Hello, hello. So the big news: I managed to escape to London for a day. Have to go down and refill the tanks every now and then. Thanks to some very intense and regimented planning, I managed to fit in a lot of art: the recently made-over National Portrait Gallery; the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize at the Photographers’ Gallery; the World Photography Awards at Somerset House; and Richard Serra’s six large drawings at David Zwirner. But the highlight of the day was this errant cardboard box that slowly and flamboyantly drifted down James Street to the delight of everyone.

In between all that frolicking about, I did manage to grab something to eat at the fantastic Lina Stores on Greek Street – sat next to Ruth Bloody Wilson. I was very cool about this, of course. I pushed the boundaries of nonchalance so far I think she actually ended up being starstruck by me.

Back in the real world of the internet, I got a little bit lost in the Rural Indexing Project, photographically documenting the architecture of America. Fascinating to see the buildings grouped by tags – I had no idea there were a number of uniform Post Office designs, for example.

Only a few days left for Unit Editions/Volume’s Anita Klinz monograph Seeking Beauty to hit its funding target. It looks absolutely lovely, but at fifty quid a pop, I can see why it might be some way off. I would imagine students/young designers are a huge section of the target readership for this sort of book, and that price tag is a heck of a barrier, but it now seems like the norm. There’s definitely a market for smaller, simpler design books at a lower price point.

I’ve finally switched to Chrome, and a big thank you to Alex for recommending the Control Panel for Twitter extension. It’s basically resets the design and usability back ten years – which is of course a very good thing.

… and then I immediately went a bit viral with a dumb bit of photoshopping. Kind of tangentially related: “Planet of the Apes” Goes to a ’70s Mall, an excellent find from the LIFE archive.

Hanging Stones, a five hour circular walk of abandoned buildings in the North York Moors, all housing Andy Goldsworthy artworks. Yes please.

Elsewhere across the newslettiverse: Animation Obsessive on how Ghost in the Shell was deliberately engineered for western audiences; Owen D. Pomery examines a particularly fine Tintin spread; Nick Asbury launched his new book The Road to Hell.

And finally a quick affiliate plug for Freeagent, without which my business would pretty much collapse into a void of unutterable fiscal despair. With this here link you get a 30-day free trial plus 10% off your subscription, which is nice.

That is all.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header photo courtesy the author.

In a bold move to capture the essence of the New York City home-buying experience, StreetEasy has partnered with Mother New York to decorate the city streets with Renaissance-style paintings. These visually striking artworks vividly portray the odyssey-like challenge of purchasing a home in the Big Apple.

These ads have become impossible to ignore, as seen on bustling subway cars, iconic yellow taxi toppers, and even a complete takeover of the Broadway-Lafayette station. The campaign has now reached new heights with two hand-painted murals by Colossal Media gracing Wythe & N. 14th St. in Williamsburg and Spring & Lafayette St. in Nolita.

Navigating the real estate market in New York City has always been an adventure, but today, it can feel as elusive as acquiring a masterpiece. Despite the city’s reputation as a haven for renters, StreetEasy’s data reveals a surprising statistic: 1 in 5 New Yorkers are actively browsing homes for sale alongside those searching for rental properties.

As the campaign coincides with the spring home shopping peak, the Renaissance-inspired art style perfectly captures the complex and often dramatic emotions accompanying the search for a place to call home in the city that never sleeps.

“Let The Journey Begin” dramatizes key milestones of the home buyer’s journey in the style of Renaissance art: from deciding whether to renew a lease, searching the five boroughs with an agent at the helm, right up to the moment of getting the keys and becoming your own landlord.

Advertising to New Yorkers is an interesting creative challenge. On one hand, you have a population capable of tuning out almost anything. On the other hand, you have a savvy audience who can appreciate a clever ad that speaks to their experiences, which StreetEasy certainly has a track record of doing. ‘Let The Journey Begin’ touches on a uniquely New York problem and does it in a style that will stand out in the city’s sea of distractions.”

Nedal Ahmed, Executive Creative Director at Mother New York

These murals serve as more than just a visual spectacle; they encapsulate the aspirations, struggles, and triumphs of individuals embarking on the quest for homeownership in one of the world’s most dynamic metropolises. Through their artistry, StreetEasy and Mother New York have not only adorned the streets but have also painted a poignant portrait of the enduring allure and challenges of New York City’s real estate landscape.

Images courtesy of Colossal Media, banner image courtesy of StreetEasy.

The NAD’s latest exhibition, Sites of Impermanence, is set to delight art and architecture enthusiasts as it showcases the works of newly elected National Academicians. Running from February 8 to May 11, 2024, at the Academy’s new permanent location in Chelsea, this exhibition promises a journey through the diverse and thought-provoking creations of eight exceptional artists and architects.

National Academy of Design 2023 Induction Ceremony

Each Academician brings a unique perspective and approach to their craft. These creatives explore contemporary issues through sculpture, drawing, architecture, or interactive installations while delving into the rich tapestry of history that informs their work.

One striking aspect of the exhibition is its exploration of impermanence in various forms. Through a lens of time and space, the artists and architects invite viewers to contemplate the ever-shifting nature of our world. Sanford Biggers and Willie Cole repurpose materials laden with historical significance, infusing them with new cultural and spiritual meanings. Richard Gluckman expands upon existing structures, adapting them to meet the demands of contemporary society.

Top Images, Bottom Left, Bottom Right: Sites of Impermanence | Photo: © Etienne Frossard. Courtesy of National Academy of Design; Bottom Middle: In Tension: The Function of Body in Space with Torkwase Dyson and Sarah Oppenheimer, February 21, 2024 | Photos by Rebecca Smeyne

Others, such as Torkwase Dyson and Carlos Jiménez, delve into pressing ecological and human-centric issues, urging us to reconsider our relationship with the environment. Mel Kendrick‘s sculptures offer a meditation on the passage of time and our perception of place, while Alice Adams explores the intricate layers of architecture and the human body.

Sites of Impermanence | Photo: © Etienne Frossard. Courtesy of National Academy of Design

Central to the exhibition’s premise is Sarah Oppenheimer‘s manipulation of architectural space, challenging visitors to question their own agency within the built environment. By blurring the boundaries between human, object, and architecture, Oppenheimer prompts a reevaluation of our impact on public spaces.

Sites of Impermanence opens the door for cultural dialogue and introspection. Curated by Sara Reisman and Natalia Viera Salgado, this showcase underscores the National Academy of Design’s commitment to fostering artistic excellence and pushing the boundaries of creative expression.

Founded in 1825, the National Academy of Design has long been a champion of the arts in America. With a membership comprising some of the nation’s most esteemed artists and architects, the Academy continues to serve as a beacon of inspiration and reflection. Exhibitions like Sites of Impermanence reinforce the transformative power of art and its capacity to shape society.

Visitors to the National Academy’s Chelsea location are invited to embark on a journey of discovery and contemplation. Sites of Impermanence asks us to explore our place within the ever-evolving landscape of art and architecture.

Nichols’ latest book, Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say, is a poignant exploration of human connection and empathy in times of struggle. Drawing from personal experiences and a desire to offer solace to those facing hardship, Nichols embarked on a heartfelt journey culminating in a collection of flower paintings paired with words for the often small, sometimes overlooked moments that accompany hardship and grief. Things like the nurses who so graciously tell us what’s happening as a loved one lay on a hospital bed (one of our favorites).

Tucker shared that “putting work out into the world is never straightforward. To go from making something for myself to sharing it with the public (via the postal service, on Instagram, or in a book) can be tricky, but it’s also deeply satisfying in its own way. At the end of the day, I make things for myself and then try to find how they might land for someone else. The images with captions work when they resonate with someone else’s reality. I fundamentally believe that our sense of separateness is a myth, that we all have fears and hopes and frustrations and joys that overlap more than they don’t.”

In this book, an underlying idea is that even when life reveals what feels like an isolating experience almost beyond words, we might find some comfort in knowing that others have been here before.

Tucker Nichols

I make things for myself and then try to find how they might land for someone else. The images with captions work when they resonate with someone else’s reality.

Tucker Nichols

The inspiration for the project stemmed from Nichols’ own battle with illness and the realization that sometimes, despite our best intentions, words fail to convey the depth of our emotions. Reflecting on his journey to remission, Nichols found solace in the support of a close-knit group of loved ones, underscoring the importance of genuine connection during times of adversity.

Initially starting as a small gesture of kindness, Nichols began sending flower paintings to sick individuals on behalf of their loved ones. The project gained momentum when it was featured on national television, prompting requests from people around the world grappling with various challenges, from illness to grief to everyday struggles.

“I make flower paintings throughout the day—over breakfast, at my studio, at the dentist’s office. Drawing and painting regularly—some might say constantly—is how I stay sane, and I can get grumpy if I don’t make some art every day. I usually make the flower paintings without an idea of what text might accompany them unless there’s a news event that I want to speak to, like someone dying or another mass shooting. They find their way into piles in my studio, and when it’s time to make captions, I spread out a few and see what comes to mind.”

—Tucker Nichols

In Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say, Nichols invites readers to contemplate the shared experiences that bind us together as human beings. Through his art, he reminds us that despite the complexities of life, we are never truly alone in our struggles. Each painting and accompanying caption serve as a reminder of humanity’s interconnectedness and the power of empathy to bridge the gaps between us.

All reports from my “tribe” of artist friends suggested that there was much to discover in Florida’s most international city. New museums, public access to private art collections, and hot new galleries offered the latest contemporary art. Planning only a three-day trip, I needed to focus my excursion and treat my time like a conference for “one” with a daily agenda centered on one theme: MATERIALITY. I wanted to learn what “stuff” artists now use to express themselves and how it might influence my work.

My experience did not disappoint. The Miami art scene pulsates with artistic power, deft craft, and conceptual innovation. For this review, I’m sharing a selection of artists who courageously use uncommon materials in an increasingly immaterial world.

Murjoni Merriweather

Sculptor, ceramicist, and filmmaker Murjoni Merriweather’s work is provocatively beautiful. In a gallery setting, her female busts, fired in ceramic and covered with braided synthetic hair, beckon close examination. Adding hoop earrings or other metallic accessories, including gold teeth, she makes a defiant statement about Black culture and style.

Kennedy Yanko

Brooklyn-based painter/sculptor Kennedy Yanko creates lighter-than-air forms in metal and paint. Her installation I Am Flower from 2021 flies through space like a vengeful archangel, shape shifting depending on your approach. Corten steel and paint skins (made from hundreds of gallons of poured paint) result in contrasting surfaces that are visually raw and surprisingly graceful.

Kehinde Wiley

Although famous for painting President Obama’s official portrait, Kehinde Wiley mastered the art of portraiture “using the visual rhetoric of the heroic” since his days at Yale. His massive painting, Sleep at the Rubell Museum, measures 11’x 25’ and is a tour de force of exacting craft in rendering flesh, color, and decorative pattern in the same “oil on canvas” technique used for centuries but with pyrotechnic effect.

Yayoi Kusama

You must wait your turn before entering Yayoi Kusama’s Where the Lights in My Heart Go, as the legendary Japanese artist wants an intimate experience with you. The eleven-foot cube, made of glass mirror and polished stainless steel, is drilled with randomly placed holes providing the only interior light source. Once inside the box, a starscape of pinpoint lights glows in a universe of darkness. It’s a simple illusion that always delivers and never gets old.

Rashid Johnson

Cipher-rich and aggressively muscular Rashid Johnson’s “painting” After Medium combines oak flooring, fire-branded marks, black soap, wax, and paint to create a conceptually intricate work. Because the background is conventional flooring, I shifted my perspective. I imagined floating above the surface, looking down at the burned, scuffed, and spilled remains of some sinister afterparty.

Bisa Butler

The art world is currently flush with artists who work with fiber in all its forms, from raw sisal, cotton, and wool to lush satin, lamé, and polyester. New Jersey-born Bisa Butler sits solidly amid this exciting trend in textile art. Her lush portraits of historical figures, families, and artists, such as Black is King, 2001, are “stitched’ together in silk, wool, velvet, and quilted appliqué. Her color palette is intensely bright, and the topographic tactility of the textile is terrific.

Nick Cave

The New York Times called Nick Cave “the most joyful and critical artist in America.” I would emphasize joy and add audacity because there is nothing like a “Nick Cave.” I saw Soundsuit 2008, one of my favorite works by him to date and was awed by the insane use of color, fabric, metal, and fiberglass. This sculpture makes you smile, festooned with a garden of exaggerated flowers.

Es Devlin

The description “superstar” is so overused that it has lost its sense of importance, except in the case of Es Devlin. By any measure, artistically and commercially, she is an international phenom. At Miami’s SUPERBLUE gallery, devoted to experiential art, Devlin’s Forest of Us is a “mirrored maze inspired by branching — bronchi in the lungs, limbs of trees, rivulets into streams.” Meandering through the space was a delight at every turn, where visitors suddenly appeared and then vanished in the forests of reflective surfaces. At one point, I stood at the edge of a gentle stream of water and watched my motion-activated silhouette respond to my every gesture.

My three-day visit to Miami offered just an amuse bouche to the city’s cultural banquet. However, my focus on contemporary art in the Miami Beach, Wynwood, and Allapattah districts was full of exciting new work by mainly young and restless artists who embody the edge of contemporary culture today. If you have time to treat yourself to such an experience, the following links will help plan your trip:

Rubell Museum

The de la Cruz Collection

El Espacio 23

Pérez Art Museum (PAMM)

Institute of Contemporary Art Miami

SUPERBLUE

The collection of Craig Robins

Finally, I liked most of what I saw and acknowledged the efforts of artists whose work did not appeal to me. I returned home, mission accomplished, inspired to experiment with materials that will add depth, character, and distinction to my work.

P.S. I never saw the beach.

Ken Carbone is an artist, designer, and recipient of the 2012 AIGA Medal. He is a Senior Advisor to 50,000feet, a strategic branding and design firm with offices in Chicago, New York, and London.

Images taken by the author; the art depicted is copyrighted by the artist.
Banner photo: author and Yayio Kusama’s Narcissus Garden, 1966.

There’s so much in the world that’s not positive, so if you’re creating something, why not make it brighten somebody’s day? 

Mary Lai has no time for pessimism. The Los Angeles-based multimedia artist moves through the world fueled by positivity and happiness, and this is reflected in all of her work. The next chapter of her joyous exploration is a solo exhibition entitled Synchronicity, which is on view now at the DTLA gallery, The Art Room. Replete with 30 pieces of Lai created over the last two years in various mediums, Synchronicity is a visual manifestation of meaningful coincidences. “Meaningful coincidences seem to happen when preparation and hard work meet opportunity, validating our artistic journey,” she says.

I had the pleasure of speaking with the effervescent Lai about Synchronicity and received a hardy dose of her signature warm-hearted enthusiasm in the process. She walked me through her journey from handbag designer in New York City to multi-hyphenate fine artist in LA, provided some insights about the show, and reflected upon her always-positive worldview. Read our interview below.

(Interview edited slightly for clarity and length).

Can you walk me through your creative journey? How did you make the leap from handbag designer to fine artist?

I’ve been in this creative industry now for 20 years, and the first decade was in New York. That was great for learning and building a foundation. I studied graphic design in college, and began doing graphic design for kids bags, but I ended up falling in love with product design. So I was doing handbags for a very long time, and even had my own namesake handbag collection.

Then, one of my previous bosses in New York, who had moved out to LA, started building these beautiful homes that he would curate with art and furniture to then sell as one whole package. He wanted to build his design team in LA, so he offered to relocate me and my husband to LA to help with the design curation. That’s when I transitioned from handbags to the design side. It really pulled the curtain back on the art world for me, where I got to see how the art world runs.

Art was something that I’ve always loved; I just never pursued it because I didn’t think I could make a living at it. I would always go to all the different exhibitions and Art Basel and paint murals on the side. Once I moved to LA and the project with my former boss ended, I took that leap to be a full-time visual artist in 2019. I haven’t looked back since!

Since then, I’ve expanded all the different mediums I use. Because I have a graphic design and design background, I love creating and experimenting. I’ve done murals, sculptures, paintings, and mixed media, so it’s a wide range.

I’m always curious to hear about artists’ studio spaces. What’s yours like?

My studio is in Lincoln Heights, about five to ten minutes from Downtown. I’m in this cool space called Keystone Art Space. It’s a community of artists that have studios within the warehouse. So there are 50 different artists, and then in the center, there’s a gallery, and everybody shows in the gallery. It’s a nice community space of like-minded people.

In a creative career, there’s no formula. You’re putting work out there and hoping for the best. 

Can you describe Synchronicity? What are the main themes of the exhibition?

In my career, I’ll have these moments where I feel like the stars align, and I’m like, Oh! I have to do this! In a creative career, there’s no formula. You’re putting work out there and hoping for the best. 

So recently, I was at Art Basel in Miami with an eight-foot sculpture, and it was on its way back to LA. I had yet to sell it; I thought it would go into storage. Then, I met up with the Art Room and had a five-minute conversation with the co-owner and founder, where he looked at photos of my work. He said, “Do you have that sculpture coming back? Do you want to put it on the front patio?” He told me they’d just had an artist postpone, so they had a slot open. “Are you ready for a solo show?” I said, “Oh, my God, yes!” It was two months away when he asked me that, and even though I wasn’t really ready, I wasn’t going to say no to a great opportunity. 

So everything lined up. I had all of this work that I’d been actively creating in 2023 and exhibiting nonstop, so I had some existing pieces, then created some new pieces and pulled the Synchronicity show together in two months. The base of this show coming together was serendipitous—a bit of luck, a bit of the stars aligning—and that’s why I titled it Synchronicity.

What sorts of artworks are on display in the show?

There’s a huge range within price points, series, and styles, but it’s curated very well because there are many different areas. When you enter the gallery side of the space, it’s divided into two areas: I have my new works in the front and my earlier works in the back, so it has a nice flow.ow.

Within the 30 pieces, there’s the sculpture right in the front, smaller sculptures in the gallery, and then paintings made out of wood that I call my “Cloud Series.” So it’s a blend of many different series but curated in a way so that they’re in distinct areas. That said, they all come together with this vibrant, contemporary, and modern color palette. There’s always an uplifting, positive vibe to my artwork, which you can see consistently throughout.

What sort of experience do you hope viewers of Synchronicity have? What feelings and sensations do you hope they walk away with?

The sculpture right out front is eight feet tall, called “The Dream Portal.” It’s the best introduction to the collection because I created that sculpture to inspire people to create their own doors and paths of opportunity. The sculpture looks like a big door, and if you look at it from afar, it seems almost like a rainbow arch with a sun and cloud shape, but there’s also a door handle. It’s also activated by AR (augmented reality), so viewers can go into this dream portal world.

I feel like all of my art and everything I’ve done, is the result of me making my dreams a reality.

The whole point of “The Dream Portal” is for each person to be inspired to create their own doors and make their dreams a reality. All of my art and everything I’ve done is the result of me making my dreams a reality. So if other people come, see the artwork from the beginning all the way through, and then leave saying, I’m inspired. I want to go after my dreams, that would be a great takeaway from the collection.

Part of your ethos as an artist is having what you call a “Dreamer mindset.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? 

I’m definitely a glass-half-full type of person. I have this mentality of abundance versus a mentality of scarcity. I’m very optimistic and always try to see the best in situations. I keep that sense of what’s presented in the artwork; somehow, when people see the artwork, that’s the emotion they get, too. People say my artwork makes them smile or makes them happy. I know that sounds very fluffy, but that’s exactly how I am. I can have the worst day, but I try to walk away smiling and ask, What did I learn from it?

