Backscatter: Light Studies and Everyday Alchemy at OVERLAP

Backscatter gallery view

Sparkling surfaces abound in Backscatter, OVERLAP’s quietly radiant summer show of works by Funlola Coker, Katherine Mitchell DiRico, Jesse Kaminsky, Joetta Maue, Leah Piepgras, and Esther Solondz, curated by Alicia Renadette. On a clear summer midmorning, sunshine falls across shimmering layers of glass, crystal, gold leaf, copper, bronze, salt, acrylic, and clear liquid. Materials catch and refract light. The overall effect is of a hushed brilliance that draws you in, inviting a closer look.

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Being There, with Weihui Lu

In conversation
Weihui Lu at Wave Hill, March 2025, photograph by Jan Dickey

Terra Keck and Jan Dickey caught up with artist Weihui Lu a couple of weeks after she completed a residency at Wave Hill in the Bronx. At the time, Weihui was reflecting on that experience while also preparing for her current solo show, when there is no longer a danger of frost, at Tempest Gallery in Ridgewood, Queens. An installation artist with roots in Chinese landscape painting, Weihui continues to explore impermanence, a delicate and sparing use of material, and humankind’s relationship to the natural environment. Her installation at Tempest draws its source material from an aging greenhouse she spent time contemplating during her residency at Wave Hill—understood as a physical embodiment of human systems of care, including their inevitable collapse and repair.

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Into the woods – Immi C. Storrs at The Century Association

Immi Storrs, Trees with Man and Birds

Immi C. Storrs is obsessed with depth: she manipulates it, refusing to render it as-is. Instead, her adventures in depth-perception range from steeply sloping forests—her favorite subject— to thickly layered glass light-box dioramas, and to truncated and oddly meshed animal forms in bronze. While the animals merge together into multi-legged seemingly mythological beasts, or emerge pseudo-two dimensionally from a bronze cube, it’s less about the creatures themselves—horses, sheep, and oxen, but more of a slow-down lugubrious space in which forms melt together and time becomes unpredictable.

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West Chelsea Artists Open Studios 2025

© 2025, West Chelsea Artists Open Studios

The West Chelsea Artists Open Studios presents its 16th annual artists open studios tour on Saturday & Sunday, May 10th and 11th, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event offers a look inside the art studios at the iconic building at 526 West 26th Street. Art Spiel conducted brief interviews with three artists who will participate in the event.

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OXH Gallery Setting the Stage for Women Artists in the Heart of  Tampa

In dialogue
Motherhood Mediated installation view, courtesy OXH Gallery

Odeta Xheka, an artist, curator, and mother, has been an avid advocate for women in the fine arts. Her latest endeavor is an ambitious and exciting one, as she opened OXH Gallery in the heart of Tampa’s Ybor City Historic District just a few months ago. I’m sitting down with Odeta to discuss her new gallery, her mission, exciting collaborations, and the current two-person show Time Shards, which will be on view through March 20th, 2025.

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Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in July 2024

HIGHLIGHTS
Wind Challenge III at Fleisher Art Memorial, partial installation view, Alexis Granwell (left) and Brynn Hurlstone (right)

There are many thought-provoking shows in Philadelphia this July. Beginning at Fleisher Art Memorial, three innovative Philadelphia sculptors combine materials in unexpected ways to reflect on intimacy, vulnerability, and natural phenomena. At the Fabric Workshop in center city, artist John Jarboe brings her cabaret aesthetic to create a stunning immersive experience titled Rose Garden following her life and gender journey. In Kensington, at Peep Projects Todd Stong’s delicate drawings and wall-sized multi-panel monotype reflect on the complexities of history, contemporary life, and what the artist terms queer cultural production.

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Transformation at Socrates Sculpture Park

In Dialogue
‘Desire Lines’ by Stefania Urist. Image by Alexa Hoyer. Courtesy of Socrates Sculpture Park.

Founded in 1986 by artists, activists, and community members, Socrates Sculpture Park transformed an abandoned landfill into a cultural cornerstone in Queens, New York. This dual-purpose venue serves both as a public park and an exhibition space for contemporary art, targeting early- and mid-career artists. Occupying five waterfront acres, Socrates provides a unique platform for artistic expression and public engagement, offering free access to a civic space amidst the urban environment.

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Nancy Bowen: Sometimes a Body is Not Just a Body at WCC Art Gallery

Featured Artist

Nancy Bowen with “Third Eye” and “Throat” from Chakra Series, 2009, mixed media on paper, photo by Lindsay Walt

What links Nancy Bowen’s work at Westchester Community College Art Gallery—from abstract to narrative work—is the presence of the female body in some form. “I will always be compelled to create work from a feminist point of view, work that needles or asks questions, and given our current political and social climate, that seems even more necessary than ever,” Bowen says. The show runs through April 12th, 2023.

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Deanna Sirlin: Borders of Light and Water at Palazzo Bembo

Featured Artist

Deanna Sirlin, Borders of Light and Water, 2022, C-print transparency on glass, 199.5 x 493 inches, Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy

In Borders of Light and Water at Palazzo Bembo in Venice, American artist Deanna Sirlin utilizes the architecture and translucency of the large-scale windows overlooking the Grand Canal, to create a luminous and ever-changing patches of bold color. The beauty of this installation allures you in and prompts you to gaze out at the flickering water of the iconic canal below, raising awareness to what is at stake with rising water and changing climate. This installation is part of the Venice 2022 Art Biennial organized by the non-profit organization European Cultural Center, running from April 23, 2022 through November 27th, 2022.

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Heidi Norton – The Edges of Everything at Wave Hill

Featured Artist

Heidi Norton and Eileen Jeng Lynch, curator.

Heidi Norton’s site-specific installation at Wave Hill examines the intricate links between humans and the natural world. Inspired by Wave Hill’s grounds and the Sun Porch’s architecture. Activated by sunlight, Norton’s installation is made of sculptures and large, vibrant photographic scrolls draping from the ceiling and undulating through the space. Norton says that the configuration of scrolls encompasses landscapes of present and past, incorporating recent photos that the artist took of the gardens, as well as archival images. Norton’s work draws on her rural upbringing by New Age homesteaders. She upcycles discarded plant clippings from Wave Hill’s gardens, repurposes compost and deconstructs past work, incorporating it into new pieces—speaking to sustainability, contemplating how memories are embedded in materials and landscapes, as well as how a sense of place is recorded through time and changes in the land. Heidi Norton with her site specific installation, The Edges of Everything at Wave Hill, July 16th – August 28th, 2022. Meet the Artist recording can be found here

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