Art Hag

Heidi Lau: Gardens as Cosmic Terrains | Green-Wood Cemetery

Heidi Lau, "Gardens as Cosmic Terrains" at Green-Wood Cemetery's catacombs

Sunday, July 10, was the last day to catch Heidi Lau’s Gardens as Cosmic Terrains at Green-Wood Cemetery’s catacombs. In 2021, Lau was selected out of 964 submissions to be Green-Wood’s first ever artist-in-residence in the cemetery’s 184 year history. She created her site-specific ceramic works at the cemetery’s beautiful, landmarked Fort Hamilton Gatehouse and was granted access to the cemetery’s grounds and archives.

Gardens as Cosmic Terrains was inspired by Lau's long walks through Green-Wood’s 478-acres and a Taoist concept of "the convergence of wandering, play, and introspection, which together invite a reawakening of self-knowledge,” she said in a press release for the exhibit. The artist also found inspiration in the “cosmological settings of traditional Chinese gardens, where the arrangement of plantings, pathways, and vistas act as a metaphor for time, space, and our place in the cosmos.”

Her striking ceramic sculptures populate the cavernous catacombs – which are typically closed to the public. Many dangle on disproportionate chains from the circular skylights like mystical spelunkers dropping down from the heavens. Rich in texture and details, some pieces resemble urns and “ritualistic funerary objects” while others feature body parts, faces, hands, and vertebrae.

Lau’s fantastical installation is right at home in Green-Wood’s catacombs, inspiring contemplation on mortality/immortality, spirituality, and universality. Green-Wood Cemetery is a peaceful space for reflection that inspires many visitors. Hopefully Green-Wood will continue its residency program and invite more artists to find inspiration.

Heidi Lau is originally from Macau, China and currently lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from New York University in 2008, where she focused on printmaking and drawing. She is a self-taught ceramist. See more of her work on Instagram @heidiwtlau and visit green-wood.com to learn more. 

 

Art Over Time | Celebrating Senior Artists

Symphony of Colors by Victoria Cowles, on view at Art Over Time

A new exhibition in Red Hook is shifting the spotlight from au courant young artists onto their more mature peers. The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition [BWAC] presents Art Over Time, a monumental showcase of works created by 70 artists over the age of 65.

“As I’ve aged it’s become abundantly clear that the art world tends to focus on the young, the new, the innovative,” said artist Susan Handwerker who co-curated the exhibit with fellow BWAC member Sandra Forrest. “Whatever you haven’t seen before, that’s what’s going to be the next big thing. And that’s great because we need newness and we need innovation, but then there are the rest of us who bring depth and experience and perspective to forms and techniques that we’ve been practicing for a very long time, and we tend to get overlooked.”

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Handwerker attended art school in Toronto and Vancouver and remained in Canada after graduating. After marrying and starting a family, she returned to NYC in the mid-80s and taught art in public high schools until her retirement in 2012.

Handwerker creates painted clay sculptures from her studio in Gowanus. “I’ve almost always made figurative work in clay with a fairly feminist approach content-wise,” she explained. In the early 80s, while doing research for a solo show centered on death and transformation, Handwerker found several images of boats “referencing the way different cultures deal with death.” She began sculpting a series of boats. “That was the original impetus,” she recalled. “Then just before COVID I started to make boats again,” she added, but now her works focus on climate change and migration. One of her three works included in the exhibit, Fish For Home, Blue, was influenced by Southeast Asian fishing boats and addresses the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar.

Moving in Waves by Susan Handwerker

Fishing For Home, Blue by Susan Handwerker

A member of BWAC since the 90s, Handwerker currently serves as co-president for the non-profit organization. Art Over Time celebrates “the work of older artists and recognizes the people who have these extended careers,” she notes. “What I should have titled this show was ‘The Triumph of Art Over Time’ because that’s really my intention. That’s really what I want people to take away, that there is important contemporary vibrant work being done by people into their senior years and [they should] not to be overlooked.”

A perfect example of a lifelong artist whose extensive oeuvre demands attention is 93-year-old Bernette Rudolph of Park Slope, Brooklyn. “I have been wanting to feature and honor some of our much older [BWAC] members,” Handwerker said of the mini-retrospective. “People love her work and it’s time she was recognized.” A rear corner of the BWAC exhibition space is dedicated to Rudolph's work over the decades.

Left to right: Hera, Sea Horse,  Antelope Man, Mermaid Riding a Sea Horse by Bernette Rudolph

Diana of Ephesus #1 and #2 by Bernette Rudolph

Left to right: Owl Lady, Looking At You, Wise Woman, Bunny Lady (above), Pearls Abound, Fish Face by Bernette Rudolph

Archway by Bernette Rudolph

Rolled Paper Art #2, #1, #3 by Bernette Rudolph

While she works primarily with wood, both fine wood and found pieces, Rudolph masterfully transforms various materials— paper, varnish, beads, shells, animal figurines—into delightful treasures. Unwilling to sit idly during a hospital stay last year, Rudolph rolled, folded, and transformed pieces of paper into enchanting sculptures. “She’s my hero,” Handwerker says.

Charlotta Kotik—a former curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum—served as the juror for Art Over Time. Along with the age requirement, the criteria for submissions included a narrative explaining how each artist arrived at this stage of their career. “We wanted to know how did [they] get here from there, from wherever [they] started, whether it was in youth or...a second career,” Handwerker explained. “The work itself is wonderful…and having the backstory is so enriching.”

On Her Mind (foreground) and Double Dare (rear) by Leah Poller

Ice Writing: River I by Ellen Alt

Oil Spill by Diane Miller

A Man by Nina Hellman

Opposites Abstract by Joe Banish

Clinton Hill Red Green, 1 on 1 (above), Six Over Six (below) by Daniel McDonald

Pandemic Series #2 by Michael Padwee

Memories - Coke Case (foreground) by Renee Radenberg; Do You Want to Meet at My Place? (rear) by Elizabeth Casquiero

Andy Warhol in China by Hui Tian

Infinity (foreground) by Ray Katz; Table of Contents (top) and Freud's Sister - A Collection of Short Love Stories (bottom) by Kenneth Ricci

Left to right: Blue's Note (top) and Basta (bottom) by Steven Nedboy; Noon and Nocturne by Virginia Sharkey

BWAC received more than 100 submissions from across the country for the juried exhibit. Kotik selected the top three artists:

• Mixed media works by Victoria Cowles of Potomac, Maryland;
• A pair of intricate sculptures composed of found materials by Ronald Gonzalez of Johnson City, New York;
• Elegant paper relief collages by Judith Eloise Hooper of Brooklyn, New York.

