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!
Brian Barr is an incredible artist, professor and
curator. I can attest to all of this because I am married to him. One of the things that I admire most about
Brian is his integrity, in both artmaking and curation.He is a supporter of the
beautiful and the strange, and does not succumb to trends. He is sincere and
does not care about being cool (which, in turn, makes him the epitome of cool).
Although Brian started his artistic career as an oil painter, these days
he works with drawing, print media, collage and sculptural installation. Manipulating
found imagery is at the center of his practice. Conceptually, his work
confronts ideas around the limits of human understanding. Do we have any hope
of understanding the past when our own temporal, cultural framework imposes
limitations upon us? If we can’t understand the original context of an image,
where does that leave us? With Brian’s work, I find myself sitting with the
shifting instability of the image, in the place between aesthetics and context,
between abstraction and figuration, between certainty and doubt. It is precisely in this state of mystery where experiences beyond language exist.
I was excited to have Brian answer these questions because even though I’ve
known him for 20 years and definitely had an inkling of what a lot of his
responses might be, I knew there would be a few surprises (and I was right). For
more about Brian and his work, take a look at his website and follow him on
Instagram.
xo, Lauren
Name: Brian Barr Occupation: Artist/Professor Astrological data: Cancer Hometown: Detroit, MI Current location: Richmond, VA
Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?
Galleries and word of mouth from friends mostly. I also an art book addict. I love the Phaidon Vitamin series. Vitamin P4 just came out and is one of the best since the original Vitamin P.
Trenton Doyle Hancock, The Former and the Ladder, Ascension and a Cinchin', 2012, Acrylic and collaged canvas, 84 x 132 inches Image Source
An artwork that makes you cry?
Anything my kids make for me; especially with words like "I love you" or "best dad ever”!
Most underrated artist?
I am going to list two, with the caveat that I am biased (and extremely biased) in both cases having curated both of their work and liking them both as people! Ian Pedigo and Lauren Rice. Ian is one of my favorite artists and has been for some time. As a curator, I worked with him for the 2014 show, Ad Infinitum, at the Katzen Art Center Museum in D.C. His work has continued to evolve over the years and is as smart as it is strange and beautiful. His work and career are incredibly well respected, but in my opinion he deserves as much recognition as possible.
Lauren, on top of creating this questionnaire, is my wife, best friend, partner in all things and studio mate, so of course I am biased (but I am also not wrong). My proximity to her creative practice is a blessing. Her work and studio ethic push me to work harder, take more risks, and value creative growth above all else. Ditto on her work being beautiful, strange and smart (my trifecta for what makes great art)!
An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?
A week is too long for me, but maybe for a few hours I could check out Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (for purely anthropological research purposes of course).
An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?
I love risk takers and artists not afraid to change, grow and evolve. This is increasingly rare. Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, Njideka Akunyili Crosby are examples of artists that have done just that.
I will also be forever obsessed with the ultimate irreverent trickster, Marcel Duchamp, and his legacy for the history of art. He is the world’s forgotten boy, the one who searched and destroyed. He exploded both the classical and modern structures through which art had been made and understood. This was freeing, but the creative freedom he bequeathed the world was also immensely heavy to handle.
What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?
I touched on this above, but the right combination of intelligence, beauty, and strangeness. I have no formula, but I know it when I see it.
Erotic artwork? (editor's note: this is a multiple choice question)
Other: It depends on how it's handled. For example Bonnard's paintings of his
wife in the bath are subtly erotic. They are very much about the erotic
nature of the sensual pleasure of both paint and flesh.
What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?
That is impossible to answer because since Duchamp, anything can be art.
What is an artwork that you know you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?
No guilty pleasures for me. If I like it, I like it. But an artist who wasn’t “cool” to like back in my art school days was Tiepolo. Goya was punk, Tiepolo was Neil Diamond, but I like Tiepolo (and I love Neil Diamond). I would add Andrew Wyeth to this list. He is too often dismissed as a technician, but his drawings and gestural studies are incredible.
What's an artwork that you secretly hate?
I do often complain privately about things I think are overrated or soak
up too much attention but I prefer to share what I love.
I will say an artist a lot of people love that doesn’t do anything for
me is Mark Rothko.