I always try to see the positive, what I can learn from it, and what I can change to do better. So that’s the “dreamer mindset”— making more positive art. There’s so much in the world that’s not positive, so if you’re creating something, why not make it brighten somebody’s day?

Photography by Meg Hudson

You aren’t alone if you’ve ever responded with ‘huh?’ to someone speaking International Art English at you, or felt icky about the unspoken social capital at work at a gallery opening, or found yourself struggling to come up with the correct answer to ‘But, what do you see?’ when standing in front of a painting or sculpture.

The promise to confirm all my sneaking suspicions propelled me into the story. Many moments provide red meat for my inner judge, not least of which was Bosker’s hoop-jumping first assignment as a Brooklyn gallery assistant and her expectations around her first Art Basel Miami. But alongside this look at the art glitterati under a microscope is a softer, more personal story about a woman yearning to understand why art is so important. Why did Bosker’s grandmother teach art in a displaced persons camp in Austria after World War II? Why do world cultures honor art as essential as air, food, and shelter? Why do artists toil away in their studios for years in obscurity with little financial reward? When artists do ‘make’ it, why do they put up with the incredible heaps of bullshit from the art-capital machine?

This why is the essence of Bosker’s research in Get The Picture. I sat down with her to discuss the book, and we veered into art, writing, and life. Our interview is condensed for length and clarity.

Reading Get The Picture, I was struck by how untouchable and unknowable the art world is, and I couldn’t help but draw parallels to the publishing industry. As a writer, did your immersion change how you view your place in your industry and the process that writers go through? 

So much about the world is magnified by the art world: the way we judge quality, the extreme wealth disparities, and the power of gatekeepers.

I went into this process to develop me eye, to learn to see the world the way hyper-obsessed art fiends look at it. I wanted an answer to how a work of art goes from being the germ of an idea in someone’s studio to a masterpiece that we ooh and ahh over in a museum? I learn by doing, and so my way of learning was to throw myself in, to insert myself into the nerve center of the art world. It’s very different to listen to someone describe how they sell an artwork from schmoozing with billionaires for a week at an art fair and selling a $9000 photograph in the backseat of an Uber while people are doing cocaine around you.

Observing all the power plays behind the scenes, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own industry.

I learned that all the decisions that shape an artwork are all the decisions that shape us: what we define as art, who can make art, and why should we bother to engage with it? Throughout this process, my relationship with art changed but my relationship with everything else changed as well. 

I hope that Get The Picture empowers people to develop their eye and trust themselves. And if we do that, then that has implications far beyond the art world. My hope is that people reading this book, whether they are in finance, or publishing, or simply developing a new recipe, is that it will spark them to think more expansively, but also to think more for themselves.

You mentioned it just now: the question of, well, “What is art?” Someone has to define it, right? 

The intimidation we feel is not an accident. I got an intimate look at how the art world wields strategic snobbery to build mystique and keep people out. Based on what the art world advertises about itself, I expected to find this group of open-minded iconoclasts who wanted to share the magic of art with as many people as possible. But I encountered the clubby elitism that I associate with stodgy country clubs. Case in point: I worked for someone who encouraged me to get a makeover, rethink how I spoke and dressed, and rethink my “overly enthusiastic” personality. He wanted me to address what he saw as my fatal uncoolness. But you can also see this in how galleries hide themselves on the second floor of nondescript buildings. The way that art aficionados use this unnecessarily complex, made-up language of art speak. The way that gallery professionals judge you even more than you judge the work. All of this contributes to this deliberate gatekeeping.

Through tracing the history of the museum, I was surprised that these seemingly “public” institutions have historically had mixed feelings about letting in the general public. Deliberately or accidentally, the art world erects these barriers to preserve power in the hands of gatekeepers, to preserve the mystique, and to preserve it as the playground of an anointed few. Getting to see all of this helped me feel validated. The art world is doing anything but rolling out the welcome mat for the “Schmoletariat.”*

[*Joe Schmoes, aka Schmoes, is the term for the rest of us. Bosker first learned this term from the same gallerist who had suggested a makeover.]

We’ve been told for the last 100 years that everything that matters about a work of art is THE IDEA. This outsized importance on context has effectively put up a barrier to anyone engaging with works of art. Gallerists I met offered data points, often “a cloud of names,” such as where an artist went to school, the social capital of the artist, who their friends are, and even who the artist has slept with.

Being a museum guard at the Guggenheim made me rethink my relationship with art history and museums. I’d always thought of them as these unimpeachable custodians of the best culture had to offer, and working in galleries and museums shook my faith in that idea. You come to understand that that piece over there is only in the show because one person or collector forced it to go in. Or that a curator took a rich person by the elbow through an art fair and then said collector bought two copies of a piece and sent one to the museum collection. What we see in these hallowed halls of culture is not necessarily the “best” but the result of a series of decisions by flawed individuals who are all like us – read subjective. 

Ultimately, when you see what’s at play, it loses a little bit of its power. Everything you need to have a meaningful relationship with art is right in front of you.

My hope is that people reading this book, whether they are in finance, or publishing, or simply developing a new recipe, is that it will spark them to think more expansively, but also to think more for themselves.

Bianca Bosker

How did this experience change the way you engage with art?

As I worked with Julie Curtiss in her studio, I realized that an idea is not a painting. Making art is practically athletic. It is a bloody business; you must wrestle with the laws of gravity. Following an artist’s decisions offers us a path into the piece. 

One artist encouraged me to notice five things about an artwork. They don’t need to be big. It could be as simple as “I wish I could lick that green” or “that corner of the canvas seems unfinished.” This process also lends itself to slowing down and ignoring the wall text. 

Art is a practice for appreciating life, but art is also a practice for creating a life worth appreciating. Art teaches me to open myself up to the beauty and surprise of everyday life.

We can have that experience of art where our mind jumps the curb.

Bianca Bosker

I loved your relationship with Julie (Curtiss). You describe her expansive mindset; her apartment full of her artwork, other artists’ work, and stuff she’s found along the side of the road and elevated as ‘sculpture.’ Can you talk about what you got from working with Julie in her studio?

Julie changed my life. One thing I appreciated about her was that she taught me how to look at the world with an art mindset. When you do that, the world opens itself up to you. 

I’d always thought of art as a luxury. Yet artists behave as if art is something absolutely essential. But, I was surprised to find that scientists were right there with them, calling it a fundamental part of our humanity. As one biologist said, “as necessary as food or sex.” One scientific idea that intrigued me was that “art can help us fight the reducing tendencies of our minds.” Vision is a hallucination. Our eyes are different, and the data we take in is paltry. Our brains proactively compress, filter, and dismiss the data before we get the whole picture. Art helps us lift our filters of expectation, allowing us to take in the full nuance and chaos of the world around us.

Lifting this filter, like Julie, exposes us to a great nuance of experience, but we can also see art where we never did before. And we can have that experience of art where our mind jumps the curb. 

Let’s spend less time looking at so-called masterpieces and more time looking at underappreciated art that surprises us. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fix all the flaws in the machine, but we can begin to build a better art world by broadening our horizons about what we choose to go and look at.

Julie taught me that art can emerge when we slow down, when we question, when we lift our filter of expectation, and when we look at something and wonder about it.

Beauty is a moment that nudges us to wonder about the world and our place in it.

Bianca Bosker

How did your relationship with color change? It blew me away when you talked about your experience at the Visual Science of Art Conference in Belgium. 

So much of what we understand of vision science was discovered by artists before scientists discovered it. These historical divisions are more flexible than we currently think.

Vision has always been celebrated as the most trustworthy of the senses. We’re told that good data comes from our eyes. I was shocked to learn that vision is a hallucination. I didn’t realize how slippery color is—it’s befuddling but also a gift. I became enchanted with color and by this concept of color constancy. Color is a great place to feel your filter of expectation at work. 

My love affair with color has only intensified. I’ve started wearing more color. Color spotting has become a hobby. The other day, I was on the subway, and rather than pull out my phone, I watched the ticklish orange of the seats, and it was a delight. It was like eating a delicious snack. I’d never thought of color having that hedonistic dimension, but it does. My two-year-old son is currently learning colors, and I think I’m confusing him. I can’t unsee the variety in colors that might live in the middle. While he sees blue, I see more green. But I’m not going to correct him. When it comes to color constancy, who actually knows what color it is? This knowledge has given me some humility.

So, what did you learn from AllFIRE (the performance artist who sat on your face)? The thought of it scandalized me. At the same time, if art is supposed to get us slightly off-balance and spark questions about our thinking, our biases, and our outmoded ways of thought, then, by that token, AllFIRE is art on steroids. I appreciated the internal conversation you invited readers to have with themselves.

Art doesn’t have to be a physical object. It can be a behavior. Art is a handshake between the viewer and the creator. 

The night in question, I did not leave my house that evening expecting to be sat on by a nearly naked stranger. Weirdly, my mind went to my fictional future political career, and I felt nervous and concerned. To my surprise, I was very much at peace once she was on my face. Afterward, I felt intensely conflicted and intrigued. As I engaged deeper with her work, it took me to an interesting place. Her work hits at the definition of art. It taught me to look for art in places I didn’t expect to see it and helped me see it in places I didn’t anticipate. Everyone can have an opinion about AllFIRE’s work (not just in the art world). It’s accessible. Her work caused me to think so deeply in ways that many abstract sculptures or more obvious art forms did not. Her work is not uncontroversial. It’s not easy. And it’s not for everyone. But, I hope that people go through this journey with me from thinking it’s absurd and, by the end, happy that she helped you consider these questions. That’s a gift that can knock our brains off their well-worn pathways and let the universe jostle our souls.

At the beginning of the book, you fondly mention your grandmother’s watercolor of carrots. Do you have a different relationship with her carrots after going through this experience?

For me, it brings up our relationship with beauty. Beauty has become a dirty word—in the art world, in elite society. There’s an idea that beauty is corrupted, frivolous, and a waste of time. That it’s old-fashioned. I came to feel differently about beauty. It’s essential. It’s not something that can be found in a color, a shape, or morality. Beauty is a moment that nudges us to wonder about the world and our place in it. Beauty is something that pulls us close and pulls us deeper into life. 

With that, there’s a value in challenging our idea of beauty. One of art’s gifts is the ability to stretch our ability to see beauty in places we never thought to look. 

Regarding my grandmother, I wonder how she’d answer these questions for herself if she were alive. The way she turned to art when the world was turning itself inside out speaks to the primacy of art in our lives.

Recently, the firm created a custom set of playing cards in collaboration with the Historic Districts Council (HDC) and renowned type designer Tobias Frere-Jones. The Rowhouse Playing Card deck celebrates the beauty and utility of these 19th and early-20th-century architectural gems across Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and The Bronx.

The cards feature The Brooklyn Studio’s favorite rowhouses in various architectural styles, from Flemish Renaissance to Federalist, rendered in watercolor by artist Diane Hu.

The Brooklyn Studio chose Community Gothic —specifically, an unreleased weight, Extra Condensed Medium – from Frere-Jones Type for the typography. Inspired by 19th-century printing, Community Gothic’s gritty forms and somewhat irregular curves embody the imperfections of small jobbing presses of the time. Community Gothic was a perfect anchor for the Rowhouse deck artwork. Christopher Devine, a consultant who oversaw the design of the playing cards, said. “There is a remarkable parallel between Community Gothic and New York City rowhouses. Today, we tend to romanticize rowhouses, but their design and construction were rooted in utility. Community Gothic was created in a similar spirit: it celebrates the ordinary, utilitarian letterforms that characterized nineteenth-century print culture.” 

“In addition to philosophical and historical parallels,” Devine said. “Community Gothic and Hu’s illustrations share some noteworthy aesthetic similarities. The typeface’s letterforms are characterized by slightly irregular, asymmetrical outlines, which mirror the playful irreverence of Diane’s watercolors. From the day Community Gothic was released in late 2022, I had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to specify this typeface. As soon as Diane signed onto the playing card project, it was clear that the time had come.”

With the illustrations and typeface in place, one crucial design element remained. “Pairing Community Gothic with a set of crisply drawn suits would be, to paraphrase Adrian Frutiger, like wearing jeans and a tailcoat, “ said Devine. 

So, Devine approached renowned type designer Tobias Frere-Jones to design custom suits. “Tobias grew up in Brooklyn and is something of a resident expert on nineteenth-century New York City. He responded right away, said that he’d love to be involved, and we had a call the following day. Beyond some general details, I did not provide any specific artistic direction; I trusted his instincts wholeheartedly.”

Rounding out the design is a card back featuring a delightfully asymmetrical Flemish bond pattern evoking a 19th-century bricklaying technique, created using hyphens and en-dashes from the Community Gothic family.

Part of the proceeds from Rowhouse Playing Cards go to the HDC to help them continue their work advocating for New York’s historic neighborhoods. Learn more and shop on The Brooklyn Studio’s website. 

Find out more about Frere-Jones’ 2022 release of Community Gothic in this article on their website by Elizabeth Goodspeed, and here, in our Type Tuesday feature from early 2023.

Christopher Devine also oversaw the design of The Brooklyn Studio LEGO set, featuring Brooklyn highlights such as the Carroll Street Bridge, Park Slope rowhouses, and Grand Army Plaza. Like the Rowhouse Playing Card deck, part of the proceeds support HDC’s mission.

Photographs by Ethan Herrington.

Painter Jessica Brilli aims to do the same.

We all have similar exposure to images that evoke nostalgic feelings. These images tap into similar experiences and memories, like an unspoken language that can bridge individual experiences from the broader cultural context.

Jessica Brilli

Brilli is preoccupied with nostalgia and how it can be portrayed visually through her paintbrush. After gathering 35mm Kodachrome slides and old photographs while traveling around the United States, she felt compelled to start painting them. “I view thousands of slides and photos to find the ones that move me emotionally,” she shares on her website. “I’m constantly on the hunt for photos that mirror scenes from my childhood or that I feel a connection to through personal or familial experience.”

Through this creative process, Brilli has found that many of her feelings surrounding these nostalgic images strike a chord with others. “My experiences are part of a common thread that many Americans share regardless of age, race, and gender,” she writes. “The images that produce a flood of involuntary memories for me often evoke similar cascades of feelings and thoughts in others. Why is this?” Brilli isn’t necessarily interested in answering this question but instead poses it tenderly with a discerning curiosity that guides her work.

Her paintings also explore the effect of color on memory. “When looking at vintage photography, I see the color as a built-in time stamp,” she elaborates. “Different types of film age in various ways because of unstable color dyes— the faded color scheme adds a Gestalt effect that evokes these nostalgic feelings.” As such, the carefully considered color palettes Brilli works with mirror and experiment with these same hues, conjuring warmth and sentimentality.

Something of a retro aesthetics obsessive myself, I quickly became immersed in the patina-soaked world of Brilli’s work upon first discovering her; I reached out directly to learn more. Brilli’s responses to my questions are below.

When did you first embark upon the process of painting from old Kodachrome slides and photographs? What initially sparked this project? 

I had been painting vintage objects like typewriters and radios. I started collecting 35mm slides and photographs as an artistic exploration and soon realized they are also tangible artifacts. Photographs are also objects that carry unique narratives, emotions, and layers of history, and I wanted to capture and convey these complex moments that had been frozen in time.

Can you describe how it feels when you come upon a source image that speaks to you in such a way that compels you to paint it?

If the image resonates with me, it can be a visceral experience, going beyond the visual appeal. That emotional spark is a part of visual recognition. Sometimes, that spark has complex layers that are difficult to explain, and you want to explore and convey them to others.

What is it about retro aesthetics that you’re drawn to? Have you always had an affinity for that vintage look and feel?

I’ve always been drawn to retro aesthetics, not as a particular fondness for the past, but more the clean and simple designs of some vintage objects, particularly if there is a timeless elegance. The simplicity means less visual clutter, allowing each element to stand out.

You masterfully use color and shadow in your paintings— what’s your process like for nailing down your color palette for a given painting?

Thank you. I’d like to think that I’ve developed a deep understanding of the nuances of color, light, and shadow over time. I don’t let something go out of the studio unless I’m happy with it and it has the right look and feel.

Why do you think people respond so intensely to your paintings? Why is nostalgia so powerful?

To some degree, we all have similar exposure to images that evoke nostalgic feelings. These images tap into similar experiences and memories, like an unspoken language that can bridge individual experiences from the broader cultural context.

Thus concludes the bio of Volker Hermes on his website, succinctly capturing his essence. Based in Düsseldorf, Germany, Hermes is a drawer and painter who, over the last few years, has embarked upon a series called “Hidden Portraits,” in which he reworks classical portraits with wit and whimsy.

Taking venerable paintings of ancient socialites, Hermes uses digital collage techniques to conceal the faces of the subjects. The concealment can take the form of an absurd mask, a mound of fabric, or a ridiculous wig entirely created from details of the original work itself.

Quite tickled by an aristocrat wearing a collar so ostentatious that he could no longer see, I reached out to Hermes to learn more about the series and his practice. His responses to my questions are below.

How would you describe your personal design aesthetic and ethos as an artist? 

I use a wide range of techniques in my work, from painting and drawing to digital. Of course, they all have different challenges and require different approaches, so it’s not easy to condense them all into one term. But perhaps what all of my thematic series have in common is that I span an arc between the times, and I think about the general concepts of art.  

It’s important to me that my works are contemporary and autonomous artistic inventions. “Artistic invention” is probably the most essential term to me. Additionally, I believe it’s important and possible to shed new light on our cultural heritage of painting. This heritage can still tell us a lot, even though we no longer know much of its vocabulary.

How did the idea for your “Hidden Portraits” series come about? 

At a certain point, after I studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf, I started thinking about the social environment of art. What does a society expect from art? And, How does an elite, for example, use artworks for its purposes? Historical portraits are a good example, as artists were commissioned to depict the social significance of other people. But I have realized that today, we hardly notice the codes in the paintings that convey the messages of the commissioners. Nowadays, we are so obsessed with the face that we overlook many metaphors in these paintings. We can no longer read them. I wanted to work with this thought, and since I didn’t want to imitate the historical way of painting, I decided to use image processing. I cover the faces with what I find in the paintings, and this actual limitation enables a completely new approach.

Your reimagined portraits are infused with a hardy dose of wit and whimsy. Where would you say your sense of humor comes from? Have you always incorporated a bit of comedy into your work?

Oh, that’s hard to say! I would describe myself as a person with a sense of humor in many fields— even as a German. You’re probably born with it or not. 

In my opinion, humor is rather different from comedy. A comedy or a gag creates a quick punchline that then quickly disappears. But humor works differently and has a longer-lasting effect. For me, humor is an important tool for taking a sometimes critical look at the environment of historical art. Compared to today, there is a completely different image of society in the portraits I work on, power relations that we today would describe as toxic, a strange understanding of the role of women in society, and so on. I can point this out by humorously shaking things up and exaggerating other things so that we notice this different context. Humor can be a sharp knife, and it’s not didactic. It conveys content or evaluations without pointing fingers. These are reasons enough for me to enjoy using it.

From where do you source the portraits you repurpose in the series? How do you decide if a particular portrait is worthy of a “Hidden Portraits” installment?  

