Interviews From Yale Radio / Artists, Curators And More

Matt Magee is an American contemporary artist known for his minimal geometric paintings, sculptures, prints, assemblages, murals, and photographs. Over a four-decade career, Magee has experimented widely with abstract and conceptual art practices. His compositions draw inspiration from personal history, numerology, and language. In his paintings and prints, he explores language through abstraction, repetition, reiteration, and the occasional tip of the hat to art historical precedents. His visual language relates to early hard-edge abstraction and finds inspiration in contemporary scientific, ecological, and technological ideas. His work is in the permanent collections of the Albuquerque Art Museum, NM; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, CT; Black Mountain College Art Museum, NC; the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, CT; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; Tucson Museum of Art, AZ; and the University of New Mexico

SCAD Savannah – Summer 2024 – Exhibitions – Anthony Akinbola – ”Good Hair” – Artist Portrait – SCAD Museum of Art, Gallery 109 – Photography Courtesy of SCAD Born in Columbia,Missouri, Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, is a first-generation American raised by Nigerian parents in the United States and Nigeria. His layered, richly colored compositions celebrate and signify the distinct cultures that shape his identity. The artist’s signature Camouflage paintings, consisting of single and multi-panel works, utilize the ubiquitous du-rag as their primary material. Universally available and possessed of significant cultural context, the du-rag represents for Akinbola a readymade object that engages the conceptual strategies of Marcel Duchamp and other significant artistic predecessors. Throughout his work Akinbola unpacks the rituals and histories connecting Africa and America, addressing the power of fetishization around cultural objects. His previous interview on Yale University radio can be found here. Anthony Olub

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Haynes. Deborah Zlotsky received a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship and NYFA Artist Fellowships in Painting in 2012 and 2018. Her work is in a variety of public, private, and corporate collections in the US and abroad and she has been awarded recent residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the Bemis Center. Zlotsky is represented by McKenzie Fine Art and Markel Fine Art, both in New York City, Robischon Gallery in Denver, Sandler-Hudson Gallery in Atlanta, and Bernay Fine Art in Great Barrington, MA. She has a BA in art history from Yale University and an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Connecticut. She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in the Hudson Valley. Deborah Zlotsky, Ghost lines 3, acrylic gouache on panel, 2025, 14” x 11” Photo courtesy of Liz Dejeuness. Deborah Zlotsky, Not a line but a constellation, oil on canvas, 2025, 14” x 11” Photo courtesy of Liz Dejeuness. Deborah Zlotsky, Tragedy plus time, oil on canvas

Simone Kearney is a Dublin-born, Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist and writer. Her practice is an inquiry — as much visual as it is psychological — into how experience is a cobbled, fragile thing, shapeshifting, subject to time, configured and reconfigured through our bodies. In recent projects, she has been working with hand-carved stone sculpture, watercolor, and text, where the work starts to gather like archaeological fragments of the psyche. Dealing in the realm of what floats beneath the surface of consciousness — dreams, ruminations, and archetypal symbols — Kearney creates fields of objects that exist somewhere between rune and cartoon, between suggestive remnant and semi-emergent fact. In her playful receptivity to the raw stuff of stone, earth, pigment in water, or language itself, she explores all kinds of lively materialities. The tangible becomes an occasion for the intangible to reveal itself. Images arise from matter’s ambiguous zones of reference and into the nameable: as ovals, hands,

Brendan Fernandes, born in Nairobi, Kenya 1979. Currently based in Chicago, his practice addresses issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, andother forms of collective movement. Constantly seeking to create new spaces and forms of agency, Fernandes’work often takes on hybrid forms: part ballet, part queer dance party, part political protest always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity. Fernandes is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007) and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship (2014), a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020), an Artadia Award(2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2019), and most recently, the PlatformAward (2024). In 2024, he was also honored with the Creative Voice Award by Arts Alliance Illinois. His work has been presented at prestigious venues such as the 2019 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum ofContemporary Art Chicago, C

