Delaware Art Shows- “Self, Realized” at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film, Wilmington
Aug 262026
 

Paintings by E. Lizé

The members of this year’s Artist-in-Residence Cohort (ARC) at The Delaware Contemporary, Mo Berrouet, E.Lizé, and Celeste M. Rodriguez, each explored an element of the self for their culminating exhibition, Self, Realized.

This exhibition was curated by Amber M. Chacana, the first ARC curator-in-residence, and closes on 8/30/26.

Paintings by E. Lizé

E. Lizé’s series is titled Familial World.

E.Lizé is a musical artist and trained visual artist, who paints portraits and scenes dedicated to the Black experience. E.Lizé’s goal is to bridge the gap between predecessors and successors in order to remain a catalyst in preserving Black culture and Black history. E.Lizé is dedicated to archiving and preserving cultural and artistic history. She has a strong interest in tangible history and what it means to inherit it.

Inspired by the women who raised her, E.Lizé created these portraits as a way to honor their legacies and their lives (so far). In doing so, she created a personal archive, marked by her own perspective and care for her family.

Paintings by Mo Berrouet

Mo Berrouet‘s series of work is titled Emotional World.

From the museum:

Mo Berrouet is a visual artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a BFA from West Chester University. Her work explores themes of mental and physical health, personal narrative, and the complexities of the human experience, expressed through a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, ceramics, and photography.

Berrouet delves into the world of her emotions and how they exist within her body, and how her body exists in relation to her emotions. While her subject matter is personal, the emotions and feelings within them resonate with others. For Berrouet, our collective human experiences inspire her.

Work by Celeste M. Rodriguez

Celeste M. Rodriguez chose Cultural World for this body of work.

From the museum:

Celeste M. Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican-American artist born and raised in Camden, NJ. She received her B.A. in Painting from Rutgers University-Camden. Her work examines the complex relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States through visual storytelling, addressing themes of colonialism, cultural erasure, and resilience. Utilizing video, painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage. She confronts exploitation while honoring Puerto Rican strength. She views art as personal and political, and through her art, reimagines a future for Puerto Rico rooted in dignity and self-determination.

Delaware Art Shows- John Breakey at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Painting / Painters, Wilmington
Aug 262026
 

“Calla Lilly Cloud”, 2024, Acrylic and mediums on stretched linen support

In John Breakey‘s paintings for Passing Each Other, at The Delaware Contemporary, he uses flowers and skies to explore the passing of time.

His statement about the work:

Foreground flowers and background sky move at their own pace and span of life.

Together, composed for specific periods within the day, combined to express captured growth and deliberate movement.

A cloud’s soft color shifts throughout time; they can’t seem to sit still.

And what about the flower? Each blossom evolves, invisibly slow. By days, but finite.

Flowers being what they are, fall.
Clouds, how quickly they can pass.

Like the years, the more one has.
This is my current work; a series that mixes different forms of time.

In the work above, Yellow Calla Lillies (2026) he reorders the panels to explore these ideas even further.

He says this about the painting:

I have an engraving by Aki Kuroda in the studio that speaks quietly to me: Flower X, 2004. Simplicity and grace packed into eight by ten inches. It served as a challenge to make this rendition of lillies more simple. Not graphic, not hard edged like Kuroda’s work but a new version of the work to the immediate right.

There was a deliberate choice to flip the left and right panels: these works are about time.

Two kinds.
Faster as the clouds pass.
Slower; a flower’s young green pigments before moving to dark.

Reordering the panels was my way of asking if moments are what we think they are.
Is how we account for time spent as linear as a best guess recall or something else?

This exhibition closes 8/30/26.

Song of the Day- Indigo De Souza- “Come to God”

 Los Angeles Music, Music, Musicians / Bands, Spotify Playlist
Aug 242026
 

Indigo De Souza- Come to God

Echo Park Rising music festival is back! The FREE two day festival is taking place this weekend at venues around Echo Park in Los Angeles with tons of bands playing– including Indigo De Souza (playing with a long list of bands including Primer, Sedona, and Small Forward at Sticky Rice on Saturday 8/29/26).

