Art Hag

Miguel Reyes | Prospect Park: An Intimate Walk

Artist Miguel Reyes' solo exhibit "Prospect Park: An Intimate Walk" is on view through July 7, 2024.

Do not miss Prospect Park: An Intimate Walk, a gorgeous solo exhibition by Miguel Reyes currently on view at Established Gallery!

Inspired by hikes with his father in the mountains of Guanajuato, Mexico and the idyllic scenery of Brooklyn's Backyard, Reyes depicts Prospect Park throughout the four seasons in a series of intoxicatingly lush landscape paintings. 

 

The artist considers the pastoral park an "intimate space" where Brooklynites can connect with nature as well as their inner thoughts. After moving to Brooklyn, Reyes says in his artist statement, "the discovery of a natural space near home, with a river and a pond surrounded by trees, marks the beginning of this introspective journey. In this place, I would draw, paint, play, bike ride, exercise, walk to clear my mind, and reflect in solitude."

 

L-R: A Quiet Place and The Bridge by Miguel Reyes

 

Clockwise from top left: Under the Tree of Wisdom, Augury, Autumn in Brooklyn, Down the Slope by Miguel Reyes

L-R: Stone Bridge and Wooden Bridge by Miguel Reyes

 

L-R: Reflections, An Intimate Walk, On the Edge by Miguel Reyes

 

Clockwise from top left: Twins, A Morning After Rain, A Scream in the Woods, Silence by Miguel Reyes

 

The Discovery by Miguel Reyes

Reyes' enchanting canvases exude the beauty and serenity of the park on a tranquil Sunday afternoon. All the sights and details experienced on a blissful day at the green space are keenly captured: reflections on a pond; sunlight filtering through tree branches; birds resting on a lamppost; children playing; bicyclists buzzing by; a couple deep in conversation; a man walking his dog.  To "emphasize the grandeur of nature," Reyes paints his human and animal figures at a reduced scale, creating a tiny cast of characters amongst tall, magnificent trees and vast, vibrantly green lawns. "The paintings presented here are not intended to be a catalog of activities in Prospect Park; rather, they represent a personal experience, what I observe and am drawn to on my excursions through the park."

 

Originally from Mexico City, Reyes received his Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the National School of Fine Arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Focusing on nature and our relationship with the world around us, Reyes' work has been exhibited in Mexico, Spain, France and the United States.

 

L-R: The Mirror and The Gate by Miguel Reyes

L-R: Wave, On Top of the Hill, Fallen Tree by Miguel Reyes

 

Just a Rock by Miguel Reyes

 

L-R: The Lover's Blossom Tree and Interludio 2 by Miguel Reyes

Empty Field by Miguel Reyes

"Each individual has their own connection with Prospect Park, their own intimate walk," Reyes notes. "In this series of landscape paintings, I only share mine, inviting viewers to reflect on their own experiences and encounters with nature amidst urban life."

 

Reyes' captivating work will inspire you to head straight to Prospect Park from the gallery to embark on your own contemplative journey! 

 

Prospect Park: An Intimate Walk

A Solo Exhibition by Miguel Reyes

Established Gallery, 75 6th Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

On view June 7 – July 7

Why Not Art? Presents Rebirth: Brooklyn

Works by Michael James Freedman and Jo-Ann Acey on view at littlefield

Last Sunday the recently launched art gallery and performance space, Why Not Art?, held a reception for its inaugural exhibit, Rebirth: Brooklyn at littlefield in Gowanus. Joining the three featured artists – Jo-Ann Acey, Demarcus McGaughey, and Michael James Freedman – was trumpeter Wayne Tucker, who wowed attendees with his funky electric jazz quartet.

Amateur Night by Demarcus McGaughey

Country Boy in Harlem by Dermarcus McGaughey

Rebirth addresses the city’s gradual return to normalcy following the pandemic. “There’s change in the air,” according to Why Not Art? “Jazz is flowing through the streets of Brooklyn, creativity is flourishing, social awareness is rising and people are emerging after months of uncertainty, tragedy, and protest.”

The works by the three artists represent diverse styles – abstract, representational, expressionist – but collectively “burst with life, reflecting our exhilarating re-entry into vibrant city life.” The lyrical works encompass musical New York narratives, from Acey’s exuberant dancing shapes, Freedman’s pulsating musicians, and McGaughey’s majestic portraits of performers.

Clockwise from top right: Swing Series - No. 7 by Jo-Ann Acey; Study of the Brass Queens, City Life - Open Streets, Jazz at Wild Birds - May Day Concert by Michael James Freedman

On left: Swing Series - No. 24, No. 23, No. 27, (top right) No. 15 by Jo-Ann Acey; Jazz at Wild Birds - Anniversary Concert by Michael James Freedman

Why Not Art? was launched by Freedman and his wife, Grace. The couple plan to organize more exhibits showcasing both work by visual artists and performances by local musicians. Learn more at whynotart.com.

From left: Grace Freedman,  Demarcus McGaughey, Jo-Ann Acey, and Michael James Freedman at Rebirth: Brooklyn reception

Demarcus McGaughey and Jo-Ann Acey with Michael and Grace Freedman behind them

See my November 2020 interview with Jo-Ann Acey here and my October 2020 interview with Demarcus McGaughey here.

Rebirth: Brooklyn
On view through December 3
Littlefield Gallery, 635 Sackett Street, Gowanus

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.

Fred Bendheim | Making Space

Artist Fred Bendheim stands between his shaped paintings, The Planets (left) and Influence (right), at 440 Gallery.

This weekend is your last chance to see Fred Bendheim’s Making Space, a series of seven curvilinear shaped paintings bursting with radiant circles and exuberant spirals.

The works in Making Space were created in the last 15 months, in the midst of the lockdown, when Bendheim was able to work freely at his Sunset Park studio with few distractions. The artist’s process begins with visceral drawings. “A lot of it is free association, just drawing what appeals to me, different shapes, and I make compositions from those,” he explained at 440 Gallery where the exhibit is on view. “The last 15, 20 years I’ve been doing this sort of experiment, just painting what looks good to me, keeping it at that level. That cuts out a lot of the intellectual stuff, which I think gets in the way often, and then one thing leads to another.” Based on his drawings, Bendheim will then work on watercolor studies which eventually lead to his final acrylic paintings.

“I like the freedom of it. I can do any shape I want, and it just allows me a certain freedom,” he said of his preference for a sculptural foundation versus a more traditional canvas. “These don’t have corners. Four corners can really influence your composition.”

Confluence (2021) by Fred Bendheim

Confluence detail

Music Of The Spheres (2021) by Fred Bendheim

The Planets (2020) by Fred Bendheim

Bendheim began creating his intricate shaped paintings 15 years ago. “Originally, I did them on wood and…sometimes they would warp,” he explained. “A few of the pieces I wanted the grain, but [overall] I wanted [the paint] flat.” About seven years ago, Bendheim switched to PVC board, a material used by sign makers.

For his current series, Bendheim focused on circular shapes. “I love seeing spiral shapes,” he said. “I love the energy of them, how they go inward and outward at the same time. How they’re still but they move. These sorts of dichotomies fascinate me.” Spiral patterns common in Native American art may have influenced Bendheim’s paintings, the artist said. Originally from Arizona, he grew up seeing a lot of Native American art and finding petroglyphs, elaborately carved rocks, in the desert.

“And the spiral relates to the cosmos,” he said of another influence. The shapes and swirls in Making Space suggest an otherworldliness—planets, galaxies, and star formations. “I like stuff like this where the spirals go off kilter and some interesting things happen,” he said of the cloud-shaped Sunset. “These spirals on top of these radiating concentric circles…that kind of happened by accident.”

Sunset (2021) by Fred Bendheim

Influence (2021) by Fred Bendheim

In the ellipse-shaped Influence, a viewer might perceive a sun and moon in the various color shifts that transition from dark to light. This piece was the last created in the series and features a much softer, more serene palette than the other vividly hued works.

The element of transparency, where overlapping colors meet and interplay, adds to the celestial quality of Bendheim’s paintings. “It looks like you can see through everything,” Bendheim said, but instead of using a glaze to achieve this effect, he separately mixed the colors where they intersect before meticulously layering the paint for a translucent appearance.

“I like the look of the transparency,” Bendheim said, adding that it alludes to “the Buddhist idea that matter is not real. There is no ultimate reality. Matter is transparent. Things that we take for reality are part of a larger reality...the unsubstantial [nature] of things.”

Bendheim hopes his paintings will make viewers “feel connected to the universe,” he said, or “make mental and spiritual space for humanity,” according to the show’s press release. “People say they’re very optimistic,” the artist noted of his spellbinding works. “I’m not an optimistic person but I guess deep down there’s something there.”  

Artist Fred Bendheim stands between Confluence (left) and Music Of The Spheres (right) at 440 Gallery.

Bendheim received a degree in Studio Art from Pomona College in Claremont, California. Following school, he moved to San Francisco where he met his wife. The couple moved to Brooklyn in 1984. Bendheim has been a member of 440 Gallery for eight years. Making Space is his fifth solo exhibit at the gallery.

Meet Bendheim at 440 Gallery on Sunday, June 27, during the closing reception for the show from 5pm to 7pm. Bendheim’s work will also be included in a group exhibition at Gallery MC in Manhattan next month. See more of Fred Bendheim's work at the artist's website.

Fred Bendheim | Making Space
440 Gallery, 440 6th Avenue, Park Slope
May 26 through June 27, 2021
Closing reception: Sunday, June 27, 5pm to 7pm

Meet Dodji Gbedemah: Artist & Founder of Kente Royal Gallery

Kente Royal Gallery's Dodji Gbedemah (Photo: Nathan Haselby)

Dodji Gbedemah’s father wanted his eldest son to follow in his footsteps and become an accountant. “I was born a creative but I got a business degree because of my father,” the artist said from his gallery in early December. “My father forced me to be a business person, now I’m grateful to him because I can do both.”

In 2019 Gbedemah and his wife Phyllis opened Kente Royal Gallery in Harlem, “the Black mecca of the world,” he says. Named for the vibrant royal Kente cloth, “the most recognized and celebrated African garment,” the 940-square-foot gallery occupies the street-level of 2373 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. “We opened up this gallery to give opportunity to artists of the African diaspora because they are so underrepresented,” he explained. “We are talking about Harlem, and the lack of galleries in Harlem….” Gbedemah and his wife discovered a surprising statistic when opening their art space. “Out of all the art galleries in New York City—and there’s over 1,500 of them—one percent are Black-owned,” he said. A list of Black-owned galleries in the United States compiled by Artsy.net in June includes only 19 such businesses in New York.

Originally from Togo, West Africa, the charismatic Gbedemah immigrated to the U.S. in the ‘90s. “I always imagined that there would be so many more cultural institutions, galleries, and all that,” he recalled of his initial impression of Harlem. “Today we have the Schomberg [Center for Research in Black Culture], the Apollo, The National Black Theatre, very few.” He hopes that Kente Royal Gallery will help pave the way for more Black-owned art venues in the neighborhood. “We want to be the spark for the next generation to establish spaces like this for art of underrepresented artists,” he says.

Phyllis and Dodji Gbedemah on the opening day of Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem at Kente Royal Gallery (Photo: Nathan Haselby)

Gbedemah instantly fell in love with New York City when he moved here at 24. His aunt and uncle, who had been living in Virginia since the ‘60s, sponsored his visa. “When I came to New York I was like, 'I’m not leaving. I’m not going to Virginia.' So I stayed here,” he recalls. “In 1994 it was just at the heels of the crack epidemic and I remember coming and things were beginning to change,” he reflected. “Even Times Square was not like Disney Land, the way it looks now. When I got here, you couldn’t walk one block from 8th Avenue to 9th Avenue without getting hit by some kind of crime. All of that for a 24-year-old was very exciting, believe it or not. I was just like, ‘Yes! New York.’ The tall buildings, the flashing lights, it was a dream.”

