Dear Readers,

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As the pandemic continues it seems “We are all Edward Hopper paintings now,” according to a post on Whats App. However it is just this moment that connections between artists and writers seem the most needed to get us through this difficult time. 

 

In this December 2020 issue TAS presents dialogues with three artists whose work has a relationship to nature. These artists have addressed the natural world  and engaged it in their art. 

 

Nitzanah Griffin had a conversation with environmental warrior sublime Pam Longobardi. Longobardi, who began her artistic life as a painter, has made it a personal quest to remove plastic from the ocean and to make us aware of the vast amount of trash that is killing our earth. This artist  makes art from these cleanup journeys around the globe, and Griffin engaged with Longobardi about her work and vision.

 

Meredith Sims has a wonderful understanding of conceptual and performance artist lauri stallings (who does not use capital letters in her name). lauri’s company, gloATL, “is a southern women, artist-led social movement organized through the analogy of a living organism, to better understand the world.” Her movement-based sitework is all about connections and transference of one body to another. In a time where we stay six feet apart and only touch with our elbows, stallings' gracious movements empower the viewer beyond the corporal body.

 

MaDora Frey recently exhibited works that create a dialogue with nature in interior gallery spaces. It was my pleasure to have a discussion with this artist about her work. Her sense of light and color is seductive. For those sheltering in place and finding themselves going no further than their front doors, it is good to think about how Frey brings nature into the interior space.

 

Three women artists dialogue with three women writers. I hope for a time when gender will not matter, when we stop counting. As Justice Ginsburg once said when asked about women on the Supreme Court, “When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, ‘When there are nine,’ people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”

 

Stay well,

Deanna

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Deanna Sirlin 

Editor-in Chief

The Art Section