“Sanity,” a title shared by Rachel Rotenberg’s recent exhibitions at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, and at Gershman Gallery in Philadelphia, not only suggests the role that making art plays for her, but also argues for the necessity of art in a world where countless forces, from technology to climate change to war, threaten to overwhelm us.
Natalie Moore: Metaphor in Action
Natalie Moore, a longtime resident of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Greenpoint (she has a studio in Greenpoint), originally hails from California. In the mid-1980s, she attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is known for its experimental interests, particularly in the arts and humanities.
Annabeth Rosen: Five Conversational Fragments
Something in the totality of Annabeth Rosen’s work does not lend itself to the question/answer format of the formal interview. Her conversational style, like her work, is rich and discursive, gaining in depth and resonance through additions and accumulations.
Judy Chicago
“I was always interested in fringe techniques. I did formed domes, I did big fiberglass sculptures, I went to autobody school—new form allows for new content. But nobody paid attention to my interest in fringe techniques as long as they were masculine. It was only when I crossed the gender gap into what was forgotten that it became notable.”
Giants Walking: A Conversation with Huma Bhabha
Huma Bhabha does not work with images culled from the Internet; she eschews appropriation and explanatory texts. Perhaps because of her devotion to old-fashioned creativity, Bhabha is rapidly becoming one of the most celebrated contemporary artists.
Patricia Piccinini: Imagining Empathy
Peering into the hotel rooms of the budget Patricia Hotel in Vancouver was an indelicate intrusion into the most private of intimacies: a naked mother nursed her infants on a double bed while, in another room, a young couple in post-coital languor embraced under disheveled sheets.
Serious Frills: A Conversation with Phyllis Green
For the past 40 years, Phyllis Green has questioned the nature of objects and their social context, using a wide range of materials—video, fiberglass, steel, concrete polymer, wood, textiles, polyurethane foam—and fabrication techniques such as hand construction, sewing, and digital milling.
Cathy Wilkes: Ugly Archetypes
Cathy Wilkes, a 2008 Turner Prize nominee, has raised eyebrows with her highly charged arrangements of commonplace items and personal artifacts. Formally precise and essentially diaristic, her work employs a difficult and coded visual language that succeeds in exerting a strong psychological pull, creating shared experience from isolation.
Irresponsible Objects: A Conversation with Matthew Ronay
Entering a Matthew Ronay exhibition is like walking through a deserted kindergarten, with ice-cream-colored sculptures strewn around a play area. Ronay, who approaches his creative configurations with genuine curiosity, attributes his childlike approach to color blindness and an insistence on scribbling things down.
Sterling Ruby: Monument Material
A precocious 12-year-old once rolled her eyes at me after I described an artist as a “Renaissance man.” When I asked her what was wrong, she said “I hate that phrase. It’s so vague, it’s meaningless.
