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Artists on Coping: Liz Sweibel

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

Untitled, 2020, thread and vellum, 8×8 in

Liz Sweibel’s work is an exploration of liminal spaces, points of contact, and unseen forces:  wind, history, values, math, gravity, emotion, memory. Her drawings, sculpture, and installations are spare and abstract, using specific yet ordinary materials and gestures. She often salvages materials, sources, and forms from her older work and uses them to make sense and establish identity in the present. Her studio process is low-tech, immediate, and improvisational.

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Artists on Coping: Eileen Hoffman

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

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Hoffman in her studio working on an installation. Photo by Izzy Nova

Eileen Hoffman is a textile sculptor and installation artist whose use of non-traditional materials acts as a bridge between past traditions and contemporary approaches. Her art involves making the undervalued and unseen culture of women’s work visible. Her work has been featured in Family Matters: SDA International Exhibition in Print; The Gold Standard of Textile and Fiber Art, NYC; and Art From the Boros VII, NYC.

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Artists on Coping: Melanie Vote

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


Melanie Vote, In Studio, photo credit: Jessica Glick

Though Melanie Vote has lived in NYC for over 20 years, she grew up on a functional farm in Iowa. Her work straddles these two worlds, investigating the complexities of the human-land relationship, the cyclical nature of all life, and the impossibility of permanence. In temperate months she works remotely, painting outside. She is a visual scavenger collecting passages, then returns to the studio to reconstruct layers of a place, weaving them together into open-ended narratives. Her most recent body of work, The Washhouse, Nothing Ever Happened Here, at Equity gallery is on view virtually, via Artsy.

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Artists on Coping: Claudia Chaseling

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


Claudia Chaseling in her Berlin studio in April 2020. In the background mutopia 5 in progress.

Claudia Chaseling lives in Berlin and Canberra and received a Masters from Udk, Berlin and a Ph.D. from ANU, Canberra. Claudia is known for “Spatial Painting”, site-mutative biomorphic murals that optically distort the familiar geometry of the space, whilst carrying socio-political content. In 2013 she published the graphic novel Murphy the mutant that became an anchor for her work to follow. Her work has been featured at over sixty exhibitions internationally, including X-Border Biennial, Finland, LAB11 Biennial, Sweden, and the Lorne Biennial, Australia. Recent solo exhibitions were held at Art Gallery Nadezda Petrovic, Serbia; Wollongong Art Gallery, and Yuill Crowley Gallery, Australia; Kunstverein Duisburg and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; and AiB, NYC. “Vfzkt Berlin” published her monograph in 2016. Grants include DAAD, Karl-Hofer Award, Samstag Scholarship, OZCO and artsACT. Residencies include Art Omi and ISCP, NYC. 

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Artists on Coping: Paul Behnke

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


Paul Behnke and Gulley in his studio in Lambertville, NJ. Photo courtesy of Robin Stout.

Paul Behnke’s painting comingles references from pop culture, religion, and imagery associated with mysticism and the occult with an abstracted interplay of pure color and open and closed spaces and forms that become further complicated by realistic collaged references. His works ultimately relate to the intersection of pop culture and spirituality and how sacred beliefs become co-opted in a disconnected, consumptive society. Behnke’s work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally. He has edited Structure and Imagery art blog since 2011 and was the co-director of Stout Projects in Brooklyn. Behnke currently lives and works in Lambertville, NJ.

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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: 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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Artists on Coping: Rhonda Dee

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

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Photo credit: ZakiP

Rhonda Dee is from Texas and currently resides in Australia. She holds a BFA, (CCA, Seattle), and MA, from Sydney College of the Arts. Her layered works explore the body as a site of transformation between human, animal hybrids and supernatural forces. Her works are in permanent collection at Macquarie University, Australia-China Arts Foundation, and Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, Sao Paulo, Brazil.  Recently, she’s begun creating public artworks with disadvantaged communities. She features in Artist Profile, The Art Life, Torrens University Blog, Arts Hub Australia and is currently designing podcasts with Casula Powerhouse Art Centre, in response to COVID19.

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Artists on Coping: Lasse Antonsen

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


Lasse Antonsen in Assens, Denmark, during a residency in 2018, talking about his early years as an art student at the Experimental Art School in Copenhagen

Lasse Antonsen is an artist, art historian, and curator. He was born in Copenhagen in 1947, and attended the Experimental Art School as a teenager. After living in Spain and Morocco, Antonsen studied art history at Copenhagen University. Moving to the US in 1978, he continued his studies at Tufts University. He received an MA in art history in 1985. Antonsen was a researcher at the ICA in Boston, and for 25 years director of the University Art Gallery at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he, among others, presented the work of Ana Mendieta, Frank Stella, Ilya Kabakov, and Nancy Spero.

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Artists on Coping: Farrell Brickhouse

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


Experimenting with my wife Beverly Peterson’s VR gear

As a mature artist Farrell Brickhouse states: “I have this large vocabulary to draw from, imagery that has woven its way thru my entire career is available and malleable even as new stories continue to emerge.” He has a long Exhibition history in New York and across the U.S. A. including One Person Shows @ Julian Pretto Gallery, Max Protetch Gallery, Pamela Auchincloss Gallery, Life on Mars Gallery, John Davis Gallery, Fred Giampietro Gallery and elsewhere. His work has been reviewed in the major publications. Farrell has taught at The School of Visual Arts since 1980 and recently retired.

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