In the midst of a chaotic year, Marisa Avila Sayler created “little happy places”—fantastical scenes in searingly bright rainbow clay—to bring moments of joy to her followers, and herself.
“It is very much about crafting a world for yourself that feels safe, that feels comfortable, that provides you with all the things you need in terms of visual stimulation and happiness,” Sayler said.
Her artist studio, much like her Instagram page, reveals the landscape of Sayler’s self-created environment.
The room is like an acid trip, maxed out in saturation: tiny gardens burst with three-eyed smiley face flowers, a collection of palm-sized neon slugs look like the result of a radioactive leak, a four-eyed fish head spotted in blue and green reveals a garden in its gaping pink mouth.
“One of the many reasons I make art is because it’s how I process the big, deep, scary things in life,” Sayler writes in one Instagram caption. “The resulting rainbow escapism is the mending that is necessary for my processing of the world.”
In one piece, a madcap diorama lays host to toothy flowers and a large sun towering above, childlike in its embrace of color and form. The work may not be contemporary, but it is surreal.
Sayler, who lives in Cypress, has long been a member of the Long Beach art scene. She was a member of now-defunct Long Beach Arts, has showcased her work at MOLAA and conducted live drawings for the Long Beach Museum of Arts.
Her work is inspired by her life: motherhood, migraines, introversion, neurodivergence, and her childhood. She recalls spending hours in her family’s backyard studying the environment. Motifs of flowers and gardens are prevalent in her work, an homage to those introspective hours of her childhood.
“I do think the concepts behind nature and blooming and the fact that there are some terrifying bugs and creatures out there, it kind of fits into that same concept of like, the world is terrifying, but it’s also beautiful,” Sayler said.
Her work wasn’t always so playful. She attended school at the Atlanta College of Art and later gained her master’s degree at Cal State Fullerton. During that time, she was working for the “grade.”
She remembers bringing a sculpture to a critique and being told that it was “too crafty.” She switched gears to appease her professor.
“I look back at that now and I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I talked myself into that,’ because I look at the sculptures that I brought in to that professor, and I can see how they were the very beginnings of what I’m making now,” Sayler said.
When she became a mother, she wanted to create work alongside her now 6- and 7-year-olds. Paint was too messy, but air-dry foam clay (her primary medium now) was child-friendly. The puffy clay had the same texture as the Play-Doh she used in her youth.
“It kind of grew out of that, like a return to the things I loved as a kid for the purpose of providing them to my kids,” she said. “It wasn’t until after grad school, after all of that, that I really kind of returned to my roots of sculpture.”
Over the past five years, she’s embraced her personal style, unlearning the constraints that academia thrust upon her.
“I like to call it acting out,” Sayler said. “I’m generally a rule-follower in a lot of ways. I’m not going to get in other people’s way. I’m going to be respectful. I don’t start fights. But I will be offensive in terms of color.”
The pandemic played its role as well. Tired of creating “illusions” by means of 2D work, she finished up her commissions and flung herself into sculpture.
“During the pandemic, I said, ‘I’m just going to do the things that feel right to me and feel good to me, and creating illusions doesn’t feel good right now,’” she said. “‘I need to create real things.’”
The tangible forms she creates are otherwordly, silly at times. A mushroom or bee might have a childlike toothy smile. Flowers have eyeballs, staring back at their viewer the same way Sayler stared at them as a child.
“The response [from my following] has been like, ‘Yes, this is what I need. The world is dark and scary,” she said. “If it makes them a little bit happy for a split second, to me that’s a worthy secondary purpose for my art.”
And Sayler believes the pandemic helped people embrace their own styles as well. After spending so much time alone, she said, people were able to divorce from the social standards that may have prevented them from being their authentic selves.
“A lot of people have embraced that,” she said. “They’re like, ‘You know what, let’s grab on to the little things that make us happy, because that might be all we have right now.’ And if it’s friggin glitter, go for it.’”
Marisa Avila Sayler posts her work on Instagram at @speaking_in_rainbows_.
