Pouch Power Women: with Brenda Zlamany

Installation view, Seven Women Chase Icebergs, The Re Institute

What starts as an open call and a group text to trusted friends becomes, two years later, an exhibition that feels inevitable. Seven Women Chase Icebergs, on view at The Re Institute in Millerton, NY, brings together seven painters whose friendships span decades and continents: Rome, Skowhegan, Triangle, Braziers. Organized by Brooklyn-based artist Brenda Zlamany — creator of The Itinerant Portraitist and a painter whose practice has long centered on community as both subject and method — the show grew from a month-long residency at Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, where the group painted, hiked, shared meals, and chased icebergs along the edge of the Atlantic. We spoke with Zlamany about friendship as curatorial logic, landscape as psychological mirror, and what it means to build something together at the edge of the world.

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Dorothy Robinson: Paint Through Space and Time

End of Story, 2022, oil on panel, 48×60 inches, photo courtesy of Bill Massey

Dorothy Robinson’s family moved often during her childhood, starting in rural Iowa, where they farmed for generations and eventually settled in California. After high school, she bounced between colleges before landing at UC Berkeley. Studying art never crossed her mind, but she was drawn to geography, “probably because of its strong visual component—map making, field trips, slide shows,” Robinson says. During an internship, she learned darkroom skills and later worked in commercial photo labs, shaping her sense of color while making color prints. An invitation from an artist friend to join a drawing group was transformative, and started Robinson on the path to a life of making art.

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Hesse Flatow East- Reverse Cascade

Reverse Cascade, Hesse Flatow, Installation View- Curated by Kirsten Deirup

As the season of exhibitions at commercial galleries winds down, the need for enriching visual engagement becomes more demanding over the thick heat of the summer months. Out of the way for viewers and gallery dwellers, there are some noteworthy exhibitions that take place outside the boroughs of New York City that are worth noting and can easily be missed if you were not looking or aware. A good point of example is Hesse Flatow East. Karen Hess-Flatow has launched a unique exhibition at their Amagansett space, nestled on the east end of Long Island in the Hamptons, a location that adds to its allure.

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Elisabeth Condon Describes a Painting – Tree of My Life

Joseph Stella, Tree of My Life,1919, Oil on canvas

Painter Elisabeth Condon’s reflections on a painting by Joseph Stella were initially presented in the second episode of Elisabeth Condon Describes a Painting, a new series artist Amy Talluto has recently launched in her podcast Pep Talks for Artists. In each episode in this series Elisabeth Condon shares her way of looking at one painting, here, at the oil painting (1919) Tree of My Life, by Italian – American artist Joseph Stella (1877-1946)

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Elisabeth Condon Describes a Painting – Wanderings, Bilbao

WANDERINGS: BILBAO, ORANGE, YELLOW AND BLUE, 45 1/2 X 39 1/2, Acrylic on Canvas, 2004 //Jules Olitski Art Foundation Inc. / 2022 Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Jules Olitski ,Wanderings: Bilbao, Orange, Yellow and Blue, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 45 ½ x 39 1/2 inches, from the exhibition Jules Olitski: Late Works at the Sam and Adele Golden Gallery on the campus of Golden Artist Colors in New Berlin, New York

Painter Elisabeth Condon’s reflections on a painting by Jules Olitski she had seen at the exhibition Jules Olitski: Late Works—were initially presented in the first episode of Elisabeth Condon Describes a Painting, a new series artist Amy Talluto has recently launched in her podcast Pep Talks for Artists. In each episode in this series Elisabeth Condon shares her way of looking at one painting, here, at the acrylic painting (2004) Wanderings, Bilbao: Orange Yellow and Blue, by Ukrainian- American artist Jules Olitski. The show at the Sam and Adele Golden Gallery in New Berlin, NY is up until March 2023 and another concurrent show of his works was up at Yares Gallery in New York (till February 11, 2023).

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Cynthia Pareja Dubin: MVA Open Studios


Cynthia Pareja Dubin, Liquitex Acrylics Medium Residency, June 2021

Manufacturers Village Artist Studios, located in an 1880’s historic industrial complex at 356 Glenwood Avenue in East Orange, NJ, will feature the work of over 60 different artists at its annual open studios weekend, Friday 10/15 (VIP Preview) and Saturday thru Sunday from 11-5, 10/16 and 10/17.

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Will Hutnick – Artist as Facilitator


At the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency by Collar Works, Granville, NY, July 2019, Photo by Monica Hamilton

Will Hutnick is an artist, curator, co-director of Ortega Y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn from 2015 to 2020 and Director of Artistic Programming at the Wassaic Project upstate NY. In his paintings Will Hutnick is using rollers, and includes other mono-printing-like methods to create repetitive passages which form playful and unexpected relationships between shapes and colors. He shares with Art Spiel some of his work process, reflections on the ways his paintings have developed, and some of his other art related practices.

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Artists on Coping: Meryl Meisler

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

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Meryl Meisler studied photography at the University of Wisconsin, and with Lisette Model in New York where she began to capture the city’s street life and infamous nightlife. A 1978 C.E.T.A. Artist Grant supported her portfolio on Jewish identity, after which she began a three-decade career as a NYC public school art teacher. Upon retirement, she began releasing large bodies of previously unseen work, including two books, A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick, and Purgatory & Paradise SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City. She is currently working on her next monograph, New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco, and is represented by CLAMPART.

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Artists on Coping: Katrina Bello

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


In the studio, with large drawing titled Terra Magnoliaceae, April 2020

Born in the Philippines, Katrina Bello is an artist who lives and works in New Jersey. Her work is devoted to drawing, and her subjects are migration, ecology and our complex relationship with the natural world. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and the Philippines, and has been awarded residencies in the United States. She recently received a studio fellowship from the Sustainable Arts Foundation though Gallery Aferro in Newark, New Jersey. Katrina is the founder of North Willow, an informal artist-run attic exhibition space in northern New Jersey.

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Artists on Coping: Mary Waltham

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

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With degrees in biology and fine art, Mary Waltham’s work reflects the fragility of our environment as seen through the eyes of a scientist and artist. She was Managing Director and Publisher of The Lancet, and President and Publisher of Nature, before returning to her early passion for art. She works in a variety of media, including drawing, painting, video and installation works, incorporating natural materials collected locally, with the intention of merging the landscape with environmental issues to spark new conversations.

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