Short Answer Sunday: Marissa Long

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?

Maurice Barnes (of Art Enables), Visit to the Clown Cemetery. The cemetery is just outside some circus tents. The clowns are crying but the non-clown people are laughing because – clowns?! So many of the details in Maurice’s works make me laugh.  

 

Maurice Barnes, Visit to the Clown Cemetery, 2025,
colored pencil and ink on paper, 12 x 9 in
Image Source

An artwork that makes you cry?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

Most insane art piece?

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.

Fav monograph or art book?

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.

PPG notable: the glittering spiderweb photo on this page and the horse and burning house here

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

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Allison Schulnik’s Eager (love all of her work so much)

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

Sheila Heti's Pure Color

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.

6 + 1 Questions with Marie B. Gauthiez

In Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, author Annalee Newitz writes about the Neolithic city of Çatalhöyük, one of the world’s oldest urban areas. Newitz unravels the relationship between personal identity and place, as well as public and private iterations of the self. According to Newitz, prior to settling down, nomadic Homo sapiens didn’t have a real conception of privacy. Identity was defined by one’s ancestral lineage rather than ties to a specific location. The aesthetic and symbolic components within the structure of this ancient city are also fascinating. Buried in the plastered walls are the skulls, teeth and claws of wild animals, some protruding out of the plaster and painted in bright colors. Over the course of their inhabitation, the homes within the city were perpetually cared for and rebuilt, each reconstruction burying the past under new layers of plaster, ash and clay. The walls and floors of the city are like palimpsests, hiding and revealing narratives of ancient human life.

I find compelling visual and conceptual similarities between Marie B. Gauthiez’ installation Self-portrait as palimpsest and Newitz’ description of Çatalhöyük. For one, Gauthiez’ work also investigates the relationship between identity and place, personal history and memory, using the wall as a metaphor to understand self-hood. Not just any wall, Gauthiez’ installation evokes a living space, albeit a deconstructed one. Additionally, Self-portrait as palimpsest incorporates material both on the surface of and within the constructed walls. Operating as a three-dimensional painting that references both the hard-edged clarity of geometric abstraction and an ecstatic material glut associated with the expanded field of painting, Gauthiez’ work uses the language of home renovation to explore how the physical boundaries that surround us can hold up a mirror to who we are.

Gauthiez’ materials list is expansive. In her work, traditional painting elements coincide with materials associated with home construction and interior décor. Self-portrait as palimpsest uses drywall, wooden studs, metal gridwall panels, plaster and latex paint aesthetically as well as contextually, and the materials are exposed rather than hidden. Expanses of stained canvas, wallpaper and fabric curtains create a layered, tactile (yet somehow still ephemeral) facade. Glazed ceramic shards are tucked within the nooks and crannies and fragments of patterns and images peer out of crumbling holes in the drywall. More often than not, the shallow windows within the piece give way to more walls underneath. Although her work does not veer head-on into the space of performance (thinking here of Corin Hewitt’s 2013 performative installation, The Hedge, at The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, where Hewitt continued to manipulate the installation throughout the duration of the show), Gauthiez’ work resists stillness and promotes a kind of close, active looking, both encouraging and rewarding our efforts to look around and through, up and down, outward and inward. 

Marie B. Gauthiez completed her MFA from American University in May 2024. Her thesis work was recently exhibited in Surface Tension: The Visible and the Hidden at The Katzen Museum at American University and in Threads at 52 O Street Open Studios in Washington, DC. 👇Read the interview for more about Marie and her upcoming projects👇 💐Thanks a million to Marie, for sharing this peek into your mind and studio practice!!💐

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Marie B. Gauthiez, Self-portrait as palimpsest, mixed media installation, 2024
Photo credit: Pete Duvall

 

1.  What’s your sign? If you are astrologically inclined, feel free to give your Sun/Moon/Rising. Do you identify with the characteristics of your sign(s)?
 
