Art / Dalton Day

:: I Found This Bee and We Both Just Sat There ::

From the writer

::  Account ::

Imag­ine it for a sec­ond, The green world, green­er still. Still, too, except for the hum­ming. The air, rust­ed har­mon­i­ca that it is, gets car­ried along by any num­ber of small mer­cies. The drag­on­flies, the bull­frogs that eat them and then dis­ap­pear, thread­ing even more green. The name­less pur­ple flow­ers that bend not out of cour­tesy but out of desire to return to that which offered them in the first place. And the water. That lucky pen­ny. Leaves bal­anced on top of it, as if on pur­pose. A sin­gle bee, land­ing, as if on pur­pose. A small eye­lash of a drink, before fly­ing away, or fly­ing towards. Imag­ine it for a sec­ond. Now make it so.

Dal­ton Day is a kinder­garten teacher in Georgia.

Art / Nazifa Islam

:: #121 ::

Acrylic paint on stretched can­vas, 18“x 24″

From the writer

:: Account ::

I’m a poet who pri­mar­i­ly writes found poetry—poems cre­at­ed exclu­sive­ly using the lan­guage of anoth­er writer. This means that unlike most writ­ers I’m not often tasked with fill­ing a blank page. I paint when:

1. I feel a strong need to hold my own art­work in my hands—the intan­gi­bil­i­ty of poems I’ve writ­ten on my lap­top just doesn’t seem cut to it sometimes.
2. I feel com­pelled to see how I can fill a blank can­vas with only the tools of acrylic paint and my own imag­i­na­tion at my disposal.

My found poems owe so much to oth­er writ­ers; they wouldn’t exist if Vir­ginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and L.M. Mont­gomery had nev­er put pen to paper and pub­lished phe­nom­e­nal work. My paint­ings, on the oth­er hand, belong much more com­plete­ly to me and me alone. They of course fol­low in the foot­steps of abstract artists who came before me, but I’m nev­er con­scious­ly attempt­ing to mim­ic some­one else’s style when I paint. Armed with only mars black, tita­ni­um white, per­ma­nent magen­ta, cad­mi­um yel­low, and cobalt blue acrylic paint, I give myself over to the process of cre­at­ing some­thing com­plete­ly new and com­plete­ly mine. There is a free­dom in paint­ing that just is not pos­si­ble when writ­ing giv­en the very nature of found poetry.

I cre­at­ed my paint­ing “#121” as a gift for my niece who was, at the time I fin­ished it, 17 months old. I knew the paint­ing was going to be a part of the dec­o­ra­tions in her nurs­ery. All my paint­ings are essen­tial­ly orga­nized chaos, but for “#121” I made a con­scious deci­sion to work with bright col­ors, to attempt to high­light fre­net­ic joy instead of my more typ­i­cal (in both my poems and paint­ings) fre­net­ic, over­whelm­ing anx­i­ety and grief. Joy is dif­fi­cult to cap­ture in any medi­um, but it was the word most on my mind while I was paint­ing this piece.

Naz­i­fa Islam is the author of the poet­ry col­lec­tions Search­ing for a Pulse (White­point Press) and For­lorn Light: Vir­ginia Woolf Found Poems (Shears­man Books). Her poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, The Mis­souri Review, Boston Review, Smar­tish Pace, and Beloit Poet­ry Jour­nal among oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. She earned her MFA at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty. You can find her @nafoopal

Art / Aaron Burch 

:: Pocket Knife Buffalo ::

From the artist

:: Account ::

My pri­ma­ry goal with my art is to enter­tain myself. To make myself laugh, ide­al­ly. 

