Sally Young

Sally Young is a working artist, street artist, poet, community activist, and community gardener, who has resided in the Bowery for mostly 40 years with a short stint around Ave. B and C in the 1980’s. Sally taught at Children’s Aid Society for 12 years, prior to its move to Greenwich House in 2012.

Sally’s artwork is about HOME – finding home, having home, losing home, meaning of home, necessity of home, survival, and what’s left. Climate change has changed our homes and the landscape of them-some are disappearing due to rising seas, tornados and hurricanes. Recent paintings examine the rural, the urban, and industrial landscape, some that is disintegrating and inevitably changing for better or for worse. All is not lost though—there is sometimes a glimmer of hope and positivity in her paintings and as it plays out in her life.

Recent exhibitions are a Solo-Show at 222 Bowery Gallery in 2019, and was an Acker Award recipient for painting in 2018. She has been in numerous group shows. The most recent is a street mural as part of the show BRINGING BACK BOWERY: PAINTING AS PROTEST presented by Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project. 6 East 1st Street, Curated by Sono Kuwayama and Bob Holman.

Sally’s work is represented in many collections including HOWL! Gallery, Willis Woods, former Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Joy Hackenson-Colby, former Art Critic for the Detroit News, Dinter Fine Art, The Lily and Earle M.Pilgrim Art Foundation, The Filmmakers Coop, and many private collections.

In addition to teaching and art making, Sally is a board member of Arts Loisaida Foundation, an officer with Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, and contributing writer/researcher in a recently published book, “Windows on the Bowery”. She was a contributing researcher that helped bring the Bowery to both the National and State Register of Historic Places. She is also on the board of The Lower East Side Preservation Initiative.