Arts Briefs: Painting and book discussion in Northampton, an art workshop in Hatfield, and more
Arts Briefs: Painting and book discussion in Northampton, an art workshop in Hatfield, and more
Native
Artist Spotlight: Freiman Stoltzfus
Anabaptist World: You grew up in an Amish-Mennonite community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. How did this shape you artistically?
Freiman Stoltzfus: My formative years in the Amish-Mennonite community may seem an inauspicious beginning for an artist, but I am eternally grateful for my agrarian roots, which were a way of viewing the world through a lens of perpetual wonder with an embrace of nature and the four seasons. I spent my childhood outside: springtime in the orchards, gardening with my mother, summer in the fields, harvest each year, role-playing with neighborhood kids, ice skating and sledding in winter—always outside. I feel particularly fortunate to be among the last generation of children who were granted freedom of movement in the days before surveillance by cell phone and over-zealous helicopter parenting. I enjoyed an old-fashioned childhood with no TV, movies, radio, or other trappings. This gave me the expansive head and heart space to develop a unique (idiosyncratic!) point of view, much needed for an artist.
AW: In what ways did you encounter support and resistance for your art?
FS: I encountered resistance and support in more or less equal measure. In hindsight, I don’t think I was clever enough to recognize resistance to my calling as an artist. If anything, I myself provided pushback as I sought other paths of employment, which ultimately led to surrendering to my vocation by the time I was 21. By nature, I am contrarian, stimulated by opposition. The unwavering support of my mother provided me with the backbone I needed to build a creative life. I didn’t pay attention to those who sought to dissuade me on my path.
AW: You have several paintings with musical titles. What role does music play in your visual work?
FS: Music is central to my work. I fell in love with classical music at an early age; ironically, it’s the most sophisticated and worldly of all musical genres, but it’s preferred in our plain world with its firm rejection of contemporary music. I feel lyrically guided by my lifelong love of composers with whom I feel an affinity: Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Handel, Rachmaninoff, Satie, Debussy, and Bach. Their music has sustained me for decades and has given me an emotional strength to navigate the world. I approach painting in musical terms: always thinking of composition, rhythm, color shades and harmonies, counterpoint, and melody.
AW: How did you come to have a gallery in Lancaster City?
FS: As a native of Lancaster County, the blossoming downtown arts community beckoned with its love of creativity and its support of artists. In 2011, I returned home from New York, where I had enjoyed a few years of academic growth, and the timing was right to open the gallery.
AW: How have you seen your work change throughout your career?
FS: It is strange to see work from decades ago and reconcile it with my present expression. I began at an early age (preteen), and at that point I knew so little about the world or what it meant to be an artist. I did it because it was my primary mode of communication and because it came naturally. Over the years, through study, travel, and experimental periods, I developed a personal style that is still evolving, but has a much clearer direction than in my early years when I was under the influence of many other artists.
AW: What does a day look like for you in the studio? How do you feed your creativity?
FS: I am fortunate to have been brought up with a work ethic that did not discriminate against or highlight particular paths of employment. Show up, do your job, don’t complain or grandstand, and above all, do not think more highly of yourself because your native gifts happen to be inclined toward the arts. I feed my creativity through travel, sketching, curiosity, and generally following threads of passionate interest.
AW: Your work strikes me as simultaneously grounded and transcendent. For example, I notice that you pair a cathedral with trees in “April” and a cathedral with a field of corn in “Field Hymn.”
FS: “Grounded and transcendent” is a perfect way to describe my efforts. I am constantly thinking of the space between heaven and earth: grounded to nature and the seasons while reaching upward.
Indigenous fashion designers, models & vendors converge on Billings for 2nd annual Big Sky Indigifest
BILLINGS – Thirteen indigenous fashion designers, 100 models, runway makeup artists and dozens of vendors are in Billings for the 2nd annual Big Sky Indigifest event on May 11 and 12 at the Doubletree hotel.
The event, open to the public, is a fashion show as well as a business symposium, and it has helped launch many businesses from local to global over the past year.
Angela Howe-Parrish is an Apsaalooke fashion designer who we first visited with one year ago when she officially launched her fashion line, Choke Cherry Creek at the first-ever Big Sky Indigifest in Billings.
