Interviews From Yale Radio / Artists, Curators And More

Dike Blair (b. 1952, New Castle, Pennsylvania) uses gouache, oil, his own photographs, and strategies appropriated from Postminimalist sculpture to create intimate tableaux that transform quotidian sights and materials into exercises in formalism. A writer and teacher as well as an artist, Blair came up in the downtown scene of 1970s New York among punk rockers and Postmodernists. In the early 1980s, against prevailing art world trends toward Neo-Expressionism, he began rendering scenes from his life in gouache on paper. These ongoing diaristic paintings are devoid of human figures but nonetheless evoke the specter of the artist whose daily life plays out at a remove across their finely-wrought surfaces. Blair lives in New York and Sullivan County. Blair’s recent solo exhibitions include Edward Hopper House, Nyack, New York (2024); Karma (Los Angeles, 2023, New York, 2022); Various Small Fires, Seoul (2020); The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2019); Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf (2019); Secession, Vienna (2016); and Jüer

Photo by Brad Trone Maja Ruznic (b. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1983) fuses personal narrative, psychoanalysis, mythology, and esoteric thought into vivid paintings that hybridize figuration and abstraction. Painting variably with oils and gouache on immense and small scales alike, she extracts order from layers of diluted pigment. Ruznic’s practice is informed by her studies, from Slavic shamanism and alchemy to Jungian psychoanalysis and sacred geometry. Imbued with a discordant beauty, her compositions emerge without a premeditated outcome. Ruznic’s introspective, mystical approach places her into a lineage of visionary painters including Paul Klee and Hilma af Klint. Ruznic lives in Placitas, New Mexico. Recent solo exhibitions include those held at Karma (New York, 2024, Los Angeles, 2023); Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque (2022); Karma, New York (2022); and Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico (2021). Ruznic’s work is held in the collections of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Dallas Art M

Leora Fridman Leora Fridman is a writer whose work is concerned with issues of identity, care, dis/ability, and embodiment. She is author of Static Palace, a collection of essays about chronic illness, art and politics, Bound Up: On Kink, Power & Belonging,just out this month, and other books of prose, poetry and translation. She is currently faculty at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School and Director of the New Jewish Culture Fellowship.       A provocative look at historical trauma as bound, incarnated, and processed through intimate and sexual expression. In an autotheoretical journey through bondage, domination, and intimacy, Leora Fridman uncovers how Jewish historical trauma can be challenged and explored in embodied relations. Drawing on her experiences as an American Jew in Germany, Fridman delves into BDSM practices and experimental communities from Oakland to Berlin. This work weaves personal encounters with critical analysis founded in feminist theory, queer literature,

Margaret Cogswell- In Mother’s yukata, giving presentation on my work in Japanese at the opening for my mixed media installation- Karasu to Issyoni Kaerimasyo: A River of Memories in Ichinomiya, Japan- 8/24/2024. Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist residing in West Shokan, New York. Cogswell is the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2009),  Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2017-18, 1991 & 1987) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (2007, 1993). Cogswell’s most recent project (2024), “ Karasu to Issyoni Kaerimasyo:  A River of Memories”, was made possible by a generous grant from The Tree of Life Foundation. Cogswell was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Japan where she lived until she was 13 years old. Since 2003, the main focus of Cogswell's work has been an ongoing series of RIVER FUGUES projects exploring the interdependency of people, industry and rivers. RIVER FUGUES began in Cleveland, Ohio with Cuyahoga Fugues, a

Artist Portrait by Alexander Bedder Anthony Cudahy (b.1989, Fort Myers, Florida, US) received a BFA from Pratt Institute, NY in 2011 and completed an MFA at Hunter College, NY in 2020. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Cudahy is a figurative painter whose tender scenes reveal the nuanced complexities of life. In masterful compositions he creates a world for unspoken stories, intimate moments and romantic gestures. Personal and poetic, Cudahy's figures coalesce with the atmosphere of their environments in fluid brushstrokes. At once dark and luminous, Cudahy's paintings often have a phosphorescent quality to them, as though they are lit from within. For the artist, how the paint is handled has its own narrative potential - the thick textures, light airy space, patterning and delicate marks are all active in the story he is creating. Alongside painting, Cudahy makes incredibly detailed colored pencil drawings, in an all-consuming process of mark making. Unlike his paintings which transform throughout the maki

