I first met Steven through a mutual friend at a party almost a year ago.  I was immediately intrigued by his wit and overall disposition. Through the omnipresence of Facebook in modern day networking, Steven and I became friends.  When I finally clicked the link to his website, I was pleasantly impressed.  Initially taken by the color, Steven’s collages peaked my curiosity and I had to know more.  Ostensibly his works read somewhat like hand made, neon-colored eye spy puzzles, but with further investigation they stand up to the interest of the viewer revealing more with a longer look.

TSV video editor, Emily Biondo, and I made the trek up to Baltimore on a Sunday afternoon.  Luckily, we hit no traffic between the District and Steven’s studio and surprisingly arrived right on time.  Steven met us out front and jovially escorted us up the stairs to his studio toward the back of the building.  Steven’s workspace, as one might expect, is full of color.  Paint and cut outs cover the walls, a box full of paper and a variety of in-process pieces surround his worktable.  The space is clearly active and well used—Steven, admittedly, spends more time in his studio that in his apartment.

Steven makes collages, a term he intentionally decided to embrace when referring to his work.  Though, his painting background is apparent in his color construction and also in his compositions.  The pieces range from small still lives, to large abstractions, and soon to be full room installations.  His work comfortably contextualizes itself in the contemporary painting dialogue.  He exclusively uses hand painted paper, original textures, etc.— never using found images or patterns.  Through his material manipulation of cutting and pasting, he also activates a dialogue about material and process based work.

While we were there, Steven gave us a demo of how his process happens.  His pieces start as individual parts and are assembled together to create layered scenes.  These scenes exist in between the space of his reality and his imagination.  Pulling source material from past experiences, to Netflix movies he streams in his studio, the work exudes a somewhat autobiographical feel.  For example, Steven said that the scissor cut outs sometimes acts as a personal signifier.  Using scissors his sister bough him from Christmas, Steven starts a piece by cutting.  Pulling from a stockpile of hand painted paper, old collages, and left overs, he begins laying out the composition—and it grows from there.  He cuts, adds, rearranges and repeats.  He said he could sit for hours without noticing how much time has gone by.  A somewhat meditative process leads to a perfectly assembled piece.  Although sometimes, this perfection flips on itself and Steven decides the work is no good.  In this scenario, he cuts it up and recycles the parts for future use.

It seems apparent that Steven’s process is primarily additive, so I asked if there is a subtractive element in his process.  I was surprised to learn that his process has a strong subtractive component.  He often edits out whole sections or quietly adds a subtractive mark with his Martha Stewart brand hole punch.   As Steven was explaining this part of his process, I realized that he interacts with his 2-dimensional work in a very 3-dimensional way.  Picking pieces up, moving them around, layering on the front and the back, his relationship with the piece is not just head on.  It is all-inclusive– each section, mark and moment completely under his control.  Everything is intentional and thought about, spatially and compositionally.

As the visit continued, we started to discuss the bigger more abstract piece hanging on the wall.  He explained to us why he uses neon colors—which is fascinating (see video) and how each individual aspect of the piece has significance.  Although, he specifically notes that he is not articulating a narrative.  Rather, the work is a physical amalgamation of stimuli from his daily life and imagination providing a visual and physical platform for the viewer to experience.  He does not expect the viewer to dissect the meanings of each mark or object, but he intends for the viewer to decipher their own meaning from the work.

More than two hours after we arrived, we packed up the video gear and headed back toward DC.  What we learned while there was captivating, entertaining, and well articulated.   Steven not only brings an innate talent to his process and work but also piles on literal and conceptual layers.  Steven really is an artist’s artist.

