Interviews by Brainard Carey

Paul Scott in print studio with cut Wild Rose detail

Paul Scott (b. 1953, United Kingdom) is a UK-based artist, living and working in Cumbria, with a diverse practice and an international reputation. Creating individual pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art, craft, and design, he is well known for his research into printed vitreous surfaces, as well as his characteristic blue-and-white artworks in glazed ceramic.

Scott’s artworks can be found in public collections around the globe, including the National Museum, Norway; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; National Museums Liverpool; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY. Commissioned work can be found in a number of UK museums, as well as in public places in the north of England, including Carlisle, Maryport, Gateshead, and Newcastle upon Tyne. He has also completed large-scale works in Hanoi, Vietnam, and at the Guldagergård public sculpture park in Denmark.

A combination of rigorous research, studio practice, curation, writing, and commissioned work ensures that his practice continues to develop. His work is fundamentally concerned with the reanimation of familiar objects, landscape, pattern, and a sense of place. He was professor of ceramics at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) from 2011–2018. Scott received his Bachelor of Art Education and Design from Saint Martin’s College and his PhD from the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design in England. His current research project, New American Scenery, has been supported by an Alturas Foundation artist award, Ferrin Contemporary, and funding from Arts Council England.

Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Souvenir of Portland OR Black Lives Matter (After Killen & Howard)/Trumpian Campaigne, No.5, 2021. Transfer print collage on partially erased Staffordshire transferware souvenir plate by Rowland & Marsellus, c.190010.25" Dia. x 1” D

Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Residual Waste (Texas) No.5/1, 2022Transfer print collage, shell-edged pearlware platter, 13" H x 17.25" W x 1.25” D

Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, The Sleep of Reason, Wood Cuts (After Spode's Woodland/Wild Rose) 2, 2024Transfer print collage on pearlware plate with Kintsugi, 11" Dia. x 0.5" D

Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Sampler Jug, No.7 (After Stubbs), 2021Transfer print collage on pearlware jug, 15" H x 14" W x 11.75" D

Aglaé Bassens, Photo: Jenny Gorman

Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986, Belgium) has a BA in Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University (2007) and an MFA in Fine Art Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2011). Her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo presentations at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; HESSE FLATOW, New York; 12.26, Dallas; Nars Foundation, Brooklyn; CRUSH Curatorial, New York; and Cabin Gallery, London; as well as group exhibitions at Gowen Contemporary, Geneva; STEMS Gallery, Paris; The Valley, Taos; and Workplace Gallery, London. Bassens’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami and Colección SOLO, Madrid, Spain. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986) What was that, 2025 Oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 51 1/8 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and HESSE FLATOW, New York. Photo: Jenny Gorman.

Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986) Stone Tiles, 2025 Oil on canvas 51 1/8 x 39 3/8 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and HESSE FLATOW, New York. Photo: Jenny Gorman.

Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986), Deflated, 2025, Oil on canvas, 51 1/8 x 39 3/8 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and HESSE FLATOW, New York. Photo: Jenny Gorman.

Janet Echelman is an artist known for sculpting at the scale of buildings and city blocks, creating large-scale, fluid installations that merge art, architecture, and engineering. Her work transforms with wind and light, inviting viewers into immersive experiences rather than static observation. Echelman uses unconventional materials—from atomized water particles to fiber stronger than steel—blending traditional craft with advanced computational design. Her monumental works anchor public spaces across five continents, in cities including New York, London, Sydney, Shanghai, and Singapore.

Permanent installations in locations such as San Francisco, Vancouver, and Porto continually evolve with shifting light and air. Echelman’s unconventional path includes a degree from Harvard, five years living in a Balinese village, and graduate studies in both painting and psychology. Oprah ranked Echelman’s work #1 on her List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!, and she received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts, honoring “the greatest innovators in America today.” Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, she has taught at MIT, Harvard, and Princeton. Her interdisciplinary approach challenges artistic boundaries and redefines urban space through experiential public art.

Her recent book, Radical Softness The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman is now available.

Remembering the Future, on view at MIT Museum, and its maquette at Sarasota Art Museum retrospective. Photos: Anna Olivella

Study (Butterfly Rest Stop 1/9 scale), on view at Janet Echelman: Radical Softness, Sarasota Art Museum through April 26, 2026. Photo: Ryan Gamma.

