Sculptor Dan Lam works with non-traditional materials to create vibrantly colored and highly textured sculptures in her home studio in Dallas, TX. Born in 1988 in a refugee camp in the Philippines, her parents had fled Vietnam and were awaiting sponsorship to start a new life in the United States.
Lam showed a growing talent for artmaking with whatever materials that were available to her while attending grade school in Texas. She earned a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas in 2010 and an MFA at Arizona State University in 2014. Challenged by her professors for making work that was “too pretty,” Lam took the challenge as an opportunity to examine excessive beauty as a major theme. The cultural implications of this examination began tying in additional themes of biology, nature, the human form, and the visual impact of color and texture on human sensory responses.
After her graduate studies, Lam moved to Midland, TX, and began experimenting with bringing her work before the public eye through social media. As her work has evolved and expounded, she continues an investigation that runs through art history with the work of artists like Meret Oppenheim, Eve Hesse, and Claes Oldenburg, who analyzed cultural conventions and made work that created visceral responses in their viewers.
Her pieces contrast attraction and repulsion, naturalness and artificiality, control and flexibility. To create them, she first lays down layers of expanding foam on an armature, deciding where it will go but also letting the material expand and gravity pull. After the foam has cured, she uses layers of paint and resin to finish the piece. Since the steps require time in between, she works on multiple pieces at once.
Lam’s Instagram following (@sopopomo) has grown at a rapid pace, gaining the attention of celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and an increasing number of followers and commissions. In addition to her massive online following, Lam exhibited in ArtVenice Biennale 3 and has been a part of group exhibitions in England and France and had solo exhibitions in Boston, New York City, and more.