Glasswork – longlistshort

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Kurt Lluch, Edith Lebeau, Rebecca Reeves and Danielle Schlunegger-Warner at Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia

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

Sep 242026

Kurt Lluch, “The Weight of A World”, 2026, Watercolor on shaped panel

Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia has an almost overwhelming amount of art in its galleries, with several exhibitions currently on view. Kurt Lluch‘s whimsical watercolors for PARABOLA, pictured above, are one of the highlights.

From the gallery and the artist about the work:

Arch Enemy Arts presents PARABOLA by Kurt Lluch, a series of intricate watercolors depicting fanciful narratives and surreal parables uniquely painted on custom-cut speech bubbles—literal conversation pieces that feel fundamentally open-ended. Like the mathematical curve from which the show draws its name, Lluch constructs his work through the visual language of comparison. From the juxtaposition of big and small to the contrast of detail and texture on flat white grounds, each painting becomes a wordless exchange between obstacle and resolve. Lluch relies on the viewer to finish the story, answer the question, or solve the problem posed in his pictorial exchange.

“The inspiration for my work comes from humanity’s sense of perseverance, will, and hope—the drive to overcome even the most seemingly insurmountable obstacles we encounter. Most of these themes affect me personally, and lately, this is an ongoing concern within my conceptual bubble. The intention, underneath the whimsy, is to convey hope, determination, and resilience. In a way, these works tap into sociopolitical issues, especially viewed through my perspective as an immigrant, a Filipino-American living in the USA during the current climate. I hope to convey grace and perseverance to make the most out of any situation, whether it be positive or negative.”

Below are selections from a few of the other exhibitions also currently on view.

Paintings by Edith LeBeau

From the gallery and artist Edith Le Beau:

Arch Enemy Arts presents CATCHING FIRE by Canadian artist Edith Lebeau. Seven new portraits depict women and nonbinary artists, friends, and influences, who form a symbolic narrative of internal, invisible pain. Poised before dark skies and crashing waters, Lebeau’s stormy blues are like beautiful bruises punctuated by glowing embers. They symbolize the emotional weight burning behind a composed facade, as protective comfort becomes the gathering storm and the beautiful armor we wrap around ourselves begins to swallow us whole.

“My work is about mental health awareness, especially agoraphobia and being afraid to face what’s outside your cozy and secure cocoon. I’ve been dealing with social anxiety since I was a teen, and I’ve met so many people like me, dealing with anxiety and struggling in silence. We all felt alone, but speaking to others who dealt with the same thing made us feel less alone, and this helped me in a way. There is a fine line between feeling cozy and getting out of it. These portraits with houses on fire are about struggling with the need for comfort, the meaning of home and comfort versus denial, and staying in your security blanket to a point that it’s not healthy anymore.” – Edith Lebeau

Work by Rebecca Reeves

From the gallery and artist Rebecca Reeves:

Arch Enemy Arts presents LIKE A LEAF ON A BREEZE, YOU BLEW AWAY by Rebecca Reeves, marking the Bucks County fiber artist’s fifth solo feature with the gallery. Reeves is a master at striking that delicate balance between beauty and unease. For this series, she pairs her signature beaded floral bouquets and elegant bows with tintype portraits from the early 1900s, all presented in custom designed and fabricated frames. From the distressed gold leaf and ornamental tacks to the altered photographs, heavy bows, and unraveling flowers, every component of Reeves’ work is carefully considered. With impressive technical range and deep sensitivity to historical materials, these pieces feel inherited from another life, functioning somewhere between sculpture, portrait, relic, and shrine.

“This new body of work is inspired by memorial photographs that hang in the home, and the custom frame designs are based on antique Victorian frames and wooden wall art. Although the antique tintypes were purchased, the titles of the works are directly named after my ancestors dating back to the mid-1600s. They are hand-cut so that the figures lift off the surface, leaning over the edge of the frame. After my Dad died, the first few days felt as if I were carrying the weight of him on my back. I felt lost and broken. These tintypes represent the weight of grief that we carry for a lifetime. The emptiness of the silhouettes and the hollowed-out frames, to me, speak louder than words.” – Rebecca Reeves

Work by Danielle Schlunnegger-Warner

From the gallery and Danielle Schlunnegger-Warner:

Arch Enemy Arts presents TIDAL SHIFT by Danielle Schlunnegger-Warner, a new series of sculptural ecosystems that celebrate the biodiversity and movement of Earth’s oceans, lakes, and rivers. All of the plants and animals within Danielle’s sculptures start as hand-sculpted specimens that she then molds and casts multiple times over. Danielle finishes each creature with painted details before delicately placing them into staged habitats inside hand-poured resin domes, reminiscent of portholes or bubble dome tanks at aquariums.

