Contents for December 08th, 2025
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Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz, FF Member, In Memoriam
1. Marisa Morán Jahn, Shaun Leonardo, FF Alumns, receive 2025 Creative Impact Award
2. Eddy Falconer, FF Alumn, at Octopus Marquee Independent FIlm Festival, Dec. 17. 2025-Jan. 31, 2026
3. Annie Lanzillotto, FF Alumn, now online in NewVerseNews.blogspot.com
4. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, FF Alumn, at SPCUNY, CUNY Graduate Center, Manhattan, Spring 2026
5. Pamela Sneed, FF Alumn, at Joe’s Pub, Manhattan, Jan. 11, 16, 17, 2026
6. Autumn Knight, FF Alumn, at Chocolate Factory, Long Island City, NY, Jan 16-17 2026
7. Modesto Flako Jimenez, FF Alumn, at Onassis ONX, Manhattan, Jan 16-17, 2026
8. John Kelly, FF Alumn, December news
9. Jessica Hagedorn, FF Alumn, at Lincoln Center, Manhattan, May 22
10. Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, FF Alumn, at Flux Factory, Long Island City, Dec. 16
11. Marisa Morán Jahn, FF Alumn, awarded 2025 Holcim Foundation Grand Prize, and more
12. Tom Klem, Gregory Sholette, REPOhistory, FF Alumnns, at the New York Transit Museum, Brooklyn, opening Dec. 17
13. Long Island City Artists, FF Members, annual holiday party, LIC, Dec. 9
14. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn,now online at https://youtu.be/6xbnvseg7Jo
15. Gabrielle Hamilton, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
16. Robin Tewes, FF Alumn, at Palladium/Athena Project Space, Brooklyn, Dec. 6, 2025-Jan. 6, 2026
17. Adrianne Wortzel, FF Alumn, online with ACM SIGGRAPH, Dec. 12
18. Bee (Beverly) Naidus, FF Alumn, at CoCA, Seattle, WA, thru Feb. 21, 2026
19. Kenneth King, FF Member, now online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9Z43aetYI
20. Jane Goldberg, FF Alumn, at Greenwich House Senior Center, Manhattan, Dec. 19
21. Jillian McDonald, FF Alumn, at PS122 Gallery, Manhattan, opening Dec. 12
22. Cyrilla Mozenter, FF Member, at Mckenzie Fine Art, Manhattan, opening Dec. 5
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Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz, FF Member, In Memoriam
Please visit this link:
https://hyperallergic.com/remembering-joyce-pomeroy-schwartz-robert-stern-and-ruth-thorne-thomsen
Thank you.
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1. Marisa Morán Jahn, Shaun Leonardo, FF Alumns, receive 2025 Creative Impact Award
2025 Creative Impact Awards from United States Artists and the Joyce Foundation have been presented to Trenton Doyle Hancock, Marisa Morán Jahn, Shaun Leonardo, Kaneza Schaal, Edra Soto, Joseph Bamuthi, Larissa Fast Horse, Marlena Myles, Rokafella and Edgar Arcenaux.
This award recognizes Marisa Morán Jahn’s multi-year (and ongoing!) partnership with The National Public Housing Museum which led to the creation of the HOOPcycle, a Meso American basketball court on wheels she designed with architect Rafi Segal and ReCreation, a set of floor to series wallpaper she created with Micah Campbell Smith and Dr. Sarah Szanton celebrating Baltimore’s cultural exuberance from the 1960s through 1970s.
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2. Eddy Falconer, FF Alumn, at Octopus Marquee Independent FIlm Festival, Dec. 17. 2025-Jan. 31, 2026
The Octopus Marquee Independent Film Festival begins Dec. 17 with a different virtual program each of several nights in a row, at the end of which all films run through Jan 31.
Eddy Falconer’s films in the festival are as follows:
Still You Must Go plays Night One, Dec 17.
The Tarot of Berlin plays Night 4, Dec 20.
And Personal REVolts plays Night 6, Dec. 22.
