Art Spiel – Page 90 – Contemporary Art and Culture

June 20, 2020June 20, 2020

Artists on Coping: Niki Lederer
by Etty Yaniv

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

*Goldenrod*, 2019, Found re-purposed plastic bottles, machine screws, hex nuts, wire, rebar armature, concrete base. Artist with sculpture currently on view at Wolfs Lane Park as part of Pelham Art Center’s Public Art Program.

Niki Lederer is a sculptor working with found materials including discarded umbrellas and post-consumer plastic. Born in London, Ontario and raised in Vancouver, she received her BFA from the University of Victoria and her MFA from Hunter College in New York City. Group exhibitions include Portal: Governors Island, 50 Years of Public Art in NYC Parks, Central Park and the Outdoor Sculpture Biennial Adelphi University, Garden City, NY. Solo exhibitions include Washington Square Windows, NYU and Preset Tense, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Niki recently collaborated with XAOC Contemporary Ballet for Norte Maar’s CounterPointe8. Currently her re-purposed plastic bottle sculpture is featured at the Pelham Art Center and Wolfs Lane Park and her discarded-umbrella based work will be included in the Wassaic Project 2020 Summer Exhibition. Niki lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

June 19, 2020November 2, 2022

Artists on Coping: Bill Travis
by Catherine Kirkpatrick

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

*Bill Travis, self portrait as a young man*

Bill Travis is a photo-based artist, working in alternative techniques around such themes as desire, nostalgia, and impossible worlds that exist only in the imagination. He earned a Ph.D. in art history and was a tenured professor before turning full-time to creating art. He has had over sixty shows in museums, galleries, universities, and public institutions from New York City (where he lives) to San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Buenos Aires, and others. His work was featured in two monographs published in Italy and he recently co-curated an exhibition on Photography After Stonewall for Soho Photo Gallery in New York. He has lectured on his photography at Columbia University and was interviewed on Italian television. His work has been collected by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, The Kinsey Institute, Yale and Harvard Universities, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The New York Public Library, and national collections of photography in Russia, Japan, Portugal, and Hungary.

June 18, 2020May 30, 2020

Artists on Coping: Cathy Diamond
by Etty Yaniv

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

Studio Portrait, photo by Elizabeth Reagh, 2019

Cathy Diamond is a New York City-based painter. For decades, her imagery has fused elements of nature and figuration into a kind of narrative abstraction. Residency fellowships in Wyoming, Virginia, Maine and elsewhere form the building blocks of works developed in her Queens studio. Diamond spent two decades in Williamsburg, exhibiting there at Farrell-Pollock Fine Art, Sideshow Gallery, Gallery Boreas and Janet Kurnatowksi Gallery. She has shown extensively in New York City. Diamond’s paper works travelled to national print fairs with Oehme Graphics. She recently exhibited at 490 Atlantic Gallery and at SRO Gallery in Brooklyn. Diamond is Adjunct Lecturer of Painting and Drawing at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

June 17, 2020June 17, 2020

Artists on Coping: John Moran
by Melissa Stern

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

John Moran with Endless Night in his studio in Ghent, Belgium. Photo: Evert Van Laere

John Moran is a politically and socially engaged hot glass sculptor, mixed media artist, and all around nice guy. Originally from Philadelphia, Moran currently resides in Ghent, Belgium and is also the director of Gent Glas, a community glass studio he co-founded in 2014. He received his BFA from Tyler School of Art, MFA from Illinois State University, and is currently pursuing his PhD at Eugeniusz Geppert Academy in Wroclaw, Poland. His work has been exhibited in many galleries and museums across the United States and Europe, including Habatat Galleries, SiC! Gallery, Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, and Delaware Contemporary. His work is dedicated to his interests in politics, pop culture, social awareness, and contemporary art.

June 16, 2020November 2, 2022

Artists on Coping: Ronit Levin Delgado
by Catherine Kirkpatrick

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

*Ronit Levin Delgado by Written in Water (detail), site-specific installation at SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2018, NY.*

Ronit Levin Delgado is an Israeli–born, New York–based multidisciplinary visual artist and a Fulbright Scholar. Her work explores conditions and experiences of instinctual human interactions through the use of the body, rituals, and the intimacy of a kiss. In performances, videos, paintings and sculptural objects, she calls into question the personal narratives of vulnerability and desire. In immersive installations she invites the viewers to engage and share a private intimate moment in a collective environment experience. The artist’s personal rituals fuse the fragments of cultural traditions, rituals and beliefs into performative actions and objects.

