Newsletter Overflow
Sometimes I put too much in my newsletters.This is where the overflow lives.
What if small changes add up?
This email turned out to be too big to email, so here it is in full!
Hello and Greetings People of Earth!
Lots of new people are receiving this newsletter for the first time this month, and I am so grateful to each and every one of you for taking an interest in this weird art lady life I am leading over here.
I have a bunch of new friends from my residency at Chautauqua Institution entering my newsletter world (specific links and shout outs below), as well as a bunch people who connected with me via Instagram after they expressed interested in having me create a custom 8x10” painting for them.
This newsletter is a lot longer than normal and has about a million links to check out so save this page forever so you can go down the rabbit hole on each and every one of these artists.
Entries coming in via Instagram through September 13th!
I opened up a commission giveaway on Instagram
because I just launched a commissions page on my website (check it out here!) and thought this would be a great way to test out the process I designed to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Commissions on my website start at $2,300 with a 24x24” minimum. Beyond the studio time I block off to create the work, a commission requires a lot more mental space so this is the smallest I am currently willing to go (except for my giveaway which will be an 8x10” painting).
8x10” on wood panel
That being said, I have been pushing myself to turn out more small works in the studio to keep my compositions moving. Whenever I hit on one that I am completely obsessed with, I will use it as a launching point for larger pieces.
If you follow along on Instagram or listen to my podcast (latest episode linked here), you already know
I love working large!
Give me a 48” canvas on the smaller side and I am a happy painter. It just seems to make the most sense for the way I’m making work these days.
Proud moment selfie in my Chautauqua studio, excited to be working at this scale.
In my most recent podcast episode, I dive into the daily rhythm of life during my residency, as well as the heart of what is driving this current body of work. I included plenty of video and photos, so I recommend watching on Spotify or YouTube rather than just listening, though the audio is streaming everywhere if you prefer.
My current paintings serve as a visual record of reflecting on my personal experience with postpartum anxiety and depression and current exploration of ways to maintain an anchor to a stable sense of self.
They are also an artistic response to the local tragedy the Clancy family has experienced and continues to endure. The trial is drawing national attention
to the medical community’s profound disconnection from itselfand its patients,
the staggering prevalence of maternal mental health crises among young families,
and the critical lack of research and understanding surrounding these conditions.
(Smiling in a screenshot here because it isn’t all hard stuff in the ep. The first 2/3 are a recap on fun work I did over the summer and exciting projects I have coming up this autumn.)
As I reflect on all of this through my paintings and on the podcast, I certainly do not hold the answers for how to push the medical industry forward.
Nor do I know how to reform our legal systems
to handle these complex cases with true nuance and care,
especially when considering how women of color have historically faced an utter lack of representation and advocacy regarding their mental health in our courts.
Take Latarsha Sanders for example. Latarsha was tried in the same court as Lindsay Clancy with the same judge and the same prosecution team.
They didn’t allow any of her mental health records into the trial
and she has been serving time since being found guilty.
Starting point for “Flight Path”
The fact that it was in any way possible to suppress Latarsha’s medical records, I can’t even.
Thankfully, the MA Supreme Judicial Court recently decided this was not right and her trial is in the process of being reopened.
Other names to look into with painfully similar stories are:
Bianca Bolaños of Illinois
Tasha McLeod of North Carolina
Mercedes Salazar of Texas
and there are so many more.
This is a problem in our society that must be addressed deeper on every level.
So…
What if we each took one small but deliberate action to create change in our own community?
Could that accumulate into something monumental?
Chautauqua Cinema featuring “Mary Oliver” which I saw with new friends while there.
That core belief, that small changes in our own and surrounding communities, is what motivated me to found my nonprofit, Creative Pathways. This belief is what fuels my desire to open up this conversation through visual art. I’m trying to be the change I want to see in the world and do it in a way the leverages both my privledges and skillset.
I know how to make paintings and the physical act of creating them helps me to both ground my mental health and create safe space for me to think deeply about hard things.
I also know how to facilitate open public conversations, something I have been doing on the podcast for a year and a half now. I love people and am genuinely curious about various life experiences.
This is what I know how to do.
I don’t know how much of an impact it will have, but I hope it will open up more dialogue on these topics and get something rolling towards inspiring someonesomewhere who can give another push in a new direction that levereges their privledges and their skillsets.