I browse the online archives of museums, other institutions, or auction houses almost every day, very intuitively. I then select the portraits that “speak to me” or are suitable for a particular statement I’m working on. I go through all the eras wildly; I soak up the art like a sponge. But sometimes, it takes me a while to work on it, and some artworks need a lot of time. Generally, it’s a very intuitive and organic process.

Everything should fit together plausibly, and form a kind of contemporary idea on the original painting. It’s important to me that the original spirit is preserved, which has something to do with respect for the original artist.

Volker Hermes

What’s your typical process like for creating one of these pieces? 

The most important first thing is looking at the painting. What does it want to convey? What are the special characteristics of the artist? What does it say to me? Then I think about my modifications; what is my statement as an artist? I try out a few things, still very roughly, and start the detailed process when I think it might work. For my interventions, I only use elements already present in the painting. That is, I cut things out and combine them into new contexts.

In the end, everything should fit together plausibly and form a contemporary idea of the original painting. It’s important to me that I preserve the original spirit, which has something to do with respect for the original artist. Since I don’t want to imitate historical paintings, I don’t print anything on canvas, and I don’t use fake historical frames. My works are contemporary photographic prints, which I produce in a small edition and frame in a current way. The technique change is an essential method, and I make this clear both in my approach and production.

From Form took a highly visual and nostalgic approach, staying away from text-heavy applications, instead inviting the audience to curate their own unique experience during the event. And that’s exactly how the duo approached the project. Equipped with two cameras, co-founders and creative directors Jurjen Versteeg and Ashley Gover explored Amsterdam’s museums and captured visual fragments of their experience. The resulting flip-book aesthetic mimics how people might discover the city’s cultural treasures in a seemingly endless number of combinations.

From Form has a reputation for combining real and imagined worlds in a playful, colorful, and approachable way. In addition to filmmaking, the duo are painters and set builders with a strong affinity for analog and “the imperfect.”

We opted for an optimistic and upbeat tone of voice. One that’s playful and rhythmic putting a strong emphasis on the analogue approach – such as the flip-book, printed textures and stickers – with a hint of nostalgia.

Ashley Govers

The studio also produced the 2021 and 2022 campaigns. This year’s campaign builds on their efforts to encourage people, especially the young, to experience well-known institutions such as the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, and Ann Frank Huis, alongside smaller collections like the Amsterdam Pipe Museum, The Black Archives, and Mediamatic (an organization that features workshops and exhibitions at the intersection of art, nature, and food).

The campaign played out on the Museum Night website, its social media channels, and on posters and billboards throughout Amsterdam and its public transport system.

The only thing as dynamic and multifaceted as Stan Squirewell’s remixed portraits is the artist himself. The Harlem native is on a lifelong exploration of his craft, initially studying painting in school and then carving out a style uniquely his own. Starting with archival photographs from the 1900s featuring Black and mixed-race people, Squirewell then uses various techniques to create identities for these anonymous original figures. Squirewell brings new life to those who have otherwise been cast aside through collage, burning, scraping, ripping, and more.

Squirewell has a newly launched solo show at the Claire Oliver Gallery in Harlem entitled “We Speak In Rivers.” The exhibition features 15 works and will be on view through January 13, 2024. To celebrate this achievement, I recently had the joy of speaking with Squirewell directly about his artistic practice, the development of his distinct style, and his grandfather’s eyes. Our conversation is below.

(This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.)

How did you develop this artistic process and style that is so uniquely yours? 

The process itself came from everything I’ve done, experimenting here, playing around with that—just years and years of doing things, trial and error.

I’ve always loved mixed media. From the moment I went to arts high school, I enjoyed mixing things up. I never wanted to do one medium because I would get bored. So, if it was just a drawing, I wanted to add something else to it to elevate it and make it different. Mixing things has always been a part of my practice, even as a child.

This particular process right here helps me do a little of all of the things that I love doing. The drawing aspect of things, drafting things out, painting, cutting and burning images and layering them on top of each other, scraping away images, and adding new stuff on top of that.

I never know what’s going to go where. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. It’s like playing in the sandbox; every time I dig into something, I find something great. I even amaze myself.

Stan Squirewell

[Experimenting and layering] also keeps up with my thought process because I can easily change my mind with something. Dealing with collage, if I lay one thing down and I don’t necessarily care for that, I can lay something else over the top of it or paint something in there and completely rework the entire image. I’ve done that to some pieces; I’ve reworked them 10, 15, 20 times until I got what I really wanted.

I’m always collecting images, cutting and burning them, and having my assistant bag things up according to the color or if it’s a masculine or feminine-looking fabric or anything like that. I have bags of thousands upon thousands of pieces of burnt paper, and I never know what will go where. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. It’s like playing in the sandbox; every time I dig into something, I find something great. I even amaze myself.

How do you know when a piece is complete and you can step away?

I just feel satisfied. I’m like, Ooh, that’s it! I got it. I don’t need to do anything more. The piece requires nothing more of me. That’s when I’m done. Because if I overthink it, [the piece] will become overworked. The work is already multi-layered, so, in a sense, overworking it is the aesthetic. But there’s always a balance between the sharpness of things I’m printing and the blurriness of the photographs and the backgrounds. I’m always curious about finding what more this aesthetic can lend itself to.

I’m always intrigued by the aspect of actually bringing forth things from the past.

Stan Squirewell

When it comes to the photographs you’re manipulating, where do you find them? And why do you choose the photos that you do? What is it about a particular photo that will speak to you?

I see something familiar in them. I see family in their faces. Sometimes, the image strikes me. I say, This is a very striking individual, and I want to work with it. Or it’s the composition. I often find low-res images that aren’t very high quality, which lend themselves to me being able to paint in them to bring out that extra detail. These documents are hundreds of years old, so my paintbrush can go in and add magic to them again and bring life back to them again. I’m always intrigued by the aspect of actually bringing forth things from the past.

I get images from all over the place. People send me images now. They’re like, Oh, my God, I think you would like this! And they’re usually right! I also get them from family albums, estate sales, archives, and online; there are images all over the place. But finding the right ones that really resonate with me takes time. I have to envision myself doing them. And once I get that go-ahead, that this is the one, that’s when the process starts. There are many that I’ve started and didn’t feel the energy in them, and I left them alone. But the ones that make it are the ones that chose me, in a way. It’s a shared process. I believe that the spirit of the individual in the photograph speaks to me. They really do. It is a very spiritual process. It’s a very familiar, ceremonial process.

It’s like you’re building a relationship between yourself and these people who, in one aspect, are long gone but, in another sense, are being kept very much alive by you.

Well, see, here’s the thing: I see the same faces. They haven’t gone anywhere. They’re not gone. Those individuals may be gone, but their offspring, their descendants, are very much still here. As they say, “energy is neither created nor destroyed.” It’s just a cyclical thing. We see the same faces generation after generation after generation; it’s just amazing.

Funny story: My maternal granddad is from Barbados, and he had eyes that would change colors according to the season. So one moment, they’d be green; the next, they were light gray; the next season, they’d be light brown. And everybody’s waiting to see whose child will get these eyes! So far, 13 grandbabies, and nobody’s got ‘em yet. We are waiting to see when Grandpa’s coming back.

Can you tell me more about the frame carving process you’ve incorporated into your practice?  

It’s a Japanese burning process called shou sugi ban. It makes the woodgrain come out, but it also wards off insects in the process of carbonizing it. Insects don’t like that char. So, it preserves the wood, and I find it a very beautiful process.

That part of my practice is also part of the ceremonial aspect of my work. As every part of the collage burns, it represents things we do not know but are very much felt. We can feel it, but we may not be able to comprehend it or explain it in a literal context. We just know. Certain things are instinctual. It may not be apparent to us, but it is very much in us.

I enjoy being in a space of knowing certain things that are just innately there; they’re innately with us. Just like histories. Like with our ancestors. We know them because we look at them every day; you see them every time you look in the mirror. Millions upon millions of your ancestors culminating into you. Every single cell in your body could be representative of an ancestor. With the burning process, things go up in smoke like a spirit. [The spirit] is still oddly present; it’s still in the air. It’s still in the ether. The spirit is still with us.

Featured banner images:
Left: Aponi & Halona; Cut photograph collage, oil, and glitter in hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 2023; 58×48 inches.
Center: Junie; Cut photograph collage, oil, and glitter in hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 2023; 39x20x2 inches.
Right: Mrs. Johnson’s Sunday Best; Mixed media collage, paint, hand-carved shou sugi ban frame, 2023; 68x68x2 inches.

The Norman Rockwell Museum presents Lionni’s full story in the exhibition Between Worlds: The Art and Design of Leo Lionni, co-curated by writer and historian Leonard Marcus and Steven Heller. Read Steven Heller’s thoughts on the exhibition in The Daily Heller.

I recently sat down with Leonard Marcus to discuss Lionni, his work, and the exhibition. There were many highlights for me. One is his multidisciplinary yet compartmentalized talent. Another is the deeply thoughtful and philosophical way in which he wrote and illustrated for children. 

These days, we recognize and celebrate multidisciplinary creativity. It wasn’t always the case. As a working graphic designer in the era of abstract expressionism, Lionni and his fellow applied artists understood that their commercial work wasn’t viewed as ART. In the pecking order of the art world, applied artists couldn’t be fine artists as well. Children’s book illustrators worked under the weight of dual sins: they depicted the narrative realm during an era when the abstract was king, queen, and jury, and in the hierarchy of publishing, works for children were an afterthought.

Despite narrative art being the main Western art tradition, Marcus says that “many illustrators of Lionni’s era had to resist the pressure to draw abstractly from their instructors in art school. To become an illustrator in those days, you had to rebel against a very strong orthodoxy that discouraged the narrative.” (The art critic Clement Greenberg once called illustration “prostitution.”) So, when you consider that children’s book art was one of few realms that sustained narrative art during the time it wasn’t favored, “Lionni’s book illustrations come into focus in a different way,” says Marcus.

Piecing Together a World

Seeing the whole picture of Lionni’s creativity helps us understand and admire him all the more. As the child of an art-loving family in Amsterdam (Marc Chagall’s Le Violonniste hung outside his bedroom), Lionni received an education focused on nature, arts, and crafts. As a young adult in Italy, he rubbed shoulders with the Futurists, who emphasized dynamism and progress. Emigrating to the US in 1939 on the eve of WWII, Lionni had experienced a lifetime’s worth of adversity at the hands of others’ small-mindedness. You can see how his experiences shaped his work, which often incorporate collage elements: how an individual thing (a child, a shape, a concept) informs and inspires the bigger picture (a community, a composition, an outlook). 

“Collage became an important way of art-making after World War I. With European society in shatters, artists like Kurt Schwitter set out to put it back together. You can view Lionni in this aesthetic tradition, along with Ezra Jack Keats and Eric Carle,” says Marcus. “Collage is also a common way of making art that children do from a young age. Lionni’s work suggests that we need not be reverential towards the art but rather to offer up to people with open minds a way to think boldly about what the world could be.”

The subtext of Lionni’s books for children is ‘What if?’

Leonard Marcus

Lionni’s children’s book illustrations are not just about beautiful pictures, “Leo realized that children are the people who can change their minds.” Marcus says, “He was making art to shape the future. He was always aware of what was happening in society. He didn’t want to tell people what to do, but rather offer up to people with open minds to think in a big way about what the world could be.”

Vivian Paley, a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, recognized this future-creating theme in Lionni’s books and that they built on each other. “They are reconsiderations, one after another, of the relationship of the individual to society,” says Marcus. Paley understood this is an issue that always comes up for children, so she created a year-long curriculum using Lionni’s picture books. “Lionni’s children’s books help children find their place in that constellation of alternatives.” 

Marcus’ favorite is Lionni’s award-winning Inch by Inch, and he believes it’s where his signature style came together for the first time. “Lionni’s depiction of ‘out of frame’ images–the crane is so big it doesn’t fit on the page–is mindblowing from the perspective of a child trying to understand what’s going on. His children’s books speak to the power of what art can do, how it can stretch your way of thinking about things.”

Between Worlds: The Art and Design of Leo Lionni is on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum until May 2024.

Image galleries:

1) Left: Leo Lionni (1910-1999), World on View, n.d. Poster, © Leo Lionni. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Lionni Family; Middle: Leo Lionni (1910-1999), New Building Techniques, 1956, Cover design for Fortune, March 1956, Tearsheet, © Leo Lionni. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Lionni Family; Right: Leo Lionni (1910-1999), Two famous globetrotters. The smaller one—the Olivetti Lettera 22—travels the year and the world ‘round, 1957, Advertisement for Olivetti’s “Lettera 22,” reprinted from The New Yorker, December 7, 1957, Tearsheet, © Leo Lionni. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Lionni Family

2) Left: Leo Lionni (1910-1999), And so the days went by, Illustration for Fish is Fish, 1970 (Knopf), Colored pencil on paper, © Leo Lionni. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Lionni Family; Right: Leo Lionni (1910-1999), “And hang from my tail.” Cornelius was amazed, Illustration for Cornelius: A Fable, 1983 (Pantheon), Mixed media collage, © Leo Lionni. All rights reserved., Courtesy of the Lionni Family

Banner artwork:

Leo Lionni (1910-1999), Cover illustration for Frederick, 1967 (Knopf), Mixed media collage, © Leo Lionni. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Lionni Family. (left) Leo Lionni (1910-1999), BDC Rex Rotary M-4, n.d., Brochure for BDC (Bond Duplicator Company, New York, New York), © Leo Lionni. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Lionni Family (right)

Printmaker Rachel Singel is on a mission far beyond making pretty images. The fine artist and professor at the University of Louisville uses her finely tuned printmaking process as commentary on the beauty of the natural world and sustainability. The etching effects of printmaking capture the intricacies and depth of the natural forms she recreates, while the organic materials she uses heighten her message.

“Beyond bringing attention to the immense complexity of the natural world, one of my primary goals as an artist is to raise environmental consciousness,” she penned to PRINT. “I print on handmade papers made from recycled materials such as old cotton shirts and linen sheets, as well as plant fibers, especially those of invasive plants. Conceptually, the union of process and subject embodies an important metaphor for my views. Fundamentally, my work is about discovering, then understanding, and finally expressing an attitude towards nature.”

I recently reached out to Singel with a few questions to learn more about her process and ethos as an artist. Her thoughtful responses are below! (Conversation edited slightly for clarity and brevity).

I remain in continuous awe of the depth and force of the natural world.

Rachel Singel

How did you develop your unique printmaking style and methodology?

I was first drawn to printmaking because I am inspired by nature’s infinite complexity, and intaglio etchings on copper allow me to make the fine lines I need to illustrate its forms. My goal is to capture as much information from the surface as possible. 

In my works, the lines radiate out from a central point. While beginning with a specific image of a vine, unfurling fern, fungi, etc., the work is overtaken by the idea of potentially limitless growth. I remain in continuous awe of the depth and force of the natural world. Ultimately, I hope to bring attention to our environment’s intricacy, beauty, and fragility.

What is your studio set up like? Where and how do you bring your prints to life? 

I always appreciate the chance to travel to other studios for artist residencies, but for the most part, I currently make my prints at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, where I teach. I have a print shop equipped with vertical ferric chloride baths for etching my copper plates, glass tabletops and hotplates for inking and wiping them, and presses (including a 48″ x 96″ Takach press) for printing.

Before I make the prints, I make the paper using a Little Critter Hollander beater (made by Mark Lander) and molds made by my predecessor at the University of Louisville, John Whitesell.

Have you always been environmentally conscious? Where does your love of nature come from?

I grew up on a small farm outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. My mother, who is also an artist and teacher, took my siblings and me outside to sketch the landscape and natural objects. That is where my love of nature and art began.

From where do you source the materials you print on? Do you make the paper you print on yourself?

I now make all of the paper that I print on. While I first learned paper making at the University of Virginia, after taking paper making with Timothy Barrett at the University of Iowa, there was no going back!

After that, I had the opportunity to be a resident artist at Bernheim Forest and Arboretum, where I made paper from their invasive tree of heaven. That’s when I started primarily using invasive plants.
I have since made paper with other invasives such as yellow flag iris, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese honeysuckle, and johnsongrass, which I have collected from my family’s farms in Virginia, rural local areas here in Kentucky, and even around the city of Louisville.

Just recently, I even made paper with Japanese knotweed, which was harvested for me at Acadia National Park, where I was a resident artist this past summer. I have learned a lot about the possibilities of papermaking by working with each of these fibers!

Why is reflecting on environmentalism in your art important to you?

I am aware that as an artist, I am also a consumer. As a teacher, I feel an even greater responsibility to promote environmentally friendly practices because that’s the only way we can sustainability continue to make work.

The artist duo known as Clarke & Reilly (David Grocott and Bridget Dwyer) saw this creative potential in the structure of a T-shirt and conceived of an exhibition called Blue Collar with the T-shirt at its core. On view now through November 4th at LA’s SIZED Studio in West Hollywood, Blue Collar consists of a space with 62 T-shirts hanging from the ceiling. The pieces on display are hand-sewn from indigo-dyed fabric spanning three centuries and sourced from various corners of the world.

“We just copied the classic American T-shirt, and that was it,” Grocott told me bluntly when he and Dwyer gave me a tour of the exhibition just before its opening. “I’ve always deconstructed stuff, and I had this huge piece of material, and I was thinking of how I could deconstruct it and make it individual in each piece. The fabric lent itself to this classic, basic shirt. It’s a very humble shirt, which kind of speaks to everyone.”

It’s the universal functionality of the everyday T-shirt that underscores the greater theme of Blue Collar as a reflection on the American working class, specifically within the Los Angeles Garment District. The 62 dangling T-shirts sway and spin slowly from strips of a painter’s drop cloth that Grocott cut up, creating a sense of movement and bustle reminiscent of a factory or warehouse. Meanwhile, a soundtrack composed by Magnus Fiennes pulsates in the background, serving as a sort of sonic poem that features samples from different cultures and nationalities. The result is an eerie, twisted sound that creates tension among the floating T-shirts.

“Our process is very much the idea that things have a life of their own, and one thing turns into the next,” Dwyer told me as she elaborated on Blue Collar’s origins. “That’s how David always works; this is his nuanced reaction to the working class in America versus some kind of political statement. It came out of walking around LA and observing all of these people that were working and making things happen.”

Even before the fully realized concept for Blue Collar came to Grocott, he and Dwyer had been working with the fabric in other ways, weathering and tinkering with it and using it in other shows. Most recently, they incorporated it into an installation at the Howard Hughes compound in LA. 

The fabric is a stunning amalgamation of utilitarian material found in England’s Black Country, the French countryside, and the Northeastern US. These materials include sections of bedsheets and old sacks, peasant cuts, and farming cuts, some with old repairs and patches, some with embroidered details. Once stitched together, the fabric was dyed using indigo from India, the US, and Japan through traditional dyeing techniques.

With the patina of time, things become more beautiful.

Bridget Dwyer

“This textile has been with us in our practice for about five years, and the fabric spans 300 years,” explained Dwyer. “So these 300 years of fabric were all hand-stitched together and then dyed with three types of pigment. Now, we use them in different ways, like aging them out in a field. When we put them out in the field to age them, this wasn’t the project.” 

To achieve different weathering effects on the fabric, Grocott and Dwyer stationed various sections of it in three separate locations on a mountain range in Northern California. One site had dappled light, another was hyper-exposed, and the third was on a hillside. One portion of the fabric was bolted around a large boulder that grazing cows butted up against with their immense long horns. Another was wrapped around large columns in the sun. The fabric was then left to face the elements for three months before Grocott and Dwyer made the trek back out to retrieve them. 

