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 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 MoreA Conversation with Cara Levine
Our recent discussion with Cara Levine, an LA-based conceptual artist who has been involved with several West Coast progressive art studios in various capacities since 2011.
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 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 MoreA Conversation with Harriet Body
Paired at Firstdraft in Woolloomooloo, Sydney is the culmination of in-depth investigation by Harriet Body of collaborations between artists with and without disabilities. Body, who has maintained a collaborative creative relationship for several years with Thom Roberts at Studio A, has traveled throughout Australia and elsewhere to visit progressive art studios with a specific interest in collaboration…
Read MoreNeurodiversity in Contemporary Art - Lecture at Haverford College
Disparate Minds co-founders Tim Ortiz and Andreana Donahue discuss current concerns at the intersection of art and disability studies while highlighting neurodivergent artists’ contributions to the contemporary art discourse...
Read MoreHelen Rae at White Columns
Helen Rae, one of the progressive art studio movement's rising stars, currently has recent work on view at White Columns in NYC, marking her first east coast solo exhibition. Rae is quickly emerging as an important figure in this movement; her work is striking, wildly popular, and at 78 years old, her practice is one of great dynamism and momentum.
Read MoreDontavius Woody
We recently traveled to MAKE, a Baltimore progressive art studio; Dontavious Woody is one of the artists we were most interested in meeting, struck by his compelling works on paper that convey an enduring fondness for humanity.
Read MoreBeverly Baker at Institute 193
Underlying Colors is a striking selection of drawings by one of Latitude Artist Community's most tenured artists, Beverly Baker, who has been supported to maintain a creative practice in their studio since its founding in 2001.
Read MoreA Conversation with Phoebe Rohrbacher
Phoebe Rohrbacher is an artist and former facilitator at The Canvas in Juneau, who is currently living and working in Fairbanks, Alaska. A lifelong Alaskan (born and raised in Juneau), Rohrbacher has a unique perspective on art and disability in rural and remote communities...
Read MoreMarlon Mullen at JTT
Marlon Mullen’s second solo exhibition at JTT Gallery is an expansive collection of recent works by this San Francisco-based hero in the progressive art studio movement.
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