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!
Everything that I’ve ever seen Marissa Long make is awesome. Go to her website and you will see with your own eyes that I’m not exaggerating, not even a little bit. Marissa works with photography, sculpture, drawing, video and installation, all while maintaining a consistently high level of visual and conceptual rigor. In fact, I struggle to think of many other artists who shift across visual art forms so skillfully (it bears emphasis that she makes this look easy, when it is, in fact, not easy). Marissa’s recent sculptural work pairs elaborate, artist-made cast resin objects with photographs, some of which are found or altered. The cast objects often become framing devices which take on a range of unconventional forms--sometimes chunky rococo sarcophagi, other times droopy intestinal flowers—and house mysterious and tender images that evoke impermanence, distance, grief, and longing.
Marissa has a discerning eye for compositional drama. She composes materials and images to achieve contrasts in scale, value, color and texture that metamorphize into other types of oppositions, seduction/repulsion, hiding/revealing, abundance/scarcity, decomposition/rebirth (if you watch the David Altmejd video that Marissa shared below, you will hear his thoughts on how tension generates energy). Both eerie and exceedingly beautiful, her work is precise, but not at all simple, striking just the right balance between information given and information withheld.
Marissa brings the same discerning eye to her curation at Art Enables, a DC non-profit that supports artists with disabilities. I regularly look through the Art Enables’ website (and Instagram) and I’m constantly blown away by the resident artists’ work as well as the stellar line-up of visiting artists who exhibit there. The current show with the excellent title Shrimps on the Mountain has repeatedly captivated me!
As you soon will learn from her Short Answer Sunday, Marissa rocks. The generosity of her responses is unparalleled and I am so inspired by all of the artists she mentions, as well as her commentary!
xo, Lauren
Name: Marissa Long
Occupation: Gallery Director & Curator at Art Enables
Astrological data: Virgo (Capricorn moon + Scorpio rising, whatever that means!)
Hometown: Reading, PA
Current location: Arlington, VA
Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?
Through galleries and museums, reading, and friends, mostly.
An artwork that makes you laugh?
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Maurice Barnes, Visit to the Clown Cemetery, 2025, |
Film and music tend to make me cry the most. Recently in film: Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. So brilliantly, delicately layered, plus the power of art to connect people when difficult emotions interfere. Charlotte Wells' Aftersun also really got me.
In music: I saw several artists with disabilities perform at a symposium last year through Studio Route 29’s Beauty Music program and embarrassingly could not stop crying throughout – it was so cool, and joyful, and affirming.
I’ve cried several times seeing Aldous Harding play. I love her in general but something about the beauty and mystery of her music paired with her gestures and often weird, intense facial expressions is so moving to me and I find it hard to describe why. I love this feeling – when I can’t fully analyze or unpack why I’m deeply moved by something.
Wait, one more! A book: Percival Everett’s Telephone. The ending of several others of his books had made me teary before I read this one, and as I was approaching the last page, I was thinking to myself that I didn’t see how that could happen again with the amount of text left – a couple paragraphs. Wrong! Totally undone by the last sentence. Does this answer make me seem like I’m crying all the time?? lol
Most underrated artist?
Cheating a little here, but I’m going to say all the artists of Art Enables. Progressive studios like Art Enables exist because artists with disabilities don’t get the same opportunities and recognition as many other artists, when in fact they’re doing some of the most interesting things you will find in the art world. Their work constantly surprises and thrills me, and there’s such a wide range of styles and ways of seeing happening here. I really implore everyone to visit, check out, follow Art Enables, but I feel extra strongly about other artists doing so. I’m biased in multiple directions here, but I do find it hard to imagine that other artists won’t find at least one artist at Art Enables who really speaks to them.
Wow, hard to answer. Without overthinking it, I’d be happy to be in Rae Klein’s Blue Sphinx for a week. I feel like she’s bounding and floating through magical landscapes, just inhabiting her power. No stress, chill confidence, peeking into other dimensions, drinking raindrops from flowers.
Nickola Pottinger. Her use of materials in her sculptures is very compelling. I’d like to use materials in this more painterly, organic way. Her sculptures are like talismans or totems – they feel spiritual but so deeply physical at the same time. And Stella Waitzkin. Similar theme here, re: materials. Her resin works are so much more painterly and raw than the way I work. I’d like to push myself to work more like this.
An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?
An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?
What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?
I love the combination of beautiful and unsettling or even grotesque elements, and I also really swoon over subtlety. When something sits at JUST the right level of scrutability that you might almost miss but it quietly, dramatically alters the meaning of the piece – I am slayed. Also: materiality forever. That was three things.
Erotic artwork? (editor's note: this is a multiple choice question)
Erotic artwork? (editor's note: this is a multiple choice question)
Other: ✅ Sure! Depends what it is, I guess.
What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?
Photos of people’s derpy Easter lamb cakes online. Love. Current interest.
