The West Chelsea Artists Open Studios presents its 16th annual artists open studios tour on Saturday & Sunday, May 10th and 11th, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event offers a look inside the art studios at the iconic building at 526 West 26th Street. Art Spiel conducted brief interviews with three artists who will participate in the event.
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Arlene Rush Studio #302 Website @arlenerush
What will we see in your studio?
In my studio, I will be showing a range of works from an early period to the present. As a multidisciplinary artist, I use a wide array of materials: steel, resin, glass, mixed-media, and photo-based work.
I am featuring my current series, All I Hear is the Symphony, which draws from how music interlaces individual parts into a unified whole. As standalone wall sculptures, the works are intimate and personal; when installed together, they gain a collective strength. Their familiar and tactile presence invites close engagement, prompting reflection regarding our social, political, and personal conditions. While the work is deeply personal, it speaks of our shared vulnerabilities, resilience, and interconnectedness.
Speaking of vulnerability, I am highlighting an array of early works, hoping to place this inventory by doing a pay-what-you-wish model and recent works at a studio discount to help preserve my legacy and scale back my inventory. I am calling this project Avoid the Dumpster, which will help me sidestep the artist’s nightmare: my artwork ending up in a dumpster instead of living happily in a home, since I can no longer afford to keep or store it myself.
If you’re curious, check out my website, reach out, and come visit. Find something that speaks to you and support my practice. It’s a win-win (and way better than a landfill fate). This, too, will be ongoing by appointment from May through June.
There is one small string attached: if there ever comes a time when the work no longer fits your life, please promise to contact me before giving it away, selling it (I get a percent of the sale), or—worse—discarding it. I’d love the chance to reclaim or rehome it again.
Art deserves better than a dumpster. Let’s give it a second (or first!) life together.
About the artist: Arlene Rush is a multidisciplinary artist born and based in New York. As a Chelsea pioneer, she opened her studio on West 26th Street in 1986. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in numerous collections. Awards include the 2025 Rauschenberg Medical Grant, CFEVA residency (1988), and Pat Hearn & Colin de Land Foundation Grants (2011, 2020). In 2020, she received the Carole Eisner Award for Sculpture. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, Artdependence Magazine, Time Out New York, and The New Yorker.
Scotto Mycklebust studio #511 Website @scottomycklebustgallery
When visitors step into my studio, the immediate reaction is often a simple, awe-struck “Wow.” It’s a true “artist’s artist studio” — a vibrant, immersive creative sanctuary where every wall, table, and corner pulses with energy. The space is alive with bold, color-saturated paintings in various stages of completion, intricate black-and-white line drawings, experimental mixed media works, and sculptures that emerge like living forms from the environment. Each work reflects my vision—a blend of abstraction, surrealism, and urban storytelling.
Beyond painting and sculpture, my interdisciplinary approach unfolds through artist-crafted electric guitars — functioning artworks that combine musical craftsmanship with visual poetry. You will see costume sketches, theatrical set designs, and conceptual drawings that hint at my extensive work as a playwright and theater creator, bridging the worlds of visual art and the performing stage. The studio itself feels less like a static workspace and more like a living installation — a place where art is always in flux. Layered paintbrushes, open sketchbooks, stacked canvases, experimental objects, and tools of creation create an environment that invites contemplation and discovery.
About the artist: Scotto Mycklebust is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist whose work explores intersections of contemporary urban life, socio-political tensions, and personal mythologies. His paintings, drawings, and conceptual pieces have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Scotto is also the founder of the West Chelsea Artists Open Studios and a leading advocate for preserving artist spaces in New York City. His interdisciplinary practice extends into theater as a playwright and set designer.
Paul Michael Graves Studio #609 Website @paulmichaelgraves
What will we see in your studio?
For open studios, I will be showing work from my recent solo exhibition, Technobabble Blue, and some newer, more colorful pieces. Each figure is a meditation on line, shape, pattern, and color. These patterns reveal what makes us human as they address themes of language, diagram, and technology. My work is an invented language of lines and dots that infer technology or, in other words, the diagrammatic suggestion of technology. Patterns are extemporaneously drawn from the subconscious. I simply let each shape inform the next until I achieve a kind of balance and asymmetry.
The nickname “technobabble” encapsulates my approach: a technological language made abstract. When people read my paintings, they often perceive something man-made, noticeably distinct from the organic patterns we find in nature. The viewer is therefore compelled to question why these patterns suggest the man-made. What differentiates the geometry we find in nature from the patterns of the built environment? The important distinction is not what is suggests (a map, a circuit board, a city plan) but why.
These compositions can be clusters or minimalist fragments made up of elementary geometry. My technobabble language is a subconscious, spontaneous meditation where abstract shapes form patterns and connections across the canvas. As abstract art, they reference nothing in particular. Yet, at the same time, they are drawn from my past as an Air Force pilot who studied mathematics and architecture before becoming a painter.
I’m excited to show some recent paintings which are more chaotic, playful, and colorful. Using unprimed canvas, I layer clusters of color into chaotic compositions. This new series is inspired by stained glass, gemstones, and feels more like pixelated pictures of some faceted object. What pleases me most is how well these transparent colors overlap and interact with each other.
About the artist: Paul Michael Graves is a painter, videographer, actor, and Air Force veteran. He has paintings and murals in notable collections such as Sir Elton John, Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Drew and Rachel Katz, and Michael Rubin. His work has been published in Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, Harper’s Bazaar, among others. He is represented by Erdrich White Fine Art and Cynthia Byrnes Contemporary Art and has shown in various group shows throughout New York. His first solo exhibition with Cynthia Byrnes, Technobabble Blue, opened December 5th of last year. He is currently filming a documentary called Gloria about the community of artists occupying the West Chelsea Arts Building.