Cowles’ winning work embodies the exhibit’s theme, according to Handwerker. “Tory Cowles…does exemplify how innovative people are. If you’re an artist you’re an artist no matter what, no matter how old you are.” Learn more about Art Over Time at bwac.org.

Otherwise Engaged and Then by Judith Eloise Hooper

Head #1 by Ronald Gonzalez

Head #3 by Ronald Gonzalez

Dark Tapestry by Victoria Cowles

Art Over Time
Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC)
481 Van Brunt Street, Door #7, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Exhibition on view July 10 through August 15, Saturdays & Sundays from 1pm – 6pm
Closing party on August 15 will include a joint celebration with the concurrent Coney Island exhibit (on second floor) and feature magic shows and performances.

PSWT Artists Open Studios: Redux | Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC)

Carol Adams' sculptures (front and back left); Joyce Riley's Dawson's Creek, Meet You There, We Are All One (back wall, left to right)

The second weekend of the Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists Open Studios: Redux at the BWAC gallery was bustling on Saturday with art lovers of all ages. The exhibition, featuring a variety of works by Arts PSWT members, serves as an alternative to the group’s annual Open Studios event, offering more room for artists and visitors to adhere to pandemic protocols.

“With COVID we were thinking of just canceling and not doing it at all,” explained Sandra Giunta, a member of Arts PSWT who helped organize the group show. “I’m a member here at BWAC so I knew the space and…I thought that this would be a great way for us to continue our Open Studios this year, in an 8,000-square-foot gallery where we could social distance.”

She proposed the idea of hosting the exhibit at BWAC in early October. The 32 participating artists joined forces to make it a reality, exhibiting an array of  painting, prints, ceramics, collage, drawings, photography, and sculpture. Each artist is given wall space or a table to showcase a selection of their work.

Sandra Giunta stands beside a display of her Corals sculptures at BWAC

Sandra Giunta, Cause and Effect 1, Cause and Effect 2

Alise Loebelsohn, Talking to Angels, Sail and Sea (top), Dots and Stars (bottom)

Works by Dara Oshin

Works by Cynthia Ruse

Paper collage portraits by Judith Eloise Hooper

Works by Robin Roi

Whereas the open studios tend to be “a much more intimate kind of event,” Giunta is happy with the expansive exhibit because it gives the artists an opportunity to see each other’s output. “When we have Open Studios at many different places, the artists don’t get to see each other’s work, so it’s something you really miss. This is giving everybody the opportunity to see all the artists' work.”

Janie Samuels, President of Arts PSWT agrees, adding that “manning our own studios” during the usual Open Studios event prevents members from visiting their colleagues at their workspaces. “What’s fabulous about this show is that…it’s the first opportunity we’ve actually had to be able to spend as much time here as a group and talk about the work as a group,” she said.

Born in upstate New York, Samuels grew up in Manhattan and received her BA from Bennington College in Vermont and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts. A member of Arts PSWT for more than ten years, Samuels works from her home opposite Green-Wood Cemetery. Her evocative drawings and paintings address immigration issues and the refugee crisis. “I’ve always been affected by how horrific, heartless, and unnecessary so much global strife is, so I try to attack those political issues on an intimate level and bring it back to something that’s humane,” she explains. “I also deal with more intimate issues, but the paintings are all about relationships.”

Janie Samuels stands with her works (left to right) Is It Safe Yet?, Lazy Summer Days, Lean On Me, and two landscapes

Janie Samuels, (clockwise from top left) In Dialogue, Helping Hands, In Hopes of a Better Life

Jonathan Blum's (with Sean Qualls) A Magical Moment (top left); Brooklyn Rabbi Blessing Flowers (bottom left); Pope Playing Bass (center);
(with Sean Qualls) The Rehearsal (top right); Pink Llama with Blue Watermelon (bottom right)

Works by Bob Hagan

Fotini Vurgaropulou, Film Reels

Works by Bernardo Justin Campoy

Phil DeSantis (left to right) Lily Pads, Crucifiction, Nathan's, Windows Reflection

Works by Heidi Yockey

Mary Cuddihee Skrill, Blue and red building (top left); Black Lives Matter wall (bottom left);
Yellow house (center); Orange building (top right); Grey buildings (bottom right)

Watercolors by Lynn Cole

Sculptures by Steve Ettlinger

A member of Arts PSWT for five years, Giunta is a resident of Windsor Terrace and works from TI Art Studios in Red Hook. Formerly a Doctor of Education in Instructional Technology and Distance Education, Giunta is a self-taught artist working in clay sculpture. She began sculpting figurative works—detailed busts and human figures—before finding inspiration in the “wonderful coral reef” along the coast of Belize. Her playful, colorful coral sculptures on display at BWAC transport visitors momentarily to a tropical beachfront, however her works carry a more pressing message. “With global warming, the reefs are being destroyed and I just want to keep everything kind of above the surface and alert people,” she said. “We have to do something about this or we’re going to lose these incredible structures.”

With dozens of artists enthusiastically showcasing their work to the steady stream of visitors throughout the weekend, the exhibition at BWAC proved to be just as popular as the annual open studios. “I didn’t know how we would do with COVID and what kind of turn-out we’d have, but I think everybody’s anxious to get out again and do things,” Giunta noted. The Arts PSWT team may make the group show a regular event on their calendar. 

“We may try to set something up where we do this once a year and we do the Open Studios once a year,” added Samuels. “This has been a wonderful event [despite] COVID. It’s given us an opportunity to show our work and what we’ve done, and it’s also given the community an opportunity to see work in a safe place.”

Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists Open Studios: Redux has been extended through next weekend, November 21 and 22. 

Like last year, OSSAM Gallery in Park Slope serves as a central hub for the event, displaying one piece by each participating artist. See my post on the OSSAM exhibit here.