Octopus Marquee Independent FIlm Festival is online at OctopusMarquee.com
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3. Annie Lanzillotto, FF Alumn, now online in NewVerseNews.blogspot.com
Annie Lanzillotto, FF Alumn, writes “Femminicidio” in New Verse News, online — in response to Italy passing a femicide law. Automatic life in prison for killers of women in gender-based violence. Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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4. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, FF Alumn, at SPCUNY, CUNY Graduate Center, Manhattan, Spring 2026
Upcoming seminar with SPCUNY:
Commuting into Community / Engaging Social Practice and Activisms in the South Bronx
To learn more about this got to: https://socialpracticecuny.org/spcuny-seminars/
This seminar, which includes meetings with South Bronx activists and community organizers in-situ, as well as lectures and praxis, focuses on legacies of activisms in the burgeoning field of socially-engaged art/social practice. It therefore serves as a point of departure for critical reflections on the most pressing issues raised by the work of socially-conscious creatives: artists’ visions versus participants’ expectations and needs; and long-term commitment with collaborating communities and their demands on artists. What is the fine line between revindicating or fetishizing disenfranchised individuals and groups? What are the roles–yes, plural–, of the artist when traveling, being and becoming with communities sometimes far away from their own? What happens with the connections forged when the work is complete and the artist returns home? Our group will engage in conversations on the possibilities of art for self and collective transformation, and the potentialities of envisioning new worlds that we can inhabit. Similarly, we will explore together somatic exercises dealing with space, presence, and care. The great majority of our sessions will take place outside of the classroom as we commune with communities in the South Bronx. Why the South Bronx? Given its long history of struggles and oppression, and yet as the locus where much of the culture of New York and the world (from Hip Hop to spoken word and graffiti) has been born, the Bronx perhaps encapsulates the most tangible example of what it takes to live, engage creatively, fight for liberation and thrive in our city.
Commuting into Community / Engaging Social Practice and Activisms in the South Bronx is a seminar consisting of readings, discussions, embodied exercises, and circles, which invites participants to actively respond to the materials presented with individual or collective performance-based pieces, actions, ephemeral and process-focused gestures, as well as through any other creative forms and media pertinent to the concepts explored. Our group will also watch and discuss at length several videos and films. Please allow yourself ample time to travel to and from the Bronx, and dress in accordance to the weather/season, as we will spend time walking or in transit to places like community gardens and casitas. Throughout this seminar participants will be working on their own proposals and presenting their research to our class during the two final sessions.
Commuting into Community / Engaging Social Practice and Activisms in the South Bronx ©2025 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful
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5. Pamela Sneed, FF Alumn, at Joe’s Pub, Manhattan, Jan. 11, 16, 17, 2026
Please visit this link:
https://utrfest.org/program/a-tribute-to-big-mama-thornton/
Thank you.
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6. Autumn Knight, FF Alumn, at Chocolate Factory, Long Island City, NY, Jan 16-17 2026
Please visit this link:
https://www.showpass.com/autumn-knight
Thank you.
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7. Modesto Flako Jimenez, FF Alumn, at Onassis ONX, Manhattan, Jan 16-17, 2026
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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8. John Kelly, FF Alumn, December news
Dear Friends,
What a year it’s been – my studio at Painting Space 122 that has resulted in a major solo exhibition (see below), 2 sold-out performances at Joe’s Pub, our band RIMBAUD HATTIE at the best dive on the Lower East Side, appearances in Provincetown’s legendary Hawthorne Barn, and residencies at both YADDO in Saratoga Springs, NY, and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
My creative life now seems to be 50% performance and 50% visual art. A balance I’ve long yearned for.
I’m being honored along with CHARLES BUSCH, GRACIE MANSION, CARLO McCORMICK and CHRIS TANNER. I’m also performing a few songs on the guitar. All to benefit EQUITY GALLERY, operated by the New York Artists Equity Association (NYAE), which was founded in 1947 to advocate for artists’ opportunities and economic issues. There will even be live model drawing! Should be a delightful afternoon. TICKETS (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/boho-bazaar-party-on-purpose-tickets-1689110056649)
3 dimensional front and back panels for illustrated graphic memoir,
10″ x 10″ x 3.5″, oil on linen with wood
SAVE THE DATE for my solo exhibition at P·P·O·W Gallery (https://www.ppowgallery.com/) opening on January 9th and running through February 21st. I will be exhibiting A FRIEND GAVE ME A BOOK, my illustrated graphic memoir. FINALMENTE!!
I’m currently working on the 30″ x 30″ oil on linen painting for the gallery’s street level entrance on Broadway, just below Canal Street. 10 years of sporadic work finally landing where it belongs.
SAVE THE DATE – Saturday, January 17th at 7pm our band RIMBAUD HATTIE will be performing at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art as part of the David Wojnarowicz: Arthur Rimbaud in New York (https://leslielohman.org/exhibitions/david-wojnarowicz) exhibition.
