February 5, 2026
Montrel Beverly
Megan Mulrooney Gallery
January 10 - February 14, 2026
Montrel Beverly
Montrel Beverly (b. 2003) is an Austin, TX based artist who primarily works with pipe cleaners. He has exhibited at Sage Studio and Gallery, a non-profit art space in East Austin that supports artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities including materials and space to produce, exhibit, and sell their art. In addition to Sage, his work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions, as well as at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City in 2023 and 2024.
Usually associated with children and craft, pipe cleaner art yields colorful, small-scale, free-standing sculptures of plants and animals. This malleable material can be twisted and combined to make colorful objects with depth and texture. Beverly uses them in unpredictable and unusual ways to make pictorial reliefs in a wide array of colors and fuzzy patterns. While his previous pipe cleaner creations drew from video games and anime, Beverly has also recreated scenes from the Bible, as well as images from art history like Grant Woods’ American Gothic and Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. For this exhibit, his focus is Los Angeles where he cleverly reinterprets imagery drawn from iconic landmarks like Pink's Hot Dogs and artists, including Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari.
The entry gallery is a small room with two pink metal chairs placed around a white table. On the table are two red plastic trays filled with oversized hot dogs and onion rings, as well as lumpy mustard and ketchup bottles. These are all fabricated out of thick pipe cleaners. A sign on the wall is also made entirely from pipe cleaners and depicts a flat hot dog between the words "Made Special" and "PINK'S." This historic hot dog stand is not far from the gallery, so it is fitting that Beverly would pay homage to this L.A. institution.
At first glance, the works on the walls of the larger back gallery seem familiar, yet not immediately identifiable. After a moment, an "aha" sets in, prompting viewers to recognize what they are looking at. Standard Station (all works 2025) is a replica of one of Ed Ruscha's paintings from 1964. Here, the light blue sky seen in the original painting is made of a grid of coiled baby blue pipe cleaners. At the bottom is a childlike rendering of the red and white gas pumps below the Standard sign that extends across the composition into the sky. Drawing with pipe cleaners does not allow for straight lines and Beverly's quirky and soft depictions playfully engage with this unusual medium.
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) from 1972 is based on a 'classic' David Hockney painting. It features two figures one in a pool, the other, looking down from the deck at the submerged swimmer. The scene is framed by distant hills and green foliage. Beverly's version faithfully captures the mood and the setting of the original — one of voyeurism and companionship. In both versions, the swimmer floats in the water as the second man in a bight pink coat looks on. In Beverly's composition, the thick bundles of pipe cleaners that form the landscape make the piece feel more like a tapestry than a painting.
Other artists Beverly chooses to recreate are Jonas Wood, Mickalene Thomas and Kerry James Marshall. In each, he transforms a well documented original into something amusing yet witty. John Baldessari was known for making paintings and photographs where he covered small parts of the images with geometric shapes. The red, yellow, blue, and white circles obscuring the faces of four figures at the beach in Baldessari is a humorous riff on the original color photograph from 1991, Beach Scene/Nuns/Nurse (with Choices). In this scene Beverly makes lumpy pipe cleaner figures flexing their muscles and carrying a bikini clad woman whose body extends across their torsos. A profusion of white clouds populates the blue sky above the mens' heads. While true to Baldessari's original composition, Beverly's relief is comically distorted in the third dimension.
Art history has a long tradition of borrowing. Some artists — Sherrie Levine, for example — create exact replicas. Others like Rachel Lachowicz, Deborah Kass, Yasumasa Morimura or Cindy Sherman pay homage by replicating as well as transforming. To use the art of another as a point of departure can be seen as a sign of respect. With Beverly, it appears as though he has researched and studied his peers to create charming and tactile works that celebrate a handful of Los Angeles archetypes.
Megan Mulrooney Gallery
January 10 - February 14, 2026
Montrel Beverly
Montrel Beverly (b. 2003) is an Austin, TX based artist who primarily works with pipe cleaners. He has exhibited at Sage Studio and Gallery, a non-profit art space in East Austin that supports artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities including materials and space to produce, exhibit, and sell their art. In addition to Sage, his work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions, as well as at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City in 2023 and 2024.
Usually associated with children and craft, pipe cleaner art yields colorful, small-scale, free-standing sculptures of plants and animals. This malleable material can be twisted and combined to make colorful objects with depth and texture. Beverly uses them in unpredictable and unusual ways to make pictorial reliefs in a wide array of colors and fuzzy patterns. While his previous pipe cleaner creations drew from video games and anime, Beverly has also recreated scenes from the Bible, as well as images from art history like Grant Woods’ American Gothic and Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. For this exhibit, his focus is Los Angeles where he cleverly reinterprets imagery drawn from iconic landmarks like Pink's Hot Dogs and artists, including Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari.
The entry gallery is a small room with two pink metal chairs placed around a white table. On the table are two red plastic trays filled with oversized hot dogs and onion rings, as well as lumpy mustard and ketchup bottles. These are all fabricated out of thick pipe cleaners. A sign on the wall is also made entirely from pipe cleaners and depicts a flat hot dog between the words "Made Special" and "PINK'S." This historic hot dog stand is not far from the gallery, so it is fitting that Beverly would pay homage to this L.A. institution.
At first glance, the works on the walls of the larger back gallery seem familiar, yet not immediately identifiable. After a moment, an "aha" sets in, prompting viewers to recognize what they are looking at. Standard Station (all works 2025) is a replica of one of Ed Ruscha's paintings from 1964. Here, the light blue sky seen in the original painting is made of a grid of coiled baby blue pipe cleaners. At the bottom is a childlike rendering of the red and white gas pumps below the Standard sign that extends across the composition into the sky. Drawing with pipe cleaners does not allow for straight lines and Beverly's quirky and soft depictions playfully engage with this unusual medium.
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) from 1972 is based on a 'classic' David Hockney painting. It features two figures one in a pool, the other, looking down from the deck at the submerged swimmer. The scene is framed by distant hills and green foliage. Beverly's version faithfully captures the mood and the setting of the original — one of voyeurism and companionship. In both versions, the swimmer floats in the water as the second man in a bight pink coat looks on. In Beverly's composition, the thick bundles of pipe cleaners that form the landscape make the piece feel more like a tapestry than a painting.
Other artists Beverly chooses to recreate are Jonas Wood, Mickalene Thomas and Kerry James Marshall. In each, he transforms a well documented original into something amusing yet witty. John Baldessari was known for making paintings and photographs where he covered small parts of the images with geometric shapes. The red, yellow, blue, and white circles obscuring the faces of four figures at the beach in Baldessari is a humorous riff on the original color photograph from 1991, Beach Scene/Nuns/Nurse (with Choices). In this scene Beverly makes lumpy pipe cleaner figures flexing their muscles and carrying a bikini clad woman whose body extends across their torsos. A profusion of white clouds populates the blue sky above the mens' heads. While true to Baldessari's original composition, Beverly's relief is comically distorted in the third dimension.
Art history has a long tradition of borrowing. Some artists — Sherrie Levine, for example — create exact replicas. Others like Rachel Lachowicz, Deborah Kass, Yasumasa Morimura or Cindy Sherman pay homage by replicating as well as transforming. To use the art of another as a point of departure can be seen as a sign of respect. With Beverly, it appears as though he has researched and studied his peers to create charming and tactile works that celebrate a handful of Los Angeles archetypes.