In DisCerning Eye: The Written Woman

“The Written Woman

Words mark bodies in a show of Korean women’s art. Also: two more installments of “Women Artists of the DMV”; duo shows of Joanne Kent & Richard Tinkler; & Deb Furey & Gordana Geršković

MARK JENKINS

 

Yoon Jeongmee, “Red Face” (Trio & Beats Curatorial Collective)

 

OCT 27, 2025

A KEY WORK IN THE CURRENT THREE-VENUE SHOWCASE of Korean and Korean-American women artists is Hong Lee Hyunsook’s video, “Menopause 1 & 2,” in which a woman at a public bath writes an auspicious message on another woman’s back. But inscribing text on female flesh is just one of four themes of “Ecriture with the Body: Contemporary Korean Women Artists,” an ambitious exhibition at IA&A at Hillyer, the Korean Cultural Center, and the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University.

The 18-artist array, which was curated by Dr. Jung-Sil Lee and Dr. Koh Dong-Yeon, also has three other motifs: challenges to traditional literati painting, Korean women’s poetry, and the legacy of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. In addition, many of the pieces reflect on aspects of women’s reproductive biology -- miscarriage, pregnancy, and mothering as well as menopause.

The exhibition is haunted by the presence -- and absence -- of Cha, a Busan-born writer, filmmaker, and performance artist who emigrated to the U.S. at 12 and who was raped and murdered in New York City at 31. Several contributors employ excerpts from Cha’s Dictée, a posthumous poetic novel that’s one of the threads connecting the diverse work in this selection of art that’s mostly conceptual and often takes the form of photos and videos.

Thus Jean Jinho Kim, a D.C.-area artist known for sleek aluminum sculptures, enters the spirit of the show by incorporating Cha’s text into her customarily wordless work. At the Corcoran, two pieces in mirrored negative and positive forms are linked by text. At IA&A, a trio of Kim’s fabrications, leg-like forms with booted feet, have lines from Dictée projected behind them.

The words are written in lipstick in the video and photos, at the Korean Cultural Center, of Yoon Jeongmee’s performance, “Red Face.” She covers herself with such defining labels as “mother” and “woman” until her flesh is almost entirely scarlet. Seongmin Ahn renders blunt English phrases, hostile and often profane, in a traditional Korean style of elaborately ornamental script; her sardonically flowery placards are at the Corcoran and the Korean Cultural Center. At the latter are photos of a Cha performance in which she covered her face in fabric strips that read “voix aveugele,” French for “blind voice.” (Ironically, “voix” blocked her eyes and “aveugele” her mouth.)

Blindness also serves as a metaphor in the work of one of the D.C.-area participants, Hyun Jung Kim, who makes metal crowns and finger and toe covers embellished with patterns in Braille. These objects, on exhibit at IA&A and the Corcoran, are used in performances and audience-participation selfies and refer to what Kim calls the “cultural blindness” she experienced upon moving to the U.S.

Korean text adorns Minsun Oh Mun’s playfully update of a Joseon Dynasty landscape painting. In the picture, at the Corcoran, lurking monks use cellphones to photograph women who are bathing in a stream. Also at the Corcoran are Jean Shin’s wall sculptures made of computer keyboard keys, grouped into repeated readings of such multiple-meaning words as “home” and “enter.” Jung Jungyeob’s paintings and assemblages often feature Korean words spelled out in red beans. The beans represent women’s labor in Jungyeob’s work, at IA&A and the Corcoran.

American viewers may not understand the significance of some references, notably the Jeju Island palm trees photographed by Kim Oksun (KCC); the semi-traditional, semi-farcical sun-worship ritual staged for video by Yeesookyung (Corcoran); or the gloomy old ballad (helpfully subtitled) that plays in Jaye Rhee’s video (KCC). But East can meet West evocatively, as in Kim Jipyeong’s tribute to difficult women, “Rebecca, Bertha, Carmilla, Audley” (Corcoran). Named after troubled heroines of 19th and 20th century English-language novels, the piece consists of four damaged hanging scrolls that the artist likens to female bodies. The words here are less important than the scrolls themselves, precarious yet enduring.

 

Joyce Zipperer, “Hell on Wheels” (photo by Mark Jenkins)

 

SOME OF THE AREA’S BEST-KNOWN WOMEN ARTISTS are among the nearly 75 included in exhibitions at the Athenaeum and Pyramid Atlantic Art Center. Both shows are, of course, installments of “Women Artists of the DMV,” the 18-venue extravaganza arranged by curator Florencio Lennox (Lenny) Campello. The Pyramid selection is more diverse in media and slightly bigger than the Athenaeum one. It’s also more political.

Stars and barbed wire, both made of glass, overlay a U.S. flag in Trish Kent’s “The Divided States of America,” a suitably prickly statement for immigrant rights. An eloquent memorial for a victim of police violence, Janathel Shaw’s “Grief for Philandro Castile” is a stoneware bust of a male angel with Castile’s head embedded in his chest, framed by two bullet shells. Also fashioned deftly of ceramic and metal, Jennifer Hayes’s “Armor Eaters” is a set of women’s underwear being eaten by cast-bronze moths who represent the undermining of women’s autonomy. Amity Chan, a Hong Kong native, protests the crackdown on dissent in her homeland with a high-contrast rendering of a set of handcuffs in red and yellow, the colors of the Chinese flag.

Pyramid usually exhibits prints and other works on paper, a category that encompasses some of the most striking pieces in this show. Courtney Applequist’s “So You Say” is a self-described “doodled self-portrait” stretched across 60 pages from a right-wing Christian book the artist terms misogynistic. Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann’s partly abstract collage-painting fits her trademark swirling elements into an uncharacteristically tidy rectangle. Among the traditional realist prints are two that are intriguingly dark and shadowy: Ellen Verdon Winkler’s mezzotint of a gabled house and Jenny Freestone’s meditative etching-engraving of a bird’s disembodied head.

Some of the three-dimensional entries play with formats that are customarily flat. Joan Konkel’s “Bent Out of Shape” in a purple-and-black hanging banner made of canvas that’s slit into bands and woven. Margaret Boozer’s ceramic relief map is made partly from soil from her yard in nearby Brentwood. Also ceramic, Catherine Satterlee’s “Scully Square vii” is a color field painting rendered with stoneware in shades of bronze. More fully sculptural is Joyce Zipperer’s playful “Hell on Wheels,” a metallic mashup of high-heel and rollerblade. Placed across from Hayes’s “Armor Eaters,” it’s an aptly mobile symbol of female autonomy.

The Athenaeum array is heavy on abstract and near-abstract paintings, many of them with a liquid quality. Anne Marchand’s exuberant “Mirabilia” is a mixed-media montage that features thick pigment, fluid pours, and stubbled textures. Sparked by an aerial view of a salt bath, Anne Cherubim’s immersive “Inspired by Salt II” depicts a series of turquoise pools separated by undulating bands of metallic silver. Suzanne Yurdin’s luminous “Upwelling” is a mostly blue, seemingly aquatic scene with sunlit white highlights; it complements Susan Shalowitz’s dynamic “Sonata,” a detailed realistic painting of surf.

Somewhat more linear is Carol Brown Goldberg’s elegant “2:00 p.m. at Hanlon Park,” whose gridded dots fade from blue to white atop a field of splashed, dripped colors with touches of glitter. The picture’s backdrop is akin to the heavily worked surface of Cianne Fragione’s “Workers Wearing Toe Shoes,” a collage-painting that suggests strata of history. The rough layers of these compositions are very different from the overlapping color blocks of Adi Segal’s “8 Block Quilt Variation,” whose translucent forms are deployed high above the gallery on a horizontal window.

The representational works include pictures by Anna U. Davis and Helen Zughaib in their familiar stylized modes. Both depict women, but where the former’s “Crying Girl” renders isolation in shades of black and gray, the latter’s “The Long Wait” portrays a queue of closely grouped women whose presence is defined entirely by their colorfully patterned robes. The first seems stuck and the others are on the move, but each circumstance is equally urgent.

Joanna Kent, “Speechless” (PFA Gallery)

BRUSHSTROKES ARE ARCHITECTURAL OR EPHEMERAL, respectively, in the work of Joanna Kent and Richard Tinkler. The two artists, showing together in PFA Gallery’s “Vibrations,” both use oil paint to make vivid abstractions. Kent’s sculptural paintings cover cubes or vertical panels with dried plumes of a heathered single hue. Tinkler’s multi-color pictures appear to be blurred, but close inspection reveals the illusion of softness is created by thousands of tightly fitted small gestures.

Kent is a veteran D.C. artist who melds sculpture and painting somewhat in the manner of Anne Truitt, but Kent’s work is as craggy as Truitt’s is sleek. The 11 pieces in this show, made between 1998 and 2002, cover flat surfaces with tufts of pigment, so that the blocky ones resemble carefully pruned shrubs. The wall-mounted vertical panels are bisected by narrow gaps in the paint, a breach that’s most conspicuous in the all-black “Eclipse.” These subtly drawn lines offer the eye a passage into the object, but then the artist’s creations are riddled with small inlets. That Kent’s 3D paintings appear simultaneously solid and airy is their essential mystery.

Where Kent retains something of the fluidity of pigment, Tinkler relies on its liquid qualities. He applies layers of paint while the lower level is still wet, so that different colors partly meld into each other. The resulting images are soft yet organized into overall patterns such as multiple diamonds or rows of lozenges. These paintings, from 2024-25, are fundamentally orderly. Yet they have an oasis-like shimmer that suggests that at any second they could transmute, or even vanish altogether.

 

Gordana Geršković, “ Jiyūgaoka” (Foundry Gallery)

 

THE TWO ARTISTS OF “AFTERTIME” STRETCH A BIT in this Foundry Gallery show, but the best work is in familiar modes: Deb Furey’s bold charcoal drawings of costumed people, and Gordana Geršković’s photographs of battered walls and other surfaces, rendered in closeup so they appear abstract.

To these, Furey adds some brightly hued paintings that portray her usual subjects in looser forms, while Geršković emulates her own small photos with a larger mixed-media painting of what appears to be a grainy, pitted surface. None of these are highlights of the show.

Instead, viewers are likely to be drawn to Furey’s pictures of kings, queens, jesters, and mythic trans-species creatures, all packed into crowded, dynamic compositions. Sometimes interrupted by insets or overlaid with primary colors, these drawings evoke the roles we all play, or wish we could assume.

While impossible to place in their original contexts, Geršković’s images work as pure patterns and sometimes as accidentally representational shapes. The artist titles a few of her pictures after places, presumably where the photo was made, although knowing that Jiyūgaoka is an upscale Tokyo neighborhood doesn’t help in identifying the field of black cracks on gold as part of recognizable location. Where Furey’s symbolic scenarios have a universal quality, Geršković’s photos are highly individualistic: She reveals tiny aspects of reality that no one else might have seen.

Ecriture with the Body: Contemporary Korean Women Artists

Through Nov. 2 at IA&A at Hillyer, 9 Hillyer Court NW. athillyer.org. 202-338-0680; and Nov. 12 at the Korean Cultural Center, 2370 Massachusetts Ave. NW. washingtondc.korean-culture.org/en. 202-939-5688; and Nov. 15 at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University, 500 17th St. NW. corcoran.gwu.edu/corcoran-exhibitions

Women Artists of the DMV

Through Nov. 2 at the Athenaeum, 201 Prince St., Alexandria. nvfaa.org. 703-548-0035; and Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, 4318 Gallatin St., Hyattsville. pyramidatlanticartcenter.org. 301-608-9101.

Joanne Kent and Richard Tinkler: Vibrations

Through Nov. 1 at PFA Gallery, 1932 9th St. NW (entrance at 1917 9 1/2 St. NW). pazofineart.com. 571-315-5279.

