Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake

A picture containing indoor, art, wall, museum

Description automatically generated
Installation view, Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake, photo courtesy of Etty Yaniv

Collected Things, Jim Condron’s terrific solo exhibition at Art Cake in Brooklyn prompts us to question our relationship with the objects we interact with—objects that we use, discard, and transform through memory and art process. At the heart of this exhibition are Condron’s recent series of sculptures, which brings together everyday objects and ephemeral materials he has collected from artists, writers, and thinkers who participated in the project—these individuals include personal acquaintances like Graham Nickson, Lucy Sante, Rebecca Hoffberger, Carl E. Hazlewood and Cordy Ryman. Among them is the pioneering painter Grace Hartigan, who was Condron’s teacher and for whom he also worked as a graduate assistant in 2004, four years before her death. This body of work highlights how Condron’s process of collecting, editing, and adding other materials, activates the lineage and history of everyday objects, transforming them into playful art objects with renewed vitality and psychological presence. 

Continue reading “Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake”

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.

Continue reading “Dana Yoeli: Staging Memorials”

Patricia Miranda + Christopher Kaczmarek: Entering a Material Discourse

In Conversation


PM working on Kaczmarek’s Labyrinth project

Patricia Miranda and Christopher Kaczmarek are artists and partners living and working in Washington Heights, New York City. Art Spiel prompts served as a catalyst for a dynamic conversation between them which they recorded as a free-flowing dialogue. Here is a short excerpt of what became a much longer free-ranging conversation about art, education, and life as an artist couple.

Continue reading “Patricia Miranda + Christopher Kaczmarek: Entering a Material Discourse”

Clive Knights: Fragmentary Intimations of Shared Meaning


Clive Knights in his studio, Portland, Oregon, 2021, photo courtesy of the artist

Clive Knights practices architecture and art, in particular mixed media and monotype printmaking. He holds professional architectural design undergraduate and graduate degrees from Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK, and a Master of Philosophy in Architectural History and Theory from Cambridge University. Clive has taught architecture since 1984 and was a full-time lecturer at Sheffield University for six years before moving to Portland State University in 1995 where he currently resides as a professor and director of the PSU School of Architecture. His primary areas of interest include the cultural meanings of architectural representation understood through the phenomenology of the human body, with particular reference to the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty; the revelatory capacity of metaphor in poetic work; and speculations in architectural design studio pedagogy. Publications include many journal articles and book chapters on the theory, history and pedagogy of architecture. 

Continue reading “Clive Knights: Fragmentary Intimations of Shared Meaning”

Nandini Bagla Chirimar: Becoming Who We Are


Nandini Bagla Chirimar, in her studio

Nandini Bagla Chirimar’s richly layered drawings, prints, paintings and installations draw on her daily life as a mother, daughter, homemaker and artist living in New York. She grew up in Jaipur, India and came to the USA to complete her undergraduate art education at Cornell University. Here, she found herself working with many of the elements she had encountered in her daily life growing up in India — homes she lived in, her relationships, events, color, block prints, miniature and folk paintings.

Continue reading “Nandini Bagla Chirimar: Becoming Who We Are”

Brandon Graving: Honing Viscosity and Air Currents


Brandon Graving, Mother: Earth 2 detail, 2021, embossed monoprint, 41”x 108”, photo by artist

Brandon Graving aims to transfer and translate a sense of wonder in her artworks. She describes her process of making as exploring the connectedness of all things with ongoing “delight, immediacy and a sense of virginal untamed discovery with a nod towards Humbolt.” Some of her sculptural works are kinetic and turn, revealing elaborate intricacy and shadow play, while other works, including monoprints with handmade inks and semiprecious stones, alter dramatically in different light. She does not intend to depict nature but rather hone ideas and objects into simplified essential forms, some with elaborate treatment. Through her extensive attention to detail, she reflects on how the micro and macro within the work suggest a system that is both diverse and similar, how these dualities interrelate or even duplicate in nature.      

Continue reading “Brandon Graving: Honing Viscosity and Air Currents”

Pablo Garcia Lopez – Fibrous Neuroplasticity


Brainvolution 1, natural silk, PLA filament (3D printing) and fabric. Shadow Box (plexiglass covered) 48x29x7 inches, 2019

The Spanish born, New York based artist Pablo Garcia Lopez makes mixed media reliefs and sculptures which evoke hybrid forms resonating with Baroque imagery, biological forms, and at times Victorian delicate ornaments. His Spanish heritage, coupled with his background in biochemistry and Neuroscience largely inform his visual vocabulary and themes.

Continue reading “Pablo Garcia Lopez – Fibrous Neuroplasticity”

Maria de Los Angeles in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center

In Dialogue with Maria de Los Angeles

pasted-image.jpeg

Artist in her Studio. Photo by Ryan Bonilla 2019 . Photo by Ryan Bonilla 2019

Maria de Los Angeles says she feels very blessed to be included in the Domestic Brutes exhibition at the Pelham Art Center. A DACA recipient, she grew up undocumented and currently she is working on getting her citizenship, looking forward to contributing by voting for the first time. “Since I arrived to this country 20 years ago, I have looked forward to Voting. I love this county and consider it my home and can’t wait to do my part by helping elect new people. I truly believe we can build a better future together,” she says.

Continue reading “Maria de Los Angeles in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center”

Aisha Tandiwe Bell in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center

In Dialogue with Aisha Tandiwe Bell

Mac OS:Users:aisha:Desktop:self portrait in mask 2020.JPEG

Aisha Tandiwe Bell is interested in the many manifestations of the traps of race, sex, and class. She makes drawings, paintings, ceramic sculptures, installations, and performance work that examine the metaphors and the allegory that this trap manifests. In her newest work Aisha Tandiwe Bell’s is looking at how one might negotiate traps, utilizing shape shifting, and code-switching as well as looking at identifying markers that both separate and unify. She says, “I am a Black African American Jamaican Woman Artist Wife and Mother. These are all categories that I consistently juggle and negotiate in a white male dominated space.” Aisha Tandiwe Bell is participating in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center.

Continue reading “Aisha Tandiwe Bell in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center”

Manju Shandler in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center

In Dialogue with Manju Shandler


Manju Shandler working on Persistent Mothers in her studio in Brooklyn, NY 2020. Photo Stephen Estrin.

Manju Shandler creates symbolic art that speaks to current events. Building upon established storylines from myth, religion, and history, her mixed media artworks create richly layered narratives that reflect on our dense and complicated times. Shandler believes people are natural storytellers that make sense of the world through by mining both personal experience and collective memories that have been passed down. Her work dips into this well. Training as a theatre designer helps her to envision installations and her background as a puppet builder informs how she approaches building objects. Identifying as a mother seeps into everything she does.

Continue reading “Manju Shandler in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center”