Visualization/Representation Class in Pratt News!

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Foundation and SCPS Lecturer Melissa Staiger took her  Visualization/Representation class to the Stephen Friedman Gallery, where they were encouraged to draw from their latest exhibition by painter Claire Woods. They also visited Ericka Beckman’s exhibition at The Drawing Center. Institutions like the Stephen Friedman Gallery and The Drawing Center welcome Pratt students to engage with and learn from their resources.

“We sketched directly from contemporary artworks, building not just drawing skills, but confidence and comfort in gallery spaces,” said Staiger. “The project became more than an exercise; it was a bridge—linking Pratt students with the vibrant world of contemporary art encouraged my students to visit The Drawing Center so they could experience firsthand what a powerful and versatile medium drawing can be. It’s a space filled with unexpected, thought-provoking, and visually striking works that go far beyond the traditional definition of drawing.”

The Drawing Center exhibit became “a jumping-off point for rich dialogue about visual language, intention, and technique,” added Staiger. “More importantly, it helped students see that these questions are not just academic—they’re deeply relevant to the decisions they’ll make in their own Capstone Projects later this semester.”

Prisma at Hebel_121

Artist Statement: Prisma – Hebel_121, Basel

On view: June 14 – August 9, 2025
Opening, June 14 at 4PM

I create large-scale paintings, installations, and works on paper that investigate color, spatial rhythm, and the emotional resonance of light. My process often begins with a physical space—as it did with Prisma, where the architecture of Hebel_121 became both a container and collaborator. I started by analyzing the floor plan to understand the scale and how natural light might radiate through the windows and into the street.

Color is my driving force. I’m captivated by its ability to shift perception, anchor memory, and create a sense of presence. My materials—acrylic gouache, cotton rag paper, painted canvas, and silkscreen inks—serve as conduits for this exploration. I don’t try to suggest light or mood; I build it, saturate it, and let it spill into the viewer’s space. 

At the heart of Prisma is a central textile installation: painted canvas rolls, shaped with cardboard stencils and hung with grommets, cascading in wave-like arcs from wall to floor. The edges are hand-cut in curves to heighten the sense of movement. These forms evolved from my Rooted Series, where bands of color met at a central point. This time, I wanted a work that could travel lightly—but unfold boldly, radiating color like a signal through the gallery window.

The acrylic gouache works on paper push the wave into new territory—fluid, organic, and psychedelic. Saturated colors echo bodily curves and plant life, while metallic paint catches light like a shifting mirror.

Alongside the installation, my sketchbook is on view. It reveals the process behind the project—filled with Polaroids, tape experiments, color studies, and intuitive notes. This “thinking space” is part of the exhibition itself, offering visitors a direct connection to the playfulness of the creative process.

Finally, Prisma debuts a limited edition of silkscreen prints in muted teal, earthy red, and fluorescent pink—colors chosen for how they change with light and temperature. Repeated motifs and lyrical lines echo earlier works, while hinting at new directions still to come.

Future Proof Group Exhibition At Westbeth Gallery, NYC

Westbeth Gallery
55 Bethune Street, New York, NY 10014
Gallery hours: Wed – Sun, 1 – 6p
Future Proof opens on Wednesday, Feb. 5 (6-9pm)
on view through Feb. 23

Future Proof is a group show curated by Jared Linge for American Abstract Artists, featuring 17 of the group’s members.

Jeffrey Bishop, Jacob Cartwright, Joanne Freeman, Lynne Harlow, Carl E. Hazelwood, Pinkney Herbert, Jane Logemann, Stephen Maine, Russell Maltz, Tom McGlynn, Manfred Mohr, Lisa E. Nanni, Jim Osman, Sonita Singwi, Melissa Staiger, Jason Stopa, and Li Trincere

“Art has political consequences, which is to say, it reorganizes society and creates
constituencies of people around it.” – Dave Hickey

This exhibition examines the way that longevity in art can meaningfully shape communities and cultural landscapes over time. Here, “longevity” refers to the ability of art to endure, develop, and proliferate on its own terms, regardless of trends and circumstances. In an industry where social media and the art market reduce discourse to an endless succession of changing fashions, Future Proof positions communities of career-long practices as an alternative model. In this context, longevity is achieved both in open systems of making, and an intergenerational collaborative spirit.

