#drawing – Page 2

April 14, 2025April 14, 2025, by Art Spiel

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, by Art Spiel

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, by Caitlin Reid

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.

February 20, 2025March 3, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

Robert Yarber- Regard and Abandon at Nicodim Gallery

Robert Yarber, *Error’s Conquest*, 1986, acrylic on canvas, 71 by 130 inches. Photo courtesy of Nicodim Gallery

Neon nights are brought to life within Robert Yarber’s paintings. The large-scale paintings in Nicodim Gallery’s survey of his works bring viewers along for a wild ride. Whether it’s pulling us into a dark hotel room, lit solely by the blue light of a droning, static television set, or throwing us outside, into the life of the party, and possibly, over the balcony and into the air- we are left in suspense of what comes next. It’s as if we were sitting in a dark movie theater, watching someone’s life story unfold.

February 5, 2025February 5, 2025, by john ros

Emergent Strategies: In Defense of Weeds at Stand4 Gallery

hot air

Kariann Fuqua, *Emergent Strategies: In Defense of Weeds*, 2025. installation shot: front gallery. Image credit, Brad Farwell

In her latest exhibition, Emergent Strategies: In Defense of Weeds, Kariann Fuqua invites viewers to reconsider their relationship with the natural world—specifically the wild plants we so often dismiss as nuisances. Through a collection of drawings, photographs and found objects gathered from her acre of land in Mississippi, Fuqua examines the ecological and cultural narratives tied to “weeds,” challenging the capitalist obsession with control that underpins the American lawn.

January 6, 2025January 7, 2025, by Melissa Stern

Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson: Character Studies, Curator: Character Studies at Fort Gansvoort

A framed piece of art Description automatically generated — Dad’s Journey. 2003. Pen, ink, colored pencil, fabric, thread, buttons, on paper. 15 x 11

“She was weird,” said the Columbus Museum of Art curator affectionately of artist Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson at the press preview celebrating the late artist’s work. She went on to explain that Robinson made her own art supplies, lived an unconventional and rich life, making art in many mediums and acted as an informal archivist and raconteur of her community. “Weird,” in this context is a high compliment. Fort Gansevoort, an eccentric gallery in New York’s Meatpacking District announced its representation of Robinson’s estate (1940-2015) in collaboration with the Columbus Museum, to which Robinson bequeathed her work and archives. It’s a perfect match between artist and gallery.

December 16, 2024December 15, 2024, by Nicole Michaud

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in December 2024

HIGHLIGHTS

“Shared Vision: Portraits from The CCH Pounder-Koné Collection at The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP). Photo courtesy of The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP)

December is a gift of a month for exhibitions in Philadelphia. Those currently on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, African American Museum of Philadelphia, and Fleisher/Ollman Gallery are not to be missed. From macro scale celebrations to quiet personal yearnings in intimate moments, the works in these exhibitions explore the fullness and complexity of artists within and alongside Black contemporary life.

December 9, 2024December 8, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Mindscape: Patterns of Identity at L’Space

A couple of men in a room

Description automatically generated — Moran Kliger, Installation

In the group show Mindscape: Patterns of Identity at L’Space, people, animals, and places shift and juxtapose, coming together like pieces of a map—one that charts the shared inner terrain of memory, trauma, and identity. Curated by Noa Rabinovich Lalo and Carolina Werebe, with L’Space founder Lily Almog, the show, as Almog puts it, draws on “a shared Israeli heritage and a deep connection to the contemporary art scene in Israel, a country with a rich cultural history and traditions amidst ongoing uncertainty.” And it’s that sense of uncertainty that pulls everything together—voids and absences linger in the air. Even when the work seems rooted in specific places, the setting remains layered and elusive, offering more questions than answers. This is evident in Netta Lieber Sheffer’s sweeping charcoal drawing installation of Sigmund Freud’s Vienna clinic, where he lived and worked for 47 years before fleeing the Nazis in 1938.

October 16, 2024October 16, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Bascha Mon’s Life and Journey of Dreaming at Tappeto Volante

In Dialogue

A Celebratory Retrospective of an Artist’s Life and Journey of Dreaming, Perseverance, Activism, & Unconscious Expression.”

The retrospective of Bascha Mon’s paintings at Tappeto Volante offers a focused look at an artist whose career has been shaped by both creative achievements and personal struggles. Mon first gained recognition in the 1970s and 80s, with numerous exhibitions and critical acclaim. However, her trajectory was interrupted by health challenges that led to a long period of seclusion. During this time, she continued to work from her basement studio in New Jersey, expanding her creative vocabulary across various mediums while remaining largely out of the public eye. In recent years, Mon turned to digital platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Paola Gallio, the exhibition curator and gallery co-founder, describes this phase as “dissolving the physical isolation that had once defined her situation.” These platforms allowed Mon to reconnect with the art community and sustain an active, visible presence. Gallio emphasizes that “Mon’s modest basement studio became a metaphor for boundless creative space,” where the constraints of physical isolation were replaced by the limitless possibilities of virtual engagement. For deeper insights into the retrospective, Gallio’s interview with Art Spiel offers further reflections on Mon’s artistic journey and the significance of this exhibition.

October 14, 2024December 7, 2024, by A.E. Chapman

A Leg to Stand On—Melissa Stern at DIMIN

*Melissa Stern: A Leg to Stand On*, installation view

In Melissa Stern: A Leg to Stand On, the domestic meets the fantastic in the aptly named The Living Room, the front room exhibition space at DIMIN complete with a cozy two-seater sofa. Featuring her drawings and sculptures, Stern’s trademark humor and sense of play persists while the underlying thread of darkness that pervades her oeuvre feels especially heightened in this presentation. Deeply shaken by a fall during a winter walk in 2021, the artist’s works in the exhibition explore the precarious and fragile construction of the human body. Cobbling together disparate elements such as vintage shoes, wooden branches, scrap pieces of bannister railings, a doll’s lost arm, linoleum, wallpaper, resin, clay, paint cans, bolts, and screws, Stern balances absurdity with familiarity.