Short Answer Sunday: Darien Arikoski-Johnson

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!

I write a lot like I paint, which is heavy on the cutting, pasting, rearranging, tearing away, and covering up. It’s a lot of editing, really, and I’m drawn to other artists and art forms that involve working in this way. Maybe it’s the use of destruction to access something new and different? Maybe it’s my obsession with fragments and scraps of all sorts? Regardless, it makes a lot of sense that I’m into Darien Arikoski-Johnson’s ceramic work as he is also interested in pieces, arrangements and destruction as a means of creation (watch this Instagram video). 

I met Darien when we both lived in Detroit (my husband’s hometown) and now that he lives in Atlanta (my hometown), I thought it would be especially cool to check in with him. My instincts paid off because I love the perspective Darien offers in this Short Answer Sunday. For more about Darien and his work, head on over to his gallery’s website and follow him on Instagram.
xo, Lauren

Name: Darien Arikoski-Johnson
Occupation: Associate Professor/Artist
Astrological data: Aries
Hometown: Hibbing, MN
Current location: Atlanta, GA

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

Honestly, not a lot of time is spent searching for other artists. but I enjoy the occasional interview/video on Art 21 or the Louisiana Channel

An artwork that makes you cry?

I can’t think of a time I’ve actually cried while viewing art, but the closest emotional experience I can remember was in a small gallery at the Walker in MN. It was a Sol Lewitt exhibition. Can’t remember the name of the piece but it was lines on paper. The horizontal line drawings by individuals one under the next in the middle of each paper. If my recollection is correct, I was by myself at the time and entering an intimate gallery surrounded by the subtle evidence of a group of people stirred an unexpected emotional response that was close to tears. It’s a strong piece, and surprising that a group of simple lines could evoke such an emotion.

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

I realize this is looking for something more fantastic but the honest thing that comes up is actually possible and it would be the Pantheon.

The interior of the Pantheon, Rome, Italy
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An artist whose work you can’t stop thinking about?

I tend not to dwell on the work of others, my own work has me perplexed enough.

What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

Work that balances tactile knowledge and abstract ideation well. While I don’t have an underrated artist to point out, I do think material fluency is often underrated, or maybe the issue is that it’s often polarizing.

Erotic artwork? (Ed. note: this is a multiple choice question)

Yes: ✅

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

At this point that’s impossible to say. Placing anything in the right context identifies it as art. There’s olfactory work that doesn’t “look” like art as it doesn’t look like anything. Pull the banana off the wall and it stops looking like art. assemble some trash in a gallery and it looks like art. Everything and Nothing looks like art.

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

The idea that I would feel guilty for liking an artwork is a little absurd to me. There is some amount of subjectivity in this arena and if somebody disagrees with my taste that’s their prerogative but not my concern... When thinking of things I like that some portion of the art world has turned away from Klimt comes to mind. One would need to see his paintings in person to fully appreciate how well he could articulate subtleties of the body and portraiture.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Fritza Riedler, 1906, oil on canvas, 153 cm × 133 cm
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What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?

it’s not much of a secret to those who know me, but approximately 90 to 95% of what is being produced I’m either indifferent to or strongly dislike.

Most insane art piece?

hard to label a “most” but it would probably be pulled out of the performance art movement in the 60’s 70’s. Chris Burden’s Shoot comes to mind. Yayoi Kusama comes to mind as somebody who uses more traditional media.

Chris Burden, film still from Shoot, 1971, performance/video
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Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

Hard to play favorites locally after having lived in Copenhagen for three years. My favorite in Denmark was Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, they have an amazing location and great shows. The layout to get lost in also created a fun experience.

It’s not to say there isn’t good work being shown in Atlanta, There is. My current routine doesn’t involve much going out and as such I can’t point to a favorite.

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Chelsea galleries a few months ago on a NYC excursion. not sure which was the last one I saw.

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

It doesn’t exist yet, or I’d stop making things.

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

Clay

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

Prob some finance podcast or a 90’s alt or punk station on Prime.

What’s a book that changed your life?

It’s probably the case that all new information/interaction changes ones life to some degree and as such all the books have done that. There’s not one particular that I feel drastically changed my trajectory.

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

Lex Fridman does a good job of digging at information.