I start­ed draw­ing and paint­ing again ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic. I drew a lot as a kid—cartoon char­ac­ters, sports heroes, favorite com­ic book panels—but had bare­ly even doo­dled in twen­ty, maybe twen­ty-five years. And it felt a lit­tle like pick­ing right back up where I’d left off! Like rid­ing a bike, like the pat­terns and rit­u­als of the church ser­vices of your youth. My hands felt like they knew what to do—the art seemed bet­ter than by some­one who was “just start­ing,” I had a pret­ty good eye and also spa­tial awareness—but also my “style” was still not what I wished it were. I wished could just draw—from my imag­i­na­tion, not only from what I was look­ing at—and also that I could draw… well, cool­er. I need­ed ref­er­ence images con­stant­ly, for every­thing, and every­thing came out kin­da car­toony, goofi­er than I’d prefer.

In all those years since though, I’d grown up, I’d matured, I’d devot­ed so much of my life to writing—doing so myself, edit­ing, teach­ing. As I’d let go of the kind of writer I wish I were and embraced the things I do best—as I became more myself—I got bet­ter. 

And so, with my art, I leaned into myself, my per­son­al­i­ty. I smile, rather than get frus­trat­ed, at some of the goofi­ness. I use ref­er­ence images con­stant­ly, but I com­bine two, three, four dif­fer­ent ideas in ways that feel like encap­su­la­tions of myself, and also that make me laugh. I draw skulls because they’re look cool even if—maybe espe­cial­ly when—they aren’t per­fect, and I mash them togeth­er with oth­er things I love—Oreos, buf­fa­lo, piz­za. I draw tiki mugs that look like skulls, or anatom­i­cal hearts, or fists. I draw tat­too-style pock­et knives with buf­fa­lo blades and Mt. Rainier in the back­ground because I love tat­toos and knives and buf­fa­lo and the Pacif­ic North­west. 

Aaron Burch is the author of an essay col­lec­tion, a nov­el, and a short sto­ry col­lec­tion; the edi­tor of a craft anthol­o­gy, a jour­nal built on spon­ta­neous sub­mis­sion calls, and anoth­er jour­nal for longer short sto­ries; a teacher; and a bit of a painter where his main goal is often to make him­self smile, which “Pock­et Knife Buf­fa­lo” very much does. 🙂

Art / Denise Vitollo

:: Three Works ::

From the artist

:: Account ::

My pas­tel art­works explore col­or, and how it is influ­enced by light and shad­ow. My trav­els to loca­tions such as Bonaire, Bermu­da, and Cal­i­for­nia dur­ing the past few years have great­ly inspired my work and have assist­ed me in real­iz­ing my goal of con­vey­ing the intense pul­sa­tions and ener­gy I feel in the world around me. An avid boater, pad­dle board­er, and snorkel­er, I am obsessed with water and what goes on under­neath it, through it, and on top of it. Many of my works are about the peace­ful, med­i­ta­tive, and grace­ful move­ments of crea­tures that are found in fresh and salt water. Hav­ing spent my child­hood sum­mers on the Susque­han­na Riv­er, I have fond mem­o­ries of boats and all water-relat­ed activities.

Denise Vitol­lo holds a BFA in print­mak­ing and an MEd in art edu­ca­tion from the Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, as well as an MFA in illus­tra­tion from Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty. When she is not paint­ing water, Denise loves to work in plein air. For the past nine years, she has par­tic­i­pat­ed in Plein Air Brandy­wine, and has been a plein air artist with Lan­dArt and Paint Snow Hill. She enjoys exper­i­ment­ing with mixed media in her stu­dio and on loca­tion. Often, she com­bines water­col­or and pas­tels, and print­mak­ing with pastels. 

