Photo courtesy of Ace Lehner
Libby Paloma
Libby Paloma (she/they, b. Santa Ana, CA) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, and performance. Embracing maximal aesthetics, humor, and craft traditions, Paloma transforms familiar materials into layered forms embued with multiple meanings. Immersive and labor-intensive, Paloma’s soft sculptures draw from craft practices and traditional sewing techniques passed down by the women in Paloma’s Mexican lineage. Through these tactile, richly textured works, Paloma explores intersectional identity, cultural transmission, and the radical softness of queerness. Often activated through sensory engagement or performance, Paloma’s pieces invite interaction and play, creating spaces of interconnection and reimagination.
Paloma has been an artist-in-residence at The Clemente (NY, NY), SPACE (Portland, ME), The Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), and The Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY). In 2025, she Co-Chaired a panel at the College Art Association (CAA) titled Crip Time: Disabled Spacemaking in the Work of Queercrip Artists and spoke on panels at The International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA), the College Art Association (CAA), and Tufts University’s symposium How Do You Throw a Brick Through the Window…
Recent exhibitions include El Museo del Barrio (NY, NY), Burlington City Arts (Burlington, VT), SOMArts (San Francisco, CA), SPACE Gallery (Portland, ME), Geary Contemporary (Millerton, NY), Silvermine Gallery (New Canaan, CT), Spring Break Art Fair (NY, NY), Unprofessional Variety Show (NY, NY), The University of Southern Maine (Gorham, ME), and The Dorsky Museum (New Paltz, NY), where they received the Artist Purchase Award. Their work will be exhibited in upcoming shows at Tufts University (Medford, MA), Stephan Street Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), and Human Resources Gallery (Los Angeles, CA).
Before fully pursuing an art career, Paloma spent two decades working in education as a counselor, teacher, and Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP). Paloma holds a BA in Liberal Studies, an MS in Communicative Disorders from San Francisco State University, and an MFA from Parsons School of Design, The New School, where she received the President and University Full Scholarship.
CV available here.