Pieter Schoolwerth. Photo by Jason Mandella. Courtesy the artist and Petzel, New York. Pieter Schoolwerth (b. 1970, St. Louis, Missouri) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He works in a multitude of mediums including painting, sculpture, installation, and video. Since graduating from the California Institute of the Arts in 1994, Schoolwerth has exhibited nationally and internationally with notable solo shows at Kunstverein Hannover, Thread Waxing Space, New York; Greene Naftali, New York; Grand Palais, Paris; Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; What Pipeline, Detroit; Capitain Petzel, Berlin; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin and Petzel, New York; Twelvetengallery, Chicago. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Sadie Coles, London among others. From 2003–2013 Schoolw

Torey Akers is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Hunter College. Her work has been featured at arts venues across the country, most recently in a solo show at A.I.R. Gallery in Dumbo, NY.     Install image of "Besotted", a solo show at A.I.R. Gallery Tzipporah, 2024, 38" x 19", ink on paper with sealant, cardboard, velour, sewing pins, mirrors, ribbons Untitled, 2024, 12" x 5", printed chiffon

Sasha Sykes (b.1976) is an Irish artist with a research-based practice in rural Ireland, at the foothills of the Wicklow mountains. Her artworks and furniture pieces are hand made using acrylics and resins to explore, manipulate, and challenge the material language of the natural world through the embedding of plants, flowers, algae and fungi she collects from the landscape. Her architectural background infuses her work with a sense of rigor, and informs her strong approach to form and composition, exploring notions of history and usefulness in a 21st century context. The artist has worked all over the world including London (1999-2003) and New York (2003-2006) and has now settled in her native County Carlow where she lives with her husband and three children and works in a strawbale studio next door. Known for her use of hand-cast resins, embedding found objects and collected organic materials, Sykes tells stories of our landscape and social history. Her work is found in numerous private and public collecti

Louise P. Sloane (b. 1952) has been active as an abstract painter since 1974, infusing her works with personal text that motivates her own experimentation. The visual language of her paintings continues the legacy of reductive and minimalist ideologies, while celebrating color and the human inclination towards mark making. Sloane’s detail-oriented works are typically divided into rectangles or squares. The quadrangle has become a repetitive motif, often centrally featured within the context of a grid. In contrast with her iterative geometries, it is important to Sloane that the works present themselves as human made objects. Thick paint constructs repetitive handmade patterns, the physical motion of her brush strokes revealing the humanity of her practice. The surface holds Sloane’s signature extrusions. Painstakingly written and overwritten, Sloane’s inscribed text is a form of private meditation. Turned into a relief, and abstracted through color blocking, the text is interpreted through its physicality, no

Howard Fishman is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times, where he has published essays on music, film, theater, literature, travel, and culture. His bylines have also appeared in the The Boston Glove, Rolling Stone, The Telegraph, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Artforum, San Francisco Chronicle, Mojo, The Village Voice, Jazziz, and Salmagundi. His play, A Star Has Burnt My Eye, was a New York Times “Critics Pick.” As a performing songwriter and bandleader, Fishman has toured internationally as a headlining artist for over two decades. He has released eleven albums to date, and is the producer of the album Connie’s Piano Songs: The Art Songs of Elizabeth “Connie” Converse. His book, To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse, was shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography of 2023. To Anyone Who Ever Asks The mysterious true story of Connie Converse—a mid-century New York City songwriter, singer, and composer whose haunting music never found

Jen DeLuna in her studio Jen DeLuna (b. 1999), a Filipino and Colombian-American painter, explores the feminine through the lenses of affinity and vulnerability. DeLuna uses found and family photographs as the basis for her work, capturing the tension between movement and stillness, personal and public. Her figurative works in Dust and Sweat and Feigning Grace are wrapped in blurry hazes yet pierce through the surface with shining highlights, creating a simultaneously uncanny and invasive impression. Her mystifying and alluring style builds visual and emotional tension in her works, calling into question their own viewership. Jen DeLuna | The Soft Animal of Your Body, 2024, Oil on canvas | 24 x 24 in. Jen DeLuna | Etiquette, 2024, Oil on canvas | 12 x 12 in. Jen DeLuna | Timid Repetitions, 2024, Oil on canvas | 36 x 36 in.

