Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

Unblocking Creative Block
A drawing of a person lying in pyramids

Description automatically generated
Louise Bourgeois Fear 1999 Drypoint from 11 Drypoints

Recently, I was making coffee, and I know it’s bad, but I love sweetening it with granulated sugar. I was trying to pour some out from a box, but only a few grains were coming out because the whole thing was full of clumps. And those clumpy lumps became for me an analogy for artist’s block, a condition I was suffering from at the time. As artists, we are like the sugar box with our sweet, sweet creativity trapped inside of us. Those heavenly granules are abundant and want to pour out to make coffee more delicious, but they can’t because their own selves are blocking it. And, as I was squeezing the box, trying to crush the bigger blobs, or choosing violence and stabbing a spoon handle in there, I started to wonder what other artists do in this predicament. So, I went up periscope, past the crystallized chunks, and spied about to find ideas for overcoming it.

Continue reading “Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts”

Myth Maker: Laleh Khorramian at SEPTEMBER Gallery

Installation view. Photo courtesy of Alon Koppol

Finally! What a joy to meander through a show that is not just a formulaic scaffolding rendered to execute a marketing plan rather than make art. Walking into the building that houses September Gallery’s new space in Kinderhook, NY, The first thing you see is not a wall or architectural ornamentation but a monumental scroll that immediately hints you might be here for a while. This colossal collage introduces Myth Maker, the second exhibition at September Gallery by Laleh Khorramian.

Continue reading “Myth Maker: Laleh Khorramian at SEPTEMBER Gallery”

I Make My Own Weather at the MAC

Featured Artist
Bonny Leibowitz “I Make My Own Weather”, “Raindrop installation”. photo courtesy Bonny Leibowitz

In her installation-based exhibition titled I Make My Own Weather at the MAC in Dallas, Bonny Leibowitz explores the validity of social constructs and the reliability of acquired or assumed perceptions, implying separateness, otherness and disconnection. Leibowitz’s work utilizes and expounds upon the landscape painting traditions of idealized histories, such as the Hudson River School, Romanticism, and Baroque. The installations act as deconstructed paintings, as though walking through fragments of represented landscapes—a tree root painted epoxy green, an Astro turf tarp in the shape of a pond, a peeling away of a blue sky.

Continue reading “I Make My Own Weather at the MAC”

On the Waterfront: A View from the Coast (Line)

HOT AIR

On the Waterfront: A View from the Coast (Line)

From its founding in 2009 by Maddy Rosenberg, CENTRAL BOOKING has focused on the exploration between art and science with emphasis on aspects of the environment and social justice issues. In many collaborative projects with organizations such as the New York Academy of Medicine and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, artists researched their work in the collections, libraries and grounds of these institutions and exhibited the resulting work in several venues. Rosenberg says that after years of living along the Brooklyn waterfront of Buttermilk Channel and incorporating the imagery into her own work, she sensed it was time to take a deeper dive into the ecosystems of the Brooklyn waterfront and the last surviving section of functioning port within New York City’s boundaries. The life along the harbor integrates the wildlife, land and neighborhoods of human-made architectural elements seemed to her like “a perfect barometer for exploring climate change”. A collaboration with the New-York Historical Society was a natural step, as their collections preserve many of the earlier roots along the way to the transformations we live with today. Rosenberg says that in addition, by forging partnerships with other area organizations such as Kentler International Drawing Space, Pioneer Works and the RETI Center, the project became truly emblematic of the Brooklyn Waterfront.

Continue reading “On the Waterfront: A View from the Coast (Line)”

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

Art Made in Kitchens

A group of people holding flags

Description automatically generated with low confidence
Luchita Hurtado Encounter, 1971, ©Luchita Hurtado

“There’s always time to do what you really want. When I had children, I worked when everybody went to bed, after 11pm. I would set up at the kitchen table and clean it very well before I would start.”