“Last year was my first fashion show,” said Howe-Parrish. “I didn’t really know where it was all going to go, but I started getting invited after the first show to more shows.”
Since then, she’s traveled the world from one runway to the next from Paris to New York, and everywhere in between.
“Indigenous fashion is just blowing up everywhere,” said Howe-Parrish.
In addition to traveling, she’s also launched two collections: Honoring Our Mothers and Resiliency. The third collection drops May 20 with a preview at Friday’s fashion show on Saturday.
“My third collection will be coming out on May 20th, which is the Matriarch collection, just to time around Mother’s Day,” said Howe-Parrish. “Where else are you going to see clothing that has an indigenous influence? It’s the beauty of our culture being shown and expressed through fashion.”
Howe-Parrish’s creations aren’t the only amazing indigenous products you’ll find at Big Sky Indigifest, being held on the 22nd floor of the Doubletree in Downtown Billings where the Petroleum Club was previously located.
Indigenous Eyecon is a makeup line designed for the runway and everyday wear, complete with highly pigmented war paint for men and even horses.
“My slogan is transcending indigenous beauty,” said owner and founder Jen Atchico. “When I started this company I just wanted to start with this one pallet and it just flourished into, I have many more, but flourished into what you see here. I have a line of men’s war paint for the pow wow trail.”
Atchico is originally from Fort Peck and currently lives in Seattle. Her business has her jet-setting from one fashion show to the next, doing indigenous runway makeup.
“I travel the world, so I’m an international makeup artist now. After this show, I’ll be going to Cannes, France,” said Atchico.
Atchico’s creativity paired with her MBA makes her an entrepreneurial role model for up-and-coming indigenous designers like 21-year-old Taeshon Mirage Scheaffer, who’s debuting her upcycled couture line at Big Sky Indigifest this year, and following her dreams.
“My main focus of all my fashion is upcycling, so I take something from thrift stores or somewhere like Goodwill and make it my own. I’ll take certain cuts, make my own patterns and add either applique or paint on top to make it my own,” said Scheaffer. “To have flexible paint on top of fabric, I take acrylic paint and mix it with laundry detergent until I find the right mixture, and that allows it to be washed safely.”
All of these designers have elevated their businesses, thanks to one woman’s dream to bring an indigenous fashion show to Montana.
“Our designer wear and all of these items are not just for native americans, but we do have a way of sharing our culture with non-natives that want to wear our items, so that’s a really fun part of it too,” says Cora Kay Chandler, Big Sky Indigifest Founder and Executive Producer at Cora Kay Productions.
The Big Sky Indigifest fashion show is Friday May 12 from 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Doubletree in downtown Billings on the 22nd floor, where the petroleum club was previously located. Anyone is invited to attend. VIP or general admission tickets range from $30 to $50 and may be purchased online or at the door. Guests are also invited to shop 30+ indigenous vendor booths from vendors all across the United States and Canada.
Drake Helps Wizkid Become First African Artist To Land RIAA Milestone
Drake has had many hits throughout his career, and now, the Toronto native has helped Afrobeats superstar Wizkid reach a history-making RIAA milestone.
The RIAA has certified “Come Closer” — the hit track featuring the two artists — as platinum on Tuesday (May 8). It’s the Nigeria native’s third platinum single, following “Essence” (which featured Tems) in November 2022, and “One Dance” (which also featured Drizzy, alongside Kyla) in December 2022.
With this third certification, Wizkid is now the first-ever African artist to earn three RIAA singles. And interestingly enough, “Come Closer” first dropped all the way back in 2017.
The song, originally dubbed “Hush Up The Silence” when it leaked in January and then debuted on OVO Sound Radio a few weeks later, was renamed “Come Closer” for its official release at the end of March.
The track debuted at No. 13 on Billboard’s Twitter Top Tracks chart for the week of April 15.
It marks the third meeting of the two artists, who produced one of the biggest songs of 2016 with “One Dance” (which became Spotify’s first song to hit a billion streams), and before that, brought more than 11 million plays to SoundCloud for WizKid’s Ojuelegba remix, with some help from Skepta.