When he first arrived to NYC, Gbedemah worked a variety of jobs including bike messenger, security guard, and a shirt presser for a dry cleaner. “Back then you had to press four shirts to make a dollar,” he recalls laughing.

He put himself through college driving a taxi while taking evening classes at New York University where he received a business degree. “I made my dad proud,” he said. The experience he gained driving a NYC taxi came in handy post-college. “I’ve been in transportation my entire time in corporate America,” Gbedemah noted. “I started with Zipcar after finishing school.” He joined the company when it was still “a little tiny startup with one small room as an office in Chelsea.” He worked his way up through various management positions during his twelve years at Zipcar, then moved on to Uber where he was a people manager until May when the company laid off more than 3,500 employees due to the pandemic.

Gbedemah was suddenly free to devote more time to Kente Royal Gallery. His wife Phyllis, a hair stylist, had been running the gallery on her own during the week. “She was full-time and I was coming on the weekends,” Gbedemah notes. “I’m very grateful to her.”

Though the couple resides in Queens, where Gbedemah has lived since moving to the U.S., they chose Harlem for their gallery because “This place has so much creativity, resilience, swagger...,” he says. “There’s a vibe over here that just attracts you, it reaches my soul deeply.”

Kente Royal Gallery is around the corner from where the couple worship, the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church. The gallery's inaugural exhibition in July 2019 featured a member of the church’s congregation, Harlem-based abstract artist Gabrielle Baker. “We did that intentionally because she is a Black female artist,” Gbedemah says. “We wanted to make a statement: when you think about Black art, what do you think about? How do you define Black art?”

Dodji Gbedemah, Sankofa (photo courtesy of the artist)

Dodji Gbedemah, Kaya Kaya (photo courtesy of the artist)

Dodji Gbedemah and his paintings Behind the masks (left), God supreme (right)
(Photo courtesy of the artist)

Growing up Gbedemah attended College Protestant high school, “one of the best schools in Lomé, the capital of Togo,” he recalls. “We had music classes. We had art classes. We took ceramics, macramé, painting. We did all of that on top of our required academic courses.” The school fostered his multifaceted creativity. At 16, he taught himself how to play guitar and he eventually took up bass and djembe as well. Decades later, Gbedemah still reaches for his paintbrushes whenever he can to create his bright and dynamic abstract canvases.

“I love abstract work. Everybody sees things differently in an abstract piece,” he says. “It makes me so happy when somebody looks at one of my pieces and they see something that I haven’t seen myself."

Dodji Gbedemah on the opening day of Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem at Kente Royal Gallery
(Photo: Nathan Haselby)

During the lockdown this year, when Kente Royal was forced to close for four months, Gbedemah used the time to paint 40 new works. He hopes to exhibit them soon. In the coming year, he’s looking forward to showcasing work by NYC artists Daryl Daniels, Ricky Day, and Demarcus McGaughey at the gallery. “There are so many artists in the Black community but they don’t have a place to show their pieces,” Gbedemah notes. “I want this to be a community gallery to help foster all these artists in the community, not just in Harlem, but in New York City and beyond.”

Check out Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem on view at Kente Royal Gallery through January 3, 2021 and see my post on the group exhibit here. 

Kente Royal Gallery 
2373 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (between W138th & W139th Streets), Harlem, New York

Yinka Shonibare CBE | Earth Kids

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Earth Kid (Boy)

Four child-sized sculptures elegantly dressed in Victorian-era garb fight for the environment in Earth Kids, a new exhibit by British artist Yinka Shonibare CBE on view at James Cohan’s Lower East Side gallery.

Shonibare has called attention to climate change for years. Each of his Earth Kids represents a natural element—earth, fire, air, and water. “The colonization of Africa is somewhat parallel to the colonization of the planet and the climate change issues we are facing now,” the artist states in a video posted on jamescohan.net.

Shonibare has replaced each figure’s head with a globe, erasing any hint of race or ethnicity. “The children, they’re neither black nor white,” the artist explains. “They are somewhere in between.”

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Fire Kid (Girl)

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Fire Kid (Girl)

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Earth Kid (Boy)

The four figures are dressed in elaborate ensembles made from Dutch Wax fabric. “The batiks are Indonesian-influenced fabrics produced by the Dutch and then sold to the West African market," the artist notes. "The fabrics are now popularly seen as African textiles. The fabrics are now also made within the African continent.”

The colorful patterns on the Earth Kids’ outfits feature symbols of the four elements each child represents, including leaves and fruits, flames, electric fans, and faucets and pipes. “The children are actually wearing…Victorian dress and the reason for this is that I link history to the present,” Shonibare explains. “The high point of the colonial period in Africa is the Victorian era. That is why those kids are wearing those [costumes]."

Earth Kid (Boy) greets visitors as they enter the gallery. The figure slouches under the weight of a massive net slung over his shoulder filled with plastic waste—water bottles, single-use bags, food containers, and more. The sculpture demonstrates our reliance on plastic goods which impacts developing countries and chokes the oceans.

Fire Kid (Girl) leans against the burnt remains of a tree reading a book entitled Climate Change. The book is open to an image of a forest engulfed in flames. The young female figure serves as a “cautionary tale,” according to the artist, “there is a caution there as to what could happen” such as drought, wildfires and deforestation. A few budding leaves poking out from a branch above the girl represent a bit of hope and “the possibility of redemption or possibility for regeneration,” Shonibare optimistically adds.

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Air Kid (Boy)

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Water Kid (Girl)

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Water Kid (Girl)

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Air Kid (Boy) and Water Kid (Girl)

Air Kid (Boy) battles gusty winds armed only with a battered vintage umbrella. Water Kid (Girl) desperately tries to pour out every drop from a Victorian water decanter as a single droplet vexingly glistens on the rim of the vessel. The nattily dressed children are a visually compelling call to action that elucidates the perils of global warming and implores protecting the environment for future generations. 

While climate change continues to plague the planet, Shonibare finds some hope, particularly in younger environmental activists. “I’ve actually been particularly inspired by the way that the younger generation are not passive and they’re seeing what we’re doing wrong and pushing us to do something about it," the artist says. "And I think that’s admirable.”

A pictoral quilt and sculpture by Yinka Shonibare CBE

Yinka Shonibare CBE, Fire Kid (Girl) 2

Born in London in 1962, Yinka Shonibare CBE moved to Lagos, Nigeria when he was three-years-old. He returned to London and studied Fine Art at the former Byam School of Art (today Central Saint Martins) and received his MFA from Goldsmiths College. A member of the YBAs or "Young British Artists" in the '90s, the multimedia artist regularly addresses class and race in his work.

Shonibare was honored as an MBE, Member of the ‘Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ in 2004 and was made a CBE, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in 2019. Learn more about the artist at yinkashonibare.com.

Yinka Shonibare CBE | Earth Kids
James Cohan, 291 Grand Street, NYC
Exhibition on view December 4, 2020 through January 23, 2021

Thornton Dial: The Tiger That Flew over New York City

Thornton Dial, The Tiger That Flew over New York City (1990)

The Lower East Side's David Lewis gallery currently has on view Dial World, Part I: The Tiger That Flew over New York City featuring eight of late artist Thornton Dial’s intricate found object assemblages. Discarded materials including carpet, bedding, clothing, wood, tin, rope, even an animal jawbone, are given magnificent new life in the hands of the self-taught artist.

Born in Emelle, Alabama in 1928 to a single mother, Dial grew up on a sharecropping farm where he started picking cotton at an early age. Receiving very little formal education, Dial worked in many construction jobs, such as a bricklayer, house painter, and carpenter. He was employed as a welder at Birmingham’s Pullman Standard Company for nearly 30 years until the company closed in 1981. Dial retired that same year and began focusing on his art, a hobby he’d picked up in his youth, according to artnet.

Dial met the art collector William Arnett in 1987. Arnett had amassed a vast collection of work by Black—mainly self-taught—artists from the American South and founded the Souls Grown Deep Foundation in 2010 to house and manage hundreds of these works. Arnett provided Dial with a weekly allowance, offering the artist the freedom to fully devote himself to his art, according to Arnett’s August 2020 obituary in ARTnews.

The current exhibit at David Lewis is named after a 1990 work by Dial inspired by his first visit to NYC. A white tiger glides above the peaked rooftops of the congested city—pristine white skyscrapers towering above bleak tenement buildings composed of brown carpet—representing “the struggle for life, liberation, and justice,” according to the show’s press release. Colorful striped tigers also appear in Dial’s Patterns: Road Map of the United States (1992) and All the Cats in Town (1993), displaying joy and energy in their united fight for freedom.

Thornton Dial, Everybody Loves the United States (2002), In the Making of Our Oldest Things (2008)

Thornton Dial, Patterns: Road Map of the United States (1992)

Thornton Dial, All the Cats in Town (1993)

“People say I make all my art about tigers, but I got tigers in just some of it,” Dial told Arnett in an interview compiled at soulsgrowndeep.org. “Women be in just about everything I have made, in one way or another way. That tiger for me symbolized the Struggle, in the works of life, but women are the creation of the world, at the creation of all works. If it wasn’t for women it wouldn’t be none of us here, and without them we couldn’t make it through the struggle.”

Dial pays tribute to the women who helped raise him in his two takes on the time-honored African American tradition of quilt-making, In the Making of Our Oldest Things and In Honor. “Women was the ones always responsible for me. My great-grandmother raised me up. After she died when I was ten years old, I went to my mother’s sister, stayed there for two years, then come to Bessemer. Sarah Lockett [his grandmother’s sister] took me in and raised me on up,” Dial told Arnett.

“Women are the creation of the world,” the artist continued. “They give love and care, and they also give strength and power. But you got to listen. I always paid attention to what the women was saying, ever since I were a little fellow. Women back then was picking cotton, doing hard time fieldwork, cooking, making, and providing.”

Thornton Dial, In the Making of Our Oldest Things (2008)

Thornton Dial, In the Making of Our Oldest Things (detail)

Thornton Dial, Meat (2003)

Thornton Dial, Meat (detail)

Thornton Dial, In Honor (2002)

Thornton Dial, In Honor (detail)

Thornton Dial, Bone Dry (2011)

Dial’s first exhibition, Ladies of the United States, in Atlanta, 1990, featured work on plywood with house paint, rope, and tin. In an interview with Arnett, Dial recalled a critic condemning the show: “Mr. Dial can’t draw worth nothing and his art is ugly.” Despite this negative early review, Dial eventually found success in the art world. His work was exhibited in solo shows and group exhibitions across the country and was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Dial died in 2016 in McCalla, Alabama at 87.

“I like to use the stuff that I know about, stuff that I know the feel of,” Dial told Arnett. “There’s some kind of things I always liked to make stuff with. I’m talking about tin, steel, copper, and aluminum, and also old wood, carpet, rope, old clothes, sand, rocks, wire, screen, toys, tree limbs, and roots. You could say, ‘If Dial see it, he know what to do with it.’” This statement sums up Dial’s work perfectly. The artist had a natural ability to take discarded objects and transform them into showstoppers. Click here to see my 2011 article on Dial’s show at Andrew Edlin Gallery which was held in conjunction with his solo exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

The Tiger That Flew over New York City is one part of a two-part exhibition of Dial’s work presented by David Lewis. The second part is taking place at 47 West 12th Street. Email [email protected] to schedule an appointment to visit that location.

