Back in the living room of her Chevy Chase, Maryland, home, Luttwak discusses the major theme of her art. “I like the idea of uncovering roots, taking them out of the ground, revealing what nature chose not to show,” the sculptor says. Long before shaping these forms, she collected root specimens found on neighborhood walks or dug up in her garden. 

One day while disposing of a late-summer basil plant, she noticed its distinctive root nodules. “Plants have such different root systems; some are fantastic looking,” she points out. “I was inspired, but didn’t do anything with it. ‘Nature is so perfect,’ I thought, ‘Who am I to even try to make anything like it?’” 

Then, in 2006, she did just that. After only two attempts, Luttwak recalls, “I immediately knew that this was mine. I’m not copying nature; my aim is to create interesting visual effects for the viewer.” 

At that stage, her metal-working skills had advanced. Since first taking metal classes at Montgomery College 15 years earlier, she had been designing and making one-of-a-kind silver and gold jewelry, along with pewter vessels and Judaica.

Deciding to scale up in 2006, she began to work in steel. Heating and connecting two pieces using that material produces a blobby residue, which typically is removed as an error. In her sculptures, it remains. “For root systems,” she observes, “the more weld-building that shows, the more organic and natural it looks.”

Luttwak’s works, both outdoors and in, are intended for specific sites, from the 100-foot-wide Root of Sweet Potato that courses 30 feet down the stone walls of a Sicilian castle to the attenuated, branch-like structures, echoed as shadows against the white walls of a residence in Israel. 

Whenever possible, the artist begins by taking a photo of the location, printing it out and hand-drawing the sculpture on top. Designs are often constructed in her light-filled basement studio. Starting with at least five steel rods of different dimensions, she cuts them to size, heats them up in her studio forge and, once malleable, shapes them on an anvil. When the steel is red-hot, “it’s as soft as butter,” she says. “But you don’t have much time; steel becomes hard very quickly.” Formed pieces are then fused together by welding.

Each sculpture is composed in sections. For works that are too heavy, too awkward or too big to handle, the sculptor heads to Metal Specialties in Spencerville, Maryland, for help with fabrication and installation.

Since first presenting her work at the 2011 International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, she has received five public and private commissions in Italy, with more underway. 

Luttwak’s ongoing fascination with roots may have been instilled early on. She was born on a kibbutz in Israel’s Upper Galilee, in a valley of relatively plentiful flora and fauna. Later attending Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she studied law before transitioning to art history and political science. “Basically,” she remembers, “I always wanted to be an artist.” A part-time job guiding visitors through the Israel Museum’s ceremonial art collection enhanced her appreciation for these historical metal forms. She met her husband in Jerusalem; the couple moved to Washington in 1972 when he pursued a doctorate. 

Luttwak starts a piece by researching root systems online, unearthing their structures and exposing their hidden meanings. In Roots of Winter Wheat, a series exhibited at the World Bank, four sculptures illustrate an entire life cycle. “As the plant’s energy moves from the roots to the flowers,” she reflects,“its roots shrink. We don’t see that the roots are dying, but they are.” Her interpretation: “When we see something that is at its peak, something else has to give.”

In the sculptor’s front garden, several pieces once exhibited around the region are now on display. A cluster of bright-orange mangrove roots shoots from the earth like joyous trumpeters blaring. The long, lively Alfalfa Root at 4.5 Months ascends a huge evergreen.

Luttwak remarks, “Sometimes from inside the house, I see people stop and ask themselves, ‘What’s going on? Is it real? What is it?’” Brightening, she adds, “I like the process the viewer goes through—noticing the sculpture, thinking it’s like nothing they’ve seen before, then moving closer. I want people to stop and look and try to figure it out.”

For more information, visit dalyaluttwak.com. 

PERFECT PERCH  Designed by Sacha Lakic for Roche Bobois, the diminutive APEX pouf buries its wood frame entirely under a quilted cover. Available in a host of colorful fabrics at showrooms in Friendship Heights and Tysons. roche-bobois.com

UNDER GLASS  Orbit, a blown-glass side table by Jean-Marie Massaud for Poliform, boasts a round top seamlessly welded to a conical base for an airy silhouette. Find in two sizes at Poliform’s new Cady’s Alley location in Georgetown. poliform.it/en-us

CLOUD NINE The Elle Fabric Sofa by Bernhardt streamlines a classic kidney shape to conjure the softness of a cloud. The seat reaches to the floor, concealing its framework. Available at Belfort Furniture in Dulles. belfortfurniture.com; bernhardt.com 

HAPPY HOUR Made of lacquered MDF and rattan with brass, copper or nickel feet, the Traje de Luces bar cabinet by Portuguese design company Dooq recalls delicate architectural flourishes found in the south of Spain. It comes in a range of lacquered hues. dooqdetails.com

SKIN TIGHT As designed by Marie C Dorner, Ligne Roset’s Uncover seating collection comprises light, all-foam structures clad in stretch fabric for a skin-tight fit. Find at Ligne Roset in Upper Georgetown; the armchair is pictured. ligne-roset.com

SMALL WONDER The Wally workstation, a small-space solution by Resource Furniture, comes in melamine or lacquer. A touch lowers it via slow-open pistons while tech integrations add convenience. Find at the Cady’s Alley showroom. resourcefurniture.com

GOING MODERN Saka Home Furniture, which recently opened a showroom in Upper Georgetown, offers seating and tables in sleek, contemporary style. Pictured: The Demi Sofa combines matte-black steel legs with a tight seat and back in a wide selection of fabrics. sakahome.com

SLEEK SHAPE A curved, open silhouette distinguishes Room & Board’s Rhodes accent chair. A minimal metal base supports a hardwood frame concealed in foam and fiber and covered in leather or fabric. Available at Room & Board locations in DC and Bethesda. roomandboard.com

Monaghan was asked to engage with art from The Phillips’ collection for this show. He drew inspiration from two works, including a Théodore Géricault painting of horses cavorting among Greco-Roman ruins. “These ruins are a signifier of a lost or collapsed civilization,” says the Washington-based artist. “In my practice, I engage with history and ancient mythologies and reinterpret them for the digital age.”

