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Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril
by Aurelia Butler 19 March 2025, 13:38
“Overlook” (2025). gouache, acrylic, ink, and 42 vintage postcards
on panel, 32 x 40 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, shared with permission
Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril
March 19, 2025
ArtClimate
Kate Mothes
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The first known postcard printed as a souvenir can be traced to Vienna in 1871, followed by commemorative cards for famous events like the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 and the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. It wasn’t long before a fashion for picture postcards took the U.S. by storm throughout the first half of the 20th century.
For David Opdyke, the iconic correspondences form the groundwork for an artistic practice examining capitalism, globalization, consumerism, and our fraught and increasingly disconnected relationship with the environment. Occasionally darkly humorous yet steeped in a sense of foreboding, his uncanny scenes suggest what kind of world we might live in we do nothing to stem the mounting climate crisis.
“Charismatic Megafauna” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches
Opdyke summons idyllic coastlines, national parks, government monuments, wildlife, and civic infrastructure to weave “fractured yet cohesive topographies,” says Cristin Tierney Gallery, which is presenting the artist’s current solo exhibition, Waiting for the Future.
For nearly a decade, Opdyke has invoked the nostalgia of landscape postcards to interrogate the climate emergency within the context of American politics and geographies. “Through these carefully altered compositions, Opdyke merges the past and the future, presenting both urgent and inevitable visions of environmental upheaval,” the gallery says.
The artist often uses antique cards that he purchases on eBay, painting scenes of environmental disasters or discordances between nature and architecture. Alternating between cartoons and life-like portrayals of trees, animals, fires, and structures, his compositions range from single cards to wall-spanning assemblages, his gouache-painted details spreading from frame to frame.
In “Overlook,” for example, giant tentacles destroy bridges, rising sea water threatens cities, and huge fires rage in institutional buildings. A dome encloses a metropolis, a rocket named Mars 2 heads for a new home in the solar system, and an airplane banner advertises “Technology Will Save Us” in a bleak yet not unimaginable reality fueled by techno-utopianism.
“Enough of Nature” (2025), gouache, acrylic, and ink on 500 vintage postcards, 104 x 168 inches
In his large-scale “Enough of Nature,” Opdyke transforms natural landscapes into encampment sites for those displaced from their homes, and portions of the overall composition appear to dislodge from the main grid as if floating away.
Caught tenuously between outmoded industrial practices, shifting societal value systems, and a rapidly evolving climate crisis, Opdyke’s pieces point to once-idealized symbols of American progress to stress the dangers of ignoring our own impact on the environment.
Waiting for the Future underscores the precariousness of complacency, a “cautionary tale,” the gallery says, laying bare the fragility of our constructed environment.
The show continues through April 26 in New York City. Find more on the artist’s website.
Detail of “Overlook”
“Main Stage” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches
“Unity, Industry, Victory” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches
“Insurrection” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches
“Fourth Wall” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches
“If you can’t say something nice” (2024), gouache and ink on two vintage postcards, 4 x 12 1/2 inches
“Breaking In” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches
Detail of “Enough of Nature”
“First Contact” (2023), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches
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Salvador Dominguez Confronts Identity and Labor Through Woven Pipe Cleaner Vessels
by Aurelia Butler 18 March 2025, 21:35
Images © Salvador Dominguez, shared with permission
Salvador Dominguez Confronts Identity and Labor Through Woven Pipe Cleaner Vessels
March 18, 2025
ArtCraft
Jackie Andres
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“I was among the first in my family to go to college,” artist Salvador Dominguez says. “Years after graduating, I began to realize the biggest challenge was going to be sharing the work I make with those closest to me.”
When art is so deeply intertwined with identity, a profound irony can form when trying to share it with loved ones who haven’t had access to the same resources or lessons in Western art theory and history. Even when the work itself is rooted in shared culture and family connection, how do artists bridge this gap?
