Lisa Pressman and Jim Napierala at Susan Eley Fine Art

In Dialogue with Lisa Pressman


Lisa Pressman, Things That Were Never Said, 2021, Drawing and encaustic, 48” x 38”. Photo courtesy of Lisa Pressman and Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson

The current exhibition at Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson features Lisa Pressman’s newest encaustic paintings and works on paper. One of the primary series on view in this show is entitled Messages, a recent and ongoing series of mixed media works on various handmade papers. Pressman collects handmade paper, including Japanese Shikishi board, which is edged with gold, as well as Letraset—the rub-on letters employed by graphic designers before the computer era. Onto these unique handmade paper, she employs the press-on letters of the Letraset, as a mark-making tool to create a symbolic language—hieroglyphic and intuitive.

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STREAMING at Stand 4

In Dialogue with Melissa Staiger


Keisha Prioleau Martin, Head Over Handlebars, 2020, acrylic on paper, 10 x 13.5 inches, photo courtesy of the artist

In March 2020 the New York art world shut down and soon went online for exhibition opportunities. Like many artists, Mike Childs was furloughed from his job, and stayed at home, drawing as well as supporting his 6th grade son. To foster a sense of community, he reached out to fellow artist and curator Melissa Staiger to see if she was interested in combining their skills. They came up with the idea to create an online group of artists who worked on paper. The collective identity of this group was envisioned as eight individuals who reflect the creative New York community and exhibit a compulsive nature towards the making of images. Childs referred to these image makers as “producing work via a stream of consciousness in the modernist literary tradition”. In referencing this type of creative approach, Staiger immediately seized on the word to title their project Streaming, referring both to a creative thought process and the online reality of contemporary artistic existence. This led to the creation of the website https://s-t-r-e-a-m-i-n-g.com, which was the foundation for the current exhibition at Stand 4 Gallery. The group exhibition at Stand4 Gallery, brings together work by Mike ChildsDeanna Lee, Keisha Prioleau-MartinRafael MelendezBenjamin PritchardSharmistha Ray, Melissa Staiger, and Julie Torres. The show runs through July 10th.

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Tomo Mori: Fibrous Points of Origin


Filling the gap, 2020. 24″x30″. Acrylic, painted canvas fabric on masonite board.

Tomo Mori is a Japanese-born and New York City-based fiber artist who has been focusing on two main bodies of work: wall based collage series and sculptural
installations . In both she is working with used materials like old clothes and linens, fabrics she keeps reusing and transforming into new forms. During this 2021 Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Tomo Mori shares what brought her to art making, what role her cultural background plays in her work, and what are some of her recurrent themes and processes.

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Sue McNally: Learning how to Find

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Jockey for Postition

Sue McNally lives and works in Rhode Island and when life permits, as she puts it, in rural southeast Utah. Her landscape paintings and her self portraits encompass everything in between — the views of nature she has encountered, and her shifting states of being. Sue McNally reflects on her art making and shares ideas on her new body of work.

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Now + Never – Marcus Aitken

In Dialogue with Jacob Barnes, Editor in chief, Soft Punk Magazine

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Marcus Aitken, Now + Never print, Limited edition of 50 on 300gsm Hanehmuhle German etching paper,42×29.7cm

Now + Never, a virtual solo exhibition of new works by London-based gestural artist Marcus Aitken, is released in tandem with Soft Punk’s latest publication. The exhibition will be made available online from November 16th, 2020 via Soft Punk’s web platform. In this interview for Art Spiel, Jacob Barnes, the London and New York based co-founder and editor of this literary arts and culture quarterly, shares some of the background for his publication and for Marcus Aitken’s virtual art exhibit.

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In My Room – Susan Carr at LABspace

A Photo story


Installation view of In My Room

Upon entering In My Room, Susan Carr’s solo show at LABspace in Hillsdale, NY, my senses are overloaded in the best way by the colorful and tactile work. The gallery is teeming with an impressive amount of work that fills the walls, floor, and pedestals. As I walk around, I am greeted with the fond familiar smell of fresh oil paint— thick, bold, and often mixed on the surface. This application is important to the overall sensation of Carr’s work. It makes me grasp the immediacy and the confidence that are necessary to make the work. Squeezing paint directly from the tube onto the canvas requires a commitment from the artist and Carr dives in headfirst to create paintings of zombies, clowns, self-portraits, and eyeballs.

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Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis at SAPAR Contemporary

In Dialogue with curator Aliza Edelman


Eunice Golden painting Metamorphosis #20 in her East Hampton studio. Photo: © 2007 Walter Weissman

The excellent current exhibition Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis at SAPAR Contemporary, rigorously curated by scholar and curator Aliza Edelman, Ph.D., features paintings and photographs by the 93 years old prolific artist from 1979 to 2009. Based in the West Village and in East Hampton, New York, Eunice Golden has made throughout five decades an outstanding and bold body of work with consistent commitment to her artistic vision and to feminism, while keeping her work admirably fresh and urgent all the way. In her later paintings the body is fragmented and anthropomorphized into a landscape, described by the artist as a philosophical and spiritual outgrowth of her earlier radical oeuvre of sexual body landscapes. Golden says on these recent works, “I am concerned with tactility and the sensation of touch, but also of thought on a primal level, where there are no boundaries and where natural phenomenon are blurred by processes of metamorphosis.” In this interview Aliza Edelman elaborates on the genesis of this show and the ideas behind Eunice Golden’s work.

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Gabriel J. Shuldiner – Hybridsculptural Bruteminimalism


sLAY1_2019, postapocalypticblack®* [ modified acrylic polymer emulsion | carbon black pigment | calcium carbonate | water | modified industrial urethane enamel | modified polyurethane thermoset cellular plastic | vinyl acrylic co-polymer emulsion | acrylic stain-block sealant | mastic adhesive | polyurethane adhesive | solvent-based ink | nuisance dust | studio detritus | spit | air | light ]*proprietary | chrome enamel spray aerosol | cotton duck canvas | repurposed polystyrene | blackened stainless steel flat head hinge screws | reinforced galvanized steel wire, overall dimensions: 20.75 x 19 x 5.25 in.

Gabriel J. Shuldiner dislikes categorization of his work to the point that he invents new “isms” to describe its allusive hybridity – its DNA can be traced to abstraction with elements of minimalism, expressionism, and Arte Povera. While Shuldiner’s use of material is extensive , his use of color is restricted to mostly black, with tinges of other colors at times. Gabriel J. Shuldiner shares with Art Spiel some of his thought and work processes.

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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: Liz Sweibel

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

Untitled, 2020, thread and vellum, 8×8 in

Liz Sweibel’s work is an exploration of liminal spaces, points of contact, and unseen forces:  wind, history, values, math, gravity, emotion, memory. Her drawings, sculpture, and installations are spare and abstract, using specific yet ordinary materials and gestures. She often salvages materials, sources, and forms from her older work and uses them to make sense and establish identity in the present. Her studio process is low-tech, immediate, and improvisational.

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