PSWT Artists Open Studios: Redux
Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, 481 Van Brunt Street (ground floor), Red Hook, Brooklyn
Saturday & Sunday (Nov. 21 & 22), noon to 6pm

Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists Open Studios: Redux | OSSAM Gallery

Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists Open Studios: Redux, OSSAM Gallery

Although the annual Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists Open Studios event cannot proceed as usual this year, the group has found an alternate way to showcase work by dozens of local artists while adhering to COVID-related health restrictions. Instead of attendees visiting individual artist studios, PSWT Artists Open Studios: Redux assembles more than 30 artists for a group exhibition taking place at two spacious venues where there is plenty of room to social distance while meeting the artists and checking out their work. Don't forget to wear a mask!

The collective of artists based in Park Slope and Windsor Terrace has hosted open studios annually since 2013. Spanning two weekends, Open Studios: Redux kicked off last Friday. Once again Ossam Gallery serves as a preview gallery, exhibiting one piece by each participating artist. Works on view include painting, prints, drawings, ceramics, sculpture, photography, and collage.

Over at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition's (BWAC) gallery in Red Hook, the artists showcase an array of work, each with a designated table or wall space to exhibit. The artists will be on hand over the weekend to meet and greet visitors and sell their work.

Visit ArtsPSWT.com for more info and click here to see my post covering last year's PSWT Open Studios Weekend. Below are photos taken last Sunday at OSSAM Gallery. 

PSWT Artists Open Studios: Redux
OSSAM Gallery, 300 7th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn
Friday through Sunday (Nov. 13-15), noon to 6pm

Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, 481 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Saturday & Sunday (Nov. 14-15), noon to 6pm

Dan McDonald, 6 Over 6, mixed media

L-R: Bob Hagan, Life Goes On (25a), mixed media; Mary Cuddihee Skrill, Pink Building, acrylic on canvas

Robin Roi, Elemental, mixed media, acrylic paint, collage, dressmaking paper

L-R: Stephanie Amend, Doe Deer, oil; Dara Oshin, Fecundity, archival pigment print, glass beads, metal leaf, board; Alice Garik, Nest, gelatin silver print

L-R: Cynthia Ruse, Still, oil and mixed media on wood panel; Alise Loebelsohn, From Green to Orange, oil paint on panel

L-R: Janie Samuels, Silence Speaks, pastel on paper; Lynn Goodman, Brooklyn Parrot Flight, porcelain, glazes, gold

L-R: Stacy Bergener, Behind the Veil, mixed media on canvas; Heidi Yockey, Untitled, oil on panel

L-R: Phil Desantis, Rusty Chains, photograph; Susan Greenstein, Wave Hill, watercolor

Howard Skrill, Junipero Serra Decapitate, ink, gesso, graphite, colored pencil, pastel on watercolor paper

L-R: Raya Dukhan, Ardent, mixed media on canvas; Phyllis Gaughran, Just Before Dawn, acrylic on natsume

Luis Coig, Untitled, wood shelf and tchotchkes

L-R: Justin Campoy, in collaboration with John Lennox, Fielder's Choice (First buds must like the cold), multicolored ink and letterpress with Baskerville Type on paper; 
Lynn Cole, View From Inside, watercolor, rubber stamp

Joyce Riley, Green-Wood Cemetery, Pink Paths, oil and acrylic on wood

Kathleen Jean-Jacques, Lou, mixed media

L-R: Caryn Kreitzer, The Peace March, terracotta; Karen Jarmon, Hanukkah Menorah, ceramic and brass; Paola Corso, Blue Moon Shadows, photograph

Jonathan Blum, Sheep Thinking About Aged Gouda, monoprint

Steve Ettlinger, Sleeping Shmoo, cedar with Danish oil

Fotini Vurgaropulou, Chambers, cast glass and copper

L-R: Sandra Giunta, Coral Reminder 47, clay; Carol Adams, Irini, ceramic with terra sigilatta, underglaze, washes, glaze, metal, beads

Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists Open Studios Redux, OSSAM Gallery

Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks | Brooklyn Museum

Charles Cary Rumsey, The Dying Indian, circa 1904, and Study for Buffalo Hunt Freeze, Manhattan Bridge, 1912-15;  John Little Sun Murie, I'm Gonna Run With Every Minute I Can Borrow moccasins (on sculpture), 2019;  Jeffrey Gibson, I'm Gonna Run With Every Minute I Can Borrow mural, 2019.
A selection of moccasins from the Brooklyn Museum's Collection is displayed in front.

For his current show at the Brooklyn Museum artist Jeffrey Gibson exhibits a selection of his recent multidisciplinary works alongside an array of Native American objects from the museum's collection. When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks features Gibson’s kaleidoscopic paintings and murals, sculptures, and garments juxtaposed with ceramics, headdresses, and beadwork created by Indigenous artists, as well as works depicting Native Americans made by non-Native artists.

Born in Colorado and based in Hudson, New York, Gibson is of Choctaw and Cherokee descent. He incorporates into his work traditional Native American materials and practices (e.g., beadwork, metal jingles, animal hides) to challenge perceptions of Native American artwork and to address the erasure of Indigenous art from Western history. He received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 2019. 

Visitors entering the exhibit are met by Charles Cary Rumsey’s life-sized bronze, Dying Indian (circa 1904), set against a dizzying rainbow-colored mural by Gibson. According to the artist, the sculpture is a prime example of how many late 19th- and early 20th-century non-Native artists represented the “decline and eventual end of Native American civilizations.” In the wall text Gibson states that these artworks “have always saddened and perplexed me because I have never understood why some people celebrate these sculptures while I have found them offensive since I was a child.” Gibson collaborated with John Murie to create a pair of the latter's signature beaded moccasins to adorn the statue’s feet. Lyrics borrowed from the Roberta Flack song See You Then are meticulously beaded onto the footwear, reading, “I’m Gonna Run With Every Minute I Can Borrow.”

Two other sculptures by non-Native American artists—one of Chief Blackbird and another of an Indian Warrior—are displayed on either side of Gibson’s I Don’t Belong To You – You Don’t Belong To Me. “These sculptures present images of Native people that are idealized in the mind of the maker either for the objectification of their beauty or their demise,” the artist states.