Denise is a juried Asso­ciate Mem­ber of the Pas­tel Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca. She holds Sig­na­ture Sta­tus with the Philadel­phia Water­col­or Soci­ety, Degas Pas­tel Soci­ety of NOLA, Pas­tel Painters Soci­ety of Cape Cod, and the Mary­land Pas­tel Soci­ety. Over the past few years, she has been accept­ed to nation­al and inter­na­tion­al juried shows at the PWCS, Pas­tel Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca in NYC, Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Pas­tel Soci­eties, Degas Pas­tel Soci­ety, the Con­necti­cut Pas­tel Society’s Renais­sance in Pas­tel, Mary­land Pas­tel Soci­ety, and the Pas­tel Painters Soci­ety of Cape Cod. Recent­ly, she has received awards from the Philadel­phia Pas­tel Soci­ety, Philadel­phia Water­col­or Soci­ety, Con­necti­cut Pas­tel Soci­ety, Farm to Table Plein Air, and the Pas­tel Painters Soci­ety of Cape Cod exhi­bi­tions. Denise is the Vvice Pres­i­dent of the Philadel­phia Pas­tel Soci­ety, and is Work­shop Direc­tor for the Philadel­phia Water­col­or Society. 

She has taught at the col­lege and grad­u­ate school lev­els, and in pri­vate schools.  Her work can be seen on her web­site, www.denisevitollo.com.  

Art / Yeon Jin Kim

:: Three Works ::

My prac­tice is based on tra­di­tion­al tech­niques put to new uses. 

I make ani­mat­ed films shot from minia­ture sets and scroll draw­ings, cut-paper and book works, and Jogak­bo-inspired plas­tic quilts. 

My work is equal­ly influ­enced by my ear­ly life in South Korea and my last fif­teen years in New York City. 

Grow­ing up under mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in South Korea, I was sub­ject­ed to per­va­sive gov­ern­men­tal indoc­tri­na­tion and mis­in­for­ma­tion through­out my edu­ca­tion. Under the dic­ta­tor­ship, tra­di­tion­al folk art was denounced while west­ern art was cel­e­brat­ed. In my male-dom­i­nant col­lege edu­ca­tion, any female craft such as sewing, weav­ing, and tex­tile work was reject­ed and regard­ed as “low art.” 

My years away from Korea pro­vid­ed an out­side van­tage point which allowed me a greater under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of  Kore­an aes­thet­ics and tra­di­tions. Although I was pre­sent­ed in school with West­ern aes­thet­ics as a pri­or­i­ty, I was always drawn to the beau­ty of Kore­an ceram­ics and textiles. 

As a child I was intro­duced to Jogak­bo (Kore­an tra­di­tion­al quilt­ing) by my aunt who owned a Han­bok (Kore­an tra­di­tion­al gar­ment) shop. Jogak­bo devel­oped in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry as a way for low­er-class peo­ple to wrap gifts for wed­dings and oth­er cel­e­bra­to­ry events. Scrap pieces of fab­ric were stitched togeth­er, much like quilts, to cre­ate beau­ti­ful wrap­pings sig­ni­fy­ing good wish­es for the recip­i­ent. My aunt was par­tic­u­lar­ly tal­ent­ed, and her Jogak­bo were love­ly and visu­al­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed. Exam­ples were gift­ed to fam­i­ly mem­bers, and my moth­er passed hers down to me. 

The aes­thet­ic of using scraps, unim­por­tant mate­ri­als, comes from the Con­fu­sian phi­los­o­phy of  mod­est but not shab­by, beau­ti­ful but not gaudy (儉而不陋 華而不侈). My use of plas­tic bags is influ­enced by this phi­los­o­phy of beau­ty in every lit­tle object in the world. 

In updat­ing this tra­di­tion­al Kore­an art form, I am stitch­ing togeth­er pieces of com­mer­cial plas­tic bags and also drug bag­gies I find on the streets of New York City where I live. As in tra­di­tion­al Jogak­bo, the scrap ele­ments have all been used and are sewn togeth­er to cre­ate com­po­si­tions influ­enced by the lived real­i­ty of neigh­bor­hood folk. 

Jogak­bo #2 is made as an Homage to my aunt. The pat­terns and the col­or were direct­ly derived from her Jogak­bo made in 1986. 

Jogak­bo #3 was made in Korea, using only plas­tic bags (col­lect­ed by my moth­er and myself) from Seoul. Some scraps include geo­log­i­cal infor­ma­tion, hob­bies, and the spend­ing habits of collectors. 

