Interviews by Brainard Carey

Devin B. Johnson (b. 1992, Los Angeles) obtained his BA in Fine Arts from the California State University of Channel Islands (2015) and received a Masters of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute (2019).

In addition to being named a 2023 Artist-in-Residence for Fountainhead, Miami, he was selected as an Artsy Vanguard (2022),  named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Art and Design (2022) list, was included in Cultured’s “Young Artists 2021,” and was one of sixteen artists from around the world selected for the inaugural year of the Black Rock Senegal residency (2020).

His work is collected by Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art;  the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pond Society, Shanghai; the Rubell Museum, Miami; the Columbus Museum of Art; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; and many others.

“A Moment in Crossing,” 2023 Oil on linen. 48h x 60w in.

“Something Tender” 2023 Oil on linen. 60h x 62w in.

“Water Me Deeply”, 2022 Oil and spray on paper. 30h × 22 1/2w in.

Photo credit: Lamar Landers

Sydney G. James (b. 1979, Detroit, MI) is a fine arts painter and muralist living and working in Detroit. James began her career as art director of an advertising agency after earning her BFA from Detroit’s College of Creative Studies in 2001. In 2004, James moved to Los Angeles to work as a visual artist in the film and television industry and earned a master’s degree in secondary education. Since returning to her native city in 2011, James has become known as the eminent muralist of the Detroit art scene, transforming the city’s skyline and artistic legacy as well as completing murals across the country, including New Orleans, LA; Brooklyn, NY; Atlanta, GA; Los Angeles, CA; Worcester, MA; and Hawaii.

James was awarded a 2017 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship and served as a 2021 Kresge Artist Fellowship panelist in Visual Arts. Her work has been exhibited at Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MOCAD), the Charles H. Wright Museum, Inner State Gallery, PlayGround Detroit Gallery, Collective Detroit Gallery, Detroit Artist Market, Red Bull House of Art, Janice Charach Gallery, and was included in the Arts, Beats and Lyrics traveling exhibition. James’ work has also been featured by major marketing brands including Vans shoes, PepsiCo, Ford Motor Company, Detroit Pistons, and Detroit Lions. James is a co-founder of the bi-annual BLKOUT Walls street mural festival which debuted in Detroit in 2021, created as a direct response to the lack of diversity and artist remuneration across the country’s creative economies. In 2022, James participated in the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) Residency in Brooklyn, NY.

Sydney G. James, Serving Tee Liberation, 2023. Acrylic, t-shirts, fabric, and gel medium on canvas, 14.5x8ft.

Sydney G. James, Bereavement? (non-binary), 2023. Acrylic, fabric, gel medium, and satin trim on canvas, 96x120 inches.

Sydney G. James, The Westside Johnsons, 2022. Acrylic, gel medium, and upholstery trim on raw canvas, 10x6ft.

Donna Green, photo by Joe Kramm

Donna Green wrestles with coils of stoneware, manipulating and prodding to create anthropomorphic gestural shapes that burst and stretch into space. Her physical experimentation challenges the properties of the clay, resulting in works that seem to be in a constant state of growth and transfiguration; heroically scaled urns undulate and drip with layer upon layer of glaze.

Green draws inspiration from the ancient Jomon ceramics of Japan and Chinese Han Dynasty storage jars, as well as Gonshi, the naturally occurring scholars’ rocks, and Baroque garden grottos.

Donna Green was born in Sydney, Australia, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Design in 1984 from Sydney College of the Arts in New South Wales. In 1985, Green moved to New York and joined Industrial Design Magazine as one of its editors. She began working in clay in 1988, studying at Greenwich House Pottery and the New School in New York, and in 1997 at the National Art School, Sydney.

Green has participated in numerous workshops including “Fire Up,” 1995 with Janet Mansfield in Gulgong, New South Wales, working on-site with Danish artists Nina Hole and Jorgen Hansen, and “The Vessel as Metaphor” in 2018 with Tony Marsh at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass, CO. In 2019, she was a Resident Artist at California State University Long Beach. Later that year, she undertook an Artist Fellowship at Greenwich House Pottery. Green has exhibited at Hostler Burrows, New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA; McClain Gallery, Houston, TX; Greenwich House Pottery, New York, NY; Utopia Art Sydney, Australia; SIZED Studio, Los Angeles, CA; and the Leiber Collection, East Hampton, NY. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney, Australia. Green lives and works in New York.

Donna Green installation, photo by Joe Kramm

Donna Green installation, photo by Joe Kramm

Donna Green installation, photo by Joe Kramm

Loren Erdrich creates paintings that both aspire toward transcendence and revel in their physicality. Erdrich’s deliberate and open collaboration with her medium allows for discovery in every painting, and she uses her materials in unconventional ways to create a dynamic tension between deliberate and unintentional gestures.

She paints on raw muslin with water, dyes, pigments, and other water-based media, allowing the artist and her emerging figures to embrace and celebrate the strength of fluidity, vulnerability, and reactivity. Erdrich holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the Burren College of Art at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, Jentel Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, Sculpture Space, Vermont Studio Center, and Art Farm Nebraska, and was selected as a Hopper Prize Finalist for 2023. Erdrich has exhibited in solo and group shows internationally in cities including New York City, Paris, Los Angeles, Madrid, Shanghai, Miami, Berlin, Denver, Copenhagen, Houston, Rome, London, and San Francisco. Her work has been featured in DNA Magazine Mexico, Maake Magazine, ArtMaze Mag, Chicago Tribune, Vogue Italia, Cultured Magazine, and WhiteHot Magazine, to name only a few. In 2021, Erdrich collaborated with fashion designer Marc Jacobs to incorporate her paintings into their Resort Collection.

