Studio Visit

Studio Visit

Interview: Medrie MacPhee in Ridgewood

Contributed by Sharon Butler / Medrie MacPhee’s pensively beautiful paintings first came to my attention at the 2015 American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibit. The paintings she had in the show, abstract with architectural references, featured deconstructed pieces of clothing subtly collaged onto the surfaces. MacPhee is a very accomplished artist. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, she earned her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and then, in 1976, moved to NYC. Since then, she has racked up numerous shows and awards, including a Guggenheim, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, an Elizabeth Greenshields Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Grants, and Canada Council Established Artist Grants. After 25 years in a loft on the Bowery, she and her partner–filmmaker Harold Crooks–moved to Queens, where they bought a small building with first-floor garage that MacPhee has turned into a studio. We talked about image, process, surface, content, and the impulse to add clothing to her canvases.

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Studio Visit

Interview: Leslie Smith III in Madison, Wisconsin

I took a trip to Madison, Wisconsin, in December, when the sky was gray but before the temperature had turned bitter. My guide was Leslie Smith III, a 2009 Yale MFA graduate with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art who will have paintings on display at VOLTA next week with beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary. Smith is an assistant professor of drawing and painting at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has a generous studio in the art building on campus. During my visit, he showed me his new paintings, which are purely abstract, comprising multi-panel shaped canvases, vivid, high-key color, and wobbly geometric shapes. We talked about the painting process, his shift to shaped canvases, and his transition from figurative work to abstraction.

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