Most insane art piece?
Ryan Trecartin’s entire oeuvre. It is incredible, disorienting, and so prophetic in understanding today’s internet culture. To me all the work that deals with internet culture today is second rate knock offs compared to Trecartin’s work.
Fav monograph or art book?
As an obsessive book lover it’s impossible for me to list just one so I’ll give a list of the ones I return to over and over for inspiration: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Arturo Herrera, Phaidon Vitamin Series (P and P4, T, C), Kerry James Marshall, The Painting Factory: Painting Since Warhol, David Hockney Drawings, Ian Pedigo, Corin Hewitt: Seven Performances, Jessica Stockholder, Mark Bradford, Dada and Surrealism, Phyllida Barlow, Albrecht Durer, I could go on and on!
I don’t know about spiritual, but an artwork that has always deeply affected me, and continues to all these years later since first seeing it, is Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry mural at the DIA. As a Detroit boy, this work is certainly a point of hometown pride in that it was in my city and internationally recognized as significant. It is incredible. I go see it every time I go back to Detroit.
A detail from Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry at the DIA Photo: Getty ImagesImage Source
An artwork that you'd like to see before you die?
I have to see the Prado to see the monumental Velazquez and Goya paintings before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
What art material do you love to nerd out on?
Colored pencils, graphite pencils and oil paint
What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?
I usually split my studio listening between music to get me going when I am in the creative discovery/play phase, and podcasts to engage my brain while in the more technical, execution phase. Most recently, I first listened to my "Crank it Up" playlist of songs to listen to loudly. It has a lot of Detroit Punk, MC5, The Stooges, White Stripes etc., but also James Brown, Joan Jett, and The Eurythmics. I also listened to the “Where are We Going? Societal Collapse-Origins" episode of the Past, Present, Future podcast hosted by the political philosopher David Runciman. The guest was Luke Kemp who discussed the origins of the state in hierarchical societies, and patterns leading to societal collapse. It was fascinating and deeply alarming.
What's a book that changed your life?
Again, cheating here, but I can’t possible name just one. The first book I read that ignited my love of reading literature and complex books when I was young was William Faulkner’s Light in August. Some of the books that have had the strongest intellectual and emotional impact on me are: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World, Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers, and Thomas Hobbes Leviathan.
What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?
Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World. While slim in size at under 200 pages, it is an intellectual powerhouse and a whirlwind of a read. It is brilliant. I have read it 3 times since it came out a few years ago, and each time it has the same impact. I can not recommend it highly enough!
❤
Brian Barris an artist and independent curator from Detroit, currently
based in Richmond, Virginia where he is an Assistant Professor at
Virginia Commonwealth University. He holds an MFA from American
University and a BFA from the College for Creative Studies. Barr has
been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, the Kala Art Institute, the
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and completed a residency at the
Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis. He currently serves on the
city of Richmond’s Public Art Commission.
Barr frequently collaborates with his wife, artist Lauren Rice.
Together, their work has been exhibited at Vox Populi (Philadelphia),
Flashpoint Gallery (Washington, DC), Purdue University, Current Space
(Baltimore), the Neon Heater (Findlay, OH), Artist Alliance Inc.’s
Cuchifritos Gallery and Project Space (New York), and Alabama
Contemporary (Mobile, AL). His solo exhibitions include Popps Packing
(Detroit), Skylab (Columbus, OH), and the Museum of Contemporary Art
Arlington (VA). His work was featured in New American Paintings No. 95.
Prior to relocating to Richmond, Barr founded and directed PASSENGER, a
nomadic Center for Contemporary Art in Detroit. As a curator, he has
organized exhibitions at PASSENGER, ORG Gallery (Detroit), Purdue
University, the Museum of New Art Detroit, Delicious Spectacle (DC), and
the Katzen Art Center Museum (DC).
As Executive Director of PASSENGER, Barr forged partnerships across the
public and private sectors. He worked with Mayor Michael Duggan’s office
to curate local artists into the mayor’s residence and municipal
offices. He also collaborated with Dan Gilbert (Founder of Rocket
Mortgage) and Rock Ventures to activate vacant downtown properties
through public events and art exhibitions. Under his leadership,
PASSENGER received a grant from the Knight Foundation to support
community programming in Rock Ventures spaces. This initiative
contributed to the revitalization of a formerly vacant business
corridor—now a thriving commercial, arts, and entertainment district.