Check out his work at www.steven-riddle.com and nudashank.com

Magnolia Laurie is a painter who works in a variety of mediums that include installation, drawing and sculpture. She currently lives in the Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden, and teaches drawing and painting at Maryland Institute College of Art and American University. Laurie’s professional programming has been hearty to say the least. Concurrent to her continual participation in fellowships and residencies, Laurie’s work was included in selected group exhibitions at New York University and Maryland Art Place. During that time she also had her first two solo shows in Brooklyn, NY, at DRWR Gallery and Causey Contemporary. As a result, two of her paintings are now part of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art’s permanent collection in Kansas City, MO.
After meeting at the Baltimore Penn Station on a Monday afternoon, following the conclusion of one of Laurie’s morning classes, we went straight to the studio. Emerging from a road flanked by industrial warehouses on each side, our car entered a wide clearing with trees in the distance and nobody in sight. The studio location was filled with the kind of seclusion and quiet that’s often rewarding for studio practice. Once indoors we entered a large room that had piles of Laurie’s paintings all over the place –sixteen on one wall alone. Small works were wrapped in bubble and stacked in boxes. Stacks of larger paintings sat up against the wall with one or two lying on the floor to dry. Views of other buildings came in one window; and views of trees came in through another. Against the wall sat a reclining chair with piles of books surrounding it. We both proceeded to pace around the room. Laurie talked about her process and work rhythm, taking cues from paintings on the wall that were facing us, many of them still in progress. A bit later, we both sat down to discuss the places she’s lived, the content in her work, and that which informs it.

In addition to her relatively nomadic experience in the US, moving from city to city, the artist has lived in several other countries. Much of the thought put into her work’s content is sparked by her experiences abroad. During a visit to Italy, she was reacquainted with a cultural sense that she said she hadn’t felt since her time growing up in Puerto Rico. She referred to this sense as ‘a casualness with history’. Things like a walking tour on top of the centuries-old cathedral roof, or the sight of a city dweller’s small shack touching the back of an ancient amphitheater, were some of her examples.

Laurie noted while living in Zurich, the distinct  and often socially minded intentionality that permeates the way things are designed there. ”It is so contrary to what we’ve been accustomed to in the United States, in terms of safety guidelines, codes and precautions,” she says. A parallel influence came to Laurie during a more recent stint in Turkey, when she saw temporary, makeshift structures that people had assembled out of recycled materials and various scraps. Laurie’s imagery includes environments–sometimes arctic, sometimes desert, and structures which, in the paintings, occasionally appear to be wrapped in coded flags (at times the same ones historically used by ships in distress). They convincingly stem from her perspective on the environment and cyclical nature of our habitat. These representations are imbued with a sense of impermanence.

During the visit, I mentioned to Laurie what I am most taken with. Her paintings appear to be quite aware of dialogue occurring in contemporary art, yet at the same time detached from our own times with an existentialist mood. I was most impressed with her compositions that mesh together abstraction (marks “for marks’ sake”) with marks that represent concrete symbols or rudimentary forms/objects. Each work seems to be a different image, a different moment, despite the fact that she starts and builds up numerous pieces simultaneously. They are demonstrative of a well developed sensitivity to painting.

She also reads a lot, and creates titles for her works that are starkly poetic. In answer to the question of what she is most content with at this point, she said she was happy that pieces of her work could have themselves singled out by a curator for museum acquisition. After all, and due to her continuing practice of balancing teaching with artist production and networking, I am confident there is much more to look forward to, by way of Laurie’s poignant voice.

www.magnolialaurie.com

Reaching the gallery is like stepping back in time to the lower East side of the 1980s New York.  In fact I almost walked by the gallery, located in the H&H Arts Building on a nondescript, warehouse-filled street just west of downtown Baltimore.  When I found the building, I was kindly buzzed in through an unmarked door and boarded a graffiti-filled elevator (“SIX PEOPLE MAX!!” warned a sign) that, at the risk of dating myself, reminded me of the mens’ room of the old CBGBs.  The elevator opened onto the communal space and kitchen area for artists whose live/work studios dot the building’s third floor, and I located the gallery space just to the left.  After the raw edginess of the building, I was unprepared for the cool, white space and the entire wall of windows on the street.  Alex Ebstein and Seth Adelsberger, the gallery’s co-directors, welcomed me into the space and gave me a quick overview of their current solo exhibition Bed Bath and Beyond featuring the work of Ryan Lauderdale before we sat down to talk.