Jogak­bo #8 was made dur­ing the Covid-19 shut­down and was also influ­enced by my aunt and oth­er ear­li­er Jogak­bo makers. 

Yeon Jin Kim is a visu­al artist and film­mak­er, born in South Korea and based in New York City. 

Her most recent solo exhi­bi­tion, Kong­lish, was pre­sent­ed in 2020 at Place Mak in Seoul. Oth­er recent solo shows have been held at the Soci­ety for Domes­tic Muse­ol­o­gy in New York, Albright Col­lege in Read­ing, PA, and at the Clus­ter Gallery in Brook­lyn, all in 2019. 

Her films have recent­ly been screened at the Philadel­phia Asian Film Fes­ti­val, New­Film­mak­ers New York, Blow-Up Art­house Film Fest Chica­go, and at the Glim­mer­glass Film Fes­ti­val in Coop­er­stown, NY. 

Her work was fea­tured in the book 50 Con­tem­po­rary Women Artists, edit­ed by Heather Zis­es and John Gosslee and pub­lished by Schif­fer Pub­lish­ing in 2018. 

She has done numer­ous res­i­den­cies and cur­rent­ly teach­es at Fair­leigh Dick­in­son Uni­ver­si­ty and Westch­ester Com­mu­ni­ty College. 

Art / Doron Langberg

:: Three Works ::

From the artist

:: Account ::

My work is about closeness—to my sub­jects, paint­ed sur­faces, and the view­er. I make large-scale oil paint­ings of my friends, lovers, and fam­i­ly. My process starts with mak­ing por­traits from life as source mate­r­i­al. In these small paint­ings, I work impro­vi­sa­tion­al­ly and gen­er­ate ideas about col­or and mate­ri­al­i­ty that will be the struc­ture for my larg­er works. My rela­tion­ship with my sub­jects is the dri­ving force behind my work and what guides my for­mal and image deci­sions. This famil­iar­i­ty allows me to gauge whether the paint­ing I’m work­ing on embod­ies the sub­ject I’m depict­ing: it’s a mea­sure of my empa­thy and of the painting’s poten­tial to feel like a liv­ing per­son. The height­ened col­ors and vari­ety of tex­tures and marks are my way of exter­nal­iz­ing the sub­jects’ inte­ri­or­i­ty, giv­ing the view­er a sense of their human­i­ty, and through that, my own. This is a response to the dehu­man­iza­tion of queer­ness I see embed­ded in our legal sys­tem, in the media, and in every­day life. The his­to­ry of paint­ing also reflects such atti­tudes in the work of artists like Delacroix, Courbet, Ingres, Picas­so etc.; their desire is metaphor­i­cal of the most major themes in cul­ture like war, god, life, death and more, where­as rep­re­sen­ta­tions of queer desire are not afford­ed that same grav­i­ty, seen as only able to stand for what they depict. As a way out of this bind, I look at artists and writ­ers such as Alice Neel, James Bald­win, and David Hock­ney that come from mar­gin­al­ized points of view, but who were able to tran­scend this chal­lenge and speak to larg­er truths. Inspired by Hockney’s diary-like imagery, I sit­u­ate depic­tions of queer sex­u­al­i­ty and inti­ma­cy with­in a larg­er nar­ra­tive of every­day scenes, fram­ing queer­ness as a way of view­ing and being in the world rather than just a sub­ject mat­ter. In these chro­mat­ic envi­ron­ments, fueled by per­son­al con­nec­tion and a near abstract for­mal qual­i­ty, I want to make queer plea­sure, friend­ship, and inti­ma­cy feel expan­sive, and for my figures—and me by proxy—to have the free­dom to be ful­ly themselves. 

