“I love New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.”
-Truman Capote

The world has watched New York City buckle under the pressure of illness. And yet it has also once again become a beacon of hope for a way forward. A weary nation looks to its leadership and hopes for its strength and recovery. The city is united and it unites us all. While its iconic streets lie empty but for the ambulances that shriek through every hour of every day, we wait, secure in the knowledge that this city has weathered storms before. Confident that New York will rise once more and draw us back in – fill up again with vibrant chaos to shake off the slumber of this strange moment in time.

Matthew Langley joined us on April 29, 2020 in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He lives on the Upper West Side of New York City where he is currently under lock down. In order to reach his studio he would need to use mass transportation and so has not been there in over a month. His upcoming show has been moved to September giving him time to prepare. During this time he’s been creating zines, small sculpture and paper pieces exploring color and mark making. Langley has long been a fan of the zine world and began creating them years ago after the revelation that art does not need to be something that just sits on a wall. To hear more about his journey with the zine including his projects during quarantine, as well as discussion of his other work, listen to the complete interview.

Andrew Schwartz lives and works in New York where he, too, is locked down as the pandemic stretches on. He says his habit always is to have his head down and be working and so this time has been an opportunity for the artist to dig in deeper. The baseline anxiety he experienced at the outset made it difficult to tap into his creativity but, like many artists, he feels he is now more able to focus and becoming more used to this time. He is working in four different sizes at the moment, making smaller works that in some ways serve as studies in formal aspects such as color and composition, and larger works (30 x 22 and 50 x 40) all on paper. To hear more about his experience working during this time, including a discussion of how the paper he’s using lends itself to his current process, listen to the complete interview.