285 Stephanie Sherwood on Painting Trash, Artist Collectives, and Municipal Art Spaces in Los Angeles

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza speaks with Stephanie Sherwood, an artist and Exhibition Coordinator at the Brand Library in Glendale. Sherwood reflects on her dual role as a practicing artist and arts administrator, drawing on her experience working within municipal institutions such as libraries, city galleries, and public exhibition spaces. The conversation explores Sherwood’s painting practice, including her long-term engagement with found materials, discarded objects, and containers, as well as earlier work focused on the body, still life, and abstraction. She discusses artist collectives, alternative pathways outside the MFA system, institutional labor, and the ways public art spaces shape access, experimentation, and community within the Los Angeles art landscape.