NYC Public Art- The High Line- Iván Argote

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Nov 052025
 

Iván Argote created Dinosaur (2024) for the fourth High Line Plinth commission. The giant sculpture was cast in aluminum and celebrates one of NYC’s most common sights- the pigeon.

From the High Line’s website about the work-

Dinosaur was first submitted as a proposal for the High Line Plinth in 2020, among 80 proposals that included the third High Line Plinth commission, Pamela Rosenkranz’s Old Tree (2023). The meticulously hand-painted, humorous sculpture challenges the grandeur of traditional monuments celebrating significant historical figures, instead choosing to canonize the familiar New York City street bird. Posed on a concrete plinth that resembles the sidewalks and buildings that New York’s pigeons call home, Dinosaur reverses the typical power dynamic between bird and human, towering 21 feet above the Spur, over the countless pedestrians and car drivers that travel down 10th Avenue.

Reflecting on the work’s title, Argote notes, “The name Dinosaur makes reference to the sculpture’s scale and to the pigeon’s ancestors who millions of years ago dominated the globe, as we humans do today… the name also serves as a reference to the dinosaur’s extinction. Like them, one day we won’t be around anymore, but perhaps a remnant of humanity will live on—as pigeons do—in the dark corners and gaps of future worlds. I feel this sculpture could generate an uncanny feeling of attraction, seduction, and fear among the inhabitants of New York.”

Dinosaur, like the pigeons that inspired it, bears witness to the city’s evolution and confronts us with our ever-changing relationship with the natural world and its inhabitants. The oft-overlooked and derided creatures that seem to over-populate the city first arrived in the US via Europe, likely in the 1800s. They were kept as domesticated animals and were most notably used as reliable message carriers. Pigeons have an internal GPS, known as “homing,” that allows them to always find their way back home. This skill once made the bird indispensable in war—they served as military messengers in both World War I and World War II, saving hundreds of soldiers’ lives by transporting messages quickly to both the trenches and front lines. Many of these pigeons received gallantry awards and were celebrated as war heroes, before technology eventually rendered them obsolete.

Dinosaur recognizes this seemingly prosaic figure and celebrates its anonymity amongst the urban landscape, while also taking aim at classic monuments erected in honor of great men, who all too often are neither honorable nor great. Argote humorously suggests that, in fact, the not-wild—but no longer domesticated—birds are likely more deserving of being placed on a pedestal and celebrated for their contributions to society than most. Further, by highlighting their origins, Argote reminds viewers that, to some degree, everyone is an immigrant. Even the pigeon, a New York fixture, initially migrated here and made the city their home, like millions of other “native” New Yorkers.

Flashback- Sofia Love at Shelter in NYC

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture
Oct 312025
 

Today’s flashback is to a few of the intricate works from Sofia Love‘s 2023 exhibition Vaquera at Shelter in NYC.

From the gallery about the exhibition-

Vaquera – not determined by an article, the word becomes both a noun and an adjective, an iconic figure and a way of being in the world. For Brooklyn-based painter Sofia Love’s debut solo exhibition in New York, vaquera is both a manifesto of queer self-fashioning and a patron saint.

Born and raised in Boston, but with deep family ties to the Mexican community of Laredo, TX, Love’s acrylic paintings serve as a negotiation between ancestral memory and contemporary identity. The titular cowgirl recurs throughout the exhibition – gun-slinging, brown, and frequently nude – framed by expanses of desert. She’s a real, historical cowgirl. She’s the artist traversing her own imagination. She’s a badass dyke. For Love, vaquera is an object of desire and an extension of herself.

While there are traditional canvases, the majority of works on view take the form of nichos, intimate yet elaborately decorated altars that can be found in homes across Mexico. Dedicated to deceased ancestors or particular saints, nichos blend folk spirituality with Catholicism, smuggling pre-Colombian vernacular traditions into contemporary, Westernized culture. Love’s nichos draw on this history to produce art objects that exist at the border of painting and sculpture, with frames that extend the content and imagery of the paintings they enshrine.

