STUDIO VISITS 2024

What did you get up to in 2024? We hope you all had as good a time as the 3walls team did whilst we traipsed around New York City and environs, meeting with artists and chatting about art and real estate and that election and books (especially all the ones that center on mad women and include copious amounts of sex) and children and wrinkle cream and distant hotels worth a seat in economy to get to and toast and, and, and.

We were lucky enough to go on nineteen studio visits in 2024 (wondering now why we didn't push it to twenty, ah well, this year!), ten of which were with artists we had not visited before. A huge thank you to all the artists, old friends and new, for having us over and for being so generous with your time. And, to those of you who recommended artist friends to us, big thanks to you, too. Word of mouth is the best pipeline there is. Please, send us to your talented friends, we promise we’ll behave.

In January of 2024, we went to see Chala Toprak in Industry City. Chala is an Istanbul fashion designer turned Brooklyn sculptor who makes the most magnificent floral-driven works out of porcelain. A master of the cascade, sometimes Chala’s vessels are engulfed in flowers; other times, flora snakes along the sides or provides support for candles or—perhaps our favorite—houses fresh versions of themselves (very mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? I'm sure you've heard the story. “Thou, O Queen, art the fairest in the land,” said the mirror. Then one day, the mirror turned the tables and said to the queen, “Snow White, O Queen, is the fairest of them all.”). 

Chala’s vessels can also be musings on just flower pedals themselves, and, in these cases, there is also an underwater sea creature feel to them, enhanced by the beautiful and textural brown and cream glaze.  In Chala’s studio, flowers rule the day. Chala came to us through a 3walls friend – we love you, friend! 

 Chala shares her studio with another very talented sculptor, Tania Whalen, so the visit ended up a two-fer. Maybe then we did make it to twenty visits - Lucky us!

We were sent to the painter John Reynolds by Harry Weil, Vice President of Education and Public Programs at Green-Wood Cemetery (Harry is the creative genius behind Green-Wood’s innervating arts programming!). John was fresh off a Pioneer Works residency, and we fell in love with his work the minute we stepped out of the pouring rain down into his undercroft studio. Transience, liminal spaces and climate uncertainty weave into his vibrant abstract landscape paintings. Trees, castles, passageways and unexpected interpretations of familiar themes grab you. Reverberating unexpected and sometimes alarming colors hold you, John, like his work, radiates with energy; boy, is he a joy to talk art with! 

The summer is often a quiet time for us for studio visits. However, this July, we walked down to Dumbo for a deeply memorable visit to Kate Teale’s Studio. Fans whirled around us in a valiant effort to combat the heat. Kate paints magnificent windows illuminating a mysterious life on the other side. In some, the lights are off, the occupants hinted at but never seen—sometimes the interior is obscured by shutters or drapes. Stillness reigns. She also had a series of door drawings for us to see (more portals), so detailed and exquisite they had us staring for quite some time.

We have been admiring Stephanie Serpick’s work for years. After seeing her paintings years ago at Red Hook Open Studios, we stalked her online and then chased her down at a few art fairs. Finally, we made a date to visit. On a colorful fall day in October, Bevin drove us to Nyack to see her (while being a passenger in Bevin’s car is no longer an act of camaraderie, she still sits with her nose two inches from the windshield, begging us not to make her laugh). Stephanie has a tidy, serene studio over her garage with light pouring through skylights. Her circumspect brown tabby cat, Toby, slinked by us, quietly asserting claim to the studio as we took in Stephanie’s gorgeous work. The studio was filled with Stephanie’s dramatic flower paintings, paintings of unmade beds — seemingly just vacated — and those of windows. Like Kate, her windows often obscure a dimly lit interior, here diaphanous curtains, concealing a seemingly solitary world.

A parade of paintings were propped against the wall and on window ledges and in progress on easels. In Stephanne’s flower paintings, the juxtaposition of two mismatched, dualling bouquets is genuinely spectacular. Each side is only half itself compelling one to look from one to the other over and over and somehow try to join to unjoinable images. The skill of the brushwork and composition is magical. Stephanie was about to send her work to a show at San Antonio College’s Department of Fine Arts, so we were lucky to see them all before they were gone for the season!

This past October, Macon sat next to Taha Clayton at the New York Academy of Art’s Take Home a Nude gala dinner. They hit it off right from the starter course (a tasty little leaf salad). Of course, we jumped on Taha’s offer to see his studio. Lively music playing, we opened the door and entered the wonderfully spacious Williamsburg studio of this charismatic, ebullient and super talented, self-taught artist. For his current series, Taha paints Black collectors of vintage clothing staged in their period pieces, including objects carefully placed to enhance the narrative. Taha is a talker and teller of stories; we got to hear how this project has led him around the country to find his subjects and particularly about the community of new friends he has found. The cowboy painting blew us away, of course (apparently, Taha’s cowboy is now a runway model for YSL – take a look; not so surprising, really). 

Below are all the artists who graciously shared their time and work with us. Take a look, if anything speaks to you, please let us know! 

Chala Toprak

Kylee Snow

Katherine Fichthorn

Dora Somosi

Georgia Hupfel

Claire McConaughy

John Reynolds

Scott Ferguson

Reid+Factor

Kate Teale

Davide Cantoni

Clare Burson

Taha Clayton

Ally Gildersleeve

Clare Spooner

Carrie-Ann Bracco

Stephanie Serpick

Rob Stephenson

Nancy Hubbard

We are excited to report that we teamed up once again with our west coast sister from another mister, the Sarah Shepard Gallery, this time for the exhibition Understory, In Blue; a solo show of Hungarian-American artist Dora Somosi’s lens-based work and it will be on view at Sarah’s gallery in Larkspur, CA from January 16 to March 1, 2025. The show features a collection of Dora’s cyanotypes produced from digital negatives captured at the homes and studios of influential female artists and thinkers, along with unique hand-embroidered cyanotypes from Dora’s Mending series. 

If you are in Marin County on January 22, please join us for breakfast with the artist at Sarah’s gallery; Bevin, Sarah and Dora will be there and so happy to see you!