L-R: Alexander Phimister Proctor, Chief Blackbird Ogalalla (Oglala) Sioux, modeled 1903, cast 1907: Jeffrey Gibson, I Don't Belong to You—You Don't Belong to Me, 2016;  Adolph Alexander Weinman, Indian Warrior, 1898

Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks installation view

Jeffrey Gibson, When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks, 2019

Jeffrey Gibson, All I Wanted, All I Needed, 2019

An adjacent gallery exhibits Gibson’s dynamic paintings on hide or canvas, a beaded punching bag, and three garments inspired by Ghost Dance ceremonies wherein Paiute dancers wore “self-made ghost shirts” that they believed would deflect “white man’s bullets.” The gallery also displays various examples of Native American beadwork as well as two traditional headdresses. The feathered headdress represents the “romanticized Indian” in mainstream media, according to the artist. Young Native American men from the Plains section of the United States (the central expanse from Texas to the Dakotas) added feathers to their headpieces after demonstrating an act of courage or performing a good deed, taking years to accumulate the plumage to complete a full headdress.

The Tsimshian headdress, from the northwest coast, is worn by leaders during gift-giving celebrations to symbolize prestige and “showcase acts of generosity.” Gibson’s two interpretations of headdresses appear more like helmets, encasing the wearer's head in a protective shell. All of the headwear exhibited “symbolize strength” according to the museum, “but one represents strength in the form of protection while the other is in the form of the protector.”

L-R: War Bonnet from the Plains region and Tsimshian headdress from the Northwestern Coast

Top, L-R: Jeffrey Gibson's People Like Us, 2018;  Tribes File Suit To Protect Bears Ears, 2018; A Wag A Wit A Witness; 2018
Below, L-R: Jeffrey Gibson's Oceana, 2018 and Peace, 2018

Jeffrey Gibson, Peace, 2018

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) artist,  Beaded Bag,  circa 1850s-60s

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) artist, Beaded Bag, early 20th century

Jeffrey Gibson, Mound Builder, 2013

Jeffrey Gibson, Speak To Me In Your Way So That I Can Hear You, 2015

The third gallery focuses on items from the Brooklyn Museum’s Archives including a tipi liner covered in illustrations by the Lakota member, Rain-In-The-Face, who documented his life on the swath of cotton. This gallery questions the museum’s Native American collection assembled by Stewart Culin, Curator of Ethnology for the institution from 1903 to 1929. Gibson and historian Dr. Christian Ayne Crouch, who collaborated on this exhibit, argue that while the objects showcase “Indigenous subjects and culture," they also suggest a vanishing culture, “the exclusion and erasure of indigenous histories and stories that had been fundamental to the narratives that institutions promote.” The tipi liner that documents Rain-In-The-Face's history is, according to Dr. Crouch, both an art object and archival piece that "invites us to bring a new approach to recover Native agency, presence, and voice in the Museum archive and in the collections."

Jeffrey Gibson, Whose World Is This? It's Yours It's Mine, 2019
The stained glass work's title is a modified Nas lyric from the 1994 song "The World is Yours"

Grete Mannheim,  Navajo Mother and Baby, Arizona, 1952

Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks installation view

Jeffrey Gibson, Power!, 2018

Rain-In-The-Face, Tipi Liner, 1850-89

Southwest water jars from the Brooklyn Museum Collection

Charles Cary Rumsey, The Dying Indian, circa 1904, and Study for Buffalo Hunt Freeze, Manhattan Bridge, 1912-15; John Little Sun Murie, I'm Gonna Run With Every Minute I Can Borrow moccasins (on sculpture), 2019; Jeffrey Gibson, I'm Gonna Run With Every Minute I Can Borrow mural, 2019

“When fire is applied to a stone it cracks” is an Irish proverb, Gibson explains, adding that it reflects his desire for museum-goers to abandon their preconceived notions when looking at historical objects. “I read ‘fire’ in this quote to describe the innovative making, use of materials, transformative techniques, and the survivalist ethic of Indigenous people. Our use of new and different materials to make things that support ourselves and our communities in the ‘fire’ that continues to break open the static and antiquated ideas regarding who we are and what we are capable of.”

Through the exhibition and his artwork, Gibson demonstrates the “continuity and endurance of Indigenous communities and artists.” Don’t miss this fascinating exhibit that showcases overlooked Native American artwork while reviving it in meaningful and innovative ways.

Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Exhibition on view through January 10, 2021

Continuum | Established Gallery

Brooklyn-based artist Gail Flanery celebrates friendship, collaboration, and women artists in Continuum, a group exhibit currently on view at Established Gallery.

L-R: JoAnne McFarland, Free, 2012 and Tatana Kellner, Violent, 2018

While reading Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women, which chronicles the careers of Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler, Flanery reflected on her life as an artist and the relationships she has developed with fellow women artists over the years.

“I was musing over the time I’ve spent in my life as an artist here in the city and the people I know,” she said at the gallery Sunday afternoon, “and the women that I have known through this whole period of [our] living in New York and paddling through the art world. I met these women in different ways but all of it having to do with art.”

Flanery was moved by the connections formed by the five artists in Ninth Street Women, “the influence that they had on each other” and “the risks that they were taking” when the arts community was “still a man’s world” and women had to balance their careers with their families. “That really made me stop and think because I’ve seen it. It was not always easy to be acknowledged [as an artist] and to get a show.”

L-R: Gail Flanery, Ocean, 2018 and Damali Miller, Memories of Home Once....and always

L-R: Ellen Chuse, Totem, 2017 and Kathy Caraccio, Victorian Wallpaper I, II, 2016

L-R: Amy Weil, Flowers not for Algernon and Karen Gibbons, Snake, 2018

Doris Rodriguez, Kite Dreams

L-R: Olivia Beens, Flowers of Perseverance, I, II, III and JoAnne McFarland, Positive Shirley, Negative Shirley

It can still be challenging today for women artists to be recognized, making the need for a supportive community crucial. “If you’re a functioning artist and you’re trying to get shows, you’re trying to be seen, and you’re trying to figure out what do…there’s a conversation that you can’t really have with anyone else as easily, as naturally [as another artist],” Flanery said. “There are things you don’t even have to describe because you know they know. There was a familiarity in a lot of [Gabriel’s] writing, just with the relationships.”

After receiving the offer to curate the exhibit at Established Gallery, Flanery faced the daunting task of coordinating the show in three weeks. “That night I tossed and turned,” she recalled, “and the next morning I got on the phone and I just called everybody.” She contacted artists she has known and collaborated with over the years—some for more than four decades—including former classmates, members of the printmaking community, members of 440 Gallery, and colleagues from the Studio in a School program. With the help of assistant curator Mitchell-lee Van Rooij, who is also assisting Flanery with her archives, the pair managed to present an empowering, consistent exhibit showcasing a diverse selection by 14 artists who have paid their dues in the NYC art world.

