LITTLE HAND

Madison East

Opening Reception

Sunday, June 28

5:00–7:00 PM

Cruise Control Contemporary

Cambria, California

Cruise Control Contemporary is pleased to present Little Hand, a new body of work by Madison East. Through a series of intricate collages incorporating fragments of Craigslist Missed Connections, vintage LA Express escort newspapers, maps, advertisements, and found printed matter, East excavates the emotional residue of public communication. Each work functions as a portrait of longing assembled from the discarded language of strangers—small declarations written in the hope that someone, somewhere, might still be listening.

The materials that make up these collages originate from a world of print media that is rapidly disappearing. Long before social media feeds and algorithmic matchmaking, newspapers served as places where people searched for companionship, work, intimacy, excitement, and recognition. The classifieds represented a uniquely public form of vulnerability: a space where desire could be broadcast to an anonymous audience and returned, if at all, through chance. By layering together decades of these printed appeals, East transforms ephemeral advertisements and personal messages into visual records of collective yearning.

Central to the exhibition is the recurring presence of time. Embedded within each collage is a functioning clock, its hands moving continuously throughout the duration of the exhibition. These clocks transform the works from static images into living objects. The slow and constant movement of the clock hands becomes a reminder that every message exists within a specific moment: a missed encounter, a fleeting opportunity, a memory already receding into the past. The clocks mark the distance between the original writer and the present viewer while simultaneously collapsing that distance through the shared experience of waiting, hoping, and remembering.

The exhibition’s title, Little Hand, refers both to the smaller hand of a clock and to the subtle gestures that connect people across time. A classified ad, a handwritten note, a newspaper clipping, or a brief glance exchanged between strangers can become a small hand extended outward, searching for contact. East’s collages preserve these gestures long after their intended moment has passed, allowing them to continue speaking to new audiences. What begins as evidence of missed connections becomes a broader meditation on human connection itself.

In an era increasingly defined by digital communication, Little Hand asks what is lost when physical media disappears. The works celebrate newspapers not simply as information delivery systems, but as repositories of desire, confession, fantasy, loneliness, humor, and hope. Through their layered surfaces and quietly ticking mechanisms, East’s collages invite viewers to consider how people seek one another, how messages survive beyond their intended recipients, and how the desire to be known remains unchanged even as the methods of communication evolve.