For more about Brian Barr and his work, go to his website and follow him on Instagram!
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!
Sharon Shapiro and I met through a very cool
synchronicity involving a copy of New American Paintings. I won't
elaborate on the full mystery here, but I'm overjoyed that the NAP gods
connected me with Sharon and her work. I loved getting to see her 2024 solo
show No
Man's Land at Quirk Gallery in Richmond, a stunning show that included her large-scale paintings (oil! airbrush!), as well as smaller gouache
paintings and collages. During her artist talk at the gallery, she led with a
quote by D. W. Winnicott, "Artists are people driven by the tension
between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide." Chills.
Another cue from the universe that I was in the right place at the right time.
There's
so much I want to say about Sharon Shapiro's paintings (let’s blame the Pisces Mercury
retrograde for my vivid, swimming thoughts). Compelled by both the female figure
and color as subject, Sharon’s paintings ride the line between beautiful,
eerie, and deliciously provocative. The figures are poised yet roiling beneath
the surface, as the chromatic underpainting acts as optical antagonist against the outer layers of paint. Often
including imagery that conjures fairy tales, mythologies and the art historical canon (I'm thinking especially of Manet and Moran here), many
paintings resist easy logic. To me, they feel dreamlike, with narratives that bend and refract through layers
of color within a surreal, constructed environment. Other paintings, like the
fantastic, tongue-in-cheek (tongue-on-axe? ha) Tradwife, are darkly funny. And! As a paint-loving painter, I really
just can't get over the way she applies paint to a surface (I am basically a
gouache on paper addict).
I hope you enjoy Sharon's incredibly thoughtful, contextually rich responses for Short Answer Sunday. For more on Sharon Shapiro, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.
xo, Lauren
Name: Sharon Shapiro Occupation: Artist Astrological data: Pisces sun, Pisces moon, and Cancer ascendant Hometown: Bluefield, West Virginia Current location: Charlottesville, VA
Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?
I meet a lot of artists going to art openings and/or galleries. I try to
get to New York once a year and I always discover at least a couple of
artists that are new to me. I also frequently go down online rabbit holes.
An artwork that makes you laugh?
Martin Kersels’ ”Twist” (1993), a kinetic sculpture made from rubber bands, a prosthetic leg, wood, a sock and a shoe. His work walks the line between humor and failure/misfortune so well.
Hannah Hoch. Her exploration of gender and media was way ahead of its time.
An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?
A painting by Rosson Crow. Her large, exuberant, vivid and stylized interiors and exteriors make me want to dive in and walk around. Her work has enough darkness that I wouldn’t feel out-of-place but the way she handles themes of American history and decay give me joy.
An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?
Omg, this was the hardest question for me. The list is too long and there is no hierarchy so to name just one feels wrong.
What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?
The feeling of surprised recognition, when I see something as a viewer that I know but didn’t know that I knew it until I saw it.
Erotic artwork? (editors note: this is a multiple choice question)
Yes: ✅
What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?
Joseph Grigely’s installation “White Noise”, an installation in two huge circular rooms covered in hand-written notes. Each one is an artifact from his life as a deaf person, a piece of paper that someone passed to him in order to communicate.
What is an artwork that you know you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?
“Thérèse Dreaming” (1938) by Balthus. I see it as a young girl who feels so free to be in her own world with her thoughts that she doesn't care that her underwear is showing, and of course I wish it were painted by a woman! (editor's note: love this response so much)
Kara Walker, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and
overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane
fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the
demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant, 2014 Image Source
Hyphen (1999) by Jenny Saville. I saw it in person in 2009 at the Phillips Collection and it was the most incredible experience I’ve ever had looking at a painting. Very transcendent and spiritual.
What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?
The Swimmer (1968) directed by Frank Perry and adapted from the short story by John Cheever. It’s dated, yes, but in the best way (to me). Whether you love it or hate it, it’s 95 minutes that you probably won’t forget.