Accomplished artists themselves, Alex and Seth realized several years ago that there was a lack of exhibition opportunities in their city specifically for emerging artists seeking to establish a career in the art world.  Nudashank (itself an invented, dada-ish word coined during an online brainstorming session) fills that niche by providing both a curated environment for emerging artists as well as needed mentoring in the business aspects of working in the art market.  The two directors take their mission seriously, and run their space as a for-profit business venture.  That said, their primary goal is to nurture new talent.  Rather than develop a stable roster of represented artists like a traditional gallery, they prefer to act as a “stepping stone” for artists wishing to reach a regional or national audience.

Knowing that they specifically seek out emerging talent, I asked them how they choose their artists and to elaborate on the mentoring that takes place.  Alex and Seth generally mount group shows, both to accommodate more artists and to work around a unified context.  Most of their “homework” comes from online research, studio visits and watching particular artists over time.  While they receive a steady stream of unsolicited submissions, they tend to favor doing their own networking.  They also consider recommendations from artists with whom they currently work.  While there is no “typical” candidate, they do seem to work often with artists recently out of school who are “serious” about developing an art career.

While those artists may demonstrate great skill in their pieces, they often have limited experience in working within the gallery system or interacting with collectors.  To that end, Alex and Seth mentor artists on topics like the pricing of pieces, arranging installations, documenting the exhibitions for posterity and speaking with potential collectors about their work.  On the topic of collectors, Alex and Seth acknowledge that Baltimore does not have a well-developed collector base of emerging art like New York or Los Angeles.  They have been very ambitious in taking their gallery on the road to art fairs, such as Aqua in Miami, showcasing not only new American talent, but also putting Baltimore on the national art map.  They also have a thriving on-line presence and a significant portion of their business is conducted entirely online and shipped throughout the US.

Developing and broadening that collector base is one of the challenges they face in growing their burgeoning business.  “Art as a luxury good”, according to Seth, is not part of Baltimore’s ethos.  Along with taking their wares to art shows, they co-curate shows with galleries in other cities (such as Chicago’s Western Exhibitions) as well as work to place their artists in other group shows around the country.  I was impressed with how robustly they fill their exhibition calendar, given that both of them have their own artistic pursuits to schedule around.  This unfortunately has limited their abilities to staff the gallery full-time (Nudashank is open by appointment).  Ironically though, most galleries (Nudashank included) do not have the foot traffic to justify full-time staff — hence the reliance on dedicated collectors.

This space is obviously a labor of love for these two entrepreneurs, and so I wanted to know what facets of the business bring them joy every day.  They both immediately answered that the interaction with artists is what keeps them going.  They love studio visits, especially at art schools, and watching artists grow and develop their ideas over time.  Opening the gallery space has also strengthened artist networks within their own community, allowing local artists who may not have previously known each other to interact and exchange ideas.  This networking has also had a spill-over effect into their own artistic practices, challenging them to incorporate more conceptual ideas into their own painted works.

I asked Alex and Seth if they had any parting words of advice. Their advice, which they follow themselves, is to network, network, network!  The internet is the new marketplace for exchanging ideas, and working with social media is now a crucial (and inexpensive) way to develop a following for emerging artists.  Follow the programs at galleries that show works that might be in the same vein as your work.  Chat with other artists, and consider organizing your own pop-up shows with other artists in your social network.  Finally, they state it is vital that your own website has as high-quality images as you can afford and make sure that all your contact information is on the website and easy to find.  You never know when you might receive an email from an interested collector or curator.

Chris Samuels in an artist raised in metropolitan Detroit mixed with a brief stint in the deep south of Florida. In 2009 he co-founded the artist-run gallery Org Contemporary. In its brief existence from March 2009 through June 2010 Org Gallery offered a glimpse of some of Detroit’s most cutting edge and critical art. Art being made by emerging practitioners from around the country including the New York based collective, Corn Row Rider. Org also showcased Detroit’s own next generation of innovators. Such local talents include Kevin Beasley, Co-founder of the artist run CAVE Gallery, who is now in his second year at Yale School of Art. This is how I first met Chris. In November of 2009 I curated, CONSTRUCTS, at Org Gallery.

