History’s Shadow Marks the Beginning at Grove Collective


Installation view featuring Mitch Vowles, Earnie, 2021, Fruit Machine, Photographs, Water, 175 x 70 x 65cm courtesy of Grove Collective, photographed by Ollo Weguelian

Dibnah in Lights is hard to miss. The name of that legendary Yorkshire steeplejack flashing in red, white, and blue bulbs against the green felt backdrop of a repurposed snooker table is the first piece that greets you as you walk through Grove Collective’s doors. This piece by Mitch Vowles, a sculptor who works with found objects to draw out their cultural and personal contexts, nestles easily amongst Connor Murgatroyd’s pastel-hued still life paintings of anthuriums, signet rings, Sinatra albums and a scaffolders A-Z, and film photographer Alfie White’s hand-printed images of boys at Brixton bus stops, on Tottenham blocks, and playing in Burgess Park.

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A Golem Sleeps and Wakes in the Mourning at Old City Jewish Arts Center

Logan Gabrielle Schulman + Benjamin Behrend in Conversation


Gallery View of Exhibition A Golem Sleeps and Wakes in the Mourning, 2021

A Golem Sleeps and Wakes in the Mourning, featuring works by Philadelphia based artist Logan Gabrielle Schulman and writer Benjamin Behrend, is a collaborative interactive exhibit of images, objects, and video from the theatre of grief, on view at the Old City Jewish Arts Center in Philadelphia, PA through July 2nd. Benjamin Behrend, a writer and performer, says he has recently been straddling the worlds of comedy, performance art, and also various explorations of faith, especially these past few years. Logan Gabrielle Schulman (they/them) is a queer interdisciplinary artist, with a background in theatrical performance, directing, playwriting, and designing, while also developing over the last few years a foundation in the visual arts. They say their work “primarily investigates modern crises of faith and collapse,” which they started investigating initially by drawing on their theatrical design experience through installation work, and gradually later on, in smaller scale work as well. Schulman’s work also draws upon their experience as a Jewish educator teaching about the Jewish diaspora and Holocaust history.

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Noel Hennelly at PeepSpace

In Dialogue with Noel Hennelly

Installation view

Noel Hennelly’s solo show at PeepSpace, wrapped up the first year of programming at this new venue in Tarrytown, NY, founded by artists Monica Carrier and Jane Kang Lawrence. The exhibit featured sculptures and wall pieces made of mixed materials, manufactured components, wood, metal, fabric, as well as painted and photographic elements. Hennelly’s work highlights the tension between the natural world and the urban environment, mediated by mythical language and devotional ideas as vectors for the way we perceive, process, and store memory and experience.

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Melissa Stern: Stronger than Dirt: A twenty year Retrospective

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Stronger than Dirt: Melissa Stern at the Lockwood Gallery, installation shot

Walking into The Lockwood Gallery in Kingston NY one is instantly transported into another Universe. One populated by people and things who clearly are living in a world parallel to ours, but profoundly different. Smiling figures stand tall, grinning at the world, while all the time missing a limb or two. Or having their feet nailed to the ground. Images from vintage magazines merge seamlessly with Melissa Stern’s drawings. Her world is populated with folks who exhibit a stubborn resilience in the face of cosmic obstacles. Hence the exhibition’s title – Stronger Than Dirt.

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Vick Quezada: Interconnected Matter


Artist photographed with their work, Tabled Remains, 2018. Currently on view at El Museo del Barrio. Photograph by Jill Richards

Vick Quezada (they/them) is an Indigenous-Latinx artist, they queer the archaeological through hybrid forms and aesthetics. Inspired by the guiding principles of Aztec Philosophy, Quezada integrates the theory of interconnected matter and how it’s embedded in the cosmos, planet earth, ecology, and all lifeforms. These elements of matter cannot be governed by sovereign powers as they are inherently queer and infinte. Quezada activates these themes and histories through their work, and this is conveyed by way of digital photography, video, performance and sculpture. 

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Twenty Twenty Twenty One

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Partial view of gallery installation, photo courtesy Jon Bunge

Twenty Twenty Twenty One is a group exhibit and corresponding artist book created by 18 artists. During the darkest days of the past year, the fellowship this group of artists built became a beacon of hope. The artists initially congregated in early April of 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, via weekly Zoom meetings launched by artist Mike Sorgatz, that continued through the year and up to the present. Inspired by their camaraderie, in late summer of 2020 they began casually discussing making a book to share artwork loosely relating to themes of community and connection. This book expanded into a corresponding exhibit, with Janice McDonnell generously taking the initiative in early December of 2020 to curate the exhibition at Sweet Lorraine Gallery. 

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Kathy Goodell: Infra-Loop at the Dorsky Museum

In Dialogue with Kathy Goodell


Kathy Goodell, Mesmer Eyes, 2020, ink on synthetic paper, 120 x 300”, photo courtesy of Ferris Ramirez

Infra-Loop, Kathy’s Goodell’s survey exhibition at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz, explores the visual vocabulary that runs throughout the artist’s diverse disciplines, across geographies and time periods. Guest curator and artist Andrew Woolbright brings together more than 40 artworks including paintings, sculptures, and multimedia installations from 1994 to 2020. This is the first time Goodell’s work has been presented on a large scale. The exhibition runs through July 11th.

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Sue Havens: Cull at Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art

In Dialogue with Sue Havens

The artist, photo courtesy of Mikayla Whitmore

The mid-career survey exhibition, Sue Havens: Cull, at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art includes the Florida based artist’s paintings and ceramic work since 2016. Curator Jason Lazarus describes the recent “pandemic paintings” as “a compressor, kettle, and prism” of the artist’s work from the past twenty years. Havens outlines her goal most simply as a question: “What is it to search for form?”

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The Location of Serenity at D R O N E

In Dialogue with Gryphon Rue

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The Location of Serenity (installation image, 2021). Photo: Jimi Billingsley

The inaugural group exhibition at D R O N E, a non-profit arts space in Tribeca, brings together four New York-based artists – Elsa Rensaa, Viktor Timofeev, Yasue Maetake and Eddie Natal – who explore recent memory from loss and death to spiritual regrowth. Gryphon Rue, a New York-based artist, composer, and curator, organized the exhibition and sheds some light on its premise. The show closes June 29th, or July 10th, 2021, depending on imminent leasing of the space.

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Down and Dirty at Duck Creek Arts

Installation view, photo courtesy of Gary Mamay

Down and Dirty, recent works by Bonnie Rychlak and Jeanne Silverthorne on view at Duck Creek Arts in East Hampton, NY, is a vaudevillian collection of subtly crafted works that tickle our collective psyche. The narrative of banal objects formed largely from wax and rubber elicits empathy, provokes thought and causes laughter, a complex jumble visually and emotionally. Arranged on the floor in the massive wooden barn, rejecting the hierarchical placement of art on pedestals, the works address a child-sized viewer, or perhaps an imp. They deftly implicate our inner child. The worn wood panels and flooring of the barn are complicit with Rychlak’s and Silverthorne’s works, collaborating to generate an experience in which the “feeling” or “haptic” sense is awakened, enriching the viewing experience. That Down and Dirty also blurs the boundaries between the works of the two artists is gleefully conspiratorial, the word defined here as “to breathe together.” It is a feminist gesture which includes an actual collaborative work titled Grate of Unintentional Consequences.

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