Born in Ohio to a career army sergeant, Flanery spent her childhood moving every 18 months around the world. “We’d ship out of Fort Hamilton Army Base in Bay Ridge. We’d leave from there and come back there,” she recalled. When her father retired from service, the family settled not far from the base in Staten Island where Flanery completed her last year of high school.

“From the time I was a little kid I’ve always drawn,” Flanery said before fondly telling her “fairy princess story.” During a visit to her grandmother’s farm in Ohio when she was about five years old, Flanery remembers standing outside with her pet cow and seeing a “fairy princess” fly by. “She was exquisite and had amazing wings, long blond hair, and high heels, of course.” While she now realizes it was probably a dragonfly, as a child she excitedly ran to tell her grandmother about her sighting. “I started to describe her and my Grandmother Abigail said to me, ‘Wait, don’t tell me. Show me,’ and she handed me a paper and a pencil.” This sparked Flanery’s passion for visual storytelling. “I always drew from that point on. It started early and it never ended…. Grandma, until the day she died, had that picture taped behind her bed.” she said. “When I became a teacher I often used that as my experience in how…there’s more than one way to tell a story.”

After completing high school, Flanery sold refrigerators in Manhattan for a brief stint before enrolling at The Cooper Union where she met Damali Miller, one of the artists featured in Continuum. “I love that school so much,” she said. “That school picked me up from one world and dropped me in another in such an enormous way.” Flanery recalls making lifelong friends and having incredible instructors at the school, including the art historian Dore Ashton who guided Flanery when she felt overwhelmed. After waitressing at many of the old Soho artist haunts to pay her rent throughout school, Flanery received her BFA in 1972.

Amy Williams, The Hemingway Series

Robin Holder, Copper Leaf Promise

Tracy Penn, Everything is Everything

L-R: Susan Newmark, The Language of Flowers I, II, 2015; Olivia Beens, Flowers of Perseverance, I, II, III; JoAnne McFarland, Positive Shirley, Negative Shirley; Amy Williams, The Hemingway Series

Shortly after graduating, Flanery met Kathy Caraccio whose “unique and extraordinary” personality fostered Flanery’s love for printmaking. “I discovered that I loved process and that’s what [Kathy] gave me,” Flanery said. “I learned so much from her and she gave me such confidence,” Flanery added, noting that she continues to learn from Caraccio today.

“The printmaking world is so small and intense, that everyone who has a shop knows everybody else in the city,” according to Flanery. She adds it was through Caraccio that she met Tatana Kellner who contributed two pieces to Continuum.

In the mid 1980s when Flanery moved from Soho to Park Slope, she needed to find a kindergarten for her son so she visited PS 107. “I went to look in on one of the classes and Olivia Beens was there with Studio in a School,” Flanery recalled. “I had never heard of it but I walk in and here is this artist and she’s really teaching. She’s not doing the turkey hand [tracing] kind of things…. I was like, ‘This is where I want my boy to go to school.’”

After working with Beens as a volunteer for Studio in a School, Beens recommended Flanery as a teacher for the program. Flanery spent the next 20 years teaching art to pre-K through high school students across the city, retiring about six years ago. Along with Flanery and Beens, Flanery’s old friend and classmate Damali Miller also taught for Studio in a School. Other Continuum artists Flanery met through the program include Robin Holder, Doris Rodriguez, and Susan Newmark.

Flanery has been a member of Park Slope’s 440 Gallery for ten years. It was at the artist-run gallery that she met Ellen Chuse, Karen Gibbons, Amy Weil, and Amy Williams, 440’s Gallery Director. Connections with Continuum artists JoAnne McFarland and Tracy Penn were more recently established through the Gowanus arts community.

Flanery’s prints are inspired by nature and feature vast landscapes, open skies, and bold horizons. “I would say palette is definitely my first consideration,” she notes. The deep blue waters in her Ocean complement Miller’s Memories of Home Once….and always. The similarities in the works' colors and lines suggest the synergy between the two longtime friends.

Gail Flanery stands next to Ocean, her monotype with chine collé

Flanery points out the relationships between Kellner’s Almost Gone and Weil’s Flowers not for Algernon, and the conversation between their palettes and grids. Penn's intricate encaustic piece Everything Is Everything is a perfect companion to Newmark's multi-layered collages The Language of Flowers I, II in the rear of the gallery just across from William's entrancing installation The Hemingway Series. “Mitchell and I walked through here and we were both like, ‘Wow. This is such strong work,’” Flanery recalled after hanging all the pieces. “I’m really glad we were able to hang it with space because each piece is so powerful.”

Joyfully explaining Continuum to a visitor at the gallery on Sunday, Flanery noted, “The thing that pulled it together for me is my relationship with these artists. I’ve known them and made art with them 30, 40, some of them almost 50 years in New York, and we never dropped the thread. And the thread was creation…our work. There’s great variety in our work but there’s a strength and a continuum.”

“It was about us keeping on keeping on,” she continued. “After decades it continues. That was the commonality, the artists I knew who have never stopped.”

Continuum
Established Gallery
75 6th Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Exhibition on view January 18 through February 9

Queer + Peculiar Craft | The Clemente

Currently on view at The Clemente in the Lower East Side is Queer + Peculiar Craft, an exhibition of contemporary ceramics and textiles that examines identity and challenges viewers' expectations of craft.

Queer + Peculiar Craft installation view: works by Phoenix Lindsay-Hall (far left); Greg Climer (right and left of window); Koren Christofides (rear table); Andrew Cornell Robinson (front table); and Roxanne Jackson (far right)

Curated by Andrew Cornell Robinson, the exhibit showcases “an intersectional group of artists who explore craft to transgress expectations of traditional materials, methods, and meaning,” according to the show’s press release. The show features a diverse selection of subversive work that includes pottery, quilting, cross-stitching, printmaking, and crochet employed in unconventional and refreshing ways.