Aftertime: Deb Furey & Gordana Geršković

Through Nov. 2 at Foundry Gallery, 2118 8th St. NW. foundrygallery.org. 202- 232-0203.”

Written by Mark Jenkins in DisCerning Eye, thank you!

Source: https://discerningeye.substack.com/p/the-w...

In DisCerning Eye: Langley Spurlock, John Martin Tarrat, Chris Corson, Freda Lee-McCann, and Beth Curren

“Past Masters

Spurlock and Tarrat oil history’s hinges. Also: Corson sculptures, Lee-McCann calligraphy, Ashton Reeder photography, Steven Ferri video, and more DMV Women

MARK JENKINS

OCT 13, 2025

Langley Spurlock & John Martin Tarrat, “Yucatán” (Studio Gallery)

THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD as told by “S*** Happens” runs approximately from 66 million years ago, when an asteroid hit the Yucatán Peninsula and ended the era of dinosaurs, to 1945, when a U.S. A-bomb devastated Nagasaki. But the creators of this Studio Gallery show, artist Langley Spurlock and wordsmith John Martin Tarrat, don’t recount only cataclysms. Attention is also paid to breakthroughs in art and communication: the 15th-century invention of Hangul, the Korean alphabet; the 16th-century synthesis of red dye from cochineal insects in Mexico and the pigment’s exportation by the Spanish invaders; and the 1971 arrival of blue acrylic paint in the Australian outback, where it was integrated into the previously earth-toned paintings of Aboriginal artists.

European colonization is crucial to the histories of Mexico and Australia, and “S*** Happens,” which was curated by William Carroll, also memorializes other interplay between new and old worlds. In 1804, enslaved Haitians defeat imperial France to make their nation “the first Black republic.” A decade later, the brand new United States confronts the Barbary pirates. There’s also a less direct link to Europe’s subjugation of just about everywhere else: the bloodline of Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, whose great-grandfather was a kidnapped African servant given in chattel slavery to Peter the Great.

The breadth of Spurlock and Tarrat’s research is impressive, but what really distinguishes the D.C.-area collaborators’s projects is the cleverness of the presentation. Pushkin, for example, is visualized as a stop on a rail system whose other stations are each named for one of the author’s writings. Tarrat’s text is deftly integrated into the artworks, most of which are computer-generated prints on aluminum panels. (The notable exception is the stark “Nagasaki,” a ravaged wooden spike slammed off-kilter into shards of broken glass, some of which are engraved with such words as “plutonium” and “second sun burns even shadows.”)

Indian or Arabic script float through “Goa” and “Barbary Coast,” respectively, and English words spin toward the bottom of “North Sea,” as if caught in a whirlpool. In “Yucatán,” words and phrases take the place of cosmic debris, crashing to earth past a clueless dinosaur. At what the artists call “hinges” of history, contemporary observers rarely have a clue what’s going on.

AT THE CENTER OF CHRISTOPHER CORSON’S “MY CUP RUNNETH OVER,” also at Studio, is a ceramic sculpture of a kneeling man who’s holding a small bowl. The figure in “The Bowl” is painted gold, which in Buddhism signifies enlightenment. Does the gilded, physically intact figure represent a breakthrough for the local artist? Maybe not, but the 2025 sculpture is a significant contrast to the show’s earlier ones, which were made over the last 15 years.

This retrospective, which was curated by Mary Welch Higgins, consists mostly of sculptures in Corson’s usual mode. The nude figures, often unmistakably male, are typically pit-fired to give them partly charred patinas that are striking and slightly eerie. The blackened bodies are usually partial, often headless, and sometimes heart-less as well. The subject of “Chapel” holds open his chest to reveal a void, and the man in “As Was Done to Her” has a torn-open chest and a crow-like bird, perched on one shoulder, who reaches into the neck cavity to gnaw on an internal organ. He suggests Prometheus, punished for giving fire to humans by having an eagle feast daily on his regenerating liver.

The mythic struggles Corson symbolizes are more likely psychological than physical, and some cases are clearly political. The shackled hand of “Be the Voice” evokes the struggle for liberty and free speech. Overcoming is arduous, but perhaps possible. According to his statement, Corson has traveled a “path from difficult places to joy and gratitude.” Perhaps that’s why “The Bowl” has an unexpected luster.

INSPIRED BY A 500-YEAR-OLD CHINESE POEM that she writes is about “renewal and hope,” Freda Lee-McCann undertook a series of purely calligraphic pictures. These became her latest Studio Gallery exhibition, which was also curated by Carroll. The show is titled “Without Words,” which may seem odd for an array of what appear to be Chinese characters. But the painter traveled farther into illegibility than most artistic East Asian calligraphers, whose output can verge on unreadable. The characters she wrote “no longer have meaning,” she recently told a gallery visitor.

Lee-McCann has made purely calligraphic works before, but she’s known mostly for variations on classical shan-shui (”mountain-water”) ink paintings. There’s not a hint of that tradition in these elegant works, although sometimes the gestures are so tightly clustered that their totality suggests forests. Also adding to a sense of depth is the way the artist layers gray and black brushstrokes. (Two of the pictures also incorporate pink and brown.) The lighter strokes sometimes look like shadows of the darker ones, or appear to indicate that the brushwork is fading into oblivion. This sense of ephemerality adds to the pictures’s vibrant spontaneity. Lee-McCann’s wordless gestures can be read as flickers of mortality.

 

Ashton Reeder, from “Surveilling the Surveillers - Tech” (Photoworks)

 

THE INTERNET BEGAN AS A ROUTE FOR IDEAS, but it’s increasingly become a conduit for stuff. And as the worldwide web was commercialized, the existing computer networks that were originally sufficient had to be supplemented by lots of new gear, and ultimately whole neighborhoods of data farms. Many of the last are in northern Virginia, which is one of three areas scrutinized by Ashton Reeder’s “Planetary Computation.” The show is at Photoworks, where the D.C.-based photographer-technologist is artist-in-residence.

In addition to data centers in Ashburn, Dulles, Sterling, and Manassas, Reeder documents Silicon Valley as well as areas of Nevada that are being excavated for minerals used in high-tech devices. The photographer is particularly interested in AI, both as a technology and as a cause of frenzied speculative expansion of Internet capacity. Among Reeder’s subjects are homes owned by AI moguls Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Sam Altman.

Reeder didn’t just point a camera at mansions and industrial buildings. The show includes straightforward photos of Nevada mining sites and AI-touting billboards along California’s 101 highway, but most of the other pictures are pixelated or collaged. The artist photographed data centers with a low-resolution thermal camera that registers the hottest areas -- up to 130 degrees -- as white rectangles. He also produced layered “image net hallucinations” from leaked AI training data. The simple photos of Nevada mining towns offer a striking contrast to the AI-generated images. “Planetary Computation” travels from a brick-and-mortar world to a universe that threatens to become entirely chimerical.

 

Steven Ferri, “100% Pure Peace” (Transformer)

 

THE VIDEO IN TRANSFORMER’S WINDOW involves only three concrete ingredients: a toy soldier, a Mason jar, and some honey. But Steven Ferri’s brief art flick, which loops 24 hours a day, also features an intangible element: light.

That illumination might be termed “honeyed,” since Amish honey is the catalyst for the symbolic scenario of the local artist’s “100% Pure Peace.” The thick amber liquid is poured into the vessel that contains the silhouetted plastic figure until the fluid overflows and pools on the adjacent white surface. Then the action reverses so that the honey ascends from the jar until it entirely vanishes. In between the flowing and the unflowing is a moment when the soldier is hit by what appears to be a strobe light, whose intense flashes makes the toy appear to be yellow and then red.

Light also turns the honey red, so the video recalls Andres Serrano’s “Immersion (Piss Christ),” another luminous photographic rendering of a small object submerged in yellow liquid. That’s probably unintentional, and it’s possible that Ferri’s concern is the metaphorical overwhelming of war by sweetness. But surely he’s aware that his photography transformed the bit of pure honey into a sea of sumptuous complexity.

 

Becky McFall, “Volume 3: The Lure of Exploration - All Those Ones and Zeroes” (Zenith Gallery)

 

MOST SHOWS IN THE 18-VENUE “WOMEN ARTISTS OF THE DMV” project offer a single piece by multiple artists working in various media. Two exceptions to this approach are exhibitions at Zenith Gallery and the Portico Room of University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library. The first contains several works each by seven artists chosen by Zenith proprietor Margery Goldberg and the series’s overall organizer, Florencio Lennox (Lenny) Campello. The second consists of artists’s books, one each by six contributors.

Collages and wall sculptures dominate the Zenith show, although it does include Tracy Griffith Tso’s functional yet whimsical ceramics -- cups, flasks, and a teapot embellished with 3D rabbits and pandas. Two of the artists have shown recently at Zenith: Mitzi Bernard, whose pictures of women are assembled from hundreds of tiny female figures, often nude pinups; and Ashley Joi, whose collage-paintings often conjure women from snips of flowers and plants. One of Mentwab Easwaran’s sculptural paintings portrays a woman who’s part tree, but her work more often turns on colorful fabric patterns, presumably of Ethiopian origin.

The other artists also piece their works together. Jennifer Wagner’s glass mosaics build trees, waves, and a cat from simmering shards, while Margaret Polcawich combines abstract forms, made of wood and polymer clay, in shades of blue, green, and copper. Most energetic are Becky McFall’s abstract sculpture-paintings, most of which are topped with coiled strips of paper tinted with metallic inks. These ribbons pieces weave together sympathetically even as they project assertively from the surface.

Among the books at the McKeldin Library is Kanika Sircar’s multi-layered “Barthes,” made of paper on ceramic plates and recently shown at Washington Printmakers Gallery. Other highlights are Elizabeth Curren’s “The Paradise Fire,” a pop-up book with several layers of trees in flaming colors, and Kerry McAleer-Keeler’s “Skeleton in the Closet,” a boxed history of Prohibition written in corks, bottle caps, vintage prescriptions for whiskey, and other pertinent objects. Tina Huduk’s fold-out beach book, which contains short poems and small abstract pictures that suggest nature, is placed amid scattered sand and shells, as if the book had somehow summoned the environment that inspired it. Even the gentlest musings can be too vivid to stay on the page.

Langley Spurlock with John Martin Tarrat: S*** Happens

Christopher Corson: My Cup Runneth Over

Freda Lee-McCann: Without Words

Through Oct. 25 at Studio Gallery, 2108 R St. NW. studiogallerydc.com. 202-232-8734.

Ashton Reeder: Planetary Computation

Through Oct. 19 at Photoworks, Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur Blvd, Glen Echo. glenechophotoworks.org. 301-634-2274.

Steven Ferri: 100% Pure Peace

Through Oct. 20 at Transformer, 1404 P St. NW. transformerdc.org. 202-483-1102.

Women Artists of the DMV

Through Oct. 18 at Zenith Gallery, 1429 Iris St. NW. zenithgallery.com. 202- 783-2963 and Oct. 23 at Portico Room, McKeldin Library, University of Maryland, 7649 Library Lane, College Park. 301-405-0800.”

Written by Mark Jenkins in DisCerning Eye, thank you!

In DisCerning Eye: Lisa Battle.

“A partial tour of “Women Artists of the DMV,” with stops at five of the 18 venues

MARK JENKINS

Sondra Arkin, “Structure XXIV” (courtesy of the artist)

AN EXPANSIVE CELEBRATION, “WOMEN ARTISTS OF THE DMV” spans 18 venues and three months. Some of the shows arranged by curator Florencio Lennox (Lenny) Campello have yet to open, and some are already about to close. (My review of the project’s American University Museum flagship exhibition is at https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/09/10/women-artists-dmv-american-university-museum/, behind a paywall.) Under the circumstances, a comprehensive overview is impossible. The only alternative, frustrating as it may be, is simply to identify some highlights.