Though his prints, sculptures and animation imagine a technology-driven future, Monaghan’s body of work is influenced by art, architecture and emblems of the past. His visually stunning imagery draws viewers in to experience “a cautionary tale,” as he describes it, posing questions about power, technology, consumer culture and the environment. Cloaked in ermine, robotic figures with LED lights for eyes stand in for royals. Gilded columns and frescoes adorn spaceships that undulate like jellyfish. Empty coffee shops and supermarkets with unmistakably familiar logos gleam like long-forgotten shrines.

Monaghan has exhibited globally, from the Sundance Film Festival to solo shows in Paris, St. Petersburg and Istanbul. His work can also be found in private collections.

H&D paid a visit to his bright studio at Catholic University, where he teaches digital art and design. Monaghan started out by explaining that his artistic path began when he was a kid in Rockaway Beach, New York, playing video games in his parents’ basement. He taught himself how to use 3D Studio Max—software he still uses today. “I didn’t have a whole lot of drawing or painting skills but knew I wanted to create moving and still imagery,” he recalls. “Anything you could dream up you could create using this software.” He went on to study computer graphics at the New York Institute of Technology, where he was inspired to craft more “challenging and experimental” pieces.

“I began to exhibit in galleries and have been an artist ever since,” Monaghan says. In 2011, he completed a master’s program in studio art at University of Maryland. “Having that experience was very valuable because I was going from making virtual forms to making physical forms,” he notes. “I got experience with sculpture and metal-casting and continue to make physical work and art objects.”

One of these, a faceless bust with a surface resembling tufted leather, was inspired by Apollo Belvedere, an ancient Roman relic. Monaghan’s sculpture was carved out of Carrara marble by a robotic milling arm in Italy and hand-finished by local artisans. A collaboration with Visionnaire, an Italian furniture brand, it was unveiled at Salone del Mobile in 2022 and at press time was shown at Art Basel Miami.

Initially, Monaghan brainstorms a new work on an old school sketch pad. “I start by making doodles, thumbnails and storyboards,” explains the artist, who also considers the environment where a work will appear. “Though it originates on a computer, it’s designed with the physicality of an installation in mind.”

“After Fabergé,” a 2017 exhibit at The Walters in Baltimore, displayed the museum’s jewel-encrusted Fabergé eggs alongside Monaghan’s digital prints; his takes on the precious objets d’art are embedded with tiny computer screens, satellite dishes and a Starbucks.

In these and other works, he often references the lavish ornamentation of the Baroque period. “The era defined by Baroque aesthetics—an era of strong central power and authority—didn’t do so well,” he asserts. “I recreate that opulence and draw connections between it and the decadence of the digital age.”

Beaches also recur in his dreamscapes. “I grew up between the natural expanse of the Atlantic and the concrete jungle of Manhattan,” says Monaghan. “The relationship between manmade and natural, between organic and synthetic—all of my work deals with the tensions between these different things.”

Monaghan’s surreal worlds are devoid of people, yet the human presence is always there. From Amazon to AirPods, he riffs on brands and technologies that are ubiquitous in daily life. “I think of my work as a dream,” he reflects. “In dreams, your fears and desires manifest as familiar imagery. In my animation, things we’re familiar with come together in a cryptic dance that’s hard to understand at first, but I think has an impact."

For more information, visit jonathanmonaghan.com.

“When you talk about a vessel, you’re talking about the lip and body and foot,” she begins. “I want to use that comparison in a kind of autobiographical way.”

Beneath the surface of her pretty, feminine pieces lies deeper commentary. “Clothes imply bodies,” says Briegel, who often recasts items from her own closet in her art. “Instead of wearing the clothes, I’m reclaiming their identities to make functional objects that provide nourishment. It’s a little bit of body acceptance,” explains the potter, who traces a long line of artists using ceramic vessels as stand-ins for bodies, from the anthropomorphic bottles of Peru’s Moche society to modern vases by Picasso and Betty Woodman.

On a recent morning, Briegel is standing in the Randallstown, Maryland, farmhouse she shares with her partner, Matt Nierenberg. After the two met online, he wooed her with an offer of studio space in his childhood home. “I moved in on our third date and never left,” she says, smiling. “It worked out.”

As light streams into her basement studio, the ceramic artist demonstrates a few steps in her rigorous handcraft. It starts with a plaster mold of her creation. To make one, Briegel takes a lacy swatch cut from one of her dresses, flattens the 11-by-17-inch fabric on a sticky surface, places a barrier of boards around it and plugs up the edges with clay. She then pours in wet plaster and waits for it to dry, generally over two days. With this technique, the potter has amassed some 40 molds, each based on a different garment or fabric border.

Using a mold, Briegel creates a clay slab formed of three layers—the first painted into the mold’s crevices with a liquid clay called slip, the second a poured slip, then a layer of rolled clay pressed on top. Once all are bonded together, Briegel peels off the clay slab. Its pattern stands out in high relief, just like the lacy fabric it came from.

Porcelain is the potter’s clay of choice. “It captures all the details of fabric texture,” she says. “Its translucence relates to the see-through fabrics I use. And it is very challenging to work with. I’ve always been attracted to challenges.”

Case in point: Building a useful object out of pieces cut from the textured slab. Like a professional tailor, Briegel plans out patterns for cutting into the clay slab before joining pieces together. A single bowl may involve 10 seams. “With porcelain, the more seams you add, the more potential places there are for the object to crack,” says the potter, who fires most pieces three times in electric kilns located in a barn near her studio.

She minimizes breakage in part by throwing a separate base on a potter’s wheel, then attaching it to the object’s upper body. “I call that quilting them together,” she says. “I like to use the same language for the throwing and sewing processes.”

When she was nine, Briegel received a sewing machine as a Christmas gift; it now holds a place of honor in her office. “I grew up in the ‘Project Runway’ generation,” observes the 31-year-old. A highlight was the show’s “unconventional challenge” competition, which involved making garments from something other than fabric. “It had a big influence on what I do now,” she reflects.

Besides sewing, Briegel was also interested in painting and drawing, and intended to study arts education upon entering The University of Tennessee, Knoxville in her hometown. After taking a pottery class and meeting graduate students in the program, her goals expanded; she went on to receive a master’s of fine arts degree in ceramics at Ohio University.

The ceramicist also learned advanced clay techniques as an intern at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Montana—“a very formative experience,” she says. Landing the first residency at DC’s District Clay Center brought her to the East Coast; that was followed by a second residency at Baltimore Clayworks. Briegel is now an adjunct professor at Maryland Institute College of Art and teaches workshops on her technique around the country. For the past three years, she has exhibited at the Smithsonian Craft Show.