Doron Lang­berg (b.1985, Yokneam, Israel) lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and holds a BFA from UPenn and a Cer­tifi­cate from PAFA (Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­e­my of the Fine Arts). Lang­berg has attend­ed the Sharpe Walen­tas Stu­dio Pro­gram, Yad­do artist res­i­den­cy, and the Queer Art Men­tor­ship Pro­gram and is cur­rent­ly at the EFA Stu­dio Pro­gram. His work was shown at the LSU muse­um, Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Let­ters, Leslei Lohman Muse­um, The PAFA Muse­um, Per­rotin Gallery, Yos­si Milo Gallery, DC Moore Gallery, 1969 Gallery, and sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ty art gal­leries. Langberg’s work was reviewed in Art in Amer­i­ca, Frieze Mag­a­zine, The Brook­lyn Rail, Hyper­al­ler­gic, Art­Crit­i­cal, and GAYLETTER, and it is in the col­lec­tion of the PAFA Museum.

Art / Sawyer Rose

:: from Seeds of the Monoliths ::

From the artist

:: Account ::

Both sculp­tur­al and painter­ly, the forms in the Seeds of the Mono­liths series are clad in lay­ers of sil­ver sol­der and cop­per, as if their del­i­cate botan­i­cal bod­ies are grow­ing the armor they need to flour­ish in the envi­ron­ment humans are leav­ing for them. Using the tex­ture of the met­al as my pri­ma­ry mark-mak­ing medi­um, the liq­ue­fied sil­ver morphs into bark, or feath­ers, or scales. There is elo­quence and beau­ty in the act of self-protection.

The sur­faces of my sol­dered met­al spheres draw inspi­ra­tion from unex­pect­ed­ly diverse sources—typically a mash-up of Cal­i­for­nia flo­ra and Medieval weaponry—though I’ve also tapped into the organ­ic pat­terns of coral, fun­gus, and lava flows for fresh ideas.

In a recent depar­ture, I based the pat­tern­ing of the Dis­sent piece on the jabot (or, col­lar) that Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg wears when she announces a dis­sent­ing opin­ion on a Supreme Court case. Metaphor­i­cal­ly, the Jus­tice wears this jew­eled armor when defend­ing her views in an increas­ing­ly hos­tile polit­i­cal environment.

When build­ing these pieces, I begin by cov­er­ing the fiber­glass sculp­ture arma­ture with cop­per foil. Next, I lay down the first lay­er of tex­ture in sil­ver solder—like paint­ing with molten met­al. I add dimen­sion to the work by plac­ing beads of sol­der to cre­ate depth and con­trast. The pieces are cov­ered with a rich black pati­na and bur­nished with steel wool to bring out shin­ing high­lights on the raised peaks, while leav­ing dark in the valleys.

Sawyer Rose is a sculp­ture, instal­la­tion, and social prac­tice artist. Through­out her career, Rose has used her art­work to shine a spot­light on con­tem­po­rary social and eco­log­i­cal issues. Her met­al­work sculp­tures explore the ways liv­ing things adapt to chang­ing envi­ron­ments and The Car­ry­ing Stones Project address­es issues around women’s work inequity. Her work has been exhib­it­ed wide­ly across the U.S.

Rose has been a res­i­dent artist at MASS MoCA, Fort Mason Cen­ter for Arts & Cul­ture in San Fran­cis­co, Ver­mont Stu­dio Cen­ter, Rag­dale Foun­da­tion, and The Tyrone Guthrie Cen­tre in Ireland.

She has been award­ed mer­it grants from The Cre­ative Capac­i­ty Fund, The Awe­some Foun­da­tion, and Ver­mont Stu­dio Center.

Rose is the Pres­i­dent of the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Women’s Cau­cus for Art.

