About

They / Them

Artist Statement:

As a fine artist committed to social justice, I work at the intersection of research and lived experience, using embroidery, painting, digital illustration, and typography to explore the fat experience in modern society.

Desirability politics is often dismissed as trivial, yet aesthetic appearance shapes access to healthcare, employment, love, and quality of life. Fatness intersects with race, gender, sexuality, and ability, and its stigma is rooted in colonialism. My research traces the history of anti-fatness, where it began and how it evolved, and that history informs the work I make.

My goal is to move fat representation beyond visibility. I want viewers to confront their unconscious biases and reckon with the institutional oppression fat people face, especially where it compounds with other systems of "-ism." My practice situates fat liberation within the broader landscape of liberation movements, alongside abolition and other emancipatory politics.

I make art to contribute to our shared culture and to educate the public, working toward a world where fat liberation is understood as inseparable from justice itself.

Artist Biography:

Samantha Sponer is an interdisciplinary artist from Las Vegas, NV. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Arts in Civic Studies from Tufts University in Boston, they moved back to their hometown, drawn to the inspiration found in the infamous "Sin City." Through digital illustration, textiles, and painting, Sponer’s work addresses the fat experience and the desirability politics that surround it.

Their work has been shown in university exhibitions for photography, printmaking, and embroidery at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Loyola Marymount University, and in a solo exhibition presented in collaboration with the nonprofit Artworks for Freedom to educate and inspire action against human trafficking. One of Sponer’s most significant projects to date is the "Body-ody Project," begun as their senior thesis: a series of illustrations depicting bigger bodies in a range of expressions, alongside a textile triptych shown in their senior gallery exhibition and accompanying artist talk. They later continued the project during their first artist residency at Casa Na Ilha in Ilhabela, Brazil, depicting fat bodies in nature and exhibiting embroidery pieces alongside fellow resident artists.

Since graduating in Spring 2023, Hambleton has shown their illustration work primarily through digital exhibitions. They currently write poetry paired with original illustrations, publishing the work in self-produced zines under the pseudonym Art Hambleton. Looking ahead, they plan to pursue a Master of Fine Arts as they continue building a practice rooted in cultural contribution and public education.

What does it mean to be a Nevada-based Artist?

Being a Las Vegas artist means making work in a place built entirely on how things look, a city that turns spectacle and image into industry. Growing up here and then choosing to come back after Tufts, rather than stay in Boston, was a deliberate decision to draw inspiration from that contradiction: a hometown often dismissed as tacky or hollow, but one that understands, better than almost anywhere, how much power appearance holds over a person's worth and access. That's the same terrain my work operates in. Making art about fat bodies and desirability politics in a city defined by aesthetic performance isn't incidental, it's the perfect, uncomfortable backdrop for asking who gets to be seen as desirable, worthy, or human.

Nevada's arts and culture scene is still often read through the lens of the Strip via entertainment, spectacle, kitsch. I see my work as part of a movement pushing back on that flattened image, showing that Nevada can produce art that is research-driven, socially engaged, and personal. Through projects like the "Body-ody Project," and now through zines and illustration sold locally rather than through galleries, I'm trying to build a version of Las Vegas's cultural identity that isn't just about looking at something, but about being seen, bringing fat bodies, marginalized histories, and questions of institutional bias into a public arts conversation that hasn't always made room for them. Every piece I make here is also an argument that Nevada's art scene has depth beyond its reputation, and that the stories worth telling about bodies and justice can come from Sin City just as much as anywhere else.

Instagram: @arthambleton 

Substack: @arthambleton