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Jake Berthot Doesn’t Need To Be Original

For the past twenty years Jake Berthot has painted his vision of the Catskill Mountains, where he has lived since 1994, after living in Manhattan, much of it on the Bowery, for thirty years. A painter of what he calls “small sensations,” Berthot has included fourteen paintings and six drawings completed in the last three years, in his current solo exhibition at Betty Cuningham (October 17–November 30, 2013).

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Francisca Sutil’s Method of Counting Time

Francisca Sutil is a Chilean abstract artist who lived in New York from 1977 until 1992, when she returned to Santiago, Chile, where she currently lives and works. She came to New York to study printmaking at Pratt Institute. In 1978, she discovered papermaking and, within a short time that included a basic how-to class, mastered the process.

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Peter Acheson’s Obdurate and Tender Talismans

Some artists need to be gurus, always insisting on their elevated place in the hierarchy, while others are happy if younger artists look up to them, content to have companions on their solitary journey. Peter Acheson belongs to the latter group, which is one of the reasons why his current exhibition, Rusted Giacometti, is taking place at NOVELLA (October 13–November 17, 2013), the latest addition to the still-expanding, Lower East Side gallery scene.

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An American in Paris: Shirley Jaffe’s Paintings from the 1970s

About her work, Shirley Jaffe has stated: “I want a certain tenseness, a congestion or a combination of forms in which none is stronger than any other. I’m interested in the idea of coexistence.” In her current exhibition, Shirley Jaffe: Paintings from the 1970s at Tibor de Nagy (October 17–November 23, 2013), there are six paintings, most of which were done around the middle of the decade. They remain fresh.

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The Poet-Magus of the Lower East Side

Imagine the following scenario: You and your wife live on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. You start a greeting card company, Ink Weed Arts, in 1951, just after the two of you get married. You are a poet and she is a dancer who works as a hand and foot model in advertising. The two of you want to offer an alternative to the insipid messages of Hallmark Cards.

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Weekend Studio Visit: Rick Beerhorst in Grand Rapids, Michigan

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — I first met Rick Beerhorst in 1986, when he was a graduate student in the MFA program at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. One of his teachers was Peter Bodnar, whose small, quirky, symbolic abstractions with a spiritual undercurrent — they share something with Jain cosmology — have flown under the radar for many years. I know of two other artists who studied with him and hold him in high regard: Christopher Brown and Tom Lieber.