The resulting works each have interiors and exteriors, the painting and the frame, in which ambivalent scenes are surrounded by totems and animals that seem to hint at the psychological subtext of the central image. Figures reappear across the framed nichos like characters in a narrative, each with its own personal connotation for the artist. Skulls, moths, storks tell stories that are only partially legible from an external perspective. Like the vaquera herself, Love’s layered compositions refuse any easy interpretation.

 

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.”

Flashback- NYC Public Art- Huma Bhabha at Brooklyn Bridge Park

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Oct 102025
 

Today’s flashback is to Huma Bhabha‘s spooky figures for Before The End, which was on view until March of this year at Brooklyn Bridge Park.  It is just one of the many projects organized by Public Art Fund.

From Public Art Fund about the work-

With the ominous title Before the End, Huma Bhabha (b. 1962, Karachi, Pakistan) sets the stage to evoke mythologies as old as humankind. Conceived for Brooklyn Bridge Park, Bhabha’s four monumental painted and patinated bronzes were cast from carved cork and skull fragments. The mysterious figures recall ancient effigies cut into tombstones, their surfaces evoking centuries of eroded sediment and stone. Yet, unlike a tomb, these four-sided vertical forms stand elevated above the earth, their bones open to the sky.

“Before the End” is a title borrowed from the writings of Vincent of Beauvais (ca. 1184–1264), whose medieval imagination sparked with supernatural and apocalyptic visions. Today, the related popular genres of horror and science fiction continue to inspire Bhabha, as does art history from antiquity to the present day. Her rough-hewn figures are ambiguous—are they emerging or trapped within, rising from the depths of the earth or returning to the underworld? Set amidst an expansive landscape where the natural and man-made converge, Bhabha’s sculptures captivate through contradiction, seemingly forged in geological time yet animated with a visceral sense of immediacy.

 

 

Flashback- NYC Art Shows- Sandy Williams IV at Socrates Sculpture Park 2020

 Art, Artists, Conceptual Art, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Queens, Sculptors / Sculpture
Sep 192025
 

Wax Monument IV (Free Wax) by Sandy Williams IV was on view at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2020 for Call and Response, Part II of the MONUMENTS NOW exhibition. The outdoor exhibition included ten monuments projects realized by the Park’s 2020 Artist Fellows.

From Socrates Sculpture Park about the work-

A monument to living history, this wax flag can be set alight from multiple-wicks and rests perpendicularly upon a black mulch base shaped like the borough of Queens. Rendered in black and white, the wax flag is reminiscent of – but not equivalent to – the U.S.’s own flag and emblem of patriotism. By enlarging the candle- a commemorative form often spontaneously employed in immediate reaction to events, Williams celebrates this popular, accessible form of expression. Alive with transformative potential, the work invites participation, mark-making, melting, and molding of a malleable symbol.

The 2025 Socrates Annual: Up/rooted– featuring new commissions from the Park’s 2025 Artist Fellows: Natalia Nakazawa, Pioneers Go East Collective, Rowan Renee, Catherine Telford-Keogh, Zipporah Camille Thompson – opened on 9/12 and will be on view until 4/6/26.

Throwback- Los Angeles Art Shows and Public Art- Mark di Suvero at L.A. Louver and in Venice

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Sep 182025
 

Abstract expressionist artist Mark di Suvero‘s sculpture Declaration (pictured above) is located on the Venice Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles. It was installed in 2001 to commemorate the Venice Art Walk’s 22nd year and in support of the Venice Family Clinic, a local organization that provides quality health care to those in need. Di Suvero turned 92 today, 9/18.

Although he is well known for his large sculptures, he is also a painter. Some of these works were shown in 2019 at L.A. Louver in Los Angeles along with some of his smaller sculptures (pictured below).