The video is directed by Daps, born Oladapo Fagbenle in Lagos, Nigeria, who worked on Kendrick Lamar’s “King Kunta” video and has become a regular collaborator of Migos, directing the visuals for “Bad & Boujee,” “What The Price” and “T-Shirt” off the trio’s Culture album.
But despite all of Wizkid’s success with Drake, Swizz Beatz recently claimed that it was he — not the “Laugh Now Cry Later” rapper — that first introduced Wizkid to America.
The producer was a recent guest on Amazon Music’s Rotation Roundtables with Speedy Morman, Nyla Symone, Rob Markman, and Gabe P. During the interview last month, Swizz made a bold statement about his role in bringing Afrobeats to the U.S. audience.
“See, the key thing that you said was you got on a plane and you went to Ghana and now you’re stuck on Afrobeats,” he said. “I introduced Wizkid to America. I was the first person to play his song. Me and my wife were on a trip and we danced to his song.
Chris Brown & WizKid Celebrate Black Beauty In ‘Call Me Every Day’ Music Video
“[I was the] first person to bring Burna Boy to the States. Actually, he had a Ruff Ryders bandana on and I introduced him on the stage. When I was playing Fela Kuti, people thought I was being too African, and that’s how ignorant the energy was at that time.
“But I didn’t let that stop me from moving what I’m moving because it is what it is. It’s all educational. So we can’t be scared of the educational journey of something that sound different or feels different. So for me traveling the world, it’s a whole like — I can’t wait for people to listen to Ebo Taylor.”
He added: “It’s piercing through, by the way. People are more open-minded — they just need the right entry point.”
Native American art on display at Sisters gallery
The third edition of the Homelands Collection, featuring the works of indigenous artists from across North America, is on display at Raven Makes Gallery, a Native American art gallery in Sisters.
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For Scottsdale artists, experimenting is key to growth – The Daily Independent at YourValley.net
Delicate bead paintings, colorful abstract paintings, whimsical ceramics, mixed media and more will be on exhibit during The Finer Arts Galley’s special “Art Affaire” event from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, May 19.
The special evening will showcase the diverse works of its 50 artists, all of whom are Arizona professional artists. The unique gallery is located inside the historic Treehouse building, 6137 E. Cave Creek Rd., in Cave Creek.
One common theme among many of the gallery’s artists is a natural desire to experiment with different mediums and styles. Sometimes, pushing themselves out of their comfort zone leads to an exciting discovery that changes their focus as an artist.
Painter discovered passion for abstracts later in career
Originally from Washington, Jan Griggs has been an artist all her life. But she says she was a “late bloomer” to discovering her passion for abstract art, according to a press release. Not long after she moved to Scottsdale, she took a special week-long mentoring session in Taos, New Mexico that challenged her to be intuitive and spontaneous as she painted. That was 13 years ago, and since then, she has been laser-focused on creating abstract art.
“I love painting abstracts,” Griggs said in a press release. “My work is a collection of places, feelings of color, light and dark, movement and stillness that I translate into abstracted forms.”
Energy, color, light and intuition are the elements that characterize Griggs’ paintings. She works with acrylics on canvas or heavy watercolor paper with a variety of tools to move and manipulate the paint.
“My artistic process is intuitive and spontaneous” Griggs said in a press release. “My parameters are the color pallet I choose and the shape and size of the surface I am painting on. I have a very basic idea of what I want to create and let the flow of color and paint guide me.”
While much of her work is inspired by the beauty of the desert, she continues to be influenced by the cool grays, blues and greens of the Puget Sound area.
Artist pivoted to “paint” with beads
Karen Johnson has always been passionate about art, according to a press release. She attended The Atelier LeSueur in Minnesota where she worked on figure drawing, still life and plein air landscape painting. However her focus changed when she discovered Native American beadwork.
“I collected so many different glass beads, I decided to start ‘painting’ with the beads,” Johnson, a Scottsdale resident, said in a press release. “Beads don’t translate like paint. It’s a very timely process.”
She begins with a photograph, and then chooses from shiny, matte, metallic, opaque and different sized beads that she can incorporate into the picture.