I am Capricorn, with the moon in Sagittarius, and rising Capricorn. I have always been fascinated by astrology, but I don’t know that much about it. When I was a child, my aunt gave me a little book on Capricorns that explained all the characteristics of the sign. I poured over it, thinking it held answers to so many questions. I am practical, sensitive, ambitious, enthusiastic, persistent, and protective. One thing that comes up is the idea that within my Rising in Capricorn “you feel like something is missing, and you won’t stop searching for it”. This is uncanny because this is truly how I feel about my practice. I am actively searching through the work. I like the idea that we are ruled by those bigger bodies that are planets and that it only shows our interconnectedness to the vast universe, but I also believe in our own agency and psychological strength to redress our negative traits. 

 

Marie B. Gauthiez, Self-portrait as palimpsest (detail), mixed media installation, 2024
Photo credit: Pete Duvall

2.  What is your morning routine?

I have always been amazed by the American idea of the “miracle morning”. Get up at 5 am every morning and be super productive. Sadly, it doesn’t work for me. I just have to be productive during normal sun hours! My ideal morning is tea while my kids have breakfast, shower and pack lunches, sending kids off to school with good vibes, and arriving at the studio by 9:15 am. Nothing fancy or athletic. I tried Julia Cameron’s morning pages for a while but it was just too brutal to force myself to get up early enough to write in peace.

 

Marie B. Gauthiez, Self-portrait as palimpsest (detail), mixed media installation, 2024

 
3. Have you ever cried in front of an artwork? If so, what was it?

That happened to me last week! I went to the National Portrait Gallery with two of my MFA colleagues, Pooja Campbell and Connor Gagne, and my professor Kyle Hackett. We wandered in the Fold and Self-taught Art Galleries. Connor and I stopped in front of a strange sculpture of stuffed denim pants, bucket with holes in lieu of head, torso missing, seating on a rugged wooden chair. From afar, it was unassuming. The wall text however gave it a context that made us reevaluate the work: The artist, Hawkins Bolden (1914-2005) was blinded in a childhood accident. He took to sculpting, creating scarecrow-like sentinels to protect the family’s vegetable garden. It triggered so many emotions in my heart and tears came up. I imagined this child feeling the world with his hands, building up shapes through touch but also through his visual memories. Instead of recoiling from making, he hung to his creativity with purpose: protecting. As an artist, I wonder how do you see the world through your hands? As a parent, I can only imagine the tragedy of raising a blind child, the worry, the adjustment, the loss. It was amazing to enter his world for just a little bit through those projections. I admire artists that can trigger emotional reactions and transport you instantly. It just goes to show how connected and empathetic humans are and it is a “movement” that is worth working towards. I wonder if his art should be experienced only by touch. Are we restricted by our visual sense?

 
 
Gauthiez' photo of Hawkins Bolden's Untitled, 1987
 
 

4. What are you reading now? (You can also include what you’ve read lately, as well as what you are listening to, watching, etc.)

I am reading too many books at once. Books are emotional support objects for me. I have books in different places for different activities. Amy Sillman’s collection of essays called “faux pas” is currently in the bag that I carry every day. I am enjoying her witty prose so much and I am mining the book for insight and wisdom. It is also very informative, and I am using it for the classes I teach at the Washington Studio School. It took me time to get into “The Great Believers” by Rebecca Makkai but I really enjoyed the second half. This fiction novel is about the AIDS crisis in Chicago, about chasing a hypothetical art collection and an estranged daughter. It is heavy, but essential to remember how inhumane the US were to the gay community as the disease started infecting people. The human losses were astounding, the agony implacable, the shame so thick. The novel also follows a photographer who documents the epidemic and who later becomes a super star in the art world of the 2000’s. I liked that the writer included this character as I believe artists are important witnesses of our societies and can shift mentalities through their works. I admire the bravery it demands. I just started “Wrong is not my name” by Erica N. Cardwell which weaves personal memoirs and art criticism through the works of Black artists. She explores loss and the healing powers of art through art, which really speaks to my own practice. Through her writing style, I feel very grounded in her experience. Can’t wait to read more!