From the L.A. Louver press release about the paintings-

A selection of brilliant abstract paintings by the artist accompanies the sculptures. Like the sculptures, his paintings are never still. Created with dazzling colors in dense layers of linear and freeform gestures, they project a swirling sensation akin to the twirling movement in his three-dimensional works. Accented with phosphorescent paints, the works luminesce and reverberate even in the absence of light (and are especially dazzling when activated by black lights installed throughout the gallery space). “The heart of art is the search for form that is electrifying, that gives life to our vision,” explains di Suvero. “This is the language of emotion. Anesthetic is to kill feeling. Aesthetic is the opposite, aesthetic is feeling. The thing that is most important is the dream, the vision for what doesn’t exist that could exist.”

It was recently announced that L.A. Louver will be closing their Venice Beach space, but in happier news they will be donating the gallery’s complete archive and library to The Huntington in San Marino, California.

Flashback- Robert Irwin at Pace NYC and Palm Springs Art Museum

 Architecture, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Conceptual Art, Films, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Palm Springs, Palm Springs Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Sep 122025
 

Born today, 9/12, artist Robert Irwin used light and space in his work as a way to create an experience for the observer. He started out as a painter but later became well known for his site-specific installations and architectural and outdoor projects- including the central garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles (pictured below) and his work for the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.

The works above are from his 2020 exhibition, Unlights, at Pace Gallery in New York.

About that show from Pace-

Irwin’s new works are composed from unlit six-foot fluorescent lights mounted to fixtures and installed in vertical rows directly on the wall. The glass tubes are covered in layers of opulently colored translucent gels and thin strips of electrical tape, allowing the reflective surfaces of unlit glass and anodized aluminum to interact with ambient illumination in the surrounding space and produce shifting patterns of shadow and chromatic tonality. Reflecting his recent turn toward the perceptual possibilities of unlit bulbs, Irwin’s new body of work expands the range of possibilities for how we experience sensations of rhythm, pulsation, expansion and intensity, while continuing the artist’s long-standing interest in registering the immediacy of our own presence in space.

Expanding from his breakthrough disc paintings of the late 1960s, Irwin’s new works effectively dissolve the perceived border between object and environment, focusing the viewer’s consciousness on the act of perception. Each light fixture in Irwin’s sculptures contains one or two unlit bulbs—or no bulb at all—while alternating gaps of “empty” wall are painted in subtle shades of gray, producing a sense of uncertainty about what is tactile and what is merely optical. As the shadowed, painted and reflected intervals of space reverberate in the viewer’s visual field, the wall itself enters the composition, destabilizing any sense of figure and ground. To encounter Irwin’s sculptures is thus to allow oneself to be caught in a ceaseless oscillation between flatness and volume, transparency and opacity, solidity and atmosphere.

In Irwin’s art, the object functions as a kind of score for orchestrating “the continual development and extension of humans’ potential to perceive the world.” Although unlit, the bulbs in these new sculptures are therefore never “off.” Their optically rich surfaces serve as energetic loci for heightening the sensory possibilities of the human body. In their chromatic complexity, the works convey an almost painterly quality, recalling Irwin’s origins as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter in the 1950s. Suggesting a rhythmic, minimal composition of repeated linear elements, the works also evoke his innovative line paintings of the early 1960s, which involve us physically and perceptually in an open-ended, immersive and transitory experience of seeing.

Widely recognized as a pivotal figure in contemporary art, Irwin is closely associated with the Light and Space movement that emerged in Los Angeles in the 1960s, and he has continued to live and work in Southern California for his entire career. He first used fluorescent lights as substrates for producing what he has called a “conditional art” in the 1970s, often in combination with architectural scrims and other spatial interventions. In the 1990s he introduced colored gels to the fluorescent tubes to alter the chromaticism of the light, and, over the past decade, began isolating the bulbs and fixtures as sculptural objects in their own right. In returning to the use of solely ambient light, Irwin’s new sculptures embody the culmination of seven decades of rigorous experimentation.

