Continuing: Lois Dodd | Natural Order at the Bruce

One of the eight exhibitions inaugurating the new Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT this week presents almost eighty paintings spanning nearly the entirety of Dodd's artistic production, from the mid-1950s to 2021. For nearly eight decades, Lois Dodd (American, b. 1927) has produced a compelling body of work grounded in direct observation of her immediate surroundings. Working from her homes and studios on New York’s Lower East Side; Blairstown, New Jersey, near the Delaware Water Gap; and Midcoast Maine, Dodd continually draws inspiration from everyday life. Her subjects include verdant landscapes, detailed close-ups of flowers, nocturnal skies, dense woods, windows, clotheslines, weather-worn clapboard barns, and urban views entirely devoid of people. 

Painting outdoors, Dodd returns to familiar subjects repeatedly over the course of years or decades, working quickly to capture subtle changes in light, weather, and atmosphere at different seasons or times of day. Taking its title from a work in the exhibition, Lois Dodd: Natural Order refers both to the artist’s enduring interest in nature and to the underlying geometry that structures her work. In compositions distilled to their very essence, Dodd offers a closely observed yet deeply personal view of the world that reflects the interiority of her artistic vision. “Painters are lucky that they see things—not everyone has this ability,” Dodd has said. “I can see things, and that’s where it starts.”

The Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich, CT Info

Friday, April 7, 5-7 pm: Tegan Brozyna Roberts | Turn-in-the-path at Established

Drawing on a background in landscape painting as well as an interest in textiles, Turn-in-the-Path focuses on Brozyna Roberts’ relationship to place and geography, specifically her neighborhood in Brooklyn. She creates woven collages with found source material. The concept of Turn-in-the-Path comes from the lexicon of medieval illuminated manuscripts, specifically the Book of Kells. The term refers to the insertion of text or letters into the blank sections and margins of the page. In her work, Brozyna Roberts embraces this notion of finding freedom within the confines and limitations of her materials and process. The physical structure of the work is consistent (i.e. warp and weft/layer over layer), but each piece is unique in composition and feel. 

“Material and process are vital to my practice,” says Roberts. “I am particularly inspired by the generations of seamstresses in my family as well as the quilting tradition of reusing fabric remnants. Fascinated by this idea that material holds memory, I utilize paper, which retains the physical history of every mark and dent on its surface. By incorporating past drawings and paper fragments into each piece, I create a record of a generative process,” said Brozyna Roberts. “

Established Gallery, 75B 6th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY Info

Sunday, April 9: Second Sundays at Pioneer Works

1:00-4:00 pm: Moving Through Brooklyn: A stop-motion animation workshop with Susan Rostrow

Contribute to a collective animation set against architectural elements and historical maps of the Brooklyn waterfront while bringing life to your own personal items or drawings. Part of On the Waterfront - A View from the Coast (Line), an exhibition by CENTRAL BOOKING in collaboration with New York Historical Society. Results will be combined and participants will be credited by name in an animation that will be shared at a later date. Family friendly, children under 13 need to be accompanied by an adult. Groups of 2-3 can sign up for a 15-minute session. Register

Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn, NY Info

Tuesday, April 11, 6:00: Ishta Jain | Searching for Sunshine at Rizzoli

"For me, a New Yorker, tree-hugger, people-person, and art-appreciator, this book is everything I love, all in one.” —Julia Rothman, illustrator of the Scratch column, The New York Times

Ishita Jain will be joined in conversation with Julia Rothman to celebrate the launch of Searching for Sunshine, an illustrated, heartfelt journey into answering the simple but vital question, "Why do plants and green spaces make us happy?"

Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, NY Info

Closing April 18: Josephine Halvorson | Unforgotten at Sikkema Jenkins

Josephine Halvorson’s paintings emerge from chance or repeated encounters with objects the artist comes across while wandering and traveling. Her practice often takes place outdoors, naturally relating to daylight, geography, and season. The works in this show center on still life and memento mori, artistic genres that, for Halvorson, “hover between liveliness and decay.” She is drawn to things which have little apparent value—objects and spaces that have been, or may be, forgotten. Sharing the same air and hours with a subject, Halvorson finds within them latent expressions and buried meanings.

Since 2018, Halvorson has been painting with acrylic gouache on absorbent grounds. Inspired by fresco painting’s ability to indelibly hold color and mark, the artist has sought to make a sensitive surface that preserves her observations in real time. Painting in longhand, Halvorson works in a verité style, documenting the subtle shifts of shadow and thought. As she says, “I want to make a painting that remembers better than I can.” Inspired by fresco painting’s ability to hold color and mark, I’ve wanted to make a sensitive surface that preserves my observations in real time. Painting in longhand, I work in a verité style, documenting the subtle shifts in shadow and thought. I want to make a painting that remembers better than I can.

John Yau, writing in Hyperallergic says, “Halvorson is an observational painter, whose depictions of things seen but not looked at are about the cycle of consumption and waste that informs every part of our lives. She has an uncanny ability to zero in on commonplace items — a roadside memorial composed of plastic flowers, a graffitied sign, or her deceased father’s desk — as a way of speculating on the bond of art and life, vulnerability and defiance.”

Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, 530 West 22^nd Street, New York, NY Info

Opening April 19: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith I Memory Map at the Whitney

A citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Smith has charted an exceptional and unorthodox career as an artist, activist, curator, educator, and advocate. The exhibition, a celebration of fifty years of work by this groundbreaking artist, highlights how Smith uses her drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures to tell stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Memory Map is the largest and most comprehensive showcase of Smith’s career to date. 

Smith’s work engages with contemporary modes of making, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural practice, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege, and value.

Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation—issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.

Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY Info