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: Yolande Heijnen

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

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Father Watching Coronavirus News

Yolande Heijnen was born and raised in Luxembourg, and has lived in New York since 1998. She has an MFA in painting from the New York Studio School, has won the Edward G. McDowell Travel Grant of the Art Students League, and is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.

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Artists on Coping: Tamar Zinn

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

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Behind Closed Eyes 19, 2019 / 33 x 28” / oil on panel

Tamar Zinn is a New York based artist whose work reflects the primacy of intuitive sensory experiences. Both painting and drawing are integral to her studio practice. Recent projects include a solo exhibition, At the still point, at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, NYC, a 3-person exhibit, Thinking Sequentially at Key Projects, NYC and curating Explorations in Line at Garrison Art Center. Zinn’s work is in collections throughout the US, including Citibank, Fidelity, IBM, McKinsey, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and NYU-Langone Medical Center.

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Artists on Coping: Ashley Norwood Cooper

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

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Easter Eggs, 2020, oil on linen, 80” x 72”

Ashley Norwood Cooper’s paintings are intensely colored, painterly figurative work, exploring the creative lives of women, the awkwardness of family relationships, and the schizophrenic role of the artist-mother-wife teacher. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibits throughout the US including First Street Gallery (NYC) and ZINC contemporary (Seattle). Her work has been featured in New American Paintings and on the I Like Your Work Podcast. Her recent debut at VOLTA NYC 2020 garnered write ups in the NY Times and Arcade Projects Zine (Columbia University).

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Artists on Coping: Galen Cheney

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

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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.

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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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Artists on Coping: Deanna Lee

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

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Deanna Lee was born in Putnam County, New York, to parents from China and Taiwan, and raised in suburban Boston. She grew up spending time in her mother’s biology lab and taking classical music lessons on several instruments for 14 years. Comprising drawings, paintings, site-specific installations, and public artworks, her art interprets everyday traces of transformation in natural systems and the built environment. Numerous venues have shown her work, including Robert Henry Contemporary, Wave Hill, the Drawing Center, and the New York Hall of Science. Among her honors are awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Asia Society, National Academy, Millay Colony, and Saltonstall Foundation. In addition to her visual art practice, Lee is a member of the Balinese ensemble, Gamelan Dharma Swara.

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Artists on Coping: Barbara Friedman

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


Barbara Friedman in front of “Hard Rain” at the opening of “Hauntings”, February 29th, 2020, at Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn. The show was supposed to be up through March but closed after a week due to the pandemic. Photo from the Bogliasco Foundation’s weekly newsletter courtesy of Arielle Moreau.

Barbara Friedman makes painterly paintings of unreliable narrators in scenarios that are unsettling both narratively and formally. She has had thirty-six solo shows throughout the United States, and reviews of her work have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Sun, The Irish Times, Newsday, Art in America, ARTS Magazine, and Artweek. A group of Friedman’s paintings were selected for the 2007 issue of New American Paintings, and another group for the 2010 issue. She lives, paints, and teaches in New York City, where she has been a professor of art at Pace University since 1983.

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Artists on Coping: Ellen Hackl Fagan

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

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Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue, Installation during Bushwick Open Studios, 2018. Photo: Charles Geiger

Ellen Hackl Fagan is an artist and the creator of ODETTA, a contemporary fine art gallery in Harlem, NYC. Fagan builds connections between color and sound using color-saturated paintings, sculpture, installations and collaborative projects that explore our potential for synaesthesia, often resulting in ad hoc performances with viewers. Balanced between randomness and intention, like jazz music, Fagan’s art reveals limitless possibilities for improvisation. Fagan also invented The Reverse Color Organ (RCO), a web app that enables viewers to playfully interact aurally with color. Fagan exhibits her work extensively, curates, writes, and creates opportunities for collaborations with artists, curators, musicians, and coders to further her projects.

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Artists on Coping: Julian Kreimer

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

The artist at his studio

Julian Kreimer is an associate professor of Painting and Art History at SUNY Purchase. Solo and two-person shows have included TSA LA (CA), Lux Art Institute (CA), and Weeknights Gallery (Brooklyn) and his work has been included in group shows at Fluc space (Vienna), Hotel Pupik (Austria), Curator Gallery, Alexandre Gallery, Von Lintel Gallery, and TSA. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Hyperallergic, Artcritical, and Two Coats of Paint. He is a repeat fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell Colonies and received a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Painting Fellowship. He is a frequent contributor to Art in America.

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