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    Gabrielle Garland’s House Portraits Illuminate Daily Life, Individuality, and the ‘Fabric of Society’

    “Good morning, winner. Take a deep breath. Good. You’re ready to dominate this day. —
    Motivational Voice,
    Booksmart (2019)” (2024), acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, shared with permission

    Gabrielle Garland’s House Portraits Illuminate Daily Life, Individuality, and the ‘Fabric of Society’

    July 31, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    Gabrielle Garland may not depict people in her square-format, mixed-media paintings, yet the works might as well be described as portraits. From mailboxes and landscape choices to colorful stoops and glowing interior lights, her vibrant depictions of houses seem to come alive with saturated color and almost palpable feeling.

    Distorted, even cartoonish, Garland’s homes portray a range of American vernacular styles, from ranches to bungalows to Queen Annes. Often, neighborhood happenings enter the scene, like the shoulder of an adjacent house, power lines, trees, or planes flying overhead.

    “Remember, you’re the one who can fill the world with sunshine. — Snow White, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)” (2024), acrylic and oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

    A new solo exhibition of Garland’s work opens at Miles McEnery Gallery next month, titled I’ll Get You, My Pretty, and Your Little Dog Too. Her titles typically reference quotes from films, ranging in tone and topic as much as her homes also appear to do.

    “Stairs, flower boxes, and mailboxes swell or shrink disproportionately, revealing the distortions of the artist’s memory (that murky area where structural logic intermingles with emotional noise),” says a gallery statement. Whether depicted at night, during fireworks displays, in a storm, or in the blazing sun, the details of each house converge with out-of-context sentiments from movies that draw us into their unique characteristics and quirks while also affording a playful insight into the artist’s frame of mind.

    Garland takes inspiration from everyday observations around her home in New York and beyond. She often works from her own photographs, sometimes using found images. “My body of work might be interpreted as an investigation of the physical fabric of society,” Garland told Dovetail. “I believe it documents the constantly shifting balance between our desire for independence and interconnection, between the comfort and familiarity we seek and the strangely disorienting spaces we create.”

    I’ll Get You, My Pretty, and Your Little Dog Too opens on September 4 and continues through October 25 in New York City. Find more on Garland’s website and Instagram.

    “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. —Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)” (2025), acrylic, oil, and glitter on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

    “I’m glad he’s single because I’m going to climb that like a tree. —Megan, Bridesmaids (2011)” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

    “We have enough. You can stop now. —Ava Fontaine, Lord of War (2005)” (2024), acrylic, molding paste, glitter, and oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

    “And… and… c’mon, Nick, what do you expect? To live happily ever after? —Elizabeth James, The Parent Trap (1998)” (2024), acrylic, oil, and glitter on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

    “I don’t bite, you know… unless it’s called for. —Regina Lampert, Charade (1963)” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

    “I’m scared. —Christine, Before I Go to Sleep (2014)” (2025), acrylic and glitter on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

    “That is why every day we pray for rain. —Daena, Planet of the Apes (2001)” (2024), acrylic and glitter on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

    “It’s just, living alone, you know? And, the thought of buying those books like Cooking For One, and… it’s just too depressing. —Allison Jones, Single White Female (1992)” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

    “I guess it feels different when it’s someone you love —Cassandra, Promising Young Woman (2020)” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

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    Order an Object at the New V&A East Storehouse to Get Up-Close to 5,000 Years of Cultural Heritage

    The Weston Collections Hall at V&A East
    Storehouse, including over 100 mini
    curated displays in the ends and sides of the storage racking. The
    space is anchored by six large-scale objects, including a building section from the now-demolished Robin Hood
    Gardens, a former residential estate in
    Poplar, east London. Photo by Hufton +
    Crow for V&A. All images courtesy of V&A, shared with permission

    Order an Object at the New V&A East Storehouse to Get Up-Close to 5,000 Years of Cultural Heritage

    June 3, 2025

    ArtDesignHistory

    Kate Mothes

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    What do the largest Picasso painting in the world, punky Vivienne Westwood apparel, pins for securing a 17th-century ruff, and a complete Frank Lloyd Wright interior have in common? That’ll be the U.K.’s Victoria and Albert Museum, or the V&A, the world’s largest collection of design and applied and decorative arts.