Sarah Brenneman (b.1975, Middletown, OH) lives and works in West Orange, New Jersey. She received her degrees in painting from Columbus College of Art (BFA) and Virginia Commonwealth University (MFA). She has had several solo shows including with Garvey|Simon at Artisan Lofts (New York, NY -  a two-person exhibition with Gary Petersen 2024); Gold Scopophilia (Montclair, NJ) in 2020 and with Jeff Bailey Gallery (New York, NY) in 2004, 2006 and 2011. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally most recently with La Grange Gallery, (Reims, France) in 2022. She has been awarded residencies with Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Millay Colony of the Arts, Chashama, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Liquitex-Just Imagine Residency and VCCA, Moulin à Nef, Auvillar France. Brenneman’s paintings are included in many  private and corporate collections including The Aspen Contemporary Art Collection, Citigroup, Cleveland Clinic, Sprint and The Progressive Corporation. Sarah Brenneman,  Dove, 2024

Elias Wessel in front of his work series “Nostalgia” at International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) New York. Elias Wessel is an artist whose conceptual work moves between photography, painting and site specific installations with moving images and sound. He has had exhibitions at 1014 New York (formerly known as Goethe House); Palais Beauharnais, Paris; Art Collection of the Willy-Brandt-Haus, Berlin; NRW-Forum, Dusseldorf; Art Basel, Basel; Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern (mpk); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei among many others. His works are included in public and private collections such as the Spallart Art Collection, Salzburg; AXA Art Collection, Cologne; and the German Parliament’s Art Collection (Kunstsammlung des Deutschen Bundestages), Berlin. Recent publications include Textfetzen (Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2022) and Aesthetics of Conflict (Verlag Kettler, 2023). He is based in New York City since 2008 with regular stays in Germany. Picture Theory: Elias Wessel, “It’s Complicated” (201

Jack Arthur Wood in his studio. Photo by Bradley Marshall Jack Arthur Wood Jr. is a visual artist, writer, curator and educator based in Ridgewood, Queens. Wood studied at Guilford College, in Greensboro, NC, receiving a BA in printmaking in 2012, and earned an MFA in printmaking from Texas A&M University—Corearned Corpus Christi in 2017. He has been a resident at The Skowhegan pus School of Painting & Sculpture, The Wassaic Project, The Jentel Foundation, Little Bear Hill, and Tiger Lily Press. Wood has had solo/two-person presentations at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY; My Pet Ram, New York, NY; Conduit Gallery, Ridgewood, NY; Paradice Palase, Brooklyn, NY; Not Gallery, Austin TX; The Weil Gallery, Corpus Christi, TX; Hudson & Jones Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; The Bakery, Vancouver, BC; and The Clay Street Press, CinThe Cincinnati, OHcinnati, OH. His work has been exhibited at Chart, New York, NY; . Geary Contemporary, Millerton, NY; Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; 5-50 Gallery, Queens, NY;Green House

Martina Grlić (b. 1982, Croatia) was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb, Croatia. She has exhibited at Fragment Gallery, New York, USA; Museum of Mali lošinj; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Kunstlerhaus, Vienna; Ningbo Museum of Art, Ningbo, China, and the National Museum, Gdanjsk, Poland. She lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia. For her second solo exhibition in New York City, Martina Grlić presents new and recent works.  At first glance, Martina Grlić's paintings might appear fragmented, fuzzy, or even incomplete. However, this is a deliberate artistic choice made to visualize the inconsistency of the recollection process. Interested in the intersection of personal and collective memory and a blurry line on which certain forms become semi-recognizable, the Croatian artist combines technical skill with conceptual depth to convey the understanding of human identity. Drawing on the metaphor theory, her Memory Projects are essentially rearranging and reappropriating visual allegories revolving