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020

Artists on Coping: Jessica Segall
by Etty Yaniv

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

Reverse alchemy in Conga (Màxima), 2019, Photograph. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Jessica Segall is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is exhibited internationally including recent/ current shows at The Fries Museum and The National Museum of Jewish American History and upcoming at Thomas Erben Gallery, The Coreana Museum of Art and The Center for Art Research. Jessica received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, The Harpo Foundation and Art Matters and attended residencies at The Van Eyck Academie, The MacDowell Colony and Skowhegan. Her work has been included in Cabinet Magazine, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Mousse Magazine and Art in America. Jessica will have a work in a show on ecofeminism in June 19th at Thomas Erben Gallery and she will also participate in the Virtual 2020 Dumbo Open Studio that was postponed (TBA) due to solidarity with the movement of Black Lives Matter.

June 14, 2020June 13, 2020

Artists on Coping: Jaanika Peerna
by Etty Yaniv

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

Macintosh HD:Users:Jaanika:Pictures:Jaanika Peerna p.jpg — Jaanika Peerna at her pandemic era studio

Jaanika Peerna is an Estonian-born artist and educator living and working in New York since 1998. Her work encompasses drawing, installation, and performance, often dealing with the theme of transitions in light, air, water and other natural phenomena. For her performances she is often involves the audience in participatory reflection on the current climate meltdown. Her art practice stems from the corporeal experience of our existence and reaches towards enhanced awareness of the fragility, interconnectedness and wonder of all life.

June 13, 2020July 10, 2020

A Studio 54 Reject Is At It Again 40 Years Later
by Nathalie Levey

Lisa Levy in dialogue with Art Spiel

A person standing in front of a building

Description automatically generated — *Studio 54 Reject Re-Performance by Lisa Levy, Photo Credit: Phil Buehler.*

Right before the Coronavirus outbreak prompted a mass-shutdown of New York City’s galleries and museums, multidisciplinary artist, radio show host and (self-proclaimed) psychotherapist Lisa Levy recreated her classic guerrilla art project ‘Studio 54 Reject’. On the opening night of the “Studio 54: Night Magic” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, Levy stationed herself outside the institution’s main entrance. Standing behind a small table encircled by red velvet ropes and four stanchion posts, she gestured toward a sign reading “Studio 54 Reject T-Shirt, $20” while imploring passersby to take pride in “reject status” with the purchase of a shirt, newly re-designed in gold glitter and the official logo.

June 13, 2020May 30, 2020

Artists on Coping: Miles Hall
by Etty Yaniv

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

*Deconstructing the Apocalypse in her own Image,* 72 x 84, Oil on panel, 2018. (in studio)

Miles Hall is a painter and draftsman. He has lived in California, Massachusetts, Japan, and New York, but now resides in Richmond, VA. His work explores the mythological relationship between the landscape and human figure. The science and psychology of visual perception is important to his practice. He currently teaches in the Communication Arts Department at Virginia Commonwealth University and maintains a critical visual arts review for the Richmond area called Lucid.

June 12, 2020May 30, 2020

Artists on Coping: Seren Morey
by Etty Yaniv

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

Seren Morey and her Ridgeback/Boxer Chloe in front of her latest painting Ingress

Seren Morey makes fantastical, nature inspired sculptural painting abstractions that reference the energy force of the particles that connect all matter together. She was born in Massachusetts to a family of artists and went on to complete a BA at Bard College and an MFA at Pratt Institute. Upon graduating from Bard she became an assistant to Kiki Smith and later a professor in fine arts at Pratt Institute. Morey’s work has been exhibited in numerous shows and reviewed by Robin Pogrebin, Barry Schwabsky and Helen A. Harrison of The New York Times. She currently lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and is a partner in Guerra Paint & Pigment Corp., a specialty resource store for artists.