Rimbaud Hattie is an investigational art song collective involving innovatory chanteuse Heather Litteer, genre-defying performance artist John Kelly, Julie Hair and Doug Bressler (two members of the pivotal 1980’s art rock band 3 Teens Kill 4), and percussionist Dany Johnson, a founding member of Samba Reggae Drum Line Fogo Azul. Including original songs by Doug Bressler, John Kelly, and covers of songs by Brian “Hattie” Butterick, Destructo, Gavin Friday, and Jefferson Airplane.
photo by Paula Court
I’m starting a new feature, focusing on my past work.
ODE TO A CUBE was performed at La MaMa in 1988, and featured a sequence that showcased my interpretation of The Mona Lisa. Here is a link to the 8 minute video sequence LINK (https://vimeo.com/1074344159)
ODE TO A CUBE
The muses have turned into demanding demons, and have split. At my wit’s end, overextended, frustrated and tired, I was booked to premiere a new work. Without a clue as to what to create, my solution was simply to render my point of view. If straddling the footlights had taken its toll, make a piece about the footlights.
I designed the set so that the footlights were along a side wall. The real audience shared my vantage point, as if they were with me looking through the off-stage wings onto the stage which lay beyond. In this sacred precinct, hidden from the imagined audience but in full view of the actual audience, was a messy dressing table, chair and mirror loaded with costumes, makeup and props––a safety zone.
I performed a shotgun tirade of songs and arias, dances, short acts played to the footlights, which reached a feverish pitch, into a bit of a mad scene. Tripping over one of the black cubes that populated the space, I considered what their purpose might be. One side of the largest cube turned out to be a lid. On the inside of the lid is a circle of light bulbs, and a mirror. All I needed to do was remove the makeup from my face to end this torture.
I’m also involved in a theatrical project about the outsider artist Henry Darger – but I will give you more info once it goes public after the New Year.
If you feel compelled to support our work, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to John Kelly Performance through our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas.
Wishing you the most gorgeous of holidays,
~ John
DONATE (https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/john-kelly-performance)
Donations to John Kelly Performance made through Fractured Atlas are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Follow the link to make a secure online donation or get information on how to donate by check.
Our mailing address is:
John Kelly Performance
400 west 43rd Street 4Q
New York, NY 10036
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9. Jessica Hagedorn, FF Alumn, at Lincoln Center, Manhattan, May 22
Dear Friends & Family,
Wowza bowza! A staged concert of MOST WANTED, a musical play I co-wrote with the brilliant composer Mark Bennett, will be presented as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook festival in 2026. The exciting and expansive new season has been curated by Clint Ramos, and our event is FREE. How cool is that? For details, click on this link:
https://lincolncenter.org/series/american-songbook/most-wanted-305
Looking forward,
Jessica
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10. Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, FF Alumn, at Flux Factory, Long Island City, Dec. 16
Tuesday, December 16
Shared Grounds x Chance Ecologies with Klaudia Ofwona Draber, Dylan Gauthier, Catherine Grau, Meghana Karnik, Nathan Kensinger, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, and Nat Roe at Flux IV | 6 PM
Shared Grounds x Chance Ecologies
Tuesday, December 16, 6 – 8 PM
Flux IV (56-21 2nd Street)
Please join us for Shared Grounds x Chance Ecologies, a curatorial presentation and panel discussion looking at two exhibitions sited at Hunter’s Point: Shared Grounds (2025) and Chance Ecologies (2015). The evening brings artists and curators together to reflect on their projects and consider new potential for artistic research and collaboration in Hunter’s Point; given the fruition of rezoning and development along the Newtown Creek in the past decade. This event is co-organized by Flux Factory and Finnish Cultural Institute in New York (FCINY).
