This is the 186th installment of a series in which artists send in a photo and a description of their workspace. In light of COVID-19, we’ve asked participants to reflect on how the pandemic has impacted their studio space and/or if their work process has changed while quarantining. Want to take part? Please submit your studio! Just check out the submission guidelines.
Steven Merahn, Orchard Lake, Michigan
I didn’t make art for decades; I started painting and drawing in the ’70s, but the most recent work in my web portfolio was made in 2001. When COVID-19 hit in NYC, we were living in an apartment in StuyTown; I took over the kitchen table for my day job and my children went to school remotely from one of the bedrooms. We didn’t leave the apartment at all for six weeks; after that, every excursion was planned to the last detail.
Some switch flipped and I started to sketch at night. My wife and children would be decompressing in the living room and I would sit at the kitchen table and obsessively make lines on printer paper. I imagined them in three dimensions but didn’t draw them that way; I didn’t have to.
In June, we went to a house in the midwest for the summer, for some space and relief. When NYC schools went fully remote, we decided to stay; we could always get back if we needed to. I took over the dining room table as my workspace. I turned those lines into things. In my mind, they are eight feet tall and made of steel.
Jean Foos, Governors Island, New York
This photo shows a corner of my studio on Governors Island this past August. In mid-July I was granted a four-month studio residency in an old house on the island. During the prior months of quarantine I had a set-up on my kitchen table to paint small sculptures. With this new opportunity, I wanted to work large. I decided to paint directly on the decrepit plaster walls, knowing they would eventually be repainted and the room returned to its original state. During those first wonderful days of taking the ferry back and forth we all stayed isolated and safe, believing almost no one would ever see the work. Normally during residencies, there are open studios, events, and visitors. The quarantine seclusion offered great freedom. I was inspired by the multitude of surfaces, dragging my brush across broken or smooth plaster, across wooden doors and baseboards. Soon, some of my earlier painting styles burst forth after having been long quashed. The initial painting got complicated with more layers. Due to the circumstances, I took care to document all phases. Now, walls repainted white, I’m back home at the computer — reviewing the sequence of images and reflecting on the development of my installation.
Eleanna Martinou, Athens, Greece
This is the place where I can dream during day or night, in Athens, Greece. My main medium of expression is painting. Especially during the global pandemic, my favorite route remains the journey within me, which, no matter how many times I repeat it, is always different. My research focuses on areas that relate to the concept of the network as labyrinth. Important buildings, routes, elements of contemporary popular culture, galaxies, city personalities and images, city sounds as waveforms, drawings and figures, are linked and presented in collages, grids, networks, and labyrinths.
At this time, I am particularly interested in the connections between people; we are all intertwined. The structure is the same as in brain cells, in computation networks, in aerial photography of metropolises, but also in microscopic images. Everything is rhythmically connected in a flow.
The Latest
Art Problems: How Do I Get a Public Art Commission?
Want to leave a mark on your city or town, but don’t know where to start? Paddy Johnson has some tips.
Rose B. Simpson Embeds Ancestral Histories in Clay
She has taken clay and used it to recall its ancestral roots in Pueblo culture and address the present history of postcolonial recovery and ongoing trauma.
Mondays at Pratt Institute: Weekly Openings of Work by Graduating Artists
Free and open to the public, Pratt Shows celebrate the school’s graduating students. MFA and BFA work on view this spring in Brooklyn, New York.
Quiet Paintings at a Time of Sensory Overload
Where Kim Mikyung’s process suggests an obsessive burrowing into the self, Kim Hyung-dae casts his gaze upward and outward into the sky.
Is the “Free the Nipple” Movement Too White?
Online representations of the activists lean White and thin, creating an image problem for the movement.
LSU School of Art Grants Highest MFA Stipends in the Southern US
With funded assistantships, full tuition waivers, and generous stipends, Louisiana State University helps students lay the groundwork for a successful lifelong art practice.
New “We ❤️ NYC” Campaign Misses the Mark
The recently unveiled design is meant to live alongside the iconic original and specifically address the city, but New Yorkers are not happy.
1,000+ Objects at The Met Linked to Antiquities Smugglers
A report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed hundreds of works once owned by people accused of or convicted of antiquities crimes.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Offers Summer Art and Design Courses Online and On-Campus
Emerging and established artists can choose from over 50 Adult Continuing Education courses at one of the most influential art and design schools in the US.
Lunar Bead Necklace and Asteroid “Emoji” Head to Auction
Christie’s bizarre sale features other space rocks propped up on stands like sculptures.
Scientists Create the First Full Brain Map of a Fly
The achievement is a giant step toward understanding human neural networks.
IDSVA Offers a Non-Studio PhD in Visual Arts: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory
With no campus, the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts is a truly nomadic institution, existing everywhere our students and faculty are.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Closes Over Climate Protest
The institution shuttered in advance of an action planned for the 33rd anniversary of its infamous art heist.
Remembering the Migrants Who Died in US Detention
Artist Jackie Amézquita will lead a caravan of trucks with the names of the deceased to LA sites representing systems of oppression and solidarity for immigrants.