❤

Darien Arikoski-Johnson’s work is recognized internationally through awarded grants, exhibitions, and residencies. In 2012 he was awarded the Emerging Artist Award through NCECA, he has received multiple grants including one from the Danish Cultural Ministry to complete a residency and exhibition opportunity through C.R.E.T.A. Rome. A-Johnson’s work was awarded the Gold Prize in the Korean International Ceramics Biennale 2021 and in 2023 his work was featured in the 62nd Faenza Prize – International Competition of Contemporary Art Ceramics. A-Johnson resides in Atlanta, Georgia and is an Associate Professor at Georgia State University. His work is represented by Alan Avery Art Company.

For more about Darien Arikoski-Johnson, find him at Alan Avery Art or on Instagram.

Short Answer Sunday: Carlie Kinto

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!

Happy Sunday, everyone. This week I am so excited to share a Short Answer Sunday with artist Carlie Kinto. Carlie and I went to the same grad program in DC, and even though our time there didn’t overlap, I’ve been an avid follower of her work since about 2010. I most often think of Carlie as a painter, although she also works with jewelry, metals and 3D mixed-media arrangements. Her paintings combine a broad range of paint media (gouache, acrylic, oil, Flashe, ink, etc.) and also less traditional painting substances like rhinestones, glitter and sand. Carlie’s use of the conventional and the idiosyncratic extends into her supports which run the gamut of size, shape and material.

There are many reasons why I am drawn to Carlie’s work, but one striking reason is her investigation into two ongoing, yet distinct, bodies of work—one that is primarily abstract, and another which is based on the observational, natural landscape. Although they are different bodies of work with varying agendas and processes, to me, they are cumulative and in dialogue. Carlie’s abstractions often include spiritual symbolism—spirals, moons, stars, mandalas and double ellipses. Much of this imagery references phenomena in the natural world, but Carlie’s renditions feel like a turn inward, an inner vision that feels both familiar and unnameable. Her deliberate, chromatic landscapes encourage close looking and evoke a similar sense of solitude, wonder, pattern, and time. Whether representational or abstract, all of Carlie’s paintings show the artist’s penchant for layered mark-making, vibrant, complicated color/pattern relationships and her awe + reverence for the natural and spiritual worlds (which are maybe not so separate after all).

Carlie’s responses are wonderful and provide such a great foundation for looking and thinking about her work. For more about Carlie Kinto, go to her website and follow her on Instagram. Thanks for reading, pals 😊
xo, Lauren

Name: Carlie Kinto
Occupation: Artist (day job- Administrative Assistant to a design team)
Astrological data: Sagittarius Sun and Rising, Gemini Moon, Libra MC
Hometown: Bend, Oregon
Current location: Portland, Oregon

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

Art books, word of mouth, art shows

An artwork that makes you laugh?

Medieval paintings of cats

An artwork that makes you cry?

“The Artist is Present” by Marina Abramović

Most underrated artist?

It’s hard to answer this one because I feel like there are so many great artists making art today that don’t get enough recognition

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

“Paysage méridional: Le Cannet” by Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard, Paysage méridional: Le Cannet, 1929 - 1930, oil on canvas, 55,5 x 46,5 cm

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

Raina Lee stoneware paintings, Lily Stockman, Yevgeniya Baras

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

“Two sunflowers” by Joan Mitchell

“Mimi’s Garden” by Hayley Barker

Joan Mitchell, Two Sunflowers, 1980. Oil on canvas, 110 1/4 x 142 x 1 1/4 inches

What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

Soulfulness… the artist’s hand, a bit of tension, texture, imperfections

Erotic artwork? (Ed. note: this is a multiple choice question)

Other: Depends

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

Jewelry doesn’t get enough credit as art

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

“The Kiss” by Gustov Klimt and in general decoration and pattern

What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?

David Hockney iPad drawings

Most insane art piece?

“The Four Seasons” Charles E. Burchfield

Light Years, “finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions” by Judith Pfaff

Charles E. Burchfield, The Four Seasons, 1949-1960, watercolor on joined paper mounted on board, 55 7/8 X 47 7/8 inches

Fav monograph or art book?

Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group

Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

PAM and Nationale

Last exhibition you saw irl?

A Queer Arcana: Art, Magic, and Spirit at Palm Springs Art Museum

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Tantric paintings from Rajasthan, India. (From the book ‘Tantra song’)

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

“The Ten Largest” by Hilma af Klint

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

Sennelier oil pastels 💸

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

Aphex Twin

What’s a book that changed your life?

