Sheffer Gallery
April 8 through May 31
Reception: Wednesday, April 22, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by a conversation between kHyal and Miggs Burroughs at 7 pm.)
Signs of the Times is an ongoing series by kHyal. Complex, and unclassifiable, kHyal’s mixed media work riffs off of pop culture icons and performs like a Rorschach Test in a behavioral science lab, tugging at the neurons of each viewer, and born to challenge perceptions. Using ordinary objects snatched from dumpsters, recycle centers, flea markets, tag sales, thrift stores, the ocean, and the street — assembled with raw precision in a dazzling cacophony of visual clutter — each piece decidedly explodes the human-centric flaws, foibles, and sometimes tragic outcomes of a plastic society.
The work speaks to our imperfections and glazed ideals, actions taken on that which we once professed to love. What we aspired to yesterday is what we throw away today — leaving our emotional bonds, saliva, bite marks, and fingerprints behind — often on objects made from materials that will never decompose, and would otherwise be left to the landfills, in shapes we form attachments to, then get bored with because they have no real meaning. Glitter, rhinestones, rainbows, and unicorns. Overused clichés and superficial samenesses. A vernacular of nothingness.
kHyal’s work is an archeological dig, an observation of the mess we call mankind, in a rearrangement of the discarded ordinary into an awkward form of self-portraiture through vignettes of childhood memory, sometimes blended with current events. Via a highly personal saga, the past is unearthed and merged with the future in stories told through the immediacy of quickly juxtaposed objects, much like when children who suffer trauma are asked by psychologists to visualize their experience through puppets or drawings. Through each story, obscurity surfaces in a remix of the banal malaise of society at large into a contemporary primordial ooze. Here, we journey into microcosms where what was unwanted, rejected and discarded becomes elevated and seen anew — bringing with it an awareness of the urgency for action.
Sustainability has always been a center point for kHyal. She is a member of Beyond Plastics, Clean Creatives, and Break Free from Plastic, and is a Certified Climate Reality Leader. From 2022–23, she was part of the team invited by best-selling author Seth Godin to rally for climate action. As a cross-functional collaborator, writer and strategist, her work included spearheading the online Sustainable Fashion Resource Guide, contributing to the LinkedIn Learning course “34 Things to Know About Carbon and Climate,” creating content for “The Daily Difference,” and producing a standalone event as part of the global book signing event for The Carbon Almanac. (Which won the “Most Insightful Data Book” award for Data Literacy). She has been an invited speaker at the Yale School of Sustainability, a featured guest on the Climate Gist, EarthWork Collective, and Salvage podcasts, and received a CoA Artists Respond grant for an environmental justice project. In 2025, she completed the Sanitation Foundation’s NYC Trash Academy certification program.
The history of my work evolves with time, although shaped primarily through childhood experiences in the physical world, which were mapped by psychological mysteries. My obsession with the ecosystem of the ocean tidal pools while summering on Money Island, one of the Thimble Islands off the coast of Stony Creek, Connecticut. Endless hours of observing the sun glinting refractions across the skin of the water, sea glass, bits of mica, barnacle-adorned shell fragments, miniature fish babies, tiny crabs, anemones, star fish, tangled seaweed shaped in jello molds, like chunky Lucite souvenir paper weights, dense collages of constant change metered by my own internal complexities and shifts of mood. A sense of wonder, magnetized toward found objects and how relationships form in color, juxtaposition, emotion – a private world where I am continuously lost.
kHyal is a self-taught environmental activist and digital art pioneer who has worked with recycled materials since the early 1980s. She created street art and found-object sculpture in Los Angeles before moving to New Haven, where she was among the first wave of self-taught artists to use personal computers to create immersive multimedia installations and live MIDI performances incorporating video and computer animation. She was a member of the Amiga Users Group at Yale University.
Her analog collage and assemblage work was first exhibited in the early years of the Outsider Art Fair through Henry Boxer Gallery, London, and was featured in Raw Vision magazine. This work has been shown by Margaret Bodell, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, The Folk Art Society, and the American Visionary Art Museum.