Thornton Dial
Dial World, Part I: The Tiger That Flew over New York City
88 Eldridge Street, 5th Floor, NYC
Exhibition on view October 24 through December 20

Art Crawl Harlem Presents Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem at Kente Royal Gallery

Art Crawl Harlem Presents Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem at Kente Royal Gallery

Head uptown to celebrate the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance with Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem. Presented by Art Crawl Harlem at Kente Royal Gallery, this sweeping group exhibition features a vibrant array of work by 18 artists influenced by the iconic neighborhood.

The Harlem Renaissance emerged in the wake of the 1918 influenza pandemic and The Great Migration which brought an influx of Black Americans from the South in search of opportunity. “A movement translating the joy, pain, resilience, and brilliance of Black people. A rising up of sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers. A celebration of artistry, individuality, and community,” according to the Art Crawl Harlem website.

Fire & Soul commemorates this influential movement in Black history during another pandemic, celebrating the “the majesty of Black life” a century ago, today, and looking ahead to the future. The artwork showcased in the exhibit examines “the varying identities and impacts of Black people as it intersects American culture, from The Great Migration to immigration, music, sexuality and gender identity, politics, religion, public health, education, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pursuit of freedom and everyday life.”

Fire & Soul curators Nakia Hicks, Ulysses Williams, Executive Director of Art Crawl Harlem, and Dodji Gbedemah, owner of Kente Royal Gallery, received an overwhelming response when the call for submissions launched for the exhibit early last month. “We knew it was going to be an important exhibit, but…considering COVID and everything that’s been going on this year, we didn’t know that the interest was going to be that big. We were pleasantly surprised,” Gbedemah said last week at the gallery.

“We were heartbroken that we couldn’t include everyone,” he added. “We wanted to have all of them because they were all wonderful pieces.”

Featuring painting, photography, collage, sculpture, digital art, and textile art, the exhibit features longtime Harlem stalwarts such as Thomas Heath, artist and owner of Heath Gallery, and Rudy Collins, a photographer who has documented the neighborhood for decades. “He’s a true Harlemite,” Gbedemah said of Collins. “Not only was he born here in Harlem, lived here his whole life, but he took a lot of pictures of Harlem, especially of the architecture and personalities and all kinds of people who came through here. He’s seen it all.”

WIlliam Daniels, Falcon-Warrior Totem, Butterfly Totem, Bird Totem; Dominick Williams; Mario Joyce Belyusar, Matrilineal I

Mario Joyce Belyusar, Patriarchy, Matrilineal I, Matriarch

Thomas Heath, Caravan (top), Kings Crown (below)

Taeesha M., We the People, Warrior Prose; Ricky Day, A Day and A Park, Malcolm and MIke, Baldwin and The Bishop; Rudy Collins, Harlem is Art, Ladies Day in Harlem, Happy Birthday Daddy, Black Sup-Her Hero

Guy Stanley Philoche, Aubrey W., Saba F.

Demarcus McGaughey, State of Mind, Mind of a King; Sade Boyewa El, Faces of Harlem Series

“The Harlem Renaissance [included] poets, musicians, writers, painters, and dancers,” exclaims Gbedemah. “It was an explosion of artistic expression.” Fire & Soul serves as an “ode to the Harlem Renaissance and beyond,” he continued. “Yes, the Harlem Renaissance happened a hundred years ago but what happened in the hundred years that followed? And what’s going to happen in the next hundred years?”

Khalid Sabree vividly illustrates Harlem’s musical history linking two hometown genres in Jazz Iz Hio Hop Iz Jazz while a fiery orange canvas proudly declares The New Harlem Renaissance, a nod to today’s thriving creative community showcased at this exhibit.

Harlem-based textile artist William Daniels upholds the African American tradition of quilt-making. “He is one of the few male African American quilters,” Gbedemah notes. “In the African American tradition, there’s been a lot of quilters since slavery but the majority of them have been women.” Daniels’ three black, white, and red panels perfectly combine the time-honored craft with a modern graphic aesthetic.

Anthony Boone’s monochromatic sculptural works darkly stand out in the gallery filled with brightly hued works. Black Butterfly represents “Black women and their beauty,” Gbedemah explains, while a closer look of Ma’ Dear reveals a woman feeding an infant, a haunting representation of wet nurses or “Black women feeding white babies,” he adds.

Matrilineal I, a portrait of Mario Joyce Belyusar’s mother, traces the artist’s African American lineage through her womb. Belyusar further explores his roots by incorporating vintage family photos in Patriarchy and Matriarch.

Daryl Daniels’ intimate works focus on everyday New Yorkers riding public transportation. Far From Home, her painting of a young boy curled up on a bus seat pensively staring out the window, is a touching and familiar sight. “We’ve all been there, riding with our parent and looking at the beauty of New York City,” Gbedemah says of the work. “A young person experiencing the city.”

Daryl Daniels, (clockwise from top left) Divine RIght II, Butterflies, Windows to the Soul, Far from Home; Sean Patrick Watters, Harlem Black Series: Pose, Black Sabrina, Andre J. Superstar

Mark McLeod,  What Would Jackie Do

Mark McLeod, Blue Heals All

Karim Chambers, Nina Simone and Miles Davis

Khalid Sabree (KHA-Tees), SunRa + Sun Raised, Jazz Iz Hio Hop Iz Jazz, The New Harlem Renaissance; Demarcus McGaughey, State of Mind, Mind of a King; Sade Boyewa El, Faces of Harlem Series

Art Crawl Harlem's Ulysses Williams and Kente Royal Gallery's Dodji Gbedemah

The message of the exhibition is hope, according to Gbedemah. “Maybe it’s a coincidence that we have another pandemic,” he said. “Every time society goes through such a drastic period, we come out of it with an explosion of creativity, business, and prosperity.” Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem is an outstanding homage to a storied NYC neighborhood that will inspire pride and optimism. “We might be going through a tough time right now but 2021 is around the corner.” Learn more at artcrawlharlem.com.

Art Crawl Harlem Presents Fire & Soul: 100 Years of Harlem
Kente Royal Gallery, 2373 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, Harlem
Exhibition on view December 3, 2020 through January 3, 2021
Gallery Hours: Wed. – Fri. 2pm to 8pm; Sat. & Sun. 12pm to 8pm; Mon. & Tue. closed
Visitors must follow social distancing protocol. Reservations are encouraged. RSVP here.

Meet Brooklyn-based Artist & Curator Yvena Despagne

Yvena Despagne in her studio flanked by works from her Monsters series: Always Looking for Trouble (left) and Gang (right)

Along with creating her own spirited abstract paintings, artist and curator Yvena Despagne showcases work by emerging and mid-career artists from Haiti and Brooklyn as co-founder of Arts x Ayiti and the recently appointed curator-in-residence of Arts Gowanus.

“As an artist you never do not have anything to do,” Despagne said at her Gowanus studio this week. “Even if I’m on one project, I can’t sit still. I’m on this one project but I’m planning five more.”

Discovering Art

The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Despagne was born and raised in Harlem, moving to Brooklyn in her teens and graduating from New Utrecht High School in Bensonhurst. She studied psychology at Brooklyn College before taking a position as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home to see if the medical field was a good fit for her. It wasn’t.

“I started catching myself hiding in empty rooms on my lunch break or whenever I had a moment, and researching art stuff,” she recalled. “I would study people’s artwork, read about becoming an artist or about artists’ stories. The more I was doing that, the less I wanted to be at the nursing home.”

“Going back [to college] was a challenge for me because at that point I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself,” Despagne added. “I was tired of taking classes and being unsure of my direction. That happened in the course of being married too.” At 25 Despagne married a Jehovah’s Witness whose religious beliefs she says “restricted me as an individual and didn’t allow me the opportunity to get to really know myself or even discover the fact that I liked art as much as I did.”

The couple separated in 2015 after five years. “Then the divorce happened and I started to get depressed,” she said, noting that she’d struggled with depression when she was younger. Searching for a distraction, Despagne found an instructional painting video on You Tube. “That was the first time that I stopped thinking about everything and was just focused on what [the artist] was doing,” she recalled. Inspired, she went out and bought art supplies and recreated what she saw in the tutorial. “I felt so good painting,” she said. “My issues were not an issue and I was able to block everything else out and think about myself…. Art in that sense, when you have that solitude, forces you to think about life, think about everything, or maybe not think about anything at all. Just focus on what you’re doing.”

She discovered her creative calling, and with the support of her new husband, Richard Rameau, decided to leave her position at the nursing home. “I left a good-paying job to barely making ends meet, but pursuing the art,” she said.

Rameau convinced Despagne to start an Instagram page in 2016 to share her artwork online. Within the first year of devoting herself full-time to her art, Despagne’s Instagram page caught the attention of Shirley Dorsainvil, the founder of Haitians Who Blog. She invited Despagne to exhibit and discuss her work at an event in Florida.

Another boost of confidence happened in 2019 when her painting Belle Machan’n was one of 11 works selected by the Flatbush Avenue BID for a street banner art campaign. The winning works were printed on to banners and prominently displayed along Flatbush Avenue between Cortelyou Road and Parkside Avenue in Brooklyn. “That was a big accomplishment for me because I almost didn’t enter,” Despagne noted with a laugh. The ethereal scene, featuring a “beautiful market lady” dressed in white and carrying a basket on her head, appeared to Despagne in a dream. “I woke up and was like I have to paint this now,” she remembers. “When I painted it, I was thinking about all the moms—about my mom and grandmother, my aunt, and all the woman that work hard to feed and provide for their families in hopes that they’ll have better opportunities or a better future than they did.”

(Left to right) Yvena Despagne's Ladybug, The Bee, and Hummingbird, all 2018

Her 2018 series, Little Wonder, features an enchanting menagerie of tiny creatures including a bumble bee, butterfly, and hummingbird. A friend inspired the initial piece, Ladybug. “One ladybug had me thinking about all the other little creatures that we don’t really think about until we see them…. Regardless of how small we are, we still all have a reason and a purpose for being on earth,” she explained.

Anger was the impetus behind Despagne’s Monsters series. The project started with two works on paper in 2019. “I was so upset about so many things. It was a point in my life where I felt like I was facing a wall and didn’t know where else to go,” she said. “I just started drawing these random shapes and…suddenly they looked like parts of a body to me. I wrote the words ‘tongue,’ ‘teeth,’ and ‘eyes’ on them.” She set these two drawings aside for a few months until the pandemic hit and she felt compelled to revisit them and make more. “I just couldn’t stop creating these monsters. I was thinking of politics, the government. It’s just annoying how people feel a sense of having control over other people’s lives and just like that [snaps fingers] you can destroy it or take everything away,” she said.

Yvena Despagne's Monsters series

Yvena Despagne's Always Looking for Trouble (left) and Gang (right)

Yvena Despagne's Two-Faced, from her Monsters series

Always Looking for Trouble features searching eyes “constantly looking for the next thing to gossip about” and an elongated pink tongue. “The tongue is so long because gossipers just have so much to say all the time,” she explains.

Four lashing tongues, four sets of teeth, and a single pair of eyes intermingle on a deep blue backdrop in Gang. “Usually in a gang, whether it’s a government, a school setting, or an actual gang in the streets, there’s always one leader of the pack. That’s why there is only one set of eyes,” Despagne notes. “It only takes that one person to see or say something to make everybody else follow.”

Another Creative Path

Despagne landed her first arts-related job in 2018 at sk.ArtSpace in East New York. After submitting her artwork and speaking with the venue owners, they recognized her drive and took her on as a gallery assistant. After three months, they gave her the opportunity to curate an exhibit on her own. The theme of Despagne’s inaugural curatorial project I Was Created to Create acknowledged “all artists who, although they do other things in their lives, can’t deny at the end of the day that they are an artist first,” she said. Featuring painting, photography, sculpture, and film, the exhibit went over so well that she was asked to curate two more group shows at the space in 2019.