Noli Timere, Echelman’s sculpture-dance collaboration with choreographer Rebecca Lazier, currently traveling the eastern seaboard. Photos: Julie Lemberger

Isaac Lythgoe is a sculptor, painter and writer based In Paris, FR. His practice is world-building; reimagining narrative traditions and modes of storytelling, he creates interconnected works that probe power structures, contemporary ethics, and shifting social norms. Within this constructed universe, arcs of romance and mortality intersect, inviting viewers to consider how collective memory is formed—and what future societies might resemble. This temporal drift between past and future is mirrored in Lythgoe’s aesthetic language, where tensions between the natural and the synthetic unfold through form, material, and gesture.

Recent and forthcoming shows include Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age, The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK, (2026), Would I lie to you, Duarte Sequeira, Seoul, KR (2024), Production Residency at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, FR, (2024), Cute!, Somerset House, London, UK, (2024), After Laughter Comes Tears, MUDAM, Luxembourg, LX, (2023) amongst others.

Beautiful losers, 180cm x 140cm, oil on canvas, 2025.

I pretended there was nowhere to love, 80cm x 60cm, oil on canvas, 2025

Everyone’s a bad guy, 110cm x 80cm x 80cm fibreglass, carbon fibre, epoxy, cast aluminium, scarab beetles

Samuel Guy (b.1991) is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Through prolonged observational paintings he explores the multifaceted nature of the self, its murkiness, its chance quality and its socially buttressed construction. Through costuming and a deep relationship to the history of portrait painting he re-presents himself in various forms. The chameleon nature of these self portraits positions the artist as both real and potential, blurring those distinctions and positioning the image of the individual as within a larger cultural context. Often reflections on manhood, these paintings interrogate how it is performed, engaging with the imagery in complicated ways, ranging from the satirical and ironic, to the honorific, and even funerary.

He has presented his work nationally, including recent solo and two-person exhibitions Stages Of Presence at Vardan Gallery, LA with Jenny Brillhart (2025), Hitchhike From Saginaw at Auxier Kline, NY (2025) Bildungsroman at Vardan Gallery, LA (2023) and A Distant Mirror at Auxier Kline, NY (2022). Guy has received numerous awards and fellowships including from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and Colman Foundation. Guy is featured in New American Paintings Issue No. 165. A three person upcoming show can be found here. 

Samuel Guy, "Hobo’s Lullaby", Oil on panel, 10 ¾ x 8 ¾ x 1 ¾ inches, 2025

Samuel Guy, "A Prairie Home Companion", Oil on panel, 19 ¾ x 14 ¼ x 1 ¾ inches, 2025

Samuel Guy, "Axe", Oil on panel, 19 ¼ x 4 ½ x 1 ¾ inches, 2025

photo by Janna Tew

Sophie Haulman is a Brooklyn-based ceramicist and sculptor from Wilmington, North Carolina. She received her BFA (2019) from Virginia Commonwealth University’s department of Sculpture + Extended Media. While maintaining her practice, she is also a ceramics teacher and works in ceramic production and fabrication. Her evolving work explores the sensuality of space, the body and the unknown through material-based experimentation, contemplation on process, investigation of tactile form, and a constant surrender to fate. 

 “every month grass came” is a contemplation on mortality and the temporary nature of all that we possess - our bodies, relationships, experiences, memories, desires. As beings of the natural world, we evolve, erode, disintegrate; how do we construct a coherent sense of identity from an existence that is ever-changing? 

These ceramic works question and explore these themes of impermanence, loss, and the unknown through a material which has the capacity to long outlast our own bodies while bearing moments of our time within it. Its physical fragility but potential for permanence challenges the transitory nature of self. Sophie Haulman reflects on the idea of resiliency as crucial to surviving one’s evolution. 

Haulman’s work is just as much about the labor and fate of process as it is about the result, considering “process” as both an action and a passage of time. Each piece was handbuilt with slow, methodical, repetitive movements encapsulated within the material body, resulting in forms that question themselves and occlude the transformations of their identities. 

The title and show are dedicated to Steffan Elijah Haulman, the artist’s deceased brother. His photo, seen daily on the side of her refrigerator, is held up by four contemplative word magnets that have become a kind of mantra: every | month | grass | came. 