What's an artwork that you suspect that you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?
I think I mostly just like what I like these days, although often I’m parsing out what I’m responding to in a work vs. what I recognize as complicated, or feel is unsuccessful, or lazy, or even offensive. I tend to really enjoy that analysis, even if a piece is, like, 90% terrible or infuriating!
What's an artwork that you secretly hate?
I once worked with someone who owned one of Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pig skins. This was from his controversial “art farm” project where he tattooed live pigs. They were supposedly sedated during the process and treated very humanely, etc., although I believe he moved the project to China because animal welfare laws were more lax there. The pigs were shown live in galleries and not skinned until they died of natural causes, I think. If they were saved from slaughter because of this project, great. But overall, I’m just not into it, regardless of any cultural commentary. I want all factory-farmed animals to be set free in sanctuaries without Wim Delvoye drugging and tattooing them first.
I don’t know if this is the MOST insane piece, but the complexity of David Altmejd installations like “The Heart is a Werewolf” are wild to me.
This is so hard to answer but in recent years, I’ve really loved Sara Cwynar’s Glass Life. And Pia Paulina-Guilmoth’s Flowers Drink the River. I can’t believe some of these images by Guilmoth exist.
Most insane art piece?
Fav monograph or art book?
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| Pia Paulina Guilmoth, we make a flower, 2022 Image Source |
Last exhibition you saw irl?
All of the incredible booths at the Outsider Art Fair
Allison Schulnik’s Eager (love all of her work so much)
An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?
An artwork that you'd like to see before you die?
Stretching the parameters of this question, but I’d like to see as many cathedrals around the world as I can. I’m not religious, but I am very drawn to their kind of sacred imagery and vast, dramatic, spaces. Visiting cathedrals is one of my favorite things to do in life. They’re like deeply experiential museums. Discovering what’s in all of the different spaces and the history of the structure and everything in it is incredible to me. The ultimate is during the day when there’s an organ player practicing in intense stop-and-start spurts. It makes me so happy.
What art material do you love to nerd out on?
Resin and other mold-making and casting materials. I’ve done a lot of casting in the last 8 years or so and these materials are so complex. So many different types, different ways to exploit them, so many tricky things to figure out in terms of what materials can be combined. When I get to talk to a fellow mold-maker/caster, I feel the most excitement I’ve experienced discussing any medium.
What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?
I have to admit that questions like these really stall me. I consume a lot of all of these things and I love talking about them, but picking just one or even a few feels impossible! So, these probably aren’t my platonic ideal answers, but I’m going to mention Percival Everett again (an author, not a book) because I’m always stumping for him. My faves are Telephone, as mentioned, So Much Blue, Erasure, The Trees and his more recent James was also great. Some of these books can be intense and deal with trauma but are also profound and extremely funny (some others are primarily just funny and absurd, too), and he’s always doing interesting structural things. There are three different versions of “Telephone” out in the world with no indication other than tiny differences in the cover art! So you might read a slightly different version of the book than I did. He’s the coolest.
Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2013 doc The Act of Killing and its 2014 companion film The Look of Silence also stand out to me as important works that people should know. I couldn’t stop thinking or talking about these for months after I saw them and clearly I still can’t. These are also very intense – they concern the mass killings in Indonesia in the 60’s. “Death squads” killed over a million alleged communists, but a lot of this was just racial profiling. The first film follows some of the men who led the squads. At the time of filming, these people were still in power, their actions had not been publicly condemned. The director asks them to participate in musical re-enactments of some of the killings they perpetrated. At first, they’re very eager to do this – they’re proud and boastful, they feel like movie stars glorifying what they think of as their achievements. But they’re re-enacting scenes as both themselves and as their victims, having to reckon with their actions from a different perspective for the first time. The Look of Silence is a more quiet but equally profound extension of this story. After these films came out, they actually changed the culture of the country and the way the genocide is acknowledged. I just wanted to end my Short Answer Sunday on a really fun note.
❤
Marissa Long is the Gallery Director & Curator at Art Enables - an organization that supports the creative and professional growth of artists with disabilities and spotlights their valuable contributions to the arts - where she has curated over 60 exhibitions including Art Enables artists and visiting artists from around the country. Recent external collaborations include “ALIAS” at the Corcoran School of Art at GW, and “Forward” in collaboration with Amtrak at Union Station. As an artist, Long works across mediums including sculpture, photography, drawing, and installation, exploring themes of loss, transformation, connection, and perception. Notable solo and 2-person exhibitions include "Blister Pearl" at MoCA Arlington (2023), “Instruction Manual” at NoVA’s AFA Gallery (2020), Borrowed From Dust" (MoCA Arlington, 2019) and "Luminiferous Aether" at Transformer [2017]. Long holds an BFA from The Corcoran School of Art and Design (2006). She lives and works in the DMV Metro area.
Get to know more about Marissa and her work on Instagram and on her website.
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