In mid-March, responses to the rapidly escalating COVID-19 pandemic forced, as with many aspects of society, the indefinite closure of progressive art studios. During this time, studios hustled to adapt, inventing diverse methods in order to sustain their organizations.
Read MoreProgressive Art Studios Adapt to the Pandemic
Progressive art studios have navigated (even taken advantage of) this strange and difficult time to cultivate a heightened sense of connection; the various ways programs have responded sheds new light on how they see themselves and their true potential.
Read MoreDance, Dance, Dance at Circle Contemporary
Pulling from Arts of Life artists, the broader contemporary art community, as well as his personal collection, Tyson Reeder has assembled an exhibition representing a diverse range of concepts and approaches. The resulting installation is bright and lively - an exuberant arrangement of individualistic and intuitive works.
Read MoreMarlon Mullen's Monumental Year
From the Whitney Biennial to SFMOMA, the past year has been a remarkable one for Marlon Mullen. Mullen (born 1963) maintains a prolific painting practice at NIAD’s studio in Richmond, California. Represented exclusively by JTT in New York and Adams & Ollman in Portland, Mullen has upcoming exhibitions at Adams & Ollman, Independent Art Fair, and the Frans Hals Museum.
Read MoreSUMMERTIME
SUMMERTIME, the latest forward-thinking initiative spearheaded by arts professionals coming from progressive art studios, opened on December 13th in Brooklyn. In addition to inclusive gallery programming, this non-profit collective aims to cultivate a communal space for contemporary artists with developmental disabilities to create work alongside artists without…
Read MoreDorrie Reid
Drawing inspiration from diverse interests - including animals and the environment, identity, family history, and civil rights activism, Dorrie Reid’s disarming works reflect a joyful approach to art-making. Endlessly imaginative, her artistic practice becomes a natural extension of memory and personal experience…
Read MoreWilliam Tyler
Generated through interweaving narratives from the news, historical events, his imagination, and personal memories, William Tyler’s fantastically inventive drawings are abundant with distinctive imagery ranging from the everyday to the magical. Having maintained a creative practice in Creative Growth’s Oakland studio since November of 1977, Tyler has produced an extensive and complex body of work spanning forty years.
Read MoreKerry Damianakes
Over the past 35 years, Oakland-based artist Kerry Damianakes has amassed an extensive body of unconventional and playful works directly informed by her desire to reproduce the everyday. Damianakes remains primarily committed to an ongoing series of velvety oil pastel drawings - faithful tributes to foods that alternately elicit a state of well-being or decadence.
Read MoreAndrew Hostick at Western Exhibitions
Hostick’s current solo exhibition and Yellow at Western Exhibitions includes a selection of 11 works completed over the past several years. Unframed, these intimate graphite and colored pencil drawings are mounted directly on the wall, allowing viewers to experience the salient physicality of their surfaces without a barrier. Born in 1962, Andrew Hostick has maintained a creative practice at Visionaries + Voices’ Cincinnati studio since 2010.
Read MoreDave Krueger
Heavily driven by an ongoing fascination with pop culture, Dave Krueger’s maximalist aesthetic is defined by dense systems of geometric shapes and asymmetrical grids. Between fantastical narrative passages, the surface is populated with symbols, numbers, occasional text fragments, and numerous decorative patterns comprised of diamonds, asterisks, zigzags, circles, crosses, and X’s.
Read MoreSlow Read at Circle Contemporary
Our latest curatorial endeavor, Slow Read at Circle Contemporary in Chicago, is a diverse selection of recent works that represent ongoing pursuits of material manipulation and process, while remaining tethered to narrative, memory, or the spiritual.
Read MoreChicago
Since 2014, Disparate Minds has been an itinerant endeavor which initially began through an extended road trip to visit progressive art studios across the country. Advancing this project in Chicago begins with the understanding that there’s something radical and crucially important happening in these studios which transcends art and disability
Read MoreHugo Rocha
Based in suburban LA, Hugo Rocha creates uncanny works demonstrating his particular sense of drama and ongoing interest in telenovelas, re-imagining still images from favorite episodes in dynamic and engaging ways. Rocha’s fascinations are translated into portraits of cartoonish characters within elaborate, eerily staged interiors and landscapes.
