#drawing – Art Spiel

April 14, 2025April 14, 2025

DUMBO Open Studios 2025 with Rodney Ewing

Studies for “*The Architecture of Memory and Loss”* 2024-2025, Drawings: Ink and Colored Pencil on Paper.

On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door. Rodney Ewing has been in DUMBO since 2022. His studio is at 20 Jay Street, #M09.

March 28, 2025March 26, 2025

New York Studio School Marathons

Transformative Two-Week Art Immersives

“You should do it,” said a friend, and on that speculative basis, I showed up on West 8th Street, sculpting apron in hand, butterflies in stomach. I’d made a small sitting man before, but this was my first try at a life-size figure. […]By lunch break, sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park among chess players and musicians, I was already feeling like a secret sculptor. – Giles Goodhead, Summer 2024 NYSS Sculpture Marathon with Brandt Junceau

March 27, 2025March 25, 2025

1000 Days of Drawing: A Conversation with Joshua Drayzen

In Dialogue

Installation shot of *Spirit Wave*, a solo exhibition of drawings at Massey Klein

I met with Joshua Drayzen at Massey Klein shortly after the opening of his solo exhibition, Spirit Wave. A Brooklyn-based artist, Drayzen recently surpassed 1,000 consecutive days of drawing. I wanted to learn more about the enigmatic images and the devotional practice behind them. What I discovered, however, was that this was more than just a habit—it’s a ritual that shapes and invigorates his entire creative practice.

December 6, 2024December 7, 2024

Shiva Ahmadi – Tangle at Shoshana Wayne

First thing that pulled me into Shiva Ahmadi’s Tangle exhibition were the pressure cookers. It took me a moment to recognize them: from a distance, they appeared as intricate decorative objects and archaeological relics simultaneously. While the vintage pressure cookers evoked associations of domestic warmth and memories of my grandma’s kitchen, their surfaces etched with Arabic calligraphy and floral ornamentation recall artifacts from a Persian or Arabic cultural heritage museum. The patience and meticulous craft of such engraving parallels the labor of generations of women who spent countless hours in the kitchen crafting their family’s meals.

May 6, 2024December 7, 2024

Jeanne Ciravolo – the resistance in making do

In Dialogue

A person standing in front of a wall with paintings

Description automatically generated — Residency at the Anderson Center, 2019, Red Wing, MN

In her mixed-media work, Jeanne Ciravolo integrates collage, print, and stitching, materializing the stories of her female relatives—their stories of loss and hope. The female figures often reference representation of women in art history, such as medieval carvings or paintings from the Renaissance. The figure imagery is based on Ciravolo’s sketches, figure drawings, photos from newspapers and magazines, or photos she took.

January 19, 2024January 18, 2024

Ceramics+ Drawing Into Sculpture at LIC

photo story

A colorful paper ball with barbed wire

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — Sok Song,- SoNoBe: Legermain Barbed and Coiled. Clay, paper, plastic, 16”x16”x16”.2023, Me, Mom, and the War on Identity. Acrylic, screen print, collage on paper, 36”x28” 2023 ( on wall)

The Long Island City Artists, an art non-profit known as LIC-A, is currently presenting a bold exhibition that brings together artists who work simultaneously in two media not always thought of as compatible. Curator Matt Nolen has gathered a fascinating group of artists from the NYC metropolitan area who work in both clay and drawing–one influencing and bouncing off the other. The synthesis is a fascinating and genre-bending exhibition.

April 10, 2023March 18, 2023

Dana Yoeli: Staging Memorials

Dana Yoeli in her Tel Aviv studio, 2022, photo by Roni Cnaani

In her installations, sculptures, and drawings, the Tel Aviv based artist, Dana Yoeli, digs into collective and biographical memories, to create multi-layered environments which prompt us to discover a rich array of interconnected references—from theater and cinema to history, place, and architecture. In Yoeli’s visual universe the “I”, “we”, and “they” entangle to form a new entity, offering us complex shifting perspectives.

March 22, 2023March 21, 2023

Gabriela Vainsencher: Epic, Heroic, Ordinary at Asya Geisberg

featured artist

Gabriela Vainsencher with “Epic, Heroic, Ordinary” at Asya Geisberg gallery, March 2023

In her solo exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery Gabriela Vainsencher exhibits wall hanging porcelain reliefs, referencing the nuts and bolts of motherhood entangled in layers of epic mythological context—Medusa reveals a worried woman with a frying pan and a baby’s pacifier as weapons at hand. The show runs through April 8^th, 2023.

March 20, 2023February 13, 2023

David Dempewolf: Between Optics and Daydreams

David Dempewolf, imago 02 (bird’s eye self portrait), 2013 aqueous media and wax pencil on paper, 10” X 14”, courtesy of artist

Most artists’ studios give us a glimpse into their thought and work process but wandering through David Dempewolf’s studio gives more than a glimpse. It is an experience of entering a wonderous world— a hidden niche reveals a station for experimental animation, a corner serves as a station for wood printmaking, a quaint staircase to a small attic leads to imaginative series of drawings, and a “peephole” in a wall further guides our gaze below, to Marginal Utility, the non-for-profit gallery space he runs with his partner and spouse Yuka Yokoyam. It feels like entering a Borgeisan world where the artist’s thoughts and the endless possibilities of “cataloging” entangle and materialize into a new entity in a tangible space.

December 21, 2022December 22, 2022

An Interview with Chicago Artist Vito Desalvo

Album cover- Duets For Confused Couples. 12 x 12. Colored pencil. 2022

By opening night the installation of Vito Desalvo’s rare public showing of his drawings was completed and the exhibition opened without a hitch. It will be showing, through December 31 at Greenkill Gallery in Kingston, NY. With the help of Mariah Karson, we were able to present his work in a manner that he found acceptable. My main task other than that was convincing him to attend the opening. After a great deal of bargaining, Vito not only showed up but was also surprisingly charitable in his conversations with guests. No one hurt, no foul. In the weeks following the opening, I was asked to interview Vito about his state of mind and thoughts about his work. Last Monday night after considerable liquid consumption, he responded to my inquiries. Our housemate Leo took the dogs—Tina, Louise, and Jack— out for an extended walk so we wouldn’t be distracted. Here are some excerpts of our chat, flaws and all.