“When David had taken the textiles down from this land, he was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with it next,’” said Dwyer. “I think a lot of artists work like that; it’s all about the process. One of the things that’s always in our practice is time wears beauty well. With the patina of time, things become more beautiful.”

This weathered indigo fabric is no exception, as the various results of the different elemental conditions range from a vast spectrum of blue hues to striking visual patterns like tie-dye-style stripes. So, while every T-shirt in the exhibition is sewn identically, they’re each distinctly unique. “They’re all naturally different as part of the process,” said Grocott. “They’re all meant to be individual.” 

The finished product of Blue Collar is impressive in its own right, but it’s clear that Grocott and Dwyer care far more about the process and journey than any result. For the duo, the act of crafting and creating with textiles is the art. “We’ve been really lucky to work with people who hand dye and understand how to bring a fabric to life. There’s no Dylon or anything like that,” said Dwyer.   

“This wouldn’t age like this if it were a Dylon; if it weren’t an organic, natural fabric dye, it wouldn’t look like this,” Grocott went on. “It’s got to be an organic thing. It’s got soul. You’ve got to see the person who’s done it, see the hand that’s done it.”

When I asked the duo what was next for Blue Collar, they seemed interested in installing the show at another gallery. However, something tells me they’ll be on to the next project, perhaps repurposing the T-shirts, creating something entirely new. What that will be doesn’t really matter, alluded Grocott. “It’s the unknown that’s the most interesting thing.”

I like thinking that us humans are a part of nature rather than invaders of nature.

The old design adage, “the medium is the message,” is woven within each embroidered stitch of artist Loji Höskuldsson’s work. Using textured burlap canvasses as his base, the Reykjavík-based artist embroiders thoughtful still-life tableaus that marry organic materials, such as plants and flowers, with consumer goods, including food packaging and trash. The delicacy of his thread work is soothing and serene, featuring bright and airy color palettes that pop against the grey burlap backdrop.

Höskuldsson’s artworks are visually splendid at surface level, while their subject matter adds depth and even an element of cultural commentary. He makes the mundane beautiful to unite the human-made with the natural. Completely captivated by his practice, I reached out to Höskuldsson with a few questions about his work.

Why is embroidery your medium of choice? What does embroidery offer you as a medium that others don’t?

Embroidery is not a time efficient medium, so it’s understandable to ask: why embroidery? 

For me, it’s a meditative and mindful craft. It gives me time to think and reflect as I’m working. It is a way to work with natural material, like wool, which offers a variety of textures and color variations.  

When and how did you first get into embroidery? How did you develop your signature embroidery style?

While at the Iceland University of Arts, I wanted to try embroidery. I was getting a little tired of all that conceptual art that was going on at that time. My mom is a quilter and a textile artist, and has been encouraging all types of textile work since I was a kid. For a residency I did while studying, she handed me a small tufting tool and, since then, I’ve done nothing but embroidery and tufting. 

It took me a while to develop, and a lot of research went into finding the right stitches for my pieces.

What is your creative process like? Do you sketch out a design or composition before embroidering it? 

I do a rough sketch in a notebook where I mark dimensions and a rough layout of main themes. Embroidery takes time, so as I’m embroidering the larger objects, I have time to think about smaller details in the picture.

Many of your pieces combine nature and organic elements with consumer products. What are you hoping to communicate with this juxtaposition?

I like thinking that us humans are a part of nature rather than invaders of nature. A consumer product in conversation with organic elements tells a story, and there is a sense of movement that comes along with it. It asks the question of how did this get there?

After the other guests had finished sipping wine and greeting and congratulating, I chatted one-on-one with Madge Scott, 68, the proudly self-taught artist. She looked happy, exhausted, and resplendently bejeweled herself. And willing to pose for me and announce that more than half of the 42 exhibited works had sold.

I pull [these women] up in my photographic memory. They cook. They clean. They iron. They take care of children. They suffer. I dress them up to make them feel better. Some of them have died without seeing a beautiful day.

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting with Madge Scott again, this time in her studio at 145 Palisade Street in Dobbs Ferry, NY, the village just north of Hastings and about 40 minutes north of New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.

“Who are these women,” I asked.

“Some of them are real,” Scott said. “Some of them are village women from the Jamaica of my childhood. I pull them up in my photographic memory. They cook. They clean. They iron. They take care of children. They suffer. I dress them up to make them feel better. Some of them have died without seeing a beautiful day.”

This is not easy work, but it’s fulfilling.

Some of Scott’s works are made on canvas, others on wood, but exactly how?

“The dresses come from my imagination,” she explained. “I use decorated papers from the art supply store, tapestry papers. I build the surface up with other papers, like tissue paper, to add layers. I make some of the jewelry with gold leaf and get some of it at thrift stores. Some jewelry is my own or was my mother’s. And some people give jewelry to me so I can use it in my work. I drill holes in the wood to insert the jewelry. I sew on the lace. This is not easy work, but it’s fulfilling. I’m doing it mostly by faith. I cannot give up!”

“Every painting has a story. The Blue Lady is every struggling Black woman,” she said. “The Rose picture is ‘Know Our Worth.’”

“Do you only paint women?” I asked.

“No, I’ve painted Bob Marley and President Obama. But I don’t paint many men. Why? Paintings of men don’t sell.”

“The lady in green with the glasses,” she pointed out, “is me. That’s my self-portrait. I painted myself as a schoolteacher, a church lady.” Is Madge Scott a church lady herself? “No, I don’t go to church very often. I’m very spiritual, and the women spend too much time in church admiring each other’s dresses and hats and letting noisy children run around. They need to discipline those children.”

Madge Scott has the right to say that because she is highly disciplined. She emigrated from Jamaica, West Indies, in 1989, at age 34. “Yes, I’m self-taught,” she said. “I began painting 23 years ago when we lived in Brooklyn, and my son went missing. I picked up an old paint set of my daughter’s and started messing around just to get my mind off how worried I was. As Scott’s official bio reads, “She didn’t dream of the outcome; she only wanted to engage her mind.” By the time she found her son—working on the computer at a friend’s house—she’d decided to continue with her new-found avocation. Her profession was nursing, but she spent much of her time drawing, eventually experimenting with paint, color, and materials. In 2002, she moved to Hastings, where neighbors encouraged her to exhibit. At her first show at a local gallery, 19 of 31 pieces sold in two days. Since then, she has exhibited in Africa—through the U.S. State Department Art in Embassies program— and in various universities, consulates, municipalities, and libraries. Her accolades include The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award and a Westchester County Board of Legislature Proclamation.

I’m having the time of my life in this room.

“I paint every day,” she said. “I paint at home. I paint everywhere. I paint right here. Yes, even in this cluttered studio. I move everything out of the way. I’m having the time of my life in this room. I post my pictures and motivational writing on Facebook almost every day. I’ve been in this building for 15 years and watched it turn from a warehouse to this. A lot of artists have left.”

She was one of the first artist tenants at 145 Palisade Street, a building with a storied history. It was built in 1853 as a brewery and rebuilt in the 1920s with high ceilings and heavy floors to support the large presses needed to print Bibles and educational materials for Methodist churches. During and after WWII, it was a manufacturing plant for electronic products for the war effort and Columbia University’s undersea sonic detection labs. After falling into disrepair, the building was carved into basic artists’ studios with minimal amenities. Today, after a longtime-coming renovation and rebranding as Hudson River Landing, it advertises itself as “the coolest creative space in Westchester County.”

Madge Scott is nothing if not cool. And she’s here to stay. An icon to the other painters, architects, printmakers, photographers, therapists, textile artists, musicians, and hair stylists who rent spaces in the building, Scott’s made herself a lounge outside her studio with pillowed easy chairs for herself and visitors. “Madge is inspiring,” said Lea Carmichael, whose studio is down the hall. “She puts her all into her work and infuses it with her bountiful spirit.”

If you’d like to visit, too, you’re in luck. Madge Scott will be in residence during the RiverArts Studio Tour, a free event on Saturday and Sunday, November 4 and 5. But don’t just stop at her studio. You’ve got to meet the other RiverArts artists at 145 Palisade Street and along the route — posted online and on printed maps—from Hastings through Sleepy Hollow.

Photos taken the by the author.

Vancouver-based multimedia artist Katherine Duclos has taken the creative potential of Legos to the extreme, first becoming familiar with the medium while playing with them with her three-year-old son. He was diagnosed as autistic, so Duclos served as his parallel play co-regulator, and Legos were often his toy of choice. Duclos’s fascination with Legos grew from there and has erupted into her creative practice of carefully crafting works of Lego art in eye-catching color palettes arranged in satisfying configurations.

Eager to learn more about her process and the journey behind her Lego art, I reached out to Duclos with a few questions that she’s answered below. 

Why Legos? What is it about Lego pieces as a medium that speaks to you so much as an artist? 

I love the immediacy of it. It’s satisfying to touch and is so direct. I started using Lego because it was my son’s special interest when he was three to six years old. All he wanted to do all the time was Lego, and he required a parallel play co-regulator with him at all times. “Mama, do you want to build with me?” was uttered so frequently every day, that I had to figure out a way to use Lego in a way I found satisfying too. 

My son is a whiz at the sets; he’s seven now and about to finish the 6,000 piece Hogwarts castle he built all by himself. He’s been building sets that were above his age since he was three, so he’s quite gifted spatially. But I actually really struggle with the sets because my brain can’t process the diagram directions spatially, so I make a lot of mistakes and they take me a long time. 

In order for me to enjoy Lego, I had to just start seeing it as a modular color material, not as a means of building three dimensional structures. Once I saw the potential as an abstract color process, I was right back to using color as a means of externalizing an internal order. 

You say in your Instagram profile that you’re an “AuDHD artist.” Can you describe what that means exactly? How does this impact your artistic practice? 

I discovered my Autistic-ADHD neurodivergence in my 40’s after both of my children were diagnosed autistic. It turns out apples don’t fall far from the tree, and we know a lot more about neurodivergent brains now than we did in the 80’s. When I was a kid, I would spend hours arranging colored wooden pattern blocks on our floors to create intricate mosaics that I wouldn’t let my mother clean up. I’m still putting color in order all these years later. 

My need to jump around from material to material is a direct result of my ADHD and dopamine seeking, but it was almost what stopped me from being allowed to finish my thesis in grad school. Artists are often expected to develop a signature style or process they can be recognized by, but I never wanted to be limited. I can’t separate how or what I make from how my brain works now that I understand myself better.

Each brick I put down informs the next. There is always a rhythm that dictates where the colors get put in my work, but it’s internal.

Katherine Duclos

What’s your typical process for your Lego artworks? Do you use other materials at first to plot them out? Or do you start directly from the Legos themselves? How long does one piece typically take?

My process has changed since the early color constructions I made in 2021. Those were made as irregular shapes starting with small bases in a specific palette that were then paired with a colored paper background and framed. I usually start by selecting a color way for each piece— originally I just used Lego colors, but now I frequently paint them. 

The first pieces were originally shown in a well-known coffee shop with an art program, attached to Emily Carr University (an art school here in Vancouver). Michael, the curator of the coffee shop (yeah, it had a curator), messaged me on Instagram and asked if I’d be interested in doing a show. We both thought the Lego work had some appeal and wanted to just have a fun show. I called it “Mama Do You Want to Build with Me?” and I think I made 24 pieces. 

After that show, I started getting commission requests and had a few pieces go to galleries in the states, and one in a show with Studio Archive Project curated by Leslie Roberts. I started painting them for a solo show here in Vancouver at THIS Gallery in 2022. My latest group is a mix of heavily painted irregular constructions attached to wooden panels, as well as small sculptures and larger framed panels. Recently they went viral on Instagram, which has brought me a lot of attention. 

Each piece varies in how long it takes me and I often do time lapse videos of the builds, as I find people like watching them. I never plan or plot them out, the same as all my work— it’s all instinctual responses in the moment. Each brick I put down informs the next. There is always a rhythm that dictates where the colors get put in my work, but it’s internal. 

What’s your studio space set up like? I’m imagining mass amounts of bins and boxes filled with Lego pieces sorted by color! 

I work at home, which is great for the Lego work because it’s enabled my kids to stay a large part of the process. I often buy large bulk collections of old Lego that I then spend weeks sorting, like 75 pounds of Lego at once. I have color-coded drawer bins along with bags of extra bricks sorted; so when my yellow bin gets low, I can pull from the reserve bags in storage. 

I buy a fair amount of used bricks on Bricklink, a second-hand Lego marketplace. There are a lot of colors that Lego has retired—like my favorite Sand Red—and Bricklink is one of the only places to get them. I also frequent Lego stores and “Pick-a-Brick” walls. 

There is Lego in every room of our house. My son has an uncanny ability to know where each piece came from and who it belongs to, so we keep them straight. 

Has Lego the brand ever acknowledged your work in any way? Do you have any aspirations of doing a collaboration with them?

I heard from someone at Lego last week actually, with promises of further communication and possible collaboration so I’m hopeful. I’d love to design an abstract set for them. 

Maine-based printmaker Ana Inciardi is no stranger to ink stains, especially when her apartment in Portland’s Munjoy Hill neighborhood doubled as an art studio and living space. But when the national coin shortage struck, mounting piles of clothes and rags taunted her from the corners of her apartment. 

“I ran my business out of my living room for a while,” Inciardi told me in a phone interview. “There was ink all over the house. Even today, you still can’t find a wall without a blue or red handprint on it.”

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and for this innovative printmaker, necessity took the form of quarters. She needed a way to get coins for the washing machine, and as this took place when the initial outbreak of COVID-19 prompted stay-at-home orders, she needed to do so without coming into contact with anyone. 

Over the course of the next few months, Inciardi set to work designing a machine that would get her the coins she desperately needed in exchange for one of her specialities: miniature prints. She outfitted a prototype with a few small linocut prints she had yet to frame, cut them down to size, and reverse-engineered the machine to dispense the works when she slid in some coins. While Inciardi did a trial run with high hopes, she feared her prints might get mangled on their way out of the machine. To her delight, her print slid out safe and sound in a protective sleeve.

Inciardi aptly named her coin-collecting device the Mini Print Vending Machine. It makes a simple proposition: slide in four quarters and receive a surprise print. The machine is loaded with whimsical linocuts of all kinds of foods, from eggs and sardines to poppy seed bagels and jars of pickles. Every print is signed, labeled with the name of the food it depicts, and notated with that particular print’s number within the edition. 

The mini print vending machine has taken on a life of its own on Instagram, amassing over 16 million views. Once it went viral, Inciardi’s machine spurred a demand that outpaced what she alone could produce. She has since hired a few studio assistants to help her keep up with the floods of inquiries from all over the world, enabling Inciardi to share her printmaking with thousands of people at an affordable price. Inciardi reaches a larger audience than ever before, but she finds motivation beyond the likes and comments. 

“My favorite thing about my Mini Print Vending Machine is how accessible it allows art to become,” Inciardi said. “Four quarters for a two-color linocut feels pretty special to me. Since it is affordable, kids love to use it, but adults come back for more too. It has a nostalgic feeling– similar to machines you can find while exiting a supermarket, but instead of a little toy, a real work of art comes out.” 

Inciardi’s invention is a breath of fresh air in a time when ordering online has made purchasing art feel more transactional than ever before. Even after businesses reopened and coins became a little easier to come by, Inciardi continued to sell her art at local businesses with locked-in prices, determined, in part, by design. Using a vending machine to disseminate art helped Inciardi’s work get attention in the last year, though the idea itself took inspiration from an experience she had years earlier.

The Mini Print Vending Machine is a riff on the Art-o-mat®, an invention North Carolinian artist Clark Whittington introduced in June 1997. In his original design, he outfitted a modified cigarette vending machine with photos and prints that were too small to sell at shows. “I first encountered an Art-o-mat at a gallery in Bushwick as a kid,” Inciardi said. “My parents put a few dollars in, and out came a mysterious little box. Inside was an actual bee, gilded. It sits in a prominent place in their living room to this day.”

Something about the machine’s nod to the 1950’s made it feel lost in time, and the mystery of not knowing what would come out made it all the more appealing to Inciardi. Her Mini Print Vending Machines are designed rather than refurbished, though the idea behind it is recycled from other artists who saw vending as a way to connect with people. While printmaking is predictable and precision-based by nature, the element of randomness in Inciardi’s surprise prints lends a sense of novelty to the otherwise templated art that comes out of the machine.

Inciardi cites one of her central interests in printmaking being the idea that a single, carved-up piece of linoleum can go on to produce hundreds of theoretically identical works of art. While mass-production is fundamental to the nature of printmaking, every iteration of a print has slight deviations from ink patterns, pressure, and the texture of the paper. The same tension between individual identity and mass production can be seen in the subject matter her art revolves around: food. 

A marketplace selling bundles of bananas stocks their shelves with seemingly identical bundles of curved yellow fruits, but on closer examination, each banana bears a unique shape, coloration, texture, and of course, taste. Inciardi taps into this nuance of the individual among the masses, not only through speckles of ink and pencil markings on her prints, but in her creation of a machine that dispenses handmade art rather than processed snacks. 

Inciardi plays with questions about the ownership of objects and ideas, consumer culture, and food processing through her renditions of familiar foods and package designs. The challenge of having to think in reverse to sketch and carve a print forces Inciardi to abstract the image she carves from the object she studies. As her practice progresses and takes on new forms of mechanical dispensing, larger questions about mechanization and mass production permeate all her prints— no matter how small. 

As her follower count continues to grow, Inciardi refuses to compromise the integrity of the Mini Print Vending Machine. The prices of her prints haven’t changed, and she still makes each by hand in the studio space she rents in Portland. Today, Inciardi is growing her vending machine business with ten machines touring around the country. Local businesses in cities like Denver, Newport, Boston, and Brooklyn can rent out machines for two months at a time before Inciardi and her team move them to a new location. 

Though her tiny prints are making a big splash, there’s more to Inciardi’s practice than vending machines. In addition to the catalog of work she sells on her online store, you can find Inciardi’s brightly-colored designs on restaurant menus, home goods, dresses and cardigans by Rachel Antonoff, and even local farm trucks. Inciardi is continuing in a tradition of bringing art to unexpected places— and more importantly, making it feel more like an affordable, accessible part of everyday life. 

Rather than burying her frustrations in piles of laundry, Ana Inciardi found a fresh idea in the chore that once held her back from making art. She recognized that a few coins could pay for a load of laundry as easily as they could a work of art— as an artist, she has the power to set the price for her art and chooses to sell her work in a playful, affordable manner. Long after it accrued a stockpile of quarters that could sustain years of laundry payments, the Mini Print Vending Machine continues to feed an enthusiasm for affordable, accessible art— four quarters at a time. 

The art that comes out of the Mini Print Vending machine draws people in, but something more than the novelty of the machine seems to keep them coming back. While Inciardi’s machines have been seen by millions online, it’s only those who get to experience the Mini Print Vending Machine in person who can marvel at the invisible traces of the human touch behind this unmanned machine. “Watching the customer’s face as they put quarters into the mini print vending machine one by one and not knowing what they will get out is the best feeling,” Inciardi reflected. “It feels so good to be making something that brings joy to others.”

Photography by Dana Valletti
danavalletti.com

Six curatorial partners directed the exhibition’s 13 public artworks, created by independent designers, art studios, university design fellows, and a high school design team. View the complete list of participants here.