Program Participants
Introduction
Klaudia Ofwona Draber, Director of Programs, FCINY
Curatorial Presentations
Catherine Grau & Nathan Kensinger, Co-Curators, Chance Ecologies
Meghana Karnik, Co-Curator, Shared Grounds | Curator & Exhibitions Director, Flux Factory
Panelists
Dylan Gauthier, Artist, Chance Ecologies
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Artist, Shared Grounds
Nat Roe, Executive Director, Flux Factory
Co-moderators: Catherine Grau and Meghana Karnik
Exhibition Histories
Chance Ecologies (2015) was a framework for artistic gestures and research projects exploring the un-designed landscapes and wilderness found in abandoned spaces, post-industrial sites, and landfills. The main trajectories of the project are to create research and discourse around the value of wild spaces in the urban environment; to document, learn from, and commemorate the naturally occurring ecosystems that are being lost to development; and to articulate contemporary readings of and new forms of relating to (urban) wilderness. The exhibition was curated by Catherine Grau, Nathan Kensinger, and Stephen Zacks. https://chancecologies.org/
Shared Grounds (2025) was an experimental exhibition that gathered performative works by Carmen Balthazar, Kastehelmi Korpijaakko, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Jemila MacEwan, and Lotta Petronella—three Finnish artists and two New York-based members of the Flux Factory artist collective. Informed by eco-feminist thought, the project speculates on placemaking via interspecies alliances and knowledge production, and gives way to the potential for neighborly relations, codes, and customs in a public realm defined by humans and nonhumans alike. The exhibition was curated by Elina Suoyrjö and Meghana Karnik, and co-presented by FCINY and Flux Factory. https://www.fluxfactory.org/shared-grounds/
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11. Marisa Morán Jahn, FF Alumn, awarded 2025 Holcim Foundation Grand Prize, and more
At the 2025 Holcim Foundation Award ceremony at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, my Art-Tek Tulltorja teammates and I were honored to learn that we’d won the Grand Prize for the region of Europe! Selected from among 887 entries, ours along with the four other Grand Prize winners were recognized as global leaders in sustainable design and construction.
Art-Tek Tulltorja’s design is led by architects Rafi Segal, Bekim Ramku (OUD), and Alexander D’Hooghe (ORG Permanent Modernity) and myself as a collaborating artist. Sharing the stage with us was Kjetil Thorsen, Chair of the European jury and founding partner of the architecture firm Snøhetta, as well as Perparim Rama, Mayor of Prishtina, Kosovo. Many of our teammates and supporters in Kosovo watched the suspenseful event online, cheering from afar.
and
Our design transforms a current brownfield the size of Times Square located in the middle of Prishtina into a climate-forward district where 21st-century creatives and entrepreneurs converge — a transformation from bricks to bytes. By preserving the site’s historic chimneys, industrial structures, and constructing with existing brick, the project creates a new urban heart for Prishtina, blending public space, cultural programming, and ecological restoration in a post-conflict region.
and
New Commission: TIPSY at San Antonio Museum of Art
“There is no art without intoxication. But I mean a mad intoxication! Let reason teeter! The highest degree of delirium!” — Jean Dubuffet, 20th century French wine merchant turned artist
I’m excited to share this preview of TIPSY, a new installation commissioned by the San Antonio Museum of Art on view through Nov 2027. TIPSY’s wine-colored paint references the museum’s architectural dimensions but rather than remaining upright, it slides off at an angle, spills onto the floor, and creeps around corners. Curated by Lana Meador, TIPSY explores the role of art and “spirits” (drinks made from distilled and fermented plants) in shifting perspective and communing with the divine or with others.
TIPSY draws upon SAMA’s history as the former Lone Star Brewery along with cross-cultural traditions of imbibing spirits to connect revelry and rituals from around the world to layered, regional history.
Anchoring the design are two large emblems positioned on opposite sides of the foyer’s portal. On the left is the star, an emblem gracing the labels of Lone Star beer and the Texas state flag. On the right, the lone star morphs into a botanical form alluding to the star-shaped peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii), a psychotropic substance used as a medicine and sacrament for over 5,000 years by Indigenous peoples spanning from South Texas to Mexico. While Catholic missionaries first banned peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus was later accepted in Indigenous churches in the place of wine as a holy sacrament.
Bonus: People often ask me how I gauge the success of an artwork. One metric is when the vendors and install crew working with me to realize the work appreciate its aesthetic merit and are proud of their contribution to the artwork. Here are two selfies taken by the lead installer on the vinyl signage crew!
Special Thanks: Photos by Felicia Sealey; Flooring: Matter Surfaces and Bolon; Botany and indigenous cultural context: Manuel Dàvila; Studio Assistant: Willem Wauters
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12. Tom Klem, Gregory Sholette, REPOhistory, FF Alumnns, at the New York Transit Museum, Brooklyn, opening Dec. 17
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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13. Long Island City Artists, FF Members, annual holiday party, LIC, Dec. 9
Tue, Dec 9 – LICA Annual Meeting & Holiday Party (Party starts at 7:30pm!) by Long Island City Artists
10-10 44th Avenue, LIC
https://share.google/fOQ6e5EzwPB6Rv2tV
As you may know LIC Artists provides free programming (exhibitions, workshops, and the Annual LIC Arts Open Festival with Open studios) for the Queens Community. We are a volunteer run organization and need support!
