Delaware Art Shows- Elizabeth Bergeland at The Delaware Contemporary

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Painting / Painters, Wilmington
Nov 052026
 

Elizabeth Bergeland, “In Case This Works”, 2026, Oi on canvas, hand-carved pine frame

“In Case This Works”, 2026, Oi on canvas, hand-carved pine frame (detail)

“Don’t Forget You’re A Blue String”, 2020, Oil on canvas, tufted pleather frame

“While You Were Sleeping”, 2025, Oil on canvas, hand-carved pine frame

“While You Were Sleeping”, 2025, Oil on canvas, hand-carved pine frame (detail)

We are living in complicated times. For the paintings in her solo exhibition I Thought I Would ____By Now at The Delaware Contemporary, Elizabeth Bergeland uses visual symbols as a way to try to make sense of the contradictions, anxieties, and pressures of an unpredictable future.

Her statement about the work:

This show gathers paintings from several bodies of work; pieces made years apart but, I now notice, circle the same questions. Bringing these works together has forced me to curate myself backward: to reverse engineer the themes I couldn’t see while I was making them and to find the thread I’ve been pulling at all along. Some of those questions surface most clearly at night, when my mind tends to start its second shift.

Recently, I’ve been painting the scenes I retreat to in my mind to fall asleep. I’m a chronic insomniac, a trait I begrudgingly inherited from my father. Over the years, I have developed elaborate strategies for getting to sleep. One of them: imagining myself in a place where the environment is threatening but I’m in an extremely secure spot. Hidden in a tree, curled into tall grass, wedged into a place no one would think to look. These paintings recreate that impulse. A kind of self-rescue fantasy. Trying to be OK when everything around you is not OK.

The storms in these paintings have nothing to do with the weather. They’re in my head. I’m in my head. I was born into an era of indoor plumbing, antibiotics, climate control, anesthesia, grocery delivery. So why do the storms in my life feel so real? Historically speaking, the level of comfort we consider normal is absurd. But knowing that only helps a little. And only for a little while. Maybe the storm is something else entirely. Maybe it’s the distance between the safety we’ve built and the wildness we lost along the way.

I thought I would be content by now.
I thought I would have systems in place by now.
I thought I would have figured out how to sleep by now.
I thought I would have more resilience by now.
I thought I would be more successful by now.
I thought I would notice that I AM successful by now.
I thought I would have figured out how not to feel sad even when the light outside is perfect by now.
I thought I would have figured out why I get this weird rash sometimes by now.
I thought I would…

I see the same contradictions surfacing again and again in the work: feeling powerful and diminished, nurturer and destroyer, watched and watching, wanting connection while craving solitude. Objects held, dropped, passed, or pulled away. Hands reaching in or reaching out. Something always happening just outside the frame-a string being pulled, an invisible force shifting the scene. Each painting gives me a chance to hold those contradictions still long enough to look at them.

The storms, the eggs, the sunburns, the gestures, the loneliness, the pressure, the tenderness, the dread- they’re all part of the same orbit. They come from the growing suspicion that no one is in charge, and a dismantling of the quiet belief that I will eventually “arrive.” I’m just circling the same tension: the distance between who I thought I would be and who I actually am.

This exhibition closes 11/29/26.

October 2026 Spotify Playlist

 Los Angeles Music, Music, Musicians / Bands, Spotify Playlist
Nov 022026
 

Chelsea Wolfe- Death is Not the End

Every month I listen to the majority of bands and musicians who are playing in Los Angeles and select some for a monthly playlist. It includes a variety of genres and usually newer work by the artists.

This month’s playlist includes new music from Aldous Harding, Mon Rovia, Son Lux, @, Starcleaner Reunion, Denzel Curry, and many more.

The song above is by Chelsea Wolfe, from her 2026 album, The Dark.

Below are October’s selections:

Song of the Day- Genesis Owusu- “Stampede”

 Music, Musicians / Bands, Spotify Playlist
Nov 022026
 

Genesis Owusu- STAMPEDE

This song is from Ghanaian-Australian Genesis Owusu‘s 2026 album, REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE.

He is currently on tour and will be playing at the Lodge Room in Los Angeles on Thursday, 11/5/26, with After Louise opening.

Pennsylvania Murals- Shepard Fairey’s “The Stamp of Incarceration” in Philadelphia

 Art, Artists, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Public Art, Street Art
Oct 292026
 

Shepard Fairey created The Stamp of Incarceration: James Anderson in 2015 for Mural Arts Philadelphia.

From Mural Arts about the work:

Shepard Fairey came to Philadelphia to meet with inmates at Graterford SCI, members of the Guild (Mural Arts’ re-entry program for formerly incarcerated people), and others involved in Mural Arts’ Restorative Justice program. Based on this dialogue, he developed a series of images that kicked off a massive campaign designed to raise awareness about criminal justice. Going back to the origins of his Andre the Giant sticker, Shepard distributed stickers to the public for mass distribution, engaging in a participatory form of art. He has created several murals in Philadelphia.

This project was part of Open Source, a citywide exhibition that brought 14 extraordinary artists from around the world to Philadelphia. They worked with Mural Arts Philadelphia and guest curator Pedro Alonzo to create a new series of public artworks that explore and illuminate Philadelphia’s diverse urban identity.

This Saturday (10/31/26) is Mural Arts Fest, taking place from 12-5pm in Philadelphia’s LOVE Park. The free event includes live performances, mask decorating, pumpkin painting, an artist vendor market, and more.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- “Jesse Krimes: Elegy Quilts” at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Fiber Arts, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia
Oct 282026
 

Jesse Krimes, “Riverside”, 2026, Antique quilts, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles

“Red Eagle”, 2020, Antique quilt, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles

“Red Eagle”, detail

While the quilts in Jesse Krimes‘s exhibition Elegy Quilts at The Fabric Workshop and Museum are beautifully crafted works, it is how he builds on the ideas and personal items of the incarcerated people he worked with that make them so poignant.

