“Emergence” by Sophia Belkin, part of the three-artist show “Belkin Caldwell Shull.” (Hemphill Artworks)

Review by Mark Jenkins

The three-artist show at Hemphill Artworks features several things associated with the decorative arts: flowers, butterflies and embroidery. Another essential element, however, is decay, which makes “Belkin Caldwell Shull” a bit edgier than its nature motifs might suggest.

Sophia Belkin is a Baltimore artist who prints wetlands-inspired compositions on fabric, outlining certain portions with stitching. A former local resident and a longtime Hemphill artist, North Carolina’s Colby Caldwell makes camera-less woodland photographs directly with a digital scanner. Randy Shull, who divides his time between North Carolina and Mexico, hints at butterflies (“mariposa” in his Spanish-language titles) with sections of partly unraveled hammocks painted in vivid hues.

The show’s largest piece is Belkin’s “Cloud Garden,” whose shapes and colors evoke botanical forms but are far from naturalistic. Although inspired by swamps and marshes, the artist appears just as concerned with the innate character of fabric. Much the same seems true of Shull, whose arrangements of pigmented mesh call attention to the tactile qualities of the drooping, mangled strings.

Caldwell offers the most realistic flowers, but many of the blooms are warped by computer glitches. The artist has experimented for years with digitally corrupting images into utter abstraction, and sections of these pictures are simply jagged rainbows of distortion. The scans, from a series titled “Garlands,” match soft natural pinks with liquefying pictorial details. Caldwell’s career indicates his affinity for the outdoors, but his recent work elevates computer-generated randomness over nature’s more fruitful anarchy.

Belkin Caldwell Shull Through Aug. 24 at Hemphill Artworks, 434 K St. NW. hemphillfinearts.com. 202-234-5601.

Belkin - Caldwell - Shull at Hemphill Artworks

Washington, DC - HEMPHILL is pleased to announce the group exhibition, BELKIN · CALDWELL · SHULL, opening on Saturday, July 13, 2024, from 4 – 7 p.m. The exhibition will remain on view through August 24, 2024.

Sophia Belkin uses dye painting, embroidery and textile collage to create dynamic compositions that reference natural processes. Her work is inspired by the lush, teeming, swamps in the Gulf South and the wetlands in the Mid-Atlantic. The paintings explore the interconnectedness of the environment and consider verdant futures for our ecological landscape in the face of uncertainty. Belkin earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012 and lives and works in Baltimore, MD. She has exhibited at Dinner Gallery, New York, NY, Ochi Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Resort Gallery, Baltimore, MD. 

Colby Caldwell tests avenues of photography as an instrument of memory. His recent work deconstructs the very elements of digital photography by abandoning the traditional matte and frame. Caldwell utilizes direct scans from nature, producing large scale images before mounting his photographs on wood forms, waxing the surface.  The pieces are untamed and evoke the scale and presence of paintings. Caldwell’s work is included in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA among others. Caldwell received his BFA from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 1990 and lives and works in Asheville, NC.

Randy Shull lives in Merida, Mexico through the winters, inspired by the local and ancient use of hammocks at the core of life in the Yucatán.  He composes the hand-woven hammocks on the roof of his studio, where they are painted and left to cure in the hot tropical sun. Hammocks cast the body into a sense of weightlessness offering an essential utility and a dream-state.  Shull’s paintings capture fluid motion and the rare life in Merida.  Shull received his BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1986. His work is included in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA and the Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY among others.

HEMPHILL opened in September 1993 and has since presented over 250 solo and group exhibitions in gallery spaces throughout Washington, DC and, since 2019, in DC's Mt Vernon Triangle location. The exhibition schedule features modern and contemporary art in all media by artists ranging from emerging to mid-career to modern masters.

