Sticky Sand and Fine Rice focus on constructing make-believe worlds. 

In this exhibition, we can create and rebuild our imagined situations and worlds over and over again — just like a child playing in a sandlot — using sand to create, erase, and rebuild constantly. The exhibition title is a playful mixture of sticky rice and fine sand, reminiscing about my childhood days where I used to wet sand in the playground to create thick mud, pretending that it was sticky rice. A “sandlot” is a place for infinite imagination where sand can become fairy dust, rice, a castle, or an abyss for discovery.

As both an artist and an educator who teaches at a university, I am deeply embedded in an environment where colleges directly dictate the landscape, economy, and culture. While higher education institutions are spaces for furthering our understanding of the world and for discovering new structures, educators and students alike can often be too focused on outcomes and the pressure to perform socially and economically. My work seeks to shake us, asking us to freely play, as if we were children again.  

At the center of the exhibition is a “sandlot” that is made up of two floor sculptures. They are constructed using materials  from higher education institutions and artist studios. These include torn apart computers, obsolete scanners, broken easels from a drawing classroom, acrylic sheet off-cuts, scraps of fabric, pencil shavings, and more. This creates a tension between the utilitarian history of the objects and their new non-utilitarian roles as art. The “sandlot” becomes a physical container for play and a conceptual space where imagined stories unfold without an expected outcome: an antithesis to the institution as a space where imagination is expected to turn into a product. Even within a structured society, there is an urgent need for uninhibited play.

Focusing on using low-stakes, trash-adjacent materials, I engage with the tipping point where an object is stripped of its original purpose and enters a state of worthlessness. At the same time, all items have the potential to become materials for creation. 

I hope that the exhibition prompts a deeper reflection: Who determines the hierarchy of values for these objects and at what point do we internalize these structures?

Loretta Park is an artist and educator and holds an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) and a BA from Bowdoin College. Her work has been exhibited at Cherry Street Pier, Philadelphia, PA (2026), Somerville Museum, Somerville, MA (2026); Boston University Art Galleries, 808 Gallery Windows, Boston, MA (2025); NO CALL NO SHOW, x Distillery Gallery, Boston, MA (2025); Room 220, Denver, CO (2024); The MassArt Art Museum, Boston, MA (2023-24); The Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons University, Boston, MA (2023); Brookline Arts Center, Brookline, MA (2023); Brandeis Kniznick Gallery, Waltham, MA (2023); Praise Shadows Art Gallery, Boston, MA (2022); Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL (2021-22); The Umbrella Arts Center, Concord, MA (2021); New System Exhibitions, Portland, ME (2019); Ray Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2018) and Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME (2017). Reviews of exhibitions including the artist have appeared in Boston Art Review, Artscope, Art New England, The Boston Globe, and Korean Daily. Loretta currently lives and works in Boston.