Rachelle Dang

These images are studies for my upcoming Fellowship exhibition at A.I.R., Chaulmoogra Seeds for Dr. Alice Ball, a site-specific installation that tells a story of transcending division through care.  It is inspired by the pioneering chemist Dr. Alice Augusta Ball, an African American scientist and educator working in Hawaii who in 1915 developed the first successful treatment for Hansen’s disease, known as leprosy.  Dr. Ball treated many Native Hawaiian patients and taught a diverse group of students in territorial Hawaii – a place that continues to struggle against legacies of colonialism, racism, and environmental degradation.  I am from Hawaii, and my grandmother grew up on Molokai, the island where patients of Hansen’s disease were forcibly isolated from their families.  In Hawaii, leprosy was commonly known as the ‘separating sickness’ or the ‘illness that divides families.’  Dr. Ball’s efforts transcended the stigmatization of leprosy and enabled families to reunite.  My exhibition for A.I.R. honors Dr. Ball, her transformative work, and the chaulmoogra–a tree from India and Southeast Asia, the seeds of which produce an oil essential to the treatment of Hansen's disease.  This experimental, interdisciplinary project comprises sculptural objects, archival photos, and written text.  Although my Fellowship exhibition was originally scheduled to open May 29th, I feel the work will resonate with viewers in stronger, more personal ways when it is finally realized later this year.

Rachelle Dang, studio work-in-progress, 2020. Inkjet print on paper, wax. 8 x 12 inches.

Rachelle Dang, studio work-in-progress, 2020. Inkjet print on paper, wax. 12 x 19 inches.

Rachelle Dang, studio work-in-progress, 2020. Inkjet print on paper, wax. 10 x 6 inches.

Rachelle Dang (b. Honolulu, HI) is an artist based in New York whose work engages with the complexities of colonial legacies.

Aliza Shvarts

Closer (2020), a transformative work of art made for non-commercial purpose partially using but not affecting the market or market potential of the published original, by Aliza Shvarts.

Aliza Shvarts, Closer, 2020. HD video. Total run time, 3 minutes 17 seconds.

Aliza Shvarts is an artist and theorist who takes a queer and feminist approach to reproductive labor and language.

Jane Swavely

This was the very first thing I made in quarantine; I made it while I was talking on the phone. Until recently these pastel drawings were the only thing I could make during this devastating time of existential crisis. 

Jane Swavely, Untitled, 2020. Soft pastel on Bugra. 13 x 9 inches.

Jane Swavely is a painter who lives and works in the Bowery in New York City. Her work derives inspiration from both the natural environment and supernatural forces.

Ada Potter

Right now it feels like everything has been upended or is in flux. This instability can be bewildering but can also make us see anew the assumptions we have been making. Perhaps there’s possibilities here. 

Ada Potter, Light painting, 2020. Animated gif.

Ada Potter is a working artist, curator, and educator based in Brooklyn.

H.A. Halpert

A proposition condemned by the church in 1277: That eternity and the ages exist not in reality but only in the mind.

It's hard to know.

H.A. Halpert, The Sun Graph, 2020. Paper, acetate, pencil, glass, clock. 26 x 28 inches.

H.A. Halpert is an artist and writer who lives in NYC; her work concerns doubles, translations, and accidents that aren’t.

Cynthia Karasek

I have been working with branches and parts of trees because of their complex curves and animated shapes. I combine them with galvanized objects and metal screen to make intricate and dynamic volumes. The meaning of the work derives from the contradictory references and forms to find relationships that are familiar or humorous and beautiful.

Cynthia Karasek, Victory, 2001. Sculpture with Video Projection. Wood, tar, aluminum screen. 90 x 60 x 38 inches.

Cynthia Karasek is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her technique of combining video and traditional art becomes a sequence non-narrative poetry in two or three dimensions.

Carolyn Martin

Thinking about differences based on a lack of fairness or justice.

Carolyn Martin is a New York City based artist and educator who creates charcoal and conte crayon drawings on paper. Her concern is with interpreting how interacting lines tell stories and invite the viewer to create their own images from the object on the page, turning the abstraction to imagined figuration.

Rosina Lardieri

When I left NYC in March, I thought I would be gone for three weeks, not three months. I had all the wrong clothes and a tremendous sense of displacement. I craved the comfort of the home that I had left behind: my studio, my friends, my ongoing relationships with the people who lived outside in my neighborhood.  I wanted to pick up the "Anything Helps" project here, in Los Angeles, but I was afraid—fear of Coronavirus permeated everything. I photographed early in the morning, looking for the comfort of my practice but finding only fugitive traces in the landscape. 

The call to participate in Sympoiesis made me aware that I had become a person who now turned my head, kept my distance and looked away from the homeless. And then suddenly as if by magic, I met Davin, Devon, and Colin who live on my corner in Los Angeles, and the work began again.