“Vanished Under the Suns”
42x60”
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas
So what if I can exhibit my paintings, share my story as it relates to these challenges, and show how creative practice serves me as vital self care? What if this encourages others to discover what that looks like in their own lives?
We need padding, safety, and grace around difficult conversations, because without them the weight becomes unbearable and we look away.
I look away too.
The difference for me at this point in my life compared to earlier versions of myself is that now, with all I’ve learned about balancing my own mental health, I intentionally step back at regular intervals to focus on beautiful, grounding things that anchor me in the present while I process hard truths.
A glimpse of a Chautauqua garden
Finding our cushions is an act of resilience because it gives us the stamina to push our thinking, our curiosity, and our convictions that much further than we otherwise might have the capacity for.
What does that look like for you?
There is much more on this in the podcast, so check it out there if this has struck a cord for you. This is way longer than my usual newsletters so I’m cutting myself off!
But quickly, I’m seeking mental health and medical professionals
who know something about this topic and would like to participate in panel discussions I’m developing for 2027.
Please let me know if that is you or someone you know!
“Babes in the Garden” (in process)
61x49”
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas
Okay now for some fun stuff, Chautauqua shout outs!
Here is a list of the incredible artists I met during the residency, along with the generous people who offered mentorship to our cohort.
I encourage you to save this email so you can continue to explore their art. You might discover a new favorite artist whose work offers that restful cushion your own mind needs. Art can be a sanctuary.
Our wonderful cohort during the 2 week Visual Arts Residency at Chautauqua Institution along with their beautiful staff.
Faith Baum (Lexington, MA):My next door studio wall neighbor! Faith is a wonderful artist with a professional background in architecture who kept me laughing with her sharp wit. I am meeting up with her later this week to drop off work at the Concord Center for the Visual Arts and grab lunch. Faith’s work is a beautiful exploration of color and light and she spent a ton of time in the print shop in addition to painting in plein air and in her studio.
Carol Bouyoucos (New York): Carol is such a generous, kind spirit. Right before leaving, she gave me a warm hug and whispered, “You are a shining star.” Truly unforgettable. Carol creates remarkable pieces in her studio and also at scale via public art projects driven by her digital and physical collage work. Carol’s work sucks me in and once I’m in there I’m constantly finding new interesting aspects. You’ve got to see it.
Kelly Boehmer (Atlanta, Georgia): My other studio wall neighbor! Kelly is a professor at SCAD who makes the cutest, most delightfully bizarre art you will ever see. Working in soft sculpture, she incorporates taxidermy elements and animal bones to create pieces you simply cannot look away from. Through her work she is exploring her relationship with anxiety, a push and pull certainly felt in her work.
Leda Brittenham (NYC): Leda is an upstate NY native turned NYC artist creating mixed media paintings that examine the intersection of landscape and industrial infrastructure. She combines oil paint with knitted elements and is currently working on a series depicting tractor trailers carrying painted/knitted landscapes. Her work made my eight and a half hour drive home fascinating, as I found myself studying every passing rig at 70 mph.
Talia Buxbaum (Boston, MA):Talia celebrated her birthday during our residency, complete with a karaoke night at 2 Ames that I will not forget anytime soon. Talia also completed her undergraduate studies at MassArt, so sharing that connection was wonderful. Her work centers on the human figure, utilizing surrealist concepts to explore her ideas.
Marina Chisty (NYC): Marina co-curated our culminating residency exhibition, titled “Progress Shots,” inviting all of us to share a piece of our work in development. Marina creates poetic work responsive to nature and the fluid movement of materials. Her studio installation featured small canvases with delicately placed charcoal floating across water, visually extending the forms of fallen tree branches she gathered across the grounds. The paintings completed the physical sticks seamlessly. It stopped me in my tracks every time I walked past.
Vanezza Cruz (NYC): A NYC based artist who was generously open about her creative career path. Vanezza teaches at several institutions, including FIT, and inspires me with her dedication to prioritizing her studio practice. She constructs intricate mixed media collages and installations reflecting her perspective as an Afro Latina woman navigating modern life while allowing historical memory to surface within the work.
Jeff Gates (Washington, DC): A graphic designer, Jeff spent the residency developing a written piece exploring the nuanced relationship between artificial intelligence and contemporary society. Having been an early pioneer of blogging during his work with the Smithsonian in the early 2000s, his perspective carries exceptional historical depth.
