Delaware Art Shows- Guise / Trickery- Ashley Suszczynski and Brian Richmond at The Delaware Contemporary

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
Aug 132025
 

The Delaware Contemporary currently has several exhibitions on view for their summer series Radius. Guise/Trickery, a two person exhibition curated by Erica Loustau and Moriah Berrouet, features a photographic series by Ashley Suszczynski (Guise), pictured above, and hyper-realistic recreations of discarded fast food packaging created by Brian Richmond (Trickery), pictured below.

From the museum about the Suszczynski-

Ashley Suszczynski is an award-winning photographer focused on capturing ancient traditions in the modern day. The photographs on exhibit include work from her series, Ancient Tradition in the Modern Day, which is an ongoing discovery of ancient pagan roots of masked traditions throughout the villages of the Iberian Peninsula. Ashley documents costumed villagers, unearthing the various cultural traditions and winter rites of the region. The masked festivals are designed to ward away evil spirits and welcome a fresh and healthy new year. Elaborate handmade costumes allow participants to step outside their everyday identities and engage in imaginative storytelling.  Whether the suits are made from silky goat hair, fur, mirrors, or feathers, the wearing of masks and costumes fosters a sense of liberation and communal celebration. The concept of guise plays a vital role in masked folk traditions and festivals, serving as a powerful tool for transformation. Ultimately, the guise in these traditions invites reflection on the nature of identity itself and challenges participants to explore the boundaries between reality and fantasy.

Ashley’s work has been seen in National Geographic, Photo District News, All About Photo and more. Her most recent exhibition, “Ancient Tradition in the Modern Day: Iberian Folklore and Maskarades” headlined the 2022 Barcelona Foto Biennale along with the 7th Biennial of Fine Art and Documentary Photography. The exhibit took the grand prize in the worldwide Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers.

About Brian Richmond and his work from the museum-

Brian Richmond creates hyper-realistic renditions of mass-produced packaging.  Adept in paper modelling and painting, Brian tricks the viewer into seeing “trash”.  His work addresses the pervasiveness of single-use packaging and the “highly manufactured refuse that permeates our daily lives and environments in such a powerful way that we hardly notice it anymore”. By blurring the lines between illusion and actuality, Brian exploits trickery to enrich the viewer’s experience, encouraging them to explore layers of meaning beyond the surface.  Each unique artwork deceives the eye and makes us question its reason for being in a museum context.  The trickery has drawn us in only to remind us that the trick is actually on us.  We are the ones creating the real debris that litters our cities and towns.

Brian William Richmond is a visual artist from Pennsylvania who makes three-dimensional paintings of trash. Brian graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design with a BFA in 2001. In 2008, he was awarded the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship. In 2012, he was awarded the West Collects acquisition prize. He previously exhibited at Pulse Art Fair, Miami in 2012 as part of The West Collection’s “THIS END UP” installation. In 2013, Richmond was one of five artists who were selected by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery to participate in a group exhibition entitled “Philadelphia”, where Richmond’s mass-produced packaging series was exhibited. In 2016, he was awarded the Fleisher Wind Challenge from Fleisher Art Memorial. Brian has also been a songwriter/composer for many years now, and his current project with his long-term collaborator Nick Hardy is the Bell Harmers. Brian is currently working on his next collection of paintings, which he plans to release in the fall of 2024. Brian works and resides in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

This exhibition closes 8/24/25.

Caturday- John Banovich’s “Partners” at The James Museum in St. Pete

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Florida Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Pinellas County, St. Pete
Aug 092025
 

Pictured above is John Banovich‘s painting Partners, 2007, from the permanent collection of The James Museum in St. Pete, Florida.

From the museum and artist about the work-

Lions are most affectionate with their companions of the same gender. Male lions will change prides but stay with their coalition partners for their entire lives.

“There is no greater bond in the big cat world than between pride mates.”
– John Banovich

 

Throwback- NYC Art Shows- Whitney Biennial- Takako Yamaguchi

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Jul 312025
 

The two large paintings pictured above are by Takako Yamaguchi and were on view as part of Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing.

