Artists on Coping: Rachel Klinghoffer

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


Detail of installation at The Skirt at Ortega y Gasset Projects, March 2020

By repurposing materials, making and remaking them into paintings and sculptures, Klinghoffer prompts a reimagining of uses for these relic-like objects. Articles reflect the artist’s personal connection to femininity, craft-making, Judaism, romance, pushing the definition of painting. Through time, the items become specimens, icons. They are poked, prodded, stained, sprayed, stroked, rubbed, dipped, then pulled, torn, cracked open and broken apart making up and becoming the new work. Rachel Klinghoffer lives and works in South Orange NJ. Recently she has exhibited at Morgan Lehman Gallery and The Skirt at Ortega y Gasset, with a review in The Brooklyn Rail.

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Artists on Coping: Eileen Hoffman

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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Hoffman in her studio working on an installation. Photo by Izzy Nova

Eileen Hoffman is a textile sculptor and installation artist whose use of non-traditional materials acts as a bridge between past traditions and contemporary approaches. Her art involves making the undervalued and unseen culture of women’s work visible. Her work has been featured in Family Matters: SDA International Exhibition in Print; The Gold Standard of Textile and Fiber Art, NYC; and Art From the Boros VII, NYC.

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Artists on Coping: Alison Lowry

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Alison Lowry

Alison Lowry, with handmade glass awards at the Business to Arts awards ceremony in Belfast

Alison Lowry is a glass artist living and working from her studio, ‘Schoolhouse Glass’ in Saintfield, Co. Down in Northern Ireland. In 2009 she graduated from Ulster University with an Honors degree in Art and Design. Since then she has won numerous awards including first place in the category, ‘Glass Art’ at the Royal Dublin Society in 2015 and 2009, the Silver Medal at the Royal Ulster Arts Club’s Annual Exhibition in 2010, the Warm Glass Prize in 2010 and 2011 and more recently the Bronze Award at Bullseye Glass’ exhibition for emerging artists, ‘Emerge’. Alison exhibits nationally and internationally, and her work is held in several public collections. Her current exhibition, ‘(A)Dressing our hidden truths’ is currently on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin

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Artists on Coping: Barbara Lubliner

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Barbara Lubliner, "Two Zips" 2019, paper relief with staples and zipper, 12 x 16 inches, photo courtesy of Paul Takeuchi

Two Zips, 2019, paper relief with staples, zipper, 12 x 16 inches. Photograph by Paul Takeuchi

New York artist Barbara Lubliner transforms traditional and nontraditional materials into thought-provoking expressions that are both iconic and quirky. She moves fluidly from performance art to works on paper to sculpture, both large and small. Solo exhibitions include Gibson Gallery Museum at SUNY Potsdam; Carter Burden Gallery, NYC; Drawing Rooms, Jersey City, NJ; and Pierro Gallery, South Orange, NJ. Recent group exhibitions include City Reliquary Museum, NYC; Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY; Edison Price Lighting Gallery, L.I.C., NY; and Ceres Gallery, NYC. Performance venues include the Brooklyn Museum and the Après Avant Garde Festival on the Staten Island Ferry.

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Artists on Coping: JoAnne McFarland

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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Selfie With Swiss Chard, 2020

JoAnne McFarland is an artist, poet, curator, and independent publisher. She is the Artistic Director of Artpoetica Project Space in Gowanus that exhibits work exploring the intersection of visual art and literature. She is the former Exhibitions Director of A.I.R. Gallery in DUMBO. She has exhibited her artwork nationally and internationally for over 30 years, and is the author of ten poetry books, chapbooks, and libretti. Her most recent curatorial project, co-curated with Sasha Chavchavadze, is SALLY, a multi-venue, muti-year exhibition that showcases lost histories of women artists and philosophers, and contemporary artists whose work exemplifies passionate inquiry.

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Rachel Owens – The Hypogean Tip at the Housatonic

Art Spiel in dialogue with Rachel Owens on her sculpture exhibition at The Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport CT

Rachel Owens, installation view

Rachel Owens seamlessly incorporates rigorous research of history and place in her visceral sculptural environments, offering us not only a feast for the eyes – in form, textures, and color – but also engaging us in a mysterious space where detritus like broken bottles, abandoned coal, and even the dust left from marble excavation transform into new forms. Altogether her sculptures prompt complex ideas about multi layered and urgent social issues of race, gender, history and capitalism among others. Rachel Owens elaborates for Art Spiel on her thought process behind this exhibition.

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Milcah Bassel – Poetic Documents

Milcah Bassel, governing vessels, 2019, artist book (variant edition of 5), closed: 4 x 3 ½ x 3”, open: 34 ¼” x 26 ½”

Milcah Bassel is an avid art learner whose curiosity leads to cross disciplines and techniques such as sculpture, performance, and bookmaking. She probes deep into her subjects and investigates her forms with rigor, but also with a playful approach. That playfulness is revealed throughout her diverse body of work, giving us a distinct flavor of her thought process and sensibility.

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“Now You’re Looking” – Akshita Gandhi at Pulse

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand in dialogue with Mumbai-based artist Akshita Gandhi

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Akshita Gandhi, Angel, 2019, Lightbox, 48_ x 32.5_Photograph courtesy D’Arte Mart(eKo-System Inc)

Miami Art Week is bigger than any other global fair as it attracts a wide range of audiences. Centered around Art Basel Miami, Miami Art Week is the catch-all term for the seven day art world bonanza in December packed densely with art fairs, public art, interventions, activations, pop-ups, parties – basically all forms of art shows – often sponsored by companies who capitalize on the opportunity to reach art world professionals, art lovers, celebrities, and trend-setters. You might already know this, great. What you might not have considered is what it feels like to be an artist within this bustling eco/nomy/logy.

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TRAPS! Ebecho Muslimova at Magenta Plains

Exhibition review by Torey Akers


Ebecho Muslimova, Fatebe Deep Frog Organza, 2019, oil and acrylic on cavas, 60” x 66”, courtesy of Magenta Plains

Human civilization has always maintained an uneasy relationship with female monstrosity—just watch the cavalcade of sirens, witches, harpies and hags that stalk the perimeters of every major mythology on earth, luring hapless men to their deaths. This hyper-visible, oft-storied, but deeply erasive marginalization has long plagued the non-normative woman; however, there’s a certain freedom in the fringes. Take Baubo, the Orphic goddess of chaos and mirth, whose paunchy, wizened appearance belied a frisky bawdiness that ancient Greeks adored. Ebecho Muslimova’s ‘Fatebe’ character, whom she has been drawing since 2011 and features vivaciously in her latest solo exhibition, TRAPS!, at Magenta Plains, New York, builds on Baubo’s cultural legacy with appropriately grotesque panache, taking a wide-eyed, manic approach to the tandem joys and pitfalls of embodiment.

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Isabelle Garbani – on Artifacts of Place

Place and Cultural Heritage at Stand4 Gallery

Isabelle Garbani curated the group show Artifacts of Place at Stand4 gallery in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, running through December 15th. The show features work by Joyce Dallal, Dalia Baassiri, Mary Tuma, Daiffa Dessine, Arghavan Khosravi, Reem Bassous, Armita Raafat, Helen Zughaib, and Ekram Alrowmeim- all women artists who are of Middle Eastern and North African descent and who are dealing in their art with related cultural or political issues. The curator shares with Art Spiel her ideas behind this group show and some information about the participating artists.

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