Despagne soon found another position assisting Aaron Simms, the owner of Brooklyn Arts Fellowship (BAF) gallery in Greenwood Heights. She curated the exhibit currently on view at the gallery, Esansyèl [Essential], featuring paintings by Haitian-American artist Phaidra Sterlin.

Concurrent with her positions at galleries, Despagne branched out by curating artwork for local cafés, starting with Lakou Café in Crown Heights where she presented work by new artists every month. Her work at Lakou opened the door to curating gigs at several other cafés and caught the eye of the Ghost Gallery owner who enlisted her to curate three shows at his Brooklyn gallery. Despagne was even in talks to curate a show for Ghost Gallery’s LA location, but those plans had to be put on hold. “The pandemic hit and everything shut down,” she said. “Socializing is out of the picture. What am I supposed to do as an artist and as a curator? How does this work now?” she questioned.

An upcoming trip to Haiti also had to be canceled due to the pandemic. The producers of Ayiti: The Awakening recruited Despagne to organize screenings of their documentary in Haiti. “[The film] talks about how corrupted everything was after the [2010] earthquake and how the funds that were supposed to go to the Haitian people in the country to help restore it—never got there,” she explains of the film. Not easily discouraged, Despagne will host a screening of Ayiti: The Awakening in Brooklyn at BAF gallery on December 17.

While in-person events may pose problems amid the pandemic, Despagne’s online project, Art x Ayiti, continues to flourish. The platform highlights and promotes contemporary visual artists of Haitian descent. Since taking over the project from co-founder Samantha Nader, Despagne has been focused on enhancing the user experience by hosting artist talks and offering art business tips. “I feel like it’s serving its purpose, inspiring and motivating people and showing that as an artist you can make it, you just have to figure out what you’re doing.”

Yvena Despagne in her studio with her Monster series

The ever-busy Despagne joined Arts Gowanus in September as a curator-in-residence. She’s already helped the group organize its annual fundraiser in September and collaborated on the successful Atlantic Avenue Art Walk in October. The walk featured artwork by dozens of Brooklyn artists displayed in 65 storefronts along 1.5-miles for a socially-distanced alternative to a yearly open studios event. Despagne is currently working on putting together a virtual show for the organization. “The Arts Gowanus community is very open and welcoming,” Despagne says of her new role. “I’m really excited about what else we’ll be able to work on together.”

A tenacious ambition and work ethic drive Despagne toward her creative goals. “I’m happy that I push myself. Fear comes hand in hand with this career and I’ve been told countless times if you’re not uncomfortable then you’re not really doing much. I’ve constantly been pushing myself to maintain in every uncomfortable situation because I know once I get through that, it’s prepares me for whatever else is out there for me,” she said. “I’m always striving for the next big thing.”

Visit yvenadespagneart.com to learn more about the artist and message her on Instagram if you’d like to schedule a studio visit.
Check out her programming at BAF Gallery—Phaidra Sterlin: Esansyèl [Essential] on view through December 20 and a screening of Ayiti: The Awakening on December 17 at 6pm.

 

Anne-Sophie H. Plume: Stockpile | Established Gallery

Anne-Sophie H. Plume and her painting French Can-Can, 2020

Alone and far from home during lockdown, Anne-Sophie H. Plume found solace in painting an unusual subject—the canned goods she’d stocked up on in case of a food shortage. Stockpile, the artist's first solo exhibition, showcases intimate works teeming with vulnerability and unease.

“I spent the whole pandemic wanting to leave,” the French native said. “I hated being here because I was so alone.”

Plume moved from France to New York City two and a half years ago to study at The New York Studio School. Back in France, Plume focused primarily on abstract painting, but it was at the Studio School that she discovered her love for portraiture. “Coming to that school and starting to paint from the model, I realized how much I love to paint people. I started to paint portraits.” She happily painted models—many posed inside a clawfoot tub in her studio at school—working toward her MFA exhibition, until COVID began spreading across the world.

“In France the pandemic was much worse before it hit here, so my family [told me] 'you have to go into lockdown. You have to buy a lot of food…just stock everything.' And I did,” she recalls. “My whole family [said to] buy chickpeas, canned food, rice, and pasta. In France these were in shortage because everyone [was panic buying] everything. They told me in New York it’s going to be even worse, so I bought these things.... I have so much tomato sauce, a lot of chickpeas. My mom was all about chickpeas because [they have lots of] protein. I hate chickpeas,” she said laughing.

At the start of the year, Plume was living in Williamsburg with roommates who were not taking the pandemic or health restrictions seriously. “They were bringing people in. They would go out.” Carrying on as normal, her roommates were not social distancing nor following other COVID protocols.

A friend quarantining in Ohio offered Plume her empty Manhattan apartment to stay at for a while, away from her flatmates. “At that point I was like, 'should I go back to France?'" Plume wondered. But restrictions on travel and fear of losing her spot in the MFA program convinced her to stay and accept her friend’s invitation. “I went to Manhattan and just brought all my cans and all my paint,” Plume said. “I ended up staying there a month and a half.”

The first few weeks alone at the East Side apartment were difficult, with Plume feeling lonely and isolated. Accustomed to painting people, she also found herself without a model. “I was like, ‘I want to go home. I have nothing to paint.’ I was blocked for a while and then I started to make some totems with the cans.” Struck by the variety of colors on the packaging, Plume decided to paint the stacks of cans.

Anne-Sophie H. Plume, Where Is The Can Opener, 2020

Anne-Sophie H. Plume, Can Not (left) and Time Towers (right), 2020

Anne-Sophie H. Plume, It Can Be Contained (left) and Little birds (right), 2020

Anne-Sophie H. Plume, You Can, 2020

She began experimenting with her arrangements as she considered the uncertainty of the times, piling heavy cans on top of daintier items, creating haphazardly animated displays. “I was feeling that everything was crumbling down,” she said. The perilously stacked towers symbolize “a system that has proven to be worryingly unbalanced and fragile, each element at any moment could topple the rest to the floor,” Plume states in the press release for the show.

After returning to her Williamsburg apartment for a month over the spring, Plume relocated to Park Slope in July where she continued working on her Stockpile paintings on a larger scale, adding height and bulk to leaning stacks. Her implausibly teetering towers combine anxiety with whimsy, the daringly placed cans reflect a concerted effort to persevere. Plume's actual tin towers "fell down so many times," she recalls. "When they fell, it was so frustrating." The cathartic project helped her to cope with unusual circumstances and create a poignant and empathetic series documenting her experience.

Anne-Sophie H. Plume and her paintings Small Ones At The Bottom (left), Stack Riot (right)

Anne-Sophie H. Plume: Stockpile at Established Gallery

It was about five years ago that Plume left her job in the pharmaceutical industry and spent the next couple of years immersing herself in dance and art. “I decided to try everything I never dared to try before,” she said. She found her calling in painting and initially came to NYC to take an intensive summer course at the New York Studio School in 2018. After completing the program, she was offered a scholarship for the MFA program. She is currently preparing for her Thesis Exhibition opening on December 1. Despite 2020 being a challenging year, Plume does not regret her decision to remain in New York City where she adapted and took inspiration from an unlikely source.

“I’m relieved that I did. Everybody had a tough time,” she said reflecting on the past several months. “I’ve been so lucky to be able to paint. It’s been great. I mean, I never would have thought of painting cans, ever.

Anne-Sophie H. Plume: Stockpile
Established Gallery, 75 6th Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Exhibition on view November 21 - December 5

Phaidra Sterlin: Esansyèl [Essential] | Brooklyn Arts Fellowship Gallery

Phaidra Sterlin and her paintings Promès c dèt 2 (left) and Mwen Toufe ("I am choking," on right)

Phaidra Sterlin’s impassioned canvases address daily life in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and confront the inequities she witnesses there. The island nation’s inability to provide its citizens with basic resources is at the heart of her exhibition Esansyèl [Essential], currently on view at Brooklyn Arts Fellowship Gallery.

“Most of my work speaks of infrastructure, social inequalities,” she explained last week as she prepared for the show. Images of lightbulbs and fuel tanks—"the things that we need as the essentials”—recur in the textural acrylic paintings she creates as a way to grapple with the injustices in her homeland. “I always say we have a responsibility, whether it’s individually or collectively, to bring about change.”

Born in New York, Sterlin’s father brought her to his native Haiti when she was an infant to be raised with the help of his family. “My mom was from the south,” she said. “[As a] white southern woman [her mother] said the reason she didn’t bring me back home was because I was black, hence I was raised in Haiti,” the artist said.

Sterlin recalls a happy childhood in Haiti, filled with “fun memories…wholesome memories.” Her summer vacations were spent in NYC visiting her physician father. In the mid ‘80s political strife in Haiti —protests to overthrow President Jean-Claude Duvalier—prompted Sterlin’s father to move her back to the Upper West Side with him when she was 14. “I felt like I was being ripped away from all the things I was beginning to enjoy,” she said of the relocation during her formative years. “At the time you just feel like you’re pulled away from everything that you know.” She “immediately became a rebel kid” and left home soon after.

She surrounded herself with friends in the arts over the years and worked alongside them in fashion, photography, and set design. “I was always painting,” she notes. About six years ago she decided to focus on her own art. “I had a 'fuck it' day,” she recalls. “I figured now is as a good time as any to just indulge myself fully. I woke up one day and [decided] I didn’t want to live life with regrets.”

“I’m going to use my voice the best way that I can…being the best me, doing what I can do best,” she decided. In order to immerse herself in the work, she moved back to Haiti, “back to when everything was wholesome.”

While she finds the country more “connected” now, thanks to the internet, with a more modern mindset, she says that the nation’s infrastructure has not improved over the years. “Structurally it’s sad to me,” she said, noting the inequalities that pervade the society. “The environment, the people’s struggles, the structure…even a question of light.” Electricity, something often taken for granted in the States, can be difficult to access in Haiti. Only a quarter of Haitians have access to electricity, according to USAID. Many Haitian residents are forced to illegally connect to the electric grid to power their homes.

“It bothered me seeing my side having electricity but I cross the street, that side does not have it. That went on throughout the country, so it was socioeconomics,” she said. A powerful series of richly layered paintings from 2019 features dozens of lightbulbs dotting unsettling canvases. The bulbs, which bear an uncanny resemblance to tiny skulls, address the country’s power problem and symbolize Sterlin’s “anger and frustration” with the inequitable distribution of resources. “That was my own way of protesting,” she says. The lightbulbs in Sterlin’s paintings are actually rechargeable bulbs the artist purchased for her own home, but at $4 each she notes that these are inaccessible to many in Haiti.

The first work in the series, Promès c dèt 1 ("a promise is a debt"), features lightbulbs on a stunning yellow background, standing in for the illumination absent from many homes. “The land being bright yet there is no light. It’s a tropical island,” Sterlin mused, noting that sustainable options such as renewal energy and solar energy are “really for the privileged when [they] should be really a standard. There’s no reason why we [all] shouldn’t have that.” Other works in the series depict the lightbulbs in black and white—a color pairing the artist finds comforting—on an angry, fiery red background, or on the blue and red of Haiti's flag, showing pride in her heritage.

Phaidra Sterlin stands beside Promès c dèt 1

Phaidra Sterlin and her paintings Promès c dèt 3 (hanging) and Promès c dèt 5 (beside her on floor)

Another large canvas featuring a grid of red cylinders against a ghostly black and white background represents the gas tanks that are commonly used to fuel cooktops in Haitian kitchens. “A lot of the people can’t afford to get that tank filled up every day to be able to cook,” Sterlin notes. The majority of Haitian households cannot afford propane and must rely on a cooking option that is harmful to both their health and the environment. “A lot of people use charcoal and now you think about charcoal, you think about deforestation,” Sterlin said of the country’s increasingly devastated forests. “The other alternative we have is [gas], so you have to have a little more cash flow to have this.” 

