Contemporary Art and Culture
The tension between “inside” and “outside” in Erika Ranee’s paintings draw you into an enclosed space with an explosive and rhythmic internal movement. The vibrant colors, organic shapes, and linear marks that link the forms like veins, altogether resonate with living organisms, body, or microscopic landscapes. The artist shares with Art Spiel what brought her to art, her thought and work processes, as well as her current projects.
Continue reading “Erika Ranee – Wired for Bold”
Katarina Wong is an artist and curator whose interests range from cross-cultural pollination to Buddhist perception of interdependence, expressed through a myriad of media such as sculptural ceramics and works on paper. She shares with Art Spiel her background, ideas,and process.
Continue reading “Katarina Wong: Re-framing Narratives”
“The stream of sap in the trees varies according to the phases of the moon.”
-Theodor Schwenk, Sensitive Chaos
Sandra Chamberlin’s sculptural installations invites the viewer to enter a three-dimensional drawing of alternate life-forms. Lines made of wood float off the walls, hover in the air, or balance on the ground, altogether creating a sense of abstracted life-forms. These linear sculptures are deeply rooted in the artist’s intriguing relationship to materials and processes which overall tie into her intricate perception of nature. Since the early eighties, Chamberlin has been making out of wood abstracted shapes through meticulous manual and mechanical processes she has perfected over these years.
Continue reading “Sandra Chamberlin, on Breathing Underwater”
Rachael Wren’s delicate paintings pulsate with repetitive brush strokes that both allure you to look closely at the elaborate geometric surfaces and at the same time pull you into mysterious psychological interiors or perhaps cosmic fields. Her grid structure serves as an anchor for the paint /space- anchoring facilitates a greater freedom of movement and flow within. The artist shares with Art Spiel her ideas on color, painting, and studio process.
Continue reading “Rachael Wren – Shimmers and Hums”
Hailed as a “Trailblazer in Digital Art” by the Times Tribune and “The First Lady of Animated Painting” by The Examiner, Marjan Moghaddam is a pioneering and award-winning digital artist and animator who has been exhibiting her computer-generated art works in galleries, museums, and festivals since the 1980s. Most recently, her #arthacks on Instagram were shortlisted for the International Digital Sculpture price, and several of these hacks have gone viral on top art channels on social media with millions of views. Her Augmented Reality art has been exhibited at museums such as the Smithsonian. Audra Lambert talked with Marjan Moghaddam about the artist’s reflections on digital art and social media, her work, and upcoming projects.
Continue reading “Marjan Moghaddam: Pioneering Humanity in a Digital Age”
Immigration is a hot issue. It has determined national elections and divided communities around the world. Artists have weighed in on it, often with projects lacking input from the immigrants themselves.
Jackie Neale is a fine art photographer, author, instructor, and former Imaging Producer of Online Features at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In her project “Crossing Over: Immigration Stories,” she pairs large-scale cyanotype portraits of immigrants with audio of them telling their own stories. In May it will be on exhibit in Palazzo Mora at the Venice Biennale.
Continue reading “Artist Without Borders: Catching Up With Jackie Neale”
Throughout her highly imaginative multidisciplinary projects, Jessica Segall has been engaging with a wide range of fragile ecological sites, frequently with animals as her collaborators – for instance, swimming with tigers and sculpting with live bees. Jessica Segall shares with Art Spiel some of her work and thought process, as well as her upcoming projects. You can meet her and hear more about her work during the 2019 Dumbo Open Studios weekend.
Continue reading “Jessica Segall: Queer Ecologies”
Nancy Baker’s art is colorful and bright, with filigree shapes that fuse, multiply and pulse outward in vibrant, sweeping waves. Individually the panels seem molecular and scientific; layered together they suggest vast networks and digital flow, yet clearly are the work of an artist’s hand. The eye zooms in and picks out familiar details–a candy wrapper, a takeout tray–then moves out again to appreciate the larger whole.
Elisa D’Arrigo‘s upcoming exhibition, “In the Moment,” at Elizabeth Harris Gallery will feature her new body of ceramic work. Her vessel forms breathe with inner life, their cylindrical shapes are both tumultuous and vivacious – like a body, organism, or life itself. The artist shares with Art Spiel some of her thought and work processes as well as some insight on her upcoming show.
Continue reading “Elisa D’Arrigo – From the Inside Out”
Pat Lay‘s Digital work conjures ancient iconography, or maps organized in what appears to be a binary logic. Throughout her abstracted digital and more figurative sculptural work she consistently reflects on the role of technology in our life, merging cultural cues with a seemingly mathematical order. For Art Spiel the artist elaborates on her interest in technology, what brought her to art, and her 42 year experience as an art educator at Montclair State University – both as a teacher and as the founding director of the MFA in Studio Art.
Continue reading “Pat Lay: Mapping New Interiors”