You Were Born For This by Chani Nicholas

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

The Telepathy Tapes podcast

❤

Carlie Kinto is a multidisciplinary artist who creates abstract and landscape paintings, jewelry and installations.

Her abstract paintings reveal the metaphysical and otherworldly through a meditative process of building layers through repetitive mark-making, using intuitive techniques like scrying to allow images to unconsciously emerge. These coalesce into compositions that embody primal ecological forms and processes such as the spiral or cell division and evolution, reflecting Carlie's interest in the patterns the universe reveals from the cosmic to the microcosmic.

Her landscapes are painted on location. Similarly to her abstractions they are created through a process of building layers and repetitive marks with the intention to capture the energetic vibration, and the constant change and motion of nature. She embraces the chaos and bright colors of lush gardens and tress to capture the emotionally expressive feeling of a place.

Carlie Kinto received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from University of Oregon in 2007 and her Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from American University in 2010.

For more about Carlie Kinto, find her on her website and Instagram.

Short Answer Sunday: Kyle Kogut

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!

This week I’m excited to share a Short Answer Sunday with Norfolk-based artist and professor, Kyle Kogut. Kyle is an interdisciplinary artist whose work often takes the form of drawing and sculpture. His work blends high- and lowbrow cultural motifs (culled from advertising, art history, music, movies, etc.) and merges complex and loaded references, conflating symbols of religion + the occult with American consumer culture (plenty of dark humor, too). Kyle’s work possesses an intense visual power, developed through a devotion to craft, an attention to detail that can only be described as totally killer (academic term) with an attentive integration of form + meaning. Though the combination of these tactics, he renders the familiar uncanny and asks broader questions about how we (individually, nationally, globally) assign value, cultivate belief systems and mediate desire.

I came to Kyle’s work through Instagram, but we also have many mutual art acquaintances across various US cities such as Detroit, Baltimore and Richmond. One kernel of motivation behind Short Answer Sunday is that I (and you!) get recommendations from people who are doing cool things and then I (we!) get to read/watch/listen/view whatever each subject suggests. This is always exciting whether I know someone well or tangentially. I love all of Kyle’s responses—I learned about several new-to-me artists and was prompted to reread John Berger’s Ways of Seeing for the first time in (roughly) two decades. For more about Kyle Kogut, head to his website and follow him on Instagram. Get to it!
xo, Lauren

Name: Kyle Kogut
Occupation: Assistant Professor of Drawing
Astrological data: Gemini
Hometown: Kennett Square, PA
Current location: Norfolk, VA

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

Residencies have been an incredible resource for creating new connections. I also love when someone shows me an artist I’ve never heard of.

An artwork that makes you laugh?

Misanthrope by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. I love a good weird little dude.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Misanthrope, 1568, tempera on canvas, 34 x 33 in.
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An artwork that makes you cry?

Its hard to make me cry, but Wind from the Sea by Andrew Wyeth comes close. Wyeth is from my hometown, and while this work was based on his home in Maine, it retains the way he paints Pennsylvania and perfectly captures the melancholy of the American Northeast. I’m very nostalgic for all of Wyeth’s work as his was the first art I can consciously remember seeing as a child.

Most underrated artist?

James Castle. He is truly one of a kind and his work is much weirder than expected.

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

I’d love to meet some of Leonora Carrington’s creatures and wonder through her landscapes.

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

Robert Gober’s work is always on my mind.

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

Lying with the Wolf by Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith, Lying with the Wolf, 2001, ink and pencil on paper, 223.5 x 185.4 cm (Centre Pompidou, Paris)
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What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

When a work is enigmatic and continues to ask questions the longer I sit with it.

Erotic artwork? (Ed. note: this is a multiple choice question)

Yes: ✅

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

Robert Smithson’s Mirror Displacement: Indoors

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

Much of Richard Prince’s work frustrates me but I’m happy that he’s doing it.

What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?

Cezanne does nothing for me.

Most insane art piece?

Do Ho Suh’s large scale installations are hard to wrap your head around and a wonder to explore.

Do Ho Suh, Seoul Home/Seoul Home/Kanazawa Home/Beijing Home/Pohang Home/Gwangju Home/Philadelphia Home, 2012 Silk and stainless steel tubes 1460.5 x 723.9 x 397.5 cm
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Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA is a wonderful museum.