From the Whitney Museum website about the artist-

Takako Yamaguchi’s recent seascapes use meticulously rendered zigzags, tubes, and lines to suggest weather and other natural elements. They reflect Yamaguchi’s experimentation with what she calls “abstraction in reverse,” or taking recognizable forms, like clouds or waves, and abstracting them to the point of pattern. Her interest is less in nature itself than in the artifice that has allowed artists to represent it. The artist aims to paint “umbrellas” that will read as “trees,” referring to a quote by the poet Wallace Stevens, who said, “All of our ideas come from the natural world: Trees = umbrellas.”

The resulting paintings work against Western art historical ideas of “pure” abstraction. The luminous surfaces are intentionally decorative and structured using graphic techniques drawn from Mexican muralism and Japanese print design alike. Throughout her career, Yamaguchi has also resisted assumptions by critics that Japanese aesthetics are inherently minimalist, drawing from the most opulent and intricate aspects of Japanese visual culture.

Yamaguchi’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles is currently on view at MOCA until 1/4/26.

Artist Birthdays- Betye Saar

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Collage, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jul 302025
 

Happy Birthday to Los Angeles-based artist Betye Saar who turned 99 today! Pictured above is her work The Locksmith, 2018, which was part of the 2019 group exhibition Behind Face at Los Angeles gallery Roberts Projects.

Her biography from the Roberts Projects website-

As one of the artists who ushered in the development of Assemblage art, Betye Saar’s practice reflects on African American identity, spirituality and the connectedness between different cultures. Her symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical context in which it exists.

For over six decades, Saar has created assemblage works that explore the social, political, and economic underpinnings of America’s collective memory. She began her career at the age of 35 producing work that dealt with mysticism, nature and family. Saar’s art became political in the 1970’s namely with the assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima in 1972. As did many of the women who came to consciousness in the 1960’s, Saar takes on the feminist mantra “the personal is political” as a fundamental principle in her assemblage works. Her appropriation of black collectibles, heirlooms, and utilitarian objects are transformed through subversion, and yet given her status as a pioneer of the Assemblage movement, the impact of Saar’s oeuvre on contemporary art has yet to be fully acknowledged or critically assessed. Among the older generation of Black American artists, Saar is without reproach and continues to both actively produce work and inspire countless others.

In recent news, Saar has assembled a group of curators to form the Betye Saar Legacy Group, whose purpose will be to “help ensure that museums, art historians, and critics wanting to know more about the artist can continue to do so in the decades to come.” More information here.

Two for Tuesday- Public Art- Julian Voss-Andreae’s Sculptures in Palm Springs and Columbus, Ohio

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Columbus, Conceptual Art, History, Ohio Art Shows, Palm Springs, Palm Springs Art Shows, Public Art, Quotes, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jul 292025
 

Isabelle, by German sculptor Julian Voss-Andreae is located in Palm Springs, California. Voss-Andreae creates sculptures designed to change their appearance- disappearing at times when viewed at a certain angle. His background in science helped to influence this work when he went on to study art.

Below is a section of his biography from his website-

Prior to his art career, Julian Voss-Andreae studied quantum physics and philosophy at the Universities of Berlin and Edinburgh. As a graduate student at the University of Vienna, Voss-Andreae was one of the small team led by 2022 Nobel Prize Laureate Anton Zeilinger that conducted a ground-breaking experiment in quantum mechanics in 1999. The researchers showed that even molecules as big as C-60 “Buckyballs” can reveal their fundamentally quantum nature under the right conditions. Zeilinger’s group found that a beam of them, passed through a diffraction grating, will exhibit the purely wavelike property of interference. Subsequent experiments showed how interactions with the environment (in the form of infrared photons and background gas of different densities) will gradually wash away the ‘quantum-ness’ thanks to the process of decoherence, which is now recognized as the way the classical world emerges from the quantum.

Our Single Garment of Destiny, (pictured below) is located in  Washington Gladden Social Justice Park in Columbus, Ohio. It was specifically designed for the park and takes its name and inspiration from the Martin Luther King Jr. quote below.

“All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”  – Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)

The video below explains his process when creating the sculptures.

Brooklyn Art Shows- Maya Hayuk from “Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls” at Brooklyn Museum

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jul 252025
 

Maya Hayuk is one of the four artists on view in Brooklyn Museum’s Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls.  The other artists included are José Parlá, Kennedy Yanko, and the late Leon Polk Smith.