Briegel continues to experiment in her studio, striving to make pieces that are ever more comfortable to use. “I like my work to be functional—but beautifully functional,” she clarifies, continuing, “Wouldn’t you want to use a beautiful mug for your morning coffee? My work is pretty indulgent in that way. It adds a little bit of sparkle to the day.”

For more information, visit samanthabriegel.com.

The brainchild of Houston design firm RE:Site, this immersive art installation stands beside the now-completed stadium, compelling passersby to stop and experience it. The structure rises from a spot where slave quarters once stood—a reimagined slave house clad in a staggered pattern of ipe clapboard and highly reflective stainless steel. Erasure poetry, which recasts existing written materials by removing selected words, utilizes 243 runaway-slave advertisements that have been etched into the steel panels; composed by poet Quenton Baker, the words impose powerful new meaning on their hateful source.

“We envisioned this private space—the only one in the lives of enslaved peoples—as a symbol of resilience, determination and persistence,” says Norman Lee, who collaborated on the project with RE:Site cofounder Shane Albritton. Visit smcm.edu/commemorative

Kinship between Ringwald’s studio and sculptures runs deep. When she and her husband, Michael Kerr, bought the house in Washington’s Shaw neighborhood back in 1978, they started taking down walls to open up spaces. Ringwald saved and reused building materials, repurposing its rough-hewn lath as siding on wall-mounted sculptures, influenced by tobacco-drying barns she had seen on trips to North Carolina.

“The kinds of structures I’m attracted to are built out of really simple, everyday materials,” says the sculptor. Those same materials inform her art. Made primarily of wood, her assemblages often incorporate sheet metals, rubber and some plastics, all commonly used in construction.

Ringwald compares her fascination with modest buildings to the endurance of landscapes and human figures in art. “They are such common images,” she says about the structures that have absorbed her imagination for nearly half a century. “We live in them, work in them, store things in them or have our animals in them. They’re so universal.” And as towers increasingly arise, Ringwald’s art holds an irresistible charm. Her portrayals of architecture reduced to its vernacular essence revisit a nostalgic past, connecting us to a simpler life.

Ideas for her sculptures spring from many sources. On her worktable during a recent visit, the sculptor was constructing a shallow piece 30 inches high and three feet wide, based on a warehouse image taken by Shirley True, a local photographer whose pictures of weary, utilitarian buildings inspire the sculptor. Images for future reference are stacked nearby, among them a log cabin illustrated in a news story, a plain Fundamentalist church, a vintage gas station in a photo taken by the sculptor in Takoma Park, DC.

“I like to emphasize what strikes me visually and then pare it down,” Ringwald says, while noting, “Lately I’ve been staying pretty close to the image.” Heading through her extensive workspace—past jars filled with brushes and paints stored along one wall—she reaches a large filing cabinet, pulling out a corrugated metal sheet. Used mainly for miniatures—as in dollhouses—Ringwald applied it as siding on her work-in-progress.

The sculptor typically works on several pieces at once. Constructing sculptures of different sizes simultaneously encourages reuse of materials from large structures to smaller ones, an approach often taken on actual farm buildings. “They call them dependencies,” she points out, citing the example of a small shack that might be constructed with leftovers.

Over the past two years, she has transformed reclaimed materials into a series of 74 flat, textural huts, each about five inches tall. Living and working in Washington her entire career, Ringwald also has repurposed surplus materials relinquished by other sources, from wood decking to scraps passed along by furnituremaker and friend Rick Wall. Most spectacularly, the sculptor was given sections of the original, late-19th-century copper roof—now patinated to a rich teal—from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, where she taught freshman design and mixed media for 27 years.

While many of her wood sculptures are stained in natural tones or washed with thinned paint, Ringwald notes, “I also really love color. Sometimes the color or color combinations take over as inspiration.” Brilliant hues dominate in several abstract series including Patchwork and Fractured Rectangles, as well as colorful tabletop buildings. “I think about it like quilting,” she says, “except I’m doing it with wood and metal, screws and nuts.”

During the height of the pandemic, the sculptor traveled less and painted more—including works on paper. One piece from that period was selected for a centennial exhibition of local artists at The Phillips Collection. In crystalline water-based paints and graphite, that painting depicts a row of abstract sheds, part of her Exurbia series.

Born and raised in the Bronx, Ringwald followed a fairly straightforward career path. Starting out, she recalls, “We always lived in houses, not apartments. That sense of a separate building influenced me.” In kindergarten she remembers building with giant blocks, and covering one structure with crumpled brown paper to make a cave. “In a way,” she reflects, “I always liked playing around with materials.” Benefitting from her father’s work for the New York Central Railroad, the family rode trains from Canada to Florida; as a budding sculptor, she loved looking through the window at the changing landscape.

Ringwald went on to major in sculpture at Hunter College. There, she learned to use professional power tools like the drill press, band saw and sanders that now stand in her light-filled workshop. Picking up a jagged wood scrap, she cradles it between her fingers as if it were an archaeological find. Contemplating its potential, she smiles knowingly and says, “This is the kind of thing that makes me very happy.”

For more information, visit marieringwald.com.

ZEROING IN ON HUNGER
Lula Goce’s mural portrays a female farmer harvesting her crop. As the artist wrote on Instagram, “It is an ode to women fighting every day to provide quality food for their communities.” Goce’s work is one of six murals to be completed across the U.S. this year as part of the Zero Hunger project. Sponsored by World Food Program USA, Street Art for Mankind and Kellogg, the program raises awareness about rising food insecurity and injustice.

MENTORING CITY YOUTH
MuralsDC engages young artists, teaching them the right techniques to create murals and replace unsightly graffiti. In the past 15 years, the program has fostered 150 new murals throughout the District. One of these, "The Wailin’ Mailman," is a nine-story portrait of the late Buck Hill, a renowned saxophonist who moonlighted as a mail carrier. Artist Joe Pagac painted the tribute, located at 1925 14th Street, NW.

WOMEN EMPOWERED
In June, Mayor Muriel Bowser attended the dedication of two new murals celebrating women at Seventh Street and Rhode Island Avenue, NW, in DC’s Shaw neighborhood. One of these, "She Got We," is by Cita Sadeli, better known as MISS CHELOVE; it portrays strong, multi-ethnic, multi-generational women. Sadeli also completed a four-story mural on view until recently at the National Museum of Women in the Arts that addressed the role of women in ecological activism.