The artist lives and works in New York City, NY.

Loren Erdrich, Sun Worship, 2023, Size: 24 x 20 inches, Water, raw pigment, dye, acrylic, colored pencil and water-soluble pastel on muslin.

Loren Erdrich, Everywhere Alive, 2021, Size: 56 x 52 in, Medium: water, organic and synthetic dye and raw pigment on muslin.

Loren Erdrich,, Gathered Things, 2023 Size: 34 x 30 in, Medium: water, raw pigment, dye, acrylic and water-soluble pastel on muslin.

Alexander Ross in his studio, 2021, Great Barrington, MA

Alexander Ross (b. 1960 in Denver, CO) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA.

Ross has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Galerie Hussenot, Paris, France; LABspace, Hillsdale, NY; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; New York Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY; Nolan Judin, Berlin, Germany; and the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, among others.

The artist has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Valencian Institute of Modern Art, Valencia, Spain; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

His work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; British Museum, London, United Kingdom; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI, and elsewhere.

He is the recipient of awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant; New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship; The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Ross lives and works in Great Barrington, MA.

ALEXANDER ROSS, Modeling the Physical, 2023, Colored pencil, graphite, and crayon on paper, 22 1/8 x 18 1/4 inches.

ALEXANDER ROSS, Intelligence Restructuring, 2023, Colored pencil, watercolor, and graphite on paper, 12 1/2 x 17 inches.

ALEXANDER ROSS, Another Aspect of the Presentation, 2023, Colored pencil, watercolor, crayon, and graphite on paper, 14 3/4 x 14 1/4 inches

ALEXANDER ROSS, Robed in the Illusion, 2023, Colored pencil and watercolor on paper, 12 5/8 x 11 inches

photo of Ava (pictured with House Flips)

Ava Werner is an American multi-media artist, working with 2D media and installation.  Broadly, her work focuses on how humans impact the earth and its resources.

Werner is a lecturer in the Art and Design Department at California Polytechnic State University. Most recently, Werner had a residency summer 2023 at Vermont Studio Center.

Her Waterlinks Installation project with James Werner is ongoing and has been installed in New Zealand, Micronesia and Vanuatu, Australia, California, New York and Maine.

House Flip: Hurricane Katrina Photo collage, Digital print 18” x 24” 2023

Overgrowth Acrylic, cut paper, found images 12” x 12” 2023

Sordida Aqua Acrylic, cut paper, found images 10“ x 10” 2023

Omari Douglin lives and works in Los Angeles. He received an MFA in Painting from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY in 2019.

Selected solo and group exhibitions have been held at Sebastian Gladstone (Los Angeles), Ramiken (New York), Micki Meng (San Francisco), and Theta (New York).

Omari Douglin was born in Brooklyn, NY 1992.

Raining Spy and Chips, 2023, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 60 x 43 inches

Untitled (After Lukas), 2023, Oil on canvas. 60 x 43 inches

Kick Ass Painter, 2023, Acrylic and oil on canvas. 60 x 43 inches

Oidie Kuijpers (b. 1993) is a painter based in Brooklyn, New York.

Kuijpers makes work which explores representation and investigates painting as a form of critical inquiry. His paintings have been included in exhibitions at Oberlin College, Pace Gallery, New York, Pratt Institute, and D. D. D. D. in New York.

untitled (2023.31), 2023, acrylic on panel 10 x 10 inches

untitled (2023.10.A), 2023, acrylic on panel, 10 x 10 inches

untitled (2023.05.A), 2023, acrylic on panel, 10 x 10 inches

Gregg Louis received a Master’s of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2009.

His work has been featured in exhibitions around the world, including Nohra Haime Gallery in New York; NH Galería in Cartagena; Hverfisgalleri in Reykjavik; The World Chess Hall of Fame in Saint Louis; Postmasters Gallery in New York; Galerist in Istanbul; Frieze London; Vienna Contemporary; and Art Bogotá.

In 2009, Louis was an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The New York Times, The Wall St Journal, and Sculpture Magazine have all covered his work.

Louis currently lives and works in Saint Louis, and is represented by Nohra Haime Gallery in New York City.

Fires in the Sky, 2023

Summer Nights, 2023

Midnight in Wonder Valley, Deep Sky & Like a Moth Drawn to a Flame, 2023

Portrait of the Artist, Photo by Josh Wool.

Brad Kunkle, b. 1978 Lehighton, Pennsylvania, BFA, Kutztown University, 2001. A decade after selling out his debut solo exhibition in New York City on opening night, Brad Kunkle has become internationally known for his unique use of gold and silver leaf in contemporary oil painting.

His themes explore the shedding of dogmas inherited from previous generations, intuition, and the power of feminine energies as guides for seeking enlightenment in symbiosis with the natural world.

He is represented by Arcadia Contemporary in NYC.

Where Time Begins, 78 x 50 inches, Oil, gold and silver leaf on linen. 2023.

Pneuma, 63 x 36 inches, Oil and gold leaf on linen. 2023.

Stasis III, 24 x 18 inches, Oil and gold leaf on wood. 2023.