Antelman both deconstructs the body and then reassembles it, not just as a way of imagining a deeper connection with nature, but also as a way of expressing how malleable the very idea of it has become. In place of a techno-utopianism, in which the steady advance of technology is uniformly celebrated, Antelman expresses an atavistic position instead, one which delights in the complexity of nature rather than seeking to explain or instrumentalize it. Her work reminds us that what is mysterious in the world often connects us to what is mystical in it as well. Born 1971 in Athens, Greece, Maria Antelman received her MFA in New Genres from Columbia University and a BA in Art History from the Complutense University, Madrid. Her work has exhibited internationally, including at the Bemis Center of Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; Pioneer Works, New York; Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas, Austin; Botanical Garden I&A Diomidos, Athens; National Museum of Co

Benjamin Freedman is an artist whose practice spans multiple mediums including photography, video and computer-generated imagery with an interest in the restorative potential of photographic research and play. He received his bachelor’s degree in photography at the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) in 2013 and his Masters at The Ecole cantonal d’art de Lausanne in 2023. While probing the relative truths and deceptions of photography, he purposefully adopts visual vocabularies from cinema and television in an effort to create expanded documentary projects. He has exhibited extensively across the greater Toronto area and internationally at the Aperture Foundation in New York City, Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Foto-Undustria Biennale in Bologna and in the Riga Photography Biennale in Latvia. He recently presented work at the Images Vevey Biennale, Vontobel in Zurich, Switzerland and at Ptolemy Gallery in Queens, New York. Installation view: Benjamin Freedman: Surface Imperfect. Ptolemy, Glendale, NY, 202

Michelle Im creates ceramic sculptures that explore themes of home, displacement, and cultural identity in the context of globalization. Drawing inspiration from ceramic traditions, she examines how historical and cultural forces shape her experience as aKorean American. Using handbuilt figurative forms, Im addresses the psychological tension of embodying conflicting cultural ideologies such as individualism and collectivism. By portraying service workers such as flight attendants, she navigates the nuanced space between cultural dualities, using these figures to reflect on labor, performance, and community. Michelle Im is a Korean-American ceramic artist based in Queens, NY.In 2024, she was selected as the Artist Fellow at the Museum of Arts & Design. Grants and awards include the Center for Craft Teaching Artist Grant, American Craft CouncilEmerging Artist Grant,Penland School of Craft Distinguished Fellowship, and Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist Award.Shewas a Visiting Artist in Residence at the Archie B

Joyce Weidenaar is a painter and monoprintmaker living in New York City. She began pursuing art ten years ago after retiring from a real estate career. Her works have been seen in solo and group exhibitions, and in private collections. Her paintings are rendered realistically but with unusual framing, bright colors and often a bit of whimsy. Her prints emphasize texture and are purely abstract. Joyce is a member of the National Association of Women Artists, Pleiades Gallery, The Art Students League of New York and the West Side Arts Coalition. Her paintings and prints are viewable on Instagram (@joyceweidenaar) and on her website (http://www.joyceweidenaarartworks.com). Her gallery talk at the Port Washington Public Library can be seen here. In addition to her art endeavors, Joyce is an avid ballroom dancer and skier.

Adam Cable (b. 1989) creates vignettes of American domestic life using found digital images. His work entwines perception and narratives into the reconstruction of these environments, highlighting ways that impressions and expectations inform experiences of space. These compositions blur the lines between picture and collage by overlaying keyword-sourced materials onto component shapes. Challenging the conventional idea of “home” as a blank canvas, Cable presents it as a complex space influenced by countless factors. Even seemingly static forms become imbued with emotions and meanings through the images he incorporates, reflecting the intricate dance between social norms and cultural values in our everyday surroundings. Cable has shown in several group and solo exhibitions, including at the Amos Eno Gallery project space, NYC; The Painting Center, NYC; University of North Carolina, Asheville; PULSE Art Fair, Miami; Local Project, NYC; and The Plaxall Gallery, NYC. At the end of 2020, he co-curated "Annus Hor