These seventeen artists define abstraction in our present day by exploring a range of material, formal, and methodological approaches. Works have been selected with an eye towards range and contrast: from more coolly conceived formal viewpoints to the immediacy of space and raw materials. With a knowledge of abstraction’s history and the potential reinterpretation of its variables, these artists collectively champion the legacy of non-objective art as a vehicle for embodying critical thought.

image: Melissa Staiger, “Cut Cord”, 2024, acrylic on panel, 24 x 18 inches

Wavelength at Abaton Project Room

Color and sound are connected by their movement through space as wavelengths, which have both a visual and a material component. This movement can easily be demonstrated visually when light passes through optical prisms or water particles and separates into wavelengths, producing a rainbow effect. Similarly sound, an energy produced by vibration, can travel through different mediums and be detected by our hearing or by a transducer, and also observed as the popular Chladni resonance patterns. Artists who creatively transform materials naturally present the wavelength phenomenon in their practice.

In this exhibition, we present Melissa Staiger’s wavy spectrum with Chaconne Klaverenga’s black pool and Cindy Sherman “on ice.”

Abaton Project Room
11 Broadway, Suite 965
Friday, Saturday & Sunday 12-6.
(917) 227-6357
[email protected]

Rainbow Room at Equity Gallery's Wing Project Space, October 3 - 26

Join me for an opening reception at Equity Gallery for “Rainbow Room” on Thursday, October 3rd from 6:30 - 8PM.

BOS Sept. 28-29, Noon - 6PM

Please join me for Bushwick Open Studio’s on September 28th & 29th at my shared art studio space located at: 274 Morgan Ave, 5th Floor. We will be open from Noon - 6PM both days. It is a 5th Floor walk-up, so if you want to visit on another day when the freight elevator is running (M-F), just let me know.

Brain Candy, curated by Iris Jaffe at Peep Space in Hyperallergic (link)

La Banda at Tappeto Volante

La Banda at Tappeto Volante, Brooklyn, NY
Jan 20 - Mar 3, 2024

Featuring works by:

Inna Babaeva, Michael Barton-Sweeney, Joshua Bienko, Lorenza Boisi, Sharon Butler, Karin Campbell, Jaque- line Cedar, Nurya Chana, Yan Cynthia Chen, Nicholas Cueva, Jared Deery, Georgia Elrod, Allison Jae Evans, Ashley Garrett, Ann/Drew Gayle, Catherine Haggarty, Elizabeth Hazan, Chris Joy, Pete K Landis, Hein Koh, Leonora Loeb, Lauren Luloff, Jon Lutz, JJ Manford, Susann Minton, Anthony Miler, Beatrice Modisett, Bascha Mon, Alexander Nolan, Rachel Portesi, Erika Ranee, Elisa Soliven-Gerber, Joel Soliven, Melissa Staiger, Deirdre Swords, Ian Swordy, Christina Tenaglia, Alessandro Teoldi, Lumin Wakoa, Jesse Willenbring, Brian Wood, Boyuan Yang, Alice Zinnes

Tappeto Volante proudly announces the third edition of La Banda, 2024, an expansive group show of works on paper, paintings, and sculpture, featuring the works of 43 artists, stems from the commune interest of the Tappeto Volante founders in building and supporting the art community, and strengthening the heterogeneous, multicultural, cross-generational, multidisciplinary art network connected to our practices as gallerists, artists, and curators.

In 2021, TV Projects hosted the first edition of La Banda to catalyze the rebuilding of our community and mitigate the pandemic-related challenges. This initiative involved each member of TV Projects selecting a group of artists to participate in the exhibition. The success of this event led to the organization of La Banda Vol. 2 in 2023, and given the positive impact of these exhibitions, TV Projects is proud to present La Banda Vol. 3, continuing to promote community-building.

The name La Banda is a playful reference to the movie The Blues Brothers, where the protagonists reunite their band to save an orphanage they grew up in after being released from jail. The metaphor encapsulates TV Projects’ mission to provide a safe space for underrepresented artists, performers, and emerging curators to bring their projects and productions to life. Tappeto Volante’s art programming aims to celebrate the resilience of our art community and affirm our values of inclusivity, gender equality, and BIPOC empowerment.

Resonant Space at Mono Practice curated by Patricia Zarate

MONO PRACTICE is pleased to announce Resonant Space, a group exhibition featuring the work of Jacob Cartwright, Joanne Freeman, Karen Schifano, Jim Osman, and Melissa Staiger.

The distinct two and three-dimensional work of the artists in Resonant Space is enriched by the reverberant tone they invoke in each other. The affinity of these artists—Jacob Cartwright, Joanne Freeman, Jim Osman, Karen Schifano, and Melissa Staiger—can be seen in a lexicon of marks: lines, scribbles, scratches, smudges, dots, dashes, patterns, geometric and organic forms, textures and color, even as each stands firmly and uniquely in their approaches to art making.