Exhibit Columbus is unique because it engages in an international dialogue connected to the biennial exhibition structure while exploring the challenges that cities around the globe are facing today. This year’s cycle, Public by Design, de-centers the idea of singular artists and curators for art and architecture and, instead, turns the focus on the friction of public art and architecture with the community. With this focus, the installations got their inspiration from curatorial questions such as: What is civic identity? How does nature connect us? How do we interpret the past?

We wanted to demonstrate the basic idea that the best work is built with a broad belief in the collective power of community work and engagement.

Bryony Roberts, 2023 curator and former Exhibit Columbus Miller Prize Recipient

Public by Design opened to huge crowds on the weekend of August 25. Free events included a public walking tour narrated by the artwork creators, community games, live music, dance performances ranging from Bollywood to swing to salsa, and a 15-minute history of the Black Experience performed to gospel, seventies soul, and hip-hop. A public dance party capped the opening weekend’s festivities.

Exhibit Columbus 2023, Public by Design, will be on display until November 26, with additional projects and events occurring throughout. Visit exhibitcolumbus.org for the full schedule.

All photos are copyright Hadley Fruits.

Although this silly comparison recalls the old axiom, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” I think Hopper would be the clear winner.  

People commonly prefer figurative art, and Hopper’s narrative style, lush color, and distinct use of light strike an easy emotional chord. On the other hand, Pollock’s “drip” painting epitomizes abstract art, is intellectually challenging, and offers no recognizable story for the viewer. Yet abstraction is widely accepted in daily life, home décor, fashion, and graphic design. What is a beautiful tile floor, a brightly striped tie, or a QR code if not pure abstraction?

My pursuit of a career in fine art took a detour when I chose to study graphic design, resulting in a fulfilling professional practice that has lasted more than 40 years. I have enjoyed drawing figuratively since childhood, but abstraction dominated my design classes in college. For example, rigidly structured exercises would challenge students to find visual vitality and implied meaning when placing three small, black dots on a white square. Superimposing two colored rectangles to create vibrating chromostereopsis was a lesson in visual perception. Far from literal picture-making, this training was valuable in learning how to employ abstraction for commercial applications.

In 1961, designer Tom Geismar created an abstract symbol for Chase Bank, the first of its kind for a major corporation. Its octagonal shape embodied strength, stability, and safety, yet had no visual reference to money. Companies, institutions, and endless enterprises worldwide adopted geometric marks in the following decades. Fast forward to 2023, Chase still uses this symbol, and abstraction remains popular, as seen in OpenAI’s spiraling geometric mark for ChatGPT.

However, the acceptance of abstraction is less widespread in art and continues to be criticized as an elitist scam, meaningless scrawl, or “something my kid can do.” I assume that, once framed on a gallery wall, this context presents an intellectual affront to audiences seeking narratives, a sense of connection to the tangible world, and the skill required to recreate reality on canvas.

In his landmark book Pictures of Nothing, the late MoMA curator Kirk Varnedoe offers a perspective on abstraction’s contribution and importance to art history. “Abstract art is a symbolic game, and it is akin to all human games; you have to get into it, risk it all, and this takes a certain act of faith.” My take on this is echoed in painter Frank Stella’s quote, “What you see is what you see.” The point of abstraction is that it’s not supposed to be something— it is a self-contained entity, a spontaneous creation, not a copy of another reality.

The Chase symbol is the Chase symbol— nothing more, nothing less.

My drawing and painting have been about flora and fauna at the edge of abstraction for several years. I created work with a literal reference while being open to interpretation and found that trees provided the ideal source of inspiration. Their linear limbs and leafy patterns can be seen through an abstract lens.

My favorite Abstract Expressionist is Joan Mitchell, whose massive canvasses feature bold colors and aggressive brushwork. Along with Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Pollock, and Helen Frankenthaler, she was part of the mid-century art attack that rebooted the explosive innovations of proto-abstractionists Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Hilma af Klint in the early 1900’s. Mitchell’s standout appeal for me is the emotionally impactful private narrative buried in the fury of her work, sometimes suggested in a title, that results in an exuberant style without peer.

Abstract painting can feel problematic because it can be so wrong until it is just right. For example, when working without a literal subject, a portrait, a landscape, or still life is very difficult for me. But I’ve persevered and overcome this fear by enjoying an artistic “journey” without a map. The heightened surprise is the exhilarating moment when the painting and I simultaneously arrive at the right destination.

My pursuit of abstract art provides two things that bring me peace in a time of worldwide turmoil and existential threats: contemplation and action.

In 1978, I visited the Rothko Chapel in Houston, a humble brick building designed by Philip Johnson. It contains 14 monumental paintings by Mark Rothko that evoke a Zen spirituality. As I sat in this church devoid of any religious regalia, transfixed by a meditative calm, I felt that the sacred impact of this space could equal any of the world’s great cathedrals. The stark monochrome canvasses of subtle rectangular shapes in dark plum invited deep reflection, and “pictures of nothing” were all I needed.

Additionally, I will continue to “toggle” between realism and abstraction while acknowledging that my deepest roots are modern, and that pursuing non-representational work might be a more rewarding path. I can also still find inspiration from my early training in graphic design when I realize the value of placing three black dots on a white square is more profound than I expected.

Next month: “Ten Best Design Books I Never Read.”

Ken Carbone is an artist, designer, and Co-Founder of the Carbone Smolan Agency, a design company he built with Leslie Smolan over 40 years ago. He is the author of Dialog: What Makes a Great Design Partnership, a visiting lecturer at numerous design schools, and TED X speaker. A recipient of the 2012 AIGA medal, he is currently a Senior Advisor to the Chicago-based strategic branding firm 50,000feet.

For those who seek to be entranced by the full body of her work, we’re lucky: Paula Scher was commissioned to create Type Is Image, a major solo installation inspired by five decades of her work. The immersive exhibit opened last month at Die Neue Sammlung— The Design Museum in Munich.

Type Is Image is part of the prestigious series Die Neue Sammlung has created, inviting important contemporary designers to create a site-specific installations. Director Dr. Angelika Nollert and Curator Dr. Caroline Fuchs commissioned Scher to design and produce an installation of her work with typography. Guided by her belief that “words have meaning, and type has spirit,” the exhibition gave Scher the opportunity to design an immersive environment that showcases type, design, and art from over 300 projects.

Paula Scher is the first graphic designer invited to exhibit in the museum’s massive two-story high, 3700-square foot central gallery. The work on view includes her record album covers from the 1970’s, decades of posters and branding for The Public Theater, signage and identity systems for NYC Parks, the New School, the Atlantic Theater, and many more. The show also includes a collection of original preliminary drawings and drafts exhibited for the first time. Lucky for us, the installation also includes Scher’s hand-painted maps of the world, including a new map of Munich that covers the floor of the gallery. Making its public debut is a Porsche automobile that Scher handpainted with typography, a private commission she carried out in the early days of the pandemic.

I had the opportunity to interview Scher about the exhibit. The following is our conversation, which is accompanied by exclusive images of the show, seen here for the first time.

Type is Image is a major installation of 300 of your projects spanning five decades of your work that has just opened at Die Neue Sammlung, The Design Museum at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Can you share how the collaboration with The Design Museum came to be?

During COVID, I was commissioned by a German collector to paint a map on a 1977 Porsche. I was contacted by a man named David Benedek, who has an agency that specializes in branding and promotion. He called me at Pentagram and brokered the Porsche commission as an intermediary between me and the collector.

I painted the Porsche in Seymour [Chwast]’s archive in our Connecticut house, which has a cement floor and a garage door. It took a year and a half to paint, and I was in physical agony from lying under the car for half of the time painting the sides of the Porsche, which curved under the car.

When the Porsche was completed, I tried to show it in NYC and couldn’t find a place that could accommodate it for a variety of reasons.

Meanwhile, David Benedek, who lived in Munich, had gone to the Pinakhotek to show the director and curators the Porsche. Initially, the Director, Angelika Nollert, and the Curator, Caroline Fuchs, had no interest in the painted Porsche because the museum has a spectacular selection of designed cars, and the Porsche I painted did not really fit into that category. However, Angelika and Caroline were interested in my design work, particularly my environmental graphics. They had never given a show to a single graphic designer in that space before. They explained to me that they regularly invited a designer to create a site specific exhibit of their work. The show stays up for a year or more (mine closes in September 2024). They sent me images of some of their previous exhibits, and there was one from a lighting designer and someone who worked with glass. They were very impressive and equivalent to exhibits at the Cooper Hewitt.

Given the distance between where you live in New York and the museum in Germany, and how did you go about creating the narrative arc or the journey through the show?

I went to visit the museum on one of my European trips. It is phenomenally beautiful, but the space for my proposed show was bizarre. The ceiling height was about 30 feet, making the space seem smaller than it was. On one side, the ceiling dropped to 12 feet, which looked very low in comparison to the rest of the space. There are giant dumbwaiters in the space where the ceiling is high, and they move up and down very slowly.  There is a curved wall cutting into the rectangular space and a curved staircase behind it.

At the entryway to the exhibit, the ceiling drops to 12 feet, runs down a long wall, and turns a corner. It seems very separate from the rest of the space. Jungin You, a designer on my signage team, created a Styrofoam model so we could position work on the walls and see how they looked. The 12-foot wall running around the corner seemed to be a perfect place for Public Theater posters. But when we put the teeny posters in proportion to their real size on the model with space between the posters, like any gallery would do, it looked expected and boring. Also, some of the posters differed in size making it look sloppy.

It was at that point that I realized the posters didn’t have to be the size they were; they could be printed out digitally, and we could create a Public Theater wall that would be totally filled with large season posters, and then be surrounded by many other posters reproduced at smaller sizes. There would be no white space. The wall would be totally filled and continue around the corner, very much like how posters are wheat-pasted on walls in New York City.

This was the beginning of how Jungin and I figured what was going into the show and where. The space determined it. The curved wall worked well with my signage and boardwalk design for Rockaway Beach, we put blowups of the black and white number series silkscreened posters on one of the dumbwaiters, and the red and white Type Directors Club Annual work I had done on the other dumbwaiter.  The numbers and the TDC posters were the same size, but originally the TDC typography was designed for a book and some digital media, while the number series silkscreened posters were originally big, but not as big as in the show. Nothing was actually the original size, except the originals that appear in the cases. The stairs were the perfect place for the New School alphabet, and we hung a broad selection of posters from the ceiling attached to the word “Type.” The hanging posters matched the ceiling height of the dumbwaiters and were double-sided and easily visible. 

There were three columns in the space that we perfect for three different identity designs that all used a letterform for their logos: Berkeley Theater, The Women’s History Museum, and the Atlantic Theater, On the long side walls, we displayed giant photography of environmental graphics. We would meet with Angelika and Caroline once a month and show them the work.  They made terrific suggestions. They explained that the photography of the environmental design should really be flat on the wall, not framed, because if it was framed, it would seem as if we were showing photographs, not describing environmental graphics.

At different intervals, we had maps on the floor, but the color was either too dark or too light. Various areas of the gallery looked too empty and we suggested building display cases to hold live samples. At the same time, Caroline was trying to establish a collection of my design and began buying my old record covers on eBay.

Many of your original sketches and preliminary drafts are exhibited for the first time ever. Can you talk about the state of your archives and what it was like to revisit some of your early work and include it in this show?

We have an archivist at Pentagram in the New York office named Claudia Mandlik and she does a terrific job cataloging our work. She can find most of what I ask for; unfortunately, the work catalogued is my 32 years at Pentagram. CBS Records and Koppel and Scher are a mess. Caroline bought my record covers on eBay. Rory Sims— who used to be my associate— and Jesse Reed— who used to be Michael Bierut’s associate— found my record covers in places that have old covers.  I think they have more of them than I do.

I wanted to show Koppel and Scher work and the CBS record covers on one of the three digital screens in the show, but all of the resolutions were terrible, and I took them out of the show. However, Claudia found that so many drawings and New York Times op-ed illustrations from the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000’s, as well my original painting for the 1988 AIGA Annual cover.

You custom-designed tables and display cases that are held up by a variety of letterforms. What was the process of making these three-dimensional elements in the show?

The whole show is about scale and dimension, simplicity and complication as well as typography. We had originally designed six cases, but the museum only could afford to make four. They were most expensive objects in the show. The legs of the cases were typography lingo that are cut out of wood and painted gray and they support the top cases. We drew them and the amazing German fabricators built them.

I am an environmental graphic designer as well as a two-dimensional designer. The show is really about designing an environment as much it is about working with type. It is a show about my work, and part of my work are environmental graphics. What I love about the three-dimensional work is that finished work always comes out looking exactly like our final Photoshop rendering. I can’t say the same for the two-dimensional pieces! 

This installation features your hand-painted maps as well as a new map of Munich that covers the floor.  How did you make it?

I made a small black and white painting of Germany on white paper. We scanned it and blew it up; Jungin touched up the funky parts on the computer, and we made some computer color studies, got the color where we wanted it, and gave it to the museum to make. The museum works with the best contractors I have ever seen. The large-scale printouts are the best I have ever seen. The floor material is something used for dance floors in German clubs. It should last for about two years. It really ties the whole space together, and the color looks spectacular in the space.

After we had designed many of the show’s components, and selected the floor, and had shown how much of my hand written work would be featured, Angelika changed her mind about the Porsche. She suggested that if we had images of maps as part of environmental graphics, we could include them in a significant way, and then the Porsche wouldn’t be an odd addition. I am so happy it is there.

The museum highlights your belief that “words have meaning, and type has spirit,— that people recognize type and understand the emotion, wit, power, and beauty behind it without reading. What spirit do you hope museumgoers will experience being immersed in Type is Image?

I think this is a joyful exhibit. Some of it is a demonstration of the breadth of my work, some of it is about the power and beauty of typography as both a communication tool and abstract form, and most of it is really about how an exhibit design creates a special environment that enables the viewer to discover what the meaning of it for themselves. We worked on the exhibit for nine months and it was one of the happiest working experiences of my career. So much of the joy was in working with Angelika and Caroline, who were so insightful and supportive, and special thanks to David Benedek, who introduced us.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new large-format poster book containing 101 double-sided posters that can be removed and hung. Will this be for sale?

The museum is selling the books for 45 Euro.

Will the show be moving to other museums around the world?

No… this was totally designed for a specific space. It will be on exhibit through September 22, 2024.

Learn more about the show on Die Neue Sammlung’s website.

This year’s event was a wildly successful, with attendees from around the world coming to experience the pinnacle of the art market. With visitors ranging at an average age of under 50, this is the kind of super beautiful crowd that only money can buy. Being of the “Jerry Saltz” generation, I wondered why buff servers with trays of champagne were passing me by. I had been to Art Basel/Miami, but being at the Swiss fair had a distinctly big-league vibe with the refined fragrance of unimaginable wealth in the air.

I’m not a high-level art collector, so I could relax and enjoy the show. As a designer and artist, I was there to be inspired and took a particular interest in the materiality and production of the art. For example, a pound of oil paint applied in a single brushstroke or a wash of acrylic used as a diaphanous veil were among the images I noted. Chainsawed oak, mirror-chromed steel, upholstered foam, silicone, ceramic, corrugated cardboard, marble, glass, fabric, fur, feathers, fiberglass, butterflies, resin, paper, thorns, photos, film, and digital painting are only some of the media being used today. Oddly absent was AI-generated art; given the intense hype about this technology, I found this a welcome relief.

For this review, I’ve selected ten works to share with you:

Maurizio Cattelan, Roma 2023

Thought of as the “court jester of the art world,” Maurizio Cattelan made headlines a few years back when he taped a banana to a gallery wall at Art Basel/Miami. It sold for $160,000. For Roma 2023, he purchased an old master painting at auction and added the taxidermy pigeons to stand guard. Cue the laugh track.

Theaster Gates, In Recognition of Our Bleeding Nation, 2019

The Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates creates work focusing on sculpture and performance that transforms everyday materials and urban detritus found in under-resourced communities. He builds a beautifully striated, textured wall sculpture in this work by tightly wrapping a decommissioned firehose around a wood panel.

Damien Hirst, Butterflies

I’m not a fan of Damien Hirst‘s work. I find the pickled shark or diamond-encrusted skull kind of art to be slick, overtly provocative, and a bore. For this reason, I was shocked to discover that he and his team (and, sadly, some sacrificial butterflies) created this extraordinarily gorgeous mandala.

Imi Knoebel, Once Upon a Time

This painting by German artist Imi Knoebel appealed to the graphic designer in me. The simple, brightly colored, jagged shape attracts attention like a powerful billboard. At 82, Knoebel continues to create large-scale minimalist, abstract paintings and sculptures in his Dusseldorf studio.

Brigitte Kowanz, Lightsteps

In 1963, artist Dan Flavin used commercially available fluorescent tube lighting as sculpture. It became his signature medium and forever tempted future artists to use this technique. Even so, Brigitte Kowanz‘s glowing stair step at Art Basel’s UNLIMITED pavilion felt delightfully fresh as it soared through space above the heads of the attendees. I think Flavin would have approved.

Carlos Cruz-Diez, Environnement Chromointerférent

In this piece, the late Carlos Cruz-Diez offers light, color, and form as a playground. The Venezuelan modernist uses digital projectors to generate geometric patterns of light that interact with white platonic solids, resulting in a kinetic display that invites participation. Viewers take on the dual role of “actors” and “authors” of this chromatic event that unfolds in real space.

Jean-Marie Appriou, Cristal Moon (Orbital Vision) 2023 

Like any contemporary art survey, there is bound to be work I find unappealing. Unfortunately, Jean-Marie Appriou’s alien-like astronaut sculpture is a good example. This patinated bronze and glass monstrosity seems better suited for a Florida theme park than an art gallery. The subjectivity of art allows anyone to disagree with me, buy the piece, and proudly display it in their living room.

Trees are a recurring theme in my paintings and drawings that I’ve previously written about in this column. I’m certainly not the only artist with this obsession, so I’m always interested in other interpretations of this subject. At Art Basel, trees were well-represented by many artists in various styles. Here are three that I found particularly beautiful:

Emma Webster, Double World, 2023

This 97″ x 76″ oil painting by British artist Emma Webster features a dreamlike approach to a landscape. I admired her use of dramatic lighting, lyrical brushwork, color, and scale. This painting has the authoritative skill and emotional expression I value in contemporary art.

Eva Jospin, Forêt, 2023

This complex sculpture by French artist Eva Jospin was quietly tucked away in the corner of a gallery. She’s known for her elaborate corrugated cardboard carvings, and I found Jospin’s piece to be a beautifully poetic way to express the natural origins of an otherwise mundane industrial product.

Lucas Arruda, Untitled 2023

One painting that stands out in my memory of Art Basel is a 6″ x 6″ landscape by Brazilian artist Lucas Arruda. Despite its small size, the painting was mesmerizing, boldly confronting the bombast of large-scale works. I studied it carefully and found Arruda’s symphony of brushwork and “sgraffito” marks to be deftly applied. I couldn’t afford the $600,000 price tag, so I must settle for a JPEG.

The frenzy of the fair can be overwhelming, even for an annual visitor. With more than 200 galleries participating, I know that I did not see it all. But post-fair reviews and surveys online provide an excellent overview, and scrolling through Art Basel’s Instagram account is a good place to start.