The Chicago-based artist confronts this question in a series of hand-woven vessels titled Mano de Obra. Paying homage to a nostalgic vibrancy from his upbringing in southern California and Mexico, the brilliant colors within Dominguez’s work serve as cultural markers. Memories of vividly painted houses and colorful statues inside corner stores and carnicerias, or butcher shops, guide the artist’s use of color and pattern, each component tethered to his sense of identity.
Pipe cleaners—which are fairly accessible and easily recognized by both children and adults—proved to be a clear choice as Dominguez contemplated different materials to work with. Weaving each slender, fuzz-covered wire into functional vessels greatly alters the value of the material in a fascinating way and evokes a familiar environment in which the artist was raised, where trade and craft were used interchangeably as currency.
Recently, Dominguez has begun to teach his mother, Silvia, the weaving techniques he developed with pipe cleaners. He shares:
Her labor within domestic life often went unseen, but her imagination came alive through craft and embroidery. By involving her in this creative process, I not only honor her contributions but also try to maintain our connection, transforming her labor into a visible and valued part of the work. I remain curious about how this collaborative effort has the potential to bridge the gap between generations, particularly since we live in separate parts of the country.
To stay inspired, the artist also collects a slew of domestic items. From his mother’s hand-embroidered tortilleros to household textiles like pillowcases and table runners from Indigenous artisans from Mexico, Dominguez’s collection of precious goods influences form, pattern, and palette in his own work. Though he has encountered these articles since early life, turning to them for research has established a new, unique relationship with the familiar objects.
Dominguez is anticipating a group exhibition in Antwerp, Belgium this May with de boer gallery. Find more work and updates on the artist’s website and Instagram.
Photo by Ian Vecchiotti. Courtesy of the artist and ANDREW RAFACZ, shared with permission
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Mandy Barker’s Cyanotypes Revive a Pioneering Botanist’s Book to Warn About Synthetic Debris
by Aurelia Butler 18 March 2025, 13:06
Jersey boxers (Gigartina sunday). All images from ‘Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Imperfections’ by Mandy Barker, published by GOST Books. All images © Mandy Barker, courtesy of the author and GOST, shared with permission
Mandy Barker’s Cyanotypes Revive a Pioneering Botanist’s Book to Warn About Synthetic Debris
March 18, 2025
ArtBooksClimateNatureScience
Kate Mothes
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“In 2012, I found a piece of material in a rock pool that changed my life,” artist Mandy Barker says. “Mistaking this moving piece of cloth for seaweed started the recovery of synthetic clothing from around the coastline of Britain for the next ten years.”
Barker is known for her photographic practice that takes a deep dive into marine debris. Her work has been featured in publications like National Geographic, The Guardian, VOGUE, and many more. Often collaborating with scientists to raise awareness about plastic pollution in the earth’s oceans, she eloquently highlights its harmful impacts on marine habitats, wildlife, and all of us who depend on the ocean for sustenance.
Patterned blouse (Laminaria materia)
Forthcoming from GOST Books, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Imperfections surveys the unexpected and out-of-place along British shores. At first glance, each specimen appears like a fragment of a leaf or a scatter of organic material, but upon closer inspection, the subjects of Barker’s images reveal details of unraveled polyester or scraps of nylon tights.
Barker hopes to raise awareness of the damaging effects of fast fashion, synthetic clothing, and the increasing amounts of microfibers in the oceans. The fashion industry is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all international flights and container ships combined and is also the second-largest consumer of water, requiring about 2,000 gallons of water to produce a single pair of jeans.
Barker’s new book is composed as an homage to the work of trailblazing botanist and photographer Anna Atkins (1799-1871), who is thought to be the first woman to take a photograph and the first person to publish a book containing photographic illustrations. Her 1843 study, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, employed blue photograms to illustrate photosynthetic organisms and seaweeds.