Reaching beyond the boundaries of form, these works call out and comment on each other's ideas about the ongoing exploration of abstraction. Joanne Freeman does this in the way saturated color shapes overlap, converge and angle for footage within the edges and surface area of the raw linen canvas, while Melissa Staiger’s organic shapes of radiant and trippy color combinations jostle between foreground and background. Jacob Cartwright's highly organized compositions of geometric forms, combined with dense patterns, solid and translucent color, allude to an architectural space, man-made or natural. Like a theater set, Karen Schifano populates the stage with simple, provocative shapes and solid expanses of color that come in and out of the picture plane. And Jim Osman's ideas, with the addition of a third dimension, flow throughout the spaces and colors of his carefully constructed multi-leveled abstract tableaux of cut-out, exposed, and painted wood.

The artists in Resonant Space are all current members of the American Abstract Artists (AAA). AAA was founded in 1936 in New York City at a time when American abstract art was met with vigorous critical and popular resistance. AAA is a democratic, artist-run organization that promotes and fosters understanding of abstract and non-objective art.

Summer Time Rolls on view at Equity Gallery, Opening June 20 at 6PM

On Balance at Art Cake

ON BALANCE
New Work by American Abstract Artists

Curated by Mary Birmingham

April 15–May 14, 2023
Opening Saturday, April 15, 4–8pm

ART CAKE
214 40th St., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11232
Hours: Fri., Sat., Sun., 12–6 pm

a clearing at NIAD curated by Mel Prest

a clearing - opens April 1 at NIAD
Walking down a narrow path, you're surprised as you reach a clearing.
This sudden openness makes you stop short and catch your breath as you begin to absorb the change in landscape.
Works in a clearing beckon, inviting you to enter.

a clearing artists include: Carlotta Rodriguez, Debra Ramsay, James Heartsill, Jeremy Burleson, Melissa Staiger, Prajakti Jayavant, Shante Robinson and Scott Malbaurn.

Each artist composes forms evolving from intuitive, rather than predetermined, thinking. In these works, the initial pattern elements break down and fall away, creating an opportunity for something unknown to arise. Overlapping and unpredictable shapes and colors create conversations, inviting viewers to come closer, soften their gaze, release expectations. Through a variety of materials, these artworks attain a color energy using vibrant hues and textures. Optical vibrations and textures rumble as deeper looking opens to a clearing.

Technic/Color at John Molloy Gallery

---

TECHNIC/COLOR
Paintings:
Stephen Maine and Melissa Staiger
Sculpture: Naomi Cohn 

​October 8 - November 12, 2022

Opening reception with the artists
Sat, Oct 8, 2-5 pm

John Molloy Gallery is excited to present TECHNIC/COLOR, featuring the work of three abstract artists who investigate the interplay of materials, procedures, and chromatic sensation. Attentive to surface and scale, alert to the possibilities of visual humor, each of these artists has developed both a distinctive palette and an idiosyncratic approach to the mechanics of their studio process.

Stephen Maine has shown widely for the past thirty years. Having adapted the techniques of relief printmaking to the pictorial aims of painting, he forgoes the loaded brush in favor of paint-laden surfaces that function as printing plates. The resulting ‘residue paintings’ balance calibrated color relationships against the chance effects of the artist’s intentionally imprecise technique. Maine lives and works in West Cornwall, Connecticut.

In the past decade, Brooklyn-based Melissa Staiger has had numerous exhibitions in the New York area and beyond. Her compact, dense paintings strongly suggest an iconic figural presence that transcends their robust physicality. Her purposeful geometric layers of color complement the apparently arbitrary quality of Maine’s ‘residues.’

Saturated color and active surfaces are also primary in Naomi Cohn’s ceramics, which embody elements of painting and sculpture in a personal take on gestural abstraction. The ambivalence of heft and lift are rooted, perhaps, in the artist’s training and experience as a dancer. For Cohn, the spirit of play is ‘the organizing principle of my practice.’ She lives and works in Bedford, New York.

John Molloy Gallery is located at 49 East 78 St., suite 2B, New York, NY. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Friday, 12:00 to 5:00 and Saturday, 12:00 to 5:00. TECHNIC/COLOR continues through November 12, 2022

STREAMING at Stand 4 Gallery, Closing July 10, 12 -3PM