In one collection, pleated shades drop from the ceiling with the lightness of parachutes glowing from within. Linen or cotton shades cast warm ambient light, illuminating natural fibers. Each smooth, cylindrical surface becomes a canvas for bold curves or blurry stripes grounded on a wood base. These luminescent shades also may be suspended from the wall and framed by a single parenthetical wood curve.

If the couple’s contemporary designs echo the lines of Mid-Century Modernism, Lopez notes, “It isn’t intentional. We don’t start out with a collection in mind and then find a technique to use. It’s the opposite. Our collections evolve because I want to keep experimenting and exploring different textile techniques.” Their company is called La Loupe—the French word for magnifying glass—“a symbol of curiosity and discovery,” she says.

Lopez works from a small studio in the heart of Baltimore. At a separate studio in the city’s Little Italy, Duenas—her work partner and husband—cuts, shapes, sands and finishes the wood parts after they have collaborated on the designs. Duenas salvages leftover wood pieces, assembling them into abstract compositions, often applying a dash of color. The wall pieces are part of a smaller artwork collection.

Duenas also creates his own sculptures, which incorporate reclaimed industrial metal parts and found objects, and makes architectural models on a freelance basis. Both endeavors, he says, bring technical expertise to their partnership.

Lopez confirms: “I’m much more about ‘Oh, let’s create. Let’s do it.’ Marco helps me figure out how to make things work and how to make them better. The way we work balances each other.”

The couple’s journey started in 1998 when they met in Miami. Lopez had arrived from Buenos Aires seeking independence and self-discovery, while Duenas had come from Peru to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. After six years, Lopez returned to Argentina, where she earned a textile-design degree at the University of Buenos Aires. Though the curriculum concentrated on design for industrial production, Lopez recalls, “I wanted to focus on traditional craft, on the handmade process.” Her thesis proposed a collection of sculptural jewelry combining fiber and metal; she wanted to continue in a career designing three-dimensional, functional objects on a larger scale. “Lighting and lamps were a great option,” she observes. “They’re very sculptural and artistic in the way you can play with the forms and factors of light, structure and mixing fabric with different materials.”

Over the years, Lopez’s long-distance friendship with Duenas matured “like a good wine,” he remembers. Duenas had relocated to Baltimore; she joined him there in 2015. Their first collection together, Strada, came out the following year. “My main medium is fiber and textile,” she explains of Strada’s genesis, “but I really like to connect that material with other mediums, such as wood in this case. That’s how we started.”

After teaching an origami workshop at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2017, Lopez was inspired to adapt that Japanese paper-folding technique to fiber. By backing linen with rigid polystyrene, then scoring and hand-folding the composite, she was able to duplicate the geometric volumes of origami. She applied the process to plain, off-white linen and folded, blue-and-white-striped lampshades.

To achieve those variegated blue stripes, she adapted a different Japanese textile technique, shibori. The process, like origami, starts with folding, followed by pressing and tying the folded fabric with thread. This resist method prevents dye from penetrating protected areas. Unlike origami, where geometric patterns reliably fold the same way, she says, “Sometimes there are different factors in shibori that you cannot control. Just like every leaf on a tree is different, with shibori, each piece is different from every other.”

A technique Lopez uses to add pattern actually involves subtraction. Instead of screen-printing dye onto the colored linen she starts with, the artist passes a bleaching paste through openings in the screen. That discharge method removes dye from selected areas. Once the fabric is washed, a crisp, abstract pattern remains.

Lopez takes the creative process further. At Blue Lights Junction, a garden and open studio in Baltimore, she volunteers planting indigo seeds and harvesting the plants to be used for dye. “You’re involved in the entire process behind the final piece,” she explains with satisfaction. “And it connects you with a collaborative community.”

Coincidentally, Lopez and Duenas both grew up surrounded by Mid-Century Modern furniture. They dismissed the style back then; Duenas preferred the organic forms of Art Nouveau, that late 19th-century response to industrialization, and Lopez admired the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish architect and textile designer of the same era. They continue to love the modernist sculptures of Barbara Hepworth and fiber artist Ruth Asawa’s nature-inspired wire sculptures. And their views of now-trendy mid-century design have changed. “We didn’t go in that direction because it’s popular,” Lopez points out. “But it’s popular because that combination of simple forms and natural materials is timeless.”

For more information, visit laloupedesign.com

Through his prismatic lens, impressions of spring’s balmy breezes or summer’s intense light beckon. Misty lavenders drift by. Ultramarine pools ripple along. High-energy colors build on and charge each other. Rectangles, bolting from the surface, are not simply rectangles. On closer inspection, one is a loosely constructed block of lines and slabs, a luscious batter of aubergine, mauve and teal, rising on chartreuse, blue and pink strokes. All unite in compositions of unexpected complexity and depth.

“Color is an adventure,” says the artist, sitting in the living room of his home in Washington’s Shaw neighborhood, pondering the paintings around him. “When you use a new combination of colors, it’s like going to another territory, a territory you don’t know.”

Blee has experienced faraway lands. Growing up in India and Pakistan for nine of his formative years, he absorbed the lessons of brilliant, saturated colors that stand up in the glaring sun. “There is something about India,” observes the artist. “It’s not just the light. It’s also the culture that has this extraordinary relation to color.” He recalls with delight an occasion in the ’60s, when family friends mistook one of his early artworks—painted when he was 12—for that of an Indian artist. At the time, Blee’s father worked at the American Embassy in Delhi.

During those years, the budding artist frequented that city’s National Museum, looking at exotic Chola bronzes and exquisite Indian miniatures. “What affected me most was Indian art from 1,500 years ago, going to the caves of Ellora and Elephanta near Mumbai,” he remembers, referring to those ruins of elaborate, stone-cut artworks. He also visited Delhi’s Museum of Modern Art and learned about Hinduism and Buddhism embodied in the works. “Part of Indian philosophy is a deeply spiritual energy; sensuality and sacred are linked,” he says, making the same connection in his own transcendent work.