–Luchita Hurtado

Remember in the darkest, most locked down days of the pandemic, when all of us were stuck within our own walls, and many of us had kids at home too? And we found ourselves having to resort to making work at the kitchen table in between the cracks of work and school. Well, it got me thinking that this was nothing new to the history of making art: a history that wants us to think that its entire timeline is full of swaggering guys in big New York City lofts, hands-on-chins, undistracted by life’s mundanity. But, in fact, the reality of being an artist is rife with personal stories of people who had to make it work. They, like us, squeezed making art in between the oven timer and the kids’ nap, or in between the hours of a demoralizing 9-5. And quite frankly, those artists that find a way to eke through those tough years of limited space and time are the artists that have the swagger that impresses me the most.

Continue reading “Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts”

The Center for Cuban Studies and Art in DUMBO Open Studios

Featured Project
A group of people posing for a photo

Description automatically generated
Courtesy of the Center for Cuban Studies / Cuban Art Space

Each spring over 100 artists and art organizations in DUMBO And Vinegar Hill open their studio doors to the public for a weekend. This year the event takes place on April 22 and 23 from 1 to 6 PM. Art Spiel created a Mixed Media Guide for this event in addition to other curated guides on the Art In Dumbo website here. In conjunction with the event Art Spiel conducted a few interviews with individual participating artists. This one is with Sandra Levinson, the executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies / Cuban Art Space.

Continue reading “The Center for Cuban Studies and Art in DUMBO Open Studios”

David Dempewolf: Between Optics and Daydreams

David Dempewolf, imago 02 (bird’s eye self portrait), 2013 aqueous media and wax pencil on paper, 10” X 14”, courtesy of artist

Most artists’ studios give us a glimpse into their thought and work process but wandering through David Dempewolf’s studio gives more than a glimpse. It is an experience of entering a wonderous world— a hidden niche reveals a station for experimental animation, a corner serves as a station for wood printmaking, a quaint staircase to a small attic leads to imaginative series of drawings, and a “peephole” in a wall further guides our gaze below, to Marginal Utility, the non-for-profit gallery space he runs with his partner and spouse Yuka Yokoyam. It feels like entering a Borgeisan world where the artist’s thoughts and the endless possibilities of “cataloging” entangle and materialize into a new entity in a tangible space.

Continue reading “David Dempewolf: Between Optics and Daydreams”

whispered conversations at Stand 4

Curator Jennifer McGregor in conversation with the artists

Kate Collyer, Bundle: Alaska, 2022, mixed media and video, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

Artists Kate Colyer, Lorrie Fredette, and Megan Porpeglia talk with curator Jennifer McGregor about their framework to create whispered conversations, on view at Stand4 Gallery and Community Space in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The collective was active during COVID via Zoom reading about the natural world. They created bundles in response to their individual trips in 2021. These were shared through the mail to instigate a series of new artworks. Jennifer McGregor was brought in as curator to help shape the exhibition.

Continue reading “whispered conversations at Stand 4”

Jesse Pallotta – QT Art Camp

Grantee of Brooklyn Arts Fund

Project Profile: QT Art Camp Brings Free Art Workshops to Queer and Trans Youth

Photographer: Carmen DeCristo

Brooklyn Arts Council announced in March 2022 an allocation of over $1.3 million to 238 Brooklyn-based artists and cultural organizations. This year marks the highest number of grantees and awardees as well as the largest amount of funding BAC has ever distributed. Art Spiel in collaboration with Brooklyn Arts Council features some artists who received a Brooklyn Arts Fund, Local Arts Support, and/or Creative Equations Fund grant in 2022.

QT Art Camp just announced its summer series of art workshops for queer and trans youth taking place in New York. These workshops are free and welcome to youth ages 13-19. During the workshops, youth will work with NYC-based trans artists. Workshops including vogueing, film photography, painting and drawing. Youth are encouraged to learn new skills, discuss art with their peers and mentors, and will leave with a finished art piece. QT Art Camp is starting local but hopes to reach youth nationally, especially in smaller cities that don’t currently have many resources for queer and trans youth.

Continue reading “Jesse Pallotta – QT Art Camp”