Contemporary Art and Culture
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.
Continue reading “Mona Brody: MVA Open Studios”
Lauren Whearty paints mostly still life from observation and preliminary sketches. Occasionally she takes photos of things which serve in her painting process as cues to spark a sense of memory rather than a source for likeness. She builds her compositions with a collage-like construction, adding and removing objects from both the paintings and the still life set ups. She loves the process of fitting things into the grid of the canvas, playing between representing objects and maintaining a close sense of the flat painted surface. “Color for me is expressive, connects to memory and play in the studio. In using repeated objects, the excitement in experimentation comes from how an object is painted, from their color to their expression and what I can get paint to do,” she says.
Continue reading “Lauren Whearty: Slippage between Abstraction and Image”
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.
Continue reading “Cheryl Agulnick Hoc: MVA Open Studios”
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.
Continue reading “Sarah Canfield: MVA Open Studios”
Mexican visual artist Gilberto Esparza works with technology, including electronics, robotics, and biotechnology, to develop innovative solutions to the detrimental impact that humans have had on the natural world, particularly on water. His overall goal is to rethink and redo the current relationship between human society and the environment by establishing collaborations between the two.
Continue reading “The Art of Transforming Polluted Water into Clean Water, Energy, and Sound”
Briana McLaurin takes on an intimate subject matter in her large scale oil paintings, as her practice primarily consists of painting her family members. Her vibrant portraits serve as a tribute to her own experiences and upbringing, while creating a relatable narrative that celebrates African American presence. The honesty and value of family are extremely present in McLaurin’s recent body of work, where she reflects on her relationships with loved ones by depicting intimate snapshots of domesticity.
Continue reading “Briana McLaurin: Unlearning Portraiture ”
In this issue I have for you my second interview with artist Katie Holten. We first spoke back in 2019, when she created the NYC Tree Alphabet to draw greater attention to the threats that New York-area trees face. Now she’s created an alphabet for the trees of Ireland, her home country. In our interview below we discuss what inspired her latest alphabet, how she’s developed an accompanying tool for use in schools, and what to expect from Learning to be Better Lovers, her forthcoming exhibition about learning to love all creatures on the planet.
Continue reading “An(other) Interview with Artist Katie Holten”Art Spiel Photo Story
In her solo art exhibition at Reeves-Reed Arboretum, Pamela Casper invites the garden-loving public to reconcile a personal relationship of guardianship that goes beyond admiring nature’s beauty. The artist says that the trajectory of the work in this show follows her own path of transformation—from observing beauty and imagining nature “above ground” to exploring the endless networks hidden below. The show is curated by Executive Director Jackie Kondel and runs through October 31tst, 2021.
Continue reading “Earthscapes: Emerging to a Brighter World: Pamela Casper at Wisner House”
A few weeks back, an intergenerational group of five iconic NYC graffiti and street artists descended on Welling Court Mural Project (WCMP) in Astoria, Queens. The latest batch of mid-sized murals to grace this otherwise unassuming treasure trove of paint at the intersection of Main Avenue, 30th Avenue, and Welling Court includes Chris “Daze” Ellis, John “CRASH” Matos, JM Rizzi, Queen Andrea, and Joe Iurato, a world-class lineup whose collective come-up eras span the 1970s into the aughts.
Continue reading “Generations of Public Artists Converge at Welling Court Mural Project”
Amy Talluto’s paintings and collages depict landscapes, ranging from representational wood-scapes to more abstracted forms reassembling a hybrid of landscape and still life. Darren Jones wrote in Artforum that Amy Talluto’s series of oil paintings from 2017 produce “symphonic arrangements of green, ranging from deepest phthalo to honeyed laurel. Dashes of pink, crimson, and yellow also crop up, to shimmering effect. The technical proficiency of her sumptuous compositions, based on forests around the artist’s Catskills home, parlays them into sites of ethereality.” (Darren Jones, Artforum). Recently, during the pandemic, the artist started exploring collage, resulting in bold cutouts, and consequently paintings, where the previously hinted pinks, yellows and crimsons become central alongside the blues and greens. Amy Talluto participates in The Upstate Art Weekend show at the rambling old manufacturing building in High Falls, NY. This art event was initiated by Todd Kelly, Alex Gingrow and Shanti Grumbine, who have studios in that building and have invited over 30 artists to show their work there from Aug 27-29, 11am-6pm.
Continue reading “Amy Talluto: Moments of Light in the Forest”