Last exhibition you saw irl?

I just spent a month in upstate New York and had a chance to see Modus Operandi at The School by Jack Shainman Gallery in Kinderhook and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by James Esber and Jane Fine at the Re-Institute in Millerton.

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Mike Kelley’s Ectoplasm Photographs.

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

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

Because I approach all of my work through drawing, I’m drawn to any medium that expands or challenges the boundaries of what drawing can be.

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

I’m listening to a lot of dungeon synth specifically Warlock Corpse (Труп Колдуна).

What’s a book that changed your life?

I read Ways of Seeing by John Berger my freshman year of college and it had a huge impact on my understanding of art.

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

Dead Man directed by Jim Jarmusch.

❤

Kyle Kogut (b. 1990 Philadelphia, PA) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in drawing and sculpture. Raised a devout Roman Catholic and the son of an auto mechanic, Kogut's work uses the symbols of the Occult and Christianity, art historical motifs, icons of pop culture, and the ubiquitous iconography of brand logos to dissect the politics of American zealotry, myth, and despair. Kogut graduated with an MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art multidisciplinary program at MICA in 2016. He received his BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2012. His work has been included in group shows nationally and has had solo and two person exhibitions in Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, College Park MD, Detroit, Richmond, New York City, and Wilmington NC. Kogut was a member of FJORD in Philadelphia, attended residencies at the Anderson at VCU in 2019, Wassaic Project in 2022, and ChaNorth and Vermont Studio Center in 2026. He currently resides in Norfolk, VA serving as an Assistant Professor of Drawing and Foundations at Old Dominion University.

For more about Kyle Kogut, go to his website and find him on Instagram.

Short Answer Sunday: Barbara Weissberger

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!

Ladies!* This week, I’m super psyched to share a Short Answer Sunday with Barbara Weissberger. I was introduced to Barbara’s work when we were both included in a group show at Ada Gallery last year, and then I got to see her absolutely stunning solo show “Potato Poems” at the gallery in February. I’ve noted over the years that I feel intensely drawn to photographic imagery when it crosses into the world of sculpture, and Barbara’s quilted collages are no exception (although they are obviously exceptional).

In her recent work, Barbara combines photographs printed on fabric with a whole host of other materials, including but not limited to: jeans, bras, thread, grommets. Though wall-based, their quirky, irregular silhouettes place them in the world of objects for me, as do the many small sprouts of thread that protrude out of the surface like errant hairs (a detail that you might miss if viewing on the screen). While the human body may not be overtly present, the cropped and fragmented images of potatoes (or other household items) stand in as surrogates. Similarly evocative of absent humans, many of the fabrics retain a contextual reminder that they were once intimately worn by somebody, somewhere. Although maybe tinged with sadness (I like my feelings complex and nuanced), they're also silly, obsessive, sensitive, beautiful and I love the way Barbara’s work transforms the ordinary into the unexpected. I’m reminded that a sense of absurdity is one of my favorite characteristics in an artwork (in people, too, tbh) and Barbara’s work has this in abundance.

Of course, Barbara’s Short Answer Sunday is as smart, fantastic and fun as her work, so get to it! For more about Barbara Weissberger, find her on her website and Instagram.

xo, Lauren

*using this as a gender neutral

Name: Barbara Weissberger
Occupation: Artist / Teaching Professor Emerita
Astrological data: The one with scales
Hometown: Pittsburgh
Current location: Montana (my sometimes hometown)

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

Galleries and museums, art press, friends

An artwork that makes you laugh?

Almost any Fischli and Weiss

FISCHLI/WEISS, Quiet Afternoon,1984, C-print 11⅞ × 8 inches
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An artwork that makes you cry?

Tony Feher’s Magnolia

Most underrated artist?

Too many to name just one but I’ll say Helen Chadwick

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

Calder’s Circus

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

Lately Tony Feher

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

Dorothea Tanning, Étreinte

Dorothea Tanning, Étreinte, 1969, Wool flannel and fake fur stuffed with wool, 2 parts: 40 x 40 1/2 x 19 in. and 40 x 19 x 13 in.
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What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

Ridiculous, smart, heady, and embodied, all at the same time

Erotic artwork? (Ed. note: this is a multiple choice question)

Yes: ✅

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

Perhaps easier to say what is a not-artwork that looks like art

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

Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes

What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?