Frida Kahlo is the patron saint of the selection at Adah Rose Gallery, where the cherished Mexican artist appears both in Lian Sever’s painted portrait and Leslie Holt’s mostly abstract stained-color picture with a small embroidered image. The former is realistic but with fabulist touches; the latter suggests a partly decayed yet still powerful memory.

Works by Molly Springfield and Sondra Arkin are as stark as Sever’s picture is lush. Springfield’s drawing is one of her exquisitely literal pencil-rendered enlargements of a scrap of a Xeroxed text, while Arkin’s watercolor consists mostly of branching gray lines that suggest branches and twigs. But some of those gray lines have turned gold, a gentle but eloquent touch of alchemy.


At Adah Rose, as at most of the venues, wall sculptures are among the most distinctive entries. Lisa Hill’s dynamic all-white assemblage hints at the legacies of both Constructivism and Futurism. Betsy Packard’s collage is made mostly of green-glass shards, whose color suggests a nature scene. But across the landscape is an array of shattered blue-and-white ceramics that almost seem to spell out a word or two. The sense of language almost, but not quite, emerging from chaos is powerfully intriguing.

Alison Sigethey , “Awakening World” (photo by Mark Jenkins)

AT JOAN HISAOKA HEALING ARTS GALLERY, Jeanie Sausele-Knodt’s white ceramic multi-part sculpture looks like a distant cousin of Lisa Hill’s piece. Its craggy textures complement the mottled colors and perforated surface of Alison Sigethy’s lovely “Awakening World,” a wall-mounted glass half-dome that gleams like metal.

The eclectic array includes an elegant Jun Lee animal woodcut, dominated by red that’s underscored by orange, and Bobbi Kittner’s painting of color patterns on rounded rock-like shapes, a picture that neatly balances abstract and realist techniques. The latter fits well with Randa Fakes LoGerfo’s “Expectations,” a painting whose geometric arrangement of an orange bar on a blue field is simple, but complicated by painted blotches and illusory indentations. Although flat, the work appears as arrestingly irregular as Sausele-Knodt and Sigethy’s contributions.

AT THE WRITER’S CENTER, the standouts are mostly representational, although the selection features a few pieces in which the imagery bends toward abstraction. That’s literally true of Jessica von Brakle’s twisting collage-painting, whose central staircase spirals into a splatter of black ink. The hazy form of a flamingo emerges from, or fades into, soft colored-pencil gestures in Beverly Ress’s drawing. Eve Stockton’s woodcut is a series of cresting waves -- their hues naturalistic aqua and unexpected purple -- that fill the frame in the manner of oceanic wallpaper.

Color is a secondary attraction of works by photographer Pamela H. Viola and sculptor Carol G. Levin. In the former’s vignette of a muted, rustic Ireland, a horse stands between two stone structures, a wall and a ruined building; the animal’s white and gray coat neatly echoes the shades of the stone. Two tones of bronze serve to energize Levin’s small sculpture of a bent figure with its arms over its head. Although the piece couldn’t be more solid, its subject’s pose appears as kinetic as von Brakle’s mutating stairway.

 

Elzbieta Sikorska, “Ashes” (photo by Mark Jenkins)

 

AT ARTIST & MAKERS, the survey claims two exhibition spaces to display work by 44 artists. Here is another “Frida,” portrayed realistically in painted wood by Sheri Youens-Un. Other portraits include Leslie Nolan’s expressionist rendering of a red-faced “Alexander”; Linda Lowrey’s realistic and highly vertical depiction of woman who appears both pensive and fierce; and Maremi Andreozzi’s picture of a female tailor from colonial-era Massachusetts -- featureless and silhouetted, as is customary in the painter’s work, and surrounded by her tools.

One of these is a pair of scissors, also central to Ruth Lozner’s evocative self-portrait made of 3D wooden pieces, a metaphorical representation in which a human hand and various implements stand for the artist. The woman in Jenny Davis’s striking symbolist watercolor is not faceless, but she’s turned away from the viewer and toward a glass globe that signifies the wider world. Also rooted in realism, but fluid in form, is Susan Hostetler’s ceramic sculpture of birds that are melting into each other, and cocooned in a black box.

Standouts among the purely abstract pieces are Lisa Battle’s “Flow,” a riverine bend consisting of six close-fitting pieces, and Elzbieta Sikorska’s “Ashes,” a rough-edged, earth-toned collage whose submerged text teases the observer. In a show with more than a few hidden faces, this picture’s reticence seems entirely apt.

 

Joan Danziger, “Green Mist Beetle” (photo by Mark Jenkins)

 

AT MCLEAN PROJECT FOR THE ARTS is one of the largest arrays, with work by 53 contributors. These include three that are very different in form yet still exhibit visual affinities. Janis Goodman’s circular neoclassical painting is a skyscape-like composition in black, gray, and white. The only new-media piece is Jackie Hoysted’s generative computer-video drawing of curving white lines on a blue field, where they pirouette until they come to resemble a butterfly. Circles are also integral to Jacqui Crocetta’s blue-and-gray aquatic painting, but to suggest pebbles and bubbles seen in and through water.

Among the free-standing sculptures are one of Donna McCullough’s dresses made of metal, an essay in hard and soft, familiar and strange; Kristin Bohlander’s earthy “Breathe,” made of wood, wax, and natural fiber, which can be seen as a shell, a small boat, or a set of lungs; and Melissa Burley’s “The War Within,” a mysterious cabinet that glows from within, evoking buildings as well as bodies. It’s a portal that both beckons and hinders, proffers and forbids.

As elsewhere, the selection includes a lot of superb wall sculptures. Even Kyujin Lee, whose paintings depict classic fairy-tale characters, takes a tentative move into the third dimension by cutting out a little red riding hood so she’s literally outside the main image. Sheila Crider offers an abstract canvas, but a 3D one that’s draped and partly cut into slits so it appears fragile and changeable.

Also on the wall are several triumphs of form and reclaimed material, including Joan Danziger’s glistening “Green Mist Beetle,” its reflective shards of glass and metal held together by wire; and Lori Katz’s untitled assemblage of rusted springs that pop from a blue stoneware tile in a compelling contrast of serenity and tumult. Taina Litwak’s “Plastic Tsunami - Drift I” is a pileup that includes toys, bottles, and a Spiderman mask, all painted gray and stuffed inside a box to provide a sense of order such throwaways lack when cast into the ocean.

Among the other wall pieces that elicit aspects of nature are Liz Lescault’s elegant “Sun Stroke,” a sunflower-like flattened orb of ceramic, polymer clay, and encircling tufts of natural fiber; and April Shelford’s “Fossil,” a fused glass piece that’s sleek yet has a sense of ancientness. It calls attention to the fact that many of the show’s entries feel archetypal: newly made yet embodying timeless forms and forces.”

Women Artists of the DMV

Through Sept. 28 at Adah Rose Gallery, 12115 Parklawn Dr., Rockville. adahrosegallery.com. 301-922-0162; and at Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, 1632 U St. NW. 202-483-8600. joanhisaokagallery.org. Open by appointment.

Through Oct. 29 at Artists & Makers, 11810 Parklawn Dr., Rockville. artistsandmakersstudios.com. 240-437-9573.

Through Nov. 1 at McLean Project for the Arts, 1234 Ingleside Ave., McLean. mpaart.org. 703-790-1953.

Through Dec. 5 at the Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda. writer.org. 301-654-8664.

Written by Mark Jenkins in DisCerning Eye, thank you!

In PTSD and Art: "Keeping Art Alive” by James John Magner

“Making art is not the route to fame and fortune. If you are a serious artist with an innate passion to be creative, you try to be represented by a gallery and get a show once in a while.

Here are three artists in gallery shows now. The artwork may rotate, but you can find more information on the gallery website, or the artist website.

Thierry Guillemin slips through time, searching, questioning…exploring. His images emit light—the light that emanates from nature. His work reaches from abstract to landscape to figurative but always has depth; it plays with reality. He has a tryptic with much personal meaning now hanging in the Studio Gallery in Washington, DC.

Fiddlers Hill Road by Thierry Guillemin

 

David Amaroso paints the intricacies as well as the major influences that shape culture. Latino identity is more than language or a coincidence of backgrounds; there is a palpable joy of belonging—being a member of the group. He is currently among ten Latino artists in a show titled “Identidad” in Manassas, VA. The reception is September 20, 6-8 PM. The show runs to October 4, 2025.

https://insidenovatix.com/events/identidad-artist-reception

www.amorosoart.wixsite.com.

J. Chris Morel paints mostly in the Taos, New Mexico region. He also travels the world looking. Always looking. It may be the mountains, or a stream or a church covered with snow, but it is really about movement and a restrained color composition. And something else—something that runs deep in the human soul: our primitive connection to the land. He often hangs in Santa Fe galleries, but he has also created his own galleries.

Morelart.com

PTSD can come from personal trauma, or from a larger experience of human discord. It can be an attack on your physical being, or a rejection of your essential beliefs. You can give in, or you can fight through it to look for the light you didn’t notice before. It’s not suddenly there; it was always there. You can find the light in the work of a artist who has an innate passion to be creative—to climb above the human turmoil to supernatural art.

If you are a paid subscriber and have a show coming up, let me know. Or, if you would just like to share your work, send me an image.”

Written by James John Magner, thank you!

In DisCerning Eye: Thierry Guillemin, Leslie Kiefer, & Deborah Addison Coburn.

“Into the Misty

Thierry Guillemin's landscapes, Leslie Kiefer's photocollages, & Deborah Addison Coburn's gouaches. Also: group shows, tactile or historical, and work by Pedro Ledesma III & Mak Dehejia

Mark Jenkins

SEP 18, 2025

 

Thierry Guillemin, “Tuscan Staircase” (Studio Gallery)

 

PHOTOREALIST AND PASTORAL AT THE SAME TIME, Thierry Guillemin's paintings are precise yet atmospheric. The French-born local artist's latest Studio Gallery show, "Portrait of Ré as a Bird Photographer and other paintings" is titled after an atypical triptych. The selection, curated by Gaby Mizes, also includes one picture that's abstract but whose smudgy greens and blues suggest an out-of-focus landscape. The other five paintings observe heavily wooded parks, a light-dappled pond, or rustic roads and trails. All the scenes are enchanted by soft light and hazy air.

The title piece uses two paintings of birds to flank a woman (identified by Guillemin as "my muse, my love") who holds a telephoto-lensed camera. All three subjects are positioned dramatically on black backdrops, and the photographer is half-vanished into shadow. This is not the artist's usual approach. The other realist canvases feature near-photographic backgrounds and just a hint of human presence, usually offered by furniture or architectural details.

It's noteworthy that the artist continues his imagery onto the edges of his unframed paintings. This sense of continuation is significant to his pictures, in which everyday details center beguilingly long vistas. Often the compositions include passageways of a sort -- as tangible as a path or an outdoor staircase, or as ephemeral as a ribbon of low-lying mist. Guillemin's scenarios are tranquil and still, but they lead the eye on a journey.

THE NATURAL WORLD IS THE LITERAL SUBJECT of Leslie Kiefer's "Circe's Cavern: The Jewel in the Abyss," which hangs next to Guillemin's show. But the D.C. digital photographer's delicate images, which are composited in various ways, aren't simply observational. The pictures in this selection, also curated by Mizes, represent what the artist's statement calls "loss without the finality of death or closure."

