Women As/In Art

Artist, model, and curator Maxine Hoover shares her recent projects, discusses the power of women self-representing on Instagram, and explores the dynamics of her various roles. Maxine Hoover is an artist and curator, best known for her semi weekly curated shows at Landmark Art Space in Chelsea, many focused heavily on elevating female emerging and established artists. Maxine’s work as a curator h...

Emerald Gruin and Leah Interview Alexandra Goldman, managing director of Barro New York. Alexandra Goldman is a writer, curator, and art dealer living in New York. She is Founder of the art publishing platform Artifactoid, and Managing Director of Barro New York, a contemporary art gallery with locations in New York and Buenos Aires. Goldman writes for Artifactoid, Whitehot Magazine, Cultbytes, Ar...

Melissa Coote is an artist based in Sydney, Australia.  Melissa studied photography in the early stages of her practice and this still underpins the majority of her art making. Melissa works with sculpture, varying types of photography and painting techniques ranging from the earliest form of Daguerrotypes to modern day photography. Melissa is a highly skilled drawer, painter, and photographer and...

Jasmine is a professional practicing artist whose work is best described as the meeting of exploration and refinement. Jasmine has taken her art to a number of mediums – sculpture, large-scale public works and intimate paintings for private collection. She is not afraid to venture outside an established comfort zone. Whatever her choice of art form, Mansbridge brings a refined and meticulous hand...

Jiayin Chen shares her very contemporary and fascinating knowledge of our new world with NFTs, Web3, and the blockchain, as well as many other topics. Website: https://jiayinchen.com/ Bio: Jiayin Chen is a writer, curator, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of art and technology. With a strong track record in digital art and entrepreneurship, she has also written extensively about NFTs a...

Scosha is a jewelry designer that has evolved her collections as wearable art as a way to tell story, by collecting and collaging the body through intricate, playful and colorful decoration. This acts as a celebration of ones personal connection to nostalgia and linking us to our our past. She finds the common thread that we so long for,  that identifies where you fit and belong while passing...

Kurt McVey takes us on an insightful journey through the search for fresh art amidst staid institutions. He also asks Leah some wonderfully poignant questions about pregnancy and the transition into motherhood as an artist. Look for some of the artists he mentions in our conversation - Junyu Liu, Alex and Allison Grey, and Jennifer Elster - as well as events he’s involved with coming up at Ma's Ho...

This WAIA Wednesday, the inspiring and incredibly thoughtful curator Olivia Miller discusses de Kooning's 'slashed' women, opportunities and challenges of working in a smaller city, the inspirational significance of women-led art organizations, the contextual power of a museum, the return to craft and fiber arts in this age of AI, and an artist's original intentions versus the ever-changing meanin...

This week artist-activist Emma Shapiro talks with us about the exhausting liberation of being an art model, art censorship in social media, the belated recognition of women artists, the "original sin" of linking nudity with sex, and finding inspiration in a Walmart. Emma Shapiro is an American artist, writer, and activist. After graduating from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2010 with a degr...

This week we dig in with Andréa Stanislav, covering the inspirational cross-fertilization of narrative film and fine art, the erotic yet imperial power of horses, the artist's role in the face of genocide, avoiding and accepting identity, and the axiom of 'practice practice practice.' Andréa Stanislav (b. 1968, Chicago) is a contemporary American artist based in New York City. Her hybrid practice...

This week, the brilliant Alexandra Schwartz considers pay equity in arts institutions, craft traditions' roles in art history, the re-evaluation of feminism post-Hillary Clinton, cultural determinism in fashion, the parallels between podcasting and curation, and if a selfie can ever be considered craft art. Alexandra Schwartz, Ph. D., is Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, Craft, & Desig...

Ona meets OONA, as Leah gets to know the anonymous artist's ideas on the value of female artists, applying the tenets of cryptocurrency to fine art, wallet washing, manipulating social value, faceless performance art, CCTV's complicity in the male gaze, misgendering, and the innocence (or not) of lambs being led to slaughter in the era of social media. About OONA. OONA doesn't really exist, but sh...

Margaret Murphy breaks down hyperfemininity as rebellion, the surprisingly in-person community around NFTs, existing as both surveyor and surveyed, the capitalism inherent in face filters, narcissism versus self-observation, dressing for other women, and the algorithm that gazes right into your soul. Margaret Murphy is a visual artist based in Los Angeles, California. Her work focuses on topics li...