“Each piece represents different types of movement in water, and all of the titles reflect how the subjects inside move in their environments. The resin domes create optical illusions so that, when you pass by, it has the effect of these ecosystems moving and shifting inside. The work is meant to celebrate how beautiful aquatic environments are, and I hope people feel wonder and awe at how amazing this world is. Climate change is affecting all of these environments in ways that may be irreversible, so for this show, I wanted to focus on the beauty in the world that’s worth caring about and protecting.” – Danielle Schlunegger-Warner

Finally, the gallery’s annual SPECTRUM exhibition, pictured above, features a long list of artists in a variety of mediums, organized by color.

From the gallery:

Back in 2020, amidst a prolonged quarantine and escalating anxieties, a new and exciting idea for a group show theme emerged. Seeking to counter the overwhelming melancholy, we envisioned a collection of works that would radiate vibrancy and joy. Participating artists were tasked with creating near-monochromatic pieces, each inspired by a single color from the ROYGBIV spectrum. As the finished works arrived, we skillfully and carefully arranged them on the wall, orchestrating a breathtaking crescendo of colors that spanned the full spectrum. While each piece is a standout in its own right, together they unite in a harmonious symphony and a vibrant celebration of color and creativity.

The SPECTRUM series has now been presented as sic annual exhibitions since its inception in 2020.

All of these exhibitions will close on Sunday, 9/27/26.

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 Art Shows- Ava Blitz at Philadelphia International Airport

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Glasswork, Installation Art, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia

Mar 262026

Ava Blitz created this glass mosaic, Pink, in 2012 for Philadelphia International Airport. It is part of Philadelphia’s Percent for Art Program.

From Art at PHL-

Philadelphia artist Ava Blitz works in various artistic disciplines including sculpture and photography. In either medium, Blitz is inspired by nature and natural forms. In her sculptural work, she is known to mass similar objects together to suggest continual growth and to emulate the abundance of repetitive forms found in nature. Her sculpture is often large-scale and abstract with minimal detail to capture nature’s basic essence and to encourage the viewer’s imagination. Blitz also photographs nature, usually imagery that she has taken while on walks near her home. The photographs, typically of trees, feature variations of dense, lush foliage. Using digital photography, Blitz is able to heighten the color and alter the imagery to emphasize the beauty and mystery that inspires her artwork.

In Pink, Blitz has incorporated her photography and her interest in nature, abstraction, and repetition to create a glass tile mosaic. She describes the artwork as “playing with the edge between realism and abstraction to create a magical forest or garden – a virtual reality that viewers can enter, explore, and experience on multiple levels.” Seen from a distance, the branches and pink blossoms are recognizable. Yet up close, the tree dissolves into an abstraction of tactile, colorful, iridescent glass tiles.

Feb 062026

Giorgio de Chirico, “Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire”,1914, Oil and charcoal on canvas

René Magritte, “The Secret Double”, 1927, Oil on Canvas

Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents a large collection of works, in a variety of mediums, from the artistic movement. The show takes you through Surrealism’s history and is filled with many inventive and imaginative pieces- including several from lesser-known artists.

From the museum about the exhibition-

Surrealism burst onto the scene in Paris in 1924. French writer André Breton announced the aims of this revolutionary literary and artistic movement in his Manifesto of Surrealism. It started with a question: How, ideally, should we live? Breton observed that, at about twenty years of age, we make the error of trading our childlike imaginations for adult good sense and logic. Yet it’s the imagination that allows access to the innate state of freedom that we all possess. And maintaining freedom, Breton proposed, should always be the highest human aspiration.

Surrealism’s ambitions were broad and bold: its adherents wanted nothing less than a revolution in consciousness. To that end, they explored a method of experimental poetry called automatic writing, comparable to spoken free association, done spontaneously and, as far as possible, without conscious intent. Sigmund Freud’s theories about the role of the unconscious and the interpretation of dreams were an important inspiration. The Surrealists looked to access the unconscious mind to break free from the constraining rationality of the modern world.