Simultaneously, through her digital work, she was featured in Rhizome (now part of the New Museum), became active in Manhattan’s nascent Silicon Alley scene, and cofounded an Internet users group at a time when professional creatives working with computers were rare. She also cofounded blowtorch, a women-owned digital agency and software development firm based in New Haven. Her simulated AI-based sculpture was included in Ricco/Maresca’s 1994 exhibition CODE, an international digital art exhibition sponsored by Microsoft and Softimage, and her work was shown at 55 Broad Street, Manhattan’s first wired network building. She appeared on Cherry Bomb, Art Dirt, and The Silicon Alley Reporter through the livestreaming arts and technology network Pseudo, and in 1997 launched her own pilot livestreaming show at the New York Film Academy in partnership with OnlineTV.
Working fluidly between analog and digital media, kHyal continues to explore identity, technology, and material reuse. Under the registered trademark MegaGlam, she creates mixed-media art, wearables, illustration, and character design. She is the creator of The Weather sKwirl™, an alter ego for which she produced an original cartoon daily for 730 consecutive days between 2010 and 2012. This project led to media attention, inclusion in art books, public art commissions, private sales, and a product line featured in stores, galleries, art fairs, and street art venues internationally. Her original art and product designs were featured in dedicated branded sections at P!Q locations in Grand Central Terminal and Rockefeller Center.
Her sustainable fashion–based work examines body image and the artist as a kinetic sculpture. Built around the performance of everyday actions, this evolving practice uses color, pattern, messaging, and movement as tools for personal and collective social engagement. Current iterations focus on activism and advocacy related to human rights, climate action, plastic pollution reduction, and nature conservation.
Sustainability has long been central to kHyal’s practice. She is a Certified Climate Reality Leader, a Beyond Plastics advocate trained by former EPA administrator Judith Enck, and a Project Limulus Beach Captain conducting horseshoe crab conservation as a citizen scientist along the Connecticut coast. She is a graduate of the NYC Department of Sanitation’s Trash Academy and a Save the Sound Cleanup Captain, and is a member of Clean Creatives, Break Free from Plastic, and the Plastic Pollution Coalition.
From 2022–23, kHyal was part of the global team invited by Seth Godin to support climate action through The Carbon Almanac. She spearheaded the online sustainable fashion resource guide, contributed to the LinkedIn Learning course 34 Things to Know About Carbon and Climate, created content for The Daily Difference, and produced a standalone event as part of the worldwide book signing. The Carbon Almanac received the “Most Insightful Data Book” award for Data Literacy.
kHyal has been an invited speaker at the Yale School of Sustainability, a featured guest on the Climate Gist and EarthWork Collective podcasts, and a recipient of a Connecticut Office of the Arts Artists Respond grant for an environmental justice project. She has also spoken on climate and plastic pollution at NYPL, MoCA CT, the School of Visual Arts, the Connecticut Art Directors Club’s As We Create podcast, and Earthworks: Unhurried Conversations.
Her fine art and design work has appeared in Raw Vision, Artforum, ARTnews, ArtSlant, Flavorpill, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Culture, Fashion, Gothamist, Nylon, Time Out New York, La Gazette Drouot, and Whitehot, and on CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News, HBO, and Vice News. Her work has been exhibited at the American Visionary Art Museum, Pictoplasma (Berlin), the New Britain Museum of American Art, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), the Outsider Art Fair, Intuit (Chicago), EGGO Arte (Buenos Aires), Cooper Union, Henry Boxer (London), City Museum (DC), Miami Art Week, La Luz de Jesus (Los Angeles), and the Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center in association with the Smithsonian Institution.
kHyal has served as Chief Creative Officer on experiential design for digital projects for the Whitney Museum of American Art, Lincoln Center, BRIC Arts Media, BAM, and the New York Public Library. She continues to work with emerging technologies and currently writes about AI for leading cybersecurity companies, while just as readily creates analog sculptures from ocean and landfill plastics and writes poetry by hand on vintage paper.
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For more about the Library's art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