Kejoo Park (B.1956, Daejeon, Korea) lives and works in Frankfurt and New York. She earned a BFA in Painting from Cornell University, studied at Pratt Institute and The Art Students League of New York, and earned an MLA in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. Kejoo Park, a Korean-American conceptual and multimedia artist, utilizes a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, performance, and sitespecific installations, to explore the intricate relationships between humanity and nature. Her work emphasizes the duality of internal and external existence and the dynamic interplay between natural and artificial elements. In her large-scale public art projects, Park seamlessly integrates diverse genres such as music, poetry, and philosophy, developing a unique artistic language. Drawing on her studies in art and architecture, she expands her practice to express the embodiment of both Western and Eastern cultures. As a landscape architect, she has collaborated with numerous architects on internat

David Allan Peters in his studio, 2022. David Allan Peters (b. 1969 in Cupertino, CA) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, CA, and his Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA. Peters has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Royale Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA; Weber Fine Art, Greenwich, CT; Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY; Royale Projects, Palm Desert, CA; and AKA PDX, Portland, OR. Recent group exhibitions include “Hybrid Spaces” (curated by Dr. Necmi Sönmez), Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, Istanbul, Turkey; “LA Painting,” Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; “Belief in Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; and “Hello My Name Is...Los Angeles,” Royale Projects, Los Angeles, CA. He is a recipient of the Nora Bartine Memorial Award from De Anza College, Cuperti

David Anaya Maya was born in Bogot. D.C., raised in rural Colombia, and currently lives and works in New York City. After graduating as ‘Maestroʼ from Los Andes University in 2004, Anaya Maya has shown their work internationally and has explored an extensive range of materials, mediums and concepts. As an artist, curator, writer, teacher and art collective organizer, Anaya Maya has expanded seminal interconnections between peoples, bodies, identities, species, and ecosystems. They have been awarded with fellowships and residencies in Colombia, The Banff Centre in Canada, The Drawing Center in New York, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Four of their drawings are part of the collection of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art. Providentia installation, High Noon “Kikuyu,” 2023, oil on linen reinforced with epoxy resin, 10” x 7.5” “Coat of Arms,” 2023, oil and bronze powder on linen reinforced with epoxy resin, 10” x 17” x 2" “National Flower,” 2023, oil paint on dried linseed oil reinforced with epoxy

Florencia Escudero's sculptures include soft and handmade components printed with digitally-rendered imagery.  Feminist theory, cyber culture, and an embrace of various techniques such as digital photo collage, hand sewing, and silk-screening place each sculpture in the realm of both the machine-made and the handmade.  As the artist notes, "When making these pieces I am thinking about the history of feminist art that looks at the objectification of women's bodies. I want to flip the expectation and look at how objects become human."  Escudero received an MFA in Sculpture from the Yale University School of Art in 2012. Her works have been exhibited at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY, and Petzel Gallery, New York, NY, among other venues. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Florencia Escudero Snakestone, 2024 Digitally printed and silkscreened satin and spandex hand-sewn over upholstery foam, resin, ceramic, colored sand, epoxy, cotton piping, and

Areum Yang (b. 1994 Seoul, South Korea; lives and works in New York) graduated from Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea in 2017 and from the Hunter MFA program, New York, NY in 2021. She recently undertook residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been included in group shows at Long Story Short, Los Angeles, CA; Analog Diary, Beacon, NY: Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY; Margot Samel, New York, NY, and Mamoth, London, UK. Yang was selected as the winner of the Silver Award for AHL T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Awards and the KCC Young Artist Awards in 2021. Her work has been selected for print publication in Art Maze Magazine edition 23, Friend of Artists volume 15, and Whitewaller issue 33. The Day Before, 2024 acrylic, oil, fabric collage, oil pastel, pencil on poly cotton 82 x 74 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery, New York, photo, Adam Reich.  In Between Dreams, 2024 acrylic, oil, fabric collage, oil pastel, and pencil on poly cotton 70 x 60 inches