Art / Kenseth Armstead

:: Three Works ::

From the artist

:: Account ::

The Yad­do 2016 res­i­den­cy man­date was to sur­prise myself. Most of the projects and bod­ies of work under­tak­en up until that point were mono­chrome, found, mut­ed col­or most­ly, site spe­cif­ic and/or his­to­ry focused. The con­cep­tu­al rig­or of con­nect­ing to a site or his­toric body was always the key dri­ver. This body of work would be dif­fer­ent. It was strict­ly exper­i­men­tal and for FUN. This had nev­er hap­pened before. There were no rules, or for that mat­ter, goals. Each day set up new pud­dles or twists of met­al cut up in the stu­dio and then embed­ded in the paint. Each twist led away from know­ing. The Yad­do exper­i­ments are a com­plete body of work. In sev­en weeks, I com­plet­ed some one hun­dred plus works (they still have not all been count­ed) that I do not know. They know me. 

Kenseth Arm­stead has cre­at­ed provoca­tive mul­ti­me­dia instal­la­tion art for three decades. These works have been exhib­it­ed in sev­er­al his­toric exhi­bi­tions which include Black Male: Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Mas­culin­i­ty in Con­tem­po­rary Art at the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art & Armand Ham­mer Muse­um in 1994; the Berlin Vide­oFest in 1994; Frames of Ref­er­ence: Reflec­tions on Media at The Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um in 1999; Race in Dig­i­tal Space at the MIT List Visu­al Arts Cen­ter & Stu­dio Muse­um in Harlem in 2001; Veni Vidi Video at the Stu­dio Muse­um in Harlem (their first video exhi­bi­tion) in 2003; Open House: Work­ing in Brook­lyn at the Brook­lyn Muse­um in 2004; “Edit­ed at EAI”: Video Inter­fer­ence (cel­e­brat­ing 45 years of their award win­ning col­lec­tion) at Elec­tron­ic Arts Inter­mix in 2016; and most recent­ly, the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Mod­ern Hero­ics: 75 years of African Amer­i­can Expres­sion­ism at the Newark Muse­um. In each case, Armstead’s work has been includ­ed in piv­otal explo­rations of Amer­i­can cul­ture, emerg­ing fields, gen­der pol­i­tics, the New York art scene, eth­nic­i­ty, artis­tic inno­va­tion, his­to­ry, and insti­tu­tion-defin­ing moments. Armstead’s videos, draw­ings, and sculp­tures are includ­ed in the col­lec­tions of the Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou, African Amer­i­can Muse­um in Dal­las, Texas, The Newark Muse­um, and numer­ous oth­er pub­lic and pri­vate collections. 

Art / Susanna Heller

From the artist

:: Account ::

I walk every day up and down the streets of Brook­lyn and Man­hat­tan, over the bridges, along the water­fronts, and up onto the high perch­es of var­i­ous tall tow­ers, wild­ly sketching/drawing the move­ment and ges­tures of the urban land­scape from all van­tage points. (For exam­ple, one pre­cious year spent on the 91st floor of the World Trade Cen­ter, North Tow­er, in 1999 – 2000.)

My paint­ings focus on space and move­ment; I want to sug­gest a con­stant sense of motion on the can­vas, my impli­ca­tion being that ‘sta­t­ic’ or ‘com­plete’ are terms that don’t exist in our expe­ri­enced lives! The seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry pur­suit, that is, using a very sta­t­ic and finite form as a paint­ing or draw­ing to express these ideas, is exact­ly what intrigues me. It’s the way we humans inter­pret through the sen­so­ry, emo­tion­al, and social lan­guages that I am nego­ti­at­ing. Through my appli­ca­tion of col­or and paint, I have spent decades depict­ing wind, light, and smoke, and even trav­el, time, TIME PASSING. I want to bring clar­i­ty to the ener­gy, smells, and sounds of the city; per­spec­tives are dis­tort­ed and are mul­ti­ple in each work.

Often from a bird’s eye view, I am depict­ing moods of an urban atmos­phere at the mer­cy of the nat­ur­al ele­ments, influ­enced and changed by dawn or rain, and an accom­pa­ny­ing sense of flight or heady ver­ti­go. My paint­ings encap­su­late entire cityscapes: build­ings crowd­ed togeth­er below mas­sive weath­er sys­tems, full of ener­gy and in per­pet­u­al turmoil.

