North Adams – Art Spiel

October 4, 2021October 1, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Maggie Nowinski -Drawing (un)limited

A picture containing text, book, indoor

Description automatically generated — 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.

April 19, 2021April 19, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Brandon Graving: Honing Viscosity and Air Currents

Brandon Graving, Mother: Earth 2 detail, 2021, embossed monoprint, 41”x 108”, photo by artist

Brandon Graving aims to transfer and translate a sense of wonder in her artworks. She describes her process of making as exploring the connectedness of all things with ongoing “delight, immediacy and a sense of virginal untamed discovery with a nod towards Humbolt.” Some of her sculptural works are kinetic and turn, revealing elaborate intricacy and shadow play, while other works, including monoprints with handmade inks and semiprecious stones, alter dramatically in different light. She does not intend to depict nature but rather hone ideas and objects into simplified essential forms, some with elaborate treatment. Through her extensive attention to detail, she reflects on how the micro and macro within the work suggest a system that is both diverse and similar, how these dualities interrelate or even duplicate in nature.

May 25, 2020May 24, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Galen Cheney

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

Macintosh HD:Users:cheneyhaynes:Desktop:IMG_7884.jpg — *Perceiver, installed at University of Dallas, March 2020 (Photo credit: Sven Kahns)*

Galen Cheney has been working as an abstract painter for three decades. During that time she has consistently sought to make work that challenges her as an artist and vulnerable human, taking risks and pushing into new personal territory. Her work has been shown and collected throughout the U.S. and in Europe and China. She has a show installed at the University of Dallas that is closed to the public, due to the virus.