The contemporary art market is a complex and multifaceted topic that cannot be easily summarized as good or bad. Like any “market,” be it vegetables, fish, or securities, the charged atmosphere of buyers and sellers making deals is palpable. While it provides opportunities for artists and generates economic activity, critics often accuse art fairs of elitism, exclusivity, and prioritizing profit rather than artistic merit.

Ultimately, it is up to artists, collectors, and institutions to use the market responsibly and ethically balance the needs of the art world with the greater social and cultural good. I can appreciate these concerns, but as an artist and spectator, I’m content to close my eyes and cherish the moments I spent with some great art.

Next month: “When in Rome”

Ken Carbone is an artist, designer, and Co-Founder of the Carbone Smolan Agency, a design company he built with Leslie Smolan over 40 years ago. He is the author of Dialog: What Makes a Great Design Partnership, a visiting lecturer at numerous design schools, and TED X speaker. A recipient of the 2012 AIGA medal, he is currently a Senior Advisor to the Chicago-based strategic branding firm 50,000feet.

Haines’ ability to turn ordinary objects into tablescape masterpieces proves her creative eye and ability to find magic in the mundane. But the true magic of her feed lies in her unique ability to sell her art through her account: each week, she drops two new paintings, and within milliseconds, they’re sold.

I had the special opportunity to ask Haines about her work, career path, and how she’s been able to utilize Instagram to drive her artistic success.

You drop two new paintings weekly on Instagram, and the demand is wild. Can you explain how and why you chose Instagram as a sales method? 

It definitely wasn’t always this way, but it has escalated much quicker than I could have anticipated and I’m still always a bit shocked and in awe of the positive reception. When I started sharing my art, I was working on the pieces for my first solo show. I had a bit of a following from my jewelry brand and decided to do some smaller paintings and try to sell them on Instagram. It felt like a way to experiment with color/texture and wasn’t as labor-intensive as the larger pieces I was making. It felt low stakes; my plan was to not spend more than a few hours on them, and just put them up on online to see if anyone was interested.

And at first, it took a few days to sell one (which I was thrilled with) and then from there it was happening within hours, then minutes, to the point where many people were commenting at the exact time I released it. Sometimes, I have people really upset in my DMs because they have missed out on getting a painting, which is a huge compliment, and just a bizarre position to be in too. After years of working so hard to keep my jewelry brand alive, I could never have dreamed of this kind of demand for my work. I got so used to creating collections with very little reception (aside from some incredibly supportive friends and family) it still comes as a surprise to me that my work now is being so well received.

And more so, how lucky I am that I just love doing it. There’s still a huge part of me that thinks it won’t last, so I am really trying to just enjoy any success as it comes and not take it for granted.

I noticed on your website that your art practice has evolved during Melbourne’s extended lockdown. Can you explain the evolution?

Melbourne’s first lockdown in 2020 coincided with me deciding to end my jewelry brand that I had been operating for the last six years. I learned so much from running my own business, and despite some big successes with it, it was really hard to make a profit. When I finally decided to call it quits, it was bittersweet.

I had studied art at university years ago, but hadn’t painted properly again in 12 years. By deciding to let go of the jewelry brand, it was like a creative hole opened up within me and felt the urge to start painting again. And once I started, something was really awakened in me, I hadn’t felt so much passion and drive to create in a long time. I was home with my two toddlers (both under 2 at the time) and almost over night, painting was all I could think about.

When I wasn’t parenting, all I wanted to do was make more art. I was setting myself goals to get a large painting done a week while in lockdown with no real end game, aside that it gave me purpose and I was enjoying it. And lockdown kept going, so I kept painting. I never could have dreamed it would result in this becoming my full-time job. All I knew was that the joy it was bringing me was immeasurable.

Your paintings often showcase what could be mundane moments, but the vivid colors create an entirely new landscape. Can you explain how you choose your colors and why you opt for vibrant options? 

Painting for me is a form of escapism, a chance to step outside of myself, my own thoughts/existence and be entirely in a moment. I get so much pleasure focusing on color and texture and bringing a concept and feeling to life through paint. I guess the idea or aim is to create pieces that bring other people joy and capture the mood and evoke a universal feeling.

I think color and texture are the biggest vessels for that. The subject matter is almost secondary. I tend to get locked onto color combinations for a few weeks and then move onto something else. I’m always interested in color combinations that are a bit jarring or unexpected, a pretty, sweeter type color with a dirty, sickly color.

What is your painting process? How long does it take from start to finish? 

I approach my small paintings in a much more relaxed way than my large ones. The large ones I spend quite a lot of time planning and sketching, working from different photos I’ve taken to get my sketches right. I feel I can convey so much more when I work on a large scale but they also tend to take up a lot of my head space and plague me until they’re finished.

The smaller paintings are more impulsive and I usually complete them in a few hours. I paint with water mixable oil paints and I paint alla prima (wet on wet). I love the vibrancy of oil paints and the way they dry exactly as they look wet. I apply my paint very thick and liberally— for me, this is the most pleasurable part and where real magic happens. The colors and textures create something so much more vivid and powerful than my shitty initial sketches convey.

And while the small paintings are done more impulsively, they have become such an integral part of my practice now. I commit to doing two a week, even while I’m working on pieces for a show because they are a way to experiment and try different color combinations. I rarely plan these paintings— I just decide that morning what I feel like painting, and then I just go for it. Sometimes there is no motivation and I hate the outcome, and other times it just works. But regardless, I always force myself to do it. And I’ve come to realize there is an energy to the smaller pieces that I am still figuring out how to bring to the larger works I create. Each month, I chose my faves of the small paintings and make these into limited edition fine art prints.

Often, artists don’t harness the power of social media. Should more artists lean into the capabilities of social media, especially regarding sales? Why or why not?

I think it can be really scary sharing your work on social media, and when I first started doing it, I felt so exposed. So I think fear can definitely hold people back. For me, it has been a great way to connect directly with my buyers and build relationships without a middle man. It’s really built my confidence knowing there are people who like what I’m creating, because being an artist can be isolating and I tend to get in my own head about my works.

So to have a direct line to the outside world via Instagram has been a really positive thing for me. But what works for one artist is not necessarily going to be a formula that can work for others, so I don’t know if I have strong feelings about the way other artists share their works. But if you are starting out and you aren’t hearing back from galleries, why wait for someone to give you a show when you can start sharing your work right away?

That’s not to say I think galleries are irrelevant, which I know some people believe. I have had shows in a number of galleries and have loved it. It’s so satisfying seeing all your works on the walls and so important for people to be able to see your work in person, I think. Galleries have also given me access to buyers that I wouldn’t have been able to connect with on my own. But if no gallery will give you a show, there are so many other ways you can get your art out there, and Instagram is one of them.

Who is your greatest creative inspiration, and why?

I’ve been so hungry for creative success since I was 18, truthfully. I studied art, then fashion, and went on to work in fashion roles before I started my jewelry brand. Along the way, I have met so many inspiring people who have made their own creative dreams come true.

I think meeting people who were living proof that you could work for yourself and make a career of it, is what inspired me to keep going. I’m turning 37 this year and I think, for a long time there, I never thought I would have creative success. I saw it happening all around me, but it was never quite within reach. I’ve been lucky to meet so many people who were generous in what they shared with me about business and believed in what I was doing.

For every supposed failure along the way, I learned something, and the one thing that never faded was the urge to create, whether anyone was going to pay me for it or not. So when I think about my greatest creative inspiration, I think it’s all the people who I’ve met over the last 18 years who have made their own dreams happen, and were also generous enough to share small bits of wisdom that have stuck with me.

How would you describe your art in three words?

Textured. Messy. Colorful.

It bears the colors of the Black Liberation Flag, created by Marcus Garvey in 1920 for the Universal Negro Improvement Association, his organization dedicated to championing Black pride, racial unity, and the need to free Africa from white rule. Hammons’ homage is a valuable work of art in its own right and sold at auction in 2017 for more than $2 million.

The exhibition chronicles events that took place across the U.S. after police officers killed Black civilians including George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor. “It takes visitors on a journey from defiance to acceptance, from racial violence and cultural resilience, to grief and mourning, hope and change,” said Melissa Wood, a media manager at the Smithsonian Institution.

David Hammons is known for drawings, sculptures, and performance art, including the early “body prints” he made by greasing himself with margarine, pressing his body into large sheets of paper, then dusting the images with ground pigment to emphasize skin color, body parts, and clothing. After attending art schools in California, he joined the scene of ’70s New York, where he made sculptures from “the detritus of urban African American life.” This included hair gathered from barbershop floors, chicken bones, and empty liquor bottles: works described by MoMA’s curators as “iconic examples of American Conceptual Art.” They call installations like a foreboding metal basketball hoop and a sweatshirt hood mounted like an African mask “critical commentaries on the clichés of growing up African American in the U.S., from the nearly impossible aspiration of becoming a sports hero to the danger of wearing everyday outfits that are perceived as menacing.”

In addition to MoMA, Hammons’ art is in the permanent collections of major museums including SFMOMA, the Whitney, the Walker Art Center, and the Studio Museum of Harlem. I’d been hoping to speak with him about the installation at NMAAHC, but as widely reported, he does not consent to interviews. As stated in his MoMA biography, the artist is “[reluctant] to participate in exhibitions of his own work [and] fiercely [guards] his status as a cultural outsider, while simultaneously continuing to produce work that reinforces his reputation as one of the most relevant and influential living American artists.”

“Mr. Hammons doesn’t have to show up for commentary; he has spoken,” said Dr. Cheryl D. Holmes Miller, a graphic designer who has taught at Howard University, Art Center College of Design, and the University of Texas. “Are we listening [to]— which far exceeds the task of merely viewing— the flag?”

While Dr. Miller underlined that she is not an art critic, she is passionate about advocating for social justice in the fields of art and design. “I can say that the African American flag gives visual creatives of all colors hope and the inspiration to create unapologetically,” she continued. “Now, global visitors can ponder its meaning for themselves. It is an artifact that speaks on its own terms, charging us to its truths.”

Dr. Miller said she thinks the flag poses an important question to its viewers: “Are we hearing righteousness wave? We should, and be inspired to make art a tool for social justice, change and democracy.”

“I see hope for freedom, prosperity and unity for all Black people in the U.S.,” said Rakibat Abiola, who teaches English Language Learners at an international high school in Brooklyn, New York. “Whether we are African-American, African immigrants, Caribbean immigrants, Caribbean Americans, Afro-Latinos, biracial and multiracial Blacks, and other Black identities.”

Over several days, I was able to connect with members of the African American Graphic Designers Facebook group and ask their opinions. Many look at the flag and see conflict instead of freedom, prosperity, and unity, while some see as one artist’s work rather than an authentic symbol emanating from a broader movement. “This is just commercial art,” commented Austin, Texas-based designer and illustrator Terrence Moline. “To me, the American flag is like the N-word. It has always been a symbol of contradiction and oppression. Colors cannot change that.”

Brand strategy team leader Craig Brimm from Atlanta saw something a bit more pointed and subversive in Hammons’ flag. “It looks like a boogie man flag. Something to scare the shit out of white folks,” he said.

Paul James, a Brooklyn creative who specializes in urban and multicultural markets, isn’t entirely sure the flag is successful. “This flag has good intentions, but its message misses the mark,” he wrote. “In the constant battle for full affirmation of African American lives, it says that Black people are here. But using Pan-African colors for the traditional design creates a posture of conflict. It’s a reaction to imposed conditions, an honorable but misguided attempt to project being fully part of the American experience while being different and apart.”

Like Moline, James sees the American flag as essentially unchangeable. “If you want to righteously claim America, claim the traditional flag, all of it, and make it yours,” he continued. “Rock the red, white and blue… with dreads, an ankh tat, gold fronts and a college degree.”

Atlanta-based illustrator Donald G. Wooten sees Hammons’ flag as a superficial gesture towards a larger, ongoing structural problem. “What could this piece of cloth clarify for the past, present or future America… Black, white or otherwise? Not. A. Damn. Thing,” he commented. “So let’s be realistic. It doesn’t stop bullets. It can’t keep a family warm. While you may be able to picnic atop it, you can’t eat it. You can’t wear it to improve your chances at a job interview, be considered fairly for anything involving credit, or lessen the extra attention Black men such as myself get from the authorities or from anybody else that has the privilege of considering themselves superior.”

While many designers of color are split on whether or not Hammons’ flag accomplishes its goals, it can be seen flying in windows, doorways, and stoops in historically Black neighborhoods like Harlem. It is a symbol of pride that continues to resonate with many, including a designer in the Facebook group who asked to remain anonymous. “My most profound experience with Hammons’s African American Flag was when it hung as a banner at the 125th Street entrance of the Studio Museum in Harlem,” they said. “It carried so much meaning not only because of the confluence of the Pan-African colors replacing the red, white and blue of the stars and stripes, but as a symbol proudly celebrating the art and artists of the African Diaspora. The Studio Museum building…is being [rebuilt, and] I can’t wait to see the flag there again, welcoming all to the new space. Until then, the red, black, and green flag lives on in many versions sold by street vendors throughout Harlem.”

Free timed-entry passes to the National Museum of African American History and Culture are available on their website.

Header image by Rob Corder on Flickr.

While the Mosaic Tile House is open to most through self-guided Saturday afternoon tours at $20 a pop, I am lucky enough to find myself personally escorted about the kaleidoscopic grounds by none other than the lady of the house herself, Cheri Pann. She and her husband, Gonzalo Duran, have lived at 1116 Palms Boulevard since March 1, 1994, when they bought the house in its original, ho-hum state. A grainy photo of the pre-tiled iteration of the house is displayed in a plastic frame on a tiled bistro table at the entrance of the front yard. The original house appears pedestrian and quaint, painted in what looks like a light moss color with red trim. While other buyers might have simply thrown on a fresh coat of paint or done a bit of landscaping work and called it a day, Cheri and Gonzalo had other ideas. 

“We bought the property to build our art studios,” Cheri tells me at the top of the tour. She has rust red hair and a big grin she flashes at the end of most sentences. “Then we started tiling it right away.” After 29 years of nonstop tiling, the Mosaic Tile House is now a veritable fortress of prismatic wonder, with completely tiled pathways, archways, walls, benches, and sculptures throughout. 

Cheri slowly leads me through the front yard, her delicate voice bouncing about the shimmering structures with the sunshine. I follow in awe. “I make all the tiles you see,” she says proudly. “Gonazalo makes the blue and white ones because his major in art school was illustration, and he likes to illustrate quotes; they’re everywhere. But mostly I make the tile and then he sets the tile and makes the form.”

Cheri and Gonzalo are both trained fine artists: Cheri’s worked in paint for the last 63 years, while Gonzalo specializes in painting and constructing automaton sculptures. “I have a Master’s in Fine Art from university, so that’s what sets this house apart from folk art,” she says. “Everything’s done through the eyes of painters. That’s what we both do, mainly.” Neither Cheri nor Gonzalo had any real experience in mosaic tiles before they started tiling their house together, but nevertheless, they felt compelled to do so. 

The intense love that’s shared between these two artists radiates from each tiled detail, from the love letters to Cheri that Gonzalo has painted onto his illustrated tiles, to the hearts patterned throughout the property, to the countless other tender moments embedded into the design. I ask Cheri how she and Gonzalo met. “He was working at [Culver City paint shop] Nova Color, where I was buying paint, and I reached over the counter and started kissing him,” she says directly. “And here we are, 31 years later! So it pays to reach over the counter and kiss someone.” I laugh nervously, replaying the recent interactions I’ve had with the shopkeepers at the art store in my neighborhood. 

“I guess for your generation, it’s really hard to meet people; you have to go online,” Cheri continues, her thoughts unspooling gently as we walk. “But, see, I have to tell you: there’s somebody right in front of you, and you have to just be aware when you go shopping, when you’re doing anything. I met him while he was selling paint, for goodness sake. It took a long time though, because he was a confirmed bachelor,” she admits. “It took him seven years to move in. We’d already built the studios and everything. I’d already been married twice though, so I didn’t care.”

Cheri guides me down a pathway to the side of the house as I haplessly take photos that don’t even come close to capturing the surrounding splendor. “I get a kick out of sitting down and watching people explore and have so much fun,” she says of people like me visiting her Mosaic Tile House for the first time. “Sometimes it’s kids, but mostly it’s adult couples. It’s also nice for me to get to look at it through somebody else’s eyes.” When she and Gonzalo first started hosting tours back in the mid ‘90s, they’d have about 15 to 20 people come each month. But since the advent of Instagram about a decade ago, that number has climbed to 50 to 150 visitors a month, all funneling through during a three-hour window on Saturdays. 

When guests arrive, they can take a print-out of features to find around the grounds, including an elephant with a chicken on top, a flying man, an iguana, a panda, and, one of Cheri and Gonzalo’s latest additions, a dragon. But otherwise visitors are encouraged to explore in whatever direction they’re pulled, choosing their own adventure. “I like it,” Cheri says of having strangers in her space. “I let them explore, and then they get what they get from it. But I’m always happy to answer questions, no problem.” 

We come upon a man quietly tiling one of the house’s already tiled walled. “This is our incredible worker Gerardo,” says Cheri. “He’s been with us for 15 years. He works here full-time. Gonzalo shows him which tiles, and he’s the one who actually puts the tiles on the wall now.” Each segment of the house features a carefully considered amalgamation of porcelain oddities, scavenged doo-dads, and pre-loved tchotchkes. A curvature of coffee mugs loops into the sky to my left, green glass bottles melted flat in Cheri’s kiln swirl in a pattern of concentric circles beneath my feet, and a large caterpillar bench protrudes from one of the walls.

Cheri excitedly brings me to a small mirrored box that’s been built into the wall by the caterpillar bench. “This is going to have shoes in it,” she explains. “We already had some shoes in it, but it got wet from all of the rain.” She then ushers me into her studio to show me the replacement shoes in question. “The only time I’ll take people inside the studio is if they really show interest in my crazy paintings,” she says as we enter a large room filled with tables covered in tiles in various stages of production. “But most people don’t even look at the paintings. They’re not religious; they’re just very personal. People don’t know how to deal with that.” Two of the walls in Cheri’s studio are covered in a series of brightly colored portraits— one wall features paintings entirely of Cheri, and the other is just Gonzalo. “These are all Gonzalo, from hair to no hair,” she says with her biggest smile yet. 

A menagerie of miniature shoe figurines is displayed on one of her work tables, which will be placed in the mirrored box in the wall. Like many of the building materials used in the house, these shoes were a donation. People bring items to Cheri and Gonzalo for their mosaicing, sometimes even in truckloads. “Social media works really well in that way too,” says Cheri. “You can say ‘I need this’ and you’ll get 400 pieces of it.” They also source supplies from the 99 Cents Store and Goodwill. 

Through a door at the back of Cheri’s studio is Gonzalo’s studio, where she and I find him hunched over a workbench while wearing a metal face mask and using a sparking mechanical tool. He greets us kindly, but is too focused on the task at hand for much more than that. “Gonzalo will work on a project for a bit and then just move onto the next,” says Cheri. “Men are so different from us. Haven’t you noticed that?”  