Even in the most expres­sive paint­ings of sun or storm, the city is always present; it is a dis­tinct reminder of our home and heart and life under the enor­mi­ty of the skies.

A paint­ing, like a walk, con­nects the phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence: (feet on the ground/paint on the can­vas), to move­ment, ener­gy, and space. Past, present, and future are all ignit­ed with each moment of see­ing or each step tak­en. We all live in dif­fer­ent ‘nows,’ but in a paint­ing, you enter and trav­el in a mul­ti­tude of ways at the same moment, a time ele­ment that is not lin­ear but cyclical!

I love to read, inter­pret, and depict the thicks and thins of urban routes. A paint­ing can bend, stretch, and mul­ti­ply space and time in a sin­gle place. It can bring that which is invis­i­ble or uncon­scious, unno­ticed or unnamed, into the fore­front of a seem­ing­ly ordi­nary moment.

The high-pitched inten­si­ty of cities (most­ly New York), can be expressed through chaot­ic mass­es of paint that explode above and below min­i­mal sky­lines, which I like to make shift and dis­ap­pear. These are sourced from hun­dreds of draw­ings done on sight dur­ing long wan­der­ings on foot through­out the city. The paint­ings are about the city, but most­ly they are about the thick­ness of paint and the abil­i­ty of the human hand to move it.

Susan­na Heller was born in New York in 1956, but grew up in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da. After com­plet­ing col­lege at Nova Sco­tia Col­lege of Art and Design in Hal­i­fax, Heller returned to New York. She has lived and worked in Brook­lyn since 1981. Her awards include grants and fel­low­ships from the NEA, Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion, Joan Mitchell Foun­da­tion, Cana­da Coun­cil, and Yad­do. She is rep­re­sent­ed by the Olga Kor­p­er Gallery in Toron­to and Mag­nan­Metz gallery in New York.

Art / Kelda Martensen

 From the artist

:: Account ::

These works aim to com­mu­ni­cate the unre­solved and to illu­mi­nate the poet­ics of home and dis­place­ment. I cre­ate and repo­si­tion forms on the sur­face to allow for phys­i­cal move­ment with­in the frame and the free asso­ci­a­tion of process, con­cept and mate­r­i­al. I see col­lage as a code, a way of think­ing and a vehi­cle for approach­ing a con­cep­tu­al des­ti­na­tion. With col­lage, mem­o­ry and cur­rent expe­ri­ence can exist on one plane. I use archi­tec­tur­al sym­bols (doors, roofs, sid­ing, hard­wood floors) in order to speak to ideas of place – specif­i­cal­ly how mem­o­ries of home and place are altered through cur­rent expe­ri­ence yet are for­ev­er asso­ci­at­ed with the archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures of the past. I don’t see the past iso­lat­ed from the present and so gath­er and cre­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tions (pho­tos, draw­ings, prints) from places I’ve lived at dif­fer­ent times in my life and cre­ate new rela­tion­ships between seem­ing­ly incom­pat­i­ble and dis­parate icons.

The reeval­u­a­tion and repo­si­tion­ing of these images is a way for the view­er to trav­el with­in the work and to expe­ri­ence mul­ti­plic­i­ty with­in the frame. My pas­sion in art mak­ing is both in the fixed, graph­ic mark of the print, and the more mobile and reac­tive tra­di­tion of draw­ing and col­lage. Through the col­laps­ing of images and expe­ri­ences, my work aims to dis­rupt the lin­ear plane and allow for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of new meaning. 

Kel­da Martensen main­tains a stu­dio prac­tice based in paper, book and print arts. She serves as full-time visu­al arts fac­ul­ty at North Seat­tle Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege and received her MFA in Visu­al Art from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visu­al Art at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis. Kel­da was born in Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton and lives and works in Seat­tle. She can be found at www.keldamartensen.com.