That art happens at home. Canvases underway lean against walls in the dining room—shared with two colorful parrots—or in a studio upstairs. Using quick-drying acrylics, the artist applies one or two, or as many as 30 layers, often squeezing paint straight from the tube. He generally builds up separate hues on the canvas, rather than mixing them in advance. Though he paints one or two hours every day, his concentration doesn’t end there. “I’m always thinking about my work or judging it,” he says. “That’s as much part of the painting as painting is.” Those critical thoughts may prompt him to work on pictures over many months, or go back in to polish earlier work hanging on the walls. “I think something has to live in more than just one moment,” he notes.

Recently, Blee’s painting has taken a fresh turn. Looser, freer strokes sweep up and across five- and six-foot-tall canvases, evoking natural forms as well as his roots in the subtropics. “In the process of painting, if you’re open, sometimes things happen that you don’t expect,” he relates. “It’s like part of your soul opens up in a different way. I think it’s a matter of continually renewing.”

Blee compares the structure of his paintings to poetry, which he calls “very central to me.” At 16, he started reading the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke—an early influence—before fully understanding their meaning. Now, he explains, “Transformation is basic to Rilke’s idea of art and existence. We change. We go deeper. It’s a struggle, but there is also pleasure and magic in transformation. Those ideas stay with me every day.”

In her poem Song, Hilda Morley, a 20th-century poet and friend of Blee’s, beautifully references his “making paintings in which I wander as in the landscapes of my dreaming.”

Inspired also by Western painters, the artist singles out J.M.W. Turner’s imaginative colorations, Pierre Bonnard’s intimate interiors and especially abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, a mentor and friend, recognized for her pioneering technique of spontaneously applying thinned paint to unprimed canvases, adopted later by color-field painters.

Blee met Frankenthaler while he was an undergraduate at Maryland Institute College of Art, then again when he attended graduate school at Hunter College in New York. He wrote his master’s thesis on Frankenthaler’s seminal art, and visited her New York home, bringing along his own work. “When I first met Helen, I was dazzled,” he remembers. “She liked me and liked my work. That was an amazing affirmation—to have the person you admire most appreciate your art.”

He asked Frankenthaler how she chose colors. “She said it was like choosing a word in a poem,” the painter recalls. “That hit it on the head for me.” Drawing on his own experience decades later, he observes. “It’s something inside of you that you kind of go for. You bring it into being for others.”

Blee’s art is on view by appointment at the offices of Moody Graham/Teass Warren in DC through May 18, and at Cross MacKenzie Gallery in Hillsboro, Virginia, from May 24 to June 30. For appointments, email becca@crossmackenzie.com. Visit johnblee.com.

The exhibit will showcase nearly 150 artworks from the museum’s permanent collection on two floors of gallery space. Media ranging from fiber and ceramics to glass and metalwork will be on display; about 135 pieces are new acquisitions that have never been shown at the Renwick before. Featured artists include Nick Cave, Judith Schaechter, Preston Singletary, Roberto Lugo and many more; makers of all genders, sexual orientations, ethnicities and creeds are part of the mix. Virtual and in-person talks and events accompanying the show include Handi-hour, a happy hour with crafting on May 19. americanart.si.edu

Standing in the studio at her Silver Spring home, Steel is surrounded by three floor looms, acquired over the 40 years she has been developing her craft and earthy, soaring-in-scale contemporary art. During that time, her richly textured wall pieces have become increasingly three-dimensional, their abstract designs continuing to express ideas arising over a lifetime.

One series came about when Steel’s adult daughters were small. Disgusted by scandals in the news, the artist began cutting up newspapers, interweaving paper strips and cotton thread into squares stitched together to form small, rough-hewn houses. “Newspaper has such a beautiful texture,” Steel comments about the approach she revives periodically. Most of her pieces, woven of cotton, reflect a strong West African influence; others made of silk or rayon glimmer in the light.

Steel views her craft as a basic human activity. “Weaving is in our DNA,” she observes. “But we’ve moved so far away from hand-weaving in our industrial society, people don’t understand how cloth is made anymore.” As she explains, weaving is simply the interlacing of two linear elements on any kind of loom. A vertical thread, called a warp, is held under tension as a horizontal weft thread goes over and under. “It’s a very, very old technology that I have a great fondness for,” the artist says.

Most hand-weavers make cloth on a loom, then use the fabric in functional objects such as blankets, rugs or clothing. Steel takes it further. “I think of weaving as a construction method,” she explains. “I create the structure—the cloth, then I manipulate and change it a lot.”

The artist begins by weaving cloth in a variety of textures, patterns and colors in lengths up to 18 yards. Later, while composing a new piece, fabrics may be interspliced and dyed again. “Eventually I’ll get it into a form that seems right and I’ll sew it together by hand,” she says. A large wall piece—like the eight-by-eight-foot work currently underway—can take nearly five years from start to finish.

To understand the roots of her art, Steel has traveled to West Africa and South America, and worked with craftspeople from Central Asia. Almost every year since 2006, she has visited Tenancingo, Mexico, to study with the late master weaver Evaristo Borboa and, more recently, Ruben Nuñez. For these trips, Steel takes along a backstrap loom. That deceptively simple device—made of sticks, rope and a strap—anchors to a stationary post at one end and wraps around the weaver’s waist at the other.

Using that loom, she has learned to weave highly complex, traditional patterns with very fine cotton thread in resist-dyed patterns. Called ikat in Malaysia and jaspe in Mexico, the technique involves isolating groups of threads that are tightly bound to resist taking on color, while the color in a dye bath permeates the untied threads. The process may involve handling and counting thousands of threads, as bundles are marked off before dyeing, then later lined up on the loom to create a pattern. “It’s a brilliant design system and a complicated, labor-intensive process that requires a lot of time, planning and math,” Steel notes. “You can take it very far.”

The artist’s proficiency offers no hint that she stumbled into the field by chance. While majoring in English at the University of Buffalo, Steel took a poetry class at a nearby college where she discovered the textiles studio. Peering through a window, she first glimpsed floor looms.

“Somehow, I signed up for an intro to textiles class. From there I took a weaving class,” the artist remembers. She taught herself basic chemistry to understand how dyes work, combed textile exhibits and learned from books and workshops. “I experimented a lot,” she notes.

After moving to Pittsburgh with her husband in the 1980s, Steel taught textile art in a high school, continuing to learn along with her students. A Maryland resident since 1994, she now teaches full-time at The Potomac School in McLean and leads adult workshops in the U.S. and Mexico.

