Upcoming Solo Show

Mise en Place

Oct 4th - Oct 25th, 2025

Postive Space (Link to Gallery Facebook Here)
Tulsa, OK

Exhibition Statement:

Mise en Place is the result of artist Sophia del Rio's experience working as a waitress during and after the 2020 pandemic. She was compelled to document the experience and that of her co-workers. 'Mise en Place' is a fine-dining term, translates to "everything in its place," and in the context of this exhibition, speaks to the hard-lined destiny of restaurant industry workers' limited options.

This artistic body of work started outside the galleries as a social work called "100 Plates." The immersive art event took the form of a dinner party, and hosted a group of 12 restaurant workers from different Fort Worth restaurants to discuss wage and labor issues. The work has since expanded to include a series of paintings of beautiful restaurant dining rooms that reveal how difficult these elegant places are to scrutinize. The drab-colored Commemorative Plates series provide contrasting scenes of the hard-working kitchen staff, waitresses and bartenders of the modern restaurant.

The service workers in Tulsa, OK face many of the same injustices as those highlighted by the North Texas stories in the exhibition. Tulsa restaurants use the same tipping-based wage system, and undocumented and marginalized workers—many from North Tulsa, still rebuilding after historic disinvestment—struggle under low pay, unstable hours, and lack of safety nets. The exhibition humanizes the workers in our local communities and restaurants, recognizes shared patterns of systemic neglect and labor practices, while encouraging discussion of fairer conditions.

Recent Work

June- August 2025

The Present is Dark, the Future is Practice
Curator Project: H.O.M.E. (Human Ongoing Mission of Existence)
James Harris Gallery, Dallas, Texas

From James Harris: Sophia del Rio’s decorative plates continues in a long history of genre painting in the decorative arts. Her work depicts scenes of workers in restaurant kitchens. Once a waitress, she pays homage to the often rarely acknowledged staff that hold the kitchen together during a meal service. Her work strives to bring to fore the labor issues and abuses of these employees in the restaurant industry. The industry often installs cameras and other devices to spy on its staff to keep them in check... del Rio’s work comes from this tradition but her work depicts the real inequities of today.

December 2024

Group Call by Artist Ryan Sandison Montgomery
Self Titled - God is under the Rubble, No 2.
Texas Biennial, Houston, Texas, The Silos at Sawyer Yards

Photo by Rob Greer

Artist Ryan Sandison Montgomery’s words on his collaborative installation:

This installation—a meditation on the limits of artistic production in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza—incorporates contributions of destroyed artworks from over 60 artists and counting. It acknowledges both loss and complicity, asking what it means to create in a world marked by unimaginable horrors. It is neither a protest nor a fundraiser; it is merely an artwork. This distinction is one of the central questions—what, indeed, can art do?

The conversations I’ve had throughout the making of this work have been revelatory. I hope the piece resists a singular interpretation and invites multiple dimensions—contradiction, discomfort, and reflection.

Photo by Rob Greer

October 2024

100 Plates
Fort Worth, TX
Event Footage

100 Plates was an artist event designed as an interactive conversation with the community as a fine dining, unique dinner. The guests at the table attended by invitation only to support the workers in the restaurant industry. Guests included: A baker, a culinary school instructor, servers, hostess, server assistants, a bartender, and local commnuity leaders.

The plates are made to begin a conversation.

Contributors for 100 Plates:
Mikey Hernandez
Camika Spencer
Roma Auskalnyte
Will DeShazo
Kyle
Executive Chef Bradford Naumann

September 2023

White men who paint landscapes are not artists.
Further Fringe Fest, Arts Fort Worth
Fort Worth, TX

Performance Video

Purpose of the work:
1. To educate people on landscape art as an artform that has colonial roots.
2. To discuss the current partnerships between wealthy landowners, and the State of Texas Parks Department as problematic.
3. To call on artists working in the landscape genre to conceptualize their work, and do more than paint renderings of land.

