Short Answer Sunday: Hartmut Austen

Meant to elicit quick, intuitive responses, Short Answer Sunday will introduce readers to a wide variety of artists, educators, writers, curators, art enthusiasts and art adjacent individuals whose inclinations I admire. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants may respond with only a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!

Hartmut Austen is a longtime friend and an inspiring painter. I met Hartmut in 2008, while teaching at The College for Creative Studies in Detroit and we also spent many summers teaching together at The Interlochen Center for the Arts in Northern MI. He makes paintings that are smart, complex and playful, and, as an artist, seems to thrive on curiosity, discovery and invention. Hartmut’s painting are not beholden entirely to abstraction or representation, and their formal variety and color mischief results in some disorienting and poetic paintings that are absolutely my cup of tea. Often installed as a network, rather than lone entities, I find that Hartmut’s use of irregular sequencing provokes conversations between paintings, and develops connections between the aesthetic structures in the work and the architectural elements around them.

Hartmut’s questionnaire responses introduced me to a few artists and a great, new-to-me gallery and reminded me of some artists who I hadn’t looked at in a while.  For any interested parties, my weekly Short Answer Sunday prep involves a sort of immersion in each artist’s responses, their work via their website and previous exhibitions. It’s fun and recalls how I used to find new artists, books and music in the pre-algorithmic olden days.  Seven weeks in to this project, the data-head in me is loving the aggregate of all responses as much as each individual's answers. Also realizing that there are no obvious answers!! Anyways, digression complete! Hartmut has great, expansive taste in art and also music, and I know you'll love his smart, thoughtful answers for Short Answer Sunday.

For more on Hartmut Austen’s work, check out his website and find him on Instagram.
xo, Lauren

Name: Hartmut Austen
Occupation: Artist/Professor
Astrological data: Sagittarius
Hometown: Bielefeld in Europe, Metro Detroit in the US
Current location: Boston area

Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?

By pulling out random books in the university library and by visiting exhibitions

 

An artwork that makes you laugh?

"Höhere Wesen Befahlen: rechte obere Ecke schwartz malen!", 1969, by Sigmar Polke

An artwork that makes you cry?

"Self-Portrait with Jewish Identity Card," c. 1943, by Felix Nussbaum (editor's note: Made me cry, too. More info on Nussbaum here)

 

Felix Nussbaum, Selbstporträt mit Judenpaß, c. 1943, oil on panel, 56 x 49 cm
Image Source

Most underrated artist?

Asger Jorn

An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?

Maybe in works by Joellyn Duesberry, unfuzzy, straight-forward landscape paintings of the American Southwest, as seen a bit more than a year ago at the Denver Art Museum.

An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?

Johanna Billings

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

A felt suit by Joseph Beuys

What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

That it engages me over a period of time

Erotic artwork? (editor's note: this is a multiple choice question)

 

Yes: ✅

What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?

The works in the exhibition "Travelling" by Felix Gonzales-Torres (Renaissance Society, 1994) confounded me so much that I had to make a painting about it.

What's an artwork that you suspect that you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?

Tagebuch der Amaryllis, 1981, by Horst Janssen

What's an artwork that you secretly hate?

I usually forget those things quickly.

Most insane art piece?

Can't really single out one. Perhaps drawings and performances by Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley come to mind. Mind blowing, repulsive, in your face. Much needed.

Paul McCarthy, Painter, 1995, color video with sound
Duration: 50:01 min
Image Source

Fav monograph or art book?

"Drawings" by George Seurat, 1984, exhibition catalog published by Kunsthalle Bielefeld

Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

Anthony Greaney, a project space in Somerville, MA. In the 'About' section of its website it says: "Next to Market Basket and around the corner from Little India Market, off the alley."

Last exhibition you saw irl?

"Say It Loud: AAMARP, 1977 to Now" at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Isenheim Altar Piece (1512-16) by Matthias Grünewald

An artwork that you'd like to see before you die?