Sometimes Kiefer locates an artifact that appears to illustrate the ability of Circe, the mythic Greek enchantress, to transform people into animals. A shed snakeskin, artfully draped, is a found metaphor for transmutation. The photographer often depicts flowers, but also a couple of shells -- only one contains a pearl -- and a pair of pumpkins, one vegetable and the other seemingly made of fabric. Kiefer occasionally interjects other manmade objects, notably a pink shoe from which a flower, also pink, seems to grow.

The wispy look of these pictures complements their pictorial themes. Multiple images are evocatively overlapped, soft hues suggest watercolor, and black and dark-green backdrops are layered and smeary. Everything appears fragile, yearning, and susceptible to change.

DEBORAH ADDISON COBURN IS KNOWN FOR WORKS, usually somber, that draw on her family's history. The local artist's "Divertimento," also at Studio and curated by Adah Rose Bitterbaum, has a similar origin but a very different vibe. These collage-paintings are bright and kinetic, full of figures in motion. Viewers will likely not be surprised to learn that the pictures were inspired by Coburn's own childhood drawings.

While the subjects are simple and the compositions naive, the use of color is more sophisticated. Experimenting with gouache for the first time, Coburn pits vivid colors against softer, more watery hues that flow and blend. Also more grownup, if in a playful way, are the transfigurative motifs of such pictures as "Swan Lake" and "Single Cat Ladies." In these Circe-like scenarios, women cavort with animals and sometimes become partly avian or feline. It's an intriguing parallel that Coburn's humans and animals mingle much as her colors meld.

 

Robert Johnson, “Potbelly Owl” (photo by Mark Jenkins)

 

THE FIRST CLUE THAT "ORDER AND CHAOS" IS AN UNUSUAL ART SHOW is the supply of blindfolds at the entrance. The U.S. debut of a Portuguese series, the pop-up exhibition is designed for visually impaired visitors -- and those who mask their eyes for a purely tactile experience. Most of the 12 participating artists, largely selected by local co-curator Elizabeth Casqueiro, are from the D.C. region.

Casqueiro has contributed two new pieces whose compositions resemble those of her collage-like, mostly representational paintings. But these artworks translate the paintings's style into three dimensions by adding such fingerable elements as pegboard. Other artists who often make sculptural work offer pieces in their usual modes, but these aren't meant just to be seen. Gallery goers can touch Susan Hostetler's ceramic birds, Kristina Penhoet's knotted-felt curtain, Robert Johnson's "ball" of orbiting plywood strips, and Wilfredo Valladares's rough-edged bowl filled with chunky, nut-like orbs.

Many pieces are constructed of found objects, which provide a range of intriguing textures. At the risk of betraying the spirit of the show, the assemblages are also appealing visually. Such fanciful creatures as Johnson's "Potbelly Owl" or Chinedu Felix Osuchukwu's "Chiquita" -- made largely of feathers or scrap metal, respectively -- are more than the sum of their motley parts. But those parts can also be examined one by one, feel by feel.

 

Deborah Schindler, “Vaulting” (Washington Printmakers Gallery)

 

FOUR DECADES OF A GALLERY'S LEGACY ARE CONDENSED into a few more than 40 prints and photographs in "Then & Now: Celebrating 40 Years of Washington Printmakers Gallery." The 24 participants, eight of them WPG founding members, are exhibiting two works each, one from "then" and one from "now." The route from one era to the other is not always straightforward.

Among the highlights are Deborah Schindler's elegant etching and aquatint, "Vaulting," in which two queues of exceptionally agile gymnasts project their legs skyward in emulation of the arched cathedral-like space in which they're lined up. The picture's sense of structure and perspective is echoed in a very different scene, Bob Burgess's "Sprayers," a photograph of agricultural workers in a field whose parallel furrows have a geometric exactness. In Kristine DeNinno's intriguing aquatint etching, the mostly orderly rows are partly slipped and blurred, perhaps to represent the effects of its title subject, "Fog."

Rosemary Cooley neatly contrasts a precise Renaissance-style architectural rendering with a looser rendering of a flower in her two-part intaglio print, "Individuation." Nina Muys's two monoprints both depict sunflowers, but the older picture is soft and subdued, while the newer one is harder-edged and, well, sunnier. Susan Pearcy's poignant "Sunflower Leaf #8" is sort of vegetative memento mori, a drypoint print finished with pastel that adds just the most desiccated shades of yellow and tan.

Perhaps it's a coincidence, but there's a wistfulness to many of these pieces that befits a retrospective show. Yet the pensiveness can be infused with drama, as in William Demaria's "Ghost River." This stark monoprint engraving depicts a stream with dark banks and a branch that casts a unifying shadow from one black shore to the other. The scene is set on a white field, as if to suggest that the moment is emerging from or receding from time. The vignette could be coming or going, then or now.

Pedro Ledesma III, “Mr. Julian Green, Jr.” (courtesy of the artist)

VENERABLE FIGURES ARE PORTRAYED WITH GREAT DIGNITY in "Our Rich (African) American History," photographer Pedro Ledesma III's show at the Arts Club of Washington. Many of the portraits were made in churches, and their subjects pose with suitable dignity and solemnity. Somberly, Ledesma has covered with black veils the pictures of two people who have since died.

Photographed in Petersburg, Va. in 2023, the pictures mostly depict older people whose formality is both a declaration of self-respect and a means of self-defense. If many of the subjects recall the besuited activists of the early-1960s civil rights movement, Ledesma's style evokes an even earlier time. Expertly lighted, the portraits suggest the Dutch Golden Age painters who highlighted faces amid lush black shadows. In Ledesma's photo of Julian Green, Jr., both the man's face and the large book in front of him are immaculately haloed.

The photographer did memorialize a few funkier figures, including a younger man who sits in a bar, wearing a pink cowboy hat. Central to Ledesma's project is the late Richard Stewart, who collected thousands of items for his one-man archive, the Black History Museum of Pocahontas Island. He's pictured surrounded by photos, artifacts, and hand-lettered signs. Ledesma's picture of Stewart is a superb example of environmental portraiture, but it's also an expression of affinity between two historians of the Black experience.

MARYLAND ARTIST MAK DEHEJIA USES WATERCOLOR TO CONVEY the liquidity of lakes, rivers, and misty air. So it's a bit surprising to learn that his late-in-life artistic career is rooted in his experience, as a child in rural India, of colorful sunsets caused by dust storms. Less perplexing is a boyhood attraction to "streams and ponds" that "provided relief from the hot sun," according to his statement about his Park View Gallery show, "Tranquil Vistas."

There's little sense of heat in Dehejia's small impressionist landscapes, but lots of light. Orange, pink, and areas of unpainted white convey the effects of sunlight, whether filtered through clouds or reflected on rippling surfaces. The places where sky meets water hint that each is boundless, and very nearly capable of flowing into each other. These serenely fluid locations seem to exist outside the influence of people, of which there is almost no evidence in the paintings.

Luminous color and satiny forms are what is immediately striking about Dehejia's work. Just as impressive, though, is the way the artist juxtaposes flat and modeled forms. He conveys trees, for example, with just a few green blotches. But he's also capable of layering multiple colors to conjure depth and distance. Dehejia's pictures appear as moist as his medium, but perhaps they do carry some memory of the vast skies that nature painted above decades ago.

Thierry Guillemin: Portrait of Ré as a Bird Photographer and other paintings

Leslie Kiefer: Circe's Cavern: The Jewel in the Abyss

Deborah Addison Coburn: Divertimento
Through Sept. 27 at Studio Gallery, 2108 R St. NW. studiogallerydc.com. 202-232-8734

Order and Chaos
Through Sept. 27 at Realces pop-up gallery, 3307 M St. NW. realces.pt/order-and-chaos. Open by appointment: ecasq@realces.pt

Then & Now: Celebrating 40 Years of Washington Printmakers Gallery

Through Sept. 28 at Washington Printmakers Gallery, 1675 Wisconsin Ave NW. washingtonprintmakers.com. 202-669-1497.

Pedro Ledesma III: Our Rich (African) American History

Through Sept. 26 at the Arts Club of Washington, 2017 I St. NW. artsclubofwashington.org. 202-331-7282.

Mak Dehejia: Tranquil Vistas

Through Sept. 28 at Park View Gallery, Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Glen Echo. 301-634-2274.”

Written by Mark Jenkins in DisCerning Eye, thank you!

In DisCerning Eye: Jo Levine and Leslie Kiefer

“Eye Witnessed

Photographic group shows at Gallery B and Multiple Exposures focus on looking and telling, while Photoworks remembers co-founder Frank "Tico" Herrera

Mark Jenkins

Jul 30, 2025

 

Tana Ebbole, “Dew Drops” (Creative Platform)

 

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS FRAME THEIR SUBJECTS, but some images feel more enclosed than others. Most of the 10 contributors to "Through the Looking Glass," Creative Platform’s local photographers's showcase at Gallery B, depict things or people that are tightly contained. But only about half of them depict literal interiors.

One of the most striking examples is "Roundabout," a high-contrast black-and-white picture by Van Pulley (who's also in the current Multiple Exposures Gallery show). A silhouetted pedestrian moves through a walkway covered by an arched lattice, past a foregrounded puddle that reflects both the person and the framework. The effect is to transform the half-curved space into one that appears fully circular, and nearly kaleidoscopic.

Among the other pictures made within actual walls are Jim Coates's evocative interiors of an abandoned, deteriorated house, rendered in shades of cream (lost affluence) and brown (decay). People either contemplate or ignore art -- in separate pictures -- in Susan Sanders's moody black-and-white studies of a museum and its visitors. Also monochromatic are Leslie Kiefer's eerie closeups of masks and figurines, sometimes doubled in mirrors; and Leslie Landerkin's environmental portraits, in which small people can be upstaged by big shadows.

Jo Levine steps outside to observe distorted and fractured reflections on mirrored building facades, a phenomenon often documented at Multiple Exposures (and in Levine's recent Studio Gallery show). While Levine's pictures are in color, Barry Dunn's uses black-and-white for his deconstructions of modern design, such as the front of a battered but still partly glossy automobile.

The sense of closeness is visually different but psychologically similar in Tana Ebbole's watery nature scenes, which are enveloped by mist. These elegant pictures feature muted colors that are suffused with gray yet punctuated by glimmers of golden sunlight. Ebbole's photos fit well with Barbara Southworth's sweeping horizontals of rocky landscapes, one of which observes the vivid contrast -- philosophical as well as pictorial -- of red plants flowering on granite.

The persistence of vegetation is also the theme of Kevin Duncan's closeups of twigs and branches that jut from water or ice, environments that register as expanses of blue or -- in the extraordinary "Lost Breath 2" -- electric green. The composition is carefully confined, but the color bids to bust it open.

 

Eric Johnson, “945 North Washington Street” (Multiple Exposures Gallery)

 

THE CLOSEST THING TO DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY IN "SMALL STORIES," Multiple Exposures Gallery's conceptual group exhibition, is by none other than Van Pulley, who demonstrates his flair for formalism in the Gallery B show. Here he offers pictures of Cubans in artistic or athletic motion, grouped in a battered metal frame to signify their country's deprivation. The photographic suite is one of the few to depict humans, but the effects of their actions -- mostly destructive -- are well-represented.

Eric Johnson observes the gradual disappearance of houses on the Baltimore block where his grandmother once lived, a microcosm of the city's decline. Human neglect and natural atrophy collaborated to tumble the rustic wooden structure Tom Sliter glimpses in mid-collapse. Sepia adds to the sense of age in Irina Lawton's blurry interiors of an old Maine schoolhouse, made with a low-resolution plastic camera. Everyone knows the story Alan Sislen tells with three shots of lower Manhattan taken from Jersey City between 1999 and 2014.