White men who paint landscapes are not artists.

Above is the game board from my performance, White men who paint landscapes are not artists.

During the performance I took a Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game poster I purchased for $8. I chose this imagery for its a pastoral scene,as well as being an American game in origin. This particular poster has a masion in the distance as well as a fence cutting through the property. The poster is a great depiction of a cultivated, tamed landscape. The image above is of the poster and game-set.

The speech that accompanied the performance, White men who paint landscapes are not artists:

Landscape art is steeped in colonialism. Once upon a time, while the Americas were being colonized, European royalty would send painters to the newly discovered Americas to return with images of the lands they were seizing.

In Texas, ranchers and land owners commission landscape artists today to paint the property they privately own in the same fashion. The land was originally acquired through colonial seizure and westward expansion. Now land owners have the option to sell their land to the State of Texas to become park land. These people call themselves conservationists and environmentalists, but all these landowners have done is use the land for their own purposes and then sell it to the State authorities for profit.

Land owners that sell their holdings to the State of Texas make out like bandits. Often these large properties are ideal for communities and have access to water. The sale of land to the Parks Department keeps the land out of reach of the everyday people needing access to affordable land for building housing.

Cost of housing and land is at an all-time high. The cost of an acre of land increased to $3800, a 12.4% increase from the previous year. The average cost of a residential area acre is $5,050, up 14.3% from the previous year.

The problem is not that park land is being created or that people are selling their property. The problem is that the land is, and has been, in control of the wealthy, elite. As land becomes less available, our housing crisis will worsen.

I am calling artists who paint in the landscape genre to reinvigorate the art genre by conceptualizing their work. Stop painting pretty pictures to display the assets of the wealthy.

In using the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game I am calling into the question the rules behind how we operate in the Landscape Genre as Artists and community members. I am questioning the nature of the larger game.

Landscape painters, will you keep painting pretty pictures for the wealthy to hang in their mansions? Does your work conserve land or does it capture a pretty moment for a wealthy landowner to admire in his private home?

The second work resultant work is titled, “You get what remains and the debt.” This piece is made up of the scraps from the promotional poster with the reciept, below:

I chose the lithograph titled Pronghorn specifically because it is a promotional poster commissioned by the Texas Parks Department. I wanted to call attention to the art genre of landscape and land acquisition and land hoarding. I thought this promotional lithograph was a perfect piece in showcasing how the traditional use of selling pretty, scenic pictures is for the wealthy to feel good about land acquisition. The lithograph was commissioned by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. It is overpriced, and unattainable for the average American to buy.

Aesthetically, the promotional lithograph has a pronghorn deer, a native animal to Texas, positioned in the center and looking over its shoulder at the viewer. It's almost identical to the stance of the domesticated donkey in the Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey board game.

I took a commercial Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game poster, that cost me $8 on Amazon, and pasted the over-priced, promotional lithograph on top of the donkey. The visual language is clear, if artists do not conceptualize the landscape genre then artists are only producing beautiful, vapid work in the tradition of colonialism. The artist made lithograph is as valueless as a mass produced poster.

The language is clear, the artist working in the colonial traditional landscape genre is a “jackass.” In recontextuializing the game board, I permanently attached the game pieces to the poster. Anyone can keep playing, the game continues.

Why I chose the lithograph, “Prong Horn Deer,” by Billy Hassell

Reason One, Rights to the Imagery:
Billy Hassell has done many commissions for the Parks and Wildlife Department. Legally speaking - the tax payers of Texas have paid for Billy Hassell to make these posters. As such, Texans, all tax-paying citizens, own the imagery. That being said, these commissioned works are thus available for Fair Use for artists to use. That means, I am one of the millions of Texans that paid for this poster to be made. We, Texans, all own this image. Much like we, Texans, all own the Park lands.

Further more, because the image was commissioned, it puts the legal status of this object not as an “art work,” but as a commissioned advertisement. It has the same legal status of a bumpsticker. It is not protected by any special cultural relevancy.