We talk with the fantastically talented, warm-hearted Jeanette Hayes about commonalities for women in history, looking at stuff, where Bratz intersects with Picasso, and the fact that sometimes hard drives just die. Jeanette Hayes  (b. 1988) is a painter/multimedia artist based in New York. Originally from Chicago, Hayes moved to NYC and received a BFA from Pratt&nbsp...

Serwah Attafuah, an Indigenous Australian artist, tells us about her journey of creating digital art in the 2010s and now selling her stunning 3D work via NFT. She offers insight into the importance of conquering fear, the relative speeds of digital and traditionally painted work, small networks of women artists, Zoom's empowering of international collaboration, anti-colonial death metal, authenti...

This week on WAIA, we sit down with Ariana Page Russell and muse over the power balance between model and artist, the line between beauty and disgust, embracing imperfect birth stories, making the private public, feminism in and out of the work, the ability to exist artfully, and... kelp! Ariana Page Russell is a visual artist with dermatographia. She creates images that explore the skin as a docu...

Elena Zavelev discusses digital art in physical spaces, finding the right collectors, reproduction vs value, opportunities for women artists in Web3, art as a trace, AR art, the ethic of sharing in the metaverse, and details on CADAF's exciting partnership with LiveArt! Elena Zavelev is a Co-Founder & CEO at CADAF & New Art Academy. She is a Web3 expert with a focus on digital art and educ...

Penny Slinger sits down with us to discuss multimedia as cross-fertilization, the changing fashions of art and digital collage, the danger of the addiction to "Like"s and the power in choosing our own worth, hidden artists, tantric book burnings, the expression of the feminine, and Frida Kahlo's ruthless honesty. Penny Slinger (b. 1947, London, UK) is a Los Angeles-based artist who has been explor...

Grace Graupe-Pillard speaks with us about ambition, showing work in the internet era, activism in art, body acceptance in your 70s, and windows as vaginas. Bio: Grace Graupe-Pillard has exhibited her artwork throughout the USA with one-person exhibitions in Hartford, CT., Jackson MS., Chicago Ill., Newark, NJ, in addition in NYC at The Untitled Space,The Proposition, Bernice Steinbaum, Donahue/Sos...

The legendary Ann Hirsch brings her usual directness and keen observations to our conversation! She explains what makes a selfie by an artist different from a selfie taken by "just anyone," discusses the female body as a performance versus painting, and explains her "sex-friendly" stance. She says her title statement of Body Anxiety (an online show from 2015) remains true: "Whenever you put your b...

Jennifer Mien Mien Lin on woman as muse, what is TOO feminine, and the challenges growing up a Taiwanese woman. Jennifer Mien Mien Lin is a Taiwanese-Canadian visual artist based in New York. Her mixed media work is an investigation into what it means to be a woman in this world. Her artworks lift the veil of the conventional visual canon to uncover the more furtive and subtle reali...

Robert Adanto is a documentary film maker who had made 5 films about art, many of them featuring female artists, including "The F-Word," a documentary on fourth wave feminist artists in Brooklyn, which he started making 10 years ago. Particularly when women are both the artist and the muse, and where women use their body in their art, we come to the challenge of taking women seriously and fitting...

Episode 4 interviews Laura Weyl on motherhood, photography, feminism, and all the juicy stuff! Laura Weyl aka Metagasm is a New York City based  filmmaker, photographer, and multi-media artist.  Her art explores sexuality, the urban landscape, and analog image manipulations to create visceral, poetic visual worlds.  She been exhibited in galleries and event spaces including Art Base...

Episode 3 interviews Ana Finel Honigman on leaving NYC, MLM scams, hot girl art, Richard Prince, Emily Ratajkowski, and much more. Ana FInel Honigman has been writing about art, with a focus on sexuality, sex work, mental health, and gender, for twenty years. She's been published in Artforum, ArtReview, Frieze, Art in America, the New York Times, the Guardian, and Vogue. She received her doct...

Emerald Gruin, owner of Gruin Gallery, has had an exciting career of showing new, emerging, and mid-career artists in LA and NYC. We chat in her living room the week after Frieze LA '23. She shares her thoughts on Frieze LA, how motherhood has changed her, and her current show up (Dale Frank's Artist!). Photo Credit: Emerald Gruin by Laura Weyl