“Colors and values are limited so it can be a challenge to get the look that I’m after correct,” Johnson said.
She draws the picture onto a stabilized cloth and then begins sewing the beads on them. It usually takes a 3” x 3” area before she can tell if it’s looking right.
“Often times, the beads get ripped out and I start over. It is a timely process. It’s all about the beads,” Johnson said in a press release.
Her subject matters range from plants to people.
“When creating, it’s always a story or an emotion that I hope to portray,” she said in a press release. “The beauty of nature is always there. The challenge is translating what I see into a work of art that creates a lasting impression.”
The May featured artists also include ceramic artist Robin Ray and mixed media artist Joyce Hagen. For details, call 480-488-2923 or visit www.thefinerartsgallery.com.
Lumberton native eager to bring economic growth to hometown Mother’s Day
PINE BELT, Miss. (WDAM) – A Lumberton native, who has been living in Atlanta, GA., for the past 12 years, is working to shine a light on his hometown and bring economic growth.
With that goal, event organizer Ladric Kelley and artist Stacii Adams, have a big event planned for Mother’s Day.
“We want everyone to come out, whether you’re Black or white, this is for everyone who has their mother, or even if they don’t, it’s a celebration of life and love,” said Adams.
Nearly 25 award-winning artists are packing their bags and heading to Lumberton for the Ultimate Mother’s Day Blues Festival to honor all the remarkable women out there who go by the title mom.
“We call it ‘The Small City with a Big Heart,’” Adams said. “You got Anthony Hamilton; you got Calvin Richardson; you got Keneisha, who is from Lumberton; you got Chris Crane; you got Nellie Tiger Travis, FPJ, Mr. Smoke.”
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What Survivance Means for Indigenous Artists
DENVER — It is remarkable that experiencing an exhibition composed entirely of contemporary Indigenous art would be remarkable in 2023, but the fact is that these shows are just beginning to happen. Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography, on view at the Denver Art Museum through May 22, is a rare traveling exhibition of Indigenous artists, conceived and staged at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, before its current venue. Co-curated by John Rohrbach of the Amon Carter and Diné artist Will Wilson, the show is divided into three distinct conceptual sections (along with a prologue): Survivance, Nation, and Indigenous Visualities. Each part examines what it means to be an Indigenous artist working today.
The notion of audience is palpable here, especially in the first section, Survivance, which includes work by nearly half of the exhibit’s roster. Survivance is a concept first articulated in an Indigenous sense by Gerald Vizenor, an Anishinaabe scholar who understood the term to mean a continuance of native stories that share the qualities of renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry. The images in Survivance position the inheritors of settler culture as the recipients of historical and cultural reckoning while addressing an Indigenous audience with a subtler message: we are now in the process of reclaiming our own representation. The 16 artists employ humor, shock, and mundane facts, often simultaneously, in their work.
Erica Lord’s single-channel video, “Redman” (2005), speaks memorably and boldly to those two different audiences. Two women, one White, one Indigenous, face each other against a white background. Noelle Mason, a White artist, sings and enacts a racist campfire song, once popularized at Cub and Brownie troop gatherings. As she pantomimes wearing “feathers in our headbands” and fighting with bows and arrows, Lord slaps her across the face, staining it with red paint. With each slap, Mason recovers and recommences, while the paint accumulates across her face. At the end of the four-minute piece, Mason confronts the viewer literally “red faced” as well as bleeding from the nose, her eyes watering with tears. She then defiantly sings the song through to the end again, with renewed gusto. While simply performed and conceptualized, the work stuns by commenting upon so many complicated strands of what it is to be Othered, the “wholesomeness” of the children’s camp song being anything but. As it centers White arrogance, it proposes what response these songs’ writers and singers deserve from the people the songs are about.
