The Pleasure of Handmade Things: Shows Around NY

Detail of Medrie McPhee's large painting at Tibor de Nagy: lustrous, satisfying, thick and witty surfaces. 

Seamed with, well, seams and pockets. The swish of a brush, the cut of a hem.

The painting in its glory. I walk by this en route to the studio , every day and night. But the surfaces of the work reward close view and day light. Gallery Link

Tom Bevan at The Room Artspace NYC. Like McPhee he scavenges found materials and transforms them into table top sculpture and  collages. More about Tom here: Tom Bevan blog

A simply gorgeous Trenton Doyle Hancock in Dream Machines at James Cohan, 26th St. Gallery Link

Riding in the car with Mernet Larsen. Her paint is getting brushier.

David Altmejd

Animated armies running into walls

and jumping off mountains by Jon Rafman.

Larsen head studies

Switch over to Thomas Erben's Painting in Due Time featuring Lydia Dona.

Scott Anderson.

Lydia Dona.

Hanneline Rogeburg (weird figurative abstraction, with gorgeous, vein-like color)

Harriet Korman

I wanted to say goodbye to Carolanna Parlato's curated exhibition, Tremolo at Rick Wester Fine Art , in which I took part. Gallery Link

Above, Ray Rapp's ocean bottle...here, Norma Markley's mise-en-scene.

Happy to see these old friends, 2015 on the left, 2013 on the right.

Stepping back: Aaron Rothman's Arizona night sky, Kristen McIver's composites of Warhol's Marilyn, my Chinese landscape composition and pourscape.

Tom McGlynn and Maureen McQuillan's color vibrations.

At Cheim Reid's The Horizontal summer show, Louise Bourgeois, a lovely little drawing. Gallery Link

Matthew Wong. On social media this didn't look like much but in the reals, toggles  between an unfinished series of swipes and vibrating landscape of light and darkness.

Sean Scully, big and brushy

Ron Gorchov 

Star of Show: Agnes Martin's formative grids...the firm pencil incised into a surprisingly textured surface. 

Brushless, at Morgan Lehman. I wanted to see Carolanna's pour paintings in this wonderfully themed summer show. Andrew Schwartz's painting above and Medrie McPhee's fabric paintings at the start of this post create a funny bookend. Gallery Link

A large Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson tapestry that reconfigures the mark in a weave.

Carolanna Parlato. She moves between a signature pour and swipes or marks of color. Returning to the pour after a long bout of color exploration, she shows what she's absorbed in terms of transparency, overlay and edge.

Beautiful neutrals.

Sculptural surfaces, yet retaining the quality and feeling of paint, nothing else.

In the back room, a surprising set of conditions by Nathan Green. There is paper pulp in the painting.

Rachel Ostrow

Quick takes at Gladstone's summer show, Lyric on a Battlefield. Charmed by the above account of cultural displacement. Gallery link

"Bringing together artists working in various media, from multiple regions, and of different generations, this exhibition focuses on the lyric—the poetic first-person account of lived experience—to explore the complexities of being in the world. " Here, gorgeous color overlays on linen.

I wanted to see Ellen Berkenblit's painting. Perhaps this is the more appropriate bookend for Medrie McPhee's paintings.