Clockwise from top: Puppetmaster Punch Bowl, Rhyton, and Doll House, all by Koren Christofides

Couple Kissing (blue and yellow), George Climer

#communication (top) and Mincing Queen Mincing Words (bottom), both by Timo Rissannen

Detail of Mincing Queen Mincing Words by Timo Rissannen

One artist featured in the show, Koren Christofides, explores feminism through ceramics. In an email, Robinson explained that some of Christofides' works are soft sculptures made with industrial ceramic fiber insulation covered in paper clay, resulting in pieces that are simultaneously “familiar and strange.” For his prismatic quilts featuring erotic males nudes, Greg Climer reinterprets traditional quilt-making methods by “creating the fabric fragments rather than upcycling scraps,” according to the exhibition essay.

Vick Quezada's Table Remains (front) and Phoenix Lindsey-Hall's Fourteen Blows (rear)

Phoenix Lindsey-Hall's Fourteen Blows

Jamon Jamon V (Chueca), Andrew Cornell Robinson

Works by Andrew Cornell Robinson

Phoenix Lindsey-Hall’s ceramic sculptures play with “repetition and formalism,” according to Robinson. “It uses that formalism to include queer stories within the framework of contemporary aesthetics.” Her Fourteen Blows features a row of white porcelain claw hammers—a weapon used in hate crimes against members of the LGBTQ community—protruding limply from a wall.

Robinson’s own ceramic and mixed media sculptures included in the show “explore historical customs as a metaphor for queer-baiting and conformity.” The sculptures in his Jamon Jamon series reference a medieval Spanish custom in which hosts offered ham to visitors to “sniff out heresy during the inquisition when the pious were looking for expressions of distaste in response to the offer of sliced pork,” the exhibit essay explains. His Jamon Jamon sculptures are a “metaphor about being ‘suspected’ and ‘queer-baited’ as a gay man."

Inspiration for Queer + Peculiar Craft came from a 1993 interview with the late artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres for A.R.T. Press. When asked about the lack of “overt political or Latino content” in his work, Gonzalez-Torres responded:

“I’m not a good token. I don’t wear the right colors. I have my own agenda. Some people want to promote multiculturalism as long as they are the promoters, the circus directors. We have an assigned role that’s very specific, very limited….”

“[Gonzalez-Torres] expressed an impatience that I could identity with as a gay man making art,” Robinson noted. “I felt empowered by his question, ‘Who is going to define my culture?’”

Born in Camden, New Jersey, and raised on the outskirts of NYC, Robinson grew up in a creative family and discovered ceramics at an early age. He studied ceramic sculpture at the Glasgow School of Art and the Maryland Institute College of Art and received his MFA in sculpture from the School of Visual Arts. “I make work that explores identities and lived experiences, but I have often come to the same conclusion that [Gonzalez-Torres] had. Our voice, our creative lineages have broader roots that span across times, cultures, politics, sexualities, genders, languages and media,” he said, noting that he is influenced by poetry, fiction, sculpture, film, dance, and more.

“I have been fascinated by how some artists challenge an accepted idea or a material tradition and are then dismissed or criticized for their peculiar transgression against the norm,” Robinson continued. “I love that sense of the peculiar, the unfamiliar…. It’s exciting.”

Queer + Peculiar Craft installation view

Healer Giant, Roxanne Jackson

Walking Ten More Steps, Suddenly Open, Dad's Tear (top); Walking Ten More Steps, Suddenly Open, Grandmother's Grievance (bottom), both by Lu Zhang

Works by Edmund Green Langdell

Queer + Peculiar Craft on view at The Clemente. _SCAR by Brian Kenny is seen beside door.

The 11 artists included in Queer + Peculiar Craft are based around the world but most have a connection to New York City, Robinson explained. “Some are gay, lesbian, straight and/or transgender. Some are older and younger and represent a multi-racial and multi-cultural group of makers,” he said. “Their work touches upon an underlying sense of being outside of a tradition, culture or common ground, and seeing the world through that particular point of view, which may often be met with suspicion, or dismissal, hence the title Queer and Peculiar.”

With works that address homosexual desire, feminism, transgender narratives, immigration, racism, and class, the artists “push the boundaries of a particular craft tradition by introducing a new technology, material, or by combining new content with anachronistic making methods,” according to Robinson, who adds that the featured artists are “doing something now and new with materials that have deep histories.”

Robinson hopes audiences will be introduced to a new group of artists and “recognize something familiar” in their work. “Perhaps they might see the common grounds that may be found in our queerness and/or peculiarity, and find empathy, or humor, or hope, or recognition,” he said. 

Queer + Peculiar Craft
The Clemente, Abrazo Interno Gallery, Second Floor
107 Suffolk Street (between Rivington & Delancey), Lower East Side
Exhibition on view through January 18
Artists' Panel Discussion scheduled for Thursday, January 16, 6pm to 8pm

The Constructions | Ground Floor Gallery

Kurt McRobert's signage on the window of Ground Floor Gallery

Ground Floor Gallery’s latest group show, The Constructions, is packed with wonders inspired by the art of Joseph Cornell including sculpture, assemblage, collage, and painting.

“I have a long affair with Joseph Cornell. I love the work. It’s kind of heartbreaking. It’s poetic,” said the exhibit’s curator, John Gagné, during the gallery opening Friday evening. “His kind of working method was [going to] Downtown Manhattan, [into] old bookstores, antique stores, and gathering up all these small bits and then building them into boxes.” 

Cornell (1903-1972) crafted dreamlike scenes with found objects arranged inside wooden boxes as intricate tableaux. The self-taught artist called his boxes "constructions,” Gagné added. Learn more about Cornell and see his artwork at Guggenheim.org and artnet.com.

The exhibit features work by 21 local artists, including Kurt McRobert who hand-painted the eye-catching vintage type on the gallery window.

Clockwise from top left: Jon Bunge, Energy #5, 2017; Tony Stanzione, Glass Punching Bag, 1991-2019; Christina Martinelli, MY MEMORIES/OF YOU/HAVE BECOME/SILENT FILMS/YOU CONDUCT/AN ORCHESTRA/NOW AND THEN/I HEAR IT/CALLING ME, 2018; Rachel Wren, Nevertheless, 2017

Clockwise from top left: Barry Rust, Marsh Wheeling Cigar Box Ukulele, 2014; Barry Rust, Club House Cigar Box Ukulele, 2015; George Horner, Enlighten Up, 2014

Clockwise from left: Andrew Robinson, Jamón in the Marais (For the love of Bruno Lenoir and Jean Diot), 2019; Sophia Rauch, Ghost at Lunch, 2018; Sophia Rauch, Stripe Dot, 2018

Barry Rust’s cigar box ukuleles breathe brand new life into found objects while Sophia Rauch’s “literally constructed” photographic works reinterpret Cornell’s tableaux. Rauch created rich abstract scenes with painting, self-portraiture, cardboard, string, and spray paint, according to Gagné. “I think [this] is the essence of what Cornell was doing,” he said.