Rosina Lardieri is a mixed media artist who uses photography, performance and video.

Aphrodite Navab

My new series, Heart Island, is in honor and memory of the unclaimed pandemic victims in mass burials on Hart Island, New York. It was formerly called Heart island in 1775 because of the island’s heart-like shape. The ‘e’ was dropped shortly after. This series hopes to add the heart back into this dehumanizing process. To be unclaimed does not mean that their lives do not matter. My work houses stories of exile, displacement and migration, of rupture and suture, of survival and loss. Rather than disintegrating, the subjects in my work transform into other subjects, suggesting metamorphosis and reinvention through drawing. The subjects transcend their confines, taking flight. The more I immersed myself in making these abstract ink drawings, the more four interconnected heart shapes emerged, symbolizing my three siblings, Alexander, Pericles, Demetra and me, connected eternally by love and loyalty. Our father is a retired Cardiologist and we lost our beloved brother Alexander to sudden cardiac death. In the words of Rumi, “Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”

Aphrodite Navab, Heart Island, 2020. Ink on paper. 9 x 12 inches.

Aphrodite Navab (born Isfahan, Iran) is an artist of Iranian and Greek descent currently based in New York City. Her art has been featured in over 150 exhibitions and is included in a number of collections including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Lowe Art Museum, the Harn Museum of Fine Arts and more.

Yvette Drury Dubinsky

Savoring this spring, watching the enthusiasm of the plant life as it flourishes, the irony that the plants behave as they always do this time of year is remarkable. I’m not consciously trying to draw the landscape. I just walk in the park and then I go to my studio and what comes out now is various greens and has vertical lines like the trees I’ve been looking at. 

Yvette Drury Dubinsky, Start, 2020. Gouache, watercolor, ink. 8 x 8 inches.

Yvette Drury Dubinsky, Persistence, 2020. Gouache, watercolor and ink. 20 x 16 inches.

Yvette Drury Dubinsky, Redbuds Anyway, 2020. Gouache, watercolor and ink. 11.75 x 6 inches.

Yvette Drury Dubinsky is a multidiciplinary artist working in Truro, Massachusetts, New York and St. Louis, Missouri. Her work is generated intuitively, responding to materials and the internal and external environments she finds herself in.

Tomoko Amaki Abe

The current situation the world is facing has in many ways forced us to pause and take a deep breath. My work focuses on the shift in our perception with regard to the relationship between humans and the environment. This glass sculpture Silver lining is made with a cast of a plastic bag with a projected image of the sun coming out of a cloud. The plastic bag takes hundreds of years before it degrades back into nature whereas the cloud melts into the air in a matter of seconds, bringing out the tension and ambiguity between transience and permanence.

Tomoko Amaki Abe, Silver lining, 2020. Glass, Photo projection. 12 x 20 x 8 inches.

Tomoko is a mixed media artist whose work ranges from painting, paper making, ceramics and glass, often with a theme inspired by nature, its decay and regeneration.

Joan Snitzer

My recent works stage a measured and unpredictable allegory of hypnotic color and form events. Each painting is executed by hand-pouring pigment into pools of aqueous solvents, mounting a fluid mood and presenting a full continuous surface resembling expanses of land, sea, and beyond

Joan Snitzer, Untitled, 2020. Vinyl and oil paint on wood panel. 17 x 17 inches.

Joan Snitzer, Untitled, 2020. Vinyl and oil paint on wood panel. 17 x 17 inches.

Joan Snitzer’s artwork focuses on painting as a method of visual communication and the democratization of social and personal beliefs. Her recent work uses the medium of paint to articulate a current social moods and memories.

Sareh Imani

During the pandemic, like so many other artists, I have been using materials that I could find in my home studio. One day I found a bottle of liquid latex, that I had completely forgotten about, and I decided to make my own latex glove. I was thinking about how latex gloves work as some sort of disposable second layer of skin to protect us from contracting the virus. And how there is no immediate touch with that layer covering our hands, whenever we are outside.

Sareh Imani, Double-skin, 2020. Liquid latex. 12 x 6 inches.

Sareh Imani is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn.

Susan Stainman

One continuous loop of pleated and tucked fabric, the cummerbund hugs each user's body, a placeholder for our missing physical contact, and then loops again to hold the users six feet apart. At once at a distance and also within a contained, private space, each user can lean out against the fabric creating a delicate balance between their body and that of their partner. Just as in a trust exercise, each user must purposefully balance their weight to keep their partner from falling.

Before COVID-19, I was making art objects that used proximity as an entry point to think about how we live together, see one another and ourselves. Using proximity is clearly no longer a possibility, except between individuals sheltering together in lockdown. So, I have turned to the space of six feet. What does six feet feel like? What are the possibilities for intimacy, connection, and embodied play at six feet apart? Cummerbund for Socially Distant Connection is the first object I've made that contemplates this distance.

