Selected Work

Flowers, apples, eggs, milk
Art in the Park LA
May 2-31, 2026
(The Fork in the Salad)

Cabbage Flower Variation II, 2020
ink drawing on paper
30 x 22 in

Flowers, apples, eggs, milk

Heartbeats (detail) , 2026
peach pits, stainless steel
dimensions variable

Flowers, apples, eggs, milk

Google signs of baby dropping, 2024
ink drawing on paper
24 x 28 in

Dust in the door, 2023
ink drawing on paper
24 x 28 in

Flowers, apples, eggs, milk

Whisper variation, 2020/2022
ink drawing on paper
24 x 28 in

Cascade variation, 2017
ink drawing on paper
30 x 22 in

Moon tulips (detail), 2026
modified nightlights, plug protectors
3.5 x 3 x 3 in

Fontanel, 2026
upholstery foam, ceramic
7 x 137 x 8 in

Fontanel (detail)

Cradle variation I, 2019
ink drawing on paper
24 x 28 in

Dust in the door
Safemart SF
December 2025-January 2026
(The Fork in the Salad)

Things that go away variation I, 2023
ink drawing on paper
20 x 20 in

Things that go away variation II, 2024
ink drawing on paper
20 x 20 in

Dust in the door

Dust in the door

Marine basket star recto I, 2024
ink drawing on paper
20 x 20 in

Marine basket star verso I, 2024
ink drawing on paper
20 x 20 in

Dust in the door

Heartbeats (with blocks), 2025
peach pits, stainless steel, concrete
each 120 x 4.5 x 4.5 in

Dust in the door

Sometimes, especially when I’m tired, looking into my
newborn’s eyes feels like interspecies communication,
underwater even. I often think about Z as a liquid
creature. Recently, I suppose, she was.

The ocean is full of cetacean vocalization and click-
ing. Z will have no words for almost a year to come.

While I’m nursing around the clock and recovering
from surgery in the summer heat I’ve been reading a
lot to M (4) who has to sit next to me instead of on
my sutured lap. We learn about the waggle dance bees
use to communicate with the hive about the direction
and distance of a rich flower feast.

*

“Remember the seed-germ,” Louis Sullivan wrote in
A System of Architectural Ornament. This reminder is
centered under a diagram on Plate 2, and appears again
on Plate 5. “Remember the seed-germ.”

In Kindergarten Chats, when Sullivan wrote about his
wish to harness the creative potential of nature, or
“man’s instinct for reproduction,” meaning art-making,
he did, specifically, mean men. In his writing,
“nature” is coded as femme. The seed pod is kind of
like a house full of energy, or maybe it’s more of
a reproductive organ. It’s an object of desire.
Spit out the pit. It’s compost.

This autumn the transitional kindergarten class
talked about litter and now Z (4) knows that
everything ends up in the ocean. In the footnotes
of a children’s book about the Atlantic, M (8) read
about Panthalassa, the great global ocean before
Pangaea split apart. When peaches are the school
fruit snack my children save the pits and bring
them home. Do the teachers think we are planting
an orchard?

Behind my childhood home in Chicago lived two peach
trees from Georgia, planted as grafted seedlings by
the previous occupants. Nearby stands a small store-
front with a terracotta façade designed by Louis
Sullivan. A pale green jewel box, it is covered with
sinuous lines, psychedelic seed pods and radiating
near-fractal floral motifs.

Fractals are self-similar and incorporate chance.
They can be curves, areas, surfaces, curdles. Some
are described as dusts. Fractal geometry, with its
scaling, recursive nature, helps us describe and
envision infinity. Sweep after breakfast, sweep after
lunch, sweep after snack, sweep after dinner. Keep
the rhythm going and it’s like a heartbeat.

by Claire Zarouhee Nereim, 2025

Screening of Riddles of the Sphinx at Leroy’s
April 27, 2024

Collaborative riso takeaway made with artist Patricia Fernández Carcedo, designed by Giovanni Guttierez and
Nelly Le, edition of 100, 17 x 11.5 in

An excerpt of an ongoing conversation about mothering in patriarchy inspired by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's feminist structuralist film Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), printed on the occastion of a co-hosted screening of the film followed by a public conversation at Leroy's Los Angeles.

Rabbit, 2023
ceramic, 6.5 x 8.5 x 4 in

Egg dish double, 2021
ceramic, 9 x 10 x 12 in

Glyph drafts, 2021
ink drawing on watercolor paper
largest approx 10 x 10 in

KNOWLEDGES at Mount Wilson Observatory
June 3 & 4, 2017

Garden for a Swan, 2017
letterpress edition of 100, 24 x 18 in

Sub Rosa at LOUDHAILER
March - April 2016

Soft combs, 2016
brass, silver, 10 x 4 in (left),
20 x 4.5 in (right)

Soft combs (detail)

The Arbor, artist's project
X-TRA Contemporary Arts Quarterly
Volume 18, No 3, March 15-June 15, 2016

A Key to The Arbor

In this issue, Claire Nereim presents The Arbor (2015), the beginnings of an astral garden. Inside the front cover, readers will find the artist's interpretive map of the Los Angeles sky on the evening of March 15 (the first day of distribution for this issue). The inside back cover charts the night sky on June 15 (the last day the issue will be available on newstands). On each of those nights, follow the maps to find, with guidance from the Pole Star and Cassioppeia in the celestial North, two new constellations, each revealing a plant in the sky.

Since 2008, Nereim has been making star maps to examine the relationship of the terrestrial sphere to celestial space. One night, when the artist was looking skyward to locate a known constellation, she found another group glimmering instead. A game of observation began––the artist recorded an identical group, then a whole series of twin patterns emerged in the sky––amidst, between, and borrowing from the canon of astronomy's figures. After these observational maps, Nereim started making research-based seasonal maps, akin to the maps comprising The Arbor.

TIC TOC, 2016
risograph book
8.5 x 7 in closed
28 pages
published by Golden Spike Press

TIC TOC 2, 2016
screenprint edition
19 x 19 in
with Golden Spike Press