Barker’s work serves as a kind of sibling or sequel to Atkins’ pioneering publication, presented in a similar style with handwritten names in Latin beneath each specimen.
Coat lining (Dichloria vestis)
In their updated versions, the titles take Atkins’ scientific names as a starting point and tweak them just slightly to conjure references to clothing or the human body. In the plate titled “Dichloris vestis,” for example, Barker draws on a real type of algae Atkins catalogued, Dichloria viridis, but “vestis” is instead a tongue-in-cheek reference to outerwear, often made of polyester or other synthetic materials. “Conferva tibia,” which portrays frayed tights, employs the Latin word for “leg.”
From John o’ Groats at the northernmost tip of Great Britain to Land’s End at its southernmost, Barker recovered specimens of clothing from more than 120 beaches. Her finds, ranging from parkas to wigs to sports jerseys, were pulled from the sand, tide pools, or directly from the sea. In Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Imperfections, Barker looks to the past to better understand how our actions in the present have both immediate impacts and will shape the future of the climate crisis.
Find your copy on GOST’s online store, where signed editions are also available, and explore more of Barker’s work on her website and Instagram.
Nylon tights (Conferva tibia)
Shawl (Odonthalia amiculum), shown on a spread from ‘Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Imperfections’ by Mandy Barker
Jacket lining (Rhodomenia ignotus)
Fishnet tights (Chylocladia funda)
Two Blouses (Asperococcus indusium)
Synthetic fur hood (Myrionema Palliolum)
Lining (with algae) (Grateloupia intra)
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Porcelain Vessels Are Portals Through Time and Space in Paintings by Sun Hwa Kim
by Aurelia Butler 17 March 2025, 16:00
“Still Life with Jars” (2025), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 60 x 84 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Harper’s, New York
Porcelain Vessels Are Portals Through Time and Space in Paintings by Sun Hwa Kim
March 17, 2025
Art
Kate Mothes
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In the late 17th century, during Korea’s Joseon Dynasty, a particularly rotund, plain white porcelain vessel rose to popularity. Nicknamed “moon jars” for their milky glaze and spherical form, the earliest examples were finished in wood-fired kilns to add character to their minimalist surfaces. Treasured and reproduced by skilled artisans throughout the centuries, the classic style continues to influence contemporary artisans.
For Brooklyn-based artist Sung Hwa Kim, the traditional Korean jar serves as a starting point for an ongoing series of paintings invoking decorative vessels as metaphorical containers for the past. In the context of the still-life, he conjures what he refers to as “visual haikus,” poetic evocations of the passing of time, like changing seasons and the transition from day into night.
“Still Life with Jar, Ashtray, and Vincent van Gogh Painting” (2024), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 72 x 60 inches
In Kim’s current solo exhibition, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring at Harper’s, the artist emphasizes quiet, everyday moments in domestic settings that often overlook brick buildings or the iconic Brooklyn Bridge. Some of his compositions are vibrantly monochrome, setting the scene for a vase on top of a table, containing a scene from a historic painting or faraway landscape.
Kim often incorporates spectral, glowing insects (previously) and situates the vessels on sills or near windows. Vases contain landscapes, trees, and animals, while decor on the walls reference works by famous modernists like Vincent van Gogh, René Magritte, and Sanyu.
Inside the pots, the flora appears ghost-like or faded, rendered in fuzzy gray marks, and objects left nearby, like a pencil and notebook or a drinking glass, suggest that someone was recently present but an unspecified time has passed since they left. The jars serve as portals to other times and places just as the windows provide views of another world. “Ultimately, Kim masterfully inhabits the role of guide, making perceptible the delicate threshold between what fades and what endures,” says a gallery statement.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring continues in New York through April 5. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“Still Life with Jar, Fruits, and Incense Burner” (2025), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 72 x 60 inches
“Still Life with Jar and Round Glass Top Table” (2025), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 50 x 40 inches
“Still Life with Jar, Moon Lamp, and René Magritte Postcard” (2024), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 72 x 60 inches
“Still Life with Jar, Pencil, and Notebook” (2025), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