Steel remains grateful to her own mentors, especially those in Mexico. “To be able to travel to places where the language and customs are so different, and work with people in the same area of craft, to have an intercambio—an exchange, as it’s called in Spanish—is a gift,” she observes, while recognizing her point in the constellation. “I’m not from that culture. I’m not going to produce what they produce. In my own studio, I try to take what I learn, what makes sense for me, and interpret it through the lens of my own time and place.”

Hillary Steel’s art will be on view from April 1 to May 1 at the Hillyer Gallery at International Arts & Artists in DC. For more information, visit hillarysteel.com.

An artist with strong ties to his homeland, Mamandi was raised in the historic village of Musasir, now called Rabat, in the Kurdish region of northwestern Iran. The ancient town was a religious capital in the Mannaean civilization some 3,000 years ago.

These days, the artist works from his studio in a bright, new apartment in Sterling, Virginia. Along one wall, tiles and other ceramic forms are stacked on open racks, ready for his hand-painting. Finished works and those in progress line shelves opposite. Mamandi pulls out one 20-inch-round platter with intricate, geometric bands in dazzling black-and-white patterns. Nearby, a colorful, nearly completed wall tile shows two hunters—one pointing a bow-and-arrow at a bison, the other directing his spear toward a bull. The inky forms exist in separate quadrants divided by jagged lines, like national borders, and stand out against a terrain as fragmented as a mosaic of multi-hued stones.

Brimming with energy, harmony and folksy charm, the animals and figures recall prehistoric cave paintings. Here and throughout Mamandi’s art, main motifs are enfolded by meticulously detailed backgrounds, or framed in richly ornamented, symmetrical borders that bring a formal order to each spirited, hand-painted piece.

The painter’s exacting embellishments conjure a broad Middle Eastern past. “I always say, when we moved from caves to houses and palaces, especially with the tiles, we were telling our stories and history—with the colors, with every way we could express them,” Mamandi notes. While several of his favored subjects, from winged lions to rams and circular sun symbols, derive from ancient tiles unearthed in his village, “We can’t say this style is based on a Kurdish house,” he explains. “It’s a Mesopotamian house.”

Mamandi started drawing at an early age, never dreaming that one day he would become an artist. After studying health at Iran’s Urmia University for two years, he left school and opened a bookstore and publishing business with a relative in Sanandaj, a center of Kurdish culture in Iran. He had moved to the city to take classes with well-known Kurdistani painters, but found little time to attend. Still, he recalls, “I never stopped painting and sketching.”

During a difficult time for Kurdish activists and writers starting in 2005, Mamandi relates, “a United Nations office in Turkey accepted my case as a refugee.” Settling in Avanos, Turkey, he prospered as a self-taught painter on ceramics, exhibiting his work at one of the city’s largest art galleries. “I had a good life,” he remembers.

Four years later, the artist was offered refugee status in the United States and emigrated in 2010, at age 33. “This is the land of opportunity,” he says, “but for a couple years, it was very hard.” While working in restaurants in Chicago, he also pursued ceramic painting, researching and testing clays and glazes that he found to be different here from those he had worked with in Turkey.

Then in 2013, when presenting his art for the first time at a craft show in Oak Brook, Illinois, Mamandi recalls, “My life changed. People admired my work; a lot didn’t believe I painted everything myself.” As he traveled around the country, the artist came to a show in Gaithersburg and discovered that he liked the DC area. He moved to Virginia in 2019.

Today, Mamandi considers himself a tile designer. “That’s my passion,” he says, citing the freedom of creating sumptuous designs on expansive, flat surfaces. Recognizing, however, that “everyone may not need a tile, but everybody needs a mug, a plate, a bowl,” he continues, “I wanted to bring that culture, that design, that symmetry to this country in every way possible.”

The artist paints on blank earthenware forms, which he glazes and fires in a kiln off-site. Creating the brilliant colors and precise floral, geometric and architectural patterns of his art—inspired by Kurdish women’s clothing and rugs—may require up to six different colors dappled in one spot.

Reflecting back to his birthplace—where he was surrounded by beautiful design traditions and listened to age-old stories told by his grandfather—“I always thought that the past was maybe better than now,” the artist observes. But he remains encouraged by the future. “In a thousand years, I never thought I would come to the United States and start painting tiles and plates,” he says, brightening. “When you think about your past, you see a lot of small things happen that attach together to bring you here. Now I know why.”

For more information, visit mannapottery.com.

On a November day in 2020, Annapolis photographer Jay Fleming hitched a ride on a small plane flying over Talbot County, timing his trip to capture peak fall foliage. “The meandering shoreline of Tilghman Creek, where it leads out to Eastern Bay, drew me to the scene,” he notes. “The Chesapeake Bay is incredibly dynamic. There is so much happening—I will never run out of new material to photograph.” Fleming documents the environment and communities on the Chesapeake’s last two inhabited offshore islands in Island Life, a 280-page book scheduled for a November 2021 release. Photo: Jay Fleming

Standing in her Washington row house on the main floor that often doubles as a studio, Hassan has assembled miniature models for her artworks, which may take shape in mammoth size. For an exhibit at Washington’s Kreeger Museum, the artist suspended a knitted web of gossamer-thin fibers in a stairwell between three floors. The piece, reaching 26 feet tall, required 40,000 stitches that Hassan knitted by hand. On site for the installation, she stretched and pivoted the airy artwork, securing it by fiber tendrils to the staircase’s solid bronze posts.

Hassan translated knitting concepts into welded steel for Marker, now prominently displayed on Connecticut Avenue at K Street, NW. The sculpture’s monumental, circular form rises 15 feet from a bed of colorful plantings. Painted knots and loops on its pierced surface reference threads coming together and unraveling; its swirling lines stand open to the sky. A joint project of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative—which brings art about women’s histories and contemporary experiences to public spaces—and DC’s Golden Triangle Business Improvement District, the vibrant piece is coated in blazing pink, suggesting a crown or the color of knitted hats worn at women’s marches.

These artworks tie into Hassan’s underlying theme of a single thread that takes many forms while binding all parts together. “My work is about connections—how we’re all connected through community, time and memory,” she observes. Ideas about continuity and identity also weave through, the artist adds, since “the stitches we use have been used by so many generations before.”

