Yayoi Kusama (1929-2026)

 Art, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Design, Fiber Arts, Films, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Performance Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Aug 282026
 

Kusama- Infinity- Official Trailer

Yesterday it was announced that Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama passed away on August 14th, at the age of 97. Although she had a long career, she became very popular much later in life for her dot-covered sculptures and paintings, as well as her Infinity Mirror Rooms installations. Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013) and  Longing for Eternity (2017), are currently on view at The Broad in Los Angeles.

Kusama: Infinity, directed by Heather Lenz, follows Kusama’s life from her childhood in the mountain town of Matsumoto, to years trying to build a career in New York in the 1960s, her struggles with mental illness, and later, years after her return to Japan, her tremendous career success. The film is a fascinating portrait of an artist who dedicated so much of her energy into making art.

Delaware Art Shows- “The People’s Gallery” at Delaware Art Museum

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Digital Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Glasswork, Illustration, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
Aug 282026
 

As part of their programming for the nation’s 250th birthday, Delaware Art Museum is showing the work of local artists in their current exhibition, The People’s Gallery. It is a non-juried exhibition which allowed artists at all levels to contribute work.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to see what this community of artists has created and to purchase local art. Check it out before it closes on 9/6/26.

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.

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.

Delaware Art Shows- “Living Indigenous” at Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Delaware, Fiber Arts, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Wilmington
Aug 062026
 

Leonard A. Harmon, “Untitled”, c.1980s, Oil on masonite

Leonard D. Harmon, “Last Copper Moon”, 2025, Acrylic, spray paint, oxidized copper shavings, paper on wood panel

Leonard D. Harmon, “Last Copper Moon”, 2025 (detail)

Delaware Art Museum‘s Living Indigenous showcases and celebrates Indigenous communities and artists in multiple locations in the museum. The exhibition is part of the museum’s programming for the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Developed in partnership with the Nanticoke Indian Museum, one room dedicated to works created by Indigenous artists includes paintings by Leonard A. Harmon and his nephew, Leonard D. Harmon.

From the museum and artist about Last Copper Moon (pictured above):

Leonard D. Harmon notes the rich artistic legacy that precedes him. He explains, “I draw inspiration from my ancestors to infuse a modern twist into traditional arts.” This painting references the architectural forms his uncle, Leonard A. Harmon, was creating in the 1980s. A copper moon, or total lunar eclipse, is a sacred Indigenous occurrence, and the images Harmon includes refer to associated rituals.

The exhibition continues upstairs with two different series of portraits of members of Delaware’s Indigenous communities– Will Wilson‘s Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX) and Andre’ L. Wright, Jr.’s Indigenous Faces of Wilmington. In 2022 the museum invited Wilson to continue his CIPX project in Delaware and facilitated a photoshoot of citizens of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware (The Original People) and the Nanticoke Indian Tribe (The Tidewater People). That same year the museum also commissioned Andre’ L. Wright, Jr. to create a project showcasing diverse Wilmingtonians, two of which are pictured below.

Two portraits by Andre’ L. Wright, Jr. from his series “Indigenous Faces of Wilmington”

Living Indigenous is on view until 8/23/26 and the museum is free to visit every Thursday from 4-8pm.

Delaware Art Shows- “Citizen Artist” at Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Delaware, Design, Drawing, History, Illustration, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Performance Art, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
Jul 092026
 

New Deal Posters

Willie Cole, “Rolanda”, November 5, 1978, Pastel on brown paper bag. This work was created while Cole was a CETA employee in Delaware

Photographs from the 1975 CETA-funded project “CITYSIGHTS/CITYSOUNDS” in Wilmington

Dorothea Lange, “Migrant Mother, Nipomo, CA”, 1936

Clockwise from top left: William Davidson White, “Children in the Tree”,1934; Michael J. Gallagher, “A Man’s Job”, c.1933-1934; Philip N. Yates, “Broken Nets”, 1934; Walter Willoughby, “Winter Landscape”, c. 1933-1934

Helen Farr Sloan, “W.P.A. Theater”c.1935, Oil on board. It depicts a Federal Theater production during the Depression in NYC’s Washington Square Park. These productions were often free or heavily discounted.