“Still Life with Jar” (2024), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 50 x 40 inches
“Still Life with Jar and Sanyu Painting” (2025), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
“Still Life with Jars” (2025), acrylic and flashe on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
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Delight in Heather Rios’s Delectable Cakes Made from Polymer Clay and Embroidery
by Aurelia Butler 17 March 2025, 12:26
All images courtesy of Heather Rios, shared with permission
Delight in Heather Rios’s Delectable Cakes Made from Polymer Clay and Embroidery
March 17, 2025
ArtCraftFood
Kate Mothes
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While Heather Rios’s slices of layer cake look ready to stick a fork into, you may want to think twice. Formed of polymer clay and finished with embroidery, the artist pairs the sweets with a vintage plate—and sometimes a fork—in playful trompe l’oeils.
Enveloped in realistic frosting and decorated with berries, blossoms, and sprinkles, each work evokes pieces you’d be ready to dig into at a birthday or wedding. Rios meticulously embroiders each sponge element, fashioning patterned layers in thread on a hoop before transferring the finished panel to the sculpture.
In addition to freestanding forms, Rios embellishes small paintings with shallow reliefs of cakes on canvas, emphasizing vibrant color and the fluffy texture of the exposed interiors.
Many of Rios’s cakes would be exceedingly difficult to achieve in reality, like detailed floral designs or motifs from blue-and-white porcelain. Lucky for us, we can have our cake and keep it, too. Find more on the artist’s Instagram, and purchase a slice from her Etsy shop.
A sponge embroidery in progress
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Through Knotted Installations, Windy Chien Reinterprets the Hitching Post
by Aurelia Butler 14 March 2025, 18:30
All images © Windy Chien, shared with permission
Through Knotted Installations, Windy Chien Reinterprets the Hitching Post
March 14, 2025
ArtCraft
Jackie Andres
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Since the 1800s, hitching posts have shaped a history anchored in utility and community. Scattered throughout towns and outside common areas, the sturdy objects offered a secure point to tie down horses, especially during social events or gatherings. San Francisco-based artist Windy Chien reinterprets this functional object in her ongoing Hitching Post series.
Interdependent forms are particularly fascinating to Chien. “If the object around which the hitch is tied were to be removed, the hitch collapses and loses its integrity,” she says. Just as the presence of the knot relies on another element to remain intact, social spaces and gatherings rely on collective presence.
Having received commissions for the projects since 2019, Chien creates unique pieces for a wide range of communal areas, such as airports, offices, houses, and ranches. Cutting wooden supports to various lengths and fastening rope by wrapping and knotting, the flowing and geometric compositions stretch across walls and exterior facades.
Combining motifs from her Circuit Board series with other techniques, Chien recently completed a large installation in a Los Angeles office stairwell comprised of four works, each spanning 20 feet wide in a gradient of six hues. In April, the artist is looking forward to Ruth Asawa’s retrospective at San Francisco MOMA, where she will be showing several works alongside the exhibition. Find more on her website and Instagram.
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Sparse Brushstrokes Give Rise to Thick Impasto in Jose Lerma’s Minimal Portraits
by Aurelia Butler 13 March 2025, 18:43
“Leidy” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 48 x 36 inches. All images courtesy of Jose Lerma and Nino Mier Gallery, shared with permission
Sparse Brushstrokes Give Rise to Thick Impasto in Jose Lerma’s Minimal Portraits
March 13, 2025
Art
Grace Ebert
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When Jose Lerma encountered “Reception of the Grand Condé by Louis XIV” by Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, he found himself drawn to the figures tucked far behind the crowd. Known for his meticulous realism, Gérôme rendered these small characters with minimal brushstrokes, a decision that has influenced Lerma’s work for more than a decade.
Exaggerating the sparse quality of the figures, Lerma (previously) paints portraits in wide swaths of acrylic applied with brooms and industrial tools. The new works retain the contrasts of earlier pieces as well-defined strokes sweep across the burlap to form heavy, impasto ridges.
“Yamila” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 72 x 48 inches