Assemblage works include Ward Yoshimoto’s compelling mixed media pieces and Susan Greaves’ ornate frames filled with photos and an array of trinkets. Marlene Weisman’s Pop Art Punchboard assemblages and Saved Souls collages mix vintage objects that evoke different eras. Weisman’s recent Super Deep series combines 3D lenticular plastic panels to create captivating images that transform from different vantage points.

Ward Yoshimoto, At the Bell/Papal Escutcheon/Parking on Left, 2001

Clockwise from left: Susan Greaves' Sir Michael, 2014; Lady Diane, 2014; Demonica, 2014; Little Ruth, 2015

Marlene Weisman, Saved Souls Series - #16, 2017 and Barbara J. Norman's School Kids/Palms/Eyes Small/Bricks/Eyes Full, 2019

Marlene Weisman's Super Deep Series: Glam Rock, 2019; Hudson Valley Abstract, 2019; Geometric In Nature, 2019

“I’m always interested in the materials,” Gagné noted before pointing out Tony Stanzione’s wood pieces filled with hundreds of colored pencils providing an unexpected pop of color, as well as the artist’s Brass Dumbells—a pile of shiny doorknobs transformed into a work of art.

Tony Stanzione, Penciled Logs, 1999-2019 and Tree Project, 2019

Tony Stanzione, Brass Dumbells, 2014

With such diverse artwork showcased in the exhibit, Andrew Smenos decided to display six ceramic pieces. “I wanted to make it as straightforward as possible,” he said. The artist’s three 24-karat gold-lustered figures are fixated on their cell phones while catastrophes surround them—Smenos’ other sculptures of a burning building and a pair of sinking ships. “It’s fun to have them in the middle of the three disasters. They just can’t be bothered,” the artist noted.

Andrew Smenos' Idle Worship I, II, III, 2019; Looks Good Going Down, 2019; Destroyer, 2019

Clockwise from back left: Tony Stanzione, Glass Seed Bomb Prototype, 1990; Barbara J. Norman, Franken-Her, 2019; Jordan Maurice, Light Study No. 11, 2019; Andrew Robinson, Reliquary, 2019; Andrew Robinson Chicken Paw, 2019

When curating the exhibit, Gagné was drawn not only to materials but also to the artists’ practice. Of Jordan Maurice’s Light Study No. 11—a stout aluminum base topped with two 9-volt batteries and wrapped with a simple strip of LEDs—Gagné said, “I love seeing the batteries. I like seeing the process. When I saw that work, I thought that walks right into what I’m trying to show.” The intensive manufacturing required to produce Scott Albrecht’s steel tabletop sculpture Rise also appealed to Gagné. “I’m interested in what these artists are capable of doing,” he said.

George Horner, Putties, 1985 (front) and Scott Albrecht, Rise, 2018 (rear)

Like several of the artists included in the group show, Gagné met Albrecht in October during Gowanus Open Studios. Albrecht created his sculpture last year as part of a series of work that “use the same shapes and relationships, but personify different characteristics or situations,” the artist explained. For Rise, he “took the basic geometry of a circle to represent the sun, but abstracted it and personified it” to represent “rising up, rising above.”

Scott Albrecht and his work Thinking/Feeling, 2017

Originally from New Jersey, Albrecht studied graphic design at the Art Institute of Philadelphia. “A majority of my work is mostly informed by abstracted typography,” he said. Albrecht’s puzzle-like Thinking/Feeling overlays the two words in the work’s title. “Because they are overlaid on top of one another, you’re seeing little moments of each word coming through, but as a viewer you can’t really distinguish the words independently,” he explained. “It’s intentional because those two ideas are conflicting with each other. They’re fighting for your attention, and in the end because they are in direct competition, [neither] can get resolved.” Albrecht adds that his intention is to encourage viewers to slow down and “have them meditate on those ideas [and] find their own relationships.”

Earlier this year Gagné launched Gagné Contemporary, an online gallery where he represents 13 NYC-based artists and organizes exhibits, studio visits, gallery tours, and more. Originally from Canada, he traveled across Europe in 80s and 90s creating experimental films. Gagné worked in advertising as a Creative Director for twenty years, moving to NYC eight years ago. He left the ad industry three years ago to focus on art—his “first love,” he says.

“Gowanus, Bushwick, Greenpoint, Red Hook, DUMBO…they’re filled with really good, strong artists doing great work and I love being able to share that,” Gagné said. Head over Ground Floor Gallery and check out work by 21 of those artists.

The Constructions: A Complete Fabrication 
Ground Floor Gallery, 343 5th Street, Park Slope
On view November 22-December 8
Learn more here.

Park Slope/Windsor Terrace Artists 2019 Open Studios

Dozens of artists in Park Slope and Windsor Terrace welcomed visitors into their studios the past two weekends (November 9-10, 16-17) for tours. 

Since 2013 Park Slope/Windsor Terrace Artists—a collective of visual artists living and working in the two Brooklyn neighborhoods—has hosted annual PSWT Open Studio Weekends, inviting the public to visit local artist workspaces and maybe even purchase original works of art. This year, the "Open Studio Central" at Ossam Gallery (300 7th Street) showcased one piece by each participating artist, offering attendees a preview of each studio as well as information on the artists and maps of tour locations. The diverse selection exhibited at Ossam Gallery ranged from ceramics, collage, drawing, painting, photography, print, and sculpture.

Syncing, Chris Baily, mixed media on canvas, at Ossam Gallery

Coney Island Cyclone, Chris Doogan, woodcut print, at Ossam Gallery

L-R: Torii Gate, Dara Oshin, mixed media; Nested, Karen Giordano, watercolor and ink on paper, at Ossam Gallery

Else, Phil Desantis, photograph, 2019, at Ossam Gallery

9 Block North, Daniel McDonald, 9 panels, acrylic & mixed medium, at Ossam Gallery

Point/Counterpoint, Steve Ettlinger, cedar (epoxy on slate base), at Ossam Gallery

Just off Prospect Park West on 14th Street, Judith Eloise Hooper invited guests into the sunny fourth floor walk-up where she has lived and worked for 44 years. Originally from New Jersey, Hooper grew up in a creative household—her mother was an opera singer, her father a carpenter, and her three brothers musicians.

