Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Tuesday, October 4, 2022
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Tom Bills, for decades primarily a large-scale sculptor, has recently translated that vocation into riveting compact-yet-monumental wall-mounted pieces now on display at 57W57 Arts in midtown Manhattan. Rectangles of modest size, their highly wrought finishes and elliptical narratives invest them with an improbably kinetic presence and stern gravitas that leave the viewer both sobered and assured.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / This month, Open Studio Hudson takes place October 8-9. The annual event, conceived and coordinated by Hudson painter Jane Ehrlich, is a great chance to meet the artists and peek behind the scenes of their workspaces, situated in homes, barns, storefronts, warehouses and other unexpected Hudson area locations. On Saturday, October 8th, at 2pm, Tom Burckhardt will be giving an artist’s talk at The Re Institute in Millerton on the occasion of his expansive solo exhibition.
Contributed by Jenny Zoe Casey / I recently set out on a five-hour solo road trip from Chicago to Newark, Ohio, to see “Material Investment,” a group show opening at The Bank. I anticipated a first-rate exhibition and was not disappointed. Curated by Leslie Roberts, the show features eleven artists: Lisha Bai, Sean Desiree, Tracey Goodman, Ruth Jeyaveeran, Amanda Love, Alex Paik, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Vadis Turner, Kevin Umaña, Mandy Cano Villalobos, and Jeff Wallace. As Roberts notes in her curatorial statement, the artists in this show are “dedicated to particular materials, and each artist intently subverts or stretches those materials’ properties and typical forms.”
Contributed by Margaret McCann / Stylistic affinities hold the paintings of Cathy Diamond and Laurie Fader in “Luscious Wasteland” at Radiator Gallery in amicable rapport, before differences in sensibility emerge. Each painter mines the legacies of German Expressionism and American Abstract Expressionism, among other influences, as confident and direct impulses draw on banks of personal experience. Diamond’s airy but compact Woods in Vermont could have been painted from observation, but reads as an excited engagement with Modernist painting vocabulary more than with motif. Its accrual of rough yet precisely individual marks quickly bunches together. Our eyes dart around its prismatic surface, echoing how one might, in such a dappled thicket, quickly survey a way around the center bottom bramble to reach light.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In September, as people head back to the city for the beginning of the art season, the Hudson Valley region quiets down somewhat, but many of the galleries will still be open for business. Here’s the rundown.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / September traditionally has been the busiest time of the year for artists and galleries in NYC, and not even the Covid-precipitated flight of the past two years can change that.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In the early days of the Covid lockdown, Laura Dana Smith, a former organizer of Bushwick Open Studios, left Brooklyn and moved to Taos, New Mexico. I reached out to learn what Smith’s experience leaving Brooklyn and relocating in Taos has been like.
In August the party continues beyond Upstate Art Weekend, with a slew of interesting shows throughout the Hudson Valley region. On August 13th, I’ll be up in Hillsdale, NY (north of Millerton, west of Great Barrington) for the opening of “Guided by voices,” a group show at LABspace that includes work by me, Yura Adams, Lucy Mink, and Adrian Meraz. Please stop by from 1-5 to say hello!
Contributed by Sharon Butler / August is the laziest month in New York. Everyone takes a breath, some leave town, and others gear up for their September shows. That said, there is still plenty to see, usually in air-conditioned comfort. And, because gallerists are understandably loath to open new shows at the end of August, many existing ones get extended beyond announced closing dates.
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / While a degree of pandemic fatigue is understandable, there’s no denying that lockdown was an extraordinary fact of daily life whose ripple effects have far from dissipated. And insofar as it left artists with more time to think and work, it has yielded an abundance of resonant art. Jillian McDonald’s and Kate Teale’s drawings, now on view at Undercurrent Gallery in Dumbo, are sterling examples.