The full schedule isn’t up yet on Echo Park Rising’s website, so check their Instagram for the latest.

Flashback- NYC Art Shows- Gladys Nilsson at Matthew Marks Gallery

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Aug 212026
 

“Gigantica und der Messerschmitts”, 1965, Acrylic on panel in artist’s frame

“Bird Toy”, 1965, Acrylic on panel in artist’s frame

These paintings were on view in Gladys Nilsson: Honk! Fifty Years of Painting at Matthew Marks Gallery in NYC in the early part of 2020. Nilsson was one of the original members of the Hairy Who, a group of Chicago artists who exhibited together in the mid-1960s.

Now in her 80s, her first museum retrospective, Gleefully Askew, is currently at Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and features paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints from her six decade career. This exhibition is on view until 11/29/26.

For more information, Artforum recently published a great profile of Nilsson in their Summer issue.

Pennsylvania Murals- Jim Houser in Philadelphia

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture, Street Art
Aug 202026
 

Philadelphia artist Jim Houser created this mural, Wide Open, in 2019 for Mural Arts Philadelphia.

From Mural Arts:

Wide Open by artist Jim Houser features a design that speaks directly to the artist’s view of Philadelphia. Located in the Northern Liberties neighborhood, the mural’s themes include the concept of brotherly love, family and friends, a love of skateboarding and music, and the complex interaction of danger and beauty. The struggle of loss, hope and pride in where one lives intertwine in this striking mural.

His mixed media paintings, seen below, were also recently on view at Philadelphia’s Paradigm Gallery.

Work by Jim Houser at Paradigm Gallery in May of this year

You can find his most recent work on Instagram.

Mary Heilmann (1940-2026)

 Art, Artists, Ceramic Art, Conceptual Art, Design, Furniture, Painting / Painters, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture
Aug 172026
 

“Surprise”, 2012, Oil on canvas. (Photo by Thomas Müller) Image courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Installation view of “Mary Heilmann: Long Line” 2025 at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, On wall: “Long Line, 2025”; “Monochrome Chairs”, 2015; “April Chairs”, 2025. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

“Mode O’Day”, 1991, Oil on canvas, Image courtesy of 303 Gallery

Artist Mary Heilmann passed away on Friday, at 86. Heilmann started her career working in sculpture, but in the early 1970s shifted to making the paintings she would become known for. The influence of sculpture never left entirely though. She returned to making ceramic pieces, which sometimes accompanied her paintings, and began designing her signature chairs, in the early 2000s.

For more about the artist, Art21 has a few videos on their site, including the one below in which she discusses her work, inspirations, and the importance of the titles she uses.

For a deeper dive into Heilmaann’s life and career, including her childhood and education in California, check out Matt Creed’s excellent 2023 documentary Waves, Roads, & Hallucinations.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Sebastian Errazuriz at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Design, Drawing, Furniture, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Sculptors / Sculpture
Aug 132026
 

“Lightning Strike Lamp”, 2025

Top: “Piano Shelf”, 2014, Lacquered mahogony, steel ; Bottom: “Wave Cabinet”, Lacquered Baltic birch, steel, glass

“Occupy Chair”, 2012

“IMAGINE Neon”, 2025, Neon tubing

Detail from wall of AI generated drawings behind “IMAGINE Neon”

Mixing art, design, and politics, Sebastian Errazuriz‘s exhibition Double Take at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a lot of fun. On one side of the room a neon bolt of lightning repeatedly flashes against the wall, while on another neon letters alternate between “IMAGINE” and “AGI” (Artificial General Intelligence) illuminating AI-generated drawings based on his original sketches. There’s also uniquely designed furniture, lamps made using taxidermy chickens, chairs referencing the Occupy Movement, objects incorporating Greco-Roman statue head reproductions, and more, all encouraging visitors to think about nature, technology, and the world around them.