Lee Ann Heltzel (Pittsburgh, PA)s:Lee Ann creates multidimensional paintings on doors ment to use for open eye meditation. Lee Ann practices deepening her connection to her innate intuition and relies on this during art making. The resulting pieces easily take the viewer away into another place and allows for beings in other realms to come through to us and sometimes pass on through them.
Sarah Hessinger (Maui, HI): Originally from Buffalo, New York, Sarah traveled in from Maui, where she lives on an orchard. She creates stunning abstract paintings driven heavily by process, folding and dyeing raw unstretched canvas. Her finished pieces might hang stretched over traditional stretcher bars, pinned directly to the wall, or suspended swaying from tree limbs. While the geometric lines appear crisp, the gentle shifts of color reflect her calm, warm presence.
Deborah Lieberman: Deborah is a dedicated arts educator who created suspended sculptural works during our time together. She worked with an eclectic mix of materials, from cardboard and twine to ink and vintage keys. Her pieces carry a distinct narrative quality that makes you want to shrink down to miniature scale just to wander through them.
Zach Mahloch (Ohio): Zach creates paintings grounded in careful observation, and watching his ideas evolve over the two weeks was a treat. One afternoon in his studio, he pointed out a snake painting that sprang directly from watching me use spray paint outside earlier in the residency. Zach frequently builds his own shaped wooden panels, dividing his time between the woodshop and his studio. He is currently researching MFA programs, and I look forward to following his path.
Maggie Meiners (Chicago, IL): Maggie kindly sat down with me for an hour to record an interview for Let’s Chat Creative Pathways, which drops in early November! Maggie is a filmmaker and visual artist who spent the residency constructing pieces out of discarded daily to do lists written on sticky notes, along with textile sculptures built from denim jeans saved during a past period of personal and cultural transition in 2020. She wove the paper notes into a monumental hanging quilt. Seeing that bright wall of color through her studio window was pure joy, especially when you step close enough to realize the tapestry is formed from everyday, disposable scraps of paper.
Lydia M Kinney (Berkshires, MA): Lydia, another MassArt Alumn! Lydia was working in layers with paint and cut canvas to build lovely abstract pieces in monotone colors. She was mostly working in blue during this residency and it was fun walking by her studio over the two weeks to see how the work transformed throughout the process.
Kyle Ragsdale (Indianapolis, Indiana): Kyle worked with incredible speed and productivity. One evening early in the residency, I stayed in my studio until 1:00 AM and was happy seeing Kyle’s studio light burning bright across the lawn, painting away just as intensely. Kyle paints in oils, and that particular night he was bringing to life an image inspired by a campus lecture he had attended just hours before. By morning, he had completed a canvas at least 4 feet tall capturing that narrative. When he is not curating shows across several gallery spaces in his home city, he is in the studio painting.
Karen Schwartz (Atlanta + NYC): Karen works with great speed and rhythm. Looking at her work you can almost feel the vibration of how it was made. There is a confidence in her mark making that is inspiring and makes me feel like there a was a fleeting image or idea in her head that she was commanded to capture. Karen had work both big and small and even made a drawing of one of our colleagues while she slept on an outdoor couch on the studio’s patio.
Jency Sekaran (NYC): Jency was a cornerstone of our community, co-curating our final “Progress Shots” show and hosting an outdoor screening of "Loving Vincent", all while balancing her active studio practice AND her professional career in epidemiology. Her studio work included interactive soft sculptures, notably a large crocheted blanket featuring a family portrait with interchangeable sheer embroidered facial expressions that viewers could rearrange. Her art explores many things including the shifting identity experienced by first generation Americans.
Manu Sheikh (Far Rockaway, NYC): Manu was another midnight regular, working diligently in the ceramics studio. Keeping up with a firing schedule during a brief two week residency takes immense discipline, but Manu maximized every hour. Beyond their ceramics, Manu filled studio walls with expansive, gestural sweeps of vibrant paint marker, which is one of my personal favorite materials. Manu is also effortlessly hilarious, capable of turning any casual conversation into side splitting laughter.
Gillian Stoneburner (Rhode Island): Gillian has traveled the world and settled not far from me. A RISD alum, she has spent time working in the film industry and during this residency she worked in oil paint and drawing making beautiful gestural compositions that overnight would rapidly expand to great scale. One piece specifically is coming to mind that seemed to have fallen out of her head and there was a variety of patterns and line work that made me stay put as a viewer while I investigated what had happened on that surface.