Rewriting and re-framing history takes a comical and literal turn with Larry McNeil‘s “Tonto’s TV Script Revision” (2009), in which Sheriff Tonto punishes Richard Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, by dunking his face into a basin of water. Inspired by prison designs, the boarding school was one of many that abused and indoctrinated Indigenous children, advocating a platform of assimilation. Images of Carlisle’s child residents and a photo of the artist himself are framed on the wall behind this scene, functioning as a conscious reminder of the consequences of Pratt’s sins. Shan Goshorn‘s sculpture “Remaining a Child” (2017), also speaks about the infamous Carlisle facility, utilizing a traditional Cherokee “coffin”-shaped basket made of bone X-rays, vellum, and artificial sinew. Handwritten names of children buried at the Carlisle cemetery wrap around the top and bottom of the basket, and the “mountain” basket pattern links the children with their homelands. The bodies of 215 child residents of the school were discovered buried in eight cemeteries on the school grounds.
Nation, the exhibition’s second chapter, speaks about the long history of military service to which Indigenous people have subjected themselves, most notably in Tom Jones‘s photographic series Ho-Chunk Veterans. The images feature what Jones refers to as “memorial poles” for every fallen service member, each consisting of a framed photograph of the tribal member as well as a small bowl of offerings, including their favorite cigarette brands, lighters, and other ephemera. The title “Nation” also refers to sovereign and separate Indigenous nations, movingly communicated in Alan Michelson‘s video “Mespat” (2001). Projected onto a screen laboriously constructed of turkey feathers, the camera continuously pans the 3.5-mile shoreline of Newtown Creek, an estuary dividing Brooklyn and Queens. Mespat refers to a passage along the route known to the native Lenape as “bad water place,” and from which they were displaced by European colonists in 1642. Ambient sound accompanies the video, providing the sensation of bobbing along the waters ourselves, watching the urban landscape shift and turn in real time.
The final section, Indigenous Visualities, is a celebration of self-representation. The works here describe how distinct and varied these ideas of reframed portrayals are — as varied as the 15 nations shown. A painterly, gorgeously introspective standout is Cree artist Kimowan Metchewais‘s undated “Cold Lake.” Layered with photographs, paper stained by rust and tobacco, and “Atakamew-Sakihikan” — the Cree name for the Cold Lake First Nations Reserve in Alberta, Canada, written in western Cree syllabics — the piece hums with the communion and quiet of dawn. Unique from other works on view, “Cold Lake” does not perform the act of speaking to multiple audiences at once, with different messages for each. Expressing the quality of visual sovereignty, it beckons with a signal of blessing, gesturing for all to enter into it.
Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography continues at the Denver Art Museum (100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, Colorado) through May 22. The exhibition was curated by John Rohrbach, of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and Navajo/Diné artist and curator Will Wilson.
Over 46 artist studios and six organizations will be featured in a weekend of free art making activities, performances, film screenings, and more in New York.
In Sherpa’s art, Tibet and California, thangka and pop art, Buddha and Mickey Mouse mingle and morph to create a new visual language.
In contrast to the speed and bravura of gestural abstraction, new.shiver slows time, and invites viewers to ponder how one might shape time passing.
Photographs by Mona Bozorgi and Emma Creighton Hopson are on view at the UK photo fair from May 10 to 14.
From the mid-1960s, when Dodd first took her Masonite panels outdoors to paint, her production has been shaped by observation.
A long-lost Vajradhara sculpture that resurfaced in a Hong Kong collection highlights scholars’ responsibility to mediate between communities and the art market.
With virtual and in-person learning options in London and New York, these courses are intended to give students the tools and confidence to build their careers.
Following a number of high-profile art seizures by the Manhattan DA, the museum will bring on new staff to conduct provenance research.
The 32 houses on the newly designated stretch of Linden Street represent a hodgepodge of styles from Neo-Grec to Romanesque Revival.
Young Native Americans’ work highlighted in new photography display at Sanford Bemidji Medical Center
BEMIDJI — The halls of Sanford Bemidji Medical Center just got a whole lot brighter.
Dozens of photographs taken by four local Native American youth artists during a two-week photography camp last summer are now on display in the medical center’s halls for all to see.
On May 4, family, friends and strangers alike gathered for the grand reveal of the student’s exhibit titled “Bi-dibaajimowag — The Eagles Come Telling Stories.”
Maggi Fellerman / Bemidji Pioneer
Karen Goulet, program director of the art center’s Native American Gallery, expressed how proud she was of the students during the reveal event and is excited their work is being shared and seen.