    In South Kensington, the palatial museum has awed visitors since 1852, and in recent decades, the institution has greatly expanded, with locations like the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, the Wedgwood Collection in Stoke-on-Trent, the ship-like V&A Dundee in Scotland, and the brand new V&A East Storehouse in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

    The largest Picasso work in the world, the 1924 front stage cloth for the Ballets Russes’ production, ‘Le Train Bleu,’ at V&A East Storehouse. Photo by David Parry/PA Media Assignments. Pablo Picasso, “Le Train Bleu front stage cloth” (1924) © The estate of Pablo Picasso

    Spanning 5,000 years of human creativity through hundreds of thousands of objects requires a lot of space. Rather than hiding it all away in a dark warehouse, the new Storehouse takes over a portion of the former 2012 London Olympics Media Centre, providing a purpose-built home for more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books, and 1,000 archives from across the V&A’s diverse collections.

    The best part? You can visit! Storehouse hosts workshops, screenings, performances, and pop-up displays of special collections, along with the opportunity to observe conservators at work preserving a wide range of cultural heritage objects.

    Peruse more than 100 curated mini-displays throughout the building, and book in advance to get up-close and personal through the Order an Object experience. Pick any object in storage, and a member of the Collections Access team will assist you in interacting safely with everything from artworks to textiles to musical instruments.

    Plan your visit on the V&A website.

    The 17th-century Agra Colonnade, an extraordinary example of Mughal architecture from the bathhouse at the fort of Agra, visible through the Weston Collections Hall glass floor, and accessible via Object Encounters at V&A East Storehouse. Photo by Hufton + Crow for V&A

    View of Weston Collections Hall, which features more than 100 mini curated displays, at V&A East Storehouse. Photo by Kemka Ajoku for V&A

    Welcome area at V&A East Storehouse with pull-out framed textiles to explore. Photo by Kemka Ajoku for V&A

    Mesh roll-out storage racking at V&A East Storehouse. Available via Object Encounters visits. Photo by Hufton + Crow for V&A

    Multi-purpose conservation studio, visible from the Conservation Overlook at V&A East Storehouse. Photo by David Parry/PA Media Assignments

    View of the Weston Collections Hall at V&A East Storehouse. Photo by David Parry/PA Media Assignments

    Order an Object appointment at V&A East Storehouse. Photo by Bet Bettencourt forV&A Object pictured is Althea McNish, “Rubra” (1961), furnishing fabric

    View of a section of Robin Hood Gardens, a former residential estate in Poplar, east London, at V&A East Storehouse. Photo by David Parry/PA Media Assignments

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    A Rippling Townhouse Facade by Alex Chinneck Takes a Seat in a London Square

    Photos by Charles Emerson. All images courtesy of Alex Chinneck Studio, shared with permission

    A Rippling Townhouse Facade by Alex Chinneck Takes a Seat in a London Square

    May 22, 2025

    ArtDesign

    Kate Mothes

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    It takes a real knack for design to make something as hefty and industrial as steel and bricks appear weightless or even playful. But British artist Alex Chinneck (previously) is no stranger to monumental projects that reimagine urban infrastructure and buildings into striking public installations.

    As part of London’s Clerkenwell Design Week, Chinneck unveiled “A week at the knees,” a new sculpture in Charterhouse Square that takes its cue from an iconic predecessor. The artist installed the “From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of my Toes” in 2013 on a dilapidated townhouse in Margate, appearing as though the entire front of the building had simply slid right off. On view through June in London, his new work boasts a frame made from 320 meters of repurposed steel and 7,000 bricks.

    “A week at the knees” playfully anthropomorphizes a classic Georgian facade, with its lower two levels rippling over a pathway as if seated in the park with its knees up. London is famous for its green squares and gardens, and Chinneck’s work invites visitors to pass through a unique portal that calls upon the history of its surroundings, complete with downspout and lamps flanking the arched front door.