Sterlin hopes her evocative works will raise awareness to the injustices experienced in her homeland and elicit change. “I hope that it provokes thoughts, questions, dialogue…that then lead to actions,” she says. “Conversation starts an action.”

The artist will return to Haiti this week to prepare for an upcoming exhibit there in which she will include a tribute to her father who passed away two and half years ago. Based on Ezilí Dantor, a Haitian voodoo icon often depicted holding a child, her father will replace the female figure in the image she says, “because I was raised by my dad.”

After years of a strained relationship, Sterlin and her father made amends prior to her return to Haiti five years ago. “I have to say that when I made my decision to go to Haiti, he was one of the few people that supported it. He said, ‘Haiti is also your home and you’re going home,’” she fondly recalls.

Her father championed her art career and proudly watched its “progression and change” over the years. “As a kid I used to draw over all of his anatomy books…he knew what he had in me,” she said of her early signs of creativity. “He had hoped for a doctor but in the end, he was pleased with what he had.”

Phaidra Sterlin, Marriage Ideal

Phaidra Sterlin stands beside her painting Promès c dèt 3

Phaidra Sterlin: Esansyèl [Essential]
Brooklyn Arts Fellowship Gallery, 210 24th Street, Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn
Gallery Hours: Mon-Fri, by appointment; Saturday 12pm - 6pm; Sunday 1pm - 5pm
Exhibition on view November 20 – December 20, 2020

Janet Pedersen: Step By Step | 440 Gallery

Janet Pedersen stands beside her paintings Martha, Matisse and Me (top), Bird Dance (below), and Tree Dance (right), all 2020

In a year marked by a pandemic, health restrictions, and lockdowns, Janet Pedersen endured an additional obstacle—a painful, crippling injury. The Park Slope-based artist persevered, finding an escape through the world of dance. She created Step By Step, an alluring series of work depicting nimble movements, at a time when she herself was immobile.

Pedersen broke her left ankle last November while hosting Thanksgiving dinner at home. “I stepped on it wrong, my ankle snapped and this foot was at a right angle to my leg,” she graphically recalled. After a visit to the emergency room and a two-and-a-half hour surgery, Pedersen was sent home with a surgical boot and a walker. “I was in a boot and was literally upstairs in one room for about three months…. I thought what can I do? I’m an artist, how can I bring some joy to my life?” Knowing that she had an upcoming solo exhibition at 440 Gallery, where she’s been a member for almost four years, she decided to focus on preparing for it. “I had to think of a way to engage all these things that could keep me entertained and hopeful and joyful,” she said. “It did force me to have something to get up for, aside from my family, and it gave me some joy.”

Primarily a plein air landscape painter, there was no chance of Pedersen getting outside to work as usual given the COVID lockdown and her limited mobility. Her fondness for figure drawing—which she teaches online—led her to focus on the human form instead of outdoor scenes. An avid dancer in her teens, Pedersen decided to “reach back to [her] young self where [she] really wanted to be a dancer.”  

She found inspiration in magazine photos and online videos featuring dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Martha Graham Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Group, and Nederlands Dans Theater. She studied the videos, froze stills of specific poses—arched backs, soaring leaps—and recreated them on canvas. “They are posed in a way that I wasn’t. I was literally in a boot and in my pajamas.”

She incorporated her plein air practice into some of the scenes, transforming the studio and stage backdrops into outdoor spaces with trees and glimpses of blue sky. “A lot of this was almost like a dance,” Pedersen mused. “I’m the partner here. I want to join in,” she said of her desire to add her own touch to what she saw on the screen. “Dance is a lot of push me, pull me, lead and follow.”

Tango features a couple dancing cheek-to-cheek in an intimate scene emphasized by the tightly cropped canvas. “It’s not the classic tango…but it was just an intimate moment and I thought 'I want to freeze-frame that,'” Pedersen notes. West Side Story centers on a figure jumping high over the heads of onlookers, “catching a breath,” according to the artist.

Janet Pedersen, Tango, 2020

Janet Pedersen, West Side Story, 2020

Janet Pedersen's Martha, Matisse and Me (top) and Bird Dance (below), both 2020

A dancer is lifted high into the air amid a thicket of trees in Bird Dance. She proudly holds her head high and extends her arms and legs behind her as if in flight. A pale figure extends an elongated arm upward while leaning toward a dance partner that Pedersen has transformed into a tree in the expressionist Tree Dance. Pedersen’s hazy images of lithe dancers are captivating. Her dreamlike acrylic paintings vibrantly celebrate “a beautiful art form” and capture the grace and spirit of the dancers.

Born and raised in a small town near Pasadena, California, Pedersen grew up in a creative family. “You can say I come from a family of artists. My grandfather was a plein air painter from Denmark,” she said. Her mother, a fiber artist, and her father, an architect, encouraged creativity in Pedersen and her two sisters.  “We always painted together and drew on location,” she recalls. “We would be in restaurants and all of us would be drawing.”

Pedersen initially considered studying dance at UC Santa Cruz but majored in film instead. She later received her BFA in illustration from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. She moved to NYC in 1990 expecting to only spend a couple of years here working in editorial illustration. “I drove somebody’s car for them…from LA to New York,” she recalls, “with two portfolios and two suitcases, thinking I would be here for two years. But then I started to plant myself here. I met my husband, began friendships, and decided that Brooklyn was a pretty interesting place.”

She designed children’s books for several years which led to her illustrating dozens of titles. She later went on to write and illustrate four of her own children’s books. When she turned 50, she decided to focus on fine art. “I have done fine art in one form or another my whole life anyways,” she said of her decision to “become serious about showing [her] work and discovering who [she is] as a painter.” She took plein air workshops across the country “with oil paint and the easel” and was immediately smitten. “I was just blown away,” she says. “I thought this is what I want to do. This is what my grandfather did.”

“I didn’t get my MFA,” she continued. “I went to a number of workshops and picked up the tools of the trade and I brought them back. I remember buying a bike that I could fold up and I had my bicycle bags with my easel, my paints, and I just went one place after the other when I could…. Whenever I get a chance, I’m out with my easel and my paints.”

One of her favorite locales to paint is South Slope “because the light is more open,” she says. “I’m always seeking the light.” Other favorite spots include Windsor Terrace, Prospect Park, and Green-Wood Cemetery. “As an architect’s daughter,” Pederson also enjoys painting the built environment. “And any street corner that has a deli,” she adds. “[If] there’s a bit of color, some nice perspective, maybe a person standing there…if I can capture that in one-and-a-half to two hours, then I’ve had a good day.”

The industrial buildings and quirky side streets of Red Hook are also ideal locations for her. “It’s all the angles and the light, and I think Red Hook has a lot to offer that way,” she says. “If you can get the water in there, that’s great too, but it’s those side streets that I find really interesting.” Even after 30 years living in New York City, Pedersen notes, “I have many more scenes that I want to paint here.”

Janet Pedersen, Burlesque, 2020

janet Pedersen's Ensemble (top) and Dancer's Dance (below), both 2020

Janet Pedersen stands with Alvin Ailey Dance Co. 2 (left) and Alvin Ailey Dance Co. 3 (right), both 2020

Pedersen dispels any romantic notions one may associate with plein air artists contentedly painting on a picturesque street corner all day. “It’s never easy finding a good spot because you have this preconception that ‘If I go down to Red Hook, I know exactly what I want to paint.’ You get your gear together, you go down there…. You go set up and somebody has either thrown up there or somebody’s parked right in front of what you wanted to paint.”

Undeterred, she will keep searching for a spot with the right lighting. “Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, you’re losing the light…. If the light is not working for you this way, you turn this way and you paint what is lit. Or you step across the street and look at it from a different angle. You have to stay on top of your game and try not to be defeated,” she insists. “If it were easy all the time, I probably would become bored with it.”

She enthusiastically muses about perfect light and hues in different seasons. “In spring, everything is just so young and green, and happening. It’s dizzy. In the fall, everything is just golden. The color is like apricot. There’s a color tone that [inspires] ‘Wow! If I could catch that....'” 

During the cold winter months, Pedersen works from a studio at home, however this past winter was very different. “This last year, because of COVID, we were indoors all the time,” she notes. Despite the circumstances, she was able to stay motivated and productive.

“I think it’s important to keep working,” she says of her time healing during the lockdown. “We have pandemic. We have world events that have turned this country and the world on its side that I think we can’t turn our backs to, but we all have a responsibility to keep going and do what brings joy.”

Janet Pedersent: Step By Step
440 Gallery, 440 6th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn 
Exhibition on view November 18 - January 3, 2021
Outdoor Opening Reception: Saturday, November 21, 3pm to 6pm
(Rain Date:  Nov. 22)

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

Jo-Ann Acey Comes "Full Circle"

Jo-Ann Acey poses with Full Circle No. 7 and No. 6 at The Cluster Gallery in Gowanus.

You have a few days left to check out Jo-Ann Acey’s solo exhibition Full Circle at The Cluster Gallery in Gowanus. Inspired by nature and memory, the prismatic abstract works burst with buoyant circular shapes that exude energy and spontaneity.

“I just want people to feel happy or feel some sense of beauty when they look at my work,” Acey said at the gallery on Tuesday, noting that her drawings and prints document “childhood memories, good memories.”

“I really like going back to those memories of growing up in the Mohawk Valley,” she said. Much of her work recalls "New York State and the valleys and the rivers. Even though they’re very abstract in a way, that’s where it comes from.”

Full Circle features pastel drawings and monotypes from 2016 that represent the cyclical nature of life, according to Acey. “The title is really the idea that where you start and where you go usually is like a cycle, a circle,” she said.  “There’s just something about the continuation of the circle. It doesn’t end,” she continued. “I think it’s about motion, spontaneity, and the symbol that it just keeps going.”

Acey’s work is rife with movement, with line work sweeping over richly hued shapes to indicate energy and activity. “If you really move in your work, that movement becomes part of the piece,” she says.

Jo-Ann Acey, Full Circle No. 1

Jo-Ann Acey, Full Circle No. 8 and No. 4

Jo-Ann Acey, Full Circle No. 2 and No. 3

Jo-Ann Acey, Full Circle No. 12 and No. 11

Jo-Ann Acey, Full Circle No. 9 (top) and No. 10 (below)

Jo-Ann Acey, Full Circle, installation view

In her studio—down the hallway from The Cluster Gallery—Acey works vigorously from a large table composing her works. Though loud music is not permitted at the Brooklyn Art Cluster Studios, Acey recalls listening to lots of jazz at her former workspace in Clinton Hill, absorbing the music’s “movement, spontaneity, and freedom.” “Even though my work is not directly related to dance, when I’m watching a dance performance, I just envision what the painting or the drawing will look like while I’m watching the movement of the dancers,” she notes. Her series of acrylic paintings, Swing (2018-2019), was inspired by music and dance.

Full Circle is not Acey's only series featuring a prominent geometric form. Circles can also appear in a celestial guise. “I use that circle, that red moon all the time,” she said, noting her 2017 La Luna series. “That happened because I was walking down 9th Street one night and I turned around and [saw] the biggest red moon in the sky. That just stayed with me for days.... I think that circle, that red moon reoccurs often in my work.” Acey emphasizes particular shapes in other series including squares and rectangles evoking congested cities in her Urban Landscapes and triangular points suggesting towering steeples and spires in her Dwelling series.