At a time when government arts funding and jobs programs are needed more than ever, Citizen Artist at Delaware Art Museum reminds visitors of the positive and long lasting impact of two past initiatives- The New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 (CETA). Featuring artwork created during these both of these time periods, the exhibition also highlights the important contributions made by artists in their communities.

From the museum about the exhibition:

Citizen Artist highlights diverse artists working for America during 1930s and 1940s Depression-era programs and federally funded initiatives of the 1970s. The New Deal and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act were catalysts in Delaware and across the nation as economic relief programs amplified the arts, creating new possibilities for creative employment. This exhibition centers artists as historians, storytellers, and visionaries during the Semiquincentennial.

Through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 (CETA), the Department of Labor supported a nation’s worth of art programs on a scale not seen since the conclusion of the New Deal in 1943. Those New Deal artists that outlived the Federal Art Project never forgot the significance of their work for the public, and they took that knowledge to the classrooms and administrative offices where they carried out the rest of their careers. CETA was designed as a jobs program, not an arts program, but Title VI of the legislation funded opportunities for the cyclically unemployed —artists—in public service roles. When CETA arrived in the 1970s, artists and their allies across the nation quickly understood its potential in the context of the legacy of the New Deal.

Citizen Artist is a story about reciprocal support between artists and communities. The exhibition celebrates artists who found lasting success through their participation in fine art programs like the Public Works of Art Project and CETA-funded contemporary art spaces. We also honor the public service work undertaken by tens of thousands of New Deal and CETA-funded artists, especially the painters, puppeteers, and photographers who produced educational resources and performances for children across the nation. Citizen Artist looks back at the intertwined histories of CETA and the New Deal to elevate how artists can and do support the public. By working in graphics offices, writers’ programs, and darkrooms, New Deal and CETA artists created and transformed the physical and cultural infrastructure of the United States.

Included within Citizen Artist is Citizen Photographer, an exhibition of images created by Delaware photographers for the U.S.’s 250th anniversary.

From the museum about Citizen Photographer:

What does it mean to be a Delawarean at the nation’s 250th anniversary? The Delaware Art Museum, collaborating with Wilmington’s Teen Warehouse, the Smyrna Opera House, and the Lewes Public Library, invited residents across the state to engage in civic reflection and contribute to shaping public perceptions of identity through photography. Citizen Photographer is inspired by the federally funded initiatives of the past, such as the Farm Security Administration and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. These were times when documenting the nation and the many people who called it home was an earnest endeavor, the means to understand and appreciate our individuality, humanity, and common needs.

At the United States 250th anniversary in 2026, this project offers multiple ways for Delawareans to engage as learners, artists, and citizens contributing to the state’s shared story. Photographers Morris Brown II, B. Proud, and Andre’ Wright, Jr. led workshops across the state and selected the 24 photographs on view. For Wright, Jr., Citizen Photographer is “about perspective, voices, and the stories people choose to tell about where they come from.” Proud reflects how local photographers “captured the many facets of Delaware, from its cities to its farmlands, from its people to its landscapes, revealing why the state truly lives up to one of its nicknames, ‘Small Wonder.'” Morris invites us to “take the time to treasure each photograph and to experience each Delaware love story on exhibit.”

This exhibition closes 7/19/26.

 

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Hyland Mather and Shaun Kardinal at Paradigm in Philadelphia

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jun 252026
 

Shaun Kardinal “I II”, Woven paper ephemera and artist’s tape

Sculptures by Hyland Mather from the “Modus Volito” series

Framed images of work by Hyland Mather and Shaun Kardinal (sculptures by Hyland Mather on the left)

Sculptures by Hyland Mather

Discarded objects are transformed into new creations in works by Hyland Mather and Shaun Kardinal, currently on view in the two person exhibition, Form / Field, at Paradigm Gallery.

From the gallery:

This exhibition presents work from two distinct practices that converge through a shared sensitivity to line, structure, and process. Mather and Kardinal each explore how form emerges through accumulation, repetition, and material response, approaches that move between precision and drift, construction and discovery.

For his third major presentation with Paradigm Gallery, Mather presents works from several ongoing series, including Linea Pictura paintings, suspended “gravity works” (Onus Suspenda), and sculptural and assemblage-based works such as Modus Volito and Novus Inventa. Spanning painting, sculpture, and installation, the work explores line, structure, and found materials through processes of gathering, repetition, and thoughtful intervention. Across these works, line operates as both drawing and structure, with string extending into space, holding weight, or tracing paths across painted surfaces, allowing form to emerge through tension, balance, and material response.

