beeswax – Art Spiel

December 2, 2024December 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Louise P. Sloane: Optically charged text-ures

From an early age, Louise P. Sloane has been compelled by an intense fascination with how color and texture influence mood. “I was one of those art nerd kids who went nuts each time there was a new color crayon from Crayola!” she recalls, describing a childhood shaped by a relentless curiosity about different mediums and textures. Making art quickly became the dominant force in her life, guiding her on a creative journey that has spanned over fifty years.

July 28, 2024December 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Spiritual World at RAINRAIN

Photo story

Installation view, photo courtesy of the gallery

Spiritual World, the title of the current group show at RAINRAIN, references Alfred Stieglitz’s Spiritual America, a 1923 photograph of a harnessed, castrated horse. The powerless restrained stallion—a traditional American symbol of unstoppable prowess—symbolized for Stieglitz the loss of spirituality in his contemporary American culture. The organizer of Spiritual World, Theodor Nymark, a Copenhagen-based artist who also shows work in it, brought together seven artists from Denmark, Korea, and the USA to explore how spirituality can exist today outside conservative religious ideals and ultra-liberal new-age paganism. In a text for the show, Nymark specifies further how he sees spirituality—”like a multifaceted metaphor, many-sided, a prism with no central outpost, only imagination. Not just a lake, a mirror. Not just a car, a vehicle.” These notions reflect the overall premise of this show.

May 22, 2024May 22, 2024, by Art Spiel

A Tribute to Friendship at the Reinstitute

Photo Story

Through their group show at Re Institute, Julia Kunin, Barbara Zucker, Meg Lipke, Catherine Hall, and Joanne Howard reflect on how a supportive community and friendship nourish the often solitary act of creating art. Their lives have intersected over many years, and their approach to art cross-pollinates on multiple levels.

November 7, 2023November 4, 2023, by Matt Moment

The Sublimity of Simplicity in Dai Ban’s Sculptures

On view at Carrie Haddad Gallery through November 26

Artist Profile

A person in a striped shirt

Description automatically generated — The Artist in his Studio, Great Barrington, MA. Image Credit: Matt Moment

When Dai Ban first traveled from his native Japan to the United States, he was struck by the nonchalant vibrance of American street art. The year was 1985, and although the golden age of graffiti had come and gone, its ethos had indelibly permeated the fine art world. Imagery that had been considered lowbrow just ten years prior became astronomically salable, so long as it decorated a canvas and not a subway car. Ban was bemused by the transformative power of gallery spaces. “Anything you show at the gallery looks like some kind of art,” he observed.

July 18, 2023July 17, 2023, by Matt Moment

Time as Space: Alaina Enslen in The Summer Show at Carrie Haddad Gallery

Artist Profile

A person using a drill to drill a picture

Description automatically generated — Alaina Enslen in her studio in Cornwall-on-Hudson. Image Credit: Matt Moment

Around six in the morning, Alaina Enslen scales the steps of her Hudson Valley home to the attic where she works. Skylights invite brightness into the whitewashed studio. A hotplate rests upon a wax-spattered tabletop; she turns it on, waiting until it reaches about 170°F. After five minutes, the surface is finally hot enough to melt pigmented beeswax, an integral ingredient in her paintings. She collages in an 11-inch by 14-inch sketchbook, teasing out new ideas with pieces of fabric and leftover monotypes. “I set no expectations for the work,” the artist insists. “It’s all about experiment and play.”

August 4, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Heidi Norton – The Edges of Everything at Wave Hill

Featured Artist

Heidi Norton and Eileen Jeng Lynch, curator.

Heidi Norton’s site-specific installation at Wave Hill examines the intricate links between humans and the natural world. Inspired by Wave Hill’s grounds and the Sun Porch’s architecture. Activated by sunlight, Norton’s installation is made of sculptures and large, vibrant photographic scrolls draping from the ceiling and undulating through the space. Norton says that the configuration of scrolls encompasses landscapes of present and past, incorporating recent photos that the artist took of the gardens, as well as archival images. Norton’s work draws on her rural upbringing by New Age homesteaders. She upcycles discarded plant clippings from Wave Hill’s gardens, repurposes compost and deconstructs past work, incorporating it into new pieces—speaking to sustainability, contemplating how memories are embedded in materials and landscapes, as well as how a sense of place is recorded through time and changes in the land. Heidi Norton with her site specific installation, The Edges of Everything at Wave Hill, July 16th – August 28th, 2022. Meet the Artist recording can be found here.

March 15, 2019March 15, 2019, by Sharilyn Neidhardt

Ethereal Anaesthetic

Joanne Ungar at Front Room Gallery

All Photos by Sharilyn Neidhardt

Joanne Ungar at Front Room, partial installation view

Pain produces sharp, bright sensations or sometimes ripping agony. It’s often intensely specific. The substances that bring us relief often do so by blurring the hard angles of our pain, allowing us to focus elsewhere. Some substances can leave us in a disconnected fog, far away from the source of discomfort. Others mute and muffle the pain, giving the relieved a sense of floating in a cushioned world. Calibrating effective pain relief can be a struggle for balance between an alert connection to the present and a silencing of uncomfortable sensation. Continue reading “Ethereal Anaesthetic”