Piero Atchugarry Gallery is pleased to present Never The Same, Twice, an exhibition that brings together the works of five artists: Anne-Cecile Surga (b. 1987), Malin Bülow (b.1979), Sophia Belkin (b.1990), Mariana Palma (b. 1979), and Alicia Viebrock (b. 1986)– to create a powerful dialogue that explores the malleability of forms and the intersection of natural and artificial elements. Their works employ a lens of abstraction, inviting viewers to reflect on the intricate and multifaceted relationships we share with our environment. Through diverse mediums and approaches– from intricate textile and embroidery techniques to the timeless art of carving from natural stone– these artists offer a profound exploration of the human experience.

The gallery space greets viewers with a multisensory experience of textures, shapes, and colors that seduce the eyes into a deep state of engagement.

View the Exhibition Portfolio here

Joan Mitchell Foundation Residency Spring 2024

I’m thrilled to announce that I will be a resident at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans in April/May 2024!

Diverse Array of Emerging and Mid-Career Artists Announced as Joan Mitchell Foundation’s 2024 Artists-in-Residence

The Joan Mitchell Foundation today announced its selection of a diverse and distinguished group of artists to participate in the 2024 Artists-in-Residence program at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. This year’s cohort of 37 artists includes a dynamic group of 16 artists from across the United States participating alongside 21 artists local to New Orleans. The 2024 residency program is divided into three sessions, in the Spring, Summer, and Fall, and will provide these artists with the space and support needed to develop new work—while also offering an immersive experience in the heart of one of America’s most culturally rich cities.

“The 2024 Artists-in-Residence embody the spirit of creativity and exploration that Joan Mitchell championed throughout her life,” said Christa Blatchford, Executive Director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. “Their diverse practices and perspectives continue the Foundation’s legacy of supporting artists in their creative process, as Mitchell’s will directed. We are thrilled to be able to provide them with the time, space, and resources to focus, and look forward to the dynamic energy they will bring to the Joan Mitchell Center.”

The complete list of participants for 2024 is:

Diane Appaix-Castro, New Orleans, LA

Anthony Baab, New Orleans, LA

Anthony Badon, New Orleans, LA

Rogelio Báez Vega, San Juan, PR

Rina Banerjee, Brooklyn, NY


Sophia Belkin, Baltimore, MD


Alcide Breaux, New Orleans, LA

Ellen Bull, New Orleans, LA

Virginia Candler, New Orleans, LA

Elisabeth Condon, New York, NY

Cicely Cottingham, West Orange, NJ

Lauren dela Roche, Edwardsville, IL

Paige DeVries, New Orleans, LA

Dara Engler, Trumansburg, NY

James Flynn, New Orleans, LA

Thomas Friel, New Orleans, LA

Augustus Hoffman, New Orleans, LA

Emily Holt, Nashville, TN

Sarah House, New Orleans, LA

Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Chicago, IL

Ryan Leitner, New Orleans, LA

Maggie Michael, Washington DC

Joshua Mintz, New Orleans, LA

Love Nguyen, Santa Barbara, CA; Saigon, Vietnam

Lilliam Nieves, Bayamón, PR

Cora Nimtz, New Orleans, LA

Ebony G. Patterson, Chicago, IL; Kingston, Jamaica (deferred from 2023)

Angel Perdomo, New Orleans, LA

Teneille Prosper, New Orleans, LA

Sadie Sheldon, New Orleans, LA

Garvin Sierra, San Juan, PR

Jane Tardo, New Orleans, LA


Trenity Thomas, New Orleans, LA


Adejoke Aderonke Tugbiyele, Cambridge, MA

Katya Vaz, New Orleans, LA


Bianca Walker, New Orleans, LA


Brittney Leeanne Williams, North Hollywood, CA

Dinner Gallery at Untitled Art Fair in Miami

Sophia Belkin and Anna Ortiz

December 6-10

Untitled Art Fair, Booth B29

Dinner Gallery at NADA Foreland 2023

NADA is pleased to present the second edition of NADA Foreland, a collaborative exhibition to take place July 21–23, 2023 at Foreland’s 85,000 square foot arts complex during Upstate Art Weekend.

