Sonia Romero's art focuses on Avalon in newest exhibition at the Catalina Museum

Eight years after moving back into her childhood home, nestled into an Echo Park street lined with long-standing, cozy homes and shady greenery, Sonia Romero uses the backhouse as her studio where she has created paintings, prints, sculptures and large-scale public commissions. 

Most recently, it is where Romero painted two new works and prepped for her exhibition “From Los Angeles to Catalina: The Art of Sonia Romero,” which opened on May 3 and is on view until October 12 at the Catalina Museum for Art & History. 

“The Tourist (Avalon)” (2025) is inspired by the romantic nostalgia of the island that the artist fell in love with when she first visited on a school field trip at age 14. Along with snorkeling and hiking, they also had Swing Camp Catalina, which held classes of all levels of Lindy Hop. 

“I was into Lindy Hop and swing dancing in my teenage years, so I had romantic fantasies of dressing up in my 1940s clothing, going to Catalina and dancing at the casino,” Romero, 45, said. “I never went, but that fantasy is in this artwork.”

The acrylic, oil and block print features a woman in ’40s-style clothing leaning against a wall of tiles depicting prominent symbols of the island—a garibaldi, wolf and buffalo—and another symbol, a flying fish, on her chest. The flying fish, a symbol Romero is quite fond of, is special to California and is a tourist attraction on the island. “Flying fish are interesting because they leave the water and become a symbol of transcendence,” she said.

In Avalon, the only incorporated city on the island, Romero’s exhibition is just behind the museum’s gift shop and begins the journey into the rest of the exciting and foundational exhibits that depict the island’s history. In an airy room that also connects to an outdoor space where children of Catalina work on their crafts, “From Los Angeles to Catalina” consists of 14 of Romero’s vibrant silkscreen prints and paintings, along with two brand-new pieces crafted specifically for this show. One of them, “Magnolia Barbershop” (2025), is dedicated to L.A., and the other to Catalina. 

While Romero’s appreciation for the island led to the creation of this exhibition, it began when the museum reached out to her about leading an Intergenerational Printmaking Workshop last August. There, Catalina Island community members and visitors, inspired by Catalina’s historic tiles, created designs of their personal experiences and stories. These designs will be displayed outside the museum until September 21. 

“I was able to interact with locals and ask them to come up with community symbols,” Romero said. “We did this outdoor collaborative mural that was my entry point to going deep into the culture of a local neighborhood.” 

Along with the workshops, Romero spent her summer visits to the island researching vintage ephemera—postcards, brochures and ticket stubs—and connecting with the local community. While teaching the workshops, she and the participants had a bit of a give-and-take relationship: she taught them printmaking, and they answered her questions about the island. The artist also simply walked around Avalon and talked to people. 

“But I don't feel I got that far; I could still learn so much more,” she said.

“More”going forward is Romero's goal. Not only is she working on more public art projects, such as a tile mural in Culver City, but she is also sketching and planning pieces that will expand “From Los Angeles to Catalina” into an evolving series. 

She gestures toward the four large blank canvases propped up against her studio wall. “I intend to make five canvases that make a mural,” she said. “They will be separate, but I want to show them in a row. I only got to one so far, but when they're done, [there will] be five across at 20 feet long. I will also do some printmaking or drawings [on the side].”

Romero refers to “From Los Angeles to Catalina” as “the tourist,” meaning that it is her entry point into the island, of being a tourist and visitor. Going further, she plans to dig deeper into the culture of Avalon, which is 65% a Latino community. 

“I'm so appreciative that I have this relationship with the museum, where they’re letting me come back when the full series is finished,” Romero told CALÓ News. “It's so exciting. For artists, we need institutional support for motivation, right? Knowing I have their support to continue the series is meaningful for me.”

Romero’s childhood home once used to hold family art shows. A third-generation artist on her mother Nancy’s side and a second-generation artist on her father Frank’s side, Romero, a print and mixed-media artist, remembers showcasing her art since she was seven.

Romero is a painter, but her passion expanded to printmaking after graduating from the Los Angeles County School for the Arts (LACHSA) and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). 

Her vibrant colors and intricate designs are interwoven with Chicano culture, which she shares with her father, a sculptor and painter known as an icon in the Chicano art movement, but she learned more about the culture into her adulthood. 

“You can see Chicano art influence in my painting, but I feel bicultural or multicultural,” Romero told CALÓ News. “I respond to the diversity of L.A. and resonate with Chicano culture, but that's not the only culture I walk in. I’m in conversation with the Chicano art world, those are my friends and peers. I depict Chicano culture in my art constantly.

Romero’s art has found homes in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Cheech Marin Center of Chicano Art and Culture. Over the years, her love for the community has grown deeper through her workshops at Self Help Graphics and Plaza de la Raza, and her guest lectures at California universities.