Interviews From Yale Radio / Artists, Curators And More

Aglaé Bassens, Photo: Jenny Gorman Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986, Belgium) has a BA in Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University (2007) and an MFA in Fine Art Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2011). Her work has been exhibited internationally, with solo presentations at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; HESSE FLATOW, New York; 12.26, Dallas; Nars Foundation, Brooklyn; CRUSH Curatorial, New York; and Cabin Gallery, London; as well as group exhibitions at Gowen Contemporary, Geneva; STEMS Gallery, Paris; The Valley, Taos; and Workplace Gallery, London. Bassens’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami and Colección SOLO, Madrid, Spain. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986) What was that, 2025 Oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 51 1/8 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and HESSE FLATOW, New York. Photo: Jenny Gorman. Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986) Stone Tiles, 2025 Oil on canvas 51 1/8 x 39 3/8 inche

Janet Echelman is an artist known for sculpting at the scale of buildings and city blocks, creating large-scale, fluid installations that merge art, architecture, and engineering. Her work transforms with wind and light, inviting viewers into immersive experiences rather than static observation. Echelman uses unconventional materials—from atomized water particles to fiber stronger than steel—blending traditional craft with advanced computational design. Her monumental works anchor public spaces across five continents, in cities including New York, London, Sydney, Shanghai, and Singapore. Permanent installations in locations such as San Francisco, Vancouver, and Porto continually evolve with shifting light and air. Echelman’s unconventional path includes a degree from Harvard, five years living in a Balinese village, and graduate studies in both painting and psychology. Oprah ranked Echelman’s work #1 on her List of 50 Things That Make You Say Wow!, and she received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in

Isaac Lythgoe is a sculptor, painter and writer based In Paris, FR. His practice is world-building; reimagining narrative traditions and modes of storytelling, he creates interconnected works that probe power structures, contemporary ethics, and shifting social norms. Within this constructed universe, arcs of romance and mortality intersect, inviting viewers to consider how collective memory is formed—and what future societies might resemble. This temporal drift between past and future is mirrored in Lythgoe’s aesthetic language, where tensions between the natural and the synthetic unfold through form, material, and gesture. Recent and forthcoming shows include Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age, The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK, (2026), Would I lie to you, Duarte Sequeira, Seoul, KR (2024), Production Residency at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, FR, (2024), Cute!, Somerset House, London, UK, (2024), After Laughter Comes Tears, MUDAM, Luxembourg, LX, (2023) amongst others. Beautif

Samuel Guy (b.1991) is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Through prolonged observational paintings he explores the multifaceted nature of the self, its murkiness, its chance quality and its socially buttressed construction. Through costuming and a deep relationship to the history of portrait painting he re-presents himself in various forms. The chameleon nature of these self portraits positions the artist as both real and potential, blurring those distinctions and positioning the image of the individual as within a larger cultural context. Often reflections on manhood, these paintings interrogate how it is performed, engaging with the imagery in complicated ways, ranging from the satirical and ironic, to the honorific, and even funerary. He has presented his work nationally, including recent solo and two-person exhibitions Stages Of Presence at Vardan Gallery, LA with Jenny Brillhart (2025), Hitchhike From Saginaw at Auxier Kline, NY (2025) Bildungsroman at Vardan Gallery, LA (2023) and A Distant

photo by Janna Tew Sophie Haulman is a Brooklyn-based ceramicist and sculptor from Wilmington, North Carolina. She received her BFA (2019) from Virginia Commonwealth University’s department of Sculpture + Extended Media. While maintaining her practice, she is also a ceramics teacher and works in ceramic production and fabrication. Her evolving work explores the sensuality of space, the body and the unknown through material-based experimentation, contemplation on process, investigation of tactile form, and a constant surrender to fate.   “every month grass came” is a contemplation on mortality and the temporary nature of all that we possess – our bodies, relationships, experiences, memories, desires. As beings of the natural world, we evolve, erode, disintegrate; how do we construct a coherent sense of identity from an existence that is ever-changing?  These ceramic works question and explore these themes of impermanence, loss, and the unknown through a material which has the capacity to long outlast our