I'd rather be in a cabin and look at a bunch of mountains, or the sea. Not sure yet.

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

oils I guess

What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?

Hüsker Dü, "Standing By the Sea"

What's a book that changed your life?

The Seurat Drawing exhibition catalog mentioned earlier

What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?

Let me think.....

❤

Hartmut Austen studied painting and drawing with H.J. Diehl at Hochschule der Künste (University of the Arts) in Berlin. His first arrival in the United States was marked by a 1998 group exhibition titled "VOID" at Unfinished gallery in Williamsburg, New York. He has since exhibited widely in the United States and Germany, most recently at Good Weather Chicago. In 2009, Austen was awarded a Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship and was the Grant Wood Fellow for Painting and Drawing at the University or Iowa in 2012/13. He is an Associate Professor in Painting at Boston College. 

For more info about Harmut, check out his website and follow him on Instagram.

Short Answer Sunday: Sara Tuttle

Meant to elicit quick, intuitive responses, Short Answer Sunday will introduce readers to a wide variety of artists, educators, writers, curators, arts professionals, art enthusiasts and art adjacent individuals whose inclinations I admire. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants may respond with only a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!

Sara Tuttle is an accomplished artist, the Founder/Director of Foyer Gallery, and a really terrific person to talk to about art. As the connotations of the name suggest, Foyer is welcoming and also cool (not an easy act for a contemporary art gallery, but probably an ideal that more should emulate imho). Sara has a keen eye for contemporary painting and Foyer provides Richmond with a much-needed exhibition space that consistently highlights exceptional local and regional artists, all while making an effort to make art accessible to new viewers and collectors.

Sara’s own oeuvre of tactile paintings reflect and respond to the rhythms of domestic life. These paintings are abstractions, sure, but in the way that Miriam Schapiro’s femmages are abstractions, both thing and image, and a reinterpretation of items that are collected, recycled and made new. They give me flashbacks (sentimental and urgent) of the red-eyed, frenetic days (and nights) of early parenthood, evoked in equal measure by the paintings’ bright, rhythmic patterns and their title-induced associations (for better or worse, the intro song to Dinosaur Train will forever echo through my brain at unexpected intervals).

I know you’ll enjoy Sara Tuttle’s Short Answer Sunday interview—her responses are dynamite (for the record we also stan jangly, depressive dad rock & Adrianne Lenker in the SAS house)!

Find out more about Sara Tuttle on her website, at Foyer and on Instagram.

xo, Lauren

Name: Sara Tuttle
Occupation: Artist and Founder/Director of Foyer Gallery
Astrological data: I'm astrologically illiterate!
Hometown: Connecticut
Current location: Richmond, VA

Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?

Word of mouth/other artists and exhibitions. 

 

An artwork that makes you laugh?

There are a good number of European royal portraits that make me giggle. 

 

An artwork that makes you cry?

Alice Neel’s portraits of mothers and their children – they’re so real and raw and it makes me remember just how fleeting my kids’ young childhood is!

 

Alice Neel, Mother and Child (Nancy and Olivia), 1982
Lithograph in colors on Arches paper
33.5 x 30.625 in.
Image source

An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?

Any Andrew Wyeth landscape painting – take me to Maine, please. 

 

An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?

Usually whichever artist is currently exhibiting in my gallery. It is a very cool experience as an artist myself to get to spend every week for a few months immersed in an exhibition of another artist’s work. My favorite piece in the show always changes by the end of the show and that’s also a fun journey. 

 

What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

An element of surprise/a sense of the process - the feeling that the final image may have even surprised the artist!

 

What's an artwork that you suspect that you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?

People denounce Richard Prince’s series where he prints his screenshots of (usually women’s) instagram selfies after writing the most recent comment as anti-feminist etc. (I think there may have even been copyright lawsuits?) But I think that the series brings up the public domain nature of social media and the blurring of the concept of ‘authorship’ that comes with the internet. The ultimate troll ‘art’? Totally. But I find it to be a striking social commentary about how once you put a picture out there you can’t control how it might be used. A famous artist could make money off of it! It raises questions that are even more pertinent today with AI constantly scraping images off of the internet.

