SARAJO FRIEDEN

Sarajo works from a studio in Los Angeles that borders Thai Town, Little Armenia and Koreatown, with Guatemalan and Salvadoran bakeries nearby. The cacophony of hand-painted signs in a variety of languages serves as both inspiration and a daily reminder that the ordinary is often extraordinary and nothing is what it seems. A host of disparate vocabularies from the worlds of fine, folk and decorative art, including Persian minatures, Shaker trance drawings, Japanese ukiyo-e, and her Hungarian great aunt's embroidery, can be found wandering through Sarajo's images. Using open ended narratives, folk tales, abstraction and the juxtaposition of discordant images, Sarajo gives form to the human experience as she sees it. Her work has been exhibited in Galleries in Los Angeles, San Diego, North Carolina, Minnesota, New York, Rome, Venice, Naples and Australia.