Before the pandemic, Spoke the Hub’s Park Slope dance studio buzzed with creative activity, welcoming dance students and summer campers, hosting performances, and exhibiting work by local artists. All this came to a halt in March 2020 with the COVID lockdown. After 18 months of silence, Spoke the Hub reopened this past weekend with Salon 2021, featuring dance, comedy, and film on Saturday evening (with limited, distanced seating) and an opening on Sunday featuring new artwork by Alise Loebelsohn and Roxanna Velandria.
Loebelsohn was thrilled for the opportunity to show her recent work. “I’ve been working really hard. I was very busy, busy,” she said at the opening reception. Seven of Loebelsohn’s abstract paintings line a wall of the airy dance studio.
Her mixed media oil paintings feature layer upon layer of textures and patterns. “The work is very dense,” she notes. “There’s a lot of detail.” Forms resembling starbursts, micro-organisms, and flowers populate her kaleidoscopic paintings.
One painting, Take a Knee, made in response to last year’s Black Lives Matter and racial justice protests, includes recognizable human figures interspersed among a cacophony of shapes and colors. “It was the first piece where I actually put figures in,” Loebelsohn explained. “It just kind of emerged on its own. People seem to identify with the idea of a figure. But the challenge was to… try to make the figure be part of the pattern.” Various human forms surface from Loebelsohn’s abstract sea of patterns—some appear prominently and others “somewhat amorphous so that they’re not so identified”—showing up like apparitions.
Based in South Slope, Loebelsohn studied painting at Pratt Institute, The Arts Students League, and studied abroad in France. She made a living as a commercial artist—painting murals and billboards—for 30 years and started focusing on her own art 11 years ago. “I am throwing my weight behind my work because it’s now or never. I’m not getting any younger,” she mused.
Along with the current exhibit at Spoke the Hub, there are several upcoming opportunities to check out Loebelsohn’s work and to meet the artist. Loebelsohn will be showing at ShapeShifter Lab during the 2021 Arts Gowanus Open Studios in October, at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC) Gallery as part of the Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists fall exhibition in November, and at The Other Art Fair, also in November.
Also showing at Spoke the Hub is Brooklyn-based realist painter Roxanna Velandria. A series of manila envelopes dangle from a wall by the studio’s entrance, each embellished with a pastel portrait featuring a warm and welcoming face. A former neighbor of the studio’s, Velandria offered Spoke the Hub’s founder, Elise Long, a “version of the staff wall.” The vivid portraits feature members of Spoke the Hub’s dance and administrative teams. “I said past staff, present staff, future staff…whoever you consider has been keeping you going,” Velandria recalled of their conversation about the “tribute to the people who have kept [the studio] going” over the years. Spoke the Hub has been a community institution in Park Slope and Gowanus since launching more than 40 years ago.
(L-R) Portraits of Gwen O'Connor, Martha Sea Corprew, Marcia Bricker Halperon, Dalienne Majors, Lori Jorgenensen, Spoke the Hub founder Elise Long, Cecilia Schmidt, and Ed Velandria
Originally from Dallas, Texas, Velandria studied design communication at Texas Tech University. She moved to New York City in 1989 where she worked as a graphic designer for several years then as a Parent Coordinator for the Department of Education. During this time, she took figure drawing classes with Simon Dinnerstein and taught herself how to paint, inspired by nature and urban landscapes. “I really learned to paint by painting,” she said.
Velandria currently works with pre-schoolers, using recycled and repurposed materials for art projects. “I was kind of using that as my prompt so [the portrait wall] wouldn’t be too precious. People can touch it,” she explained. Along with the manila envelopes, Velandria incorporated baking twine, cardboard gift boxes, hang tags, and fortune cookie messages into the work. The portrait wall is also mobile and expandable, so portraits of new staff members can easily be added as they join the team.
Three oil paintings depicting Spoke the Hub dancers performing are displayed above the portraits. “They were performances from the past year, from the spring…from the pandemic because they’re outside,” she explained of the dynamic works. “I wanted it to look like their energy and the energy of their performance was going into the ether.” The paintings perfectly capture the vigorous movements of the dancers as they perform in lush surroundings or against an industrial backdrop.
“This is like my GED of getting my art out there because I’ve just always done it but have never really shown it,” Velandria said. “I’m good at sitting in the background doing it. I’ve never really put stuff out there but…if I can do it during a pandemic, I can do it any time.”
Spoke the Hub is open most afternoons, but if you’d like to see the exhibits, call beforehand to confirm. Alise Loebelsohn’s paintings will be on view through mid-October.
Alise Loebelsohn and Roxanna Velandria
Spoke the Hub
748 Union Street
Park Slope, Brooklyn
718.408.3234
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