Since that time I have closely followed Chris’s career. In 2010 he attended Skowhegan School Of Painting & Sculpture, his only formal art education. His work has since been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and throughout Michigan including a solo exhibition at the Museum Of New Art Detroit. In 2012 Chris will exhibit new work at the Austin Museum of Art’s Arthouse at the Jones Center in Austin, TX.

On this April evening I met Chris at his sprawling loft apartment and studio in Detroit’s Eastern Market District. Chris’s loft is indicative of many such artist spaces throughout Detroit; spacious, beautiful and affordable. Chris has walled off the front portion of his loft to serve as the base of operation for a practice that eschews the isolation of conventional studio production.

Chris’s studio thus functions more as a place to test out ideas and new arrangements. The real work is always fully realized on site.

We simply began our conversation at the studio so I could get some shots of Chris in his own space and to get a glimpse of some of his tools, so to speak. Once I was shown where the ideas gestate, we headed a few miles north to the North End Studios Gallery to view and discus his practice in the context of his current show, Self-Titled.

A little back-story is necessary at this point. North End Studios is a once vacant building that has been re-occupied by a group of recent graduates of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit’s North End on Grand Boulevard east of Woodward Avenue. This group of young artists share studio space in the huge building for minimal rent. The third floor of North End is an expansive open gallery space with concrete floors and no windows. It is completely open save for the concrete pillars that support the next floor above.  North End is yet another example in Detroit of a collective space, run by a group of young artists seeking to bring cutting edge ideas and projects to view.

In Self-Titled I noticed familiar elements from previous projects of Chris’s. I say projects because Samuels’s work seems to require the context of multiple pieces, but also, Chris always responds to the space he is occupying with his works. It is in this regard that he isn’t interested in a traditional studio practice. Chris’s work is in the same vein as many young artists interested in a cerebral art that engages in placing, arranging, altering and exposing. In his artist statement Chris says that he “creates works that expose the mythologies of comfort and class in the 21st century while utilizing handmade & every day objects as symbolic cues.” Unlike many such young artists however, Chris’s work transcended my expectations of such pursuits and exposed a quiet and extremely subtle beauty below the surface.

His choice of materials was inescapable; rubber stress mats, metal construction studs, and medium density fiber-board. Industrial materials, each placed, arranged and altered throughout the gallery floor. There is no question this work has a minimal aesthetic on the surface yet for me Samuels work is incredibly formal in its construction, a term I use to reference its source material rather than actual fabrication. A monochromatic palette of black, grey and khaki pervade the entire show, giving each piece a visual continuity creating strong spatial relationships between the works. The more time I spent in the space the more it became clear to me that part of Samuels true genius lies in his composition and spatial engagement. This is where the work most effectively transcended my expectations.

On the wall are hung unassuming scanner prints of objects placed, arranged and altered on a scanner bed, each hanging from a single black clip. On the far left wall as you enter the gallery is a video projection which upon closer observation reveals itself to be a looped projection of the very electrical closet it is installed next to. This piece was one I found to be particularly engaging. Again it was something you might want to glance at and walk away from, but encountering it in this space I could not. I have seen other exhibitions at North End, many of which have been very good, but always this electrical closet has exposed itself as a problem of the space to be ignored. Here Samuels is not simply acknowledging this spatial flaw, he is probing it and deconstructing it in order to create what I found to be an image of duplicitous beauty.

You can see more of Chris’s work at: christophersamuels.com

She participated in DCAC’s Sparkplug program and later took residency at Pyramid Atlantic for two months where she learned screenprinting and helped redesign and build their live, work, exhibition space.  I visited Deborah at her apartment in Adams Morgan on a warm windswept day this past November, excited to continue our conversation that began while installing work together for a show in October. Her home is a place where creative energy runs rampant.  Stepping into the large open interior, paintings, drawings, doodles, and wall sculptures lurk around every corner. Some are made by Deborah, some by her young daughter Zoey, and some by her husband.  It is a positive force to experience first hand.  A pentagonal shape drawn on the floor with faded white tape quarantines her studio, located in the back corner of her apartment.   “The rules of the house are a trying attempt by all,” she exclaimed with a smile.  “Indoor soccer games between Josh and Zoey will occasionally send a soccer ball cascading into a wet painting.” But this doesn’t bother Deborah.  The frenetic ambience of her home sets the tone for the breadth of living that she distills on her painted surfaces.Her daily practice is rooted in an interdisciplinary approach that weds her tactile sensibilities with her academic aptitude.