I can’t say because many of the artworks I have hated I came to love years later

Most insane art piece?

Jay DeFeo’s Chance Landscape or any of the pieces that come out of her obsession with her dental bridge. Also, my obsession with her obsession with her dental bridge.

Jay deFeo, Traveling Portrait (Chance Landscape), 1974, photo collage with acrylic and glue on paperboard, 14 1/2 x 19 inches
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Fav monograph or art book?

That’s a tough one, so many, Philip Guston Now

Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

Tinworks Art, an incredible non-profit space in Bozeman

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Museum: Marcel Duchamp, MoMA
Gallery: Fellowship 26, Silver Eye

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa

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

Velázquez, Las Meninas. And I’d like to have a chance to wear Lygia Clark’s Óculos

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

So many. Right now, blue jeans that I source from thrift stores for my photoquilts

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

My white noise machine

What’s a book that changed your life?

Ali Smith’s Artful

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

Robert Duncan, The Opening of the Field, especially the opening poem, Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow

❤

Barbara Weissberger lives and works in Pittsburgh and sometimes in Montana. Her work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and numerous residencies including MacDowell, Yaddo, Ragdale, Bogliasco, Camargo, the Drawing Center Open Sessions, Ucross, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Montana Artists Refuge. Her work has been exhibited at such venues as PS1/MoMA, White Columns, The Drawing Center, Project Artspace, PS 122, NYC; ADA Gallery, Richmond; Catskill Artspace, Livingston Manor; Hallwalls, Buffalo; Gridspace, Brooklyn; Silver Eye, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; and The Missoula Art Museum, Missoula. Media includes Fraction Magazine, Femme Art Review and The Heavy Collective. Her poetry has appeared in Contact Sheet and is forthcoming in Salt Hill. She is part of the collaborative duo ALDRICH + WEISSBERGER. She received an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute and is Teaching Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh

For more on Barbara Weissberger, go to her website and find her on Instagram.

Short Answer Sunday: Ryan Balmer

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!

This week I’m straying from my comfort zone just a bit to share a Short Answer Sunday with Berlin-based cultural historian and tour guide Ryan Balmer. I first met Ryan in 2023 when teaching the first iteration of my study abroad class, The Art and History of Berlin. Prior to this trip, I had never (voluntarily) taken a legit guided tour of any city, memorial or cultural institution (for this, I’ll let the blame rest on the glorious trifecta of wanting to make my own meaning from experience + not being predisposed to group activities + trying to avoid looking like a tourist). In retrospect, this was silly and undeniably my loss. I have since accepted that having a guide, especially one like Ryan, especially in a city like Berlin, provides an essential framework (factual and nuanced) for gaining a better understanding of a location in a relatively short window of time.

If you can take a tour with Ryan in Berlin or thereabouts, you absolutely should (book ahead, he is popular!), but I’m guessing most people will first come across him through his Instagram, where he shares reels, usually about Berlin/German history or relevant current events.  These smart, densely-packed fragments often expose overlooked stories and connect small details to larger historical narratives. His research and observations are thought-provoking and authentic, delivered with a top-notch sense of storytelling, no-nonsense gravitas and just the right combination of grit, empathy and humor. And I also just genuinely enjoy Ryan’s perspectives on all things aesthetic (from street art to museum/gallery shows, music, architecture, you name it) so I’m extra thrilled for this Short Answer Sunday. For more about Ryan Balmer, follow him on Instagram @berlin_reguided.
xo, Lauren

Name: Ryan Balmer
Occupation: Cultural historian and tour guide
Astrological data: Taurus
Hometown: Dundee, Scotland
Current location: Berlin, Germany

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

I’m pretty lucky to live in a city that has a very large number art museums and galleries. I don’t get to check them out as much as I used to (life gets in the way) but I still manage to catch a lot of new stuff - Gallery Judin and Max Hetzler both have galleries in my neighbourhood, for example

An artwork that makes you laugh?

Pipilotti Rist - ‘Ever is Over All’

Pipilotti Rist, Ever is Over All,1997 (still)
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An artwork that makes you cry?

Gerhard Richter - ‘Aunt Marianne’

Most underrated artist?