 

What's an artwork that you secretly hate?

I’m going to respectfully keep these (strong) opinions to myself ;) 

 

Most insane art piece?

Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is up there – I cannot believe that was painted in the late 15th/early 16th century. 

 

Fav monograph or art book?

Anything Amy Sillman.

 

Fav museum or gallery in your current city?

VMFA for museum. For galleries (other than Foyer ;)) I’d have to say that Main Projects has been putting on consistently impressive exhibitions!

 

Last exhibition you saw irl?

A bunch of great shows at other galleries around Richmond - There’s always a good show somewhere in our town!

 

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Fra Angelico’s frescoes or DeKooning’s landscapes

 

Fra Angelico, The Mocking of Christ, 1440 - 1441, fresco
Basilica di San Marco, Florence, Italy
Image Source

An artwork that you'd like to see before you die?

The Ghent altarpiece.

 

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

The art store “Supply”, a few blocks down from Foyer, sells transparent spray paint. I want to play with it more I love working in mixed-media layers.

 

What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?

Always music and it depends on what my current obsession is. I will listen to an album over and over and over again until I wear it out and can’t listen to it again for a few years. Listening to something I’m familiar with helps me focus in the studio. Genre-wise I usually fall back on some kind of indie dude-rock or shoe-gazey band with a driving beat – I’m basic and a sucker for a jangly guitar. Or slightly depressive dad-rock/Americana with guitar solos that are self-indulgently long ;) 

 

What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?

I think Big Thief/Adrianne Lenker is making some of the most beautiful and arresting music of the past decade.

❤

Sara Tuttle’s most recent body of work is inspired by motherhood and the domestic environment. She received a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Richmond in 2009 and an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2017. She completed the Summer Studio Program at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2009 and taught high school art at Church Hill Academy for three years. Tuttle has exhibited four solo exhibitions in Richmond, VA most recently “In The Thick of It” at Shockoe Artspace in the Fall of 2024. Group exhibitions include “Those Who Tend” at Warnes Contemporary in New York City and “Limbo” at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR. In June 2025, Sara founded Foyer Gallery in downtown Richmond, VA where she showcases exceptional work by both emerging and mid-career artists, most of whom are from the region.  

For more, find her on Instagram, at Foyer and her on her website.

Short Answer Sunday: Arjan Zazueta

Meant to elicit quick, intuitive responses, Short Answer Sunday will introduce readers to a wide variety of artists, educators, writers, curators, arts professionals, art enthusiasts and art adjacent individuals whose inclinations I admire. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants may respond with only a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!

I have been an avid follower of Arjan Zazueta’s work since meeting him in the late 2000s. He works in a broad range of media, however, I see drawing as a through line between bodies of work. The first work of Arjan’s that I came across, probably in 2008 or 2009, was certainly aligned with drawing, although the delicate marks were constructed using stitched, cotton thread on (wait for it) paper towels. These ephemeral works on this most accessible of surfaces was eye-opening for me as a recently-MFA-ed artist figuring things out (and I still think of them often).

Arjan’s recent work, which I’ve loved getting to see on Instagram, is more easily recognizable as drawing. The sensitive touch is still there, in these lovely, layered colored pencil drawings of oobleckian figures in a range of positions and environments. The drawings are simultaneously silly and beautiful and the aforementioned blobby subjects hint at the collective mood (exhaustion and absurdity in particular) that totally nails the contemporary zeitgeist.

Arjan and his partner Jennifer Bryan also jointly run REDHEAD, an artist-run exhibition space in Brooklyn.  No secret here, I have a giant soft spot in my heart for artists who are also opportunity creators and I’ve been enjoying following the gallery programming from afar.

I absolutely loved Arjan’s responses to my Short Answer Sunday questionnaire and I know that you will, too — thanks Arjan!