Acey notes that the shapes in Full Circle are not consistent. In some of the earlier pieces the circles are housed inside boxes but “as the series continued, the circles and the ovals came out of those box spaces and became much more fluid, they didn’t need to be so contained anymore.... You can go ‘full circle,’ but there’s been a lot of changes throughout that. It’s not always going to be a perfect circle. It’s not always going to be a perfect journey, but it evolves.” 

The exhibit also references Acey’s retirement five years ago which allowed her to return to her art full time. “I had recently stopped teaching, so for me it was like, ‘okay, now I’m back where I started and I’m just practicing [art].’”

Works from Jo-Ann Acey's Dwelling (left) and La Luna (right) series displayed in her Gowanus studio.

Recent works at Jo-Ann Acey's studio that will be included in an upcoming group exhibit at 440 Gallery.

Acey grew up in Utica, New York and studied painting and drawing with abstract expressionists at Daeman College in Buffalo. She then attended the University of Arizona for one year before receiving a scholarship to Texas Tech where she earned her MFA. While at Texas Tech she took part in a program that brought her to Taos, New Mexico where the vast terrain inspired her to create landscapes in addition to her abstract work. “That was a really good choice that I made,” she recalls. “I think that was a real opening up, a real freedom for me to express my work the way I wanted to, so I’ve never looked back.”

She moved to New York in the late ‘70s and immediately moved to Brooklyn. “I thought right away I was going to move to Manhattan and have a big loft in Soho, but I’ve always lived in Brooklyn,” she said. She worked at Pratt for a time, evaluating painting and drawing portfolios, before finding a position at Studio in a School which had only launched a couple of year prior. After five years of teaching visual art to public school students, she became the organization’s Program Director and supervised the teaching artists. She later moved on to the United Nations International School in Queens where she taught kindergarteners to eighth-graders for 20 years.

“To see a student who really doesn’t think that they have any drawing or painting skills and then they did the most beautiful work that you’ve ever seen…. Some of the most beautiful paintings or sculptures are done by my kindergarteners or first graders just because there’s no inhibition. I love it.”

While teaching, Acey often encountered students who doubted their drawing or painting abilities. “You break it down into shapes for them” tell them to “look at the shape, or look at the line,” she said, comparing this process to the “full circle” referenced in her show. Going back to the basics, “back to the circle and into the shape.”

Jo-Ann Acey in her studio at Brooklyn Art Cluster Studios. Pieces from her La Luna series are on the left and two of her Urban Landscapes are on the right.

“Teaching to me was a real joy,” she continued. “Towards the end though, I just felt like I need to be in my studio. If you’re teaching five days a week you can’t go to your studio….” Acey is keeping busy in her retirement and can be found at her studio every day. “The freedom to have a studio and to be able to come to it....”

Acey is currently documenting a new set of childhood memories—a series based on color and light called, The Sunny Side of the Street, after the song “my father used to sing all the time,” she said. The upbeat tune is a fitting impetus for the artist who will undoubtedly create another collection of dynamic and joyous works.

Acey will have works exhibited at 440 Gallery’s Project Space as part of the group exhibit Linked opening November 18. See more of Acey's artwork at aceyart.com.

Full Circle
The Cluster Gallery, 540 President Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn (by appointment)
Exhibition closes November 20, 2020

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

Chromaticism by Natale Adgnot | Established Gallery

Chromaticism by Natale Adgnot at Established Gallery

This is your last week to catch Chromaticism, Brooklyn-based artist Natale Adgnot’s solo exhibition showcasing dazzling three-dimensional works whose vivid colors and shapes—neatly lined slats, clusters of mushrooms, shells, and lily pads—practically leap from the gallery walls.

The exhibit features three ongoing series by Adgnot. Her Sketchbook series began in 2013 when the artist found herself disillusioned with her day job. She picked up a sketchbook and challenged herself to create a sketch a day for 30 days. She enjoyed the creative stimulation so much, she’s continued the daily activity for seven years and has since filled 700 books with black and white ink drawings. 

“When I start a sketch I have no idea what I’m going to get,” Adgnot explains. “My whole process is really about putting something down that’s a seed—whether it be a check mark that just feels good physically to make, something that matches the music I’m listening to, the seam on somebody’s purse that I see on the subway, or an object that I find on the ground in a forest—I put down an initial mark.” After putting down that first mark, she then sets rules for herself in completing that particular piece, the only constants being that the drawing must be done in black and white, with no pencil, and on a small page. “Just go directly with the pen. No color, no going back.” She says the activity is similar to a crossword puzzle for her.  “I apply those rules for the duration of the sketch and see what comes out." 

L-R: Natale Adgnot's Untitled (book 29 sketch 11), 2019; Dispersion Triptych, 2020; Untitled (book 29 sketch 21),  2019

L-R: Natale Adgnot's Untitled (book 20 sketch 17), 2016; Untitled (book 22 sketch 08), 2016; Untitled (book 17 sketch 08), 2015; Pencil Shavings, 2020

Natale Adgnot, Pencil Shavings (detail), 2020

L-R: Natale Adgnot's Untitled (book 23, sketch 02), 2017; Untitled (book 26, sketch 17), 2017; Untitled (book 27, sketch 05), 2018

After working on these sketches consistently for five years, Adgnot says she wanted to take them to another level by creating “a series that had more presence than sketches but retained the same starkness,” so she decided to “bring two-dimensional drawings up to the third dimension.” This series of black and white sculptures called Drawings in Three Dimensions combine her sketchbook drawings with an unexpected material.

The artist had been fascinated with the Shrinky Dinks her daughter played with and wanted to incorporate the morphing material into her work. “There was something inherently graphic and attractive to me about the Shrinky Dinks,” she recalls of the polystyrene plastic that shrinks in size but becomes thicker and harder when baked. The artist collected the scraps her daughter cut out and created shapes and jewelry for herself. She then learned that she could purchase blank artist-grade sheets of the material.

Adgnot draws delicate patterns on the translucent Shrinky Dink material before baking it. When it comes out of the oven she must work quickly while the material is still pliable. She has mere seconds to form the pieces into geometric or flora-like shapes. She then attaches the pieces onto a painted birch panel in intricate dynamic patterns, some suggesting spiraling motion or whirling leaves. These works are not to be viewed from a stationary position. Exciting new discoveries—discreet details, gold enameled edges—can be found in the sculptures when viewed up close and from various vantage points.

Natale Adgnot, Blades of Grass Square, 2020

Natale Adgnot, Scales, 2020

Natale Adgnot, Scales (seen from below), 2020

Natale Adgnot, Tooth Circle, 2020

Natale Adgnot, Tooth Circle (side view), 2020

 

Natale Adgnot, Hemming Square, 2020

Raised in Texas, Adgnot studied graphic design and photography at Sam Houston State University. Shortly after graduating she moved to Paris for ten years where she met her husband and initially worked in graphic design. She later studied haute couture and interned at Chanel and for Felipe Oliveira Baptista. “What I didn’t realize at the time was that when I was working in fashion, I was actually honing my sculptor’s mind,” she says. “I had been such a two-dimensional artist and designer for all those years that making these three-dimensional pieces for the runway—I was actually making pieces out of horse skin and foam and wire—they were really sculptural pieces…and that’s kind of what primed me to later on become a sculptor.”

It was while Adgnot and her family were living in Japan between 2015 and 2018 that she began her Drawings in Three Dimensions series. Since living space there tends to be small and landlords restrict hammering nails into walls to hang art, she had to work on a small scale and create diminutive “objects that people could put on their bookcases,” producing more than "a hundred sculptures that were smaller than a foot by a foot."

It was only at the start of this year that she began working on a larger scale. “Adding scale was a huge step for me,” she says. “This year I started going to three-feet by four-feet. Later in the year I went to four-feet by five-feet.” Having crossed another touchstone in her practice, she’s decided to challenge herself again. “I’ve gone to three dimensions. I’ve gone larger scale. What’s the next logical step? It’s color,” said said.

“When the pandemic hit it became almost inevitable that I had to [add color] because it was almost like fighting against the drab grimness of the year,” she explains of her most recent series, Chromatics. “I ended up choosing the most fluorescent, in-your-face colors. I didn’t want it to be in-between. It’s either black and white or it’s color in your face,” she said of her vibrant palette. For these works, Adgnot paints her substrates in shocking hues. She dips the plastic pieces in matching paint and hangs them to dry or covers them entirely in acrylic paint, creating a textural surface as they shrink in the oven. The vivid hues add an eye-popping exuberance to these pieces.

Natale Adgnot, Klein-set Half-moons, 2020

Natale Adgnot, Reflex-set Pixels, 2020

Natale Adgnot, Atomic-set Polypore, 2020

Natale Adgnot, Atomic-set Polypore (view from below), 2020

Clockwise from top left: Natale Adgnot's Atomic Nymphaea; Reflex Alignment; Klein Origami; Infrarouge Verticals; Reflex Lunaria; Klein Lamellae 2, all 2020

The musical term chromaticism—"the way musicians add color to their music”—inspired the title of her exhibition. Combining the black keys of a piano—the five chromatic tones—with the white keys of C major, musicians can play the full chromatic scale of 12 tones per octave, adding nuance and emotion to a composition. “They use it for…these really strong emotions that really can’t be evoked with the more basics parts of the scale,” Adgnot explains. “I thought it was a perfect metaphor for what I’ve been doing where I started out with these two-dimensional black and white works, brought them up to the third dimension, and then finally adding color into the mix, like filling in the black keys between the white keys.”

According to the artist, the last work she completed for this exhibition, Reflex Dispersion, “best exemplifies” all three of her series. It features elements of her black and white sketchbook drawings, the three-dimensionality of her monochromatic sculptures, and a surprise burst of color. “When you stand directly in front of it…it almost looks like lines on a white page, so that’s very much like the Drawings in Three Dimensions, but then as you come to the side, you discover this really bright fluorescent yellow where the details meet the substrate.” As with her other sculptures, the work reveals different scenes and experiences when viewed from different angles. “I wanted to have two different approaches with the color,” Adgnot says. “I want it to either be in-your-face color or color that you just discover as you move around it.”

Natale Adgnot, Reflex Dispersion, 2020

Natale Adgnot, Reflex Dispersion (side view), 2020

Natale Adgnot stands beside her work Dispersion Triptych, 2020

Chromaticism by Natale Adgnot at Established Gallery

“There’s something satisfying about discovering something in an artwork that’s not readily obvious. If you come up to the piece, at first glance from the front, you see that it’s three-dimensional, but it’s only when you move around that you discover there’s this whole other experience with the bright, bright color,” she said, noting “the joy of discovering” her work embodies. “When you take the time to look at things from other perspectives you can discover that there are several truths. I know it’s cliché but the truth is, there’s something that’s pleasurable about discovering that your initial understanding is not completely right. We like to be tricked.”

Chromaticism by Natale Adgnot
Established Gallery, 75 6th Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Closing reception: Saturday, November 14, 2pm to 5pm

Celebrating the Harlem Renaissance Centennial on Governors Island

Art Crawl Harlem's artist-in-residence Demarcus McGaughey at his Governors Island studio.

For the past four weeks artist Demarcus McGaughey has been working from one of the historic houses on Governors Island’s Colonial Row. One of two artists selected for the inaugural Art Crawl Harlem artist-in-residency program, McGaughey is creating a new series of exuberant mixed media portraits that celebrate the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance.

During this “golden age in African American culture,” Harlem became an epicenter of Black art, literature, music, dance, fashion, and more. McGaughey and Ricky Day, his fellow artist-in-residence, are creating works that focus on the theme Boundaries and Connections: The Other Side of Us, reflecting on the past 100 years of the NYC neighborhood—“from the 1918 pandemic and ‘The Great Migration’ which preceded the Harlem Renaissance when Black people moved to the north seeking opportunity and changing the economic and cultural fabric of America to the Black Lives Movement and COVID-19 pandemic,” according to Art Crawl Harlem.

