Aug 212025
 

Work by Tracey Tse

The Delaware Contemporary currently has several shows on view for their summer series Radius. Several of these exhibitions include emerging artists including ARC 2025. The exhibition will close 8/24/25.

More from the museum-

The Artist-in-Residence Cohort (ARC) identifies and supports local emerging artists poised for careers as dedicated artists. This year, jurors Dr. Casey Smith and former ARC resident Shefon Taylor chose four regional artists: Geraldo Gonzalez, Oscar De Paz, Tracy Tse, and Lucy H. West. These artists have spent several months in intensive professional development seminars, formal and informal critiques, and one-on-one meetings with mentors to prepare for their culminating exhibition. This year, the ARC residents “came full circle” through mini-residencies at Art-O-Mat by the Wilmington Alliance. This extended their perspective on the creative needs and opportunities of Wilmington, Delaware. You are seeing the results of ten months of their experimentation, planning, and growth.

This year’s cohort pushed the envelope to develop their skills beyond what they came to the museum doing. Lucy H. West has incorporated sophisticated video editing, performance, and sculpture into a tracing of sensory experience. Oscar De Paz has refined his political commentary in his painting practice, deeply rooted in social revolution iconography. Geraldo Gonzalez increased his scale and output, documenting the legacy and daily role DART plays in his life. And Tracy Tse, with the help of a new loom, weaves plastic nets and tapestries. These artists grew through a new partnership with Wilmington Alliance, where they each spent one month in the Art-O-Mat studio space. Their time working with a view to mid-center city grounded their work in an even deeper Wilmington context.

Below are additional selections and the artists’ bios from the museum-

Tracy Tse– “I like this little life of mine. It’s not something amazing, and it’s not a tragedy. However, every day doing art is enough in my world.

I’m a first generation Chinese American who grew up in a family tailoring business. Like many family-run businesses, I started helping out at a young age where I picked up skills in mending and tailoring. Over the years I’m grown into the career as a contemporary artist, where I used my skills interconnectively to express myself.

In my current work, I have been incorporating plarn (yarn made from plastic) to construct large-scale sculptures that protrude from the wall. Each piece is completed through labor-intensive repetition of sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving, braiding, and knotting techniques to sculpt. The use of a variety of techniques is then adopted and shaped to form a specific look that is derived from family, tradition, heritage, history, and childhood.

Manufactured goods go through many hands and iterations before becoming the final product. Every hand played a role by putting blood, sweat, and tears into the production. Honoring and paying homage to the human touch and the sentiments that are overlooked during the production process is important. My collection of depicts efforts laborers and craftsmen. Convey the message of what human touch means.”

Geraldo Gonzalez

“I am, first and foremost, a transit artist. I began working as an artist in the early 2000s. I first started taking photos for a homework assignment in middle school, which inspired me to start taking photographs of local transit systems. Public transit has always been an interest of mine. I regularly took the bus as a teenager going to and from school, then went out and got to know other transit routes within the greater Delaware valley, like SEPTA, PATCO, AMTRAK, MTA, NJT, and DTC. My passion for public transportation has led me to make thousands of artworks to encourage people to use and find the beauty in these local transportation systems. I am a self-taught multimedia artist, working in colored pencil, acrylic paint, oil paint, watercolor, photography, video and sculpture. My process is to project images that I take and find online and translate them into my artwork through tracing, then going back and adding color.

Issues surrounding transportation like road rage and gas inflation have inspired me to spread my message about public transportation. Outside of transit-related art, I also create self portraits that express my identity and feelings. My Puerto Rican culture influences my art, in my self portraits and expressive use of color.”

Oscar Eduardo De Paz

“My drawings, paintings, and books tie together the threads of my personal experiences and sociopolitical issues. I reflect on my personal experiences of poverty, discrimination, homelessness, immigration, and disruptions in my family and education to explore how these experiences engage with their historical and sociopolitical expressions and contexts, and shape who I am. My intent is to stimulate reflection, discussion, and examination of the impacts of sociopolitical institutions and systems on individuals, specifically vulnerable populations. My artistic process begins with writing personal narratives and poetry that become sources for me to interpret or amend into visual representations. Historical, sociological, and visual research provide further inspiration in the process of creating my work. Subjects and elements in my work often function as symbolic representations of the idea and emotions evoked by my written pieces. The writing is rarely literately translated into a visual representation, but instead through a process of association translated into figurative and metaphorical representations that contain subjects and elements laden with personal, cultural, spiritual, and mythological meanings.

Sometimes, the work stands alone visually. At other times, the work stands with the written text in a unity. It is the space between the text and image where the audience, both as viewer and reader, is invited to experience the themes of my work, and to contribute their insights.”

Lucy H. West investigates intimacy, mindfulness, incorporeal inner experiences, and understanding of the worlds we inhabit and cohabit. Using painting, installation, and most recently multi-sensory media, West seeks to push the boundaries between the artist and spectator by inviting the viewers to be involved in her work, transforming them into active collaborators.

Through participatory art projects, she is interested in eliciting social consciousness, playfulness, curiosity, experimentation, and introspection from her collaborators, creating avenues for her work to evolve and be defined by the community who engages.

West is a Philadelphia-based artist from Tokyo, Japan. She has exhibited and had works acquired in Philadelphia, New York, Tokyo, Rome, and Madrid. Her artwork has also been selected and acquired by the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Medicine.

Aug 182025
 

This mural by Micah Crandall-Bear was created for Sacramento’s Wide Open Walls Festival in 2017.

From the Wide Open Walls website about the artist-

Micah Crandall-Bear’s abstract landscape paintings examine Earth’s intrinsic resources and our disposition toward their accelerated transformation. His concept is infused with linear layers that cascade from atmospheric to subterranean. Landscape details hint at daily and seasonal shifts in light, evoking a sense of evolution and balance. In an ever-increasing technological world, his work reminds us to pause and admire our wild and natural surroundings. He presents abstractions that inspire a deep and effusive connection to nature.

Crandall-Bear achieves longitudinal depth by exacting precisely rendered lines and seamless expanses of color. This explicitly composed depth communicates a sense of contingency and locality. Micah’s construction of space is enhanced by his painting method. His ‘wet-on-wet’ method is a contemporary application of ‘alla prima,’ a traditional technique used mostly in oil painting, where layers of wet paint are applied to previous layers of wet paint. No matter how precise or general the area, Micah’s layered brushstrokes are decisive, but also gestural, often spanning the entire surface of the canvas from left to right. This highly active method of painting is sometimes tempered through rapid buffing and blending. The outcome is a smooth, boundless, and energetic surface.

As a Northern California native, Crandall-Bear established his artistic roots locally and continues to promote the growth of his community. His reputation brings him consistent national and international attraction from both private and public collectors. Micah’s work now adorns the walls of prominent corporations throughout the country, university hospitals, Facebook data centers in Malaysia, Sweden, and more. His work has been featured in ArtSlant, American Art Collector Magazine, Forbes, and PBS.

 

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.

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

 

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.

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.

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.

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

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!”