At Viola Floral, we have always dreamed of creating a space where flowers, art, creativity, and community could live together. A place to slow down, discover something beautiful, meet inspiring people, and experience the joy that comes from seeing the world through another artist’s eyes. We’re so excited to introduce Viola Gallery, a new contemporary art space within our Santa Monica floral studio.
Flowers have always been our first language. Now, we’re making room for even more forms of creative expression.
What Is Viola Gallery?
Viola Gallery is an intimate exhibition space dedicated to artists, ideas, and meaningful creative experiences.
Located inside Viola Floral at 916 Colorado Avenue, the gallery will feature thoughtfully curated exhibitions, artist conversations, collectors’ events, and opportunities for our community to experience art in a warm and welcoming environment.
Just as flowers can shift the energy of a room, art can change the way we see, feel, and connect. Viola Gallery brings these worlds together, creating a space where floral design and contemporary art can exist in conversation with one another.
Through the gallery, we look forward to:
- Introducing our community to emerging and established artists
- Hosting exhibitions, openings, and collectors’ events
- Creating opportunities for artists and art lovers to connect
- Exploring the relationship between flowers, art, color, and design
- Making contemporary art feel personal, inviting, and accessible
Why We’re So Excited
For us, Viola Gallery is a natural extension of everything we love about Viola Floral.
Flowers invite us to pause. They encourage us to notice color, texture, movement, shape, and the beauty of something fleeting. Art asks us to do many of the same things.
Our studio has always been a gathering place—a home for workshops, celebrations, conversations, and creative exploration. With Viola Gallery, we’re opening the door to another way of experiencing beauty and building community.
You don’t need to be an experienced collector or art expert to visit. You only need to be curious.
Our Inaugural Exhibition: Friction and Flight
We are delighted to open Viola Gallery with Friction and Flight: Artwork From a Decade of Creative Travel by Marin County-based artist Travis Weller.
The exhibition brings together ten years of work inspired by Weller’s travels from Japan and Sardinia to Jamaica and beyond.
To move through the world as an artist is to experience a constant push and pull.
There is friction—the uncertainty of unfamiliar places, the exhaustion of the road, and the effort required to process new landscapes, cultures, and ideas.
Then there is flight—the freedom of movement, the feeling of escape, and the unexpected spark of inspiration that can arrive when we step outside what we know.
The artwork in Friction and Flight does more than document Weller’s travels. It captures the delicate balance between the obstacles found along the way and the liberation of the open road.
Meet the Artist: Travis Weller
Travis Weller is a Marin County-based artist whose work examines ambiguity and anxiety as pathways toward precision and contentment.
Weller earned an MFA in drawing from Western Carolina University. He has designed collections for major brands, including The North Face and Roark, and his artwork is held in collections internationally.
He is also the founder and director of LOOK WEST Gallery in San Rafael, California, where he continues to support artists and build creative community.
A Decade of Creative Breakthroughs
Many of the works in the exhibition come from Weller’s personal collection.
Over the years, he set these pieces aside as visual records of creative breakthroughs—moments that sparked ideas and eventually led to new exhibitions, projects, and bodies of work.
Weller works exclusively on paper, moving between:
- Oil painting
- Drawing
- Silkscreen printing
- Intricately cut paper
Some pieces feel bright, spacious, and full of movement. Others are quieter, more restrained, and contemplative. Together, they reveal an artist continually exploring the space between truth and abstraction, uncertainty and clarity, friction and flight.
We are honored to welcome Travis and this deeply personal body of work to Viola Gallery.
Visit Friction and Flight Friction and Flight is on view through October 22, 2026.
Come experience a decade of artwork shaped by movement, memory, discovery, and the creative breakthroughs that happen when we venture beyond the familiar.
Viola Gallery at Viola Floral
916 Colorado Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90401
No passport required—just curiosity, a love of beauty, and a willingness to see where art can take you.
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