We move on to the back of the backyard beyond their two studios. Cheri shows me her hot tub that’s shrouded in a canopy of tiled arches. She uses it every night. We head back in the direction we came in, where Cheri points out a wall that depicts characters and scenes from Alice in Wonderland. As my tour with Cheri winds down, Gonzalo ambles out of his studio. He insists on taking a special photo of me in a strategically placed shard of a mirror. He tells me exactly where to stand, and positions my iPhone in front of the tiny mirror just so, so that he has the perfect angle to snap the picture. “Now you’re part of the town,” he says. “Hey, that’s a nice ring,” he adds as he hands the phone back to me, no doubt assessing how he’d be able to incorporate the aquamarine stone on my finger into his next project.  

The Mosaic Tile House is more than a house, and even more than a work of art: it’s a journey, a physical encapsulation of Cheri and Gonzalo’s love for one another, and their love for one another as artists. And for now, at least, that journey continues, despite running out of real estate. “He has more ideas, and I say, ‘Well, I don’t think there are many walls left here,’” Cheri says. She explains how they’ve consulted with architects in the past who have told them that they can’t tile above a certain portion of the house’s facade, so all they can do is paint. “We have to move and start with a new house,” Gonzalo jokes. Or is he?

Cheri and I have completed our loop of the grounds and find ourselves back in the front yard at the base of an orange tree. A woman walks by the house’s front gate on the sidewalk and compliments Cheri on her beautiful home. I ask her what her neighbors make of what she and Gonzalo have created. “Well, they like it, but almost no one on the block has seen the house,” she says. “They’re not drawn to mosaic tile; they take it for granted. Even the neighbors on either side of us hadn’t come here until finally they visited last year.”

“I’ll visit you anytime,” I tell her. And I mean it. It’s time to go, but I don’t want to leave. The Mosaic Tile House is an escape from reality; a magical realist dream world concocted by two abundantly generous spirits united by their love of art, each other, and an insatiable desire to keep creating. “We had no clue that this was what this was going to turn out to be— and that we would still be obsessed with it,” Cheri says, reaching up to pick one of the perfectly ripe oranges above her. I thank her for her kindness, and for so intimately opening up her home and heart to me. “Yeah, a little too intimate, huh? But I’m a sharer. Cheri the sharer.”

2

— Anyone else obsessed with trawling the Christie’s auctions while daydreaming about art you can’t afford? Always lots of interesting pieces to be found, and the images are nice and big too. For example, Grayson Perry’s The Island of Bad Art is well worth a zoom around, even if most of it does feel like a personal attack.

— More overdraft-troubling loveliness to be found at Projekt 26, purveyors of midcentury Polish posters. Even if you’re not going to dip your hand in your pocket, it’s an incredible resource for typography and color palette inspiration.

— Louie Schwartzberg talks about the craft and technology that goes into his mushroom time-lapse videos. The results are quite beautiful, but if you’re currently watching The Last of Us, watching this will probably trigger intense fungal panic.

— Ridiculous tables from the 1979 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons DM’s Guide, including the Unexplained Sounds and Weird Noises Table, the Chance of Monk Stunning/Killing Opponent by Height Table and of course the Random Harlot Table. (I’m *rolls* a haughty courtesan!)

3

— Really enjoying Fleishman is in Trouble on Disney+, which weirdly reminds me of Cameron Crowe’s Singles for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. Respect to the makers for faithfully adapting Kelly Blair’s original cover design for the opening shot and titles. More of Kelly’s work here.

— The history of LEGO’s smaller and cubier Modulex system, tracing its evolution from 1960s architectural modelling tool to project-tracking aid to signage system. Warning: watching this video will result in significant eBaying. I’m the proud owner of one Modulex brick (thanks to the incredibly generous Caz Mockett at last week’s Bricktastic convention) and it’s adorable and I need MORE.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header photo by the author.

That does not allow too much of a space-time continuum window to see Kunz’s narrative, satiric and comic paintings in her premiere art gallery show outside the ghetto of design and illustration. The Philippe Labaune Gallery (534 W. 24th Street) is the first contemporary art gallery in the United States specializing in “high-end” narrative art, comics and illustration.

On view in Wit & Wisdom is a series of original paintings from Kunz’s Another History of Art, presented alongside covers of The New Yorker. “Contemporary aesthetics are juxtaposed onto art from the past through the point of view of ‘a secular female,'” state a gallery text, “breathing new life into works by old masters such as Rubens, da Vinci, Hockney and Magritte, as if painted by women of the modern era.”

After a packed opening on Feb. 9 where fellow artists, art directors and patrons joined to celebrate Kunz’s breakthrough, I asked her to tell us how she felt about the event as well as the com-mix of art forms that she’s excelled at for decades.

This is your first painting exhibition in New York City at Philippe Labaune Gallery. How does it feel to have broken down the barrier between wall art and printed art?
Very honored! I was thrilled when Philippe called and offered me a show. I always thought that the barriers between the disciplines are manufactured, and I never understood why narrative art is considered less valid than “fine” art. In Europe there are far fewer issues with artists doing a variety of things, and I always thought it was strange that there is such a hierarchy of what is supposedly important and what isn’t in the American art scene.

So, you don’t see art in those binary terms?
I’ve always thought that the borders are fluid and porous. I love to see what other artistic people are doing, especially when they’re experimenting in multiple creative areas.  

How did you find the Philippe Labaune Gallery?
I have Barbara Nessim to thank for that.  She hosted a studio visit last fall with a few artist friends, and in our discussions, Philippe Labaune’s name came up. Everyone was excited that there is now a gallery in Chelsea that appreciates and elevates narrative art, illustration and comics. The following day we happened upon the gallery and I spoke to Assibi Ali the director. He took my name, I sent a few samples of my work and was astonished when Philippe actually called! I’ve had some bad experiences with galleries (I’m sure other artists can relate) and it seems that many gallery owners are just plain mean. I have no idea why. I even remember having conversations with Marshall Arisman about it.  This experience with Philippe has been amazing and I couldn’t be happier.

The exhibition is decidedly curated so that your work dominates the rooms. Yet only comparatively few of your images are on display. How was that decided?
I have an extensive archive, so I put forward some suggestions. But Philippe ultimately curated the show. I’m happy with the work he chose. Sometimes I’m just too close to my own work and I can’t figure out which paintings are better! He wanted New Yorker covers because of the gallery aesthetic, and he also wanted some larger scale works so I think it all works together well.  

There are indeed images that were done as illustrations. How do you distinguish the hierarchy between the arts, or doesn’t it matter?
At this point in my career, I don’t really think it’s for me to decide what is more important, although I do have my opinions! I became an illustrator because I needed to make a living and being a gallery artist wasn’t even an option. I have always been a working artist, and I think I have a working-class work ethic.  Plus, I always thought that visual story-telling is important! We humans are story tellers.  Also, I feel so privileged to have worked with great print art directors who gave me a lot of creative freedom and never dictated content. So, I never considered illustration to be a lesser art form in any way. 

Each of your pictures triggers something in my psyche, but “The Daughter of Man”, the riff on Magritte, has a special resonance. What does your work trigger in you?
You know, that’s really hard for me to say. As an illustrator, I work as more of a collaborator and I make work that has to perform a function for a client. And as an “artist” when I sit in my studio and make my own work without any direction, I allow myself a lot more freedom and I never know where the paintings are going to end up because I don’t do sketches. I allow myself to wander a bit more. It’s a more intuitive and emotional process. I suppose I’m influenced by the culture but not always consciously. For example, the paintings in the book that I made during the Trump presidency are weirder and crazier. I think I internalized that nothing around me was making sense, and the political insanity was somehow reflected in my work.

What would you like to be the outcome of this exhibition?
Well, it’s always nice to see the paintings just as I painted them after working in print for decades. I really think the gallery will do well because in my view it’s an important gallery for our time, and I’m very happy to be part of it. I’d love for more people to ultimately consider published and narrative work as the sophisticated art form that I believe it is.

@Yeosb Rats: “they spent all their money on that rather than giving their employees a decent pay rise?” 

@Fernandoaviv: “Personally I believe this campaign is getting out of control it’s becoming a nightmare 💔”

@seherrafiq4: “That’s scary.” 

Now, dozens of Yayoi Kusama-bots are left trapped behind glass windows, endlessly locked into mindless production of her famous polka dots. Their eyes follow passersby as they paint random splotches on their glass prison walls. If you aren’t familiar with avant garde art history, you would never know by looking at them that Kusama’s dots are in fact a life-saving method of healing a deeply hurt and very human mind.

I know because I use this therapy myself. 

I’ve been drawing patterns for as long as I can remember. When I fall into the deepest depths of despair, sometimes the only way I can pull myself out is to sit down with a pen and just draw: line after line, dot after dot, until I can breathe and see clearly again.

And I’m far from the first person to heal by making patterns. From murals painted on cottage walls to dense patterns tattooed into skin, generations of artisans in virtually every culture have created ornamental designs for as far back as we can remember. I’ve made it my purpose in life to study how the patterns have conveyed deep meaning, bound communities together, and perhaps healed the mind of the artisan. 

While most of the names of her predecessors have been forgotten, the figure of Yayoi Kusama rises above all others when it comes to painting repeating patterns. As a rare example of a prominent woman in New York’s 1960s avant garde art scene, few would link her modern paintings of enormous, mesmerizing “infinity nets” back to folk pattern traditions ranging from Australia to Nigeria. However, like many artists before her who have suffered from debilitating mental conditions, Kusama’s practice is treated as uniquely hers. 

It’s well known that Kusama suffers from conditions like anxiety and depression. Shortly after a close call with death by suicide, she voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric facility in her home country of Japan in the late ‘70s. Since then, every waking moment of her time is spent creating art. Kusama continues drawing or painting dot after dot, building an endless oasis of pattern. “I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art,” she has said. “I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.” Polka dots are her life-saving therapy. 

How many others, I wonder, could find solace with little more than some paints, a brush, and a light suggestion to paint a few dots, just to see how it feels? This is certainly not a universal panacea— art therapy doesn’t cure mental illness on its own. But how would we know the possibilities if we don’t try? Does this practice become less accessible if we link it to a single, unique, “great artist?” 

In the highly acclaimed documentary Kusama: Infinity, the artist speaks of how white male artists like Claes Oldenberg and Andy Warhol copied her work in the 60s, presenting their versions in well-established galleries as their own. Today, however, she has surpassed them in commercial success as the world’s most profitable living female artist. Alongside her work, her face and figure have blown up to unprecedented heights—quite literally, as giant balloon copies of her body loom over Louis Vuitton storefronts in London in Paris. 

For their first collaboration in 2012, LV covered handbags, coats, backpacks, and more with fairly uniform dots. The healing magic of the artist’s hand quickly vanished as her work was commodified and mass produced. Her work is so flattened that it’s not surprising when online commentators describe it as “just dots, tbh.” Under one of my videos, more commenters joined in: 

@dlisbergsonton: “What is there to see about her ‘art’ .. just dots.”

@8ontheside33: “What art ??? It’s dots”

@efenyamebekyere: “She literally got famous for drawing circles 😭😭😭 y’all anything is possible”

LMVH, however, has gone full-throttle on that one theme that they see as summing up Kusama herself: “dots, I guess.” Following the success of the first campaign, the company has poured a mind boggling amount of resources into the 2023 collaboration 11 years later. Louis Vuitton storefronts have drowned in a dizzying flood of polka dots, many of them placed by hand by unnamed shopworkers. The stores hawk a stupefyingly large array of products: Kusama T-shirts (yours for only $1,160.00), sneakers ($1,350.00), pajamas, bikinis, and of course, many, many handbags. These overdone and understyled products have led to tough reviews of the unquestionably lazy design efforts behind the 400-plus items in the collection. 

Even more befuddling than the overbloated collection is the promotion strategy. Kusama’s body has joined the dots in becoming just another pattern: she is replicated again and again, floating among bulbous pumpkins on multi-story billboards, bouncing in white space within a Louis Vuitton gaming app that no one asked for, and of course, meeting windowshoppers with a glassy gaze as hyper-realistic storefront robots. 

This motif seemed to work for the brand in 2012 when they began sculpting Kusama’s body as storefront decorations, but the animatronics and digital animation have led the theme too far down into the uncanny valley. It seems like Louis Vuitton has overestimated today’s excitement over humanoid imagery and mistakenly discounted the growing fear of an artificial intelligence takeover. While AI code lacks a body, it often has a face—usually, a woman’s face, rendered smooth and poreless. It appears on Ai-Da, the humanoid hottie credited with ushering in “the age of the ‘ultra-realistic’ art robot,” on the glistening “Instagram Faces” of beauty influencers, and on the softly glowing AI portraits of stolen digital art by apps like Lensa. And of course, there’s the dubiously inclusive, “mixed race” Lil Miquela, a CGI influencer worth millions. As infinite glossy faces blur the boundary between human and humanoid, app users have begun to report facial dysmorphia. Some of us are beginning to forget what our real faces even look like.

People are afraid. Artists are alarmed at the possibility that no one will hire them if their work can be easily replicated by a machine. Younger and younger Instagram users are anxious that they’ll fall into obscurity if their real life face can’t match what they produce on screen. Just Lensa alone has brought up deeply concerning ethical issues, from the release of confidential medical records to child pornography. The reasonable fear of human labor being replaced by machines has long been a concern. But in too many cases, that fear is directed as hatred toward Asian workers, stereotyped as “robotic” themselves. Did Louis Vuitton consider that they may have replicated a techno-orientalist archetype when they built an army of smoother, younger, and unfortunately creepy Yayoi Kusama lookalikes? 

Louis Vuitton has assured us that they are “working directly with the artist, at the artist’s direction.” While there is no reason to doubt this, the absence of a public statement from the artist herself adds to the unsettling nature of the project. This silence might be strategic— a canceled interview with Vice in 2017 revealed to many that the artist harbored racist sentiments. At the same time, her lack of comments make the silence of her roboticized body all the more blaring. The artist appears less like a human using her art to work through struggles with mental illness than an increasingly profitable object.

Louis Vuitton has degraded a deeply healing expression of cultural tradition into a luxury good, implying that you can only come close to the magic of her ornament if you can cough up enough cash. And even then, it’s a low-quality copy of Kusama’s dazzling originals. 

A comment by user @y3llowduckies says it all: “kusama stress relieve dot become other’s stress.”

Isabella Segalovich is a writer and educator who studies the intersections of craft, art, and politics. Her “anti-authoritarian folk art history” videos have amassed over 190 thousand followers across social media platforms, and in 2021, she was included in an article in Architectural Digest on “where to find the best interior design content on TikTok.” She is also a contributing author and TikTok correspondent for Hyperallergic, a professor of design history at Kean University, and a faculty member of the New York Crit Club.

Header image by Brecht Bug on Flickr.

The Colours of Africa, an online digital exhibition of work by 60 African artists from the continent’s 54 countries, is based upon the idea of a kaleidoscope where each artist’s contribution is represented by a facet of color. In its non-linear, non-hierarchical structure, no one comes first or last. Creatives from a wide range of disciplines (architecture, painting, ceramics, writing, engineering, and the performing arts) were invited to select a color and create an original piece of art that would represent their country as well as express on a personal level what it means to be African.

The interface’s randomized navigation tool gives each visitor a unique path through the art and gives all the contributors an equal chance to be seen. There is a pleasing element of surprise for the viewer as they click around the color wheel, exploring the art in a playful and serendipitous way.

The project was designed by typographer/designer Noel Pretorius and his partner, digital strategist Elin Sjöberg, in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture and Design Indaba. “The concept came from the idea of seeing the world through a number of different lenses or viewpoints and how these stories together create a larger tale of the multifaceted continent of Africa,” Sjöberg said.

The project began in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. “We used the idea of the randomized kaleidoscope to break away from the strictly linear existence we all experienced during the pandemic,” Pretorius said. “You’d get up in the morning, get a cup of coffee, get onto Zoom…it was a very linear way of being. We were looking for a way to do something in the digital world that was inspired by physical art, yet would provide a new experience every time.”

The interface’s visual appeal is enhanced by the letterforms of Movement, Pretorius’ African dance-inspired variable typeface that mirrors the triangular shapes of the kaleidoscope’s rays.

Google Arts and Culture reached out to partner with Design Indaba as a way to include African art in its online collection of work from large institutions around the world. Design Indaba’s Ravi Naidoo and Priyah Pillay in turn reached out to Pretorius, who’d spoken at the 2019 Design Indaba conference. Their collaboration was inspired by his 2008 project Them-and-Us, which paired 20 European and 20 African visual artists, designers, illustrators and photographers to address the broad themes of tolerance and intolerance.

 “Them-and-Us was a labor of love,” Pretorius said. “Where that project came short was that although we wanted to curate work from all over Africa, it was so hard to reach artists in remote areas that most of the contributors ended up being from South Africa.”

This required the team to get creative. “For Colours, Ravi and the team at Design Indaba had already done the hard work of sourcing amazing talent from the entire continent!” Pretorius continued. “It was more or less two years from start to finish. Additionally, each artist was paid $500, so everyone who contributed was commissioned.”

To find artists in smaller countries where Design Indaba didn’t already have a footprint, such as Guinea-Bissou, they interviewed creatives who already had a history with the organizations and asked them for new leads. Many of these artists are entirely self-taught, as their countries don’t have art institutions or design schools.

“Colours of Africa is deeply rooted in exalting African design and creativity, and finding artists across the continent who exemplify these qualities was paramount to the selection process,” Pillay said on curating the exhibit. The Design Indaba team made sure the show’s perspectives covered a wide range of the gender spectrum and were careful not to edit any individual point of view.

“We offered creative guidance, but did not censor or steer the artists’ messages,” she continued. “Choosing narratives aligned to the intent of the project was an important part of the selection process. We also paid close attention to diversity and inclusivity, making sure we gave underrepresented groups a fair chance to participate.”

“To be African today is to have a very particular position in a world in which your culture and your identity is undermined, undervalued and considered to be unimportant,” Gabonese photographer Yannis Davy Guibinga said in a statement for the show’s site. “Being African is knowing that, despite the world’s misconceptions, you have a deep understanding of your story, your heritage, the wealth of your culture and the strength and pride of your ancestors.”

Pillay agreed. “Truthfully, I do think Africa is often overlooked as a creative powerhouse,” she said. “It’s been a slow burn for art and design but things are definitely heating up. We are not reliant on outsiders telling our stories; we have the means and platforms to share them in first person with the world. African artists are trending on Spotify globally, we have fashion designers featured at international fashion weeks, we have directors staking their claim at the Academy Awards, and the list goes on.”

The innovative design and inclusive structure of Colours of Africa presents the art world with a complex, eye-opening experience of what it means to be African, shaped directly by the artists who live there. The project radiates a feeling of love and pride in heritage as it illuminates a range of vivid cultural narratives.

She transformed that complex thought into 30 paintings, a book HarperDesign will release later this month, and an exhibition that opened last Thursday in New York’s Chelsea district.

Like the paintings themselves, the opening party was intriguing, multicultural, and cerebral, with a lively palette, various boldface names, and thoughtful composition. Guests arrived to a large bowl of perfectly yellow lemons, with cookies and cheese straws arranged on pastel-hued glass and china plates. The labels under the pictures were handwritten on the wall by the artist. The guests were dressed in everything, from leopard prints, to knits with pink tassels, to leather and jeans.

It was crowded. When I arrived, there was a line down the street, a little polite reshuffling of bodies to fit into the elevator and stairwell, and then standing three deep to get a close look at the paintings. Family and friends of the artist were there in full force. It seemed as if some hadn’t seen each other since the pandemic began, with hugs and kisses all around. Many guests were longtime fans, collectors, and Instagram followers. Others were gallery-hopping on an early October evening and happened to find themselves there. It was all good.

