About

Since January 2018, Art Spiel has highlighted rigorous work of mostly female mid-career visual artists and other marginalized artists, as well as non-profit and smaller art venues, through formats such as artists profiles, interviews, studio visits, and exhibition reviews, with an emphasis on the creative process. 

Art Spiel welcomes writers to pitch — interviews, studio visits and exhibition reviews on an on-going contribution basis. 

For more details contact by email: etty@artspiel.org

You can follow us on:
Instagram: @artspiel
Facebook: facebook.com/ArtSpielBlog

Art Spiel Team:

Etty Yaniv, founder and chief editor
Art Spiel was founded by Etty Yaniv who works on her art, art writing and curatorial projects in Brooklyn. 

Melissa Stern, co-editor
Melissa Stern lives in NYC and The Hudson Valley. She studied Anthropology and Art History at Wesleyan Univ. Her mixed material sculpture and drawings are in a number of corporate and museum collections including The International Center For Collage, News Corp. Inc. JP Morgan Chase, The Arkansas Art Center, The Racine Art Museum, The Museum of Art and Design and The Wiseman Museum in Minneapolis. Her multi-media project The Talking Cure has been touring the United States since 2012, showing at The Akron Museum of Art, Redux Contemporary Art Center (Charleston), The Weisman Museum, Real Art Ways (Hartford) and The Kranzberg Art Center (St. Louis), and at The Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton.MA. She has written about art  and culture for The New York Press and CityArts for eight years and is a contributing writer to Hyperallergic and artcritical. Melissa has joined Art Spiel as co-editor and contributing writer.

Saul Ostrow, writer
Saul Ostrow is an independent curator and critic. Since 1985, he has organized over 80 exhibitions in the US and abroad. His writings have appeared in art magazines, journals, catalogues, and books in the USA and Europe. In 2010, he founded along with David Goodman and Edouard Prulehiere, the not-for-profit Critical Practices Inc. as a platform for critical conversation and cultural practices. His book Formal Matters (selected and revised) published by Elective Affinities will be launched Fall, 2022. He served as Art Editor at Bomb Magazine, Co-Editor of Lusitania Press (1996-2004) and as Editor of the book series Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture (1996-2006) published by Routledge, London.

Hovey Brock, writer
Hovey Brock is a writer, art critic, and painter who divides his time between Claryville, NY and Brooklyn, NY. His Crazy River series has been in the works since 2017. He is a frequent contributor to The Brooklyn Rail.

Amy Talluto, writer
Amy Talluto is a multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture and collage who lives in Upstate NY and hosts a podcast called “Pep Talks for Artists.” This written piece can be listened to as an audio essay in podcast form, as well as many others on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts. Amy Talluto’s monthly column “Whisperings from the Wormhole” will bring you artist-to-artist pep talks with topics ranging from self-doubt to artists who make work in their kitchens.

Paul D’Agostino, writer
Paul D’Agostino, Ph.D. is an artist, writer, translator and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. More information about him is available here, and you can find him as @postuccio on Instagram and Twitter.

Tansy Xiao, writer
Tansy Xiao is an independent curator, artist, writer and poetry translator who focuses on the multicultural and cross-disciplinary practice of art and literature in a global context. Having lived and traveled in more than fifty countries and received her art education in hundreds of museums worldwide, Xiao founded Raincoat Society in the hope of giving the artists with multiple cultural backgrounds a voice outside the mainstream art market.

Riad Mia, writer
Riad Miah was born in Trinidad and Tobago and is an artist who lives and works in New York City. His work has been exhibited at the LMAK Gallery, Sperone Westwater, Wave Hill- Sunroon Project, Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, White Box Gallery, deluxe projects, Rooster Contemporary Art, Simon Gallery, Lesley Heller Workshop, and more. He has participated in the Vermont Studio Center, Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, HISK, Belgium.  He’s received fellowships and awards with New York Foundation for the Arts in painting and Germination Europe and has also been nominated for the following: Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, Rema Hort-Mann Award, and the Basil H. Alkazzi Award for Excellence in Painting. He has taught at Pratt, New York Arts Program, Parsons School of Design, and Montclair State University. He is a contributing author to Two Coats of Paint, Art Savvy, and Vasari 21. Riad Miah holds an M.F.A from Ohio State University and a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts.

Sara Farrell Okamura, writer
Sara Farrell Okamura is an artist, writer, and arts educator based in North Adams, Massachusetts.

Sharilyn Neidhardt, writer
Sharilyn Neidhardt is a Brooklyn-based visual artist. She is a co-founder of the artists’ community trans-cen-der and is an assistant curator at Friday Studio Gallery. She’s an avid cyclist, loves midnight movies, and speaks only a little German. Her first solo show ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ opened Sept 7 at Art During the Occupation in Brooklyn. More at sharilynart.com

Catherine Kirkpatrick, writer
Catherine Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer based in New York. She wrote the introductions to Meryl Meisler’s two books, and is currently working on an oral history about recent changes in photography.

Thomas Motley, writer
Thomas Motley is a Texas painter and Professor Emeritus of Art and Art History at Dallas College. His drawings and paintings have been shown in many national exhibits including Center for Contemporary Art, Abilene, TX, and Wesleyan U, Ft. Worth, TX. Motley has lectured at the DMA, the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, Austin, TX, and the Meadows Museum, SMU. He has published several art museum catalogs, art periodical critiques, and reviews. He is a contributing author for Eutopia and has written articles about Mid-Century Modern Texas artists for DB/Zumbeispiel. Motley has received Fulbright Grants to Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK and was Chair of the North Texas Fulbright Teacher Exchange Peer Review Committee for many years.

Anne Sherwood Pundyk, writer
Anne Sherwood Pundyk is an artist and writer based in Manhattan and Mattituck, NY. She is interested in creating an authentic expression through the manipulation of her materials, her writing and performances. She paints large-scale abstract paintings on stained, cropped and stitched unstretched canvas. She has recently shown at Art Access Gallery, Columbus, OH; The Works Museum in Newark, OH; the Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY and the Brownstone Art Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Space Sisters Press published her artist’s book, The Garden, this year which has been acquired by several academic special collections including Denison University, Granville, OH; The New School for Social Research, New York, NY and the University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA. Her work has been reviewed in artcritical, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, ART21 Magazine, The Washington Post, The Suffolk Times and the Newark Advocate. @anne.sherwood.pundyk

Alicia Puig, writer
Alicia Puig is a curator and arts writer currently based in San José, Costa Rica. She earned her MA in Art History from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and is a regular contributor for Create! Magazine, Pikchur Magazine, and Art She Says. Her second book, “The Complete Smartist Guide”, was recently published in the summer of 2020 and is currently available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, writer
Anna Mikaela Ekstrand is a Guyanese/Swedish independent curator and researcher based in NYC. She is interested in feminism, decolonial theory, and social practice. She has held curatorial positions at the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Solomon R. Guggenheim, and Bard Graduate Center. She holds dual Master’s Degrees in Art History from Stockholm University and Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center. Anna Mikaela is co-editing Assuming Asymmetries: Conversations on Curating Public Art Projects of the 1980s and 1990s and Archeology of a Profession in Sweden: Curating Beyond the Mainstream both forthcoming with Sternberg Press. In addition, Anna Mikaela is the founding editor-in-chief of Cultbytes.

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