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.