For Sleeping in the Forest
by Mary Oliver
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
Camilla Engström’s paintings feel like a return—a quiet surrender to the rhythms of nature. Her dreamlike landscapes do not merely depict the land; they embody its movement, its warmth, its breathing stillness. Like Oliver’s poetry, Engström’s work suggests a deep attunement to nature, where color, light, and form merge into something both intimate and expansive.
Inspired by the landscapes surrounding Los Angeles—the rolling hills, the desert’s quiet vastness, the shifting glow of the Pacific—her work transforms familiar terrain into something deeply felt rather than precisely rendered. The golden hues of dusk, the soft blue of early morning light, and the earthy warmth of canyon trails seep into her compositions. Trees sway in quiet rhythm, rivers ripple like whispered reflections, and mountains pulse with an inner glow, as if absorbing and radiating the sun’s final light.
Alongside her paintings, Engström will be presenting a group of ceramic terracotta vessels. These sculptural forms, rooted in ancient traditions, bring a tactile presence to her exploration of nature. Earthy and organic, they echo the landscapes she paints—vessels that seem shaped by wind, sun, and time itself. Their hand-formed surfaces and warm, earthen tones ground her work in something physical, connecting the ephemeral beauty of her paintings to the tangible weight of clay.
Her brushwork is instinctive, her colors unconfined, mirroring the fluidity of nature itself. The land in her paintings does not sit still; it moves, breathes, and hums with quiet energy. Like Oliver’s verse, Engström’s work is an invitation—not to escape, but to pause, to absorb, to feel the world around us more deeply.
In her paintings and ceramics, Los Angeles is not just a city but a threshold to the vastness beyond. The desert, the ocean, the mountains—they are all part of her wondrous place, waiting to welcome us back.
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About Artist
Shana Hoehn received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Sculpture and Extended Media and a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at Josh Pazda Hiram Butler, Houston (2024, with Mirasol Escobar); Deli Gallery, Mexico City (2023–24, with Milagros Rojas); Jack Barrett Gallery, New York (2023, with Yan Xinyue); Frieze LA with Make Room, Los Angeles (2023); Prairie, Chicago (2023); Make Room, Los Angeles (2022); Artpace, San Antonio (2022); and Euqinom Gallery, San Francisco (2021), among others.Recent group exhibitions include Leafmold Paradise at Union Pacific, London (2024); All the Small Things at Marinaro Gallery, New York (2024); Disembodied at Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); Strong Winds Ahead at Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles; Machines of Desire at Simon Lee Gallery, London (2022); Cared For at The Blaffer Museum, Houston (2022); Slowed and Throwed at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2020–21); Prescribed Liberalism at P. Bibeau, New York (2022); and I Believe in God, Only I Spell it Nature at Lodos Gallery, Mexico City (2021).Hoehn has been featured in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, and ARTnews, among others. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Pond Society, Shanghai.
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About Make Room Los Angeles
Established in 2018, Make Room is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Emilia Yin. The newly relocated 4,500-square-foot gallery is situated in the heart of Hollywood and includes multiple exhibition spaces, an outdoor courtyard, and a garden. The gallery’s dynamic program champions emerging artists, many of them female, with a particular emphasis on artists of the Asian diasporas. In both its physical gallery – which features solo and group exhibitions – and its ambitious off-site projects with international collaborators, Make Room supports its artists’ visionary projects and the development of new bodies of work. Since its opening, Make Room and its programming has been featured extensively in leading arts and news publications, including Artforum, Artnet News, Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, the Los Angeles Times, Office Magazine, Ocula Magazine, the Observer, Purple Diary, and the Financial Times, among others. In 2022, Emilia Yin was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30, highlighted as a new force in the contemporary art world.
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For media inquiries, please contact carina@makeroom.la