“This is why I love doing what I do. My goal is to make sure that the world knows more about the wonderful talent that we have right here in our own communities,” Goulet said to those in attendance. “This is an opportunity for students to start young in something they’re passionate about and representing their communities, their nations and their families.”
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Maggi Fellerman / Bemidji Pioneer
A collaboration of Watermark Art Center and Gizhiigin Arts Incubator, the students committed their time and energy to this two-week photography camp under the mentorship of artist-in-residence Falcon Gott of Sapotaweyak Cree Nation and three other area professional Native American photographers.
“I want to thank Sanford for seeing this work, appreciating it and wanting to bring it out and share it. I think this is the first time we’ve done something like this, it was a lot of moving parts and I just really feel like a lot was accomplished,” Goulet said. “I think that all of my ancestors who are from here are all smiling down right now, happy to see this visibility of our community members in a really positive way.”
The four student artists Precious Jourdain, Waabinoo Littlewolf, Waasebiik Belgarde and Malachi Norris were taken through the steps of the working photographs. During the workshop, students were able to gain exposure to professional processes and creative ideas. They made connections with each other and shared ideas and their work, taking full advantage of the experience.
Maggi Fellerman / Bemidji Pioneer
While the main exhibit is through the east entrance of the hospital, more photographs are scattered around the halls. By integrating Native American practices like photographs by up-and-coming artists, Sanford hopes to create a more inviting and educational environment for all patients.
“Sanford realizes the importance of our Native American culture in this region. It’s something to be celebrated and honored, which is why we are here today,” Sanford Health of Northern Minnesota President and CEO Karla Eischens said. “We are excited to be able to display this photography throughout the regional hospital and our clinical locations. So thank you, everybody, for coming and supporting this. I hope we will continue to support our youth and in their talents and efforts.”
Maggi Fellerman / Bemidji Pioneer
Maggi Fellerman / Bemidji Pioneer
Maggi Fellerman / Bemidji Pioneer
Maggi Fellerman / Bemidji Pioneer
Maggi Fellerman / Bemidji Pioneer
Maggi is a reporter at the Bemidji Pioneer focusing on outdoor and human interest stories. Raised in Aitkin, Minnesota, Maggi is a graduate of Bemidji State University’s class of 2022 with a degree in Mass Communication.
The Independent, More Inclusive Than Ever
Important lessons absorbed from cultural upheavals have translated into a more thoughtful fair around issues of representation.
If you were holding your breath for another art fair filled to the steel-girder ceilings with contemporary painting, you can let go. The Independent, the local-brand fair that features art ranging from emerging to the radical old-guard, is not it. The current edition at Spring Studios in TriBeCa, which opens to the public Friday, includes 69 exhibitors from 11 countries, lots of photography and ephemera, idiosyncratic installations, and career resets — and yes, a healthy dose of painting.
You do feel a shift here, though. This fair feels more thoughtful, even reflective. Artists of color are celebrated and several presentations focus on older artists, trying to refine old narratives and biases. Here are some of the booths and tendencies that caught my eye.
Representing Race and Indigeneity
Nonwhite artists are under no responsibility to make work that considers “identity,” oppression or racism, but several artists here celebrate their origins, tribes and families in notable ways. (Forty-one percent of the fair is devoted to presentations by artists of color.) A number of booths are devoted to Indigenous or First Nations artists, like the Apsáalooke or Crow artist Wendy Red Star at Sargent’s Daughters (Booth H. 1) or Rande Cook at Vancouver’s Fazakas (Booth D. 7), who riffs on the Formline tradition of the Pacific Northwest First Nations peoples.
Kimathi Donkor, a London-based painter currently in the sprawling Sharjah Biennial, uses a figurative approach to upend myths about African history, at Niru Ratnam (Booth E. 1). Another London gallery, Harlesden High Street (Booth Y. 6) is devoted to artists of color and individuals otherwise excluded from art world spaces. Here, the work of Savannah Marie Harris, Emmanuel Shogbolu and Ruby Dickson is installed in a zone cordoned off by a chain-link fence, reinforcing this sense of historical exclusion.
