DUMBO Open Studios 2025 with Peter Drake

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Peter Drake in his Dumbo studio. Photo courtesy of Janice Faber

On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door. Peter Drake has been in DUMBO since January 2016. Peter Drake’s studio is at 55 Washington Street, #254.

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Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions April 2025

Highlights
If They Told You, Would You Listen? at Thayer Academy, Braintree, MA

Spring has sprung and many beautiful exhibitions are in full bloom across the city of Boston. Several exhibitions celebrating fiber art are on view along with multiple shows that highlight the season of rebirth. One of my favorite things about Spring in New England is seeing the trees awake from their dormancy and plants sprouting from the earth. The area thaws out and inspires a creative push toward summer. This means a lot of play, or spiel, for artists who experiment with unconventional materials and new media. This is wonderfully evident in the work on view this month as artists and galleries display playful and profound creations for a new season. Here’s some Art Spiel for you.

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DUMBO Open Studios 2025 with Anne Neely

Anne Neely, Eruption (2024). Oil on linen. 22 x 28 in. Photo credit: Kay Hickman, Julia Featheringill

On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door.
Anne Neely has been in DUMBO since November 2024 as part of the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program at 20 Jay Street, #720.

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Sarah Martin- Nuss: Future Currents- At Rachel Uffner Gallery

Installation view

In following Martin-Nuss’ work for a few years now, I was always mesmerized by the way they could establish and build a living landscape using both physical spaces and water reflections. A living landscape by means of movement, layers, and currents. This exhibition shows works that each establish their own space and carry with them their own evolutions into an entirely new space the longer you look at them.

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Field in The Wind: Scott Sueme at Uprise Art

The Field is All Around Us: Scott Sueme’s Solo at Uprise Art Will Change How You See Space
Installation shot of Field in The Wind, Scott Sueme, Uprise Art, 2025

In Scott Sueme’s latest collaboration with Uprise Art, the artist asks, “If you are called to look, what do you see?” In fact, I pose the question to you right now. As you lie in bed reading this when you really should be asleep or as you doomscroll art news to avoid doomscrolling national news, Sueme calls you to look with the consideration of someone devoted to noticing the breath within the breath, the moment within the moment.

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Art Spiel Picks: Boston Exhibitions in March 2025

Highlights
Disintegration at Gallery Very, Boston, MA

We’ve passed the Ides of March and 2025 is in full swing. Teslas are burning, the stock market is crashing, and the Black Lives Matter plaza in Washington DC has been completely demolished at the cost of six hundred thousand dollars to taxpayers. In Boston, we await some kind of tipping point, like the good revolutionaries we are. There’s no better time to be making art that will undoubtedly reflect the time we’re living in, even if only subversively. Because dissent is now a truly radical act. It’s also Women’s History Month and there are no greater radicals than women artists, blazing trails and making visible what might otherwise be ignored. Here are some highlights to celebrate.

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Diane Burko: Bearing Witness at Cristin Tierney

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Installation View 4 Diane Burko Bearing Witness Cristin Tierney Gallery 2025 Adam Reich
Installation view

Diane Burko’s Bearing Witness at Cristin Tierney Gallery combines mixed-media paintings shaped by her experiences in extreme environments—glaciers, coral reefs, deserts, and rainforests. She has engaged with the shifting landscape for fifty years, responding to the accelerating changes that threaten these places. This marks a significant moment in her career—her first solo exhibition in New York in over forty years and her debut at Cristin Tierney Gallery.

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Bill Scott: Two Decades at Hollis Taggart

Installation view at Hollis Taggart Gallery

Bill Scott’s solo show Two Decades at Hollis Taggart Gallery’ celebrates this painter’s long career of collaboration with this renowned New York City gallery. Bill, a fairly reserved individual, often clad in neutral colors at gallery openings, produces profoundly beautiful works bursting with color. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Bill, a friend and mentor for more than 15 years, dating back to my days as an undergraduate at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

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Dorothy Robinson: Paint Through Space and Time

End of Story, 2022, oil on panel, 48×60 inches, photo courtesy of Bill Massey

Dorothy Robinson’s family moved often during her childhood, starting in rural Iowa, where they farmed for generations and eventually settled in California. After high school, she bounced between colleges before landing at UC Berkeley. Studying art never crossed her mind, but she was drawn to geography, “probably because of its strong visual component—map making, field trips, slide shows,” Robinson says. During an internship, she learned darkroom skills and later worked in commercial photo labs, shaping her sense of color while making color prints. An invitation from an artist friend to join a drawing group was transformative, and started Robinson on the path to a life of making art.

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Diane Burko’s Greatest Emergency

Diane Burko, Amazon 7, Diptych A, 2022, mixed media on canvas, 20×20 inches,  In the collection of Joseph and Pamela Yohlin

This is part of a series of articles for the upcoming exhibition, The Greatest Emergency at the Circulo de Bellas Artes of Madrid. The exhibition is based on Santiago Zabala’s book, Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency. In this exhibition, ten contemporary artists rescue us into our greatest emergencies, that is, those we do not confront as we should. Each article in the series will contextualize these artists’ practices and explore how they are linked to Zabala’s aesthetic theory and the exhibition’s themes. The third article in this series highlights the work of American artist Diane Burko.


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