SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2020 in New York was, for many, the last in-person art show before the pandemic lockdown. Artists Katie Hubbell, Danni O’Brien, and Kenzie Wells, whose burgeoning collective SYZYGY made its debut installation at SPRING/BREAK, discuss how they came together through a shared love of playfulness, textures, and performative creation.

Though colder than the beginning of June, when the plywood first went up in the wake of the BLM movement, the energy in the air was palpable for Konstance and her collective members. It was the same energy, the same feeling of get out there and seize the moment, create the narrative, that facilitated their meeting and organization in June.

Juliette Hayt is not only a trained oil painter, but she recently completed a Masters in Art Therapy from the School of Visual Arts. Her lifelong practice has always been engaged with the female experience, and her thick, warm-toned painting style is immediately recognizable, whether she’s painting peonies in the south of France or posting sketch updates on her Instagram story. This week, Juliette and I talked about her practice and how it changed throughout the quarantine, remaining engaged with physical and mental well-being as well as the mysteries of the unconscious.

After a recent relocation to Asheville, NC, artist Katie McWeeney has a new garage studio and an interdisciplinary practice that envelopes paint, charcoal, writing and architecture. She discusses telephone cords and connectivity, and how artists as activists can occupy and use their space and voice to amplify others. 

The pandemic uprooted artist William Baddour, but he was never left without his paints and pens. Here, he explains how art practice is a form of healing, processing and living. From vintage illustration to his archive of sketchbooks, he offers a perspective on the power of art in isolation.

Olivia Guterson is living, working, and mothering in Detroit, MI where she’s constantly expanding her multifaceted art practice. A soon-to-be-mother, she is working with metal, black and white (and occasionally, red) ink and thinking about the intersections between her Black and Jewish ancestry, healing generational trauma, and recording non-linear time through her art.

Brooklyn-based abstract painter King David offers us a glimpse inside his new works on MDF and plexiglass, and talks Turpenoid, Gerhard Richter and essentialism with Pollinate writer