Combining her background in the medical sciences with her affinity for collecting things, Deborah incorporates the vast array of stimuli that surrounds her in a cosmic soup of art production.Gazing at the multitude of work that Deborah had organized for my visit, I decided to discuss her paintings first.  I asked her about “My sister had a pogo stick,” a large painting bisected diagonally with a minimal, pink upper portion and figurative, earth tone bottom segment.  Deborah explained the juxtaposition of forms in her work as a recurrent theme, representing “a fragmented past and riffs in reality.”  The hard-edged pink portion of the painting signifies her love of the aesthetics of graphs and charts while the expressionistic underbelly of the painting references her memory of friends and family back home.  This dichotomy of empirical evidence continued around the studio in different forms.

We were immediately greeted by bright track lighting and color– a stark contrast to the dark and grey of the day. It was color that first took my attention to the paint on the floors, the stools, and then to the walls. The space was alive with creativity. I was amazed by the amount of work- ranging from drawings on the tables, to paintings stacked against the wall, to sculptures inhabiting the nooks and crannies of the main room, kitchen area, backroom, and closets. Everywhere I looked, there was something to satiate my curiosity.

The main room of the studio has three large worktables, all active with various projects and perfectly lit. On her first worktable were vibrant linear drawings on hand made paper that had been cut out from a sketchbook Carol had purchased from an artist in Martha’s Vineyard. The drawings were loose, colorful, and embodied an aura of inspired moments. The mark moved freely on the page— each moment responding to another part of the drawing. I then looked to my left finding drawings framed and hung on the wall. Noticing the date on the bottom stated 1970, I asked how they related to the recent drawings on the table. Carol described how she had drawn them during this past summer and regarded them as a part of her mobile studio practice. They are strikingly similar to the ones on the wall from over thirty years ago, and I was in awe of the consistency of her mark over the decades. Her approach to these drawings clearly is as unwavering as her love of DC.

After thirty or so minutes of chatting over coffee, we visited her more recent paintings. Again struck by the consistency and energy of the mark, I was engaged by the individual stories of each piece. One piece revealed a border of disguised written word and the next was over seven feet tall. After Carol shared with us that she painted this piece on the floor, I was again impressed and my interest peaked. The paintings are process paintings, similar to her drawings, cohesive in completion but clearly executed with an additive step-by-step approach; all marks, color and materials, flawlessly interwoven to create a visually stimulating experience for the viewer.

Finally, we were introduced to her sculptures. I say introduced as intentionally as she described each step of her process. As we entered the back room of her studio, we were literally greeted by a collection of found object characters, each standing as an individual but composed as if a part of a choir or group picture. The small intimate objects are frozen in space, but contain a feeling of potential energy as if with the snap of a finger they would start moving, talking and interacting in the space.

Again driven by process and response, Carol builds each individual piece from a collection of found objects. These objects range from kitchen supplies, to old phones, to children’s toys and wooden building blocks. She assembles them with hot glue and considers them maquettes, only satisfied once they are cast in bronze which she has done at a foundry in Virginia. Inserting my own bias, thinking these maquettes could stand alone as individual works and do not necessarily beg to be cast in bronze (each weighing in around 10 pounds), I asked Carol why she only considers them finished once they are solidified by the bronzing process. She recognized that this was a difference of opinion reflecting the generations that separated us as artists. For her they were simply not precious enough and to stop the process at the maquette stage would not be satisfying. She did acknowledge many other found object sculptures completed in non-precious materials that she can appreciate, but her pieces are completed once they are cast in bronze. I was struck by this thought and still find myself ruminating on the decisions artists make and how we each determine when a piece is considered complete.

