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Artists on Coping: Susan Mastrangelo

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

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Susan Mastrangelo

Susan Mastrangelo was born and raised in New York City and Washington D.C. She studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the New York Studio School, and received her MFA from Boston University under the tutelage of Philip Guston. Based in New York since graduate school, she has shown nationally and internationally, and is a recipient of a Rockwell Grant as well as two grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. She has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, a guest at Civitella Raneri, and a resident at Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, The Triangle Workshop (as a student of Anthony Caro), and the Tyrone Guthrie Center. For 27 years she taught and chaired the Art Department at the Buckley School in New York City, and now works as a full time multidisciplinary artist at the Can Factory in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

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Artists on Coping: Niki Lederer

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.

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Artists on Coping: Miles Hall

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.

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Artists on Coping: Melanie Vote

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


Melanie Vote, In Studio, photo credit: Jessica Glick

Though Melanie Vote has lived in NYC for over 20 years, she grew up on a functional farm in Iowa. Her work straddles these two worlds, investigating the complexities of the human-land relationship, the cyclical nature of all life, and the impossibility of permanence. In temperate months she works remotely, painting outside. She is a visual scavenger collecting passages, then returns to the studio to reconstruct layers of a place, weaving them together into open-ended narratives. Her most recent body of work, The Washhouse, Nothing Ever Happened Here, at Equity gallery is on view virtually, via Artsy.

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Artists on Coping: Farrell Brickhouse

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


Experimenting with my wife Beverly Peterson’s VR gear

As a mature artist Farrell Brickhouse states: “I have this large vocabulary to draw from, imagery that has woven its way thru my entire career is available and malleable even as new stories continue to emerge.” He has a long Exhibition history in New York and across the U.S. A. including One Person Shows @ Julian Pretto Gallery, Max Protetch Gallery, Pamela Auchincloss Gallery, Life on Mars Gallery, John Davis Gallery, Fred Giampietro Gallery and elsewhere. His work has been reviewed in the major publications. Farrell has taught at The School of Visual Arts since 1980 and recently retired.

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Artists on Coping: Anna Shukeylo

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


Anna Shukeylo, photo courtesy of the artist

Anna Shukeylo is an artist, curator, writer and educator normally working and living in New York City, currently and hopefully temporarily stuck in her hometown suburbs of New Jersey. Her main mediums are painting and ceramics, and her work focuses mostly on voyeuristic experiences of city dwelling. Her work has been exhibited throughout New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana and internationally. She is a contributor at Artcritical.com and is a full-time Fine Arts Lecturer at Kean University in New Jersey.

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Artists on Coping: Zac Skinner

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


Zac collecting trash along the shoreline of the Hudson River, 2020, courtesy of the artist

Zac Skinner’s work explores geo-engineering, global warming, and the Anthropocene Landscape. His solo exhibitions include Rockland Center For the Arts, West Nyack, NY, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, and Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY. Recent group exhibitions include CICA Museum, Seoul, South Korea, Spring Break Art Show, New York, NY; SITE:Brooklyn, New York, NY; WAAM, Woodstock, NY. He was recently interviewed and featured in Lowdown Magazine, Berlin, Germany. He is currently a Lecturer at Ramapo College, NJ, and SUNY New Paltz College. Skinner will have a solo exhibition at Wave Hill’s Sunroom Project Space this October through December, 2020.

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Artists on Coping: Alexandra (Alexi) Rutsch Brock

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

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Photo credit – Patricia Fabricant

Alexandra Rutsch Brock has exhibited in solo and group shows most recently at The Keck School at USC, CA, The Painting Center, NY, Village West Gallery, NJ and Misericordia University, PA. Her work has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine SV Vol44. Her recent co-curations include “HyperAccumulators” with Elizabeth Saperstein at Pelham Art Center, NY and “Among Friends” project with artists Patricia Fabricant and Beth Dary at the Clemente Center, NYC. She has been teaching art at New Rochelle High School since 1991, where she started the Visiting Artists Program with Scott Seaboldt, most recently hosting Susan Luss.

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Pat Lay: Mapping New Interiors

Pat Lay, installation view in studio, photo courtesy of the artist

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.

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Farrell Brickhouse: Counter – Punching with Paint

I have been following Farrell Brickhouse’s work since 2014, when he showed his work at Life on Mars in Bushwick. You do not just “view” Brickhouse’s paintings, you experience them on a deeply intimate level. He unabashadly talks about painting in relation to “soul” and “subconscience”. As a painter who can show an outstanding body of work which convincingly resurects these modernist notions from oblivion, he also freshens these notions for the next generation of artists. Farrell Brickhouse graciously conducted with me the following interview. Continue reading “Farrell Brickhouse: Counter – Punching with Paint”