Visual artists were part of the Surrealist movement from the start. They took up surprising and often challenging subject matter, imagery, and techniques across many mediums: painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, book illustration and design, and film. In Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100, we explore how, from the movement’s 1920s beginnings through the 1950s, these trailblazing artists made good on Surrealism’s revolution in consciousness.

The exhibition is split into six categories- Waking Dream which features Surrealism’s beginnings in the 1920s, Natural History, focused on the influence of nature, Desire, Premonition of War, Exiles, and Magic Art, which focuses on the new type of esotericism that emerged within Surrealism in the aftermath of World War II.

Lee Miller’s photographs of natural rock formations

Salvador Dalí, “Aphrodisiac Telephone” 1938, Plastic, metal

From the museum about Aphrodisiac Telephone, one of the artworks in the Desire section–

Salvador Dalí likened the Surrealist object, which uses found items, as a symbolic creation with improbable juxtapositions, comparable to poetry and sexual perversion. He applied this idea in Aphrodisiac Telephone. Its basis is the substitution of a lobster— a real lobster in the sculpture’s first iteration for display in 1938, a factitious lobster in white plastic for the editioned version —for a similarly shaped telephone handset. The title alludes to the lobster’s reputation as an aphrodisiac when eaten.

Max Ernst, “The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism)”, 1937, Oil on canvas

From the museum about the Max Ernst painting above, from the Premonition of War section-

Ernst painted The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism) to protest the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War as well as the defeat of the Republican side. But this depiction of a rampaging bird-headed beast also served as an allegorical reflection on the nature of evil. Ernst exhibited this painting as The Triumph of Surrealism — a despairingly ironic title given the situation in Europe — at the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris.

During World War II many European artists escaped to New York City and Mexico. The Exiles section features works by these artists, as well as Mexican (like Roberto Montenegro pictured below) and American artists whose work could also be seen as part of the Surrealist movement.

Roberto Montenegro, “The Double”, 1938, Oil on panel

The last section of the exhibition Magic Art, focuses on the increase in post-war interest in supernatural themes. There was also a room devoted to the work of artist friends Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, who had moved to Mexico during the war.

Leonora Carrington, “And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur”, 1953, Oil on canvas

Remedios Varo, “Creation of the Birds”, 1957, Oil on Masonite

This exhibition is on view until 2/16/25.

Substack Newsletter- Autumn Begins and Spooky Season Takes Over in The Recap

Art, Artists, Day of the Dead, Films, Glasswork, Halloween, Mixed Media, Music, Musicians / Bands, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture, Spotify Playlist, Street Art, The Newsletter

Nov 212025

In The Recap this month- music, art, art shows, murals, spooky season posts and more. Check it out here and subscribe!

Palm Springs Art Museum- “Meditations in Glass”- Karen LaMonte

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Glasswork, Palm Springs

Oct 292025

“Pianist’s Dress Impression”, 2005, cast glass, cold-worked

This ghostly glass sculpture by Karen LaMonte is part of Palm Springs Art Museum‘s exhibition Meditations in Glass, on view until 11/23/25.

From the museum about the work-

This life-size figure of a pianist projects a ghostly aura, yet the sculpture holds light in its mass like the spirit is held in the physical body. We can see how flesh once filled out the figure, noting how the buttons of the dress strain over the chest. Glass is “air, ethereal, material/non-material, ungraspable, fleeting, spiritual,” says LaMonte. “The absent figure is important to me because it tempers the undemanding pleasure of beauty with insinuations of loss and mortality.”

Oct 182025

The Recap, my Substack newsletter, returns today with a focus on abstract art, punk rock, the American flag, the 90s, and more. It adds a little more dimension to what I post on the website and ties things together thematically.

Check it out and subscribe!

NYC Public Art- William Wegman’s Subway Murals

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Fashion, Glasswork, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Photographers / Photography, Public Art

Oct 072025

William Wegman‘s portraits of his Weimaraner dogs were recreated in glass mosaic form by Mayer of Munich in 2018 for “Stationary Figures”, lcated in the 23rd Street subway station. The eleven murals brighten up the walls and are one of the many projects created by MTA Arts & Design.

From MTA Arts & Design about the work-

Photographed with the artist’s deadpan sense of humor, the dogs take on human attributes, from wearing street clothes like a shiny raincoat or flannel shirt, to being grouped like passengers as they gaze into space or peer down the platform as if waiting for the train.

