Jennifer Lugris,
The Search for Meaning, 2024
acrylic on canvas
28 x 28, 15 x 48 inches
$7,000
C-lective Curator’s Cut:
Jennifer Lugris's "The Search for Meaning" (2024) is a two-panel acrylic painting - one panel 28 x 28 inches, the other 15 x 48 inches. The title references Viktor Frankl's book, which has been a touchstone for Lugris. She is a Uruguayan, Korean and Spanish American artist based in Sacramento who uses multi-panel formats to reflect the layered nature of her own identity. Plants and botanical forms recur in her work as stand-ins for resilience and growth. Lugris holds an MFA from UC Santa Barbara; in 2024 she was one of four artists selected for the Memory Palace Movement, a California Arts Council-funded project co-creating spaces for survivors of sexual abuse. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and her work is in permanent collections at the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Facebook and UC Davis Health.
Jennifer Lugris
We Love Jennifer. She is a Sacramento-based artist who creates bright, joyful works of art as a way to honor her complex heritage and to celebrate the beauty of everyday life. With a family history marked by both tragedy and triumph, she is deeply attuned to life’s fragility and responds by painting her daily experiences as vibrant, patterned scenes filled with gratitude and presence.
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Bachelors Degree in French from Rutgers University
Post‑Baccalaureate Certificate in Visual Arts from UC Berkeley Extension
Masters of Fine Art in Painting, University of California, Santa Barbara
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National Endowment for the Arts Grant Recipient
Funded by the California Arts Council
Honored with the Linda A. Day Endowed Student Award during her MFA
Her works are included in key collections at Meta (Facebook), UC Davis Health, and the Art, Design & Architecture Museum in Santa Barbara
Completed a significant 40 × 9 ft mural installation with Meta Open Arts in San Francisco (2021)
Serves as Chair of the Art Department at Sierra College in Rocklin, CA
“My paintings honor my refugee grandparents and parents who risked everything to offer future generations better opportunities.”
Her multi-paneled works reflect the layered nature of her identity, refusing to confine her story to a single frame. As a culturally mixed Uruguayan, Korean, Spanish American who was raised Catholic and is now raising Jewish children, Lugris embraces multiplicity as both a personal truth and artistic framework.
Having grown up fielding curious questions about her background, she recreates that experience for viewers—inviting them to piece together meaning from richly detailed, interconnected elements, just as she has done throughout her life.
Interviews in progress, please check back soon!