Lilah Slager Rose
Lilah Slager Rose (b.1990 Rockford, MI) has been a Los Angeles-based soft sculpture artist since 2017. Her interest in fabric work was initially encouraged by a family legacy of textile design. The popular 80s/90s print and apparel brand “Marushka” was founded by her uncle Richard Sweet with the creative support of her parents Ellen and James Rose. Lilah grew up watching her mother prepare her own designs for print by hand at the brand’s Michigan headquarters.
From 2004-2007, Lilah attended Cranbrook Kingswood as a high school boarding student. Here her understanding of textile design was enormously enhanced by the Kingswood weaving studio and the campus-wide showcase of tapestry artist Loja Saarinen, whose work hangs both in the school itself and in the dorms where Lilah Lived.
Following college years spent at Evergreen State in Washington, Lilah began to develop practical sewing and tailoring skills as an apprentice to Olympia/Seattle-based costume designer Lucy Gentry. Lilah assisted Genty in several exhibitions of the latter’s couture sculptures, further fostering an understanding of how textiles and their attendant functionality can be seen as artistic statements.
In 2017 Lilah moved to Los Angeles with her husband, landscape/abstract painter Jean Nagai, whom she met in Washington and married in 2016.
Her most recent solo and group exhibitions include Simchowitz Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2021) Almine Rech, London, UK (2022); New Image Art, Los Angeles, CA (2022); The Doolittle/Kellogg House, Joshua Tree, CA (2022); and la Beast gallery, Los Angeles, Ca (2024).