The exhibition also includes the recent quilt Riverside, (pictured at the top of this post), a newly commissioned work inspired by Krimes’s workshops with young adults from Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Restorative Justice program. A mural of the piece was also created, located at 990 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia.

From the museum about the exhibition:

Presented in partnership with Mural Arts Philadelphia, this exhibition features selections from Jesse Krimes’s Elegy Quilt series (2020–present), a body of work that renders the personal effects of the U.S. carceral system through portraits of domestic spaces. Drawing on his own experience with incarceration, Krimes gathers donated clothing and textile fragments from currently and formerly incarcerated individuals and reconstitutes them into intricately patterned quilts that meditate on memory, loss, alienation, and comfort. Continuing in the spirit of American quilting traditions, the works situate these narratives within broader histories of communal making and resilience.

To produce the works on view, Krimes invited incarcerated collaborators to describe a memory of home. He then prompted them to choose a representative animal figure as a symbolic stand in for the incarcerated person. The quilts, titled after U.S. prisons and jails, become tactile archives grappling with estrangement, yearning, and the complexities of release and reintegration. Through this process, Krimes reframes everyday materials into narratives of dignity and connection, prompting critical reflection on the psychological and material costs of incarceration.

Marion, pictured below, also has an affecting story behind it.

“Marion”, 2022, Antique quilt, used clothing collected from incarcerated people, assorted textiles

From the museum:

Krimes utilizes the names of American penitentiaries-here the Federal Correctional Institution in Marion, Illinois-as titles for his quilts to convey the immense scale of mass incarceration in the United States. The quilts themselves, however, depict personal relationships to home, memory, and safety.

When Krimes asked his collaborator for Marion, who is currently incarcerated, where he last felt most comfortable, the individual described the woods behind his house where he would meditate. The resulting quilt is a portrait in absentia: rather than depicting the figure in contemplative repose, Krimes presents an empty chair and discarded boots as the material traces of the “sitter.” A brightly patterned crane curves around the chair like a guardian figure suggestive of freedom and flight.

The crane’s vivid yellow coloring and the rich purple of the towering trees create a distinction between the peaceful natural setting and this animal avatar. As with the other works in the Elegy Quilt series, Marion offers a vision of individual longing, softness, and vulnerability in resistance to the severe discomfort and violent anonymity produced by the carceral system.

This exhibition is on view until 11/1/26.

Artist Birthdays- Roy Lichtenstein

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Oct 272026
 

Roy Lichtenstein, “Live Ammo (Blang)”, 1962 Oil and Magna on two canvas panels

Roy Lichtenstein was born today, October 27th, in 1923. His painting Live Ammo (Blang) is part of The Broad’s permanent collection.

From the museum:

Live Ammo (Blang) is an early example of Lichtenstein’s use of comic book imagery, part of an artistic strategy employing images and themes from popular culture that came to define his career. At the time it was painted, the United States was experiencing multiple wars: the spectral uncertainty of the Cold War and the nostalgia for valor from World War II coming into conflict with the twisted realities of the escalating war in Vietnam. Taking images directly from comics such as G.l. Combat, All American Men of War, and Our Fighting Forces, Lichtenstein willfully exaggerated wartime heroics to their breaking point, using caricature to test and render absurd the clean lines between hero and villain. The message was social but also insular to the world of painting, for Lichtenstein detected these macho postures in the American triumphalism of abstract expressionism. Additionally, Live Ammo (Blang) caricatures the spontaneity and “action” of this approach to art.

The Whitney museum’s current exhibition of his work, Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, is getting great reviews and is on view at the museum until 5/10/27.

Flashback- Georgia Art Shows- John Kelly Fitzpatrick at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Augusta, Georgia, Painting / Painters
Oct 232026
 

John Kelly Fitzpatrick “Autumn in the Hills, Wetumpka, Alabama, 1936, Oil on canvas

John Kelly Fitzpatrick‘s oil painting Autumn in the Hills, Wetumpka, Alabama from 1936 is part of The Morris Museum of Art‘s permanent collection. It was on view in 2021.

The museum, located in Augusta, is free on Sundays and this Sunday (10/25) they are also hosting their annual free event, Artrageous! Family Sunday: Boo Bash, which includes trick-or-treating in the galleries, decorating pumpkins, and fairy-tale story time.

 

Artist Birthdays- Robert Rauschenberg

 Art, Artists, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Printmaking
Oct 222026
 

Robert Rauschenberg, “Estate”, 1963, Oil and screenprinted inks on canvas

Happy Birthday to Robert Rauschenberg, who was born today, October 22nd, in 1925. Pictured above is his 1963 work, Estate, currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

From the museum about this work:

Robert Rauschenberg was among the first American artists to combine found images using the silkscreen process, a technique in which a design is imposed on a specially prepared fine-mesh screen (with the blank areas coated with an impermeable substance) and then transferred onto paper or canvas by pushing paint or ink through the screen. Beginning in the early 1960s, the artist applied newspaper photographs, art reproductions, and his own snapshots to canvas, thereby exploiting the wealth of mass media source material, from the banal and personal to the monumental and public. Estate presents complex combinations of such disparate images as the Statue of Liberty, Michelangelo’s painting Last Judgment, a 1962 rocket launch, and a glass of water. It draws its power from the tension between photography and painting. Seemingly spontaneous splashes of paint recall the vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism while unifying this incongruent inventory of images.

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