Elijah Gowin uses photography to speak about ritual, landscape and memory.  He was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1967 and received his BA in Art History from Davidson College in 1990 and MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico in 1997. His photographs are in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, among others.   His awards include the John S. Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008 as well as grants from the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Puffin Foundation.  He founded Tin Roof Press to publish his books on art and photography including “The Last Firefly” in 2024 and “Of Falling and Floating” in 2011.  Presently, he is a Professor in the Department of Media, Art and Design at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he directs photographic studies.  Gowin is represented by the Robert Mann Gallery, New York, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo and Bond Millen Gallery, Richmond, Virginia. Elijah Gowin, Tree 1. Date: 2012 S

James Horner is a queer chronicler who educates the public and diverts discrimination from his community. Horner focuses on ordinary queer folk, their issues, and LGBTQ+ icons like Marsha P. Johnson, a rights activist. The artist focuses on painting, but also experiments with drawings, sculptures, and zines. Using a simple color palette, Horner starts his figurative works with a line drawing and develops them to be muscular, abstract, and sometimes humorous. A native New Yorker, Horner has an M.F.A. in painting from Lehman College and is an artist and board member at the Amos Eno Gallery in Manhattan. He has a 40-year retrospective exhibition at the gallery, “Making of an American Dandy,” as well as an exhibit, “Queer Today – Love, Power, Freedom,” with his art collective, Magenta Lounge. Horner exhibits artwork mainly around the United States – at The Bronx Museum, The Tulsa Artists Coalition Gallery, Satchel Projects, public art shows in Chicago, and The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Recent residencies inclu

Jeanine Brito (b. 1993, Germany) is a painter living and working in Montréal, Canada. Layered in theatrical and fairy tale imagery, she uses her likeness to play with ideas of gender and desire. Her paintings have permeated the cultural consciousness, appearing in Harris Reed’s debut runway collection for Nina Ricci, on an album cover by Clara Luciani, on the cover of the highly reviewed debut novel by Sophie Kemp, and many other crossover collaborations. Recent exhibitions include All the Better to Eat You With, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2025), The Amber of This Moment, Nicodim, Bucharest (2025), The Grumpy Girls, Nicodim, New York (2024), The Invitation: A Fairytale by Jeanine Brito, Nicodim Upstairs, Los Angeles (2023), So Softly and Sweetly, La Causa Galeria, Madrid (2022), You Me Me You curated by Rachel Keller, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022), New Mythologies II, Huxley Parlour, London (2022). All the Better to Eat You With, 2025 acrylic on canvas 66 x 94 in. 167.6 x 238.8 cm The Lovers, 2025 acrylic on can

Ryan Crotty earned his BFA in painting from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his MFA in painting from Syracuse University. His work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Recent solo shows include a solo presentation at Untitled Art with High Noon, Miami, FL; Ever So Slightly Off, Rutger Brandt Gallery, Amsterdam, NL; and Underlying Issues, Galerie Robertson Ares, Montreal, QC. Recent group exhibitions include The Stage is Yours! curated by Eric Gauthier, Exo Gallery, Stuttgart, DE; Spectrum, Galerie Bessaud, Paris, FR; and Tone Poem, The Hole, Los Angeles, CA. His work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Artillery, and Design Milk. Crotty lives and works in Auburn, Nebraska. Ryan Crotty, “Sub Rosa,” 2025, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on linen, 36″ x 30″ Ryan Crotty, “Get a Move On,” 2025, acrylic gloss gel, and modeling paste on line, 60″ x 48″ Ryan Crot

Sigrid Sandström  earned a BFA at Academie Minerva, Groningen, The Netherlands (1997); attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME (2000); and received an MFA in Painting from Yale University, New Haven, CT (2001). Sandström has exhibited her work internationally in solo exhibitions at museums including Vandalorum Museum, Värnamo, Sweden; Västerås konstmuseum, Västerås, Sweden; Frye Museum, Seattle, WA; and at galleries including Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York; Perrotin Shanghai and Tokyo; Inman Gallery, Houston, TX; and Cecilia Hillström Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. Sandström’s work is in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Borås Konstmuseum, Borås, Sweden; Malmö konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden; The Public art Agency, Sweden; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS; Västerås konstmuseum, Västerås, Sweden, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. Sandström is currently a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Univ

