Maggie Nowinski -Drawing (un)limited

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Maggie Nowinski, Be Spilled, My Heart, 2021 detail installation view with artist for scale, wHoles are acrylic and India ink on canvas, double sided, installation approximately 20’x30’x10’

About a decade ago, Maggie Nowinski shifted her focus from site specific project-based installation to her studio as the primary site of her work. She made this shift after realizing that her connection to the work had become too fragmented. She needed her studio work to become more accessible and her creativity more meditative. Since drawing has always been at the core of her work, focusing on drawing with limited materials and themes, enabled her to process a lot of the ideas she had been working through in her large-scale installations. “I was craving a way to immediately access creativity, to be in a place where if I had an hour I could walk into my studio and pick up where I’d left off on a drawing,” she says.

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Susan Mastrangelo at 490 ATLANTIC

Art Spiel Photo Story

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The artist with her work, photo courtesy of Barabara Friedman

Susan Mastrangelo’s five paintings featured in her solo show at 490 ATLANTIC vibrate with vivid and visceral energy, a culmination of the emotional journey she has experienced this past year and a half. The artist says that as she is standing in front of this painting series, she remembers how the fear during COVID prompted her urge to “seize the moment and focus on being present every minute in the creation of each work.”

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Jennifer T. Ley: MVA Open Studios

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Jennifer T. Ley, work in progress in the studio, 2021, Paper, Anishinaabe Bimishimo tin jingles, watercolor, digital photos, Photo courtesy the artist

Manufacturers Village Artist Studios, located in an 1880’s historic industrial complex at 356 Glenwood Avenue in East Orange, NJ, will feature the work of over 60 different artists at its annual open studios weekend, Friday 10/15 (VIP Preview) and Saturday thru Sunday from 11-5, 10/16 and 10/17.

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Gail Winbury: MVA Open Studios

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left: untitled, 2021,pigment stick and oil on canvas, right top: Many Rooms,2021 oil and pigment stick on Arches paper, right below: I’m Falling, 2021, oil, cold wax and pigment stick on arches, Photo credit Robinson Holloway

Manufacturers Village Artist Studios, located in an 1880’s historic industrial complex at 356 Glenwood Avenue in East Orange, NJ, will feature the work of over 60 different artists at its annual open studios weekend, Friday 10/15 (VIP Preview) and Saturday thru Sunday from 11-5, 10/16 and 10/17.

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Burbville – New Works By Kumasi Barnett

Jac Lahav and Kumasi Barnett in Conversation

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In his first solo exhibition at 42 Social Club (Lyme CT), Kumasi Barnett explores American culture, police violence, and stereotypes through the lens of comic books. Barnett’s immaculate paintings over vintage comic book covers masterfully transform well-known superhero tropes into brutal social commentary. Kumasi Barnett and 42 Social Club founder, Jac Lahav, share their reflections on Barnet’s new work.

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Lauren Whearty: Slippage between Abstraction and Image


Lauren Whearty in her Philadelphia Studio, August 2021, photo courtesy of the artist

Lauren Whearty paints mostly still life from observation and preliminary sketches. Occasionally she takes photos of things which serve in her painting process as cues to spark a sense of memory rather than a source for likeness. She builds her compositions with a collage-like construction, adding and removing objects from both the paintings and the still life set ups. She loves the process of fitting things into the grid of the canvas, playing between representing objects and maintaining a close sense of the flat painted surface. “Color for me is expressive, connects to memory and play in the studio. In using repeated objects, the excitement in experimentation comes from how an object is painted, from their color to their expression and what I can get paint to do,” she says.

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