Along with its exhibitions and programming, The Delaware Contemporary houses several artist studios. Several times a year the artists open their doors to the public. The images included in this post are from the December 2024 event.

The first images are from new media digital media artist Lisa Marie Patzer’s Chromatic Landscapes series.

From her website about the work-

Employing digital chroma-based processes, Patzer sorted, separated, and reconfigured images derived from more than one thousand 35mm slides. Originally captured by photographer Ben Kabakow during the mid-1950’s, the slides reflect his view of life in New York City and international travel. Lisa Marie Patzer’s treatment of this large archive emphasizes the role nostalgia and personal association play when interpreting another’s visual anthology. The result is a colorful set of vignettes and landscapes that are abstracted from the original context inviting the viewer in for playful association.

Below are selections from some of the other artists studios and from the walls surrounding them and their bios and quotes from the museum’s website.

Jenna Lucente is an artist and educator currently living in Delaware. She recently completed a public art commission that includes 28 glass windows for the above-ground Arthur Kill train station in Staten Island, New York. Commissioning agency: MTA Art and Design; glass fabrication by Franz Mayer of Munich.

Ruth Ansel creates paintings using egg tempera. “My egg tempera paintings are meditations in pigment and brushstroke.”

Jennifer Borders is a visual artist whose sculpture and drawing is installation-based and often participatory. She uses history, personal family stories, and current events to prompt viewers into inquiry.

Caroline Chen paints primarily with oil on canvas. “Painting is personal. The slow act of seeing takes time and hands and grace. I’m striving to express simple truths before me, to paint the emotion as well as the subject itself.”

Caroline Coolidge Brown is a mixed-media printmaker and visual journaler who collects inspiration from her travels far and near. Her playful work combines traditional printmaking processes (etching, monotype, lino and wood block) with collage and paint. “Mixed media printmaking allows me to push expected boundaries of “what is a print?” or “what is a painting?” For me, it’s all about the layers – of color, shape and meaning.”

John Breakey– “The familiar space above the horizon line provides conditions that empower my vision. The powerful brevity of Minimalism and the lasting voices of the Abstract Expressionists motivate me to treat the pure instance of looking out not as an act of passive observance but as a call to action.”

Lauren E. Peters– Through self-portraits based on staged photographs, Peters explores the multifaceted nature of identity.

Diane Hulse is an abstract, mixed media artist whose work includes painting, drawing, and objects. With a background in science and the fine arts, she explores internal and external landscapes, as found in the psychological terrain of self and the beauty of our embattled Earth. Intensely curious about almost everything, she studies nature, architecture, poetry, spiritualism, and psychology. Just as curiosity is a pillar of her art, so is imagination. A pink ocean or a monster perched on a beach ball are not farfetched for her. In fact, Hulse often pretends that she can miniaturize herself and walk through her paintings. She agrees with Picasso, who said that it is essential for artists to keep alive the child inside of all of us.

Tomorrow, 2/7/25, the studios will be open to the public as part of the monthly Art Loop Wilmington event. The museum will extend its hours to 8pm and there will be musical guests, food trucks, and a cash bar.