Many have turned to knitting or crocheting as comforting activities during the pandemic. However, hand-knitting has ignited Hassan’s art for more than 15 years—and her connections to fiber go back even further. Born in New York to a family from Lebanon, the future artist watched as her grandmother crocheted intricate patterns for table coverings and other beautifully useful items. She learned to knit from her mother, who stitched and finished objects in impeccable floral motifs—all now treasured by the artist.

After graduating from the American University of Beirut in 1997, Hassan pursued oil painting. A few years after joining her family in Washington in 2000, she rediscovered knitting through friends and connected online to knitting communities around the world which, she remembers, “were an inspiration.”

Her artwork soon incorporated more than fiber. “I came to this as a painter,” she explains. “My work focused on connecting those two elements.” The dimensions of her art also expanded in response to commissions for specific sites. Her largest piece appeared in 2019 at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building. As serene and see-through as a waterfall, the refined, mesh-like installation descended 40 feet from black-steel trusses overhead. Called Paths VII, this elegant structure funneled down to a narrow spindle pendulum, its tip poised just above a rising mound of gold leaf. Typical of Hassan’s artworks, the sculpture was hand-knitted of natural fibers and metal filaments, some only one-eighth the thickness of a single hair.

“I’ve always used really fine threads you wouldn’t necessarily knit with,” the artist remarks, noting too that metals “add a bit of structure that helps them hold their shape and give a little sheen.”

In her DC studio, Hassan explains the process behind Liminality, her piece for the Kreeger. She pulls out a model of the staircase where her sculpture now resides. Dangling in the center, ordinary string represents her concept of “what that shape would look like and how the points would converge,” she says. The next step was a plastic-string version of the sculpture made with a 3D printing pen.

Later, paper cutouts helped Hassan determine that the flat, knitted piece would take the form of a circle with another half-circle on top, to be extended vertically. After knitting a swatch, she figured out the size of needles and the spacing of stitches.

“I scaled it up from there,” Hassan says, with an ease that belies the extensive calculations involved. After manually documenting the smallest edge (348 stitches) to the widest circumference (1,067 stitches), she produced a massive computer spreadsheet that she referenced while knitting to track every line.

“My work is very much about the calculations I use in my structures—they’re definitely more organic than the mathematics they come from,” the artist observes. She hopes viewers encountering her knitted sculptures experience the same surprise they feel when discovering “a cool spider’s web,” she says. “It has a big presence, but it’s so intricate and delicate that you have to be really paying attention to notice it. That’s how I think of my work.”

Rania Hassan’s Liminality is on view at the Kreeger through November 2021; kreegermuseum.org. Her steel Marker can be seen through Spring 2022 at Connecticut Avenue and K Street, NW. raniahassan.com

With a sure, steady hand, he glides the edge of a brush across a linen panel, repeating the movement in a staccato style to form thin and weightier horizontal lines and splatters. A delicate salmon-colored abstraction emerges, gently molded in wax relief. As he brushes the surface with a pearlescent coat, he observes, “I’m allowing these topographical points to capture the paint and build up the surface, in the same way that sedimentary rock builds up on the bottom of the ocean, as sand piles up until all the layers fuse together.”

Rose turns the painting to determine its ideal orientation. Suddenly it seems right; scattered dots take on the appearance of bubbles rising underwater. The painter decides to wait before tackling the next stages—building up layers, then melting, scraping or carving them down to rebuild again. “I started the painting so I could mutate it,” he explains.

This quick, intense technique is encaustic, an ancient painting method that predates European oil painting by at least a thousand years. Instead of mixing pigments with oil, the binder is beeswax, and the drying time is seconds rather than possibly weeks as it is with oil. “I’m capturing that real-time experience,” says the artist. “It’s a very different way to paint.”

Luminous colors and sculptural dimensions distinguish the encaustic process. Rose carries it further. After nearly a half-century practicing this formidable art, his abstractions communicate a primal sense of earth, water and air, as if seeing nature’s patterns and richness magnified. At the same time, an elusive mystery pervades each piece: Why do those gemlike and earthy hues appear to shift color as the light changes? Are the shining surfaces opaque or translucent? What is that spectral haze rising among the crisp, white-on-white waves? “I want my paintings to be enigmas, releasing their information very slowly,” the artist suggests.

What’s clear is that Rose brings boundless experience to the task. If ripples in his paintings resemble sound waves, that’s not accidental, since he sees an internal musical mechanism at work. “When I’m painting, I know there’s a certain conveyance of rhythm, there’s a beat,” he says, blue eyes sparkling. “I’ve always done both—painted and played music.”

During high school in Ocala, Florida, Rose was in a rock-and-roll band. Soon after arriving in Washington in 1976, he played guitar and synthesizer as a member of the Urban Verbs, a new-wave group that recorded two albums with Warner. His basement studio is bounded by a collection of vinyl records, played on a vintage turntable as he paints. While the largest work he ever produced was a commission for IBM—a pair of 16-by-16-foot paintings—one of his favored formats now is a 16-by-16-inch square—about the size of an album cover.

Even today, Rose associates his art with music. He compares the layers of encaustic to multi-track recording, where separate tracks for each instrument are combined. Plus, he notes, “encaustic is additive, just like music. I can keep coming back to experience it anew.”

Water themes also splash against the shores of his art. As an only child, Rose was immersed in nature. “I loved scuba diving in rivers, looking for artifacts,” he says. “I was always collecting something—fossils, sharks’ teeth, rocks.”

While attending Florida State University, Rose started out experimenting with reverse painting on the backs of Lucite panels, following a high-school hobby of lacquering cars, surfboards and water skis in glowing colors. He went on to receive a master’s degree in fine arts at FSU under Karl Zerbe, who is credited with reviving encaustic art in the U.S. His student still uses the formula Zerbe perfected in the 1930s.

These days, Rose may be found painting in his cabin studio near the ocean in Rehoboth. There during the tumultuous early months of covid, he experienced a kind of mystical epiphany. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night and there was a word in my head,” the artist remembers. The first one that came to him was “breath.” Over the next three intense days, Rose completed a two-part painting based on that word. Of its cool, Caribbean light-blue color, he says, “It’s purifying. You can almost breathe it.”

