© Daniel Derderian

A VISUAL ESSAY ON OTHERNESS by Daniel Derderian

Art

I want to stay a little naïve and desperately in touch with my emotions rather than become anxious and angry. It’s not easy to understand society at this moment. It’s not easy to be reassured when “fake’ is a new derivative of reality. It’s not easy to trust people when power games go beyond understandable limits, and when polarization is more recognizable than union in diversity. It’s not easy to stay in touch with your own nature during a pandemic and other natural disasters… But I’m trying.

patrick-perkins-rAtADOlvcos-unsplash

GHOSTS OF OUR FORMER SELVES by Eric Chasalow

Art

The songs comprising my October 2020 release, Ghosts of Our Former Selves, including the two presented here, were deliberately composed in a confessional mode. They form a forty-minute sonic memoir that draws on everything I have spent my six-plus decades learning as a composer of contemporary classical music (especially computer music) with deep roots in jazz and popular music traditions.

© Linda Louis

FAMLY OF HUMANS by Linda Louis

Art

Famly of Humans seeks to illustrate how we all are equal, regardless of the color of our skin or the shape of our features. It begs acceptance of the idea that tolerance and respect without judgment can exist. By presenting a disparate population in microcosm where no one is prejudged and there is no exclusivity, Famly of Humans promotes the idea of diversity where we are all on equal footing, no one is marginalized, and social acceptance is the norm.

© Susan Luss

IN THE TIME OF NOW by Susan Luss

Art

For a long time, I have used my body in creation of my work. The landscapes/maps on canvas are distillations of my urban wanderings, both physical and psychological. The emergence of these public performances—I’ll call them “urban en plein air interventions”—have become imperative for my survival “in the time of now.”

© Enrique Enriquez

A BIRD by Enrique Enriquez

Art

It is important to make the distinction between the languages ​​of contemplation and those of action. The language of the birds is a contemplative language. It delivers its messages directly, the meaning of which disappears, it ceases to be understood, as soon the stimulus ends, that is, once the bird is silent. Contemplative languages ​​are languages ​​of direct experience, languages ​​of ’what is.’ The occurrence of such language is equivalent to that of dreams in the sense that it paralyzes the physical body while agitating the subtle core.

Juan Pablo Valdivieso artwork Bloom

BLOOM by Juan Pablo Valdivieso

Art

These abstract worlds are composed of undulations and vibrations that I define as beings. The cosmic forces that come together in the scenes find their impulse in the decomposition of modern dualism, in contemporary ways of relating to the world, and in a nature that does not faint in its eternal flourishing. In this way, Bloom emerges as a body of work in development, composed of small- and large-format artwork designed for both digital and analog media.

© Sophie Sandberg. Temporary graffiti made with chalk by Sophie Sandberg in New York City for the art street action @Catcallofnyc to stop harassment

CATCALLS OF NYC by Sophie Sandberg

Art

Catcalls of NYC is a grassroots initiative and collective that uses public chalk art to raise awareness about gender-based street harassment. We solicit stories of harassment and their locations in New York City. Then, we go to those locations, write out the comments word-for-word in sidewalk chalk alongside the hashtag #stopstreetharassment…

© Artist Patrick Webb's paint titled Red

INTIMACIES by Patrick Webb

Art

Anna Fishzon navigates one of the most recent groups of work by Patrick Webb: Intimacies. Placing us in the hands of Punchinello — the main character in Webb’s scenes — Fishzon guides the conversation through the communion of two souls: the artist’s and his alter ego’s.

Punchinello cautiously becomes the thread linking the evolution of two worlds, neither absolute nor separate, between the realities of the artist and his character.

© Gala Garrido

THE BACCHAE: THE FEMINIZATION OF VIOLENCE by Gala Garrido

Art

From time immemorial, there have been crimes committed by women who were driven to pursue their own power. These transgressive crimes center on the tearing down of established systems. They make it possible for us to reflect upon the meaning of the offenders, sacrifice in Euripides’s Bacchae: offenders who, beyond their frantic alienation, rise, as Medea did, through a reflective process that leads to a destruction that does not horrify them and that few of them repent.