For more on Arjan Zazueta and his work, check out his website and follow him on Instagram.

xo, Lauren

Name: Arjan Zazueta
Occupation: Artist
Astrological data: Aquarius Sun, Libra Moon, Scorpio Rising
Hometown: Bridgeport, CT
Current location: Brooklyn, NY

Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists? 

 

It's MFA thesis season here in NY, so this is a great time to see lots of emerging artists. 

 

An artwork that makes you laugh?

 

Charles Ray, Portrait of the Artist's Mother at the Pompidou 2022.

 

An artwork that makes you cry?

 

I know it seems cheeky, but I still think about the Ann Hamilton "weeping" wall installation at the 1991 Carnegie International. This is still one of the most powerful pieces I've ever experienced. (editor's note: I couldn't find good images of this particular installation, but "Kaph", another of Hamilton's "weeping" pieces is linked.)

 

Most underrated artist?

 

Bonnie Collura. Her work is so good. I think she is one of our great American sculptors.

 

An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?

 

Stephen Mueller, Kabir 2011

 

Stephen Mueller
Kabir, 2011
Acrylic on canvas
57 ½ × 36 inches
Image source

An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?

Louise Bourgeois. On my art family tree she is definitely one of my art mothers. She had such a tremendous art output in her lifetime.

 

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

 

My other art mother is Helen Lundeberg. She is the best LA Hard Edge painter. I love her work so much.

 

Erotic artwork? (editor's note: this is a multiple choice question)

 

Yes: ✅

 

What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?

Felix Gonzalez Torres, Untitled (Perfect Lovers). Damn, such a poignant piece.

 

Félix González-Torres's artwork "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers) (1987-1990) at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art
Image source

 

What's an artwork that you suspect that you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?

Anything Frida Kahlo and David Hockney

 

What's an artwork that you secretly hate?

Yeah I hate some things, you won't know, but there will be signs.

 

Fav monograph or art book?

Louise Bourgeois catalog from Cheim and Read 2001. The fabric works.

 

Fav museum or gallery in your current city?

I love PS1 because I'm always surprised by something unexpected. It also holds a lot of nostalgia for me.

 

Last exhibition you saw irl?
 

Kenny Rivero at Charles Moffet Gallery - A real knockout show

 

An artwork that you'd like to see before you die?

The Giotto Chapel in Padua

 

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

I love paint - I'm not sure it loves me

 

What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?

Gamelan

 

What's a book that changed your life?

I usually have several books I'm reading at once, but never finishing. But, Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde is one that is really important to me.

 

What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?

As a family we just watched the entire Alien(s) franchise including Alien Earth, in movie chronological order. These movies are oddly timely.

❤

Arjan Zazueta (b. 1977, Loma Linda, CA) is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2002 and an MFA in Sculpture from Syracuse University in 2009. His primary work is grounded in drawing, focusing on color and form while considering the ways the figure, landscape, and abstraction can coexist. His exhibitions include Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn, NY, Tilton Gallery, New York, NY; Rush Arts, New York, NY; Dog and Pony Projects, Buffalo, NY; Bemis Underground, Omaha, NE; Munson Williams Proctor Museum of Art, Utica, NY, among others. He has attended residencies at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Vermont Studio Center, and The Ora Lerman Trust at Soaring Gardens. He lives with his partner Jennifer Bryan, a fiction writer and his daughter Sadie and is a competitive powerlifter. 

For more info on Arjan Zazueta, visit his website and his Instagram!

 

Short Answer Sunday: Rachel de Joode

Meant to elicit quick, intuitive responses, Short Answer Sunday will introduce readers to a wide variety of artists, educators, writers, curators, arts professionals, art enthusiasts and art adjacent individuals whose inclinations I admire. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants may respond with only a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!

I have been a Rachel de Joode fan for nearly a decade now (the 2017 Myths of the Marble show at the ICA in Philly was my hook). If you are not yet familiar with Rachel de Joode’s work, I implore you to stop reading immediately and visit her website right away. Her work is featured in survey texts like Phaidon’s Vitamin C (Clay & Ceramic in Contemporary Art) and Photography is Magic. If you are a fellow de Joode-head, then please pat yourself on the back and do a congratulatory little dance. You know what I know, Rachel de Joode’s work is a force.