Joseph Olisaemeka Wilson presents paintings that wildly scramble African diasporic narratives, at Derek Eller (Booth D. 5). D’Angelo Lovell Williams’s color photographs and handwoven textile works at Higher Pictures (Booth E. 7) champion Black heritage, familial bonds and roots. Otis Houston Jr. at Gordon Robichaux (Booth R. 6) has received plenty of recognition, but his story — an art career begun in prison and still creating street performances on the Lower East Side — as well as his electrifying collages, are worth highlighting.
Reconsidering Careers
Several artists here are well represented in museums, art history books and beyond. But the freewheeling art fair expands our understanding of their origins. The exhibition at Specific Object and Susan Inglettt (Booth J. 5), titled “An Assault on American Prudery,” showcases objects by Yayoi Kusama, Lynda Benglis, and Beverly Semmes — all of whom hijacked sexuality and representations of the female body in the 1960s and ’70s. At the Independent, you can see rare handmade T-shirts from Benglis’s Artforum project, images from Kusama’s brief nude-photography-studio project and Semmes’s pictures made by painting over pornography.
Two other artists getting a refined look are Stan VanDerBeek at Magenta Plains (Booth B. 6) and Eleanor Antin at Richard Saltoun (Booth C. 6). VanDerBeek’s recreated “Movie-Drome” (1964-65) of projected images is in “Signals: How Video Transformed the World” at the Museum of Modern Art and a current show at Magenta Plains. However, his collages, made for his animations, are potent art works on their own. Antin’s photographic-conceptual project “100 Boots” — black rubber boots photographed in public spaces — are a terrific project, and Saltoun is showing “100 Boots Head East” (1973), in which the boots sit like eerie, funny witnesses and participants around New York.
Self-Taught Artists
The universe of self-taught artists is a vast one. The common thread tends to be objects that ignore or shrug off conventions and academic strictures. Abe Odedina at Los Angeles’s Diane Rosenstein (Booth S. 5) is a Nigerian-born, London-based artist who studied architecture before switching to a collage form of painting. One of his works, “Blow by Blow,” draws inspiration from Nkisi power figures, which had nails pounded into them for protection. Odedina’s assemblage includes all manner of hardware inside the outlines of a rough self-portrait. The South Carolina artist Will Thornton at Ricco Maresca (Booth D. 6) makes elegantly crafted paintings depicting odd shapes and figures, which turn out to be sculptures he’s crafted in fabric or clay.
Julian Kent, a recent discovery by Kerry Schuss (Booth O. 5.1), is a young New York artist who paints everyday scenes with Black people with thick, flat planes of pigment. Demonstrating how “self-taught” hardly implies unsophisticated, Kent reveals his inspirations: films by Mike Leigh and Edward Yang; Dostoyevsky and Toni Morrison; and Jacob Lawrence, Chaim Soutine and Alice Neel.
Beyond Painting
If you just really want a painting to go over the couch, you will find one here. But many works thoughtfully question what painting is today, its history and relevance. The Dutch artist Kinke Kooi’s “Mutual Friends” (2023) at the Portland, Oregon gallery Adams and Ollman (Booth Q. 5) is a triptych made with acrylic, gouache and colored pencil on paper that answers back to Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (1490-1500). Like Bosch, Kooi’s work includes strawberries and other earthly delights, but also feminist motifs, like a cartridge of birth control pills nestled in the vegetation. Tamara Gonzales’s tapestry-like grid of paintings at Klaus von Nichtssagend (Booth G. 5) conjure spirits of the Indigenous Americas alongside Kemar Keanu Wynter’s abstract canvases, whose titles have referred to delectable Caribbean dishes from his native Jamaica.
Finally, at the London and Basel gallery Vitrine (Booth A. 1), the Danish artist Cecilia Fiona’s painted marks spill out from the canvas onto a folding screen, and even costumes she has created for a performance on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Here, the artist and a cohort will perform in the booth, wearing the hand-painted costumes and masks inspired by her recently deceased grandmother, who came to Fiona in a dream, as a bird. Call it painting, ritual or séance, there’s something poignant about this in an art fair in Tribeca, where performance art used to be quotidian, rather than the exception.