Maureen McQuillan (photo credit: Etienne Fossard)Pictured in front of “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” her permanent public art installation, completed 2018, which spans three sides of the 36th Avenue N/W station in Astoria, Queens, and was commissioned by Metropolitan Transit Authority/Arts & Design. Maureen McQuillan creates process-focused, system-based paintings from multiple layers of ink and acrylic polymers that convey a deep but elusive sense of space. Vibrantly hued, she uses rippling, wave-like linear elements and undulating rounded forms to suggest shapes in nature as well as the human body. Her systematic approach to color results in a luminous and complex optical mix reflecting her interest in how our perceptions of color have changed as technology has advanced. Born and raised in New York City, Maureen McQuillan is a graduate of Columbia University and the New York Studio School.  Since the early 1990s she has been exhibiting her work in solo and group shows in galleries and museums t

Clare Grill (born 1979, lives and works in Queens, NY) received her MFA from the Pratt Institute in 2005 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include Parlance, Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY; Cutwork, Galería Marta Cervera, Madrid, Spain; and Wich Language and Oyster, M+B, Los Angeles, CA. Group exhibitions include Things I Had No Words For at the Center for the Arts, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Interisland (New Paintings from New York and Hawai’i), University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; Of Flesh and Air, Marta Cervera Gallery, Madrid, Spain; The Feminine in Abstract Painting, Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York, NY; Deep! Down! Inside!, Hales Gallery, NY; and New Skin, curated by Jason Stopa, Monica King Gallery, New York, NY. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, ArtNews, Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. Clare Grill, Drape, 2025, oil on linen

photo by Colin Outridge. The exhibition Change of Scenery,  marks the painter’s third solo show with the gallery. It is the culmination of a year’s worth of travel across the U.S., as Brennan Hinton spent extended time in residency in Corsicana, TX, Martha’s Vineyard, MA, and Fishers Island, NY. Brennan Hinton’s practice focuses on the sustained act of observation, the plein-air discipline, and painting’s ability to capture the essence of a place. The time spent in three distinctive towns, each in its own ways divergent from Brennan Hinton’s familiar Ontario, required the artist to meet each place with open eyes and a fresh palette. To situate himself, Brennan Hinton leaned on two formative texts, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which are each set in the same landscapes in which he painted. Keiran Brennan Hinton (b. 1992, Toronto) lives and works in Toronto and Elgin, Ontario. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2014 and his MFA from Yale University in 2016. His wor

Leslie Smith III (b. 1985) was born in Silver Spring, MD and lives and works in Madison, WI.  Smith’s interests lie in our conscious effort to alter personal perception. Recent works explore Abstraction’s inherent personal and political properties as they relate to broadening notions of Black representation and expression. Smith creates paintings with a mindset that it’s possible to present a new interpretation of contemporary abstraction. One with expectations of a different sensibility than that offered by the 1950’s and 60’s, he offers an alternative worldview; one of inclusion and acceptance.  Leslie Smith III earned a BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA at the Yale School of Art. Smith exhibits nationally and internationally. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond; the Birmingham Museum of Art; the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham, AL; and the FRAC Auvergne, France. Leslie

Charisse Pearlina Weston (b. 1988, Houston, TX; based in Brooklyn, NY) is a conceptual artist who works across sculpture, writing, installation, and photography. Utilizing techniques such as concealment, repetition, and enfoldment, her work posits Black interior life as a central site of Black resistance. Weston often integrates glass into her work due to its inherent nature. Whether it be through photographs, fragments incorporated into a canvas, or an element within a sculpture, the duality of the material speaks to Weston’s understanding of Black resistance. Both fragile and susceptible to shatter at the hand of an act of violence, glass is also highly malleable despite that risk. Etched and embedded into the surface of her works are poetic fragments, as well as historical and autobiographical images. These intimate moments are often concealed and ensnared through intentional folds, offering a layer of protection and privacy to the object on display. The artist writes: "Central to the artistic methodolog