    Chinneck fabricated the sculpture in collaboration with numerous British companies to source and create bespoke steel beams, curving windows, and bricks. At five meters tall and weighing 12 tons, the piece mimics a life-size building while sporting a thickness of only 15 centimeters. The effect lends itself to the experience of a hefty, architectonic structure with a graceful, lightweight personality.

    Explore more on Chinneck’s website and Instagram.

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    More Than 200,000 Rivets Secure the Ultra-Thin Aluminum Facets of ‘The Orb’ by Marc Fornes

    Photos by © Younes Bounhar / Doublespace Photography. All images © Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY, shared with permission

    More Than 200,000 Rivets Secure the Ultra-Thin Aluminum Facets of ‘The Orb’ by Marc Fornes

    April 2, 2025

    ArtDesign

    Kate Mothes

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    From geometric, white panels riveted together into an undulating sphere, Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY’s newest public installation invites visitors to immerse themselves in a luminous experience on Google’s Charleston East Campus in California.

    Designed as a physical embodiment of innovation and creativity, “The Orb” invites us into a 10-meter-tall, 26-meter-wide labyrinthine form made of ultra-thin aluminum. “Edged yet edgeless, surfaces curve, branch, split, rejoin, and split again,” the studio (previously) says. “This extreme curvature—achieved through cutting-edge computational design—enables the surfaces to be entirely self-supporting despite being just three millimeters thick.”

    “The Orb” comprises 6,441 individual components connected with more than 217,000 rivets. During the day, a pattern of holes speckles sunlight across the pavilion and onto the ground. At night, the structure is illuminated, casting deep shadows that contrast the bright details.

    Fornes’ mission, hybridizing elements of art and architecture, is to spark “the joy wandering, the joy of marveling.”

    Find more on THEVERYMANY website.

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    A Years-Long Collaboration Sees a Traditional Tlingit Tribal House Return to Glacier Bay

    All images courtesy of the National Park Service

    A Years-Long Collaboration Sees a Traditional Tlingit Tribal House Return to Glacier Bay

    March 31, 2025

    ArtCraftDesignFilmHistory

    Kate Mothes

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    People have lived in the area around modern-day Glacier Bay National Park, along Alaska’s rugged southern coastline, for at least around 3,000 years. Nearby, in Groundhog Bay, evidence of human habitation extends back a mindboggling 9,000-or-more years.

    In the mid-18th century, advancing glaciers forced ancestral Huna Tlingit people to abandon their homes. While they could visit certain areas occasionally to hunt and fish, the evolving conditions and ice prevented them from living there. And when the area was designated a national monument in 1925, it seemed possible the displacement would be permanent.

    “I never, ever thought that I would ever see the day, in my lifetime, that Tlingits could return to the Homeland,” says local resident Jeff Skaflestad in the opening of the National Park Service’s short film, “Sanctuary for the Future.” But in 2016, thanks to many years’ work and a collaboration between the National Park Service and the Hoonah Indian Association—the tribal government of the Huna Tlingit clans—Xunaa Shuká Hít marked a momentous homecoming.

    Both a space for tribal ceremonies and a nexus of living history, the house is a sacred place for the Indigenous community that also provides visitors the opportunity to learn about Huna Tlingit culture, history, and oral traditions.

    Xunaa Shuká Hít, which roughly translates to “Huna Ancestors’ House,” was brought to life by three Tlingit craftsmen: Gordon Greenwald, Owen James, and Herb Sheakley, Sr., who spent countless hours carving their ancestors’ stories into meticulously selected trees and wooden panels.