“This year is celebrating the centennial of Harlem, a hundred years is the other side of us and how do we track and trace that history as it relates to today and where we’re at,” said Ulysses Williams, Executive Director of Art Crawl Harlem. “You have to consider the past as it relates to who we are now.”

Williams says that McGaughey embodies that theme, “being a man from Texas with a dream in New York. He came here with that dream and he’s making it his reality.”

“In the 1920s African Americans moved, they migrated from different states to Harlem and Harlem became this place of refuge, freedom, talent, and culture, a place to be expressive,” McGaughey noted. “For me those individuals created the life that they wanted.”

A metallic canvas with the handwritten message, “Create Your Life,” welcomes visitors as they step through the front door of the artist’s temporary studio. McGaughey, who also works as a life coach, uses this mantra regularly. “I always tell my clients ‘you can create your life,’ and I always say we all have something special and it’s our responsibility to use our gifts to empower the world,” he said during a preview of his works-in-progress on Tuesday. “It’s meant to be like a mirror, a reflection piece,” he said of the work composed of plaster, mirror-effect paint, and resin. “A mirror to look at and be able to see yourself but then think about the life that you want to create.”

Create Your Life by Demarcus McGaughey. Photo: Nathan Haselby

The Artist

Originally from Dallas, Texas, McGaughey received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Prairie View A&M University. He moved to NYC 15 years ago and worked in graphic design until his friend, Saundra Heath, co-founder of the Heath Gallery in Harlem, challenged him to take up painting five years ago. He accepted the challenge and has not looked back, creating vibrant pop art pieces and portraits of celebrities and friends.

The series he is currently completing on Governors Island combines pop art and portraiture while merging old Harlem with new Harlem. He started by selecting six models—five transplants to Harlem and one native—interviewing them, photographing them, then painting them on a collage of vintage images of bustling Harlem streets. “I wanted to know their experience…their relationship with Harlem, why they gravitated to Harlem, and what is it that they love about Harlem,” he said.

“The factor everyone was really excited about, really spoke about, was the connections…connections to other people and the culture of Harlem,” he noted. Each of his subjects relayed stories of a neighborhood that exudes a sense of community. “They can walk out their door and they can see someone they know.”

Harlem's New Generation

In his portrait of Steve, an actor and educator who “migrated from Atlanta,” McGaughey painted a confident young man wearing a t-shirt declaring, “I am powerful, passionate, creative.” McGaughey requested that each of his subjects wear clothing that “represents Harlem to them, [is] something they would like to be remembered in,” or something that shows them at their best.

The facade of the legendary Apollo Theater can be seen behind Steve, a reflection of the aspiring actor’s dream. Like many newcomers to the city, Steve did not know where he was going to live when he first arrived, so McGaughey also included a “rooms to let” sign in the background. Steve now resides in the Harlem apartment where his grandmother once lived.

Demarcus McGaughey's portrait of Steve (WIP). Photo: Nathan Haselby

Demarcus McGaughey's portrait of Jamar (WIP)

A cool, mysterious figure takes a swig from a plastic cup in McGaughey’s portrait of Jamar. When the Brooklyn-based McGaughey moved to NYC 15 years ago, he spent his first year in Harlem where he constantly encountered Jamar out and about. “To me he’s that guy you see at every Harlem event. He’s like an ambassador of Harlem…everyone knows Jamar.” An entrepreneur and host of the Happy Harlem Hour tour, Jamar is “a person who knows how to make things happen,” according to the artist. “For me he’s a symbol of hope. He symbolizes ‘if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.’”

“Amber has been a dancer, actress, singer her entire life,” McGaughey said of the Dallas native who relocated to Harlem to study dance at Juilliard. “I’ve known Amber since she was a baby. I went to church with her.” Dressed in a flowing regal purple dress with white flowers in her hair, Amber strikes a seductive pose on McGaughey’s canvas. “When I thought of Amber I thought of the Cotton Club,” the artist said. An image of the famous venue’s marquee and a poster of Duke Ellington and his orchestra appear in the backdrop of Amber’s portrait. “She just embodies the Harlem Renaissance to me,” McGaughey said of the performer, “creating your life. Coming here to use your gifts and your talents.”

Standing proudly with long blond braids cascading over her left shoulder, Hollis stares intensely at the viewer. The only portrait-sitter born and raised in Harlem, Hollis is a playwright and the daughter of Heath Gallery owners Thomas and Saundra Heath—the same Saundra whom McGaughey credits for his art career. In the portrait, Hollis wears a chambray shirt adorned with streaks of red, pink, and white painted by her father. “She wanted to be remembered in her dad’s art,” McGaughey noted. “I feel like I’m painting two portraits in one, because it’s her dad’s art and her dad’s creation, his daughter.”

Hollis also wears a pair of oversized gold hoop earrings. “As a child her mom would not let her wear those door-knocker earrings,” he added, “so to see her as this grown, powerful, Black woman, she now gets to wear the earrings…. To me she’s just a beautiful Amazon goddess, very confident, very strong.”

McGaughey has two more portraits to paint, one of Ashley, a celebrity makeup artist, and another of Reginald, an assistant pastor of The Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Once all six of the 36 x 48 inch portraits are complete and displayed side-by-side, a heartbeat running through the center of each background—an ECG-like line within the collaged images—will connect the Harlemites.

Demarcus McGaughey's portrait of Amber (WIP). Photo: Nathan Haselby

Demarcus McGaughey's portrait of Hollis (WIP). Photo: Nathan Haselby

Art Crawl Harlem

An educational arts non-profit, Art Crawl Harlem was founded in 2008 by gallery-owner Averlyn Archer and event organizer Jacqueline Orange. The pair produced a guided trolley tour of Harlem introducing neighbors and visitors to Harlem artists, galleries, and cultural institutions, according to Williams, who joined the organization in January 2019.

Originally from Jersey City, Williams fell under the spell of Harlem himself years ago. He recalls sitting in the backseat of his uncle’s car as a child. “My Uncle Abraham drove down 125th Street… Something just pulled me to Harlem, so to live here so many years later it was a dream come true. It’s where I’ve always wanted to be.”

After being accepted for the Governors Island residency program, Williams had just a few weeks this summer to organize and find artists for Art Crawl Harlem’s inaugural event on the island. Before McGaughey arrived, photographer Ricky Day worked in the space and Lisa DuBois, a curator at Harlem's X Gallery, exhibited a public installation on the back porch of the house in September.

Demarcus McGaughey's studio on Governors Island. Photo: Nathan Haselby

Demarcus McGaughey's inspiration board

Art Crawl Harlem's Executive Director Ulysses Williams and artist-in-residence Demarcus McGaughey on Governors Island. McGaughey's painting of Spiderman and Stan Lee is displayed on the mantel. Photo: Nathan Haselby

“This has been a wonderful opportunity,” McGaughey said of his experience on Governors Island. “There are so many different beautiful pockets and so much history here. McGaughey first visited the island last year. Wandering around, wondering what to do on the bucolic former military base, he discovered the historic houses surrounding Nolan Park, many filled with artists and exhibits. “Wow, they have artists here!” he recalled. Recently back from his first-ever residency in Barcelona, McGaughey was trying to figure out what he wanted to do next. “I remember standing in front of one of the homes saying, ‘I will be an artist-in-residence on Governors Island one day.’ And I walked away. Then a year later, I’m actually here.”

“It was that intention as well as his work,” Williams said of his decision to select McGaughey for the residency program. “I love the fact that he’s an African American Pop Artist and his Black muses are really superheroes to me. He allows them to come alive. There’s a back story, there’s a movement. I think this residency gave him an opportunity to work on a series of comprehensive works that the audience can harken back to.”

Williams notes that McGaughey’s artwork is reminiscent of Harlem Renaissance portrait photographer James VanDerZee. “It’s inspirational as well,” he adds. “He’s picked dynamic figures, diverse figures…an entrepreneur, a dancer, someone in faith,” members of a new generation of talented Black Americans who, like their predecessors a hundred years ago, moved to the iconic neighborhood to realize their dreams and create their lives.

Visit Demarcus McGaughey on Governors Island until October 31 or tune in to a virtual studio tour with him on Saturday, October 31 at noon. Go to artcrawlharlem.com to learn more.

The final works by both artists-in-residence, Demarcus McGaughey and Ricky Day, will be exhibited at the Kente Royal Gallery in May 2021.

And the celebration of the Harlem Renaissance Centennial will continue in December when Art Crawl Harlem presents Fire and Soul: Harlem 100, featuring visual art, poetry, and spoken word performances. Click here to learn more or to submit a proposal.

440 Gallery Group Exhibition At NU Hotel

440 Gallery artists Jo-Ann Acey, Ellen Chuse, and Karen Gibbons at the group exhibition at NU Hotel

As part of the Arts Gowanus on Atlantic Ave event that opened last weekend, ten artists from 440 Gallery are exhibiting their work at NU Hotel. Painting, collage, print, and mixed media works will be on view on the ground level of the hotel, brightening up the public spaces, through December 19.

Due to the pandemic, Arts Gowanus organized a 1.5-mile socially-distanced art walk along Atlantic Avenue in place of the organization's annual open studios event. With only two weeks to coordinate the show, each of the artists from the Park Slope collective contributed three pieces, creating an eclectic yet harmonious selection of work. “At 440 we’ve noticed that we have a kind of magical synergy that if we just call for people to bring work, we find a way to hang it that they complement each other,” said Karen Gibbons, a longtime 440 Gallery member who oversaw the project.

Originally from Pennsylvania, Gibbons studied painting at Pratt. She has worked with paint and sculpture and currently creates two-dimensional mixed media collages, including her trio of Goddess works on view—Lakshmi, Care, and Blue Madonna—surreal, multilayered depictions of the Virgin Mary composed using acrylic, graphite and bits of prints and photos.

(L-R) Robin Roi, For All The Rooms I’ve Ever Loved; Richard Barnet, If This; Ellen Chuse, In The Beginning; Karen Gibbons, Lakshmi; Jo-Ann Acey, City Beat #2; Gail Flanery, New Distance; Janet Pedersen, Zoom Muse

(Clockwise from top left) Robin Roi, Niblo’s Garden; Ellen Chuse, Heavenly Bodies; Robin Roi, Double Vision

(L-R) Jo-Ann Acey, City Beat #1; Richard Barnet, Boat Angels; Karen Gibbons, Care; Richard Barnet, Ten Sculpture Sketches; Ellen Chuse, Jewell II

Joining Gibbons in welcoming visitors to the exhibit at NU Hotel on Saturday was fellow 440 member Ellen Chuse. Raised in Philadelphia, Chuse studied at the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) and received her MFA from Queens College CUNY. Formerly a sculptor, Chuse now creates vibrant acrylic abstracts of seemingly morphing shapes, such as Heavenly Bodies, Jewel II, and In The Beginning. “I’m really interested in ambiguity of scale and I like people to bring their own frame of reference to things,” she explained. “It has a meaning for me, but I like the meaning to maybe resonate on a lot of different levels and not be too specific."

Gibbons and Chuse shared a studio space for twenty years at 280 Nevins Street in Gowanus. Gibbons had been at the loft building for 30 years. After the recent sale of the building, the two relocated to TI Art Studios in Red Hook earlier this year. The two were excited that the TI facility was added to the Gowanus Open Studios map and were looking forward to participating from their new workspaces this year. “I miss that interaction with people, but this is the next best thing and it’s also amazing to be able to make anything happen in this time of the pandemic,” said Chuse.