The fracturing is purely pictorial in Maureen Minehan's dissection of the Jefferson Memorial, rendered in harsh color to amplify the sense of violence in this visual metaphor for political polarization. The victims of human brutality are arboreal in Sarah Hood Salomon's pictures of decapitated heritage trees, framed in actual sawdust.

A lone person, perhaps a train buff, stalks Fred Zafran's shadowy photo essay on the Point of Rocks MARC station in what appears to be early morning. Much more exuberant are Stacy Smith Evans's pictures of bright orange facades of houses in Capetown, repainted from the white that was required when their occupants were enslaved.

Russell Creger Barajas reduces the human presence to three hands, sculpted in stone, wood, or plastic. This series of evocatively stark closeups is related in form, if not content, to sets of images of rusted metal links by Gullermo Olizola; rocks and piles of soil by David Myers; and aircraft details by Francine B. Livaditis. The story, whatever it may be, is in the details.

The one participant who utterly flouted the rules is Soomin Ham, who contributed a single picture of a flower. Many narratives are suggested by the photos in "Small Stories," but Ham's enigmatic picture demands that the viewer also be the storyteller.

 

“Mapplethorpe,” Frank “Tico” Herrera (Photoworks)

 

TO JUDGE BY HIS MEMORIAL EXHIBITION, FRANK "TICO" HERRERA was primarily a photographer of rustic landscapes, whether in Ireland, Costa Rica, or his native West Virginia. But the 30-photo retrospective at Photoworks, which he co-founded, touches on multiple subjects and themes. Herrera (1940-2021) photographed everything from a lone cow and the main building at Glen Echo -- two dramatically upward shots that are among the few in color -- to an art-world protest: the demonstration against the Corcoran Gallery's decision to cancel its 1989 Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition.

The protesters projected Mapplethorpe photos on the Corcoran facade, so Herrera was able to capture a ghostly image that flickers above the crowd. That sort of light play is unusual in this selection, although the photographer did use long exposures to make it appear as if low-speed freight trains are rocketing through West Virginia hamlets. The trains's temporary presence registers simply as a blur, accentuating the towns's sense of being left behind. Like the sepia tones of Herrera's Ireland studies, the smeared trains evoke the past in instants of the present.

Most whimsical and least characteristic is "Barbie Queue," a posed scenario populated by nearly a dozen Barbies and a single Ken. (He's at the grill, of course.) More typical are scenes where old buildings or cloud-stuffed skies are just permeable enough to yield splashes or patches of illumination. Light is essential to all photographers, of course, but Herrera was especially attuned to it.

Through the Looking Glass

Through Aug. 3 at Gallery B, 7700 Wisconsin Ave. #E, Bethesda. bethesda.org/bethesda/gallery-b-exhibitions. 301-215-7990.

Small Stories

Through Aug. 3 at Multiple Exposures Gallery, Torpedo Factory, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. multipleexposuresgallery.com. 703-683-2205.

Frank "Tico" Herrera Memorial Exhibition

Through Aug. 3 at Photoworks, Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur Blvd, Glen Echo. glenechophotoworks.org. 301-634-2274."

Written by Mark Jenkins, thank you!

Reflection on Uncanny at the NMWA, and other recent Smithsonian shows

I was born and raised in DC and the Smithsonian museums have always been a second home for me. They are where I spend my days off, walking alone through crowds of tourists, absorbing work from artists I learn about later in art history classes. Over the past month, I have visited several major DC museums, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), the National Gallery/National Portrait Gallery, the Hirshorn, and the Renwick, to name a few. I want to discuss a few works in particular that I was especially excited about, and maybe draw some connections between them. 

The show that I saw at the NMWA is titled Uncanny. Many pieces included in the Uncanny exhibition are predicated on some distortion of the physical body, often the female body in particular, whether that be through abstraction, reimagination of form, or some experimental use of medium. Distortion of the body is one surefire way to provoke unease in a viewer, as the audience will identify viscerally with the subject. 

Some of the artists in this show are prominent figures in feminist art history, including Judy Chicago, who created the Dinner Party sculptural installation (permanent collection at the Brooklyn Museum) which was made up of 39 place-setting sculptures dedicated to significant women throughout history, forming a massive triangular table. Many of the place settings are sculpted to look like female genitalia, which for some may provoke discomfort, but were intended as a celebration of the female body and experience. 

Judy Chicago (American, born 1939). The Dinner Party, 1974–79. Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 576 × 576 in. (1463 × 1463 cm). Brooklyn Museum; Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. © Judy Chicago. (Photo: Donald Woodman)

Her work for the NMWA is a series of paintings on glass and porcelain that explore the grief of climate change and extinction. This existential interpretation of ‘uncanny’ broadens the scope of the exhibition from experiences of the body to wider connectivity with the natural world, which can be just as disconcerting. 

Judy Chicago, Stranded, from The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction, 2016; Kiln-fired glass paint on black glass, 12 x 18 in.; Courtesy of the artist; Salon 94, New York; and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco; © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, NY

Another artist I was particularly excited to see was Louise Bourgeois, whose work is renowned for its disturbing and emotionally affecting subject matter, and, well, its uncanniness. Her work for this show is Untitled (with foot), “carved from pink marble, depicts a baby’s foot sticking out from beneath a perfect sphere. Sculpted to allude to smooth, tender flesh under a heavy globe-like object, the work is equally alluring and alarming. Bourgeois evokes the unresolved tension of the universal trauma of birth, a recurrent theme in her art.” (Orin Zahra, associate curator NMWA) This disembodied limb fused to the smooth, fleshy sphere suggests a monstrous, inhuman child, lacking most identifying human features, but still heartbreakingly vulnerable to the dangers of the world around it. This vulnerability is contrasted with the rough hewn surface the figure is placed on top of, suggesting a cruel and unwelcoming world. This piece reminds me a bit of the Eraserhead baby from the David Lynch movie, iykyk.

Louise Bourgeois, Untitled (with foot), 1989; Pink marble, 30 x 26 x 21 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Museum Purchase with funds provided by the Roger S. Firestone Foundation Fund, the FRIENDS of The Corcoran Gallery of Art, William A. Clark Fund, the gift of William E. Share (by exchange), The Women’s Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Carolyn Alper); © The Easton Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Eraserhead baby, from the movie Eraserhead, directed by David Lynch RIP

I was also struck by Felix Gonzales Torres’s approach to portraiture, which feels in line with the work of the Uncanny show, as his candy works are direct representations of a human body, that can in turn be consumed and continuously altered by the audience. This action of eating the candy that is the body of some specific person feels like a violation, and yet the candy is inviting and innocuous without its context. The constant turnover and reinvention of the portrait through the removal and replacement of pieces of candy reminds me of a thought I have had many times before, which is ‘the only constant is change’ or something to that effect, which I suppose is cheap buddhism for coping with the terrifying uncertainty of life. This work also reminds me of the blessed sacrament, i.e, the ‘blood and body of christ’ that catholics consume when they take communion, which provokes questions in my mind about how portraiture can be a portal to eternal life, especially when the portrait is meant to be consumed/integrated into the being of the audience. Gonzales-Torres’s work has a way of sticking with you, and this endlessly thought-spiralling effect that his candy works in particular have on me make me fascinated to learn more about him and his influences.  

"Untitled" (Portrait of Dad), 1991

White mint candies in clear wrappers, endless supply
Overall dimensions vary with installation
Ideal weight: 175 lb.
© Estate Felix Gonzalez-Torres Courtesy Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation
Photo: Matailong Du

 

Written by Zora Pauk
Gallery Associate

 
 

In DisCerning Eye: Cheryl Ann Bearss, Pam Frederick, Harriet Lesser, and Veronica Szalus

“Letter Perfect

Letterpress artists revitalize the almost-obsolete process at Pyramid Atlantic. Also: Work by Cheryl Ann Bearss, Pam Frederick, Harriet Lesser, Veronica Szalus, Dee Levinson, and Monica Jahan Bose

MARK JENKINS

JULY 2ND, 2025

 

David Wolske, “Polysynthesis” (Pyramid Atlantic)

 

"FREEDOM OF THE PRESS is guaranteed only to those who own one," wrote A.J. Liebling in 1960, before not just the Internet but also the widespread adoption of offset printing. Liebling's words would originally have been promulgated by letterpress, a once-dominant industrial process that now survives as the artisanal craft showcased in Pyramid Atlantic's "Press On." Fittingly, this large and impressive exhibition includes Khoa Nguyen's elegant poster of Liebling's maxim, the sentence neatly choreographed in highly compressed orange sans serif text.

Letters and words are central to the show, which was juried by Celene Aubry of Tennessee's Hatch Show Print and Allison Tipton, manager of the Globe Collection and Press at the Maryland Institute College of Art. There are images in many of the works made by the nearly 100 contributors (some working as members of teams), and a few contain not a single letter. But several of the most inventive pieces demonstrate how just color, layout, and type are sufficient to build an effective composition.

Words and names, especially when they're well-known, can be read even in daringly unexpected configurations. So Scott Fisk tightly overlaps the letters in "home" and "joy," emphasizing color but not entirely forgoing legibility. And Virginia Green flips sideways and breaks into two lines the longest name in this familiar lineup: John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Similar tactics, with the additional complication of multiple typefaces, enliven Frank Baseman's bold poster of the NATO phonetic alphabet, all the way from "alpha" to "zulu."

More minimalist but just as astute are E Bond's sculptural arrangement of industrial-looking "E's" in corroded shades of black; Steven Stichter's punning waves of rising blue "C's"; and Richard Kegler's duo of superimposed ampersands, one upside down. David Wolske abstracts letters by trimming them merely to such features are bowls and serifs, printed in vivid hues and partly overlaid. Carlos Hernandez uses mostly letters and punctuation -- but also silhouetted guns -- to depict cowboys identified as good, bad, and ugly. Jon Drew's gentle landscapes position black trees in front of terrain built mostly of letters.

As might be expected, there are numerous artist's books and other 3D items. Cynthia Connolly's sewn grab bag contains 15 postcards, mostly of her photographs. Andre Lee Bassuet demonstrates the letterpress-worthiness of the Korean Hangeul alphabet in a tiny book printed with Legos. Richard Zeid imprints the word "fractured" atop a black-and-white photograph that's been torn into four irregular quadrants. Elinor Swanson prints blue-on-white patterns that suggest Dutch ceramics and presents them both flat and folded into the shapes of a cup and a pitcher.

Among the most powerful entries, both in theme and form, is Sarah Matthews's "Outrage," a flag book that stands like a poster and conveys the artist's response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. "My uterus is none of your business" proclaim black-on-pink letters that stutter across repeated unfurled pages. Matthews's broadside -- and all of "Press On" -- certifies that letterpress is anything but quaint.

 

Cheryl Ann Bearrs, “Great Falls November” (Studio Gallery)

 

THE NATURAL WORLD IS THE INSPIRATION for Cheryl Ann Bearss's Studio Gallery show, as it was for her previous one. But the focus of "Fleeting Moments of Nature" has expanded from closeups of individual trees to wider views of forests, skies, and rivers -- notably the Potomac at Great Falls, a turbulent contrast to the Northern Virginia painter's serene pictures of flowering bushes and trees.

Her style has also shifted toward a more detailed and realistic approach, although some of her oils are looser than others. This can be seen even in pictures of the same essential subject. "Great Falls November" is tighter than "Stormy Skies over Great Falls," although both depict rock and water, sunlight and mist.

Bearrs hasn't abandoned renderings of single trees, including one viewed from a craned-neck perspective. All black and gray, "Snow Tree" is among the show's most elegantly stylized pictures, and such stark, leafless studies as "Twisted Trunks" have an almost-sculptural quality. Removed from their natural environs, such gnarled wooden spires have a totemic quality.

Also at Studio is "At This Time," billed as three "coordinated shows" by Pam Frederick, Harriet Lesser, and Veronica Szalus. Least like the other entries are Lesser's pictures of rumpled bedclothes, manipulated photographs that incorporate drawing and painting. Meditations on "waking up," the mixed-media pictures contrast soft and hard by mounting images of twisted fabric atop steel panels.

Both Frederick and Szalus use recycled materials. The former's installation employs found cardboard in a rhythmic composition that was inspired by a Herbie Hancock track and visually suggests Matisse, Mondrian, and Russian Constructivism. The latter's 3D assemblages appear more ominous: What appear to be toilet-paper rolls, often painted and sometimes singed, are held in place by a slice of a pipe or a ragged chicken-wire tower. Where Frederick's collage has a funky equanimity, Szalus's constructions conjure a universe that's haphazard, damaged, and dangerously unstable.

 

Dee Levinson, “Egyptian Woman” (Touchstone Gallery)

 

ANCIENT EGYPT AND ITS ENVIRONS ARE THE WELLSPRINGS of Dee Levinson's "Egypt Revisited," but the Northern Virginia artist doesn't imagine her subjects as they might have been. Instead, she models most of the oil paintings in her Touchstone Gallery show on her photographs of historical sculptures. The resulting images have a strong sense of physical presence, but they seem as much stone as flesh.

Levinson worked for more than two decades as a graphic designer for the Washington Post, and her commercial-art background is evident in her meticulous illustrative style. Unlike some artists with a similar history -- Andy Warhol, notably -- Levinson doesn't contrast hard lines with areas of looser, freer color. But she does subtly mottle the primarily single-hue backdrops, and employ boldly unnaturalistic color schemes. Earthy tans and browns are set off by vivid red, blues, and purples, and gold and copper tones evoke the riches of Pharoanic Egypt.

The artist primarily depicts historical Egyptians and their vestiges, including masks and mummies, as well as the occasional goddess (Isis) or out-of-towner (Persian emperor Darius, who ruled Egypt long after the best-known pharaohs). Ramses II is portrayed in three separate color schemes, although the hues aren't the only differences between the renderings. Each seated figure is placed inside a different painted border, the use of which is another Levinson trademark. The artist presents ancient Egyptian history as tidy and contained, ready for the viewer to unbox.

 

Monica Jahan Bose, “Freedom (Blue)” (photo by Mark Jenkins)

 

HANGING CURTAINS MADE FROM SARIS mark the entrance to Gallery Y's "Take Me to the Water," a flourish that comes as no surprise. Repurposed saris are among the customary elements in Monica Jahan Bose's work, which is often collaborative. The Bangladeshi-American local artist enlists contributions from women in her ancestral village on the Bay of Bengal -- an area especially vulnerable to rising sea levels -- but also from people who live near the notoriously polluted Anacostia River. Among the results was "Swimming," last year's public installation near another body of water, D.C.'s Marie Reed Aquatic Center.

Some pieces from "Swimming" surface in Bose's current exhibition, but this show is smaller and focused mostly on woodblock and relief prints. Some of these incorporate painting and drawing, and several include small scraps of saris. Of these, the most striking is "Rising (with Sari)," which is all green except for a slash of magenta cloth. The strip offers a strong color contrast while evoking the fluidity of both water and fabric.

Bose's eclectic art is held together by its themes, even as multiple hands and voices pull it in various directions. Phrases in English and Bengali punctuate the imagery, and one sari is bordered again and again by "1.5°C" -- the amount of global warming that's estimated to be sustainable. But the most universal emblems are simple renderings of water and fish, traditional symbols of purity and abundance that have come to represent the opposites or their longtime meanings.

Press On

Through July 13 at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, 4318 Gallatin St., Hyattsville. pyramidatlanticartcenter.org. 301-608-9101.

Cheryl Ann Bearss: Fleeting Moments of Nature

Pam Frederick, Harriet Lesser, and Veronica Szalus: At This Time

Through July 12 at Studio Gallery, 2108 R St. NW. studiogallerydc.com. 202- 232-8734.

Dee Levinson: Egypt Revisited

Through July 6 at Touchstone Gallery, 901 New York Ave. NW. touchstonegallery.com. 202-682-4125.

Monica Jahan Bose: Take Me to the Water

Through July 11 at Gallery Y, YMCA Anthony Bowen, 1325 W St. NW. www.ymcaanthonyboweneventspacedc.com/galleryy. 202-232-6936.”

Review by Mark Jenkins, DisCerning Eye, July 2025. Thank you!

In the Washington City Paper: Jo Levine, Judy Bonderman, Beverly Logan, and Suliman Abdullah

“On Camera: Four Local Artists on View at Studio Gallery

Jo Levine, Judy Bonderman, Beverly Logan, and Suliman Abdullah bring unique and interesting photography—and photography-adjacent art—to the Dupont gallery.

LOUIS JACOBSON

JUNE 9TH, 2025

 

“Sky Lights #1” by Jo Levine on View at Studio Gallery

 

Kudos to Studio Gallery for squeezing a wide range of interesting photography—and photography-adjacent art—into its modestly sized lower gallery space, with four simultaneous, loosely linked exhibits by D.C.-area artists. 

One, Suliman Abdullah, offers photography and collage that harnesses “intentional color manipulation,” often through circular abstractions that layer grainy hues over one another.

 

“Essence of Place: Tuscany” by Beverly Logan

 

Another artist, Beverly Logan, seeks to share what she calls the “Essence of Place”—digital collages saturated with hyperreal colors, notably an image set in Buenos Aires that features a vintage station wagon wedged into a weathered alley, in a setting captured by shades of tomato red, mustard yellow, and inky blue. A more obviously manufactured tableau by Logan, but that still offers intrigue, depicts a view from an Amtrak passenger-car window, featuring parallel, receding layers of track, water, a row of yellow-painted homes, a factory wall and a carefree sky. 

Like Abdullah and Logan, Judy Bonderman uses photographic manipulation; Bonderman leverages the technique to freeze moments from walks she’s made through the Tregaron Conservancy, an urban green space in Cleveland Park. She acknowledges that her images of aquatic plants, frogs, water snakes, and fish aren’t literal; her approach, she says, “exaggerates and romanticizes” what she sees. While many of Logan’s works are dominated by calming shades of green, her most compelling piece may actually be the opposite: “Rolling,” an abstraction with a blend of deep red hues that suggests the fires of hell.

 

“Transitions” by Judy Bonderman

 

The most consistently successful of the four artists is Jo Levine, whose past work at the gallery and elsewhere hasbeen similarly impressive. In the current exhibit, Levine documents a wide array of locations in D.C.; few of the more than a dozen images she contributes are squandered. What ties Levine’s works together is a seamless presentation of overlapping layers. In one photograph, for instance, Levine captures the crisp reflection of the Empire State Building off the smooth hood of a black car. In another, Levine documents a flurry of hanging light bulbs reflected in a window, cheekily suggesting a UFO invasion above an ordinary-looking street scene. In a third image, Levine presents an almost literal kaleidoscopic view of reflections on the mirrored exterior of a building.

While Levine structures many of her photographs around the rigorous lines of modernist architecture, many of them include unexpected buckling, as if the lines were being shaped by some unseen magnetic force. In one image, linear reflections bend into something resembling genitalia; in another, the lines of the National Gallery of Art’s East Building resolve into an hourglass or infinity symbol. In one photograph captured off an exterior window of the Hirshhorn Museum, the viewer simultaneously sees reflections of Henry Moore’s “King and Queen,” a portion of the U.S. Capitol dome, and the winningest portrayal of a brutalist D.C. edifice in recent memory. 

Ultimately, Levine’s two finest works may be her most abstract. One of these images depicts the organic, gently undulating surface rivulets of water in pleasing shades of olive and gray. The second captures a view of the Kennedy Center’s REACH; the portrayal brings together a satisfying mix of straight and curved geometric lines, appealing shades of Hopperian blue and gray, and a dreamy, watercolor-like texture that comes from gentle disturbances in reflected water. 

Real and Surreal: Coordinated Shows by Judy Bonderman and Jo Levine; Beverly Logan’s Essence of Place; and Suliman Abdullah’s Global Empathy run through June 14 at Studio Gallery. Wednesday through Friday, 1 to 6 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. studiogallerydc.com. Free.”

Review by Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper, June 2025. Thank you!

In DisCerning Eye: Studio Gallery's Micheline Klagsbrun, Writ in Water; Solo Exhibition

“STEELY MAMMOTHS

Natural and industrial meld in a sculpture group show. Also: Fred Folsom's neoclassical take on American life and Micheline Klagsbrun's liquefied texts

MARK JENKINS

MAY 6, 2025

Micheline Klagsbrun, “Dream Books” (Courtesy of Studio Gallery)

AMONG THE TOMES SUMMONED BY MICHELINE KLAGSBRUN'S "WRIT ON Water” is libra segundo de Moses, a Spanish title for the book also called Exodus. The volume is an apt inclusion, since many of the local artist's pieces are inspired by her family's flight from the Nazi-controlled regions of Europe. While Klagsbrun's recent shows have featured ships, this one emphasizes texts. Yet the water imagery of her earlier work endures.

Curated by Aneta Georgievska-Shine, the Studio Gallery show includes some ink and colored-pencil drawings on rough paper. But it's dominated by 3D constructions made of paper, ink, string, wire, branches, and bark. Twists of wood that previously represented boats serve here as frames and supports for swirls of smeared, water-shaped paper. These enigmatic objects represent "the instability or memory and identity," according to a gallery note.

Words matter, whether in Hebrew, English, or Spanish, and the titles identify some of these fabrications as a night book, dream diary, prayer book, tree journal, memory book, or almanac. But the overall impression is of colors -- mostly blue, brown, and white -- and textures, not of anything legible. Rather than yield commandments engraved in stone, Klagsbrun's telling of an exodus produces only fragments that are gnarled, fragile, and intriguingly inchoate.”

Review by Mark Jenkins, DisCerning Eye, May 2025. Thank you!

Reflecting on "Reclamation" and Amity Chan's Fellowship Experience

Amity Chan’s time as the Studio Gallery’s Jennie Lea Knight Fellow has been an incredible journey of artistic growth and professional development. Reclamation, her second and final exhibition through the fellowship program, was a bittersweet milestone and offered an opportunity for her to reflect on the elements that have influenced and shaped her work throughout this transformative chapter. Her work in the Fellows Exhibition was a deeply personal exploration of memory, identity, and renewal, bringing together pieces that spoke to the power of reclaiming one’s narrative. 

Chan Reflecting on Her Experience

“This fellowship has been a vital resource for emerging artists like myself. It provided an opportunity to rebuild my art practice after a period of doubt and uncertainty. I graduated in 2020 at the height of the pandemic while simultaneously grappling with the mass protests in Hong Kong. After graduation, I paused my artistic practice until I finally settled into my new life in Washington, D.C., in 2022. However, due to a lack of resources, I was only creating smaller works and digital drawings —nothing comparable to my usual practice. In 2023, while working as a Gallery Assistant at IA&A at Hillyer, I saw the open call for this fellowship. Having known Studio Gallery through our monthly First Friday and Third Thursday partnerships, I had always admired its unique co-op model. I was thrilled to apply, as I was seeking a supportive community, mentorship, and, most importantly, an accountability partner in rebuilding my practice. The fellowship has introduced me to meaningful relationships I deeply cherish, including my amazing cohorts, Olivia Bruce, Skyler Henry, and Omari Wilson; my mentor, Lynda Andrews-Barry, since 2023; Atiya Dorsey and Irene Pantelis, who both served as Fellowship Managers; Halley Stubis, the former Gallery Director; Madison King, the current Director of Studio Gallery; and Helen Frederick, who kindly curated my second fellows' exhibition. It has also provided consistent opportunities to showcase my work, including biannual all-member shows, Garden Gallery exhibitions, Art All Night, and annual fellows’ exhibitions. In just under two years, I have exhibited at Studio Gallery six times, with another exhibition scheduled for April. Through the process of consistently exhibiting and refining my work, I gained the confidence and experience to pursue additional opportunities. This led to a total of ten exhibitions in 2024 alone. Additionally, I was honored to collaborate with organizations such as the Arts and Peacebuilding Culture for DMV Leaders Fellowship at George Mason University, the Mind Your Art Business Program at Vika Visual Arts Association, and most recently, the Sparkplug Artists’ Collective at The DC Arts Center.” Chan says in reflection of her time.