NADA Foreland 2023 features over 40 participating galleries in a collaborative exhibition cascading through Foreland’s historic Flagship Building and Waterfront; a community market featuring books, art objects and more in Foreland’s Bookhouse; a selection of premier food and beverage vendors across a sprawling waterfront lawn; and a robust series of live music, discussions, guided tours, and other performances throughout the weekend. 

The exhibition will be open to the public Friday, July 21st through Sunday, July 23rd at 111 Water Street, Catskill, New York. The full program and schedule of events for NADA Foreland will be announced in the coming weeks.

Slice of Water opens March 9 at Dinner Gallery

Slice of Water
Sophia Belkin
March 9 - April 22, 2023
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 9th 6-8pm
Address: 242 West 22nd Street, Buzzer #1, New York, NY 10011

Dinner Gallery is proud to present Slice of Water, an exhibition of new paintings by Sophia Belkin. This is her first solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view from March 9th through April 22nd with an opening reception on Thursday, March 9th from 6-8pm.

Belkin’s work explores the transformation of energy between organic and inorganic materials within the ecosystem. She photographs images that are digitally printed on fabric and then collages them together with ink-dyed fabrics that resemble spliced specimens viewed under a microscope lens. The result is an amalgamation of micro and macro views that fluctuate between abstraction and representational imagery. 

From afar, Belkin’s works reveal themselves as abstracted forms of plants or water droplets outlined by embroidery. Upon closer inspection, Belkin offers glimpses into her own visual diary through closely cropped images of daily objects, nature walks and magnified insects. Weaving these images together with the loose structures of the dyed-fabric, Belkin flattens perspective and makes these two disparate elements interchangeable. The use of materials echo one another and indicate the process of recycling and regeneration. 

Inspired by her time in New Orleans, Slice of Water is Belkin’s poetic response to the city’s relationship with water. Geographically located in an area, where the infrastructure has been constructed, supported, and destroyed by water, she explores the power and omnipresence of nature. The fluid quality of water is mimicked in her treatment of dyes - allowing the pigment to flow or be constricted within her embroidered shapes. 

Belkin’s practice is deeply rooted in environmental cognizance and sustainability. Drawing on the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, she considers ways in which materiality is negotiated within the cosmos. Symbolized by her practice of recycling fabrics and images, Belkin reinforces this concept, constantly changing the state in which her materials and imagery are being engaged. In this way, she compels us to consider notions of how possessions live on long after they are gone from our lives. 

"Wish You Were Here" at Ochi- Sun Valley, Idaho

"Tempter" at the Bobby Hotel, Nashville

Tempter

Midway between happiness & sadness
Boiling but never overflowing
Falls to only make a better comeback
More powerful & poignant & falls again
Destructive lust for life erected
On the verge pricked up like a picket
Fearing to respond to the tempting but

Malevolent call of the other side


-TEMPTER, BY STEREOLAB
LYRICS by LAETITIA SADIER & TIMOTHY JOHN GANE
1995

Exhibition Curator: Joshua Edward Bennett
January 8, 2023 - March 31, 2023

Bobby Hotel, Nashville

"Winter Garden" at A.P.T. Gallery, London

‘Winter Garden’ is an exhibition featuring Byzantia Harlow, Gregory Herbert, Hannah Lim, Karolina Dworksa, Katia Kesic and Sophia Belkin which takes the form of a greenhouse gone wrong. Here we can consider the space of the greenhouse, in particular its 19th century ideas/traditions, as a lens to consider sustainability and the climate crisis. A Victorian greenhouse of the future allows us to imagine what this former feat of human intelligence might look like in the landscape of climate change and whether or not it might even be possible or necessary. The artworks in this exhibition engage with biology and botany and transport us to other worlds and futures. Who knows what freaks of nature may flourish in an out-of-control environment of bizarre cross-pollination and alien life. Who knows what ideas we may draw from an image of a future not so distant, and not so unfamiliar.