Katy Stone is best known for her large-scale installations and wall sculptures. Working primarily in aluminum, Dura-Lar and plexiglass, her artworks are a proposition to reconsider landscape painting as an environmental, immersive dynamic. Suspended, or set in relief, the artist’s drawn, cutout, painted, and stitched-together elements possess a vibrancy, a spirited energy and effect. Echoing fleeting clouds, falling leaves, moving water, and scattered light, they spill, climb and spread across the wall. This mimesis of nature locates the work in an earthly sphere but in a palpably conjured world created via the distinctive visual language she has developed over the decades.  Conveying a movement from one state to another, from one moment to another, from one material to another, her compositions become universal metaphors for phenomena in nature through which we can glimpse the sublime. She received her BFA from Iowa State University and her MFA from the University of Washington and lives and works in Seattl

Lamar Peterson (b. 1974, St. Petersburg, Florida) is a painter whose work explores the psychological and social space between refuge and exposure. For more than two decades, he has rendered the everyday experiences of Black life with a language that merges stylized figuration, domestic ritual, and surreal distortion. Across both painting and collage, Peterson creates scenes where tranquility and unease coexist: suburban gardens bloom into uncanny environments, rooms soften and dissolve into landscape, and figures pursue moments of rest and care even as the outside world presses near. Peterson’s visual vocabulary ranges from cartoon inflections and bold color to pared-down forms that verge on the symbolic. In his hands, a gesture—cooking a meal, tending a plant, pausing in thought—becomes a quietly radical act of autonomy. His subjects often appear in transitional spaces: windows, thresholds, and gardens that double as emotional terrain, reflecting the fragile distance between sanctuary and scrutiny, vulnerab

Amiko Li (b. 1993, Shanghai) is an interdisciplinary artist who translates everyday stories and encounters into film, installation, and photography, to explore and contextualize the underlying complexities and themes, such as intimacy, waiting, and value. Li’s recent Exhibition and performance include Center for Art, Research, and Alliance, New York; The Shed, New York; Asia Art Archive, New York; Ulster Museum, Ireland; Haus der Elektronischen Künste, Switzerland; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, China; Power Station of Art, China. Li’s work has been supported through fellowships and residencies at Delfina Foundation, London; Triangle Arts Association, New York; and Kunstlerhaus Dortmund, Germany. Amiko Li Kai, 2023, Inkjet print in aluminum frame, 20 3/16 x 16 3/16 x 1 in. Edition of 3 plus 1 AP Amiko Li, Another Brief Moment, 2020, Inkjet print in aluminum frame 16 3/16 x 20 3/16 x 1 in. Edition of 3 plus 1 AP Amiko Li, 12:54:21, 2021, Inkjet print in aluminum frame, 16 3/16 x 20 3/16 x 1 in. Ed

My Pet Ram is pleased to present Towards the Sun, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Heather Drayzen, on view through November 9, 2025. This marks the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The gallery is located at 48 Hester Street on the Lower East Side. Gallery hours are Thursday–Sunday, 12–6 PM, and by appointment. Heather Drayzen (b. 1985, San Antonio, Texas) is a painter known for her intimate, small-scale depictions of quiet domestic life, often featuring herself and her loved ones. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Drayzen received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2007, and earned an MAT from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008. Winter Bath, 2025, 14 x 18 inches, Oil on linen Winnie Rainbow, 2024, Oil on Linen, 20 x 16 inches Giverny, 2025, Oil on Linen 18 x 14 inches

Linda Daniels creates vibrant abstract paintings.Linda Daniels (b. 1954) spent her formative years in California. She earned her B.F.A. in General Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts.   In 1984, she moved to New York City, where her first solo show debuted at fiction/nonfiction gallery in 1988. Over the following decades, her art was featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions across New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Palm Beach. Linda’s artwork has been reviewed in major publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum International, Art in America, and The Brooklyn Rail. In 1991, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting. Linda returned to California’s Central Coast in 2014, where she currently lives and creates her artwork. Linda Daniels, Orange-Red with White, 16"x16", AcrylicCanvas, 2018 Linda Daniels, Orange-Yellow with White, 16"x16", AcrylicCanvas, 2020 Linda Daniels, Turquoise-BlueYellow-Green with White, 40"x80",