The “Sell America” trade, Spot On, Street Corner Conversations, Insomnia Project, Visual Quitter, and Two Coats of Paint Resident Artist Craig Drennen arrives this month. This piece was originally published in Sharon Butler Notebooks on Substack. Subscribe to (or comment on) the monthly Substack Newsletter here.
Hey you,
Let me start this newsletter with a few of the thoughts clanging around in my head. After obsessing over Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s eloquent upstaging of Trump at Davos, I read in the New York Times that global investors are increasingly souring on the United States and the predatory, unprincipled companies that operate here. “Sell America” is trending. “It’s trending among investors and has fueled the sliding value of the dollar, stalled the stock market’s rise, increased government borrowing costs and sent the prices for precious metals like gold soaring.” In broader context, it’s hardly unreasonable for some people and governments to want to disentangle their finances from a country whose democratic system and rule of law are in clear and imminent jeopardy. I’m just an artist, involved in my own admittedly blinkered pursuits, but even I get it. I’m grateful to all the people in Minneapolis who are slowing it down and beating back the Trump regime’s cruel authoritarianism. It may soon be our turn in NYC.
What’s up this month:
- Saturday, February 7, 5–8 pm, “Spot On,” opens at 68 Prince Street Gallery in Kingston, NY, and runs through March 8. The gallery is in a recently renovated industrial building at, well, 68 Prince Street. I’ll be shipping 14 paintings tomorrow via Sage TK Art Handlers. Frequent travelers between Vermont and NYC, they are available to deliver work under 48-inches wide up and down the Hudson in their SUV. Email me for contact info. Sharing the main space with me are painter Jason Travers and sculptor-furniture maker Kieran Kinsella. In the front gallery, Murray Hochman and Eileen Power’s work will be on view.Sharon Butler, Canyon 41, 2025, acrylic, pencil, canvas, 54 x 44 inches. On view in “Street Corner Conversations,” McBride/ Dillman, NYC, through March 1. Artists Talk is Sunday, February 8, 2 pm
- Through March 1: “Street Corner Conversations: Sharon Butler, Wendy Fulenwider Liszt And Ariel Mitchell,” a three-person show at McBride/Dillman at 195 Henry Street on the Lower East Side in which I’m showing five small paintings alongside Canyon 41 (pictured above). “The exhibition engages the political dimensions of painting without requiring overt narrative content. The politics of abstraction emerge through self-determination, refusal, attention, and persistence. Historically, women who pursued abstraction did so against cultural and institutional constraints; to claim time, space, and intellectual seriousness was itself a transgressive act. The works on view extend that lineage, asserting abstraction not as withdrawal from the world but as a way of engaging it—through material choices, through the body, and through the slow, accumulative processes of making.” Sharon Butler, Insomnia Project (part 2, detail), 2026, canvas, acrylic, pencil, crochet drawing,on panel, 30 x 22 inches. The project is on view at CLEA RSKY though March 8.
- Through March 8: Sharon Butler: Insomnia Project is on view at CLEA RSKY through March 8. It’s an outdoor project, so you can check it out anytime, even at night or in the snow. The space, located at 925 Bergen Street in Brooklyn, is curated by Tommy White and Jim Lee.
- Mid-February: A few weeks ago I spoke with Jodi Hays about quitting on her “Visual Quitter” Substack podcast. Yes, I have thought of quitting; yet I don’t. The recording should drop soon. Listen to the 15-minute conversation here.
- February 22–28: The Two Coats of Paint Residency will be hosting Atlanta-based artist Craig Drennen. Stay tuned for more details later this week. In the meantime, you can check out his playlist here.
Final thought: I’ve recently learned that my mother’s loyalist ancestors fled to Nova Scotia when the Brits lost the Revolutionary War. Their descendants lived in Canada for several generations. My niece discovered that, with the 2025 changes in Canada’s immigration laws, we could obtain Canadian passports. But I’m not sure I’m ready to Sell America. Like my old man taught me back in the day, buy low, sell high. Even when NYC is at its most downtrodden, it would probably still be a good place to make art.
Holding steady,
xx Sharon
Thanks for reading. And, as always, images of new work and information about past projects, writing, and exhibitions, can be found on my website at www.sharonlbutler.com. Follow me on Bluesky at @sharonbutler.bsky.social and on Instagram at @sharon_butler.
p.s. Bonus link: Read Jonathan’s latest opinion piece,“Trump’s War Against the States” at Project Syndicate.