“I feel really lucky that we have this nice space,” Gibbons said. “Hopefully next year we’ll be back to that.” Gibbons notably has “the distinction of being one of the few people that’s been in every single one” of the 24 annual Gowanus Open Studios!

“People don’t realize that it goes back,” said Chuse, who has participated in the event since 2000 and volunteered on the organizing committee from 2001 to 2005. “When I came on there were like 35 artists,” she recalled. “It was 295 Douglass, 543 Union, 280 Nevins, and maybe a scattering of other people. It was all located in that sort of north end of Gowanus and it grew and grew and grew.” More than 400 local artists participated in last year’s Gowanus Open Studios.

“As far as the Gowanus artist community growing so much, it is a really great feeling to know there’s energy and support around and that you’re not the only one toiling away trying to make this happen,” said Gibbons. “And the fact that Johnny [Thornton] could put this together in a few weeks is really incredible. It speaks to the energy and the commitment of the artists involved.”

“It’s a hard time to feel community…. I mean online connection is online connection, but really seeing people, and that’s what I think is extraordinary,” Chuse said of this year’s socially-distanced substitute event. “To come here, it’s like I’m actually engaged in the concrete real world, and that is so important for me at the moment…. We both got [to TI Art Studios] then everything shut down. We know we’re part of a community of 120 artists, but we haven’t seen any of them, so this is an opportunity to open up and re-engage.”

(L-R) Janet Pedersen, Wind Dance; Janet Pedersen, Romeo and Juliet (two on top); Fred Bendheim, Spring; Amy Weil, Waiting For Spring; Karen Gibbons, Blue Madonna; Fred Bendheim, Space

Susan Greenstein, Mexican Garden (top); Amy Weil, Eye Candy (bottom)

Janet Pedersen, Wind Dance; Janet Pedersen, Romeo and Juliet (two on top); Fred Bendheim, Spring (bottom); Amy Weil, Waiting For Spring (right)

440 Gallery Group Exhibition is on view at NU Hotel, 85 Smith Street, Brooklyn, through December 19. Learn more about the Arts Gowanus on Atlantic Ave Art Walk at artgowanus.org.

Also, visit 440 Gallery at 440 6th Avenue in Park Slope where Gail Flanery: Harmonies is currently on view and That’s How The Light Gets In, featuring work by Susan Greenstein, Joy Makon, Caitlin Miller, and David Stock, is in the gallery’s Project Space. Visit 440gallery.com to learn more.

See my post from February on 440 Gallery's 15th Anniversary Members Show here.

Eye Smile You Smile | Public Art Spreads Joy on Atlantic Ave

Artist Miguel Ayuso with his wife Beth and their daughters Max and Lola.

Dozens of smiling faces greet passersby from a construction barricade on the northwest corner of Atlantic Avenue and Hoyt Street where artist Miguel Ayuso has installed his public art piece, Eye Smile You Smile. Inspired by the face coverings worn to prevent the spread of coronavirus, Ayuso has exhibited a series of side-by-side portraits of participating New Yorkers—one with a face covering and one without—to reveal their hidden smiles.

“Now that we are in quarantine, we are wearing these masks [for] the purpose of caring for ourselves but also for each other,” explained Ayuso on Saturday during the opening of Arts Gowanus on Atlantic Ave. “All in a sudden [the masks] became something more aesthetic, like an art statement or a fashion statement… What we’re missing are the smiles which, when we care for somebody, are something we wish to see. My idea with this installation is to show that those smiles are still there.”

Ayuso first requested two photos from volunteers—with mask and without—in late April. Participants were asked to smile in both images. He debuted Eye Smile You Smile in May in the window of his gallery La Bodega. Johnny Thornton, the Executive Director of Arts Gowanus, invited Ayuso to recreate the installation for the Arts Gowanus on Atlantic Ave event. “I think it was a good idea because when I did it at La Bodega, it was the very beginning of the pandemic, and even though it was accessible to the public, not a lot of people were going out, so this is a better opportunity to show it again, now that we are a little bit more relaxed,” Ayuso said. The artist also enjoyed revisiting the project because this time around he was able to work on a larger scale, creating 11 x 17 inch portraits instead of the 4 x 7 inch images he previously displayed. 

Thornton was formerly the Gallery Director at La Bodega, a beloved art gallery and community space in South Slope. Due to the pandemic, Ayuso was forced to permanently shutter the space in June after three years. Even without a physical location, Ayuso is carrying on La Bodega’s mission of offering “cultural artistic activities” to the community. He hosted several of the venue’s popular figure drawing sessions at Prospect Park over the summer and is trying to continue those “in a safe way” as the days get shorter and colder. While Ayuso hopes to open another brick-and-mortar location in the future, he says right now he’s “regrouping to see what the next step is going to be.”

    La Catrina Enmascarada on view at Betty Bakery, 448 Atlantic Avenue

Detail of Miguel Ayuso's Eye Smile You Smile on view at Atlantic Avenue & Hoyt Street

Head over to Betty Bakery at 448 Atlantic Avenue to see a another work by Ayuso, a vibrant reinterpretation of José Guadalupe Posada’s iconic Dia de los Muertos image La Calavera Catrina. According to Ayuso, Posada’s illustration of a well-dressed skeleton represents a wealthy woman. “The idea is to show that we are all going to the same place after this life, no matter how much money we have here or how our life was here. We all go to the same end,” he said.

Ayuso’s La Catrina Enmascarada wears a face mask to echo Posada’s original message of unity. “It doesn’t matter who you are, everybody has to wear the masks. We’re all going through the same thing,” Ayuso said. “This is temporary and at some point, we are going to stop wearing these masks and the smiles are going to start coming back slowly.”

Miguel Ayuso’s Eye Smile You Smile is located at the northwest corner of Atlantic Avenue & Hoyt Street and La Catrina Enmascarada at Betty Bakery, 448 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. Both works are part of the Arts Gowanus on Atlantic Ave Art Walk, on view through November 1, 2020. Learn more about the event at artsgowanus.org. Follow Miguel Ayuso at @themexiyorker.

 

Jamel Robinson: UNFETTERED | Established Gallery

Art lovers finally got the chance to check out Jamel Robinson’s UNFETTERED in person this past Saturday at Established Gallery. The exhibition was up and ready to welcome visitors for the original March 14 opening, but then the gallery was forced to close after a stay-at-home order was issued in New York in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jamel Robinson poses next to his work, Love Divine, 2019, at Established Gallery

“To have a body of work that I had been waiting to show the world...,” Robinson recalled on Saturday afternoon, “then to have the whole world change…. We’re just changing with the rest of the world.” The exhibit showcases visceral abstract works on canvas and paper that Robinson began creating nearly two years ago. Having his first exhibit in Brooklyn in seven years postponed was disappointing. Still, Robinson stayed productive and navigated the three-month quarantine by developing a consistent schedule for himself which included his usual prayer and meditation along with daily Zoom get-togethers with friends and teaching himself how to play the keyboard. “I went on to compose and sing three songs,” he said, promising to share the tunes online once he properly records them. 

Initially during the lockdown Robinson didn't want to think about selling his artwork in the midst of a health crisis, but then he realized that he could assist others with proceeds from the show. “I wanted to help, use the show to help people in need. I decided to donate 20% to the Food Bank For New York City.” The non-profit, which fights to end hunger across the city, is meaningful to Robinson because he’d experienced food insecurity himself early on in his art career. “I didn’t know about Food Bank at that time, but I just knew from the generosity of others what it felt like for somebody to buy me groceries, for somebody to treat me to a meal.” Robinson has already made a contribution to Food Bank and hopes that even if visitors to his show cannot purchase an artwork that they’ll consider making a donation directly to the organization.

Later into the lockdown the Black Lives Matter movement began to intensify around the world. When asked whether the BLM protests have influenced his recent work, Robinson responded, “No,” noting, “It can’t influence something that’s influencing me all the time. I think the Black Lives Matter movement and the systemic oppression of Black people can’t move Black people this time because it’s been moving us the whole time.” He adds that his experience as a Black artist is inherently “embedded” into his work. “I’m not making work that’s specifically talking about how my life matters because it’s always supposed to have mattered.”

Jamel Robinson, Missa Secunda, 2019 (left) and Here I Am, 2018 (right)

Jamel Robinson, Angus Dei, 2019

Jamel Robinson, Here In Your Love, 2018

Jamel Robinson, Promise, 2019

Jamel Robinson, Abide, 2019

Jamel Robinson, Take Me Home, 2019, triptych, mixed media on watercolor paper

Born and raised in Harlem, Robinson converted the apartment where his grandmother raised her family into a studio and gallery space. Originally a poet, the multi-disciplinary artist taught himself how to paint in 2011 after a curator asked him to paint one of his poems on canvas for a group show. The trauma of losing a loved one a month later further encouraged him to embark on “the journey of teaching myself how to paint,” he said. He started by creating a series of abstract self-portraits and self-published a book in 2014, Poems With Faces, featuring 55 of his “unedited stream-of-consciousness” poems each accompanied by a non-representational self-portrait.

Nearly two years ago he decided to abandon the paintbrush and begin painting with his hands. “I was in the studio and I felt like I heard a voice direct me to not use the brush,” he recalls. “Abandoning brushes and traditional painting tools, my body became the catalyst for my practice. Intuitively choosing colors, my hands are the vessels for the process,” according to Robinson’s Artist Statement. “Fingerprints, smudges, and smears of paint layer the surface of the canvas or paper. Working predominately on the floor, in a bent position of surrender the paintings are a way I have processed personal struggles, but are also an area of openness and discovery.”

“Once I’d made the first painting, I knew that I was supposed to continue that way at all costs, to abandon all of my own traditions in order to explore this new way,” he adds. Being able to touch the work with his hands was a freeing experience which inspired the title of the show, UNFETTERED.

Before UNFETTERED, two of Robinson’s paintings included in the exhibit were prominently featured in a recent episode of the ABC sitcom Black-ish. “That was actually the first place that they were ever seen,” according to Robinson. “I knew that making this work was going to take me to a new place and that was the first place that it took me. I thought if millions of people can see the work in one shot that confirms that I was supposed to be making this kind of work. It was the greatest confirmation…and I thought, ‘this is how it’s supposed to be.’”

The earliest works in the exhibit feature intense strokes of murky grey hues interspersed with pops of vivid pink, purple, and yellow, “abstractions without any figurative hints” that allow viewers to decipher and “experience the work on [their] own.” Bits of text peek out from the corners of some canvases—“words that come to me just while I’m making the works,” the artist explains. “Even when there are words in it or…mixed media, that gives you some information, but everything else is up to you. It’s up to your interpretation.” 

Music is a “driving force” for Robinson who added a layer of sheet music onto some of the canvases “to incorporate the actual notes of some sound that I might have been listening to” as he worked on a piece. “That’s usually my process. I’m listening to something. I paint what I feel,” he added. “It always starts with whatever is inside of me trying to come out. I believe that I’m a channel. I’m not the one sending the messages, they’re just kind of passing through me.”

Jamel Robinson stands beside his work, Missa Secunda, 2019, featured in his solo exhibition UNFETTERED

The messages channeled in his work involve love and transcendence. “I feel this love, I share it, but it comes through me not necessarily from me,” Robinson explains. “I believe when people react and respond to this work that what they are reacting to [is] God’s love in the work. That’s always my hope.”

Learn more about the artist at jamelrobinson.com and at establishedgallery.com.

Established Gallery will be open again this Saturday, July 4, from 1pm to 6pm. UPDATE: Established Gallery will be closed for the July 4th holiday and will reopen on Thursday, July 9. Check their Instagram account at @established_gallery_ for updates. Three visitors will be permitted into the gallery at a time and masks will be required.

Jamel Robinson: UNFETTERED
Established Gallery
75 6th Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn