Erin Lee Jones

Last Friday night I went to the opening of Casino Cabaret at Safe Gallery, a very cool new spot in Williamsburg run by artist and curator Pali Kashi. It was the New York art scene at its best: great art work, accompanied by a high energy screw-ball speakeasy and a keg of beer. Melissa Brown, master of all things casino and cabaret (and curator of the show) vivaciously MC-ed the performance portion of the evening. It kicked off with Michael Mahalchick singing "Cabaret," almost better then Liza, to a swooning audience. Even with all this intermittent excitement, I was somehow able to make an impromptu appointment to draw Erin Jones' studio before her own opening at Safe Gallery next week: a two person show with Kari Cholnoky. The spirit of connectedness on Friday night carried over into our visit. Jones' studio housed some of the most stimulating works I have seen in awhile. Her space was electric, with terrazzo filler, towel fragments, tin foil, and a Minion Snake Goddess balancing a cat on her head.

Jones' process involves making her compositions before making their surfaces. In other words, she is painting inversely, and the freshness that this gives the work is unmatchable. Smoothing wet Hydrocal over a wide variety of materials laid out in her mold, these wall sculptures transform as they dry, resulting in surprises not only for Erin, but also the viewer. Highly saturated Harlequin patterns ooze over the cold white surface like melted Crayolas, uniting the busts of two curiously wide-eyed characters. And the subtlety of the tinfoil lines that hover just beneath their surface, makes the touch of their palms all the more tender. Like Dubuffet's Art Brut, her use of unorthodox materials and directness of image making excitingly lives just outside of art norms. The tactile qualities of the work made me want to experience them with more than just my sight; they begged to be touched.

At the end of the day we settled into a beer and talked over the restraint it took for Jones to not flip over the piece she had been working on before it was fully dry. We also talked about our shared feelings on the growing art world, our artist community, and how having nice people out there still made all the difference. The power of a smile and a hug are often overlooked. Go see this show on Sunday February 21st at Safe Gallery and connect with these awesome new works like I did. To see more of her work go here http://www.erinleejones.com/

Brie Ruais

“Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music” - Goethe. This is the quote that came to mind when I first saw the five large pieces that hung on Brie Ruais' studio walls. In her case, it is as though choreography is liquid art and art is frozen choreography. Description of movement and gesture is something that we see often in painting, but in Ruais' work, it transcends description and becomes real. I was captivated while imagining the actions that took place in the first steps of these beautifully realized ceramic wall sculptures. Having met Ruais for the first time when I came by to draw, it took me a while to take my eyes off the work and onto our introduction.

 The painted glazes Brie adds to her ceramic sculptures (in between their multiple firings) are as exquisite as their surfaces. The warm colors of a winter's dusk contrast with charcoal grays that are accentuated with shimmering metallics. As the light dances in their grooves, craters, and foot indentations, you can see the body in a sitting upright position, legs lengthening, pushing the wet clay away from the center. The studio is the platform where, in a recent project, Ruais is directing people to make a sequence of movements on the clay she has laid out for them. She then does the same sequence of movements on a separate piece of clay that, once glazed and fired, she gives to her volunteers in exchange for their time and work. The spirit of collaboration and shared experience in this project wakes up the usual ideas of art making and brings them to life.

                                       

I had a lovely day with Brie. It was warmer in her studio than outside; not just because of the heater, but also the company. We listened to NPR and commented on the goings on of the week as we worked. Please go see her sculpture in the group show, LOW, organized by Michael Delucia and Ethan Greenbaum at Lyles and King that opens February 14th and runs until March 13th. And to see more of her work go here http://brieruais.com/.

Butt Johnson

I love drawing, and get really excited when I encounter someone who has a similar enthusiasm for it. I went to see Butt Johnson's extraordinary show, Quaint Abstractions, at CRG Gallery recently, which is up until February 21st. The drawings in the show eluded my understanding of the form, so I immediately sought out a visit with him. After spending the day in his studio, I started to get the sense that these color concentrated abstractions are more like a subversive version of the space-time continuum than the usual pen and paper hypothesis. He is making his own conclusions about drawing and dimensionality, and taking us on that journey with him.

Some of the steps in Johnson's process, like the erratic swirl of a line, take seconds to make, while other steps, like the repeated start-and-stop of a ball point pen, take months. This is where space and time get sublimely confusing. The closer you get, physically, to the drawings, digesting their various bold (and often trippy) color patterns, the further you are from understanding how they came to be. The bright flurry of jelly roll and ball point pen marks that cluster on the outskirts of some pieces are a stimulating place for the eye to wonder and let loose. But I am always happy to get back to the meat of the work and imagine it from every angle of its conception. 

By the end of the day, we put down our pencils and pens and assessed our progress and the amount of cramping in our hands. It was pretty meta to draw a drawing while it was being drawn. You can also see his work in Drawing, up now at Kerry Schuss through March 6th, and We Are Not Things, at Invisible Imports until the 14th of February. To see more of Johnson's drawings go here http://crggallery.com/artists/butt-johnson/.

Matt Phillips

As the day teetered towards twilight, the thunder of an overhead train on an otherwise stormless summer night silenced the group. In a synchronized movement, we all stretched our heads upward to make sure that the freight, at least 5 stories above us, wasn't heading straight for the platform we were lounging on. The height of the train tracks was comparable to the buildings that surround us in the city, but the embracing trees, river, and serenity of the night was foreign, entrancing, and very unlike home. My husband and I curated a show in July at One Mile Gallery in Kingston, NY, and we were lucky to have Matt Phillips as one of the artists in it. He, along with a handful of other painters in the show, came up for the opening. When I visited Phillips' studio months later, he shared with me two paintings that were inspired by that night and the percussion of the train. The structure's mysterious hugeness was captured in his canvases and so was our joined experience.





Phillips asked me if I wanted to arrange the paintings before I got started. Curating a studio for a drawing is such a thrill. The work was leaving for Matt's double feature solo show at Steven Harvey Fine Arts in less than 48 hours, so, as you can imagine, the pickings were as rich as the paintings. With multiple points of entry, Phillips' work is generously made. The larger canvases, which often depict familiar fantastical structures straight out of a sixties psychedelic animation, beg for being climbed on and around, making a playground for the eye. The paint that is applied to fill these shapes, in both the larger and smaller paintings, pools together at their edges creating rivers of vivid color. The organic quality of these ridges gently persuades you to take time to look, resting your eye on their furry details. Phillips makes his paint by hand, allowing for it to have the right viscosity to play this game of chance on the canvas. I talked to Matt about how he arrives at his overall patterns, and he explained that he listens to the paintings while he makes them. You can see this in their differences and individual voices. There is an ethereal glow to the work, as there is to the artist.


  
I haven't mentioned Mirabelle yet. She is Matt and his wife Molly's dog, and she is like no other. My adoration for her goes deep. If you get the chance to meet her, do so. Her gentleness and magnetism can only be matched by her owners. Mirabelle spent the day with us watching and listening; the perfect studio companion. Make sure to see Matt's fantastic solo show at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects. Matt is also currently in a group show at Bannerette, curated by Austin Eddy. Matt will be at MacDowell for the month of January. And if you find yourself in Paris, check out the group show at Le Coeur, curated by Timothée Chailou, opening in February. To see more of his work go here http://paintingpaintings.com/home.html .

Jennifer Coates

There aren't many things I get a charge out of as much as art, but food is definitely one of them. Shortly after emerging from my Thanksgiving daze a month ago, I had the opportunity to combine the two with a day of drawing in Sunset Park. An entire wall of Jennifer Coates' studio is dedicated to her paintings of the food we love (and sometimes love to hate). A conversation on consumerism, the age of instant gratification, and abstract expressionism came to me while I worked. This with only a small portion of the paintings on the wall, pun intended.

The spontaneous mark found in a drizzle of nacho cheese excited me beyond my adoration of food. Coates is a painter's painter. She evokes the chaos of Pollock's drips in one canvas and divides a grilled cheese or doughnut down the middle like Barnett Newman's "zips" in another, while the landscape between two cookies of an ice-cream sandwich oozes with the same visceral qualities of a Joan Mitchell. Jennifer is analyzing the abstract in the everyday and making it more bewitching as she does so. We talked about how the subjects in this series relate to architecture, as they are shaped to be structurally sound or packaged in a perfect parallelogram. In a time where we can stuff ourselves visually looking at hundreds pictures of #lasagna on Instagram, the ocular punch of a food product is as important as its piquancy.

Needless to say, after drawing Jennifer's lasagna, I went out into the world looking for some of my own. Coates not only makes fantastic art, but also curates and writes about it as well. She is co-curating a show with Lauren Adams at Ortega Y Gasset called The Swerve that opens Jan 23. Also, she and her husband David Humphrey will have collaborative work in a show at Lorimoto Gallery in Ridgewood opening Jan 9. And if you find yourself in Kentucky, Coates currently has a painting on view at the University of Kentucky Art Museum. To see more of her work go here: www.jenniferlcoates.com.

Yevgeniya Baras

Having now visited the Sharpe-Walentas year long studio program five times, I still can't figure out how artists adapt so quickly to a new space, like a hermit crab crawling into a new shell. I guess it is inherent to our species. Yevgeniya Baras' studio, which she has been in for a month now, felt as intimate and unadulterated as many of the moments in her paintings. When I came by, she was preparing work for NADA Miami where she will show with Nicelle Beauchene. In their varying stages of production, Baras' paintings are each delegated a space, along with her finished pieces that hung collectively on the corner wall. That corner, complete with a lounge chair, rug, and view of the Brooklyn Bridge, was the most obvious and perfect spot for me to draw.

Baras' painted lines, tactile textural build up, and recurring color themes carry through from one work to the next, but for the most part each painting exists in a category of its own. They bring to mind the stream of consciousness marks on Miro's canvases, or the early cubist constructions that broke the confines of reality and convention. Baras is also breaking out of the obvious limitations of a stretched canvas by using bedsheets as her fabric and reversing her stretchers so that the bars become a part of the composition. In one instance, she has even attached a smaller painting to a larger one for a new take on the diptych. The sense of freedom that I get from not only seeing the work, but also imagining her experience making it, gives me endless pleasure. 

Halfway through the day, Yevgeniya asked if she could catch up with her family on the phone while we worked. The first call she made was to her father. Next she called her grandmother. Yevgeniya spoke to them in Russian, having immigrated to the US in the early 90's. Although I was unable to understand what they were saying, I could hear a strong bond between them and so much love. This is somehow reflected in the paintings; they are made with that same kind of love. To see more of her work go to http://yevgeniyabaras.com/home.html

Sam Moyer

A blaze of Autumnal light made a slow stroll across Sam Moyer's studio wall as the day came to an end. Cut by the brick arches that divide her space and the windows' segmented glass, the light fit on the wall as methodically as the clean marble and deeply saturated pieces of fabric fit together in her compositions. She has been in this space for a year now, and with a street loading dock and plenty of walls for hanging and leaning found pieces of marble, it couldn’t be more perfect for her practice. Nicky Morano, her studio assistant, let me to get a jump start on the day before Sam arrived. Nicky was like the straight man for their comedy duo. I was secretly forced to put down my pencil on more than one occasion in laughter as I listened to Sam bounce jokes off of him.

The cold marble in Moyer’s new pieces hovers just outside the parameters of their trippy configurations, forcing the viewer to give extra attention to the details of the artist's decision making. Maybe I have been watching too many old Twilight Zones this October, but there is something surreal and fourth dimensional about them. The reflective qualities of the metamorphic rock create natural portals as they pick up the light in the room, while the thick, rough, durable canvases suck you into their manmade void. In other works in progress, large panes of glass leaned against her studio wall, holding captive the painted black gestures smashed in-between them. While further down the wall, brightly colored, sparkle flecked cuts of found formica jutted up against one another to make bold gestures that remixed the scenes from a 50’s diner. Moyer and I talked about how, when putting these together, it felt more immediate to her than her other work, like making a painting.

We talked about the dreaminess of California, LA's art scene, and our favorite chili recipes over lunch  — obviously dealing with pre-winter jitters. The humor and luminosity that spilled over in the studio made it a place in which I would love to spend more time. Catch her work in Miami this year with Rachel Uffner at NADA and with Rodolphe Janssen at Basel Miami December 3-6th. To see more go to http://www.racheluffnergallery.com/artists/sam-moyer .

Emily Noelle Lambert

Lost in a jungle of color, I spent a day scrutinizing the value differences of certain reds and blues in Emily Noelle Lambert's punched up new 2D and 3D works. Synchronized in their creation, her paintings are easily camouflaged by her sculptures and vice versa. We took the first few minutes of the visit to rearrange the space in order to get the best view of each piece. As Lambert tenderly stroked her towering, larger than life structures, checking for rough edges, I was reminded of the intensity of preparing for a show, soon to be released to a gallery where it will breathe new life. Lambert's solo show, Idée Fixe, will open at Denny Gallery this Saturday, October 17th.

Having made the new work not only in her Greenpoint studio, but also outside among the trees, welding with her brother in West Virginia, and at a residency in Vermont, Lambert undoubtedly spent some of her time exploring the lush freedoms of a summer outside of sweaty Brooklyn. This comes across in the prismatic dances that Lambert's unadulterated gestures make across the surfaces of her canvases and sculptures. Loaded with blocks of color in punched up high contrast, her two types of work play off of one another's negative spaces, allowing for a conversation within her practice. Carved out semi-circles in her sculptures frame the space surrounding them and show up repeatedly in her paintings, interlocking her compositions. You can even find some wood pieces of the same shape sitting on the tops of her canvases, breaking up the rectangle's rigidness. Bringing to mind the recent Picasso sculpture show at MoMA, Lambert stretches beyond the boundaries of pure abstraction to reference the curve of a woman's body, broken light coming through the trees, or a perched feathered friend. There is as much to discover in her painted world as there is in a land intoxicated with Summer.

                             

  The playlists were sing-along worthy, and the snack table was full of cheese and chocolate, so you can imagine how hard it was to end the visit and head into the cold hard rain that was starting off the Fall. It was great to spend time with Lambert and her work before it headed to the Lower East Side. I am looking forward to my next viewing of it this weekend. To see more go to http://emilynoellelambert.net/section/28244.html