Natalia Zourabova was born in Moscow, Russia in 1975, lives and works in Tel Aviv since 2004. She studied at the Russian Academy of Theater Art in Moscow (1995-2000) and the University of Arts in Berlin (2000-2003). Zourabova is primarily a figurative painter. She paints scenes that she knows intimately – oftentimes city streets in her neighborhood in Jaffa, or familiar interiors. Color is central to Zourabova’s work; her palette and the mood of her paintings range from naturalistic to absurd, and her paintings vary along the spectrum of realism to abstraction. Zourabova has exhibited various solo shows in Israel, at Haifa Museum of art (2024), Herzliya Museum of contemporary art (2019-20), Janco Dada Museum, Ein-Hod (2005); as well as at the Iragui Gallery in Russia (2008-2019), and had multiple solo exhibitions across Israel, Russia, France, Sweden and more. She has participated in group shows internationally at such venues as The Israel Museum (2015, 2018), Mediterranean Biennale (2020,2013), the Garage T

Lin Wang, China Oslo-based ceramicist Lin Wang produces large-scale still life installations and sculptural assemblages which investigate the corporeality and historic resonance of porcelain. Over centuries, porcelain’s combination of a kaolin-rich white clay body with deep cobalt glazes has registered the ongoing effects of contact and trade, as well as the phantasmic projections of a long-standing dialog between East and West. As an artist working between China and Norway, Wang’s interest in this interchange holds personal significance, tinged by her own wanderlust, homesickness, and experiences of cultural discovery. Since 2016, Wang has explored these themes through a cycle of exhibitions, video works, performances, and workshops titled Exotic Dreams and Poetic Misunderstanding. As a group, these works intersperse the iconography of traditional blue-and-white chinaware with imagery of sailors’ tattoos, Buddhist and Christian religious deities, and the fantastic creatures populating the terra incognita of

Naomi Okubo’s work explores delicate and often uneasy relationships between individuals, society, and the spaces that shape them. Drawing on her personal experiences, particularly her complex relationship with her mother, she examines how guise, decoration, and inherited roles—especially restrictive notions of “femininity”—affect human interactions. In her early work, Okubo depicted women without faces as a symbol of the pressures to conform in Japanese society. Over time, these faceless figures have come to function more broadly as a mirror, allowing viewers to project themselves and reflecting both individual experiences and societal dynamics. In recent years, she has also been exploring the motif of the “greenhouse/home,” a confined yet seemingly nurturing space that resonates with her upbringing and contemporary life, highlighting how environments can both protect and constrain. Her works involve a complex, multi-layered process, where materials and techniques accumulate to convey the depth and contradict

Eva Lake studied art history and archaeology at the University of Oregon and painting at the Art Students League of New York. She has exhibited internationally since 1980. As a singer in post punk bands she recorded with Trap Records in the Pacific Northwest. Her day job was in makeup, beauty and fashion and this, plus her studies in art history, have formed the foundation and subject matter for much of her work. For over a dozen years she interviewed other art people on the radio, specifically KPSU and KBOO, and has written about art for various publications including Art Week, Visual Art Source, Preview and the Bay Area Guardian. Lake also curated exhibitions and worked at artist-run and commercial galleries including Lovelake, Chambers Fine Art, Portland Arts Collective and the Russo Lee Gallery. Born in Los Angeles, she then grew up on a dirt road in southern Oregon. Lake currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon and is represented by Frosch and Co in New York City and Modernism in San Francisco. Ev

Robert Janitz (b. 1962, Alsfeld, Germany) is a contemporary painter known for his bold, abstract canvases that balance humor, gesture, and materiality. After studying Sanskrit and art history in Germany, he lived in Paris for many years before relocating to New York and later Mexico City, where he currently lives and works. Janitz is best recognized for his large-scale works featuring sweeping, textured brushstrokes that recall the motion of everyday acts—like buttering toast or polishing shoes—transforming mundane gestures into painterly abstraction. His practice often blends saturated color fields with playful surfaces, exploring perception, language, and the boundaries of painting itself. Over the past two decades, his work has been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries, including solo and group shows across Europe, the United States, and Latin America. His works are part of the permanent collections of the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, France; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Franci

