Notice: Function WP_Object_Cache::add was called incorrectly. Cache key must not be an empty string. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.1.0.) in /www/artspiel_344/public/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131

Artists on Coping: Deanna Lee

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

Deanna_Portrait.jpg

Deanna Lee was born in Putnam County, New York, to parents from China and Taiwan, and raised in suburban Boston. She grew up spending time in her mother’s biology lab and taking classical music lessons on several instruments for 14 years. Comprising drawings, paintings, site-specific installations, and public artworks, her art interprets everyday traces of transformation in natural systems and the built environment. Numerous venues have shown her work, including Robert Henry Contemporary, Wave Hill, the Drawing Center, and the New York Hall of Science. Among her honors are awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Asia Society, National Academy, Millay Colony, and Saltonstall Foundation. In addition to her visual art practice, Lee is a member of the Balinese ensemble, Gamelan Dharma Swara.

Continue reading “Artists on Coping: Deanna Lee”

Artists on Coping: Diane Englander

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


Gatherings I (2019), 21 x 24 x 2 inches, mixed media

With color, composition, line, texture, Diane Englander is aiming for a place between discord and tranquility, a zone with a charged harmony that energizes as it also provides refuge. Her inspiration to work on a specific piece comes from curiosity about the materials. She’s always thinking (though not necessarily in a conscious way), What would happen if I did this? What would this other thing do? But always bending back to the goal of creating a place of calm energized by tension.

Continue reading “Artists on Coping: Diane Englander”

Artists on Coping: Jennifer Coates

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


Tabletop studio, Poyntelle, PA

Jennifer Coates is a painter living and working in New York City and Poyntelle, PA. She is a recent recipient of the Sharpe Walentas Studio (2018-2019) and was a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy (Fall 2019). Recent solo exhibitions include Toxic Halo (High Noon Gallery) and Correspondences and All U Can Eat (Freight & Volume Gallery). Her work has been written about in the Brooklyn Rail, Bomb Magazine, Art Critical, Hyperallergic, the Huffington Post, Smithsonian Journeys and Art News.

Continue reading “Artists on Coping: Jennifer Coates”

Artists on Coping: Pauline Galiana

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


Working space view with Tears of Fire, drawing series in progress. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Pauline Galiana’s work, from collages to paintings, ephemeral installations to small sculptures, addresses the broad themes of deconstruction versus reconstruction, mixing intuitive states of mind with free hand, formal associations, and meditative processes with rigorous grids. Galiana was born in Algeria and grew up in France.  She received her MFA at ESAG, Paris. Her work is included in the collections of UBS, New York University, the National Museum of Romanian Literature, where she won the 2018 Bibliophile Object-Book Biennale award, and private collections in New York, Washington, Houston, Paris, Riyadh, London, and Sydney. She lives and works in New York City.

Continue reading “Artists on Coping: Pauline Galiana”

Artists on Coping: Alexandra (Alexi) Rutsch Brock

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

Macintosh HD:Users:MainMini:Desktop:Pub Pic 1100 dpi Alexandra Rutsch Brock.jpg

Photo credit – Patricia Fabricant

Alexandra Rutsch Brock has exhibited in solo and group shows most recently at The Keck School at USC, CA, The Painting Center, NY, Village West Gallery, NJ and Misericordia University, PA. Her work has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine SV Vol44. Her recent co-curations include “HyperAccumulators” with Elizabeth Saperstein at Pelham Art Center, NY and “Among Friends” project with artists Patricia Fabricant and Beth Dary at the Clemente Center, NYC. She has been teaching art at New Rochelle High School since 1991, where she started the Visiting Artists Program with Scott Seaboldt, most recently hosting Susan Luss.

Continue reading “Artists on Coping: Alexandra (Alexi) Rutsch Brock”

Denise Sfraga: Constructing and Disclosing

:cARtSpiel:Art Spiel opener.jpg
(left) Malignant 40” x 32” flashe, pastel on paper 2019, (middle) Gone (series of 9) 8” x 6” each colored pencil on paper 2018, (right) New Mourn 40” x 32” flashe, pastel on paper 2018

The NYC based artist Denise Sfraga intersects in her work photography, drawing, and painting. The evolving processes, history, and aesthetics of photography altogether inform Denise Sfraga‘s thought process and practice. This results in an abstracted biomorphic imagery resonating with botany and other organic life forms. At first glance her well defined colorful shapes appear as beautiful abstractions but as you spend more time with them, you may realize that their beauty is a camouflage for darker, mysterious and disorienting undercurrents. Denise Sfraga first elaborates for Art Spiel how her way of thinking came about and then takes us through different series of work to reflect on her process in depth.

Continue reading “Denise Sfraga: Constructing and Disclosing”

In the Precipice – Karen Margolis at Foley

Karen Margolis, Separation Anxiety 2019, 24×36, Watercolor, gouache, thread, map fragments on Abaca

Karen Margolis’s intricate wall pieces and sculptures featured in her current solo show In the Precipice at Foley resemble topographic mindscapes or cosmic maps. The sum of her dense cell-like circular shapes in some works create a sense of condensing inward, and in others exploding outward. Close up it is like taking a journey through a complex network of neurons, galaxies or emotional states of mind. It is enjoyable to identify recognizable fragments such as remnants of old maps with readable places, trace the multiple burnt holes and biomorphic shapes created with a soldering iron, focus on the hypnotizing miniscule dots of paint on circular clusters painted with watercolor or gouache, and then follow a complex net of crisscrossing dark linear threads which create an engaging tension with the curvy forms.

Continue reading “In the Precipice – Karen Margolis at Foley”

Americana Archetypes Frolic Centerstage in Rebecca Morgan’s Solo Show Town and Country at Asya Geisberg Gallery

Image courtesy of Rebecca Morgan and Asya Geisberg Gallery. Photography by Etienne Frossard.

Rebecca Morgan’s solo exhibition “Town and Country at Asya Geisberg offers viewers a subversive and unflinching look into aesthetics of Americana. Panty raiding hillbillies, buxom bonnet sporting milkmaids, and characters engaged in Appalachian revelry scrupulously rendered in paint, graphite, and brass galavant throughout the exhibition. Morgan’s cringeworthy figuration walks the line between portraiture and allegory and highlights the pitfalls of romanticization. Inspired by the sucker-punch illustrations of R Crumb, Morgan’s depictions of rural life speak to notions of voyeurism, power dynamics, and the ubiquity of toxic masculinity within contemporary American culture. The works included in “Town and Country” strike a balance between hilarity and horror and provide a fantastical portal into the American psyche. I had the opportunity to chat with Morgan about her fourth solo show with the gallery and reflect upon her personal fascination with the subjects she portrays.

Continue reading “Americana Archetypes Frolic Centerstage in Rebecca Morgan’s Solo Show Town and Country at Asya Geisberg Gallery”

Margaret Ann Withers – In Her Own Skin

Margaret Ann Withers, Happy and Absurd were out roughhousing in the field before dinner; 2018, acrylic gouache, watercolor, ink on paper, 22″x30″, photo courtesy of Margaret Ann Withers.

Margaret Ann Withers‘ drawings and paintings burst with energetic gestures, exuberant colors, and bio-morphic shapes. Altogether these elements fuse into imaginative landscapes resembling a child’s play in Surreal terrains.  The artist shares with Art Spiel her ideas, process, and current projects.

Continue reading “Margaret Ann Withers – In Her Own Skin”