There are certain songs that I can’t listen to without dancing. It doesn’t matter where I am, what I am doing or who I am with, I will absolutely start to dance if you play these songs around me (thankfully only one or two other people know the power of this music over me—it is a powerful tool and should be used only for good). I bring this up because Rachel’s work is also like this for me. When I see it, I want to move. Maybe I digress, but sometimes I think that the response to contemporary art should not be to write intelligibly or to think rationally about it, but to follow it where it leads us. To let it move us.

Perhaps it is my god-shaped-hole talking, but I do look for spiritual experiences in works of art. Not every art object has it—but Rachel’s work does. I expect that it lives within the tension of the materials themselves, in the strange oppositions and mergers of color, shape, and form. These supply the messages that speak to me the most. Her nuanced use of color, light and shadow is unexpected, as is the surprising, subversive quality of her materials (clay as image and photography as object? yes, please). There is also often really fun slippage between the screen-based and the physical worlds (are they even separate places?? As time progresses, it feels harder to distinguish). Her sculptures are made by the body and speak of the body (the sloppy, fragile, disgusting gorgeousness of it all). While clay and paint are often used as metaphors for the body and it’s output, there’s something that strikes me as new and different here—an awareness of our physical forms as perceptual systems that have both allowances and terms (that can be manipulated). But whatever it is, it’s bigger than what I have the capacity to sum up, and that is something that I look for in a work of art.

Sending a giant thank you to Rachel de Joode for participating in this project! I know you will enjoy her Short Answer Sunday.

xo, Lauren

Name: Rachel de Joode
Occupation: Artist
Astrological data: Sun in Cancer, Moon in Taurus, Rising Sign (Ascendant): likely Virgo (late Leo into Virgo)
Hometown: Amersfoort, NL
Current location: Berlin, DE

An artwork that makes you laugh?

 

Can't say which but Sarah Lucas comes to mind. Or Mika Rottenberg.

 

An artwork that makes you cry?

 

The Kiss by Rodin

 

Image Source

Most underrated artist?

 

Jacoba van Heemskerck, Camille Claudel, Claude Cahun, Hannah Wilke, Hannah Höch

 

An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?

 

Inside a movie of Mika Rottenberg

 

An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?

 

Duchamp

 

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

 

Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother

 

What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

 

Surprise and layers of meaning

 

Erotic artwork? (editor's note: this is a multiple choice question)

 

Other: sometimes

 

What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?

Nature

  

What's an artwork that you suspect that you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?

 

There's nothing one shouldn't like there are no rules about liking

 

What's an artwork that you secretly hate?

Too many to answer here

 

Fav monograph or art book?

I look a lot at Laura Owens' monograph

 

Fav museum or gallery in your current city?

Neue Nationalgalerie (the building)

 

Source: A.Savin, Wikipedia

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst at KW

 

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

Basically all art materials!

 

What's a book that changed your life?

Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett

❤

Rachel de Joode (b. 1979, Amersfoort, NL) is a Dutch-born, Berlin-based artist working across photography, sculpture, and installation. Her work explores the relationship between images and objects in the digital era, treating photography not as representation but as material. Printed images are cut, folded, layered, and assembled into spatial structures in which surface, edge, and support become central elements. De Joode’s work investigates how images behave once they enter physical space. Photographs are materialized into sculptural forms and often re-photographed, creating a feedback loop between image and object. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo), ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Museum Prinsenhof Delft, and Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen. She is represented by Galerie Christophe Gaillard (Paris) and Annka Kultys Gallery (London). Alongside her studio practice, de Joode is active as an educator. She teaches in the MA Photography program at the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL), where she leads the course Materialized Photography.

For more information about Rachel de Joode, take a look at her website and follow her on Instagram!