Tirtzah Bassel in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center

In Dialogue with Tirtzah Bassel

Tirtzah Bassel grew up in Israel, the oldest of eight in a Jewish Orthodox family. Her father is a traditional scribe and her mother, a ballet dancer by training, was the homemaker when they were growing up. Although both of her parents were very creative and the value of making things by hand was instilled early on, she didn’t know any professional artists and had no concept that making art was something she could do as an adult. This changed when she took a night class at the Jerusalem Studio School in her early twenties. She recalls how she was immediately drawn to the intensity of the atelier-style learning environment, drawing and painting from observation, and the methods of the Old Master paintings. She later decided to pursue an MFA at Boston University and subsequently moved to Brooklyn. “Perhaps it was the continuous traversing of worlds – religious and secular, Israel and the US, Hebrew and English – that led me to ground my work in close observation of seemingly mundane situations,” she says.

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Susan Luss at the Museum of Art & Culture in New Rochelle

Artist in Residence Susan Luss highlights her installation in House 4 MAC Gallery and windows.

Partial installation view, today, I am…Photo credit: Susan Luss

In 2019 Artist Susan Luss was invited by the New Rochelle High School to be their first visiting artist working on site responsive installations. The school has its own museum and cultural center on its campus, called The Museum of Arts & Culture, which is the only Regents-chartered museum inside of a school in the state of New York. This collaborative project became a formative experience for the artist. Susan Luss describes the ways she formed her ideas, her collaborative work with students and faculty, as well as her takeaway from this multi layered project overall. The exhibition runs through Feb 13th.

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Austin Thomas – Lots of little things at LABspace

All images: Austin Thomas collages, photographed by the author

 

Austin Thomas’s drawings, Lots of little things, currently on view at LABspace, a small gallery in a tiny town, are diminutive in size but vast in scope.  Arranged in three irregular rows on one wall, these forty-odd drawings offer the viewer enough to look at for several hours.  I have been to the show three times and was sorry to leave each time. They seem to display almost everything drawing can be.
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