Katherine Finkelstein, Joey Frank, and Lucy Kaminsky are friends who arrived together. Kaminsky told me that she loved “Lulu Holding a Birthday Cake” because she’d been at that party, which she said was for Kalman’s granddaughter. Kaminsky pointed out Kalman’s daughter Lulu, Lulu’s children Olive and Esme, Bruno the Dog, and the red balloon on Lulu’s head.

Daisy Fornengo works at the gallery, and at the time of our conversation, she told me two-thirds of the paintings had sold. “The buyers are people who love New York and connect with her work. Many have been following her for years,” Fornengo said. When I asked if she had a favorite painting, she selected “Morandi’s Studio” and said, “I love all the little vignettes, especially the pictures on the wall. And I love the chair too.”

Jan and Wijnand Looise are a married couple from Amsterdam who put the opening on their itinerary during a past visit to New York. They learned about it from Florent (Morellet), owner of the shuttered Meatpacking District diner/artists’ hangout known for its un-designed signage and menus by Kalman’s late husband, Tibor Kalman. Jan is an academic researcher, Winjnand makes landscape paintings, and together they provide management consulting services. They expressed mutual admiration for this portrait of Edith Sitwell, the British poet who reportedly fell in love with homosexual men.

“I paint, and make stuff, and am writing a children’s book about dreaming,” said Corrine Rendinaro, who follows Kalman on Instagram. “Matisse is painting in bed with a long brush strapped to a pole because he was [debilitated by] cancer, and couldn’t paint any more, and that’s also why he began working with cut paper,” Rendinaro explained. (I did not know that. Did the professor in your 20th Century Art class mention that?)

Ron Mwangaguhunga writes about politics and the media for HuffPost. He’d stopped by to see the Donald Sultan “Yellow Mimosa” works in the adjacent rooms. After perusing Kalman’s work, he gravitated to “My Father Holding Me,” a portrait of the artist as a child in her father’s arms. “Look, he loves her so much, he’s in ecstasy,” Mwangaguhunga commented. “It must be beautiful to go backwards in time, and remember a father who was so in love with you. My father was never like that. And look how she painted the scene in pink and brown— almost membrane colors, like flesh and blood.”

Sculptor and textile artist Lucie Rosicka was there with painter Filip Svehla, and they gravitated towards “Matisse with Odalisque.” Kalman’s handwritten caption read “Matisse and Model Holding Each Other,” although drapery, a screen, and an easel separate the subjects. It’s a different kind of holding. “The style is a little bit naïve, but I admire the colors and the fabric quality,” Rosicka said. “This picture reminds me of a painting my parents bought years ago of a woman in striped pants. It was in the house I grew up in.”

The colors also earned comments from husband and wife duo Buzz Wei, an architect, and Vita Yang, an illustrator who likes to draw people on the subway. “Pink and green are my favorite combination,” Yang said. Wei focused on the chair in “The Plumpest Raspberry Tassels,” and noted that he was also drawn to a reflection in the mirror “which gives an indication of the whole space.”

“I was at her ‘CAKE’ event!” exclaimed Carolina Swan, referring to a 2018 launch party for Kalman’s book of cake-inspired paintings with recipes by Barbara Scott-Goodman. “I follow her on the ‘Gram and dabble in some artwork myself— gouache painting.” Swan attended the opening with her friend Claudia Lopez, a documentary filmmaker. They both loved the “Lulu Holding a Birthday Cake,” as well as “Woman Carrying Ill Dog.” “That’s because my dog was sick,” Lopez added.

All the responses were personal, evoking memories of sweet or poignant moments in their own lives. But none were as personal as that of Kalman’s son Alex: “My favorite is the painting of life,” he said, with his niece at his feet. “My mother and grandmother and my sister and her children.”

“Women Holding Things” will be at the Mary Ryan Gallery, 515 West 26^th Street in New York City, through November 12.

Married to George Lois for 72 years, it was a whirlwind love affair that began on the first day of their first year at Pratt Institute. They eloped after their second year, and a short while later George was drafted and sent to fight in the Korean War. Rosemary took a job as an advertising designer for Reba Sochis, then worked as art director for Fairchild Publications, and later, promotion art director for Mademoiselle magazine. When George returned from the war, they moved to Greenwich Village, where they lived for 71 years and, together, raised their children, Harry Joe and Luke.

I wrote this in 2017 after admiring Rosemary’s paintings that revealed her sublime fascination with machines. I wrote the story below, meanwhile, following the publication of a brief monograph.

I reprise the latter as a tribute to Rosie’s long and beautiful life.

George Lois’ latest book, Lewandowski-Lois Paints Machines, is a heartwarming account and visionary overview of the life and work of his partner in love and art, Rosemary Lewandowski-Lois.

This project is close to George’s heart, and it will be a feast for your mind’s eye. Prepare to enjoy the true story of a beloved dynamic artist by a beloved dynamic artist—with a “‘soul’ bringing to life the inanimate,” writes George.

The subjects of Rosemary’s portraits do not pose for her. She paints them from memory, because she “knows” them so intimately, prompting the painter Raphael Soyer to say that her portraits “tell too much.”

After her first show in 1967, the critic John Canaday wrote in The New York Times, “Her paintings leave you wondering why [Fernand] Léger bothered to simplify machines as he did. … Léger’s simplification even begins to seem more like emasculation.”

The renowned photographer Irving Penn wrote, “Her images are magical … each painting goes far beyond what the camera can do.”

If you’ve ever wished coffee table books felt more like rock documentaries, you’ll love The Steve Keene Art Book. High-quality photos of Keene’s work are juxtaposed with essays and quotes about his art from an impressive list of “talking heads” like Chan Marshall of Cat Power, Will Oldham, and members of the band Superchunk. You can check out some of his paintings below and buy the book at Hat & Beard.

“This guy must be the most prolific artist of all time.” – artist Shepard Fairey

“[Keene is an] assembly line Picasso” – TIME

“By some measures, Mr. Keene […] is one of the most successful artists in the world.” – New York Times

“Whether they realize it or not, most rock fans of the past 20-odd years, especially indie rock fans, already know the work of artist Steve Keene.” – Variety

“Warhol claimed he wanted to be a machine, but Keene IS a machine.” – artist Ryan McGinness

“…slapdash yet distinctive. The brushstrokes thick, the figures he replicates en masse are
compelling and relatable.” – Brooklyn Magazine

Earlier this month at his first art show since 2019, Steve Keene — one of America’s most collected, beloved, and affordable artists — sold over 500 original artworks. Now, an excerpt from The Steve Keene Art Book is available via the legendary “indie nerd bible” chickfactor, whose editor-in-chief, Gail O’Hara, edited the book. The featured piece is an essay written by Sam Brumbaugh, a curator of Threadwaxing Space, one of the numerous music venues where Keene got his foothold in the NYC downtown indie scene in the 90s. The first ever published collection of his art, the #SKartBook is out June 14 via Hat & Beard and Tractor Beam following a successful Kickstarter campaign with over 600 backers, as profiled in Forbes. Nearly the same size as the LPs that Keene worships, The Steve Keene Art Book is a love letter to the most prolific American artist of all time from his adoring public.

For more about Steve or to see some of his work, click on this documentary playlist: https://bit.ly/3KFzebN

Though perhaps best-known for his deep ties to the 90s indie rock scene — thanks to work with Pavement, The Apples in Stereo, The Silver Jews, Bonnie Prince Billy and more — Keene is a legend amongst music and art fans as much for his cheery, automated style, as for his everyman prices of just $5 – $10 each. After a 30+ year career producing over 300,000 paintings, he’s become what many refer to as the “Johnny Appleseed” of art.

Produced by Daniel Efram over a span of six years, The Steve Keene Art Book was born from efforts to document a 2016 exhibition at legendary artist Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects gallery, but expanded to include original works sent in from dozens of Keene collectors and Kickstarter supporters. The book includes long-form essays and insight into Keene’s life, space and process from rock stars like Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Will Oldham, and members of Superchunk, as well as anecdotes and personal stories from artists like Ryan McGinness and Fairey, journalists, collectors, art-world insiders and devoted fans around the world. Alongside a dazzling collection of 277 of Keene’s works, Efram takes readers into Keene’s utilitarian chain-link “painting cage” for an all-access pass into the artist’s fascinating systemic technique.

Specific details of book:
$95 // Hardcover // 264 pages
Published by Hat & Beard and Tractor Beam
Pre-Order Date: January 25 / Official Pub Date: June 14

More about Sam Brumbaugh:
Sam Brumbaugh is a D.C.-based novelist (Goodbye, Goodness) who has written for Open City, Chickfactor, The Minus Times and Vice. He co-produced the documentary Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt. He is a music producer and programmer who booked shows in NYC in the ’90s, and has worked for the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Incredible creativity is visible from the minute you walk in, and the exhibit’s powerful stories, strokes, and colors immediately give you a feel of how good it’s going to be. King Pleasure transported me into Basquiat’s world through its replicas of his living spaces, childhood drawings, family photos, and the personal objects that bring him to life.

The beginning of the exhibit displays Basquiat’s early cultural influences through art, sports, and music, and you can see how his exposure to Black creators would go on to inspire much of his work. There’s also a space dedicated to his famous studio that displays how he worked and what he used as inspiration. It was carefully curated by his close family, which gives this specific part of the exhibit a sense of authenticity and warmth.

One of the most interesting aspects of the exhibit is the music playing throughout the various spaces. You can hear the artists Basquiat listened to when he was painting or partying, including Elton John, Charlie Parker, and the great Jimi Hendrix. The contrast between the songs made me think of the contrasts in Basquiat’s art, which can go from smooth and simple to chaotic and wild. Exhibit sponsor Spotify created a “Listen Like Basquiat” playlist for the exhibit, so you don’t have to attend the show to hear music from his childhood, nightlife, and studio life.

As I walked through King Pleasure, what struck me the most is how relevant Basquiat’s work still is to this day. As a man of color, Basquiat experienced police brutality and racial discrimination firsthand, and you can see references to this throughout the exhibit. He often biked around the city because he had trouble catching a taxi, and you can find his bicycle on display in the exhibition. He often used his art and unique voice to raise attention to the very common issue of police brutality, and his painting Jailbirds is a great example.

In September of 1983, another young, aspiring artist named Michael Stewart was badly beaten by the police and died days later. This situation shocked the East Village art scene, which Basquiat felt deeply. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, his sister Jeanine Heriveaux mentioned that recent political issues like the 2020 murder of George Floyd inspired the Basquiat family to create the show. King Pleasure is full of evidence that Basquiat witnessed similar injustices, which made think how little we have learned as a society. Almost 50 years after the iconic Black artist’s heyday, we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

This showroom of Basquiat’s unseen art shows the world a different side of this creative and struggling artist. In a way, it allows us to see through the troubled genius label to the everyday human being we’re still getting to know. Throughout King Pleasure, you can feel all the inviting, sometimes loud warmth of the artist’s chosen city, which makes it feel different from a typical museum exhibit.

Just when you think the exhibit is over, it sucks you back into the ’80s nightlife vibe with a replica of the VIP room from the iconic East Village club Palladium. In this space, you’ll find two magnificent, massive paintings Basquiat created for this place where he often partied, showing how New York’s wild spirit from the past is very much alive. Thanks to the late night ambiance of the music and lighting, I couldn’t help but leave King Pleasure feeling energized and ready to party, even if it was only 3 PM.

Anna Fusco | @lordcowboy

One glance at Anna Fusco’s Instagram account brings her vibrantly grounded personality to life. The work by this multidisciplinary artist is highly emotional, engaging, and full of wit. My favorites include journal-inspired pieces that feel almost too special to share, featuring phrases such as “invite me to your dinner party” in her lovely, eclectic handwriting. The artist often shares profound personal insights on her stories, including, “Making something isn’t about convincing or tricking somebody else into wanting it. I focus on making what I want and care about; sometimes it resonates with others, many times it doesn’t.”

Maisie | @myfawnwy

There’s pattern design, and then there are Maisie Broome’s works. She uses color, texture, and pattern to create distinctively unique designs that explore the transformational effects of nature. In fact, her marbling designs are so magical that I was mesmerized when I watched a video on her feed of how she did the work. Broome’s account is dynamic, hypnotic, imaginative, and, quite honestly, intriguing. There’s no doubt you’ll be scrolling for hours with pure entertainment.

Courtney Hassmann | @courtneyhassmann

Having worked in the ceramics world since 2014, Courtney Hassmann knows more than a thing or two. Yet, there’s something perfectly imperfect about Hassmann’s works. While they feel thoroughly refined, they also feel admiringly unpretentious. As much as a unique piece of art, each mug tells its own story. Working through emotions via illustrations, colors, textures, and gorgeous details, these utilitarian objects are functional for a morning coffee cup while bringing a sense of insightful, reflective wisdom with each sip.

Willem Verbeeck | @willemverb

Willem Verbeeck is a photographer from LA, and with over a quarter-million followers on Instagram, he’s making a name for himself in the industry. His images, often full of still, quiet moments, are stunning. So often, Verbeeck’s shots on his feed showcase gorgeous colors of moments sans human subject matters. In fact, the images feel almost ghostly, highlighting mysterious moments that feel somewhat like they shouldn’t be viewed. I also think the highlights are essential to his account, showcasing behind-the-scenes and personal moments that make his images that much more engaging.

Sad Girls Club | @sadgirlsclub

In a world where social media can be so negative, finding an account dedicated to destigmatizing mental wellness felt refreshing. Sad Girls Club is a nonprofit organization with an Instagram account dedicated to millennial and Gen Z women, girls, and femmes of color. The account not only shares helpful tips and tricks regarding mental health but the design and execution of the account are stunning. The posts are as engaging as they are paramount via a mix of typographic styles, gorgeous examples of gradients, and bright colors.

You can tell Jonathan Chapline understands the inherent discomfort of an increasingly digital modern age in Sprawl, his solo exhibition at The Hole L.A. His trippy techno landscapes combine reference points as varied and intriguing as late 20th century architecture, computer graphics, and the foreclosure crisis. Chapline’s crumbling, pixelated scenery adds a sense of unease to our culture’s growing interest in escaping physical reality, and like any good sci-fi, you could see his work as a warning. After all, if we’re not taking care of the real structures we use on a daily basis, who’s to say we’ll take any better care of imaginary structures?

Sprawl will be open at The Hole L.A. until May 28th. Check out a selection of images from the show below.

The Hole L.A. is delighted to present Sprawl, an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by the artist Jonathan Chapline. This show marks the first solo exhibition to be held in The Hole’s sparkling new 8000-sq. ft. Hollywood location. In recognition of the expanded spatial opportunity, Jonathan will be presenting several large wall works which explode his signature style into new dimensions of scale and perspective.

Jonathan Chapline has received serious attention in recent years for his striking polymorphous style and smoothly gradated brushwork. Inspired as much by midcentury modern architecture as he is by early computer software, Jonathan’s synthetic landscapes and interiors are the culmination of a complex process that combines sketchbook drawing with digital rendering, only to inscribe the computer’s 3D models back onto the two-dimensional picture plane. Though his paintings derive from coherent life studies, they are imbued with the perspectival ingenuity of a software program, allowing the artist to tilt, drag, and reconstitute the layout from every conceivable angle. In his meticulously hand-painted works, Chapline winkingly evokes the generic, and playfully builds his visual language around the terminology of modeling – both in relation to mass-produced architecture, and the technical defaults of digital design.

Raised in the suburbs of Waco, Texas, Chapline grew up surrounded by 1970s ranch-style houses, taking comfort in the banality of his community’s vast and hardly distinguishable sprawl. Now based in Brooklyn, Chapline has, in recent years, increasingly turned towards the visual landscape of his childhood for inspiration – a world of cut-copy motifs, subtle asymmetry, and the horizontal development of the American West. Having long been inspired by the clean lines and basic shapes of industrial design, Chapline recognized a conceptual emphasis on the household entering his work around 2008, the same period as the Great Recession’s foreclosure crisis. In our current moment of rising gas prices, divided communities, and high-tilt urbanization, the status of the single-family home and the ideal it embodies remain nearly as precarious for many Americans today. Stretching the familiarity of the suburban setting to its breaking point, Chapline reconstitutes from nearly abstract forms and supple gradients the feeling of warm concrete on a cool summer night, or the sinking discomfort of mistaking another’s warmly-lit window for your own.

Having typically remained within the interior or yard of suburban-style bungalows, for Sprawl, Chapline has adopted an expanded scale and perspective which represents a major departure from his previous work. In new paintings like Night Watch, 2022, he reimagines Western American exurbs on the scale of a neighborhood grid, and from the vantage point of glitching computer software. The exhibition also features a room of drawings, appropriating the stylistic specificity of architectural drafts, which serve as imaging sources for the 3D software Chapline models his paintings on.

With this in mind, Austin Lee‘s art feels like a breath of fresh air. For over a decade, he’s brought the charming, chaotic feel of childhood back into high art institutions with his bright, expansive paintings. You can find some of his best work in the glossy, gorgeous new book Like It Is, which focuses on a recent solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch. Though Lee’s art often deals with the stark, adult subject matter of modern life, his scrawled handwriting and expressive, clay-like aesthetic add a sense of humor, comfort, and empathy to whatever he covers.

Pre-order Like It Is on Pacific’s website.

Once reserved to the writings of science fiction, for over a decade now Austin Lee has explored the shrinking dichotomy between the real world and virtual reality. His hypersaturated airbrush paintings are created through a combination of traditional painterly techniques, along with the latest digital tools.

This extends into Like It Is, where Lee further investigates recognizable cultural motifs and art historical imagery, spanning from archival photos and tarot cards to Vermeer paintings. Screaming with color, each psychedelic composition is partly inspired by the famous Rorschach test, a diagnostic psychological study that uses a subject’s perception of inkblots to analyze their personality characteristics and emotional functioning.

Like It Is is a softcover publication documenting Austin Lee’s recent solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, as well as a series of drawings and interactive AR elements.

The series emphasizes the threat of climate change through an experimental exploration of the central theme of fire. The works are abstract, yet jarring, and showcase the arid risk we face as a detrimental result of climate change. This evocative Earth Day exhibit highlights the power of art to both show and tell what the future can look like if we continue on our current climate trajectory.

“Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure” is the first major retrospective to be curated and executive produced solely by the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. His family’s 15,000-square-foot collection of over 200 never before or rarely seen paintings, drawings, ephemera, and artifacts paint an intimate, humanistic portrait of the artist. 

The focal point of the installation is a recreation of Basquiat’s Great Jones Street studio by architect Sir David Adjaye OBE, featuring sketchbooks, notes, clothing, records, books, and VHS tapes. The opening of “King Pleasure” aligns with the release of a Rizzoli Electa book of the same name, authored by Basquiat’s family and designed by Pentagram Partner Abbott Miller. Its design evokes the warm, organic feel of a family scrapbook, emphasized by Basquiat’s hand-lettering along the book’s edge. 

Last fall, Miller and Pentagram announced the exhibition with a promotional campaign that used portraits of Basquiat throughout his life. This visual identity nods to an intimacy and personal perspective that sets “King Pleasure” apart from other exhibitions of Basquiat’s work. The accompanying graphics emphasize his singular legacy by using the same vibrant colors seen throughout his paintings.

 “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure” will see a year-long run through April 2023. Tickets are available now on the exhibition’s site.