At Nino Mier Gallery in Brussels, Lerma’s new solo exhibition Bayamonesque presents the culmination of his current style. The title references his upbringing in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and how we think about resemblance. Painting both real subjects and manufactured characters, the portraits reference those who might otherwise be relegated to the background, stripping down their likeness to only what’s necessary.
Vacillating between figurative and abstract, the compositions are what Lerma refers to as “the summary of a portrait…The abstract painter in me is, above all, drawn to certain people for specific features that can be broken down to their bare minimum as paintable elements: an expressive cowl, a striking nose, a distinctive shape of lips.”
Bayamonesque is on view from March 14 to April 17 in Brussels. Find more from Lerma on Instagram.
“Celimar” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 32 x 24 inches
“Leda” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 72 x 48 inches
“Clarisa” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 32 x 24 inches
“Felo” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 24 x 16 inches
“Ismaela” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 32 x 24 inches
“Rania” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 32 x 24 inches
“Fernanda” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 24 x 16 inches
“Lisi” (2025), acrylic on burlap, 48 x 36 inches
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Melissa Calderón Preserves Neighborhood Memories in Bold Textured Thread
by Aurelia Butler 13 March 2025, 13:06
“Out Here (we is)” (2025), cotton and metallic thread hand embroidered on linen, 16 x 20 inches. All images courtesy of Melissa Calderón, shared with permission
Melissa Calderón Preserves Neighborhood Memories in Bold Textured Thread
March 13, 2025
ArtCraft
Grace Ebert
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On expanses of beige linen, Melissa Calderón immortalizes pockets of a neighborhood or domestic space. Combining imagery from her childhood in the Bronx with her family’s native Puerto Rico, the artist translates familiar landscapes and sights into vivid embroideries, preserving her memories in thread.
The intimate compositions capture how neighborhoods and communities change, particularly as long-time residents are displaced. Her current body of work, titled Gentrified Landscapes, explores “a place that once was but is now between the two spurts of gentrified-led divestment and revitalization and how this particularly affects the Bronx and Puerto Rico.”
“Villa Nueva (I’d Still be Puerto Rican even if born on the Moon)” (2024), cotton, nylon, and chenille hand embroidered on linen, 24 x 24 inches
Calderón embraces the potential of thread to add texture and emphasize the more conceptual elements of her work. “Villa Nueva (I’d Still be Puerto Rican even if born on the Moon),” for example, drapes soft, green chenille across the composition like a lush cluster of vines. “Prone IV | My Underemployed Life series” features a green sofa unraveling into tangled fibers that spill off the canvas.
In her studio, Calderón focuses on the meditative, entrancing process of stitching. Works begin with a drawing that’s transferred to a pattern and freehand rendered onto the linen. She enjoys the slow, methodical movements, which remind her “of times I sewed with my grandmother, making Cabbage Patch Kids clothes to sell on the playground before school started for the day. Embroidery takes me to a calm place where only the process matters.”
Currently, Calderón is working on a few commissions and preparing for a solo exhibition in Puerto Rico. She also recently began a large-scale work titled “Bodega Miles” that will stretch 40 inches wide and take more than a year to complete. You can follow her progress on Instagram.
“Prone IV | My Underemployed Life series” (2023), cotton and satin thread hand embroidered on linen, 16 x 20 inches
A work in progress
“Coming Soon” (2023), cotton and metallic thread hand embroidered on linen, 16 x 20 inches
“El Tiempo Muerto (The Dead Times)” (2023), cotton, and metallic thread hand embroidered on linen, 24 x 24 inches
Detail of “Coming Soon” (2023), cotton and metallic thread hand embroidered on linen, 16 x 20 inches
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Art

More stories

Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

Salvador Dominguez Confronts Identity and Labor Through Woven Pipe Cleaner Vessels

Mandy Barker’s Cyanotypes Revive a Pioneering Botanist’s Book to Warn About Synthetic Debris

Porcelain Vessels Are Portals Through Time and Space in Paintings by Sun Hwa Kim

Delight in Heather Rios’s Delectable Cakes Made from Polymer Clay and Embroidery

Through Knotted Installations, Windy Chien Reinterprets the Hitching Post

Sparse Brushstrokes Give Rise to Thick Impasto in Jose Lerma’s Minimal Portraits

Melissa Calderón Preserves Neighborhood Memories in Bold Textured Thread

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