Carol continued to discuss her sculptures, talking about their relationship to old and new family photos in regards to their composition as well as their obvious personal content. She showed one in particular of her father as a young school boy taken in 1911 depicted in a book about Baltimore’s history and affirmed that memory is a large part of these anthropomorphic figures. She is clearly inspired by this new body of work and other people seem to be as well. This work will be on exhibit at Addison Ripley Fine Art in Washington, D.C opening on December 9.

As we started to gather our things to leave, one of us mentioned the word ‘established.’ Carol, with her contagious personality, smiled and laughed a bit, as she reminisced on the fact that she doesn’t feel ‘established.’ When she is in her studio, she constantly feels emerging- continuing to explore, investigate, and discover new creative pursuits and pathways. I, as a young artist, was truly inspired by this notion, and hope that thirty years into my studio practice I embody the same energy and curiosities as Carol Brown Goldberg.

Turning the sculpted spherical brass doorknob, I enter the storefront sunlit space and immediately I hear “Hi Isabel!” Romy cheerily greets me from her office and soon after, “Hello Isabel!” Christopher seconds the welcome. Every time.

Romy Silverstein is Addison Ripley’s Gallery Director and has been for a number of years. Christopher Addison is the owner with his wife and partner Sylvia Ripley who started the gallery over thirty years ago at an old carriage house in Dupont Circle. Together they have created a program that is based on what they like and appreciate and as Christopher articulates in the video – art that is considered more traditional where craft and beauty are more important, over ‘the one-liner’ (that’s my term).

The gallery is buzzing that day. Maybe it was the rain. Foot traffic was bringing people indoors to view the abstract landscape paintings of Mary Page Evans, a Virginia and D.C. based artist. Her work is one example of one of the more traditional artists they work with. Christopher describes in detail notions of perception and observation as it relates to Page Evans’ process within the genre of landscape painting. There is a genuine interest that goes beyond the work and its connection to historical and theoretical references, but to the artist and who they are as individuals–an investment towards understanding content and process within the larger id that in the end, defines what should be a unique and expressive visual language regardless of it’s attempt to be original or begin a new trend. In fact, it is the anti-trend that Christopher and Sylvia are most emphatically interested in.

Pulling out work from the back room I get to see work by Frank Day, Wolf Kahn, Jackie Battenfield and lastly Manon Cleary, whose recent passing has been a huge loss for the Washington art community. Manon Cleary was one of Washington’s foremost artists and has worked with Addison Ripley for years. Her work is figurative depicting graphite nude drawings of herself as well as photo-realistic paintings of flowers and pieces of sky.

Christopher Addison yearns to be engaged by his surroundings and those around him. He occupies his life with work that keeps him happy and that can also pay the bills – which I find refreshingly realistic and fiscally responsible. His longevity in the Washington art scene is a testament to the sound choices he has made. The oldest contemporary art gallery in D.C.! He is an ardent supporter of numerous art projects and organizations throughout the region including Transformer, and advocates for innovative programming that can be seen happening at venues such as the Arlington Arts Center and Pleasant Plains Workshop.

While he is against participating in art fairs, Addison Ripley supports bringing new art to his gallery through a program that was started a few years ago that invites one of their gallery artists to curate a group show. This program has typically exhibited under or unrepresented artists who are considered emerging or mid-career and has brought in a different crowd and experience to the gallery that, as Christopher states “has been hugely successful!”. Yet he is true to his vision by still maintaining the experience to a ‘real’ aesthetic – where the power of lived observation — not diluted by a series of mimesis that puts value on the myth of re-creation rather than the actual creation of the work itself – remains of the utmost importance. There is a bit of romance to his stance and mission and one that is clearly working for him, Sylvia, Romy and all the artists he considers a part of his greater family—and one that I am honored to be a part of. While other galleries have come and gone in this area, Addison Ripley remains steadfast, comfortable and greeting everyone that comes to his welcoming world of art.

This month he is exhibiting paintings by Wolf Kahn and sculpture by Carol Brown Goldberg. Opening on Friday, December 9. Please go to www.addisonripleyfineart.com

I’ve known Ryan’s work for about ten years, from the summer of 2000, when he was a founding member of the artist collective Decatur Blue, located on the floor above an auto-body shop on Vermont Avenue a block away from the 9:30 Club. In those days, as well as now, his work was hybrid:  as an example, an abstract painting in a plexiglass box was connected to a fog-machine which would blow a cloud of vapor across it, so it was sonic and performative, as you watched and heard the machine work.  Not great for preserving the painting, but the piece was unforgettable.