 

Artistic Growth and Continuing Themes

One of the most fulfilling aspects of Reclamation for Chan was seeing how her artistic voice has evolved while maintaining continuity in her themes. An exciting development has been her sculptural series, Through the Cracks and her painting Through the Window, which were both centerpieces of her work in Reclamation. Both bodies of work examine the tension between fragility and resilience, using fragmented and layered materials to explore themes of displacement, belonging, and transformation. 


 
 

Amity Chan, Through the Cracks Collection, Cement and faux dandelion

Highlights and New Opportunities

Since Reclamation, Chan has been honored to share her work and perspectives in a variety of spaces. Some key opportunities include: 

- Speaker, Fine Arts Spring Alumni Panel, Maryland Institute College of Art (2025) - Artist Feature, When Art Meets Activism, ArtDiction Special Edition (2024) - Review of Pieces of the Whole by Mark Jenkins, DisCerning Eye (2024). 

Head to Studio Gallery today through May 17th, 2025 to see Chan’s duo exhibition with fellow artist, Lynda Andrews-Barry, in the Garden Gallery. Fragments of Memories is a moving exhibition that brings together two artists whose practices navigate the complex intersections of memory, identity, and place. Through paintings, sculptures, collages, and video installations, Amity Chan and Lynda Andrews-Barry explore how personal histories and political realities shape the landscapes we live in, both real and imagined. Drawing from her upbringing in Hong Kong, Chan reflects on everyday spaces such as residential buildings, schools, and malls, using personal photographs to reconstruct a childhood shaped by cultural rituals and rapid urban transformation on canvases. Her manga-inspired paintings speak to the cultures she grew up with and her diasporic experience in the U.S., as well as the desire to preserve cultural memory in the face of displacement. In parallel, Andrews-Barry responds to the political atmosphere of Washington, D.C., using snow globes, mixed media collages, and video installation to examine collective memory and national narratives. Her works translate the volatility of current events into intimate, symbolic forms that call for action and self-expression. Together, their works reveal memory not as a static archive, but as a shifting terrain shaped by place, time, and the politics of remembering. You don’t want to miss it!


Her recent exhibitions include: 

- HK Liberty Art Prize 2024, Lady Liberty Hong Kong, Tokyo, Japan 

- Journey to Self, Vika Visual Arts Association, Washington D.C. 

- Lost & Found: Searching For Home (Community Stories), Wing Luke Museum, Seattle, WA

Keep an eye out for her upcoming exhibitions:

- The 2nd Annual Art Exhibition, Hong Kong Human Right Front, Taipei, Taiwan (April 2025) - Duo Exhibition with Lynda Andrews-Barry, Studio Gallery, Washington D.C. (April 2025) - Sparkplug Artists’ Collective Exhibition, The DC Arts Center, Washington D.C. (November 2025). 

- ADMO Art Walk 2025 from 4/4-4/27, In  partnership with D Light Cafe & Bakery

As she moves forward, Chan remains deeply grateful for the experiences and mentorship that this fellowship has provided. While it is sad to see this chapter close, she carries forward the lessons and connections that have shaped her artistic journey. Chan is excited to engage with different perspectives, continue to enrich her practice, and she looks forward to the dialogue ahead.

 
 
 
 

Written by Emma Sapp
Gallery Associate

 
 

In DisCerning Eye: Studio Gallery's Premier Associate's exhibition, "Lost and Found"

“Outside In

Alice Momm artfully gleans Glen Echo Park, and contributors to group shows at Studio Gallery and Hamiltonian Artworks glean rusted metal and dried clay

MARK JENKINS

MARCH 10, 2025

Joan Mayfield, Splay (Courtesy of Studio Gallery)

ASSEMBLAGES ASPIRE TO THE CHARACTER OF PAINTINGS in the work of four of the six contributors to "Lost and Found," a Studio Gallery group show curated by the Athenaeum's Veronica Szalus. The exhibition's statement invokes Marcel Duchamp, but these artists don't enshrine a single found object. Instead, they jumble and jangle multiple things.

Jennifer Duncan's mostly abstract collages are made of found and painted paper, often with drawn tree or leaf forms amid the dotted, dashed, and capillary-like patterns. Pam Frederick's photo-collages feature curling graffiti tags, cut and partly twisted; the artist also offers two 3D constructions made mostly of painted wood, although one centers on a steel painter's palette.

Doug Fuller clusters primarily metal pieces, often gnarled, sometimes flattened, and occasionally rusted. These found items are mounted on panels that are painted a single color, thus underlying the haphazard assemblages with pop-art tidiness. Such industrial metal artifacts as a spring, a crank, and an antique light switch are framed by worn wood in Joan Mayfield's constructions, whose methodical layouts are offset by the frayed materials. The artist plays with the idea of the picture frame, recessing objects into boxes. In "Splay," she projects three curved tubes -- browned metal pipes that look like tree branches -- from within a wooden rectangle painted a faded green. These battered components combine, improbably, to suggest vitality and even rebirth.

Bright color is the show's other motif, linking the 3D pieces to the work of photographer Bob Burgess and painter Al Lipton. The latter's gestural abstractions are mostly in prime colors, underscored by black, but it's yellow that breaks the picture plane. Thick gobs of that color, arranged in roughly parallel lines, both divide and unify the compositions.

Burgess's photos are the only works that are entirely flat and fully representational. Yet they're keyed more to color and shape than to narrative. A white doorknob protrudes from a red door that's bordered by a yellow wall, an arrangement that resembles an accidental flag. A red inflatable raft rests criss-cross atop a green one, which floats on mottled-blue pool water. Such meticulous compositions might denote the show's most minimalist entries, if only their hues weren't so voluptuous. In Burgess's pictures, color itself appears to splash beyond the surface.”

Review by Mark Jenkins, DisCerning Eye, March 2025. Thank you!

Celebrating Ghanaian Artists!

The Art in Independence; Celebrating Ghanaian Artists

Through the study of art history, we are introduced to the rich diversity of African art—its deep cultural significance, historical impact, and the meaningful roles it plays within African communities. With Ghana’s Independence Day upon us,  as a Ghanaian artist myself, I find that this is the perfect opportunity to celebrate and spotlight both emerging and established Ghanaian artists, in Ghana and right here in the DMV area. 

One such artist is SenaBurgundy Appau, an emerging contemporary artist based in Accra, Ghana. His work masterfully blends traditional painting techniques with screen printing, resulting in dynamic and captivating pieces. One aspect that particularly stands out in his work—among many compelling qualities—is his striking use of blue to depict his subjects.

Teal Fields
2023
Acrylic on canvas
43 x 64”
Sena Burgundy Appau


Another featured artist is Adjoa Turkson, a multimedia artist who skillfully combines acrylic paint, oil pastels, and yarn to explore the complexities of the female psyche. Through the use of yarn, she evokes themes of connection, entanglement, and the societal constraints that shape women's experiences. Her work navigates the tension between external expectations and personal struggles, offering a profound reflection on both individuality and the shared realities of womanhood.

Headstrong
2025
Acrylic, Yarn, on Canvas
27 x 59”
Adjoa Turkson

Furthermore, one of Ghana’s most renowned artists, Kobina Nyarko, often called the “Fishman” for his striking depictions of schools of fish, is another compelling creative to acknowledge. His work masterfully captures movement, color, and pattern, using layers of fish to create a sense of depth and fluidity. While fish remain his primary subject, Nyarko’s art goes beyond marine life, exploring themes of identity and our connection to the natural world.

Small works on Paper
Acrylic Paint on paper
Kobina Nyarko

Finally, Ivan Puplampu (myself) is a multimedia artist based in Washington, D.C, whose work explores themes of self-identity, culture, and environmental consciousness. Incorporating recyclable materials into both his canvases and artworks, he merges sustainability with creative expression. His practice is deeply rooted in amplifying marginalized communities, shedding light on the experiences of African immigrants, and celebrating the beauty and distinct features of Black identity and people of color. Through his thought-provoking pieces, Puplampu creates a visual dialogue that not only reflects personal and collective narratives but also challenges societal perceptions.

Madame Rosanne (triptych)
30 x 40” (each)
Oil, recycled material, cotton on canvas
Ivan Puplampu


If you are interested in learning more about these Ghanaian artists, click the links in this blog to gain access to their social media!

Written by Ivan Puplampu
Gallery Associate

Forgotten Women of Art History: Female Artists Who Shaped the Art World

Throughout history, female artists have created breathtaking works, yet many remain overshadowed by their male counterparts. While figures like Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe are widely celebrated, countless other female artists made groundbreaking contributions to major art movements but are often left out of the narrative. This Women’s History Month, we spotlight three influential yet underappreciated artists, Artemisia Gentileschi, Berthe Morisot, and Augusta Savage, whose work challenged artistic and societal norms.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653) – A Baroque Trailblazer


In an era when women were rarely accepted as professional artists, Artemisia Gentileschi defied expectations and made a name for herself in the male-dominated world of Baroque painting. One of her most famous works, “Judith Slaying Holofernes”, portrays a powerful woman taking control of her fate, just as Artemisia did. This painting demonstrates her use of dramatic lighting and intense portrayal of emotions which is what she was known for. Unlike the more passive depictions of Judith created by male artists of the time, Gentileschi’s Judith is strong, determined, and unafraid, mirroring the artist’s own fight against gender bias and personal struggles. Gentileschi broke down barriers for female artists by earning commissions from royal families and the Vatican.



 
 

Artemisa Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes (1620), Oil on canvas

 
 

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) – The Overlooked Impressionist

Berthe Morisot was one of the founding members of the Impressionist movement and a true innovator of the style, and still she is often not mentioned in the historical texts referencing impressionist artists. She captured modern life with delicate brushstrokes and soft, airy colors, focusing on domestic scenes and the everyday experiences of women. Morisot’s work, “The Cradle”, is a striking example of her ability to depict emotion through subtle yet powerful compositions. She added a new narrative by providing insight into the life of a 19th century woman that her male counterparts could not contribute to. Despite being often overlooked, Morisot made an undeniable impact on Impressionism.


 
 
 

Berthe Morisot, The Cradle (1872), Oil on canvas

 

Augusta Savage (1892–1962) – A Sculptor of Strength and Resistance

A leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Savage used sculpture to challenge racial and gender barriers in early 20th-century America. Her work celebrated Black identity and resilience, with one of her most famous pieces, “The Harp”, drawing inspiration from the hymn Lift Every Voice and Sing. This metal cast sculpture depicts figures forming the shape of a harp, symbolizing both struggle and hope. An important note is that Savage was also an educator and advocate for the inclusion of Black artists in the exhibition space. Augusta Savage helped shape the future for female and Black artists for years to come.


 

Augusta Savage, The Harp (1939), White metal cast with a black patina

 

Honoring Women in Art

While these three women were integral to the history of women in art, they are just a fraction of the female artists who shaped history. Their contributions remind us of the fortitude, mastery, and ingenuity that women have brought to the world of art. As we celebrate Women’s History Month, let’s continue to recognize and uplift the voices of female artists past, present, and future.

