Language Arts: A Year of Writing, Curating and Conversation

Artist talk following the exhibition Witchgrass at Tempest Gallery in February 2025.

As the year comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the projects that defined 2025. This year’s primary creative material? Language. Describing, analyzing, framing and drawing meaning from the visual arts in my community.

Through my role as Program Director at Tempest Gallery, my ongoing collaboration with the artist collective Immaterial Projects, and my practice as an independent writer, I interviewed, exhibited, and wrote about nearly 30 artists.

In each conversation or interview, I’ve aimed to uncover the inner workings of each artist’s practice and translate it for a wider audience—giving language to a visual medium, articulating the ideas and processes that might not be immediately ascertained.

Here are some of the highlights.

Detail from the painting Respiration and Collapse, 2024, by Tracie Lee.

Curating with Immaterial Projects

Through the artist collective Immaterial Projects, I co-curated the group exhibition The Beginning of the End with Patrick Bower at The Active Space in Bushwick, NY.

We began planning the show in February, just weeks after the second Trump inauguration. Responding to the political moment, the exhibition’s theme coalesced around the question of making art in a time of polycrisis—climate, geopolitical, and spiritual. The show brought together artists whose work responds to an enduring sense of dread with a spirit of creative optimism.

Featured artists included Greg Dzurita, Wendi Men, Tracie Lee, Natalie Ortiz, Jebediah Long, and John Fleming. Will Kaplan generously reviewed the exhibition in Two Coats of Paint, thoughtfully capturing the show’s sensibilities.

Independent Writing

Through essays and interviews, I documented conversations with my peers that frequently began at openings, allowing time to fully understand and engage with questions of process and materials I came across in my own practice.

Installation shot of Spirit Wave, Joshua Drayzen’s solo exhibition of drawings at Massey Klein

In the interview 1000 Days of Drawing, I spoke with Joshua Drayzen about the rigor and imaginative universe of his sustained drawing practice, exploring how long-term commitment shapes his approach to art-making and the final works themselves.

I was fascinated with Josh’s practice, as it connects with my own Studio Calendar project. His dedication is striking example of balancing full-time work with a rich, abundant creative life.

Dzurita's Untitled 91 and Old Wind glimpsed through Granwell's Spiraling Return. Photographed by Masaki Hori, courtesy of Field of Play.

In Beneath the Surface: Alexis Granwell and Greg Dzurita at Field of Play, I examined a two-person exhibition curated by Yulia Topchiy. The exhibition took place at an artist-run space founded by Matty Lodgson in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

The exhibition features Granwell’s hand-shaped paper pulp forms and Dzurita’s foraged-petal pigments, each work metabolizing the passage of time and gesturing towards a life force spanning generations.

From the artist talk closing the exhibition It Must Be Nice to Fall in Love at Tempest Gallery, October 2025.

Artist Talks at Tempest

As Program Director at Tempest Gallery, I led over eight recorded talks with more than two dozen artists. Hosted at the gallery and often recorded for posterity, these conversations delved into the symbolic themes and material investigations driving each artist’s work, uncovering a shared meaning among the group exhibition or solo artist’s current projects. As a moderator, I helped tease out the meaning of the works, explore the experiences and ideas that inspired them, and illuminate the visuals for audiences– artists and non-artists alike.

Recorded talks include:

• Witchgrass
  Yasmeen Abdallah, Amy Greco, Rose Malenfant, Taraneh Mosadegh, Defne Tutus

• Aja'ib
  Sammy Bennett, Aruni Dharmakirthi, Rhonda Khalifeh

• Cats’ Cradle
  Katherine Earle, Clare Hu, Leila Seyedzadeh

• Ghost Coast
  Ray Hwang

• When there is no longer a danger of frost
  Weihui Lu

• My Armor Thinned To A Silken Scrim
  Earth Aengel, Rhonda Khalifeh, joell vee, Angelica Yudasto

• DAISIES
  Logan Blagg, Nava Derakhani, Samhita Kamisetty

• Charms Against Harm
  Jen Angulo Salguero, Casey Lin, Kate Sherman, Rose Silberman-Gorn

Additionally, we had the honor of being reviewed in Hyperallergic. Read A Textile Show Ruptures, Cascades, and Bleeds by Rhea Nayyar from October 27, 2025.

Photograph by Leah Huang, October 2025.

Tarot For Artists: Exploring Symbols, Archetypes & The Dreamworld

Beyond writing and gallery-based projects, I wrote, organized and led a Tarot workshop for artists at the Voelker Orth Museum in Flushing, Queens. Tarot for Artists: Exploring Symbols, Archetypes and The Dreamworld examined the art of interpretation.

By engaging the Tarot’s symbolic language, its iconographic motifs, archetypes, and the Fool’s Journey through the Major Arcana, attendees developed tools for interpreting artwork alongside their own unconscious processes, bridging visual analysis and inner inquiry.

A Final Note

I’m incredibly grateful to the wonderful artists, curators and creatives I’ve collaborated with in 2025 to help bring it all to life.

A huge thank you again to everyone who came along for the ride!

Here’s to a 2026 just as rich with creativity, friendship, and community. Cheers y’all!