Artists on Coping: Suzan Shutan

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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FLOW, 2016, Tar paper, handmade dyed paper, industrial glue, plexi rods, steel wire, KANEKO Org, NE, photo courtesy of KANEKO

Suzan Shutan is a sculptor and installation artist who creates room sized environments and smaller hybrid objects that explore the architecture of nature and organic growth. Paper and fiber are her main materials, forming patterns through repetition. Her work represents cellular structures, pathogens and toxins. She has been in solo and group shows in Germany, France, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Argentina, Australia, Canada and nationally at the Aldrich Museum, KANEKO and Bank of America. Her work is in private and public collections, featured in Smithsonian and Sculpture Magazines and NY Times. ODETTA Gallery exhibits her work. She lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. 

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Anne Peabody: Sunspike

In dialogue with Anne Peabody

A close up of a tree

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Anne Peabody, Love Letter, 2020, Antique silver leaf, gold sparkle, and japan paint on glass, 24” x 18” Photo courtesy Blake McGrew – Moremen Gallery

A few weeks before the Corona pandemic assumed an overpowering presence in our daily lives throughout the whole country, Art Spiel has scheduled an interview with Anne Peabody on her upcoming solo exhibition at Moremen Gallery in Louiseville Kentucky, where she was born and raised. In that interview the artist discussed her unique technique and the thought process behind her landscapes that are filled with a subtle spirit of longing, memory and loss. Anne Peabody’s images are fine tuned to our Zeitgeist, the ghost of our time. She will participate in the Virtual Dumbo Open Studios 2020, that was scheduled for this weekend, June 4-7 and postponed in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives matter (TBD).

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Artists on Coping: Jackie Neale

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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© 2017 Fernando Torres

Jackie Neale is a hybrid photographic artist creating storytelling installations in mediums ranging from alternative processes to low-fidelity recordings. Her process relies on community immersion to depict honest interactions in underrecognized communities and serving as personal testimonials as oral histories. She is the former Online Features Imaging Director at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, completing over 300 storytelling projects over 15-plus years. She is also a published author, and undergraduate Photography Professor at Saint Joseph’s University and the New York Film Academy. Neale has completed residencies in New York City, Philadelphia, Texas, Mexico, Calabria and Milan, Italy.

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Christina Massey’s USPS Art Project

Hema Bharadwwaj and Eileen Ferara, USPS Art Project Collaboration

When the lockdown began in mid-late March in New York City, artist Christina Massey felt it was too soon for her to address the pandemic in her own artwork. While desperately trying to process the disorienting news shifting by the hour, she was noticing an uptick in posts calling for people to save the Postal Service by buying stamps. The idea for the USPS Art Project came to her with immediate clarity. An artist starts making an artwork and mails it to a partner to complete and vice versa.

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Artists on Coping: Daniel Wiener

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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In the studio with my dog, Ollie. May 11, 2020

Daniel Wiener, who received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, grew up near Los Angeles but has lived in NYC for thirty-nine years. A professional artist since 1977, Daniel’s first show was at the Stephen Wirtz gallery in San Francisco, held shortly after his graduation from UC at Berkeley. In 1982 Daniel was awarded a fellowship for an unusually long stay at Yaddo, which inspired his exodus to the East Coast. Daniel was affiliated with Lesley Heller Gallery, until it closed due to the Covid 19 pandemic, where he had a one-person exhibition titled Wide-eyed & Open-mouthed in September, 2019. In response to this show, Bomb Magazine published an interview with Daniel and Fawn Krieger called The Space of Intimacy: Daniel Wiener. He is currently working on a series of painting-like bas-reliefs made from self-hardening clay based on a technique he developed at Dieu Donne. Daniel lives and works in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

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Artists on Coping: Meer Musa

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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Meer Musa at his live-in studio in Washington Heights. Photo: Odvar Daley

Meer Musa graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in Communication Design and studied at the School of Visual Arts. He is a co-founder of Trans-cen-der Art Group, a monthly curated artist talk and slide-share event that takes place at Brooklyn Fire Proof. He has exhibited in the Luhring Augustine Gallery, NYC; Sikkema Jenkins & Co. NYC; ZieherSmith Gallery, NYC; Westbeth Gallery, NYC; The Border Project Space. Brooklyn; David and Schweitzer Contemporary Gallery, Brooklyn, among others. His art is inspired and deeply informed by people, nature, and spirituality.

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Artists on Coping: Yolande Heijnen

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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Father Watching Coronavirus News

Yolande Heijnen was born and raised in Luxembourg, and has lived in New York since 1998. She has an MFA in painting from the New York Studio School, has won the Edward G. McDowell Travel Grant of the Art Students League, and is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.

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Artists on Coping: Elin Noble

During the coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


Working in the studio, March 2020. Photo by Lasse Antonsen

Elin Noble is a nationally and internationally known textile artist and dyer, living in New Bedford Massachusetts. She has spent more than 30 years investigating traditional and contemporary dye techniques, focusing in particular on Japanese itajime shibori (clamp-dye resist). She has lectured and conducted workshops in North America and internationally, most recently in the Netherlands, Hungary, and Japan. Elin has been included in numerous group exhibitions and has had one-person exhibitions at the Schweinfurth Art Center, New York; New Bedford Art Museum, Massachusetts; The Textile Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Visions Art Museum, California; and the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum, Washington.

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Artists on Coping: Hallie Cohen

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


Hallie Cohen at the American Academy in Rome working on Mi Ricordo III,ink on yupo paper, 60” x 144”. Photo by Francis Levy.

Hallie Cohen is a New York-based visual artist and curator. She is a Professor of Art, and Director of the Hewitt Gallery of Art at Marymount Manhattan College. Her subjects are topographies of real or imagined places, which toggle between abstraction and unreliable narration. Cohen explores natural phenomena, using the instability of the water-based medium to investigate the dynamic between chance and control and between conscious and unconscious thought processes. She has curated over 30 exhibits which explore science, psychology, neurology, politics, and the environment. She has recently had a virtual artist talk about her work.

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Artists on Coping: Elizabeth Riley

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


Factory Fresh, 2019; Video stills inkjet-printed on paper and fabric, repurposed laser-cut metal, 120 x 108 x 24”

Elizabeth Riley’s art addresses questions concerning the complex and changing world we inhabit and our “mixed reality,” living between physical and digital/virtual contexts. This project includes sculptural wall works, installations, and tabletop cityscapes, made from a combination of video, video stills, and diverse materials. A longtime New Yorker, the artist graduated from Barnard College and received an MFA from Hunter College. In 2019 her work was presented in Ribbons Become Space, a solo show at SL Gallery in New York City. This show included the Dragons of Iceland Installation, a 2011 sculpture/installation with multiple live video elements, as well as, two large-scale, site-specific wall sculptures made from video stills. Elizabeth Riley curated and participated in Trill Matrix at The Clemente Center on New York City’s Lower East Side in 2018, a show of seven dynamic women artists.

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