Hope to see you soon.
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14. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn,now online at https://youtu.be/6xbnvseg7Jo
NOW ONLINE: video by Christa Biedermann of Barbara Rosenthal’s interview by Gianlucca Boccanico at the Boddinale Film Festival in Berlin, 2020. https://youtu.be/6xbnvseg7Jo
(It’s on my relatively new “Barbara Rosenthal Interviews, Performances and Public Appearances” YouTube channel begun for me a few months ago by “personal and studio assistant” Rachel Rampelman. This upload is working today thanks to my current such helpmate, newly hired Asal Takesh.
The film I showed at that year’s Boddinale was a compilation of personal encounters between me and filmmaker-partner Bill Creston, which are not online. That screening, though, was the last of my EU tours — from Berlin, I flew down to Bari, Italy a few days to rest before a half dozen shows planned in Italy, beginning with meeting up with wonderful, generous artist/musician/curator Claudio Scardino, in Lecce, and then proceeding north for the next few weeks. BUT!!! COVID!!!! I got a phone call saying “trains not stopping in Lecce,” so I arranged to abort my tour and fly back to NY. Italy, and Milano in particular, which would have been my last stop, was the hardest hit, with the most deaths in the world, those exact first two weeks in March, 2020.
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15. Gabrielle Hamilton, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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16. Robin Tewes, FF Alumn, at Palladium/Athena Project Space, Brooklyn, Dec. 6, 2025-Jan. 6, 2026
Palladium/Athena
Works on Paper
December 6-January 6, 2026
Palladium/Athena Project Space, Brooklyn, N.Y.
@palladium.athenaproject
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17. Adrianne Wortzel, FF Alumn, online with ACM SIGGRAPH, Dec. 12
FF Alumn Adrianne Wortzel will be among the artists participating online in SIGGRAPH (DAC) SPARKS SESSION “Embodied Convergence: Humans, Machines and Performance,” for her talk “The Spark of Life and the Yearning for Sentience” on Friday December 12, 4:00 PM EST, registration at https://dac.siggraph.org/sparks/2025-12-embodied-convergences-humans-machines-and-performance/, moderated by Mona Kasra and Bonnie Mitchell.
Adrianne’s work deploys human and robotic avatars in performance productions where both types of characters drive narratives combining fact and fiction. These characters guilelessly put forward simple solutions to complex aspects of the human condition. They engage in discourse about protocols and strategies for the cycles of invention – wonder, ubiquity, and finally, obsolescence and replacement. The narrative emphasizes the differences between human and machine processing and ponders the decline of the paradigm of binary thinking along with its positing of the “other.” The characters weigh the benefits and drawbacks of inventions of our own making, including language, the products and detritus of the industrial age, electronics, the rise and fall of psychoanalysis, and emerging technologies
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18. Bee (Beverly) Naidus, FF Alumn, at CoCA, Seattle, WA, thru Feb. 21, 2026
Bee (Beverly) Naidus welcomes visitors to CoCA in Seattle to play with her new game project. https://www.cocaseattle.org/annual2025 Developed during her recent residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, “Participatory Spell Work for Disobedient Times” offers game cards with conversation prompts that help visitors be in discussion about the challenges of this time. If Bee is present, she offers visitors anti-fascist fetishes to take home as a reward for sitting with the discomfort of talking to strangers about provocative topics. The exhibition, juried by Joseph DeLappe, is on display until February 21st. Exhibition Hours: Thursday – Saturday, 11am – 4pm. Location: 114 Third Ave S. Seattle, WA 98104
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19. Kenneth King, FF Member, now online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9Z43aetYI
My new movie SHORTCUT TO EVERYTHING–everything you need to know–in 12 minutes!—about the environment, economy, politics, war, power, relationships, media, sex, drugs, education, food, religion, and the future:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9Z43aetYI
BTW, my novels make an ideal and economical Holiday gift—easily available from Amazon and publisher in paper as well as all digital formats. DISRUPTION, The Disappearing Game, and The Glass Pond probe the mysteries of art, politics, and performance. Kirkus Reviews: “…shocking events unfold.” More info and links on my website: kennethkingmedia.com.