Zim Syedd (Pittsburgh, PA): Zim generously spent an hour recording a podcast conversation with me, only for us to discover our audio setup failed thirty seconds in! He handled the mishap with wonderful grace, and we plan to re-record our talk this autumn for a winter release. Zim worked out of The Grotto, a studio built directly into the hillside. Visiting his space at night was unforgettable, as his sculptural installations integrated neon fixtures and glow pigments that cast a vivid purple glow out through the windows. Always one to warn of broken glass when visiting, the space was neatly cleaned up at the end of the residency and invited people to step in through the maze of art to explore the new shapes and surfaces he had created.
Grace Stephens Vogt (Charleston, SC): Grace developed mixed media installations utilizing an array of tactile materials and fastening methods. Her dimensional pieces reject traditional picture frames. In fact, when someone asked how she planned to frame a piece, she gave the classic response: “I wouldn’t.” Her work is both chaotic and cozy and I can’t see where it takes her next.
Gretchen Warsen (Massachusetts):Gretchen is another Massachusetts artist whom I look forward to visiting regularly thanks to our shared geography. She paints striking abstract compositions on paper, often working at large scale. Hearing her discuss her belief in working large and learning from her experiences presenting at major art fairs offered valuable perspective for my own studio ambitions. Her energetic brushwork and sensitive patterns leave generous expanses of clean, unpainted paper that give the eye plenty of breathing room. Inspiring in more ways than one!
Mentorship Moments
Erika b Hess: Artist, host of the I Like Your Work podcast, and Artistic Director of Chautauqua Visual Arts. I actually discovered this residency through Erika’s podcast. Erika is a powerhouse who is navigating the same busy phase of parenthood that I am, making her a huge source of inspiration. She creates tangible professional opportunities for artists while maintaining an active painting practice. My one on one studio visit with Erika provided tailored, practical steps for expanding my career. Because of her New England ties, she was able to point me toward specific regional communities to explore beyond my familiar base, recommending specific gallery communities in Maine, Cambridge, and Philadelphia.
Judy Barie: Artist and Director of galleries at Chautauqua Institution. Judy keeps the gallery spaces humming during the summer season while making time to review resident studios. True to her own painting practice, Judy loves a square composition, and several of us smiled discovering she encouraged several of us to explore square panels! Beyond that advice, she responded strongly to my 24x36” panel paintings, pointing out how that unusual proportion, like a square or elongated rectangle, breaks standard expectations and invites the viewer to linger. Judy also had specific recommendations for developing relationships with new galleries which I’ve absolutely taken note of.
Garrett Klein:Co-director of Massey Klein Gallery in New York City alongside his wife, Ryan Massey. Garrett joined us for individual studio visits, presented a talk on the practical realities of commercial gallery operations, and attended our open studio exhibition. In my space, Garrett took an interest in compositions where the trees are positioned to make the viewer feel small, noting that my instincts are spot on but cautioning me against overworking the paint surface. Hearing a gallerist say that doing less will make the painting stronger was refreshing news! His lecture also detailed their philosophy of partnering closely with artists, maintaining active dialogue throughout the creation of each body of work so they can best represent the vision to collectors.
Erika Diamond: Erika serves as Associate Director of CVA. While our studio schedules were divided between Judy and Erika so I did not get a one on one critique with her, my fellow residents spoke glowingly of her thoughtful feedback, and I look forward to crossing paths in the future.
My 8x16 foot mural made in under 14 hours over the course of two days, one with the crowd.
Okay if you liked those links, then here are some more!
Levitate Festival Muralists!
In my latest podcast episode, I also spoke about my experience painting on site at the Levitate Music and Arts Festival earlier this summer. Alongside my own work, many talented artists created individual 8x16’ murals live over festival weekend. I’ll spare you the blurbs, but be sure to check out each and every link I’ve shared in this newsletter and give all of these artists a follow.
North River Arts Society (a community mural designed by Meghan Dinsmore and facilitated by NRAS to welcome festival goers into the painting experience)
FairFolk (a regional design agency collaborating with Levitate)
thank you thank you thank you to everyone who subscribed, who read, who saved, who I have had the honor to meet and work with in this too good to be true career I’ve somehow made real.
Love to you all,
xo
Beth