    In a large carving shed in nearby Hoonah, Alaska, the artisans, along with occasional help from friends and neighbors, worked on totem poles, boats, oars, and architectural details. “Having Elders come in and talk with us, just to share with us, that was a highlight of my days,” James says. Sheakley adds that as they began carving, it was an obvious decision to make their own tools, too, as a way of connecting to time-honored traditions. More

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    In ‘Electric Garden,’ Ricky Boscarino Leads a Tour of His Whimsical Handbuilt Home

    © 2024 Stockton University

    In ‘Electric Garden,’ Ricky Boscarino Leads a Tour of His Whimsical Handbuilt Home

    March 24, 2025

    ArtFilm

    Kate Mothes

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    In December 1988, artist Ricky Boscarino was on the hunt for real estate. Not just any property would do, though. “It was really my boyhood ambition to built my dream house, where literally all my dreams could come true,” he says in the short documentary “Electric Garden.” Little did he know that over the course of the next four decades, a dilapidated hunting cabin would transform into a veritable way of life.

    Luna Parc emerged on a wooded six-acre parcel in northwestern New Jersey and has been in progress continually since 1989. “Family lore is that we were carpenters for many, many generations,” Boscarino says. “My whole life became about making things with metal, wood, glass, fabric, concrete.”

    With numerous additions and labyrinthine levels, Luna Parc includes a kind of living museum, where Boscarino adds new work all the time, plus studios devoted to various mediums, living spaces, and an expansive sculpture garden. At 5,000 square feet, the self-described “madcap” artist’s vibrant, elaborately ornamented home evokes a fairytale dwelling or a whimsical, Tim Burton-esque construction.

    Boscarino continues to add new details to Luna Parc, whether electrifying a concrete sculpture garden with colored lights or adding new works to the museum. The house occasionally opens to the public during the summer months, and you can learn more and plan your visit on Boscarino’s website. Watch the documentary in full on Vimeo.

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    Matt Bua’s ‘Repurposed City’ in Upstate New York Just Hit the Market

    The interior of Matt Bua’s cabin in Catskill, New York. Photo by Photo by Kevin Witte Productions. All images courtesy of Matt Bua, shared with permission

    Matt Bua’s ‘Repurposed City’ in Upstate New York Just Hit the Market

    February 13, 2025

    ArtDesign

    Kate Mothes

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    On nearly 27 wooded acres outside the town of Catskill, New York, artist Matt Bua has been hard at work on a creative compound like no other. For two decades, he has constructed an artist-built environment from salvaged materials comprising numerous living spaces and work areas. Recently listed for sale for $269,000, the off-grid property known as “B-Home” could be yours.

    Bua’s project originated with the idea to “build one of every type of dwelling we could with materials that were easily at hand,” the artist tells Colossal. From repurposed vinyl records, bottles, and reclaimed wood, a sprawling “repurposed city” emerged as painted signs, sculptures, and one-of-a-kind structures popped up over time.

    Bua describes his approach as “intuitive building,” working in response to the natural terrain, found materials, and vernacular structures of the northeast. He wrote a book titled Talking Walls, which focuses on the region’s tens of thousands of miles of historic stone walls and considers history and material culture merge in the ways we understand “place.”

    Bua lived in Brooklyn when he purchased the property. “All I wanted to do was go up there and build,” he recently told Artnet. He was inspired by self-sustaining communities like Drop City in Colorado, an artists’ commune formed in 1960 with a reputation for remarkable hand-built homes. Incidentally, he also used to maintain Catskill’s quirky Catamount People’s Museum, an installation of an enormous bobcat made from scraps of wood.

    Along with a cohort of friends who have contributed freestanding artworks and functional structures over the years, Bua approached “B-Home” as a collaborative experiment “informed by the needs and desires of our surrounding community.”

    Learn more about Bua’s work on his website.

