handmade paper – Art Spiel

November 21, 2025December 1, 2025, by William Corwin

Shervone Neckles: Steeping Memory

We do rely on art for healing purposes, but art that directly heals often requires a performative component. That is not to say that it delivers results, but there needs to be an interactive element in which the art appears to “give back” to the viewer. I visited the shrine of St. Anthony in Padua, for me, it was mostly to see the Donatello altarpiece and the Antonio and Tullio Lombardo friezes, but it was impossible to ignore the numerous worshippers at the shrine, their foreheads resting against the saint’s sarcophagus, inserting small pieces of paper with requests for St. Anthony. For nine years, Shervone Neckles has wheeled her healing cart — the Creative Wellness Gathering Station throughout the five boroughs and dispensed potions to fascinated and grateful onlookers.

August 28, 2025August 31, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

MIST – Fleeting moments and Summer Sensibilities at Helm Contemporary

Installation view, Sylvia Schwartz, *Temperature Gauge and Word Landscape and Green, photo courtesy of Helm Contemporary*

In MIST, four artists are brought together to take the inspiration of summer, and find a way to break through the heatwaves that have recently hit New York. There is a dialogue between the artists and their various takes on works on paper, bringing forth summer sensibilities, airiness, freshness, and a feeling of being free. Each artist offers a different series of works.

May 26, 2025May 19, 2025, by Jan Dickey and Terra Keck

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.

July 29, 2024July 13, 2024, by Art Spiel

Nicola Ginzel: How Do You Restructure Form?

Featured Project

Composite AS.jpg — Process on-site and view of Palais Equitable in Vienna. (right image): from the Wien Museum’s Online Collection taken around 1899.

In March 2020, Nicola Ginzel arrived at the Q21 Art Residency at the Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria. This residency, which hosts international artists and selects one American artist every two months with the support of a Fulbright Scholar Grant, is designed to foster creative exchange through collaboration, networking, and studio visits.

June 14, 2024June 16, 2024, by Art Spiel

Women Heavy at Gardenship Gallery

In Dialogue

Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger, QUALIA – YOU MATTER TO ME, immersive installation, UltraHD, color, sound, 10 minutes, 2024. Courtesy of the artists

Throughout the group exhibition Women Heavy at the Gardens Gallery in Kearny, NJ, curator Donna Kessinger references contemporary and second-wave feminist ideas. The curator aims to create a clinical and visceral experience by investigating broad concepts and featuring among many notable others work by Charlie Spademan, Gwen Charles, Jeanne Brasile, Josh Knoblick, Judi Tavill, Kasia Skorynkiewicz, Charlee Swanson, Lauren Vroegindewey, Kristin J. DeAngelis, Michael Angelo, Richard Gaines, Suzan Globus, Vikki Michalios, A.V. Ryan, Donna Conklin King, Anna Ehrsam, and Doris Cacoilo. In our interview curator D. Kessinger sheds some light on her curatorial vision.

April 1, 2024April 1, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Among Friends

In Conversation

In the summer of 2017, Beth Dary and Patricia Fabricant visited the Museum of Modern Art to see the Robert Rauschenberg show Among Friends. As they were looking at the exhibition, they separated and later found each other at the installation of Hiccups, which consisted of ninety-seven sheets of handmade paper with original Xerox transfer collages zipped together. “At that moment, we both had the same thought—we could hand out zipper papers to our friends to create a great collaborative show,” they recall. Patty had been simultaneously talking with Alexandra Rutsch Brock, who was similarly inspired by Hiccups and had even gone so far as purchasing some zippers. They reached out to their friend groups, and it took off from there. “We had no idea how it would turn out, but we knew it would be a fun adventure,” the co-curators say. Since this art project initiative started during the Trump administration, when women’s rights were under attack. it was important for them to include a charitable component such as Planned Parenthood.

November 10, 2023November 6, 2023, by Art Spiel

Donna Zarbin-Byrne: Like Water from a Rock at Arts Fort Worth

Hot Air

Donna Zarbin-Byrne, Like Water from a Rock. Here Once Was Ocean, still image from augmented reality animation. Photo courtesy, Donna Zarbin-Byrne

In her installation-based exhibition, Like Water from a Rock, at Arts Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX, Donna Zarbin-Byrne responds to the landscapes of the Chihuahuan desert of West Texas and the West Maui mountains, connecting material sites with an internal process. Western art traditions often portray the landscape as an idealized place to conquer and expand. Zarbin-Byrne frames the landscape as a place to experience the sensate.

October 9, 2023October 2, 2023, by Art Spiel

Armita Raafat: Traces and Silences at High Noon

Featured Artist

*Untitled, 2023,* resin, Styrofoam, paper mache, subway tiles, mirror, fabric, mesh, acrylic, and Sumi ink 58” x 41” x 7”, photo courtesy Max Yawney

In Traces and Silences, exhibited at High Noon Gallery in New York, Armita Raafat showcases multimedia sculptures and handmade paper works. By blending elements like the historic Muqarnas from Islamic architecture with subway tiles from her current base in New York, Raafat offers a juxtaposition that liberates and challenges traditional associations of these materials. Here, the artist elaborates on the insights behind this body of work.

March 17, 2023March 3, 2023, by Susan Hoffman Fishman

Once She Dries: An Ode to Coral

Hot Air

Nancy Cohen, Segment of handmade paper loop that circles the gallery. Wire, thread and handmade paper, 80” x 140” x 46,” 2022. Photo credit: Maddie Orton

In the fall of 2019, Meagan Woods, an interdisciplinary artist working in dance, theatre and costume design, attended an arts/science event at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada where she was an MFA student. She was both alarmed and inspired by what she learned about the critical condition of coral reefs around the world caused by climate change. In response, she assembled a team consisting of four colleagues in the MFA Interdisciplinary Arts program and a New-Jersey based visual artist to create what eventually became an innovative, experimental opera/installation called Once She Dries. Besides Woods, the collaborative includes pianist and composer, Casper Leerink; filmmaker, photographer and installation artist, Xinyue Liu; violinist and composer, Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahani; musician and actress, Amanda Sum; and sculptor and installation artist, Nancy Cohen.

February 8, 2023February 7, 2023, by Art Spiel

Scaling Nature at the Bronx River Art Center

Art Spiel Photo Story

A picture containing indoor, floor, room, colonnade

Description automatically generated — *Left: Wildriana Paulino, Right: Linda Cunningham. Photo courtesy of Michele Brody*

Scaling Nature at the Bronx River Art Center features large-scale mixed-media installation works by three artists: Michele Brody, Linda Cunningham and Wildriana Paulino. Curated by Gail Nathan, the premise of this show is to represent nature as a force of nurture and destruction through the use of materials from the ephemeral to the concrete. Paulino and Brody both work with cast handmade paper that hangs from the gallery ceiling to command the space. Their massive artworks invite the viewer to be engulfed by a feeling of being one with nature and simultaneously wary of the effects of climate change.