In his debut Paradigm collection, Kardinal presents his woven paper quilts created from cut and punctured ephemera, along with a series of embroidered book pages and painted postcards, creating new forms from the smallest gestures. Kardinal’s work builds from repeating parts, embroidered marks, and modular systems that gather into larger compositions. These works often embrace landscape at a distance, horizons, city grids, or atmospheric depth, while remaining grounded in pattern and accumulation. Form, in this context, is built incrementally from repeated elements. In both practices, thread-like fiber elements and linear systems act as connective tissue, binding parts into larger wholes, or tracing form across space and surface. The “field” operates here as both a physical and conceptual space: a landscape, a surface of construction, and an invisible network of forces. Across both practices, it is within this field that form takes shape, held in a state of partnership between control and chance, repetition and variation, presence and possibility.

This exhibition closes 6/28/26.

Artist Birthdays- John Baldessari

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Cleveland, Collage, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, Ohio Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking
Jun 172026
 

John Baldessari, “One and Three Persons (with Two Contexts-One Chaotic)”, 1994-2012, 14-color screenprint

California artist John Baldessari was born today, June 17, in 1931.  The print above was part of The Cleveland Museum of Art‘s 2024 exhibition, New Narratives: Contemporary Works on Paper.

From the museum about this work:

John Baldessari often incorporated appropriated (or “found”) imagery into his artwork, such as the photographs of architecture and rubble appearing in this print. He juxtaposed these elements with outlined figures in a typically obtuse manner to suggest a narrative or simply a feeling with strange or even ominous undertones. The artist’s interest in the formal qualities of art, such as dimensionality, highlighted by his use of the irregularly shaped sheet of paper, white cut-outs, and silhouettes, adds to the sense of suggestion and uncertainty in the print.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- “Some American Dreams” at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jun 102026
 

Donald Lipski, “Who’s Afraid of Red, White and Blue #37”, 1990, White wool gabardine, made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Rose B. Simpson, “Tonantzin”, 2022, Linen, cotton, clay, and thread, made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum

(L to R) Rev. Howard Finster, “George Washington Meets Martha Custis, 1984, Pigment on cotton t-shirt; James Luna, “High Tech War Shirt”, 1997-98, Smoked hide, nylon setting, silk suiting, horse hair, metal, shell buttons, bead work with watches and necklace (shell, thermometer, and plastic toys); Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap Of Birds, “Who Owns History”, 1992, Pigment on cotton t-shirt (all works made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum)

S.A. Bachman, “Are You Telling Yourself A Little White Lie?”, 1988, Edition of 5, Halftone photographic silkscreen pigment on nylon, made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Pictured are just a few of the many excellent artworks currently on view in Some American Dreams at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. Exploring the concept of America and the American dream, all the works were created by an impressive list of artists who were Artists in Residence at the museum over the past four decades.

From the museum and curator Hilde Nelson:

In her 1986 essay “Waking Up in the Middle of Some American Dreams,” poet June Jordan calls for a multiplicity of American dreams rather than a singular paradigm. For Jordan, those in pursuit of these dreams include:

the white people the black people the female people the lonely people the terrorized people the elderly people the young people the visionary people the unemployed people the regular ordinary omnipresent people who crave grace and variety and surprise and safety and one new day after another.

On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, this presentation of works from The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s collection explores the complexity of American-ness through lenses of history, memory, and mythology. Made by past Artists in Residence in collaboration with the FWM Studio, the projects reimagine symbols of nationhood and belonging, critique ongoing legacies of inequity, and offer expanded visions of kinship and community.

The works on view represent four decades of making at FWM. They meditate on themes including indigeneity and race, alternative origin stories, landscape and the environment, the construction of historical narrative, memory and resistance, and images of cultural affiliation. Sections of the exhibition invite additional voices, drawing their titles from a chorus of American poets, songwriters, essayists, abolitionists, and historians.

The artists featured in Some American Dreams break down borders and categorical distinctions to propose a polyphony of American dreams shaped by hybridity, friction, and affinity. They ask: what if America is not one project, but many? And how might these Americas be affirmed, resisted or remade, in Jordan’s words, to envision “one new day after another?”

This exhibition closes 6/14/26.

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