On subsequent nights, other words appeared: Nestle, Dissonance, Lull, Spin and more, until the last, Release. All were created between March 12, 2020, and January 20, 2021, the date of the presidential inaugural. “The word was telling me what the painting wanted to be,” Rose explains. Hemphill recently exhibited the series of 19 works—not a coincidence, the artist believes, given covid-19 and other symbolic meanings of that number in the Bible, Koran and numerology.

He reflects on the long narrative that is encaustic painting, dating back to ancient portraits painted on wood panels attached to mummies in Egypt’s Fayum region. “Those painted masks were like a calling card to the afterlife,” notes Rose, whose own work imparts a timeless quality. “It’s kind of like, when did my paintings occur,” he muses, perhaps in response to the beat of a distant drummer. “Ten thousand years ago or yesterday?”

Robin Rose’s art is available through Hemphill; hemphillfinearts.com. For more information, visit robinroseart.com.

The craft show is sponsored by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee; proceeds support grants to the Smithsonian for innovative education, outreach and research. smithsoniancraftshow.org

An integrated screen wall channels light while also showcasing the owners’ ceramics collection on movable, cantilevered shelves. gutierrezstudios.com

POINT OF INTEREST Steve Prudhomme of Metal Specialties, Inc. (540-967-4836), fabricated a sleek, hot-rolled-steel fireplace surround for an Alexandria penthouse during a renovation by Runningdog Architects. Conceived by interior designer Katie Otis, the fireplace anchors the long room, adding vertical interest to the space.

SEASIDE STYLE Pennsylvania-based Compass Ironworks was hired to design, fabricate and install a third-floor exterior stair on a Jersey Shore condo. The result was a sleek, high-grade aluminum spiral stair, powder-coated in an eco-friendly finish to withstand the harsh oceanfront environment. compassironworks.com

TOUCH OF GLAM Shazalynn Cavin-Winfrey of SCW Interiors tapped AK Metal Fabricators, Inc., to create a shelf system in a glamorous scullery she was designing for clients in Alexandria. A stainless-steel frame in a mirror finish supports tempered-glass shelves; the system complements a backsplash of antiqued-mirror panels. akmetalfab.com

BACK TO NATURE During the overhaul of a wooded property in Great Falls, Cardine Studios was commissioned to design and fabricate a steel railing leading to the home’s side entrance. Its graceful leaves and branches reflect the setting; they were handcrafted using traditional forging techniques.

Creative Metalworkers - cardinestudios.com

The brilliant colors of spring, and summer too, appear year-round in Baer’s Washington, DC, studio. On one canvas, a blaze of yellow is tempered by earthy undertones; on another, hot pink dominates, while flecks of aqua, blue and purple crisscross, orange notes rise and a single red streak descends. “The idea,” says the painter, “is to create a set of dynamics that keeps the viewer’s eye engaged. A piece of art should hold your attention for longer than just a glance. It should pull you in again and again.”

Other paintings produced over the past two decades have taken a similar approach: Blocks of blue may interact with areas of black or white; horizontal lines pulsate; or snowy tones blanket the canvas, sculpting the surface with paint. “I don’t have a formula in my mind as I work,” Baer reveals. “Some pieces are more about the texture of paint, rather than the color. There’s a back-and-forth thought process going on until the composition is resolved.”

Born in DC and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, Baer discovered painting in his formative years. After family visits to Cape Cod, his parents returned with works from a studio started by artist Edwin Reeves Euler, a relative, in Provincetown; they served as early inspirations. “Being creative and using painting as an outlet never felt like a choice; it’s a thread that has run throughout my life,” says Baer. As a high school student at St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes in Alexandria, he dedicated all spare time to sharpening his art skills and even sacrificed playing sports—against the urging of friends and the coach.

Baer’s achievement in art was recognized with a Virginia Governor’s School scholarship for an intensive summer program at University of Richmond. Later, he went on to study at Rhode Island School of Design, receiving a bachelor’s degree in industrial design in 1995.

That training has helped him simplify complex ideas in his work. Displayed in his home’s living area, an early still life and landscape illustrate the artist’s drift toward abstraction. While the subjects are easy to recognize, their forms are pared down to two-dimensional planes of color. Baer compares the flattened color fields to “looking at the world through a broader aperture,” as in aerial views. In fact, the artist keeps on hand a digital archive of photos he has taken on airplanes. Images of structured farmland and rugged mountain ranges seen from above, he says, “have had a big impact on me.”

“A piece of art should hold your attention for longer than just a glance.”

—Christopher Baer

Also informing his work are paintings by post-World War II abstract expressionists, especially Richard Diebenkorn, whose “Ocean Park” series lyrically explored the landscape and changing atmospheric effects around his Santa Monica, California, studio. “I love the rigor with which he kept going further and further in a series—negotiating between the illusion of depth and flatness on the picture plane at the advent of modern painting,” notes Baer. “He really captured my imagination, especially when I was younger and found that dynamic between the depth and flatness on the picture plane was possible.”

Baer’s tribute to “Ocean Park” came with “Palisades,” his first series also named for the place where he lives and works. These large canvases extend almost five-feet square. Built up in multiple layers using broad strokes, they evoke a sense of spaciousness along with what the artist calls “artifacts,” as lower layers poke through.

Starting out, Baer sets down big color tones with a large palette knife in free, sweeping gestures. He prefers oil paint for its translucence and depth, often mixing the paint with a cold-wax medium to make it lighter and more flexible, “like cake icing,” he says. He then overlays up to six layers of paint in large swaths. “It’s really so satisfying,” says the artist, describing his process. “I try to think of it holistically, working on all parts at once in a continuous dialogue between points of interest and rest for the eye.”

The ongoing “Palisades” series, started in 2004, was followed by three others—“White on White,” which explored gradations in a single tone; and “Line Theory,” composed of stacked, linear rows, often in throbbing colors that fill the entire canvas or board. Baer’s most recent series, “Shining Invitation,” places a single or group of circles on the painting’s surface.

Considering one example, in which a circular outline is inscribed equally over powder-blue and white panels, Baer explains, “I started to think about how good and evil, black and white are wrapped up in one thing. There’s a unity represented in these works; we’re all connected and part of a whole,” he reflects. “It’s the simplest representation of how I understand the universe, the choices we make.”
It’s also a painting that viewers may choose to return to for further contemplation.

Broad Aperture - Christopher Baer’s art is available through Addison/Ripley Fine Art; addisonripleyfineart.com