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Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees
Book Review Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees is a revelatory compendium—part elegy, part manifesto—centered on that spiky, iconic sentinel of the Mojave Desert. Assembled by scientists, historians, and artists, this is no ordinary nature book. It’s a multi-vocal chorus, grappling with ecological fragility and political urgency, yet always rooted in some primary form of awe. The Joshua tree becomes muse and metric, measuring our numerous planetary trespasses. Published by Inlandia Institute—in tangent with the past eponymous art exhibitions at MOAH in Lancaster and Hey There Projects in Joshua Tree—Desert Forest is a dazzling interdisciplinary work, arresting in both imagery…
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Almond Zigmund: A Dance Between Structure and Disruption
In Dialogue Almond Zigmund’s work occupies the charged space between structure and disruption. Moving fluidly across sculpture, painting, and installation, her practice explores the intersection of geometry, architecture, and lived experience—often in subtle yet powerful ways. I have the pleasure of discussing her work at the end of her recent exhibition at East Hampton’s Guild Hall. In this interview exchange, Zigmund speaks about the formative influences that shaped her, from growing up in a creative household to navigating the distinct geographies of Brooklyn, Las Vegas, and the East End of Long Island. The conversation delves into the improvisational roots of…
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Art Spiel Picks: NYC Exhibitions in August 2025
This month’s lineup takes us through Brooklyn, Queens, and Jersey City, where intimate thoughts, melded with the political repercussions we grapple with individually and collectively, are presented to the public in moving forms that are explorations in artistic practice as a means of activation against the norms we must confront to maintain our humanity. Through rejections of subjugation and exploitation, be it patriarchal economies or the fallout of colonialism, these selected exhibitions put artists at the forefront who contend with these issues and make space for constructive discourse.
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Lisbon Art Atlas: Mapping the City’s Artistic Renaissance
Curated for Art Spiel by Eva Zanardi Lisbon, once a soft whisper in Europe’s art discourse, has shed its translucent slipper. No longer the Cinderella of the continent’s cultural ball, the city now strides confidently onto the stage—a radiant, artful sovereign commanding attention and acclaim. Its metamorphosis over the past decade borders on the operatic—a triumphant crescendo of resilience, urban reinvention, and creative flair.
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Hovey Brock: The Invasive Species with Cornell’s Eco Arts
In DIALOGUE Hovey Brock’s show, The Invasive Species, in collaboration with Cornell’s Eco Arts features a series of paintings that focuses on how the climate crisis in general and invasive species in particular threaten the forests of the Northeast—an outgrowth of his Crazy River project that focused on the climate crisis in the Catskills. The paintings have phrases or questions that have been obsessing Brock for some time.