    All images courtesy of Matt Bua, shared with permission

    Map of “B-Home” More

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    ‘Imagining the Future’ Honors Aleksandra Kasuba’s Trailblazing Installations and Environments

    “Spectrum. An Afterthought” (1975–2014), synthetic fabric, neon lamps, colored filters, steel, aluminum, plywood, and plastic,
    40 x 105.6 x 53.9 meters. Photo by Antanas Lukšėnas. Image courtesy of The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Estate of Aleksandra Kasuba

    ‘Imagining the Future’ Honors Aleksandra Kasuba’s Trailblazing Installations and Environments

    February 10, 2025

    ArtDesign

    Kate Mothes

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    From immersive fabric installations and sculptures to photography, landscape design, and architecture, the work of Aleksandra Kasuba (1923-2019) merges myriad ideas about how we experience the world around us. The intersection of technology and nature enchanted the late Lithuanian artist, and she often experimented with a variety of materials and the effects of light, hue, and tension to explore relationships between ourselves and notions of shelter and place.

    The first major exhibition of her work in Europe, Imagining the Future at Carré d’Art—Musée d’Art Contemporain, explores the incredible breadth of Kasuba’s artistry.

    “Shell Dwellers III” (1989), paper and collage, 35 × 43.5 centimeters. Image courtesy of The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Estate of Aleksandra Kasuba

    Born to an aristocratic family, Kasuba enrolled in art school in 1941, focusing primarily on sculpture and textiles. She married artist Vytautas Kašuba, with whom she fled Lithuania in 1944 in the wake of the Nazi occupation of the country. They landed in a displaced-persons camp in Germany where they stayed until making their way to New York in 1947, and her experience as a refugee and an immigrant significantly affected her work.

    In the U.S., Kasuba found employment in crafts and design and began laying the foundations for her future artistic practice, which merged applied and functional arts with abstraction. Her interdisciplinary practice took shape in earnest the 1950s and 1960s and was deeply influenced by tenets of modernism and the era of space exploration, which cast humanity’s existence on Earth in a new light.

    Mid-20th century scholarship on vernacular architecture also inspired Kasuba, and she was moved by a visit to Bernard Rudofsky’s 1964 exhibition Architecture Without Architects at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He took a broader view of global architecture than the field typically covered and emphasized the ingenuity and beauty of structures built by Indigenous cultures.

    Rudofsky suggested that modernism—particularly modern architecture—had lost touch with the real needs of society, and he urged viewers to pay attention to artistic, idiosyncratic, culturally rich local styles free from elitist design rules.

    “Rock Hill House” (2002). Image courtesy of The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Estate of Aleksandra Kasuba

    Kasuba’s artistic practice blended with daily life in her own living spaces, too, from her New York City home in the 1970s to Rock Hill House, a sculptural dwelling in the New Mexico desert she completed between 2001 and 2005.

    The convergence of sculpture and environmental design also fascinated the artist, spurring unique material combinations in large-scale public interventions and spatial installations. Concerned with how we move through places and are affected by our surroundings, she was also commissioned to create numerous public wall installations using materials like brick, marble, and granite.

    Kasuba explored the relationships between transparency, color, and light in works like “Spectrum,” privileging organic shapes and an immersive passageway made from stretched nylon. Her Space Shelters series, composed of fabric in curving forms without ninety-degree angles, exemplifies her desire to harmonize nature, people, and technology.

    Imagining the Future continues through March 23 in Nîmes, France. Learn more on the museum’s website.

    “Dreaming III” (1963), white marble, 103 x 91 centimeters. Photo Antanas Luksenas. Image courtesy of The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Estate of Aleksandra Kasuba

    Installation view of ‘Imagining the Future’ at Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France. Photo by Cédrick Eymenier

    “Live-In Environment, 43W90, NYC” (1971–1972). From the digital archive of Aleksandra Kasuba. Image courtesy of The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Estate of Aleksandra Kasuba

    Installation view of ‘Imagining the Future’ at Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France. Photo by Cédrick Eymenier

    Installation view of ‘Imagining the Future’ at Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France. Photo by Cédrick Eymenier

    “Rock Hill House” (2005). Image courtesy of The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Estate of Aleksandra Kasuba

    Installation view of ‘Imagining the Future’ at Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France. Photo by Cédrick Eymenier

    “Shell Dwellers VI” (1989), paper and collage, 35 × 43.5 centimeters. Image courtesy of The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Estate of Aleksandra Kasuba

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