“Everything in the world is ultimately conditional,” Irwin has observed. “There is nothing that’s transcended or infinite or whatever you want to call it. Everything acts within a set of conditions.” Like all of Irwin’s works, his new sculptures respond differently to the conditions of each specific environment in which they are installed, attuning our senses to a given context and making possible an intuitive and incidental experience of seeing that resists rational or conceptual explanation. “It’s not about answers,” the artist once remarked, but rather about the act of questioning: “It’s the constant pursuit of the possibilities of what art is.”

Getty Center, Los Angeles

Below is one of his earlier paintings Untitled, 1964-6, which was on view at Palm Springs Art Museum for the 2024 exhibition Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945-1990.

From the museum about the work-

Although this work appears to have a monochromatic white surface from afar, a matrix of thousands of painted dots becomes visible from a closer vantage point. Irwin aimed to highlight the visual effects of color interaction by juxtaposing light green and lavender, complementary colors across from each other on a color wheel. The canvas’s outwardly bowed supports and the increasing density of dots towards the painting’s center further heighten the viewer’s perceptual experience of the work.

The documentary Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling, does an excellent job detailing his life, art, and the philosophy behind his work. It is well worth a watch and inspiring to watch him still at work in Marfa at 87. He passed away in 2023 at the age of 95.

Flashback- NYC Art Shows- Katie Bell at Spencer Brownstone Gallery

 Architecture, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture
Sep 052025
 

“In Search of Form”, 2024, Acrylic, wood, aluminum, glass, rubber baseboard, rope, plastic tubing, drywall, solid surface, and cue balls

“Through Line (Grass) 1”, 2024, Acrylic and wood

“Line of Sight (Sunset)” and “Line of Sight (Horizon)”, 2024, Wood, acrylic and rubber

The images above are from Katie Bell‘s 2024 exhibition Edges in Search of Form at Spencer Brownstone Gallery in NYC.

From the gallery press release-

The lawn’s flat nature leads your eye to the edges in search of form, and if the edges are not sharp it will not show.

Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present Edges in Search of Form, Katie Bell’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The show is composed of a collective of individual paintings, sculptures, and installation elements that share a common visual language with influences from architecture, the landscape, and Surrealism. The title of the exhibition references the quote above, advice from a gardener on crafting the perfect lawn.

Trained as a painter, Katie Bell’s sculptural practice stems from a rethinking of the painting process in the third dimension. Basic forms and simple found objects act as individual marks within the canvas of space, most evident in Through Line (Grass). The monochrome, matte grass green prisms are assembled together and around, activating space and generating an environment of its own. Pared down to its base attributes, shape, color, scale, and quantity foreground their objectness while their modularity alludes to a whole, greater than the sum of its individual parts. The rigidity and simplicity of the form is contrasted by its color and organic arrangement.

Operating similarly are the Line of Sight paintings, compact forms reduced to its base elements. Their shape, undulating line, softer hues, and subtle change in tones recall landscapes, shifting light, and the passage of time. The opposite wall features an amalgam of fabricated and found objects. In Search of Form is various in material and texture, with components overlapping, weaving, and puncturing the other. The eyes follow the intricacies of their interaction like a visual Rube-Goldberg machine. Or like the futile attempt of some to maintain the length and shape of grass, an exercise in controlling those things in our world that resist.

Reconciliation comes in the form of bird baths. Often found on lawns or backyards where the natural order is kept at bay to the best of one’s ability, they are beacons that welcome natural behavior. Composed of a patchwork of stone-like Corian, Water Table (Bird Bath) melds with the tones of our landscape while standing out in its formality.

Bell’s overall installation illustrates the light and often hard touches of human intervention. Her constructed worlds explore the absurdity of our extreme pursuit in controlling our environment, and ultimately its analogue in art making.

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.

Delaware Art Shows- “Artist-In-Residence Cohort (ARC) 2025” at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington

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

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