The artist photographed by Geoffrey Biddle. Avital Burg studied at Bezalel Academy, the Hatahana School, the Slade School of Art, and the New York Studio School. Burg was the artist-in-residence at the Interlude Residency, NY, and the Peleh Residency, CA. Her works are in prominent collections, including the Louis-Dreyfus Family Collection (NY), and the Bank Leumi Art Collection. Burg’s impasto paintings incorporate dry paint pieces from her palette into fresh layers, creating surfaces reminiscent of low-relief sculptures. Some canvases are painted over three or four previous works, signifying how each moment of creation encapsulates multiple points in time. The oil on canvas grows lush with life, prompting Burg to reflect on the impermanence of material existence and inviting guests into a rhythmic and meditative form of viewing.  Cracks in the Pavement offers a glimpse into nature’s quiet cycles and beauty, often lost in the urban thrum of New York City. In Burg’s newest paintings, blue chicories push th

Yatika Starr Fields, 2025. Portrait © Tom Fields 2025 Born in 1980 in Tulsa, Yatika Starr Fields is a member of the Cherokee, Creek and Osage tribes, as well as a member of the Bear Clan. Yatika Fields studied landscape painting at the University of Oklahoma’s Sienna, Italy summer program before enrolling at the Art Institute of Boston from 2001 to 2004. While living on the East Coast, the artist developed a keen interest in street art. His dynamic, vibrant graffiti works quickly attracted attention, generating public and private mural commissions across the country from Portland to Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Santa Fe, and Bentonville. In 2018, he completed Astonishment of Perception, a monumental site-specific mural in downtown Bentonville, as part of Crystal Bridges Museum’s Art for a New Understanding (2018–2019). Spanning the side of Cripps Law Firm’s two-story building, the work depicts lady justice peeking from behind her blindfold, highlighting the dissonance between America’s ideals and its judicial syst

Madeline Peckenpaugh (b. 1991, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) renders depth through iterations of adding and subtracting paint, creating a semblance of deep and flat space simultaneously. Probing the slips in perception between corporeal experience, memory, and imagination, she shifts the scale of everyday elements, interlaces components, and depicts forms in both single tones and fluctuating textures. The viewer’s trained perception of the landscape can become questioned, as monumental structures begin to vaporize, and natural forms become paper thin. There is a reconciliation of opposites: deep space of the real world with the flat space of the canvas. Peckenpaugh received an MFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI and a BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Peckenpaugh’s work has been exhibited at Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY; Bremond Capela, Paris, FR; 1969 Gallery, New York, NY; F2T Gallery, Milan, IT; Andrew Reed Gallery, Miami, FL; PM/AM Gallery, Lond

JD Raenbeau (b. 1985, Stony Brook, NY) currently lives and works in Rocky Point, New York. He received his MFA from The School of Visual Arts where he received the Paula Rhodes Memorial Award for Exceptional Achievement in Art Practice. He holds a BFA from Alfred University. Raenbeau has exhibited his work in New York, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, New Mexico, and the UK. His work has been featured in New American Paintings, Artsin Square Magazine, and Sensitive Content Magazine. He was recently an Artist in Residence at the Vermont Studio Center, The Golden Foundation for The Arts, and most recently was Artist in Residence at the Hafnarborg Museum in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland. © JD Raenbeau, “Canopy,” 2025, Oil on panel, 24 x 30 inches, Courtesy of CLAMP, New York © JD Raenbeau, “Full Moon,” 2024, Oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches, Courtesy of CLAMP, New York © JD Raenbeau, “X,” 2024, Oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches, Courtesy of CLAMP, New York

Abby Lloyd (b. 1988) is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator based in New York City. Her work utilizes humor and familiar motifs to confront themes of loss, memory, and the emotional charge of objects. Lloyd’s recent solo exhibitions include On Display at Ptolemy (Queens, NY), Goodbye Dolly at Alyssa Davis Gallery (New York, NY), and Abby’s Room at Freddy (Harris, NY). She has organized several events and exhibitions, including the recent Artists & Recipes at Marvin Gardens (Ridgewood, Queens), based on her 2020 cookbook of the same name featuring over 40 artists. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, and Vice. She has performed and exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally, including presentations at the Musée d'Art Contemporain (France), White Columns (New York), Kunsthall Oslo (Norway), Montez Press Radio (New York), and The High Line (New York). Installation view, Abby Lloyd: On Display, Ptolemy, Glendale, NY, 2025 Abby Lloyd, It's fun, 202