From the museum about Hayuk and this work-

With a diverse practice as a muralist, painter, photographer, gallery founder, and member of several artist collectives, Maya Hayuk has worked internationally to bring vibrancy and movement to urban and exhibition spaces. Weaving layers of paint, she animates walls with what she describes as “perfect imperfection.” These paintings, with their symmetrical organization and brilliantly overlapping colors and drips, are both constructed and improvisational, blurring perceptions of outer and inner space and confronting paradoxes of harmony and dissonance, optimism and hopelessness. Hayuk’s Ukrainian heritage as well as current geopolitical events inspire her to express abstracted physical and psychological landscapes of the war’s front line, simulating the flash points of explosions intersecting with the hope of sunrise.

The exhibition, which takes place on the walls surrounding the museum’s Beaux-Arts Court, remains on view until January 4, 2026.

North Carolina Art- “Liminal” at Center for Craft in Asheville

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Asheville, North Carolina Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jul 242025
 

Liminal, 2019, was created by North Carolina artists Ian Henderson and Shae Bishop, and is located outside the Center for Craft in Asheville.

From the center and Henderson-

The installation explores the idea of the liminal, or state of being in transition, through the shifting pattern created by this large-scale tessellation of concrete tiles.

“Liminal invites the viewer, even the casual passer-by, to enter that liminal state and feel the vastness of a world pulsing with change and uncertainty.”

– Ian Henderson

Cleveland Museum of Art- Julian Stanczak’s “Filtered Yellow”

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Cleveland, Ohio Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Jul 242025
 

Filtered Yellow, 1968, by Ohio artist Julian Stanczak, is part of Cleveland Museum of Art‘s permanent collection.

From the museum about the artist and the work-

For more than a half century, Julian Stanczak maintained a distinguished career as an abstract painter interested in how vision works. Filtered Yellow features hundreds of alternating reddish and greenish razor-sharp vertical bands that create the illusion of a yellow shape, despite the absence of pure yellow paint. As typical of his work, it emphasizes a high level of technical mastery rivaled by few.

And from the artist’s website about his work-

“My primary interest is color – the energy of the different wavelengths of light and their juxtapositions. The primary drive of colors is to give birth to light. But light always changes; it is evasive. I use the energy of this flux because it offers me great plasticity of action on the canvas. To capture the metamorphoses – the continuous changing of form and circumstance – is the eternal challenge and, when achieved, it offers a sense of totality, order, and repose. Color is abstract, universal – yet personal and private in experience.”

“If I take time to really look at what I’m seeing, there is no limit to the secrets unveiled. I look to nature for clarification and crystallization, for things that I can use in my paintings. I live in the moment of recognition. In search for power through abstract clarity, I select shapes that have the maximum possibility for metamorphic action. We can only see what we understand!”

 

Delaware Art Shows- “Beauty in Unwavering Truths” at John William Gallery in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Drawing, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Wilmington
Jul 232025
 

Portia Mortensen, “Floating Landscape”, 2025, Colored crayon, acrylic, and oil on canvas

Work by Portia Mortensen

Wes Memeger, “Squares, Circles, Arcs and Lines Together”, 2019, Acrylic on canvas

Wes Memeger, “Homage to Venetians IV”, 2013 (top) and “Homage to Venetians II”, 2012

Haeley Kyong, “Harmonic Progression”, Oil on Canvas

Haeley Kyong, “In Pursuit of Invariable”, Oil on canvas

Currently at John William Gallery in Wilmington is Beauty in Unwavering Truths, an exhibition of geometric art by Portia Mortensen, Wes Memeger, and Haeley Kyong.

From curator Phoebe Caswell-

In a universe of great complexity, sometimes the quiet and simple things can resonate most deeply. The simplest shapes compose the form of many of our most rudimentary understandings of the world, and the laws of geometry are immutable facts that bind the very fabric of our existence. In Beauty in Unwavering Truths, artists Haeley Kyong, Wes Memeger, and Portia Mortensen investigate these fundamentals and highlight the beauty in the simple forms of squares, circles, and diamonds, each finding their unique aesthetic voices through experimentation in color, light, and composition.