She moved to Brooklyn to study fashion design at Pratt and worked as a fashion illustrator for several years before taking a class in book writing and illustration at the School of Visual Arts. "[I] did some children’s book illustration but at the time—this was in the 70s—it was very hard for me to get someone to give me [work] that wasn’t black-related," explained Hooper, who is black. In the early 80s she shifted to working in clay, initially creating ceramic objects with an Asian influence—"so that I could have some kind of diversity in what I did," she said—and moving on to create bowls, platters and ceramic landscapes.

Today, Hooper is writing a cookbook, "where food is a character...the recipe is the action within the story," and is working mostly on paper collages—intricate, hand-cut portraits. "The paper work teaches me something different about depth and dimension," she said. "I love focusing on the expressions on people’s faces." She also teaches art therapy to patients at nearby NY-P Methodist Hospital, where she has been volunteering since the 90s. "I was trying to get the patients to do self-portraits," she recalled. "I said they could either be as you see yourself, as you think others see you, or how you want to be seen. I wanted them to have fun with it, so I would do myself and make fun of myself." These early sample self-portraits she created with her students eventually evolved into a series of evocative paper portraits featuring musicians, family members, children, and more.

Paper collage portraits by Judith Eloise Hooper

A paper collage portrait by Judith Eloise Hooper

A paper collage portrait by Judith Eloise Hooper featuring her nephew and his newborn

An early paper collage self-portrait by Judith Eloise Hooper

Japanese Napkin Rings by Judith Eloise Hooper

Also exhibiting work in Hooper's living room was ceramist Lynn Goodman. This is the fourth time the two artists have shown together during the PSWT Open Studios. A native New Yorker, Goodman studied ceramics as an undergrad at Philadelphia College of Art [now University of the Arts] and received an MFA in Ceramics from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The Windsor Terrace resident works from the Can Factory in a studio she shares with two other ceramists. "I love it there," she said of the creative complex. 

Inspired by the shapes, patterns, and colors of Islamic art, Goodman incorporates fun, unexpected elements into her works. "I like urban wildlife, so you’ve got koi, pigeons, and a squirrel. It’s partly that I’m very into certain things and it’s partly that I’m drawing from the environment," she said of her porcelain pieces. "I’ve got a fascination with UFOs. I will slap them on anything."

From sci-fi to physics, some of Goodman's tableware features swirling atoms and Feynman diagrams, mathematical representations of subatomic particles. She said a physicist gave her "these nice juicy images and I’ve been using them ever since." She pointed to an orange platter showing a flurry of particles that pass through a digram in the center and transition into a trio of koi on the opposite end. "It’s probably a stretch in the way I use it," she said of the interpretation before declaring, "artistic license."

Ceramics by Lynn Goodman

Ceramics by Lynn Goodman

L-R: Lynn Goodman and Judith Eloise Hooper during Park Slope/Windsor Terrace Artists Open Studios

Over in Windsor Terrace, Robin Roi welcomed a steady flow of visitors to her 18th Street home and studio to check out her mixed media work which includes paintings, ceramics, and works on paper. This was her fourth PSWT Open Studios event. 

Roi studied print-making at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and received her MFA in Painting from Claremont Graduate University in California before moving to NYC when she was 27. She worked for various arts organizations including the American Craft Museum and the Drawing Center before taking a job at EverGreene Painting Studios [now EverGreene Architectural Arts] where she was the Director of Decorative Painting for more than 30 years. She took up pottery after having kids. "I was always a painter, and then when I had children, it was very hard to do both, to have that career and raise the kids," she recalled. "I started going to a ceramics class on 3rd Avenue where my kids were going for ceramics, and I fell in love with it. It’s hard to dabble and not fall in love with ceramics," she said. Roi focused her personal practice on ceramics for several years, saving the drawing and painting for her day job. "When I retired in 2015 it was like it just poured out. I started wanting to work on paper again."

Family Tree by Robin Roi

A table exhibiting Robin Roi's ceramics

Ceramics by Robin Roi

Roi says that nearby Green-Wood Cemetery inspires much of her work as well as patterns and layers. Her collage work incorporates layer upon layer of dressmaking pattern paper "because it’s transparent. It’s tissue, so you can see things underneath," she explained. She pointed to one work, Family Tree, featuring a letter written to Roi's aunt in the 1940s from a boyfriend in Germany, layered under images of branches and leaves. "That’s why I use that pattern paper because it allows me to layer things up and to obscure some things and let other things show through," she said. "I like that word palimpsest.... It’s the whole idea of something rising up and coming through."

A dining table displayed an eclectic selection of Roi's ceramic work, including bowls, plates, jars, and several pitchers inspired by vintage oil cans. "These are kind of riffs on those old tins. I’m inspired when I see a really interesting shape," she said. "I love that shape."

Also exhibiting with Roi was ceramist Carol Adams. Originally from New Jersey, Adams has lived in Park Slope since 1981 and is a lawyer by trade. "I don’t have any formal training. I’m self-taught," she said. "I went to law school. I practice trust and estates," While studying at Cardozo Law in Greenwich Village, Adams lived across from Greenwich House where she first discovered the joys of pottery. "I’ve always made pottery. I love the tactile nature of it," she said. "There’s something powerful about taking dirt and making it beautiful." Adams added that up until five or six years ago, she'd always created functional pieces, such as bowls, plates, cups, and vases often adorned with sgraffito.

Oxidized metal leaf works by Robin Roi (above, on wall) and sculptures by Carol Adams (below)

Sculptures by Carol Adams

L-R: Robin Roi and Carol Adams during Park Slope/Windsor Terrace Artists Open Studios

Inspired by ancient sculpture, mythology, and everyday people on the subway, Adams switched to figural sculptures, first creating angels, then moving on to classical busts as well as whimsical armless characters topped with crowns or rings of flowers. "I always start with the faces and then they develop their own personality," she explained of her process. While Adams still practices law part-time from home, she is now able to dedicate more of her time to creating. "Now I’m doing less law, more art," she said with a smile.

To learn more about Park Slope/Windsor Terrace Artists, visit artspswt.com or follow @ArtsPSWT.