Sophie Haulman reckon with, or memento mori 2, 2025 Ceramic, glaze 60 × 60 × 3/4 in 152.4 × 152.4 × 1.9 cm. photo by Sophie Haulman

Sophie Haulman, the well, or memento mori 1, 2025 Ceramic, glaze 13 1/2 × 19 1/2 × 19 1/2 in 34.3 × 49.5 × 49.5 cm, photo by Janna Tew

Left to Right - Sophie Haulman Untitled 2, 2025 Ceramic 18 × 8 × 10 in 45.7 × 20.3 × 25.4 cm, Untitled 1, 2025 Ceramic 18 × 8 × 9 in 45.7 × 20.3 × 22.9 cm. photo by Sophie Haulman

Elijah Gowin uses photography to speak about ritual, landscape and memory.  He was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1967 and received his BA in Art History from Davidson College in 1990 and MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico in 1997. His photographs are in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, among others.   His awards include the John S. Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008 as well as grants from the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Puffin Foundation.  He founded Tin Roof Press to publish his books on art and photography including “The Last Firefly” in 2024 and "Of Falling and Floating" in 2011.  Presently, he is a Professor in the Department of Media, Art and Design at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he directs photographic studies.  Gowin is represented by the Robert Mann Gallery, New York, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo and Bond Millen Gallery, Richmond, Virginia.

Elijah Gowin, Tree 1. Date: 2012 Size: 15.33x 23, Pigment inkjet print

Elijah Gowin, fireflies in trees, selangor river, malaysia, 2017 Size: 22”x30.75”

Elijah Gowin, House 1 Date: 2014. Size: 15.33”x 23” Pigment inkjet print

James Horner is a queer chronicler who educates the public and diverts discrimination from his community. Horner focuses on ordinary queer folk, their issues, and LGBTQ+ icons like Marsha P. Johnson, a rights activist. The artist focuses on painting, but also experiments with drawings, sculptures, and zines. Using a simple color palette, Horner starts his figurative works with a line drawing and develops them to be muscular, abstract, and sometimes humorous.

A native New Yorker, Horner has an M.F.A. in painting from Lehman College and is an artist and board member at the Amos Eno Gallery in Manhattan. He has a 40-year retrospective exhibition at the gallery, “Making of an American Dandy,” as well as an exhibit, “Queer Today – Love, Power, Freedom,” with his art collective, Magenta Lounge.

Horner exhibits artwork mainly around the United States – at The Bronx Museum, The Tulsa Artists Coalition Gallery, Satchel Projects, public art shows in Chicago, and The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Recent residencies include the DNA Artists Residency and Atelier Artist Residency, and his work has appeared in Out and Advocate magazines.

Friday Night Throwdown,” 2010, Acrylic, paper, fabric, and marker on canvas, 95” x 48”

“Keith Haring - Pop Icon,” 2024, Acrylic on paper, 22” x 30”

“Homebody,” 2024, Acrylic and leather/metal belt on canvas, 22” x 28”

Jeanine Brito (b. 1993, Germany) is a painter living and working in Montréal, Canada. Layered in theatrical and fairy tale imagery, she uses her likeness to play with ideas of gender and desire. Her paintings have permeated the cultural consciousness, appearing in Harris Reed’s debut runway collection for Nina Ricci, on an album cover by Clara Luciani, on the cover of the highly reviewed debut novel by Sophie Kemp, and many other crossover collaborations.

Recent exhibitions include All the Better to Eat You With, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2025), The Amber of This Moment, Nicodim, Bucharest (2025), The Grumpy Girls, Nicodim, New York (2024), The Invitation: A Fairytale by Jeanine Brito, Nicodim Upstairs, Los Angeles (2023), So Softly and Sweetly, La Causa Galeria, Madrid (2022), You Me Me You curated by Rachel Keller, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022), New Mythologies II, Huxley Parlour, London (2022).

All the Better to Eat You With, 2025 acrylic on canvas 66 x 94 in. 167.6 x 238.8 cm

The Lovers, 2025 acrylic on canvas 66 x 50 in. 167.6 x 127 cm

Good Girls, 2025 acrylic on canvas 66 x 50 in. 167.6 x 127 cm

Impresario, 2025 acrylic on canvas 34 x 26 in. 86.4 x 66 cm

Ryan Crotty earned his BFA in painting from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his MFA in painting from Syracuse University. His work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally.

Recent solo shows include a solo presentation at Untitled Art with High Noon, Miami, FL; Ever So Slightly Off, Rutger Brandt Gallery, Amsterdam, NL; and Underlying Issues, Galerie Robertson Ares, Montreal, QC. Recent group exhibitions include The Stage is Yours! curated by Eric Gauthier, Exo Gallery, Stuttgart, DE; Spectrum, Galerie Bessaud, Paris, FR; and Tone Poem, The Hole, Los Angeles, CA.

His work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Artillery, and Design Milk. Crotty lives and works in Auburn, Nebraska.

Ryan Crotty, "Sub Rosa," 2025, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on linen, 36" x 30"

Ryan Crotty, "Get a Move On," 2025, acrylic gloss gel, and modeling paste on line, 60" x 48"

Ryan Crotty, "Exit Strategy," 2025, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on linen, 48" x 36"