Situated in bold blocks of color, the larger-than-life mosaic dogs are bursting into space and interacting with commuters. The mosaic fabricator, Mayer of Munich, interpreted the photographs taken for this project by meticulously transforming the facial expressions, skin textures and patterns of the dogs’ vibrant attire into glass mosaic. Wegman has lived and worked in the neighborhood for decades, and together with his dogs Flo and her brother Topper, they have created images that enliven this busy station.

Speaking about the project, Wegman said, “I wanted to create portraits of individual characters, people who you might see next to you on the platform. For these I dressed the dogs in more or less ordinary clothes, nothing too fashionable. I was very interested in the way in which photographs, even the out of focus dogs in the background of some images, could be translated into mosaic by Mayer of Munich, who skillfully turned gray stones into gray dogs.”

Below are the two series consisting of three panels each-

Delaware Art Shows- “Bricolage: Artists & Accumulation” at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Glasswork, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington

Aug 212025

Painting by Kelly Irvine

Installation of sculptures by Allison Hudson

Work by Anna Guarneri

Each of the five artists in Bricolage: Artists and Accumulation, currently on view at The Delaware Contemporary, use their materials to express meaning through a layering process.

From the curators, Kasia J. Bunofsky and Leah Triplett-

“I have a very simple theory. I have always pretended that objects themselves formed a self-composition. My composition consisted of allowing them to compose themselves.” – Armand Pierre Fernandez (Arman) (November 17, 1928 – October 22, 2005)

When ‘assemblage’ first circulated as an art-historical term in the early twentieth century, it referred to the primarily formalist practice of joining tangible, often discarded or found, materials. Like a three-dimensional collage, assemblages made novel juxtapositions of individual components to create a whole artwork with its own impact. As the topography of the art world shifted mid-century, assemblage was often used to critique the post-war era’s burgeoning consumerism. Similarly, “accumulation” refers to a kind of assemblage that emphasizes materiality through the mass repetition of similar objects or forms. Accumulations lent themselves particularly well to expressing discontent with consumerism. They underscored the commodity’s necessity as a medium while maintaining the artist’s agency to reclaim meaning through the processes of recontextualization and repetition. As time persisted, assemblage continued to inspire and lend credibility to avant-garde contemporary movements. Even the new wave of ‘conceptual art’–a blatant rejection of materiality–was seen as an assemblage that forwent concrete objects to assemble ideas, language, or concepts. From installation art, to performance, to ‘relational aesthetics’, assemblage and accumulation helped pave the way for today’s contemporary art world and its many innovations.

Assemblage and accumulation emphasize the importance of each material element to the message of the completed work of art. This idea evokes a sense of collectivism; a metaphorical microcosm of material cooperation that might inspire a yearning to change our individualistic society, as art reminds us the whole cannot exist without the contributions of every one of its parts.

The artists and works featured in Bricolage: Artists and Accumulation reference the tradition of assemblage, accumulation, and their many corollaries; either through the performance held within their artistic process, their compilation of abstract concepts, or their passion to speak through material. They build, assemble, accumulate, gather, and collect. Using assemblage as both a method and technique, these artists engage assemblage as an action that is always in perpetual evolution of form. Be their medium drawing or sculpting, painting or installation-their material glass or found objects, acrylic or graphite- Anna Guarneri, Allison Hudson, Brynn Hurlstone, Kelly Irvine, and Emilio Maldonado, apply an iterative, intuitive approach to making, resulting in a bricolage.

This aesthetic- in which the whole is a sum of parts-demonstrates a depth of material knowledge. The works presented here require long looks to unfold and reveal their discrete components. Layering, stacking, blending, and amalgamating are processes and aesthetic devices that enable the viewer to experience the work in an instinctual way. Throughout these artists’ individual practices, an emphasis on transformation through collecting and comingling materials, media, and forms is paramount, with bricolage being a means for metamorphosis.

Below are additional works by the artists and information from the museum-

Allison Hudson

“My work explores the nature of cycles and the emergence of growth from decay. It’s tactile and fragile- a combination of unfired clay, wool, fabric, resin, and wax. Driven to manipulate raw materials into something new and unrecognizable, I enjoy the physicality of building, tearing apart, and mending together – striving to create work that is at once ethereal and visceral.”