Read MoreMarlon Mullen and Helen Rae
This year begins with stunning solo exhibitions featuring two of this movement’s greatest contemporary artists - Helen Rae at The Good Luck Gallery in Los Angeles and Marlon Mullen at JTT in New York.
Read MoreErnie Titus
Titus’ work is divergent from traditional concepts of drawing in that the element of mask-making is central to his execution. Rather than creating sculptural paper masks, Titus instead uses the process and materials of drawing to engage the paper, resulting in a two-dimensional object with a compelling language of drawing - agile lines articulated in his distinct hand…
Read MoreRaquel Albarran: Amputation Farm
A robust visual language slowly unfurls across Albarran’s supersaturated drawings, her personal preoccupations translated here through densely applied colored pencil marks. Endearing yet grotesque tableaux are populated by impossible pregnancies, deconstructed cheeseburgers, disarticulated jaws, splayed toes and fingers, disembodied eyeballs, knobby phalluses, and prolapsed organs.
Read MoreMichael Pellew: #1 Under Control World Tour
#1 Under Control World Tour featured ten drawings and four paintings by the prolific Brooklyn based artist in Western Exhibitions’ intimate back gallery. The tight installation felt appropriate for Pellew’s populous works; as usual the drawings were teeming with congregations of favorite music and TV icons, the occasional friend in real life, and fantastic alternate identities…
Read MoreVisual Oasis: Works from Creative Growth
We were recently commissioned by the Capital City Arts Initiative to write the following exhibition essay for Visual Oasis: Works from Creative Growth. Visual Oasis brings together a diverse selection of works by Creative Growth artists employing various approaches to drawing, painting, and fiber art at CCAI’s Courthouse Gallery…
Read MoreHoliday Giving
Evelyn Reyes, Carrots (Green), 2006, oil pastel on paper, image courtesy Creativity Explored
If you participate in donating to important causes this holiday season, we extend our annual reminder to keep your local progressive art studio in mind. Studios facilitating the creative practices of fantastic artists that we discuss depend on the support of their local communities in the form of both patronage and charitable giving. These invaluable programs depend largely on Medicaid funding and now more than ever rely directly on you as continued government support is increasingly uncertain.
Of course these studios are also places to find incredible holiday gifts. Visiting and collecting works of art that you love to live with is a powerful way to integrate disability (disparate thinking) into your life in a personal and authentic way. If there’s a progressive art studio in your community, you'll almost certainly find some of the most original and remarkably affordable local art is being created there. Alternatively, you can now purchase many artists’ work online, such as Sarah Malpass at NIAD, Evelyn Reyes at Creativity Explored, or Larry Pearsall of DAC on Amazon. Please refer to our side-bar directory for all studio locations and websites.
If you’re interested in supporting larger organizations that advocate for disability rights on a national scale, this year we offer the following two recommendations:
ADAPT has always been at the forefront of the fight for disability rights even before the ADA. These heroes have been putting their lives and liberty on the line all year to defend Medicaid, crowding the halls of Congress, crashing meetings, and staging sit-ins at the offices of our political leaders - getting arrested and accruing legal fees in the process. ADAPT is still a relatively small organization, but these individuals saved America this year and they need your support.
ADAPT protester Lonnie Smith arrested at a sit-in at Denver US Senator Cory Gardner's office opposing GOP health care bill cuts to Medicaid (Jon Leyba/The Denver Post via AP)
The ACLU, co-founded by Helen Keller, has always understood disability rights in their most progressive form to be essential civil rights. They have been providing the legal muscle behind this movement at crucial moments - some you may have heard of and others you may not. When the state of Oklahoma sent letters to Medicaid recipients in early November indicating their home care services would be terminated at the end of the month, an ACLU lawsuit sent the state legislature back to work.
Curtis Davis
Cincinnati-based artist Curtis Davis blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture, alternating between totemic mixed-media assemblages and large scale panels. Davis’ mysterious abstractions conjure various interpretations, yet curious elements ground the viewer...
Read More