March 2, 2024 – April 27, 2024
Opening Reception Hours: 6 PM - 9 PM, Saturday, March 2, 2024

Hawthorn Contemporary is pleased to announce the opening exhibition of The Coconut Effect, featuring
works by Seattle-based artist Dawn Cerny.

The drawings and sculptures in the exhibition, created in 2023 and 2024, are meditations on looking and
embracing the limitations of space as confined and defined by life and responsibilities. Cerny’s works
inhabit the gallery as a memorandum of encounters in a domestic space. Often incorporating readily
available handicraft materials, drawings become sculptural objects, thus playfully complicating the
expectations of drawings and perceptions of sculpture as three-dimensional objects.

Dawn Cerny was born in Carpinteria, CA and currently lives in Seattle, WA. Cerny’s sculptures, works
on paper, and collaborative projects have been exhibited in institutions and galleries across North
America, including Cooper Cole, Toronto, MOCA, Los Angeles, Western Front, Vancouver and Micki
Meng Gallery, San Francisco. She has had solo shows at The Seattle Art Museum, The Portland Art
Museum, The Henry Art Gallery and is currently preparing for a 2025 exhibition at the Frye Museum.
Cerny’s sculptures and works on paper are held in public collections, including The Walker Art Gallery,
SFMOMA, The Henry Art Gallery, The Portland Art Museum and The Seattle Art Museum. She is the
recipient of two Washington State Artist Fellowships, the 2020 Betty Bowen Award, the 2022 Bonnie
Bronson Visual Arts Fellowship and the 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellowship. Her exhibitions and work have
been written about in Art Forum, Bomb Magazine, the International Sculpture Center Blog, The Stranger
and The Seattle Times. Dawn Cerny currently teaches at Seattle University.