Reason Two, Why this local artist, Billy Hassell, was chosen:
In conducting my research it was clear to me Billy Hassell’s relationship with a current board memeber on the West Texas Land Conservancy, is a conflict of interest. He also sits on the West Texas Land Conservancy Board.

Billy Hassell has had a fantastic career painting landscapes and has gone to many large private land holdings and painted works to commermorate the land being transisitoned to the State of Texas. He has made his career painting land owned by white men, as well as the native wildlife species and parks of Texas.
The Parks and Wildlife Department has a long legacy of land theft, and sales done to line the pockets of the elite, including corporations, and developers. In 2023, the same year, I did this perfomance, SpaceX was awarded Boca Chica coastal land, in a shadey land swap deal, done by the State of Texas - land that was supposed to be protected, Article here.
Park lands were also caught up in a battle with developers, Article here.

Reason Three, Visual Language:
Billy Hassell’s lithograph is a poster, commissioned by the Texas’ tax payer dollars. The image is of an a Native Texas Prong Horn Deer looking over its shoulder in the same posture as the domesticated donkey of the Pin-the-tail-tail-on -the-Donkey poster. Billy Hassel’s work is a vapid, pandering production of native wildlife and land made for the sole purpose to sell. Some portion of the proceeds, according to the galleries selling the work, go to conserving Texas land - this land however does not become park land for all Texans to share and access. The West Texas Conservancy land is formed to keep people off the land, to limit access and development.

When these lithographs sell, they sell at an inflated price, to people who are misled into thinking the proceeds go to help the Parks Department. My argument is this is a system of land theft, set up by Good Ol’ Boys. The system pays ranch owners for land, and then prevents it from ever being developed, prevents the tax payers from being able to acess the land, and uses tax payer money to suppport improvements on the land without full transparency of the inprovements.

I love parks too, to answer Anne Lewis’ concern. But, I am concerned with the land theft and pro-Good Ol’ Boy dealings of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. I think Billy Hassell’s reputation as ‘a nice guy,’ to use Anne Lewis’s description is accurate. I’m sure he is a nice guy, to many. He enjoyed the outdoors, being a boyscout and his white privledge has served him well. He has never been questioned or even had to answer the question: Why are you painting landscapes? Is the art you are making really perserving land or is it propaganda for a system established by the rich to remain rich?

“White men who paint landscapes are not artists,” is a call:

Artists, you have a duty to think about what you are creating and who you are creating it for.

Billy Hassell has been invited by me on multiple occasions to speak on pannels since I created this work. He has never accepted the invitation.

Update, Censorship:

Shortly after performing this work, apprximately a week, a private commerical gallery, William Campbell Gallery in the Fort Worth - that represents Billy Hassell, along with Marla Owens, the Director of the Fort Worth Community Art Center, acted togehter to censor me.

I was only informed that I was being censored by a community member. Upon learning of the censorship, I called the President of Art Fort Worth, Wesley Gentle. I was also able to find legal representation, as the bullying by the private gallery circuit, including galleries as far as Houston, continued. I was able to have my work reinstated.

The gallery wall where my artwork was removed is pictured below:

I later learned, the same day I performed, “White men who paint landscapes are not artists,” Billy Hassell unveiled a mural he painted on the second floor of Blue Mesa restaurant in Fort Worth, unbenounced to me, the same day I performed “White men who paint landscapes are not artists.” This mural is in his style, of a Texas lanscape - and only available to the rich. You have to rent a private room to access, and view the mural. The message is: landscapes and, thus, land, are for the rich to enjoy.

If you happen to walk towards the elevators at Blue Mesa Tex Mex, you’ll find a few walls dedicated to Billy Hassell, William Campbell and The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. William Campbell Gallery was once owned by a Fort Worth couple, but was bought by an equity firm that buys local gallery store fronts across the USA.

Blue Mesa Restaurant
Image below of the mural, second floor balcony: