel featuring the artists and their mentors, moderated by Riyaana Hartley.

Selected works by Zoë Solis

Selected works by Daeton Abalos Oclarays