Contributed by Jack Edson / A trip to Charles Clough’s studio, situated with his gallery and library on three floors of the historic Roycroft Print Shop in East Aurora, New York, is always inspiring. I invariably see rooms full of art from the past and find new works headed in unexpected directions. On my visit last August, his vibrant new Slotted Sculptures blew me away. Displayed on long tables labelled “Clufffalo” (the idiosyncratically spelled phonetic melding of “Clough” and “Buffalo”), they evoke playful model-train layouts and are broadly aligned with the Roycroft Movement’s legacy of handcrafted works. At the same time, they move in their own direction, using the wild color schemes and dynamic shapes of Clough’s recent paintings. The freestanding pieces urge engagement, as viewers must walk attentively around them to digest all four sides. They constitute a genuinely thrilling advance.
Studio Visit
Fran Shalom: Finding weight and presence (with humor)
Contributed by Sharon Butler / I went to visit Fran Shalom’s studio in Jersey City on the occasion of her first solo museum show, “Duck/Rabbit” at the Hunterdon in Clinton, New Jersey. Continuing a conversation we’d started at “Groping For the Elephant,” Shalom’s 2021 solo show at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in Chelsea., we discussed surface, shape, ambiguity, and the confidence painters develop over time. “Duck/Rabbit” was curated by Mary Birmingham and opens on October 2.
Elisabeth Condon: Beautiful complexity
Contributed by Sharon Butler / To understand Elisabeth Condon’s paintings, it seems important to know that she grew up in California in a highly decorated house where she spent hours staring at the wild patterns of the fabrics and wallpapers. The experience certainly informs her exuberant paintings, in which pattern, flower, landscape all co-exist, as she says in her artist statement, in living, breathing presence.
Deborah Dancy: To seduce and unnerve
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Deborah Dancy’s big abstractions have migrated from the murky darkness inspired by research into the lives of her Black ancestors, who were enslaved in the South, to a visual language informed by the rural landscape that surrounds her home and studio in Storrs. I visited her on a bitter winter day in March before Kathryn Markel Fine Art in Chelsea and Marcia Wood in Atlanta had picked up work for her upcoming solo exhibitions.
On the Bowery with Jane Swavely
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Jane Swavely has lived and worked in a loft overlooking the Bowery since the 1980s when she was an SVA student and later a studio assistant to Brice Marden. Since “Jinx,” her pre-pandemic solo show at A.I.R. gallery, Jane’s work has become more subtractive, with […]
Lisa Hoke’s unconfined vision
Restricted to her studio during lockdown and cut off from large spaces in which to create site-specific work, Lisa Hoke felt the need to fashion pieces that were more portable and more presumptively permanent. What resulted is a scintillating revelation.
Studio visit with Marcy Rosenblat
Contributed by Sharon Butler / I stopped by Marcy Rosenblat’s Fort Greene studio to see her new paintings, which have become richer and more compositionally complex.
Studio visit with Daniel Wiener
During my first visit to Daniel Wiener’s studio, we talked about his Apoxie-Sculpt head series that fuse a 1960s psychedelic sensibility with collective angst, his idiosyncratic process, and an exploration of other unusual projects during the lockdown.
Studio visit with Larry Greenberg
Contributed by Rachel Youens / I recently visited Larry Greenberg at his gallery Studio 10, which he has turned into his own studio space since the pandemic hit, allowing him to focus on his painting practice with renewed commitment. For several years Studio 10, at 56 Bogart Street in Bushwick, […]
Studio visit: Susanna Heller’s endless strength
Contributed by Medrie MacPhee / Before Susanna Heller’s paintings were wrapped and shipped to Toronto for her upcoming solo show at Olga Korper, I brought Sharon Butler by her studio, which straddles the line between Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Susanna and I moved from Haliifax to the East Village after we […]