My pal Scott Duncan

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

Anything by Carus (one of the big German romantics.) I’d feel quite peaceful in one of his gradient-heavy landscapes

Carl Gustav Carus, Tintern Abbey, oil on canvas, 24.2 x 36 in.
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An artist whose work you can’t stop thinking about?

Jeremy Deller, specifically ‘Everybody in the Place’. It made me rethink how cultural history should be taught

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

James Turrell’s light field in Naoshima, Japan

What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

Immediacy

Erotic artwork? (Ed. note: this is a multiple choice question)

Yes: ✅

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

This caramel pastry thing I ate last week in Prague. Simultaneously beautiful and diabolical

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

Not sure about art, but I really enjoyed ‘Dragged Across Concrete’ even though it seems to have very sketchy politics

What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?

Anything by Miro (although I’m not exactly secretive about it - I’ve been hater for years)

Most insane art piece?

I recently saw Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’ and the level of intricacy blew me away. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days

Christian Marclay, The Clock, 2010, single-channel video installation
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Fav monograph or art book?

I was recently given a book by Bogdan Bogdanović where he discusses the anti-fascist memorials that he built across Yugoslavia. It’s a banger.

Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

Gropius Bau

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Graciela Iturbide - Eyes to Fly With at the CO in Berlin

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

I’ve never been to Mexico and I’d like to see some of the large-scale Rivera stuff

What’s a book that changed your life?

Kindness of Women by JG Ballard (but if I was asked tomorrow, I may well choose another Ballard book)

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

I’ve been heavily pushing the ‘History of Sound’ on to anyone who’d listen. It’s quite recent and quite lovely

❤

Ryan Balmer studied at the University of Glasgow and moved to Berlin without much of a plan in 2008.

For more about Ryan, find him on Instagram.

 

Short Answer Sunday: Mariah Anne Johnson

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!

An artist’s studio research is often described as a practice, and while I’ve heard some grumble about this in the past, I feel that it’s a pretty apt descriptor for what an artist actually does in the studio. Perhaps it is an unpopular opinion, but I think being an artist is yoked to the action of making, showing up on a regular basis, researching through making, trying, failing, improving and turning nothings into somethings, again and again and again (thinking is good, but it’s not enough). The ‘success’ here is embedded in the showing up and making of the work, not in any potential financial compensation or critical acclaim (and the trick is to keep showing up with honesty, integrity and humility even if any of these external factors actually do occur). I see a sincere embodiment of this type of practice in Mariah Anne Johnson’s inspiring work.

Playful and liberating, but also consistent and devoted, Mariah’s work leans heavily into landscape and often the landscape of the domestic realm. The home (and its accoutrements), the neighborhood, the mundane ephemera of the household and the inhabitants of these spaces, become subject, media and content for creation. Citing her body as a primary tool of her practice, she takes this to the max by using all of her senses, as well as the physical dimensions of her body to interpret, explore and organize the world around her. Mariah’s work is not beholden to a singular media and takes many forms (her chromatic bedsheet installations were the first that I fell hard for, but today I am equally enamored with her suspended cardboard constructions, her aesthetically arranged collections of found scraps and her videos of movement sequences).

I was first introduced to Mariah’s work many years ago through her very smart artist-run space, Porch Projects, which existed in Washington, DC for two years in the early 2010s (I’ve already used the SAS platform to expound on my love for artist-run exhibition spaces and I’m not afraid to do it again). Mariah’s curation for Porch Projects (arguably an art piece in and of itself) disrupted traditional notions of media and installation, often creating unique conversations between the various artists’ work, as well as the space of the home (more about the amazing history of the DC artist-run scene past & present can be found here).

Not surprising even a little bit, Mariah has given us another gem of a Short Answer Sunday. Hope you enjoy! For more about Mariah Anne Johnson and her work, take a look at her website and follow her on Instagram.
xo, Lauren

Name: Mariah Anne Johnson
Occupation: artist
Astrological data: Taurus
Hometown: Little Rock, Arkansas
Current location: Los Angeles, California

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

Seeing their work in exhibitions.

An artwork that makes you laugh?

Jan Erichsen’s performative sculpture videos on Instagram.

Klara Liden’s video Untitled (Trashcan) that I saw in the Julia Stoschek Foundation exhibition in Los Angeles.

An artwork that makes you cry?