After Decatur Blue (along with Signal 66, another DC independent venue) lost their spaces, he wisely left DC with his wife to get an MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute, graduating in 2007, returning here to work. And in 2010, he received the Sondheim Prize for his show in Baltimore.  As I said in the attached video from the Kojo Namdi show, what was truly signal in Ryan’s presence in this area was that he actually chose to come back here, as an aesthetic decision and a career choice…

Ryan e-mailed me that he was having a show in late October, in New York, Natural Synthetics, at the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, so would I want to see what was up with the new stuff?  Absolutely.  So this first image is from the kitchen, a crib visible, as well as a paper-wrapped shell of a turtle, connected to another white box, by an electrical cord. On the right is an organ, which Ryan retrieved from its almost landing in a dumpster at the Katzen Art Museum at American University.  And what’s audible are insect noises, from another piece in the room.

The next image is closer.  Each sculptural piece in his show also has an audio component, so they’re never only sculptures, but venues for performative events, creating a further level of abstraction.  Next image is one of Ryan’s earlier paintings, in the same room, of a photo-reproduction of an owl superimposed by an extremely abstract form, and what’s significant in this piece, as in all his work, is that these forms are intended to merge, as if they imply each other’s presences.

The radical mystery of that conjunction may be why Ryan Hackett makes art.  These are not hip contrivances, but real inquiries into the deep, obvious creativity seen in natural form, and how conscious human aesthetic intentions may be – ought to be seen – as also fundamentally natural.  So their improbable union may seem improvisational, and sure, that’s what it is – but remember what serious grace has emerged from jazz and rock improvisational expressions…

So then, here’s Ryan inside, with his eyes semi-closed, then outside in the patio under construction, and finally at the entrance to his painting studio.  He doesn’t like to be photographed, for all the right reasons, but here the three images are.

To these next two images taken from one of his newest diptychs, in his painting studio… What Ryan has always moved sort of relentlessly into are hybridizations of the human and the natural, whether visual, physical, or audible, and his new paintings are further such investigations.  This time, he’s merging images of human objects, like a hand-held video camera, with natural forms, like a cicada, and his improvisational abstractions are more complex, and more wildly expressive.

Such abstract expressions used to be ends in themselves, considering artists like Franz Klein or Jack Youngerman, where sheer painterly energy, or the beauty of abstract natural form was plenty enough. But it’s, uh, the 21st century… so.  What’s Ryan doing?

This next image is another fierce union of human structures – a roof antenna – and an elk’s horn, by an even more imposing and complex set of abstract forms.

Ryan says, in his press release: “As our culture moves further from the natural world, we continue to pull certain elements of it along with us. The more we pull these elements along, the more bizarre their manifestation. Nature relaxation CDs, potted plants, and captive animals provide a few eerily soothing examples of how we attempt to remain connected to nature while further embedding ourselves in urban environments.”

But there’s every reason to see these works as allegories.  These 21st century days seem to be all about the ungovernable conditions of both nature and human culture, and our best art reflects the beauties and the truths of this unfolding, vast drama. Ryan Hackett’s hybrids – sculptural, sonic, or painted – demonstrate how both the natural and the human worlds can be reconciled, assimilated – and overwhelmed – by a commanding abstraction, that may represent fate, dharma, divinity, and/or the enduring, essential power of the unknown…

To see more of his work go to  www.ryanhackett.com and to G Fine Art.

When one first walks into Marietta’s studio, you might think she hasn’t been working at all. The walls are bare with seemingly blank small to medium sheets of white and black paper. Her two worktables are absent of any activity and yet are stocked with a variety of scissors, post-it notes, and multiple rolls of different kinds of tape in various gradations of white. No paint, no brushes, no drawings, no mess. Anywhere.

