Exhibitions

Two-person Exhibition, Sprue, 2026

Bio

Devin Balara (b. 1988) is an artist from Florida currently based in New Orleans, LA. She received a BFA in sculpture from the University of North Florida in 2010, MFA in sculpture from Indiana University in 2014 and has been pretending to be a geologist since 2020. Her work has notably been exhibited at Atlanta Contemporary, Ortega Y Gasset and Spring Break in NYC, Roots & Culture in Chicago, IL, International Sculpture Center in New Jersey, Coco Hunday in Tampa, FL and Blue Boy in Savannah, GA. Residencies include Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project in NY, Stoveworks in Chattanooga, TN, Monson Arts in Maine and the Elsewhere Museum in NC. She has worked for over a decade as a metal shop manager for various institutions including Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI. She is currently the owner of Solid Space Glass which focuses on custom stained glass work as well as education and preservation.

Statement

My artistic practice is rooted in the geological concept of “deep time”, utilizing stained glass and steel to embody an amateur's grasp of earth processes. This research zooms out billions of years into the past to examine rock structures, and simultaneously zooms in on human time and recorded science in the form of medieval and earlier diagrams of the cosmos. Grounded in this research, I make glass and mixed media works that read first as playful line drawings, with negative spaces occupied by strategic color, found materials, and textures.

An impulse to self-teach geology swiftly mutated into a kind of character study in which the aesthetic trappings of scientific research became the basis for my visual language—from the measuring instruments to the outfits, the things on one’s desk, books laid open, shelved specimens, and speculative doodles. As a fake scientist, I spend a lot of time at university libraries, an easy place to adorn oneself in intellectual drag, letting the stacks take me in that day’s direction and keeping an active sketchbook throughout. Often I’ll draw loose copies of found diagrams, and similar to a game of telephone, draw it over and over again to bend naturally away from the source. 

Drawing stays at the forefront of my work, which then feeds into a more intuitive making process once I am in the studio. I collaborate with the inherent properties of the earth materials I work with such as glass, steel, rust, rocks, and seashells, allowing for deeper layers of hand-hewn inquiry. I resonate with the scientist’s desire to be wrong: real inquiry bypasses the ego to make wild leaps, and possesses a readiness and a craving to have one’s views shaken. With this in mind, I happily let my work live in the realm of speculation, leaning into the humor of misunderstanding and mirroring the instability and precarity of the myths of solid ground.