Bob Seng: Cutting Corners at John Molloy Gallery

Featured Artist
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John Molloy Gallery: installation view “Cutting Corners”

Bob Seng’s collages at John Molloy remake and reimagine the iconic EXIT sign. The artist says that he has chosen these ubiquitous signs for their attitude, a “go out” directive to an alternate space and time, and for their combative red and black elements. Initially he approached these signs as if they were archaeological excavations, selectively removing layers of the red and black paint to reveal what he imagined as “lost” civilizations buried underneath, “possibly a harbinger of our own in future time.”

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ArtYard & Paul Bowen: Drift

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Frenchtown in the Delaware river Valley NJ is home to a fantastic new arts center with cutting edge programming: take note art lovers, ArtYard has come to town. ArtYard is a not for profit, state-of-the-art facility with two floors of exhibition space, sculpture lawn, black box theater with chic little bar and a tiny store. It is spacious, light, and beautiful: everything about this place is “feel good” and functional. It overlooks the river where bikers and hikers pass on the Delaware Raritan Canal State Park Trail an old railway track. The facade is a sophisticated blend of metal overhang elements (think Chelsea Meatpacking) and smart graphics with a large welcoming entrance. The pitch perfect brick building, designed by architects Ed Robinson and William Welch, was inspired by 19C industrial factories. The new center weaves itself perfectly into the historic fabric of Frenchtown NJ.

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Bay Ridge Through an Ecological Lens: Rita Leduc

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Leduc installing Field Mark (Narrows Botanical Garden). Photo courtesy of the artist.

Bay Ridge through an Ecological Lens is a multi-faceted public art exhibition hosted by Stand4 Gallery and presented in collaboration with ecoartspace.

This interactive, public, community arts exhibition is curated by Jennifer McGregor, featuring artists  Rebecca Allan, Aaron Asis, Chris Costan, Kate Dodd,  Peter Edlund, Kristin Reiber-Harris, Ellen Coleman-Izzo, Sergey Jivetin,  Nathan Kensinger, Rita Leduc, Christopher Lin, Nikki Lindt, E.J. McAdams/ Jimbo Blachly,  Nancy Nowacek in collaboration with Carla Kihlstedt and Carlos Alomar,  Benjamin Swett and filmmakers:  Aaron Assis, Nate Dorr, Sean Hanley, Nathan Kensinger, Nikki Lindt, Emily Packer and Lesley Steele, and Kristin Reiber-Harris

It consists of nature walks and community interventions in the gallery and various locations throughout the Bay Ridge community from April 15 through June 17, 2023. Art Spiel will feature a series of interviews related to this project throughout its duration, here with artist Rita Leduc.

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Ahavani Mullen: Across Centuries and the Earth

Artist Profile
Installation view, Ahavani Mullen: Across Centuries and the Earth, 2023. Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, MI. Photo by the artist

In Ahavani Mullen’s studio, humble materials of pigment, metal, limestone, and resin transform into spiritual relics. She enters into the act of creation in silence from which paintings, sculptures, and installations evolve and become artifacts of human consciousness. In connecting the seen to the unseen, her objects hold memories of time, space, and sound, referencing the very turning of the earth with its movements and vibrations.

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Adam Henry: Parts to a Whole

Opinion
  Installation view, photo credit: Charles Benton.
Adam Henry, Installation view, photo credit: Charles Benton. Courtesy of Candice Madey gallery

Amongst a burgeoning market of retrograde art practices there runs an undercurrent of artists seeking to establish for art and its practices a new sustainable identity as a means of inquiry. What made his work different was that he was using painting as a platform primarily to explore the subjectivity and semiotics of perception—the polarity between painting as an optical event and a conceptual one. Taking his vocabulary from color theory, systemic and color-field painting, and cognitive science, his work focused on the difference between what a thing (materially) is and what it may descriptively represent. As with those works, Henry in his present exhibition at Candice Madey Gallery rejects at every turn the cult of individual expression, the magical thinking of transcendence, the pervasive appeal of accessibility, and spectacle. Instead with his present body of works, he reasserts his ambition is to use art as a means to engage his audience in speculative thought and self-reflection.

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Holly Wong: Guardian of the Spirits

Featured Artist
Installation views, photo courtesy of Wes Magyar

Holly Wong’s solo exhibition Guardian of the Spirits at the Curfman gallery, Colorado State University at Fort Collins, combines sewn patchwork of silk, organza, other transparent materials, and drawings—to memorialize her mother whom she lost to alcoholism and domestic violence. The text for her show says that the installation is a “prayer for revolt against the limiting notions of beauty and body size.”

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Susan Hoffman Fishman in Burning Worlds

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Susan Hoffman Fishman, The Earth is Breaking, Beautifully VII: Dead Sea Sinkholes, acrylic, oil pigment stick, cyanotype and mixed media on paper, 51” x 51,” 2023

Susan Hoffman Fishman is an artist who has addressed climate change for many years both in context of her own work as an artist and in her writing on other artists’ work in that arena. Hoffman was first interviewed with Burning Worlds about four years ago and has recently been interviewed there again on her latest series of paintings depicting coastline sink holes and other landscapes impacted by climate change,

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Jamie Martinez in DUMBO Open Studios

Featured Artist

Artist Jamie Martinez at his studio with his work “Vision Mask I”.

Each spring over 100 artists and art organizations in DUMBO And Vinegar Hill open their studio doors to the public for a weekend. This year the event takes place on April 22 and 23 from 1 to 6 PM. Art Spiel created a Mixed Media Guide for this event in addition to other curated guides on the Art In Dumbo website here. In conjunction with the event Art Spiel conducted a few interviews with individual participating artists. This one is with Jamie Martinez whose multi- faceted art includes textiles, drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation.

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Liz Collins in DUMBO Open Studios

Featured Artist

Liz Collins in her studio. Photo by Joe Kramm.

Each spring over 100 artists and art organizations in DUMBO And Vinegar Hill open their studio doors to the public for a weekend. This year the event takes place on April 22 and 23 from 1 to 6 PM. Art Spiel created a Mixed Media Guide for this event in addition to other curated guides on the Art In Dumbo website here. In conjunction with the event Art Spiel conducted a few interviews with individual participating artists. This one is with Liz Collins whose multi- faceted art includes textiles, drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation.

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