I saw the Monuments exhibition at MOCA (of works shown with and in some cases made about removed Confederate statues and memorials) just before it closed. I had a moment of shock and sadness when I rounded a corner and saw a familiar place (front steps of Little Rock Central High School) in one of Jon Henry’s Strange Fruit photographs. This exhibition continues to resonate, with the recent actions against voting rights in Louisiana, Tennessee, etc. I wish those who need to see it would.

Most underrated artist?

The female ones!

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

Monet’s house and garden in Giverny, France. I feel this should count as an artwork.

Maison et jardins de Claude Monet, Giverny
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An artist whose work you can’t stop thinking about?

I have been thinking a lot about Louise Nevelson recently. Last year I read the biography of her by Laurie Wilson, and my hometown art museum (Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts) had an exhibition of her work that I got to see on a trip to visit my folks. I also saw an exhibition of her small collages a few years ago that has stuck with me. Her relentless pursuit of her own vision, consequences be damned, is inspiring.

Louise Nevelson, Untitled, 1969, cardboard, paper and sandpaper collage on board, 20 x 16 in.
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An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

Open Window, Collioure, by Henri Matisse (1905). This painting lives at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. I used to visit it often when I lived there.

Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, 21 3/4 × 18 1/8 in.
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What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

When I was teaching, I talked to students about “rewarding the viewer,” giving those who spend the time to look at your work a reason to do so, perhaps inviting them to look longer and closer. I suppose that’s what I appreciate in a work, and I try to reciprocate by being generous with my time and my senses, really paying attention when I am present to experience a work.

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

Many of Sam Scharf’s works. I especially love his benches and his PVC pipe pieces, the way they try so hard to fit into the vernacular built environment around them, but their craft, thought, and care give them away.

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

I really love Monet. The more I have learned about him in recent years, the more I appreciate his work and his practice as an example to follow. Set me down in the middle of Musee de l’Orangerie in Paris, and let me be.

What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?

I don’t like Renoir too much.

I didn’t enjoy the Tala Madani exhibition at MOCA a few years ago. The room after room of huge smeary paintings irritated me! I did enjoy her videos in the same exhibition, and I wish they had not seemed like a side project or secondary practice.

Most insane art piece?

The earthworks from the 1970’s. Gordon Matta-Clark slicing up houses. The Vienna Actionist performances. James Turrell’s Roden Crater.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974 (SFMOMA) © Succession of Gordon Matta-Clark and Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark
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Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

Joan and Monte Vista Projects in the Bendix Building downtown are always good. So are Chris Sharp Gallery and Guerrero Gallery.

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Over the past week I have caught the last day of several exhibitions. I especially loved Neighborhood Ecology at the Brand Library & Gallery in Glendale, CA (included two amazing Megan Mueller wall installations, a beautiful imaginary community made from wood scraps by Susan Feldman, and a moving short film by Jazmin Garcia); and Roksana Pirouzmand’s everything was once something else (the land was the sea, the sea was the land) at Joan, a meditation on the relationship between the elements and our bodies, and bringing up the next generation inside this relationship.

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Solo keyboard works by J.S. Bach.

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

At the moment I am excited by sketchbooks, colored pencils, and water activated tape. I am not an expert about any of these materials, but I love them and use them daily.

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

Sofiane Pamart’s Planet Gold album. John Adams’ Road Movies album.

What’s a book that changed your life?

I really love Claudio Magris’ Danube, as well as the travel writing of Cees Nooteboom. Their mapping of personal experience, poetry, literature, and history onto place probably informs my current work in ways I haven’t thought about. Plus, they are both just beautiful writers.

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

Everyone should read Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake trilogy. But not at bedtime.

❤

Mariah Anne Johnson explores bodily experience in the landscape through drawing and movement. She creates videos, installations, and works on paper from the knowledge she collects through these processes. Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, she studied art and literature at Rice University while performing with Rice Dance Theater, earning her MFA from the University of Illinois (2006). Recent projects include a residency and video installation at Zaratan Arte Contemporânea (Lisbon); participation in the 29th Recontres Internationales Traverse in Toulouse, France; inclusion in Los Outsiders’ Chai’n Brai Laika Daimon (Laredo and Austin, Texas); and an ongoing project about her neighborhood, Rhythms Around Us. She has received the Riddergade Fellowship from Viborg Kunsthal (Denmark) and performed with Hayley Cutler’s darlingdance. She lives with her family in Los Angeles.