© Francesca Schwartz

CITY OF WOMEN by Francesca Schwartz

Art

City of Women is an encounter with the confusion about what happens to a woman’s body over her lifetime. We become divided subjects from the beginning — separated from the womb and ourselves in birth. Then the divided mind, now we become both subject and object, observer and the observed.

© José Vívenes

ENOUGH OF FALSE HEROES by José Vívenes

Art

José Vívenes is a Venezuela-based painter. His work reconsiders the gaze given to collective references. Vívenes assumes painting as a means of communication to reflect on the complex circumstances that his country, Venezuela, is going through.

© Rachel Brown

DISORDERED: Conversations about mental health and society by Rachel Brown

Art

Disordered was a collaborative, participatory street art project designed to destigmatize mental health challenges like depression and anxiety, and reframe health as a societal issue. The project took the form of conversations, stickers, signs, and a mural in public spaces around New York City. Through a combination of social practice and guerrilla strategies, Disordered intervened in public places, creating a space for personal interactions about the connections between mental health challenges and societal issues. It pushed ideas about how our history, culture, political, and economic systems affect our health in order to inspire personal, social, and political transformations.

© Anne Sherwood Pundyk

PAINTING AS THEATRE OF AGENCY by Anne Sherwood Pundyk

Art

Anne Sherwood Pundyk is a painter and writer based in Manhattan and Mattituck. Her recent solo exhibitions include Salena Gallery, LIU Brooklyn, NY; Adah Rose Gallery, Kensington, MD; and Christopher Stout Gallery, Bushwick, NY. A selection of her group exhibitions include, EMINENT DOMAIN, Chelsea, NY; VSOP Projects, Greenport, NY; Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY; University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT; and SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY. Her artwork is in the collection of Barclays Bank, State Street Bank, The Luciano Benetton Foundation, Glamorise Foundations, Equity Residential, Marriott International, Katie Couric, Anthony Grant, Cy Twombly, Barry Hoggard and James Wagner among others in the US and Europe. Her paintings have been written about in artcritical, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, ART21 Magazine, ArtUS, ARTslant, Hamptons Art Hub, Art511 Magazine and The Washington Post.

SOCCERSCAPES by Shelley Himmelstein

Art

I paint to create a space “to be,” a space to reflect and connect me back to the physical world. My images spring when I pause to be “in the moment” and absorb where I am and what’s happening. When making cursory sketches or snapshots, I’m drawn especially to characteristics that transcend time and exist outside of narrative and that mix the everyday and the transcendent, the scripted and the spontaneous.

© Lean Lipton

COLLAGE by Leah Lipton

Art

Leah Lipton, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst and collage artist in New York City. She is a supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP) and a faculty member at ICP and the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center (PPSC).

Against the Wind © Natalie Korytnyk Forrester

SCULPTING GRIEF by Natalie Korytnyk Forrester

Essays, Art

I wish I knew exactly what drew me in. I do recall what I brought: a bullet and my late husband’s dried wedding boutonniere. Melissa Ichiuji, the workshop teacher, was afraid the bullet could explode easily. I reassured her it wouldn’t. I just never imagined something solid could explode without impact.

Political © Joanna Goodman

Artist Statement: POLITICAL by Joanna Goodman

Art

“Political” is part of a series of experimental paintings which are mediations on the concepts of transience and impermanence. Specifically, I am interested in the “mono_ no_ aware” state. The bittersweet appreciation of a moment or as some say the ahh-ness of the experience.

© Francesca Schwartz

Artist Statement: THE SPACE BETWEEN by Francesca Schwartz

Art

THIS BODY OF WORK EMERGES following the death of my mother. Driven to find what is within, as an artist and psychoanalyst, and now as a motherless child, I become aware that the very effort is based on questions without answers. No amount of digging, desire or toil will let me penetrate what is inside (the Unconscious, the Body, Death). I listen as a psychoanalyst, dig and mold and craft as an artist. I am in the presence of what is no longer living, yet that which still seems to be animated, undergoing transformation.