❤
Sharon Shapiro explores opposing forces in her female-centric, figurative work, balancing the fantastic and the natural, the utopian and the dystopian. Working across diverse media and scales, she sees painting as a cunning vessel for tension and insatiable longing simmering beneath the surface. Recent one and two-person exhibitions include You Kissed Me First at Pollinator Art Space (Atlanta, GA); Déjà View at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NYC; Then the Dream Changed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (Arlington, VA) and No Man’s Land at Quirk Gallery (Richmond, VA). Group exhibitions include the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Maine Center for Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; the McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA; and Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans, LA. She has been in residence at Ucross, Jentel, Ragdale, The Hambidge Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her practice has received grant support, including two awards from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and she was the recipient of the Atelier Focus Fellowship at AIR SFI in Georgia. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Whitewall, Art Spiel, Studio Visit, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Kolaj Magazine. Shapiro holds an MFA from the Maine College of Art and a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art.
Find out more about Sharon Shapiro’s work on her website and on Instagram!
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!
Jake Lahah is an artist that I discovered through Ada Gallery in Richmond. We exhibited together at Ada for a summer group show in 2025 and I loved his solo show Image Viruswhich was up at the gallery last October. His work is right up my alley--we both share a love of color, experimentation and material as metaphor, among other things. Jake is a great artist to follow on Instagram; he generously shares investigations into new materials and methods in the studio, as well as with his teaching. His making practice is expansive and exciting, as he combines a diverse array of materials and techniques with his expertise in print media. I found his responses to my questions to be similarly broad and insightful. Thank you, Jake! For more on Jake Lahah, check out his website and follow him on Instagram.
Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?
Mostly within my community and through word of mouth. I work in a lot of
specialty studios such as print shops, glass studios, and recently
ceramic studios. I meet all sorts of people that throw out various
artists I should look at. Usually a few stick and I reference and study
them frequently.
I hardly ever cry, but I was recently in the Cy Twombly room at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art. My parents retired out in Lexington, VA
which is where Cy grew up. Visiting there a few times each year has
given me so much more perspective on his up bringing and how it
manifests through his gestures. I generally get emotional anytime I'm in
front of one of his works.
Most underrated artist?
Tomashi Jackson! She has an impeccable taste for color theory, imagery,
and collage practices. Her work really opened my eyes to the nuanced
ways that abstraction can exist within works.
Tomashi Jackson, Forever My Lady, installation view, Night Gallery, 2020 Image Source
An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?
An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?
Stephanie Syjuco! As a projects focused artist, I'm sort of jealous at her ability to have many research topics under the locus of her contemporary practice.
An artwork that feels like a warm hug?
Sam Gilliam's "Norfolk Keels". You can see it at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk
What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?
Color and materiality. I recently discovered that I think this formally drives my intuition in my own work too
Erotic artwork? (editors note: this is a multiple choice question)
Fiber art and it's expanded field. There is so much to talk about with fiber and material studies--its relationship to queer history and feminism, its expansive to new materiality and abstraction. I think that studying fiber art is like reading a work really closely, in that you ask questions about every formal thing that you see. It's the type of close reading I practice and teach my students in the classroom.
What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I read it freshman year of college. It's a coming-of-age novel that tackled themes of bullying and the contrast between the mundane and extraordinary. As I've gotten older I've really thought about this book in relationship to my trajectory.
❤
Jake Lahah is a print, craft, and installation artist that makes
research and project focused works about queer histories, labor, built
environments, ecosystems, and the public narrative. He received his BFA
from George Mason University (2017) and an MFA in Print from Tyler
School of Art + Architecture (2024). Some of the notable places that
Lahah has shown include: ICA Baltimore, Baltimore, MD; Candela Books and
Gallery, Richmond, VA; Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia, PA; Vox
Populi, Philadelphia, PA; ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA; Page Bond Gallery,
Richmond, VA; IA&A at Hillyer, Washington, D.C..
He currently teaches at Old Dominion University within the Art
Foundations and Drawing + Painting departments, and is gearing up for a
month long residency at Stove Works in Chattanooga, TN this May.
See more of Jake Lahah's work on his website and follow him on Instagram!
