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Shari Urquhart: Selections from the Fuzzy Museum and other warm worlds


Suspended Judgement, 1983, Persian wool, satin, rattail, metallic, mohair, angora fibers, 78 x 107 inches

Shari Urquhart produced visual narratives from candy-like yarns that seem to glow. Each piece presents sensual fields that we can easily get lost in, absorbing each story as it slowly unfurls. The colorful works are made from fibers of wools, rayons, angoras, mohairs, metallics, fake fur, plastic and even Urquhart’s own dog’s hair. Each of her tapestries exhibits a brevity of controlled execution, awareness of composition that is meticulously constructed, making each piece monumental.

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Mary Ann Lomonaco: With Every Fiber at Pelham Art Center


The artist and Mop with Delicas

Mary Ann Lomonaco began her artistic life as a papermaker after majoring in
Fiber art at Parsons School of Design . Ultimately this led to exploring the kitchen mop as a cellulose fiber she could use when making pulp. One day she started noticing the mophead itself as a potential sculptural element on its own. This insight subsequently led her to explore other recycled materials. Mary Ann Lomonaco recently completed commissions for Delta Airlines for their Executive Lounges in San Francisco, London, JFK, Seattle and Atlanta as well as a large piece for their Atlanta Headquarters. Her installation at the Westchester County Airport is comprised of 55 multiple pieces. Her work is also in the collections of the Neuberger Museum, Neutrogena, AT&T, PepsiCo and the World Bank Library among others.

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Amy Butowicz: Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space

In Dialogue with Eric Fallen, Founder and Executive Director

A room full of furniture

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Duet, 2020 76.5”h x 84”w x 53”d Canvas, acrylic paint, wood, furniture parts, wheels, and hinges

Amy Butowicz solo show Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space features a collection of domestically scaled sculptures staged as a group of characters which are readily associated with notions of sensuality, ornamentation, and haute couture. Bulging cushion-like forms, meticulously hand-stitched over wooden structures, display intricate patterns and rich material suggestive of bedding, vanities, corsets and human anatomy. Bold and tender simultaneously, these anthropomorphic forms defy the disdain and fear that are frequently imposed upon feminine artforms, spaces, and bodies. Eric Fallen, founder and executive director of the Red Hook based Peninsula Art Space elaborates on Amy Butowicz’s exhibition and on his art venue.

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Michele Brody – Embodying Daily Flux


Michele Brody, working in home studio in The Bronx on handmade paper body sculpture for Annual Earth Celebrations Eco Pageant, paper made from recycled linen table cloths and caning, 2020.
Photo by Olivier Marcaud

A fourth generation NY builder, artist Michele Brody loves working with materials. She recalls how her father groomed her early on to become an architect so that she could continue the family tradition of builders and land developers. Although she excelled in the study of Architecture, she was not attracted to pursue it as career. ” I prefer building with my own hands,” she says. So in 1994, instead of getting a degree in Architecture, she graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from the Fiber and Material Studies Department.

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In My Room – Susan Carr at LABspace

A Photo story


Installation view of In My Room

Upon entering In My Room, Susan Carr’s solo show at LABspace in Hillsdale, NY, my senses are overloaded in the best way by the colorful and tactile work. The gallery is teeming with an impressive amount of work that fills the walls, floor, and pedestals. As I walk around, I am greeted with the fond familiar smell of fresh oil paint— thick, bold, and often mixed on the surface. This application is important to the overall sensation of Carr’s work. It makes me grasp the immediacy and the confidence that are necessary to make the work. Squeezing paint directly from the tube onto the canvas requires a commitment from the artist and Carr dives in headfirst to create paintings of zombies, clowns, self-portraits, and eyeballs.

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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.

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Artists on Coping: Carmen Paulino

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

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Photo credit: Michael Paulino 

Carmen Paulino is a visual artist who works on providing community art programming in hospitals, community centers, and senior centers around New York City. Raised in the El Barrio section of New York City, her love for the arts was inspired by the murals in her diverse neighborhood, and her father who performed as a musician in several traditional salsa bands. As a young child, she watched her mother and grandmother knit, crochet, and sew unique traditional quilts and patterns. These experiences inspired her to develop her own techniques and produce her own mixed media works that incorporate her own life experiences, visuals from her immediate surroundings, and the inspiration that comes from living in a diverse melting pot of cultures. Paulino works at the Creative Center of University Settlement House, and in 2019 was artist-in-residence at El Barrio’s Art Space PS 109.

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Artists on Coping: Suzan Shutan

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

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FLOW, 2016, Tar paper, handmade dyed paper, industrial glue, plexi rods, steel wire, KANEKO Org, NE, photo courtesy of KANEKO

Suzan Shutan is a sculptor and installation artist who creates room sized environments and smaller hybrid objects that explore the architecture of nature and organic growth. Paper and fiber are her main materials, forming patterns through repetition. Her work represents cellular structures, pathogens and toxins. She has been in solo and group shows in Germany, France, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Argentina, Australia, Canada and nationally at the Aldrich Museum, KANEKO and Bank of America. Her work is in private and public collections, featured in Smithsonian and Sculpture Magazines and NY Times. ODETTA Gallery exhibits her work. She lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. 

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Christina Massey’s USPS Art Project

Hema Bharadwwaj and Eileen Ferara, USPS Art Project Collaboration

When the lockdown began in mid-late March in New York City, artist Christina Massey felt it was too soon for her to address the pandemic in her own artwork. While desperately trying to process the disorienting news shifting by the hour, she was noticing an uptick in posts calling for people to save the Postal Service by buying stamps. The idea for the USPS Art Project came to her with immediate clarity. An artist starts making an artwork and mails it to a partner to complete and vice versa.

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Artists on Coping: Elin Noble

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


Working in the studio, March 2020. Photo by Lasse Antonsen

Elin Noble is a nationally and internationally known textile artist and dyer, living in New Bedford Massachusetts. She has spent more than 30 years investigating traditional and contemporary dye techniques, focusing in particular on Japanese itajime shibori (clamp-dye resist). She has lectured and conducted workshops in North America and internationally, most recently in the Netherlands, Hungary, and Japan. Elin has been included in numerous group exhibitions and has had one-person exhibitions at the Schweinfurth Art Center, New York; New Bedford Art Museum, Massachusetts; The Textile Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Visions Art Museum, California; and the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum, Washington.

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