 
 

If you are interested in these artists and their work, head to our March Pinterest board linked below that has additional works by these artists and many other female artists!

https://www.pinterest.com/atstudiogallerydc/march-board/

 
 

Sources

  1. Augusta savage. Smithsonian American Art Museum. (n.d.-b). https://americanart.si.edu/artist/augusta-savage-4269 

  2. American, A. S. (1970, January 1). Augusta Savage: Lift every voice and sing (the harp). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/898876 

  3. Och, M. (2014). [Review of Violence & Virtue: Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” by E. Straussman-Pflanzer]. Woman’s Art Journal, 35(2), 63–64. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24395426

  4. Berthe Morisot: Artist profile. National Museum of Women in the Arts. (2020, May 29). https://nmwa.org/art/artists/berthe-morisot/ 

  5. Google Arts and Culture

Written by Emma Sapp
Gallery Associate

 
 

Celebrating Black Artists From Washington, DC

Throughout history students around the world have been introduced to European artists and art movements. During this Black History Month, we want to dive deeper into the profound influence African American artists have on art and culture in Washington, D.C. Alma Thomas, Lois Mailou Jones, Hilda Wilkinson Brown, and Lilian Thomas Burwell each made their own undeniable contributions to art in the District and throughout the country. 


Our first spotlight is on artist Alma Thomas (1891-1978), Howard University’s first fine arts graduate. Thomas is known for her bright and vibrant abstract paintings depicting naturescapes and starscapes. Her painting Red Abstraction (c.1960) perfectly encapsulates the vibrance Thomas was known for. This oil painting features dynamic shapes, vibrant red hues, and energetic movement that leave the audience feeling alive. She paved the way for artists to come by becoming the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her legacy will hold a place in D.C. history as a significant trailblazer and major contributor to contemporary art and African American women in the arts. 

 
 

Alma Thomas, Red Abstraction (1959), Oil on Canvas

 
 

Our next artist is Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998), a professor at Howard University. Jones traveled extensively researching and drawing inspiration from her African and Caribbean heritage. She worked in many different mediums, however she mainly focused on painting and textile design that emphasized her inspiration from her African heritage and cultural pride. Initiation, Liberia (c.1983) combined her passions to create a moving and thought provoking acrylic on canvas painting that comments on the rights and roles of women in Liberia. Lois Mailou Jones will hold an important role in art history as she was a pioneer in promoting the use of African textiles and patterns in art in not only Washington but throughout the United States. 

 
 
 

Lois Mailou Jones, Initiation, Liberia (1983), Acrylic on canvas

 

Hilda Wilkinson Brown (1894-1981) was a native Washingtonian who advocated for art education within the DC education system. Her art primarily focused on realistic depictions of life as an African American living in Washington DC. One of her most famous pieces being Third and Rhode Island (c.1930-1940) which is a beautiful oil on canvas painting depicting the historically significant residential DC neighborhood and emphasizing its vibrant community dynamics and cultural intersections. Her legacy will always be remembered through her powerful art and her significant role in fostering local art education.

 

Hilda Wilkinson Brown, Third and Rhode Island (1930-1940), Oil on canvas

 

Last but certainly not least is Lilian Thomas Burwell (b.1927), also from Washington DC, is known for her ability to combine sculpture and painting to create dynamic works influenced by the natural world. Her work Snowbird (c.1983) is an acrylic on canvas painting utilizing various hues on pinks, reds, purples, greys, and browns that create a depth and dynamic unlike most other work. Burwell uses her art to advocate for environmental and spiritual awareness by creating abstract pieces in organic forms inspired by nature and spirituality. 

 

Lilian Thomas Burwell, Snowbird (1983), Acrylic on canvas

 

This Black History Month, as we celebrate the achievements of Alma Thomas, Lois Mailou Jones, Hilda Wilkinson Brown, and Lilian Thomas Burwell, we honor their resilience, innovation, and lasting impact on the art world. These trailblazers not only enriched the cultural tapestry of Washington, D.C., but also elevated African American art to new heights, inspiring future generations to embrace their heritage and creative potential.

 
 

If you are interested in these artists and their work, head to our February Pinterest board linked below that has additional works by these artists and many other Black artists!

Studio Gallery Pinterest

 
 

Sources

  1. “Alma Thomas.” Smithsonian American Art Museum, americanart.si.edu/artist/alma-thomas-4778. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025. 

  2. “Loïs Mailou Jones: Artist Profile.” National Museum of Women in the Arts, 8 Mar. 2021, nmwa.org/art/artists/lois-mailou-jones/. 

  3. “Hilda Wilkinson Brown.” Smithsonian American Art Museum, americanart.si.edu/artist/hilda-wilkinson-brown-29920. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025. 

  4. “Lilian Thomas Burwell.” Photo of Lilian, www.burwellstudios.com/. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025. 

  5. Google Arts & Culture, Google, artsandculture.google.com/. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025. 

Written by Emma Sapp, Gallery Associate

 
 

In DisCerning Eye: Studio Gallery's All Member Photo Show, "Something Old, Something New.""

“Pieces of the Whole

Ceramic sculptures by Lisa Battle, photographs by 15 Studio Gallery artists and Kay Chernush

MARK JENKINS

NOV 11, 2024

Judy Bonderman, The Quinceanera (Courtesy of Studio Gallery)

BATTLE'S WORK IS ALSO FEATURED in "Something Old, Something New," a photographic group exhibition on Studio's lower level. (Both shows were curated by Martina Sestakova.) The images of water-sculpted rock formations at Zion National Park -- three closeups and one medium shot -- reveal an intimate relationship to her own sinuous ceramics.

The show's titular theme is broad enough to admit almost anything, including work that is barely photographic. Suzanne Goldberg's vibrant abstractions, painted partly atop shards of torn-up pictures, treat the photos as found objects to be obliterated more than integrated. Interestingly, the free brushstrokes yield spiky patterns that somewhat resemble plants, a subject of several other contributors.

The tree and flower pictures are often intimate and evocatively blurred, whether digitally (as by Jo Levine) or simply with narrow depth of field (which appears to be the technique of Steven Marks, the only participant who's not a current member of the gallery). Suliman Abdullah also seems to focus tightly for his study of organic decay, although the picture is actually a photo-collage.

Judy Bonderman softens trees clad in bold red leaves to craft what she calls "haute couture foliage," while Leslie Kiefer's hand-gilds pictures of wintry trees to make them appear both antique and precious. Lynda Andrews-Barry ponders death with photos of fish out of water, which employ saturated color to psychedelic effect.

Some of the photos are more traditionally observational. Bob Burgess, who contributed the only black-and-white pictures, captures rows of stark Arlington Cemetery gravestones, mellowed by snow. Amity Chan's twinned photos of 2019 Hong Kong pair calm with the prospect of tumult. Susan Raines offers a three-photo tour of eccentric Louisiana, which documents a stuffed alligator and a flying-saucer-like structure. There's a comic element as well to Gary Anthes's photo of a underpass tagged with baroque graffiti, where an abandoned office chair seems to gawk at the garish tags.

Graffiti takes a more delicate form in Langley Spurlock's gold-heavy entry, which layers a jewelry-like tag over a background photographed at a different location. Red dominates in Beverly Logan's consumer-product collages, in which red lipsticks levitate before blue skies. Also digitally composited, Iwan Bagus's two self-portraits portray him as a victim of war and displacement, surrounded by a butterflyes and floating keys. Made with the newest photographic technology, Bagus's pictures contemplate age-old struggles.”

Review by Mark Jenkins, DisCerning Eye, November 2024. Thank you!

In DisCerning Eye: Lisa Battle's "Interconnections"

“Pieces of the Whole

Ceramic sculptures by Lisa Battle, photographs by 15 Studio Gallery artists and Kay Chernush

MARK JENKINS

NOV 11, 2024

Lisa Battle, “Cosmic Dance” (Courtesy of Studio Gallery)

WATERY FORMS MADE SOLID, Lisa Battle's multi-piece ceramic sculptures suggest surges and starfish, but also petals, arms, or rotors. The local artist's creations, arranged in linked designs on the walls of Studio Gallery's main floor, illustrate the show's title, "Interconnections." The components fit together snugly, but without touching, which gives a sense of lightness to the heavy shapes.

Some of Battle's handmade, wood-fired creations are single pieces, although those can be as complex as "Oceana," a coiling pillar that combines the shapes of shells and waves. Several pieces center on holes, cosmic portals defined by surrounding structures that can appear bony, vegetal, or softly fleshy. There are even a few functional objects, vases made of planes of clay that overlap improbably into coherent form, sometimes floral. The sculptures's colors are usually earthy tans, browns, and greens, fluidly mingled, although the hues sometimes shift toward oceanic blue-gray.

The artist takes inspiration from the Greco-Roman idea of a world spirit that connects all living creatures, a classical notion updated into the contemporary Gaia theory of synergy among all Earthly creatures. "Gaia Hypothesis," in fact, is the title of one of the most striking single-part sculptures, an intricately incised oval setting for a dark, narrow gateway.

Such ceramic constructions as "Rose Canyon," likely inspired by eroded rock landscapes of the arid West, appear shattered. More often, however, the separate shards of the multi-part assemblages seem to be engaged in complementary motion. In Battle's sculptures, the world spirit is a sort of dance.”

Review by Mark Jenkins, DisCerning Eye, November 2024. Thank you!

In the Washington City Paper: Gary Anthes' Exhibit "Dust and Destiny on the Great Plains"

“Eddie Palmieri and Four Must-See Art Exhibits: City Lights for Oct. 17–23

Latin jazz artist Eddie Palmieri plays with longtime bandmates, silkscreens from Houston’s Carlos Hernandez, Gary Anthes’ Dust Bowl warning about looming environmental decay, a Morton Fine Arts’ *a pop-up, and Mari Calai’s GENESIS.

Closes Oct. 26: Gary Anthes at Studio Gallery

“Abandoned Farm, Kimball, Nebraska, 2023” by Gary Anthes

A photographer’s road trip through the sparsely populated west is, at this point, something of an American cliche. Gary Anthes’ exhibit “Dust and Destiny on the Great Plains” includes some of the expected subject matter—abandoned general stores, dilapidated farm buildings, boarded-up Main Street shops, dusty vintage cars, cracked and peeling grain elevators—and it offers a Dust Bowl warning about looming environmental decay. Still, the series benefits from its surprisingly sprightly mood, offering a striking contrast between the decay on view and the glorious light that illuminates it. Anthes—whose most notable prior exhibit in D.C. involved placing natural and man-made objects against the backdrop of interiors of an abandoned 200-year-old barn on his property—made his current collection of images during a 1,000-mile, back-road jaunt through seven states. Several of Anthes’ images feature facades with compellingly rhythmic wooden shingling, one of which includes an appealing arrangement of broken windows, in an echo of Minor White’s “The Three Thirds.” Another image, of a row of grain elevators alongside a receding rail line in Yuma, Colorado, conjures the Neoclassicism of Charles Sheeler’s painted depiction of Ford’s River Rouge plant. Anthes’ finest image may be one from eastern Colorado. It features a gently undulating field of grasslands under a mesmerizing sky in shades of blue; against this elemental pairing, a long piece of irrigation equipment jumps and snakes backward into the frame, providing a bracing sense of three dimensionality. Gary Anthes’ Dust and Destiny on the Great Plains runs through Oct. 26 at Studio Gallery, 2108 R St. NW. Wednesday through Friday 1 to 6 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. studiogallerydc.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson”

Review by Louis Jacobson, Washington City Paper, October 2024. Thank you!