 

Marie B. Gauthiez, Self-portrait as palimpsest (detail), mixed media installation, 2024

 

 
5.  Tell us four truths about yourself and one lie:



         a. I was born in France
         b. I love open water scuba diving
         c. Hypnosis helped me overcome my fear of driving
         d. I met the Balinese healer from “Eat, Pray, Love”
         e. His predictions all came true

 

Marie B. Gauthiez, Wall 2, Mixed media on wood panel and metal, 2024
Photo credit: Pete Duvall

 
6. This is the wild card question. You have a lot of experience teaching art to children. Has this experience impacted your personal work at all? How so?

In 2019, my friend Patricia Baca invited to me teach at her studio called Mango Street in Washington DC. It triggered a love of visual research and an interest in pedagogy. I feel it is my duty to pass on my love of art and my reverence for the process. I remember teaching a class on Louise Bourgeois to a group of elementary kids. I showed them how she drew spirals, either with a starting point from the inside or from the outside. It was a simple practice exercise. A mom later told me that her son recreated the activity for his birthday party because he was so excited about what he learned. The fact that a connection could travel all the way from Bourgeois’s own work, to how I personally responded to it, down to that kid’s birthday party amazed me. You can learn from the best teachers without even have met them. Observe the work, understand it, make it your own. More than anything, I enjoy the fact that I can talk about art with my own two children. They just want to draw like they want, what they want and when they want (aka back off mommy!). Drawing is play to them, freedom and therapy. They are unencumbered by theory and rules. I like that. They just need supplies and encouragement. We spend so much time as adult-artists wrestling with rigid voices in our heads or trying to recreate this self-generated creativity that I don’t want to force anything on them. Becoming a mom and experiencing the pandemic with two young children stuck at home helped me understand how crucial MAKING was to me and that the practice had to adjust to the environment, not the other way around. It was never about the time or the space, all those bad excuses, it was always about the will, the desire, the survival. I think about that a lot.

 
 

Marie B. Gauthiez, Wall Fragments, mixed media installation (in dialog with Lindsay Mueller’s drawings), 2024
Photo credit: Pete Duvall

7. What other artist(s) would you like to see answer these questions?

Reem Bassous
Kyle Hackett
Julia Reising
Cora Olson
Patricia Baca

 
Not really an official question, but do you have anything else you’d like to share? Anything you’re excited about in the studio, upcoming shows, publications, events, etc.?
 
I am graduating this week and I am bracing myself for the unknown of the next phase, working diligently in the studio on my wall fragments – little brick-like panels that proliferate on walls- and to be working in the clay studio at LAC on new sculptural pieces for my mixed media works as well as developing thoughtful content for my classes at the Washington Studio School. I guess that is still a lot but I am excited about a less stressful schedule. Graduate school, work, family and basic self-care were a lot to juggle those past two years. Many artists have visited my studio those past two years, generously sharing their thoughts, energy with me and I am looking forward to return the favor! So if you are an artist based in or around DC and need someone to look at your work, feel free to reach out! 

Photo credit: Taylor Sizemore

Marie B Gauthiez is a multi-disciplinary French-American artist who makes work about mapping of the self, reconstruction, preservation and identity. Marie received her MFA in Studio Art from American University (’24). She is a faculty member at the Washington Studio School in Washington DC. Recently Marie has co-curated an MFA invitational exhibition called ‘Holding Hands, Holding Space” in the Katzen Center (Washington, DC). Marie has participated in Art Night “Homegrown” at the National Gallery of Art in 2023. She was awarded the Van Swearingen Merit Award, the Catharina Baart Biddle Award and the Carol Bird Ravenal Art Award. She has exhibited in group shows at Soft Times Gallery (San Francisco), Studio Gallery (Washington DC), Brentwood Arts Exchange (MD), the Anacostia Arts Center (DC), the Katzen Art Center (DC), Blue Mountain Gallery (NYC), Pyramid Atlantic (MD). Marie holds a BA in applied languages from Paris 10-Nanterre and an MA in Fashion Business from ESMOD Paris. She lives with her husband and two children in Northern Virginia.

mariebgauthiez.com
IG @mariebgauthiez

All images courtesy of the artist.