However, as if hiding in plain sight, her work appears before the viewer in glistening shards of reflective tape, cut and composed to create sophisticated systems of geometric shapes, lines and patterns that pay homage to a mathematical form of expression that is at once distant and elegant as they are profoundly intimate. The influence Agnes Martin has on her aesthetic is undeniable. Even the initial grid pencil lines are left exposed to comingle with the layering and built up pieces of tape that immediately recall Sol Lewitt. All the intensity and labor that is absent from the physical studio is embedded in her method of working that requires a huge amount of planning. Yet opposite of Lewitt is the evidence of the hand. It is clear there is a deliberate intention to expose some of the quirky inconsistencies of each handmade cut yet in the end, the hand is quietly subverted by the bigger presence of supreme craftsmanship and the subtlety of the pattern remains steadfast in its mesmerizing, if not obscured elegance.

Marietta found her language and expression through the use of tape. She tells the story of going into an art store in New York City for the first time after moving from Germany, her country of origin. It was an exciting and overwhelming feeling of possibility as she perused through all the varieties of tape displayed before her – unlike anything she had previously seen. As she began to explore its properties, it made sense for her to begin by simply cutting them into angled pieces. These angular shards started to build out into the larger repeated motifs that create her sophisticated patterns that can be as small as an 8” x 11” or as large as a wall installation spanning several feet. Another important factor in her exploration was the delightful discovery of the quiet value shifts that exist between the varying degrees of white, beige and greys both in the tapes as well as in the tone and value of the paper.

“Hoferer chooses materials for their physical properties such as luminosity, translucency and invisibility, reflectivity, glossiness, mattness and frosted texture or because they age and discolor over time as in this series Field 1998-2006. Her choice of white only proves to offer unconstrained variations of “whiteness,” following in the footsteps of monochrome painters, most obviously Robert Ryman. She uses a great variety of tapes -Scotch brand, strapping and masking- that change in size and texture, translucency and reflectivity.”

Mercedes, Vicente

Curator of Contemporary Art, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand

Now back in New York, you can find Marietta working in her studio located at the EFA Studio Center in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. She is currently working on two exhibitions opening in 2012. This January, Material Occupation at the University Art Museum in Albany, NY curated by Corinna Ripps Schaming, and The White Show Part Two at the  Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Pittsburg, PA curated by Vicky Clark. Most recently Marietta had a solo show at Galerie Gudrun Fuckner in Ludwigsburg, Germany (see installation shot). Black and White: Extreme Value, a group show where her work is included, just opened on Nov. 8 at The New York Institute of Technology at Gallery 61. The exhibit is up through Nov. 28, 2011.

The time in Auvillar was full of languid days and nights as I worked uninterrupted in my second floor studio overlooking a pastoral hillside farm. The comforting sounds of crickets chirping, dogs barking, roosters crowing and even the occasional yet unmistakable buzz of scooters speeding across the bridge over the Garonne River will be missed– and summer will never be the same again. However what does remain are the relationships that were made with these three wonderful artists. We shared a lot as a little family of sorts and we continue our dialogue as we are now back in the U.S. The experience from these art residencies always impress upon the importance of building an artistic relationship with other artists in the context of the studio — or at least in the context of their practice, which to me, is the most inspiring part of it all.

To see more of her work go to www.mariettahoferer.com

thestudiovisit@thestudiovisit.com

She was included in the important exhibition One Way Or Another: Asian American Art Now at the Asia Society and Museum, New York, NY in 2006 and Levity at The Drawing Center, New York, NY in 2007 and White Columns in New York, NY in 2004. She has also been included in shows at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, and the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC. In 2010 she had residencies at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA and the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH.

She has worked with numerous printmaking presses and institutes such as: Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA, P.R.I.N.T Press, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, Landfall Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Flying Horse Editions, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, Smith College Workshop with Wingate Studio, North Hampton, Massachusetts, and Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore.

Jiha continues to be an energetic force within TSV and has taken on curatorial projects such as the flat file at the (e)merge art fair this past September 2011 that included previously featured TSV artists Bonner Sale, Ann-Marie Manker and Craig Drennen. The flat file also included artist Sarah Gamble from Philadelphia, PA.

To see her work go to www.jihamoon.com