Haeley Kyong works particularly in soft pastel colors and keeps her compositions abstract and minimalist. For example, Harmonic Progression, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 x 2 inches, is a mathematical expression of emotion. The painting’s gentle hues of pink and purple accompany the generous use of circles and squares to mimic the mathematical formula of the Fibonacci sequence. The spiraled pattern often appears in nature and is called the “golden ratio” for its aesthetic appeal. Despite its simple components, Kyong takes advantage of the golden ratio to create an aesthetically elevated piece.

The late Wes Memeger took a similar approach to his work, developing abstracted pieces from shapes he became enchanted by through his work as a polymer chemist. Like Kyong and Mortenson, Memeger found beauty in the simplicity of shapes and the evolution of each piece as he created each composition using the eternal geometric models. In his, Squares, Circles, Arcs, and Lines Together, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 inches, Memeger explores luminous warm tones to create a similar depth to his piece as the composition recedes into the background. Austere shapes and a lush monochromatic color palette form the complex pictorial structure.

Portia Mortensen, too, composes her work out of the foundational elements of shape and color. Her use of light and shadow plays with one another to simulate 3D forms in the diamond shapes, producing “spinners.” In Rainbow and Blue Spinners on Checkers, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, the simple shapes seem to move on the canvas, the contrasting saturations adding to its depth. Of the three artists, Mortensen adds a stark asymmetry to her work with the roughly sketched diamond shapes to reinforce the beauty of the composed spinners.

Together, the works of Kyong, Memeger, and Mortensen serve as a compelling reminder that complexity is not a prerequisite for profundity. Through their shared focus on elementary shapes and disciplined exploration of light, color, and form, these artists reveal geometry’s quiet elegance and expressive power. Though rooted in the familiar, their pieces transcend the ordinary to evoke wonder, movement, and emotional resonance—showcasing that there is infinite space for artistic discovery within unwavering truths.

This exhibition will be on view until 9/25/25.

Flashback- Delaware Art Shows- Jennifer Small at the Delaware Contemporary and the Mezzanine Gallery in Wilmington

 Architecture, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Painting / Painters, Wilmington
Jul 182025
 

“Arches Symbolize Growth”, 2024, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas

“Pulse: Contemporary Meets Classical”, 2023, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas

Over this past winter Delaware artist Jennifer Small had two solo exhibitions in Wilmington- Walking in the City at The Delaware Division of the Arts’ Mezzanine Gallery and Facades and Rooftops at The Delaware Contemporary.

For Walking in the City, the paintings (pictured above) capture elements from a single day in Venice, Italy. In Facades and Rooftops, works on paper and laser cut wood panels (a selection of which are pictured below) are based on homes and businesses she observed and photographed on neighborhood walks.

The works in both of these shows capture the fleeting nature of memory and observation, and the fragments that linger- juxtaposing these elements in unique ways.

Here’s what she says in her Artist Statement about the work (from her website)-

My art, initially abstract in appearance, records a journey of a day in the life—a practice that starts with documentation through the lens of a camera. I see my experiences through special goggles with the ability to transform banal spaces and objects into engaging formal elements that are pulled out of their environment and placed into my painting compositions strictly for their aesthetic significance. The process of cataloging my everyday leads to the solidification of my memories in a specific time and place and constant access to a breadth of inspiration for my paintings. New inspiration comes out of each new environment I experience whether as a resident or a visitor allowing the work to be an ever-evolving documentation of my days.

The observations I collect are combined into compositions through a process of drawing and collage where I am selecting and joining bits of each sighting to build abstract structures in imagined worlds displaying a combination of shallow and deep space. The work demonstrates loose, painterly applications juxtaposed with more rigid, hard-edge areas of the acrylic paint and spray paint that I use. While the palette is imagined, each painting is an archive of a time and place connected to a personal experience.

I want to challenge the viewer to see the work as personal yet universal. A compilation of my experiences, but also as a way to connect with abstract painting in a tangible way. I want to elevate the humble from unnoticed and small to colorful and grand by putting a spotlight on the unrecognized poetry of daily routine.

For more information, Small also recently joined fellow artist Kat Collins to discuss her process on the podcast The Artist is In.

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