Susan Stainman, Cummerbund for Socially Distant Connection, 2020. Fabric. 12 x 80 x 1/4 inches.

Susan Stainman, Cummerbund for Socially Distant Connection, 2020. Fabric. 12 x 80 x 1/4 inches.

Detail of Cummerbund for Socially Distant Connection.

Detail of Cummerbund for Socially Distant Connection.

Susan Stainman is an interdisciplinary artist, working in sculpture, installation, and social practice. Her work explores our interdependence: how we live together and what we owe one another.

Susan Bee

I painted Heartwing in my studio in Brooklyn during the pandemic, after my upcoming show at A.I.R. was postponed. The painting was inspired by a page from a medieval manuscript showing two women holding nets, catching flying hearts in space. In these difficult times, instead of seeing people in person, we’ve turned to virtual encounters. Our hearts are tangled, trapped in nets.  

Susan Bee, Heartwing, 2020. Oil, acrylic, enamel, and sand on linen. 20 x 16 inches.

Susan Bee is an artist living in Brooklyn. She has had eight solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery, where she has been a member since 1996.

Erica Stoller

Working in isolation meant using available materials, what was on hand in the studio. And with social distancing in mind, how to measure 6 feet and who is the measurer? I made a series of walking sticks. One is a staff. And the plural: staves. Left. Right. Left. Right. But when someone approaches, the vertical pole becomes a horizontal distance marker. Come no closer!

Erica Stoller, Four social distancing poles, 2020. Plastic, rope, metal. Dimensions variable, maximum height 86 inches.

Erica Stoller is interested in shapes, textures, colors, and her recent work combines industrial materials including plastic, foam, rope, metal, and more.

Photo credit: Amanda Jinks

Daria Dorosh

Remember me, Long wait, and Too bad is a trilogy and visual narrative on the interdependence of biological life. Three branches are wrapped in textiles and sewn until a soft closed form evolves on the wood armature. The titles are a doorway to emotion and reflection on the state of human interaction with the planet we call home.

Daria Dorosh, Remember me, Long wait, and Too bad: a trilogy in wood and cloth, 2020. Wood, textile, text, beads, and watercolor. Dimensions variable.

Detail of Remember me from a trilogy in wood and cloth.

Daria Dorosh looks for emergent patterns at the intersection of art, fashion, and technology.

Bonam Kim

I have been making small pieces with materials that I can find at home since we're in quarantine. Two works are my visual diaries on certain dates related to my feeling and thoughts. On April 2, people in Brooklyn stuck at their tiny apartment made me think about the image that dollhouse people were sealed inside of tiny cubes in gum packages. On April 6, I created my own cell phone case while thinking about panic buying and hoarding of products like Lysol and Clorox during the coronavirus pandemic.

Bonam Kim, April 2, 2020, 2020. Dollhouse miniature, gum package. 3 1/2 x 2 x 1 inches.

Bonam Kim, April 6, 2020, 2020. Printing on plastic. 3 x 6 x 1/2 inches.

Bonam Kim is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Kim holds a bachelor’s degree in Sculpture from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea and a mater’s degree in Sculpture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She was featured as an emerging artist from DongBangYoGae, Art in Culture magazine in Seoul, Korea. She has participated in the residency program at Trestle Art Space in Brooklyn, New York and awarded the Stutzman Family Foundation Graduate Fellowship for her residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. She completed a three-month residency at NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY and the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY.

Nancy Storrow

Attending the environment, using available materials, being in and holding community.

Nancy Storrow, Chrysalis, 2020. Dried beech and oak leaves, sprouting beech, waxed paper, and hemp twine. 15 x 4 x 3 inches.

Nancy Storrow has been an artist member of A.I.R. Gallery since 1982, where she has had 12 solo exhibitions and is scheduled for a solo exhibition in 2020. She lives and works in Putney, Vermont.

Liz Surbeck Biddle

Working in isolation has me venturing into a small, manageable, three dimensional collage format of 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 5/16 inches, which makes it easier to set up the materials, all in a small box. I’m cutting up and pasting scads of old scraps of cyanotypes and drawings, some created with a sense of danger and foreboding or laced with a bit of humor.

Liz Surbeck Biddle, Here It Comes, 2020. Three dimensional collage, watercolor, silkscreen, and cyanotype. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 5/16 inches.

Liz Surbeck Biddle in collaboration with Michael Biddle, Survivor, 2020. Three dimensional collage, watercolor, cyanotype, and ink. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 5/16 inches.

Liz Surbeck Biddle, Black Rain, 2020. Three dimensional collage, watercolor, silkscreen, cyanotype, and ink. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 5/16 inches.

Liz Biddle comes from a background of ceramic sculpture and collage which has influenced her current work.