Artists on Coping: Sally Boon Matthews

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

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Sally Boon Matthews with Soundscape for March, April, May 2020. Water Colour, Ink, Felt Tip, Pencil, Thread on Mulberry Paper. 12”x 288”, 2020

Sally Boon Matthews is a British born and educated artist, educator, and yogi living in New York City. Though her background was originally in photography, in the last eight years she has developed a multi-discipline practice that includes video, painting, collage, and drawing. Her work has been exhibited and published in Europe, the United States and Latin America. Publications include Tricycle Magazine, NY Times, Blitz Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Penguin Books, Random House, Warner Books, A&M Records, Om Yoga, Battersea Museum of Art, UK, Galerie Solado, Caracas, Venezuela, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Louisiana Museum of Art, Chateau de Trousse-Barriere, Briare, France, Jamaica Arts Center, NY.

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A Studio 54 Reject Is At It Again 40 Years Later

Lisa Levy in dialogue with Art Spiel

A person standing in front of a building

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Studio 54 Reject Re-Performance by Lisa Levy, Photo Credit: Phil Buehler.

Right before the Coronavirus outbreak prompted a mass-shutdown of New York City’s galleries and museums, multidisciplinary artist, radio show host and (self-proclaimed) psychotherapist Lisa Levy recreated her classic guerrilla art project ‘Studio 54 Reject’. On the opening night of the “Studio 54: Night Magic” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, Levy stationed herself outside the institution’s main entrance. Standing behind a small table encircled by red velvet ropes and four stanchion posts, she gestured toward a sign reading “Studio 54 Reject T-Shirt, $20” while imploring passersby to take pride in “reject status” with the purchase of a shirt, newly re-designed in gold glitter and the official logo.

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Artists on Coping: Seren Morey

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


Seren Morey and her Ridgeback/Boxer Chloe in front of her latest painting Ingress

Seren Morey makes fantastical, nature inspired sculptural painting abstractions that reference the energy force of the particles that connect all matter together. She was born in Massachusetts to a family of artists and went on to complete a BA at Bard College and an MFA at Pratt Institute. Upon graduating from Bard she became an assistant to Kiki Smith and later a professor in fine arts at Pratt Institute. Morey’s work has been exhibited in numerous shows and reviewed by Robin Pogrebin, Barry Schwabsky and Helen A. Harrison of The New York Times. She currently lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and is a partner in Guerra Paint & Pigment Corp., a specialty resource store for artists.

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Christina Massey’s USPS Art Project

Hema Bharadwwaj and Eileen Ferara, USPS Art Project Collaboration

When the lockdown began in mid-late March in New York City, artist Christina Massey felt it was too soon for her to address the pandemic in her own artwork. While desperately trying to process the disorienting news shifting by the hour, she was noticing an uptick in posts calling for people to save the Postal Service by buying stamps. The idea for the USPS Art Project came to her with immediate clarity. An artist starts making an artwork and mails it to a partner to complete and vice versa.

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Artists on Coping: Meer Musa

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

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Meer Musa at his live-in studio in Washington Heights. Photo: Odvar Daley

Meer Musa graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in Communication Design and studied at the School of Visual Arts. He is a co-founder of Trans-cen-der Art Group, a monthly curated artist talk and slide-share event that takes place at Brooklyn Fire Proof. He has exhibited in the Luhring Augustine Gallery, NYC; Sikkema Jenkins & Co. NYC; ZieherSmith Gallery, NYC; Westbeth Gallery, NYC; The Border Project Space. Brooklyn; David and Schweitzer Contemporary Gallery, Brooklyn, among others. His art is inspired and deeply informed by people, nature, and spirituality.

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Artists on Coping: Hallie Cohen

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


Hallie Cohen at the American Academy in Rome working on Mi Ricordo III,ink on yupo paper, 60” x 144”. Photo by Francis Levy.

Hallie Cohen is a New York-based visual artist and curator. She is a Professor of Art, and Director of the Hewitt Gallery of Art at Marymount Manhattan College. Her subjects are topographies of real or imagined places, which toggle between abstraction and unreliable narration. Cohen explores natural phenomena, using the instability of the water-based medium to investigate the dynamic between chance and control and between conscious and unconscious thought processes. She has curated over 30 exhibits which explore science, psychology, neurology, politics, and the environment. She has recently had a virtual artist talk about her work.

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Artists on Coping: Elizabeth Riley

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


Factory Fresh, 2019; Video stills inkjet-printed on paper and fabric, repurposed laser-cut metal, 120 x 108 x 24”

Elizabeth Riley’s art addresses questions concerning the complex and changing world we inhabit and our “mixed reality,” living between physical and digital/virtual contexts. This project includes sculptural wall works, installations, and tabletop cityscapes, made from a combination of video, video stills, and diverse materials. A longtime New Yorker, the artist graduated from Barnard College and received an MFA from Hunter College. In 2019 her work was presented in Ribbons Become Space, a solo show at SL Gallery in New York City. This show included the Dragons of Iceland Installation, a 2011 sculpture/installation with multiple live video elements, as well as, two large-scale, site-specific wall sculptures made from video stills. Elizabeth Riley curated and participated in Trill Matrix at The Clemente Center on New York City’s Lower East Side in 2018, a show of seven dynamic women artists.

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Artists on Coping: Cibele Vieira

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

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Cibele Vieira in her studio

Cibele Vieira is a Brazilian-born artist whose work has been exhibited at Petzel Gallery, Gallery Geranmayeh, Valentine, Front Room Gallery, Christopher Henry Gallery, and Soho Photo in NYC; Ateliê 397 Gallery, the Bienal de Fotografia de São Paulo, and Casa de Cultura Mário Quintana, in Brazil. Her work is in the collections of the Ado Malagoli Museum and Rio Grande do Sul Contemporary Art Museum in Brazil, and the Kiyosato Museum in Japan, and has been published in The Village Voice, Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Visura Magazine, L Magazine, Culture Front, Washington City Paper, O Globo, Correio Braziliense, Zero Hora and Private Magazine. She was awarded First Place, Vision Awards 2000, by the Santa Fe Center for Visual Arts, and is currently an artist in residence at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

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Artists on Coping: Katherine Jackson

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

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Small Oils (Little Oil 79,80,81), glass, lightbox, 2019-20

Katherine Jackson has been bringing glass and light together for many years, often deriving them from drawing. Recently, in a series called Little Oil, (alluding to Big Oil), and/or Small Oils, as in oil painting, she has cast solid glass versions of vintage oil cans and set them on lightboxes. Recent shows include Park Place Gallery, 1 Gap Gallery, Odetta (Chelsea), and Odetta Harlem. She will participate in the sculpture show of the Venice Architectural Biennale (August 29, 2020 – February 16, 2021); Kunstraum LLC.

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Artists on Coping: Rachel Klinghoffer

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


Detail of installation at The Skirt at Ortega y Gasset Projects, March 2020

By repurposing materials, making and remaking them into paintings and sculptures, Klinghoffer prompts a reimagining of uses for these relic-like objects. Articles reflect the artist’s personal connection to femininity, craft-making, Judaism, romance, pushing the definition of painting. Through time, the items become specimens, icons. They are poked, prodded, stained, sprayed, stroked, rubbed, dipped, then pulled, torn, cracked open and broken apart making up and becoming the new work. Rachel Klinghoffer lives and works in South Orange NJ. Recently she has exhibited at Morgan Lehman Gallery and The Skirt at Ortega y Gasset, with a review in The Brooklyn Rail.

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