Marcia Miele Branca: MVA Open Studios


Marcia Miele Branca in her studio at Manufacturer’s Village along with her “Roland Hot Box”

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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MVA Open Studios: Philemona Williamson


Philemona Williamson in studio with work in progress, oil on canvas

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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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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Becky Yazdan: Finding the Edge of Experience

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Becky Yazdan in studio, 2021

Becky Yazdan’s paintings are based on things she encounters in her daily life as well as her memory of events, feelings, and colors. For her the painting process is an active dialogue with the nature of things around her. “The paintings are like dreams—the events of the day reorganized and combined with other events and memories until a new, often surprising reality has taken shape,” she says.

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Briana McLaurin: Unlearning Portraiture 


Briana McLaurin in front of her painting titled, Hope, Love, and What Else…?, 2020, Oil, pencil, and sharpie on canvas, 40 x 30 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Briana McLaurin takes on an intimate subject matter in her large scale oil paintings, as her practice primarily consists of painting her family members. Her vibrant portraits serve as a tribute to her own experiences and upbringing, while creating a relatable narrative that celebrates African American presence. The honesty and value of family are extremely present in McLaurin’s recent body of work, where she reflects on her relationships with loved ones by depicting intimate snapshots of domesticity.

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Earthscapes: Emerging to a Brighter World: Pamela Casper at Wisner House

Art Spiel Photo Story


Installation view

In her solo art exhibition at Reeves-Reed Arboretum, Pamela Casper invites the garden-loving public to reconcile a personal relationship of guardianship that goes beyond admiring nature’s beauty. The artist says that the trajectory of the work in this show follows her own path of transformation—from observing beauty and imagining nature “above ground” to exploring the endless networks hidden below. The show is curated by Executive Director Jackie Kondel and runs through October 31tst, 2021.

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