Kelly Irvine

“My abstract color field paintings invite the viewer to step into a lush, translucent world of color. Drawn to the beauty of layered transparent hues from an early age, I use sheer color, overlapping forms, gestural brush work, organic forms, and repeating motifs that flow and intersect, resulting in delicious new hues and increased tonal depth. Contrast is important in my work as well; hard edges are in conversation with areas of soft gradation, while vibrant, neon hues pop against muted tints and natural, raw canvas.

I’m especially inspired by the canvas staining techniques and paintings of Helen Frankenthaler and Washington Color School artists Morris Louis and Kenneth Victor Young. I pair that inspiration with constant experimentation and manipulation of materials, developing new processes as a natural outcome.”

Anna Guarneri‘s work explores the possibilities of suggestive imagery and the devotional connotations of stained glass. She uses crude marks and associations to tap into early human experience, pulling from a range of sources – ancient art, architecture, dance history, and her own body. Colors in her work conjure poignant memories, turning drawn forms and glass structures into celebrations, memorials, or premonitions.

Guarneri’s latest body of work pulls from the visual world of postpartum life, incorporating imagery of bodily landscapes and interiors, and the various devices, accessories, and toys encountered during pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood.

Brynn Hurlstone

“In Time explores the process of healing from trauma, and the permanent transformation left behind once that process begins. Layers of broken safety glass are frozen within ice and slowly melt over a steel platform. The thaw allows for the release of contained breakage onto the foundation, where it rests in a slowly evaporating pool of water. Over time the water evaporates and the shattered glass may be swept away, but the foundational steel upon which the process took place will forever carry its traces.”

Emilio Maldonado

“I create art to explore personal narratives and navigate life through the material culture of capitalist America.
My work raises questions about social constructs, structural inequalities, and the dynamics of race and class. Through a multidisciplinary approach, I repurpose discarded objects as a means to reflect on memory, identity, and social conventions.”

This exhibition is on view until 8/24/25.

Flashback- NYC Art Shows- Saya Woolfalk at Susan Inglett Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Glasswork, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film

May 092025

The images above are from Saya Woolfalk‘s exhibition The Woods Woman Method at Susan Inglett Gallery this past March.

From the gallery about this show-

The Woods Woman Method is the newest manifestation of the artist’s ongoing exploration of hybrid identity, accomplished through an elaborate fiction inspired by her own family background. Combining elements of African American, Japanese, and European cultures with allusions to anthropology, feminist theory, science fiction, Eastern religion, and fashion, Woolfalk depicts the story of a chimeric species she names the Empathics, botanic humanoid beings with a highly evolved ability to understand the experiences of others.

The Woods Women, a secret society of forest dwellers, first emerged within Woolfalk’s Empathic Universe, as she prepared for her solo exhibition at the Newark Museum of Art in 2021. While an Artist-in-Residence at the Museum from 2019 to 2021, she closely engaged with its renowned Herbarium and Hudson River School collections, leading to her reimagining of the earth and sky as she considered the “speculative fictions” of these idealized American landscapes, and her consideration of indigenous North American creation myths, oral histories of the descendants of enslaved Africans, and their uses of medicinal plants.

The exhibition features drawings, prints, mixed-media collages, sculpture, and video. Among the works on view are Birthing a New Sky: Starship Moon Cycle (2022), an inspired visualization of the artist’s sister, sitting in a lotus position, anticipating the birth of her daughter. Woolfalk writes:

“For a new sky to be born she must split herself into a million pieces. Each cell in her body replicates itself, spinning in twirling orbits. Her atomized insides burst apart, cascading into the void around her. Swirling and churning, one cell makes its way back to her center, where her heart had been. This brave new life expands, forcing its way out as new light, new land – a new sky.”

Other highlights include the landscape collages, Birthing a New Sky: Manuscripts 3 and 4 (2021),and 5 and 6 (2022), in which Woolfalk posits an alternative American creation myth. While appearing to be simple abstractions, these works are quite complex, composed of hundreds of intricately pieced and layered elements created from handmade Japanese papers that she has painted and stained with watercolor and gouache, Japanese silver foil, and acrylic medium.

The series of large-scale prints, The Four Virtues (2017) depict the physical embodiments of Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance, qualities that are vital to the ethos of her world.

The exhibition was held in advance of Woolfalk’s mid-career survey at the Museum of Arts and Design– Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe, curated by Alexandra Schwartz. That exhibition includes multimedia installations paintings, sculptures, performance, and works on paper created during the past twenty years and will be on view until 9/7/25.

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