Short Answer Sunday: Nikki Painter

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!

Nikki Painter is a good friend and an artist whose work & practice I absolutely revere. She also happens to be one of my Art Habit blogging co-conspirators and the instigator of our artist support group (every artist should really have one of these btw), so I’m especially excited to feature her here for a Short Answer Sunday.

Ranging in scale from intimate to immersive, Nikki’s work takes the form of drawing, painting, collage and sculptural installation. In her recent work, she creates invented environments that feature the garden as subject. In conjunction with a deep investigation into pattern and color, Nikki’s gardens are dynamic, emotive and optical. Deceptive from a distance (from afar elements of her drawings may appear printed), a close inspection reveals that the graphic patterns and imagery are laboriously drawn, cut out and layered by hand. Nikki and I share a love of working on and with paper, as both a surface and also for its sculptural capacities.

I’ve just returned to the US from Berlin and remain in that strange liminal (sorry, usually I try to avoid this word due to art-speak overuse, but in this case it really is the best choice) headspace when one has just traveled from one place to another. I’m seeing evidence of my time there everywhere, from my sunburnt toes to the leek scape in my garden that resembles the TV Tower. Although I’m most definitely influenced by recent experiences, I don’t think it’s off base to say that Nikki’s work evokes a Berlin-in-springtime aesthetic, especially with the interplay of floral forms, grids and stripes that recall the city’s symbiosis of wild, resilient flora next to the rectilinear grid of the plattenbau and other urban structures. Nikki’s botanicals remind me there’s little I love more in a city than vigorous weedy blooms that sprout upwards from cracks in the sidewalk. When looking at Nikki’s work, I’m also reminded of the garden as sanctuary, its regimen an incantation for hope during times of great difficulty (highly recommend checking out Kenneth Helphand’s book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime).

Once again, I just want to voice how exciting it is for me that this interview process allows for so much discovery in spite of being a relatively casual thing. I can know someone well and still learn new things about their interests (seriously, every time I open up a new Google form response, it feels like my birthday). I loved Nikki’s Short Answer Sunday and I know that you will, too. For more about Nikki and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram (and make a plan to go see her upcoming solo show at Foyer in November)!
xo, Lauren

Name: Nikki Painter
Occupation: artist
Astrological data: Privileged info
Hometown: Roanoke, VA
Current location: Richmond, VA

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

Listening to podcasts, reading art magazines/publications

An artwork that makes you laugh?

work by Red Grooms

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

Judy Pfaff

Judy Pfaff, installation view of Picking up the Pieces, Sarasota Art Museum, Sarasota, FL, 2023
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What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

surprise, humor, absurdity, beauty

Erotic artwork? (Ed. note: this is a multiple choice question)

Yes: ✅

What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?

There is a sculpture at VMFA that I have a love/hate relationship with. Whenever I think of it, my first reaction is “Ugh, ew,” but then I also immediately think “Oh, I hope that thing is on view the next time I am there, I really want to see it again!” I can’t remember the artist right now, but it is a head, and it is very late ‘70s/’80s.

Most insane art piece?

Gregory Barsamian sculptures

Gregory Barsmian, Artifact, 2010. Steel, glass, polyurethane foam, motor, strobe lights

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Fav monograph or art book?

Currently: “With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art”

Fav museum or gallery in your current location?

VMFA and Foyer

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

a comprehensive Louise Nevelson retrospective

What’s a book that changed your life?

An M.C. Escher book a teacher showed me when I was in fourth grade

❤

Nikki Painter is a Virginia artist whose mixed-media works are inspired by the natural world. She has had solo shows at Second Street Gallery, Shockoe Artspace, COOP Gallery, and Purdue University's Rueff Gallery, among others. Her work has been part of numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, the Taubman Museum, and the Daegu Arts Center in South Korea. Painter has attended artist residencies in Virginia, Vermont, Wyoming, Georgia, and Florida. Her work is part of many private collections and public collections including those of: Notre Dame of Maryland University, Capital One, and the Katzen Museum. In 2022, she was awarded a Fellowship for Works on Paper by the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She resides in suburban Richmond with her husband and a growing collection of houseplants.

Find out more about Nikki on her website and on Instagram.