From the museum:

Sebastian Errazuriz (Chilean, born 1977) twists our typical expectations and experiences of using furniture, lighting, and everyday objects. Embracing humor and appropriation, his limited edition and one-of-a-kind pieces often have a subtext that goes beyond form or function, offering personal narrative, a political message, or cultural commentary. This mid-career survey presents over twenty years of a multi-hyphenate practice that gives design a conceptual, Surrealist slant.

Works featured in the exhibition span art, craft, design, and technology. His “kinetic” furniture, constructed from the early 2010s, is characterized by moveable parts – doors, drawers, and shelves that are repositionable, creating new configurations. Other works take nature as a source of inspiration or make new and surprising use of found objects, including vintage watches and taxidermy fowl. Also on display are furniture, mirrors, and other objects that the designer creates by scanning original Greco-Roman antiquities that are then digitally-manipulated and recast in poured marble. A newly commissioned fluorescent light explores Errazuriz’s fascination with, and apprehension about, the potential impact of Artificial General Intelligence on artists, designers, and culture more broadly.

The diverse works on view convey imagination and wit, while also bewildering those who encounter them. The pieces are meant to be lived with, but, at the same time, are provocations with an air of mystery around their function and meaning. Attesting to Errazuriz’s expansive definition of design, the works in this exhibition suggest alternate ways of seeing, thinking, and living.

The show is on view until 8/16/26.

 

Pennsylvania Murals- Dennis McNett aka Wolfbat in Philadelphia

 Art, Artists, Collage, Films, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Printmaking, Public Art, Street Art
Aug 112026
 

There Is Trouble ‘Til The Robins Come was created by artist Dennis McNett (aka Wolfbat) for Mural Arts Philadelphia in 2025. It incorporates layers of printed woodcut patterns along with painted elements.

The mural is a tribute to David Lynch, who passed away in January of that year.  Lynch lived in Philadelphia’s Callowhill neighborhood, where the mural is located, when he attended Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in the late 1960s.

From McNett’s artist statement on the Mural Arts website:

“The loss of David Lynch leaves a huge void to those he effected with his work and wisdom. As a young artist, I saw Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks in 1991 when I was 18 and it changed my perspective on what art could be. It made it ok to be weird and feel out of place. It was one of my first introductions to art outside of an art history book and contributed to my development of becoming an artist. I still revisit his work almost yearly. When I was talking about doing a small mural with [Mural Arts Philadelphia], David Lynch had just passed and I was rewatching his films and a documentary. I really wanted to do a mural dedicated to him.

Philadelphia was his biggest influence. 1965-70. The character played by Jack Nance, Eraserhead, had a very memorable head of hair that stood straight up like he had been electrocuted. I put this head of hair on David Lynch’s portrait. Eraserhead was David Lynch’s first film released in 1977.

In Blue Velvet (1986 film) the character played by Lauren Dern, Sandy, describes a dream of robins. In her dream the world is dark and all there was [was] darkness because there was no love. Suddenly thousands of robins flew in and created this blinding light and the light was love. At the end of the movie when all the turmoil is resolved, there is a robin on the windowsill. The robins in the mural are from Sandy’s dream. There is also a drape of blue velvet in the bottom part of the mural. The ear is also from Blue Velvet and is the ear the Jeffrey finds.

The iconic zigzag patterned floor and deep red curtains are from Lynch’s 1990-91 Twin Peaks and later in 1992 Fire Walk With Me. They are the setting of the Black Lodge. The symbolic blue key is from the 2001 movie Mulholland Drive and is tied to Camilla’s reality. The edges or the mural are not cut straight but intentionally extend past the edges like Lynch’s unbound imagination and subconscious mind.”

McNett has a few other murals around town, including the one below, created in 2014, located on the side of what once was Philly Home Brew.

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