Thank you.
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20. Jane Goldberg, FF Alumn, at Greenwich House Senior Center, Manhattan, Dec. 19
Back by popular demand! Sarah Safford, Christina Carminucci, Conner Kelly and Cartier Williams will join Jane Goldberg and the Changing Times Tap Dance Company for a rousing performance of tap dancing and holiday cheer. No reservation needed, come out and see us. Friday Dec. 19, 1:30 PM, Greenwich House Senior Center, 310 Greenwich St., 2nd Floor. Free
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21. Jillian McDonald, FF Alumn, at PS122 Gallery, Manhattan, opening Dec. 12
Dear friends,
As we move into the Dark Season, I’m happy to invite you to a new exhibition, DOWN A HOLE DARKLY, opening Dec 12th at PS122 Gallery in New York. press release below.
DOWN A HOLE DARKLY
Jillian McDonald & Heather Merckle
Dec 12, 2025 – Jan 18, 2026
Exhibition Opening, December 12, 6 – 8PM
A conversation with the artists on the eve of the darkest day of the year, December 20, 4 – 6PM
Exhibition walk-through and workshop, January 10, 4 – 6PM
PS122 Gallery
150 1st Avenue, entrance on 9th Street
New York, NY
Gallery Hours, Friday – Sunday, 1 – 6PM
PS122 Gallery is pleased to present DOWN A HOLE DARKLY, a two-person exhibition teeming with tunnels, passageways, and portals as both physical structures and symbolic thresholds.
Featuring video, drawing, painting, and sculpture by New York artists Jillian McDonald and Heather Merckle, the exhibition spans two adjoining galleries, a connecting corridor, and an architectural column. Together, the artworks position the tunnel as a site of suspension and transformation where time stretches, boundaries blur, and wonders lie beyond our reach.
In the bright east gallery, two large-scale graphite sinkhole drawings – one by each artist – greet the visitor. These works establish a dialogue between the artists’ distinct yet complementary practices. Rising from the floor, Merckle’s sculptural pseudocrater Geomorph of the Inner World invites a gaze into its hollowed chamber. Peering over its rim and into its depth, a hidden realm unfolds, where imagination and reflection converge. A salon-style assemblage of images by both artists stretches across one wall as a connective tissue of ideas from deep underground to outer space – holes leading toward the celestial, tangled tunnel forms, and scientific cross sections of geology and deep time. These works map unseen routes of inquiry, linking the artists’ studios and archives. Around the gallery’s central column, McDonald’s hairy, animal-like clay sculptures are arranged in a looped procession on the floor – a tunnel with legs that leads nowhere.
In the darkened west gallery, McDonald’s video Tunnel and Radio Skies presents an apocalyptic narrative: a woman digs a hole like a portal in her urban backyard and sets off on a journey through unseen passages while visual electromagnetic waves animate the landscapes. Video juxtaposes live footage with images created through the use of artificial intelligence text-to-image generators. Nearby, a sixteen-foot drawing extends across the gallery in the form of a glow-in-the-dark “exquisite corpse.” Passed back and forth between the artists as they tunneled through, built upon, and created a passage, the paper is marked by continual discovery, where each exchange revealed something previously unknown, unearthed only through collaboration.
DOWN A HOLE DARKLY is an alluring exhibition that is a journey between descent and emergence, darkness and illumination.
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22. Cyrilla Mozenter, FF Member, at Mckenzie Fine Art, Manhattan, opening Dec. 5
Material Witness
December 5, 2025 – January 25, 2026
Curated by Lesley Heller
Opening Reception: December 5, 6-8pm
Ben Godward, Alexandra Kohl, James Lecce, Christina Massey, Dana Melamed, Cyrilla Mozenter, Ellie Murphy, James Nelson, Helen O’Leary, Jim Osman, Ursula Morley Price, Cordy Ryman, Pete Schulte, Drew Shiflett, John Torreano
Mckenzie Fine Art
55 Orchard Street
New York, NY 10002
Wednesday – Saturday 11am-6pm, Sunday 12-5pm
Subways: B,D to Grand. F to Delancey/Essex
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For subscriptions, un-subscriptions, queries and comments, please email mail@franklinfurnace.org
Join Franklin Furnace today:
https://franklinfurnace.org/membership/
Goings On for Artists is compiled weekly by Rohan Subramaniam, Archive Intern, 2024/2025
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