MOLLY+FRIENDS is proud to present “Home Is Where The Art Is,” a series featuring artists from around the world discussing the ways in which social distancing has impacted their creative practice.

David Pierce

Painter, filmmaker and animator David Pierce has built a practice based both in suspicion and celebration of two-dimensional media in an effort to communicate its inherent distortions in the larger world.

He reached out to MOLLY+FRIENDS from his home studio in Hong Kong and discussed his recent watercolors series, his views on the role of traditional art in digital creative practices and the story behind his collaborative DJ Mayonnaise Hands project.

Fiona Chinkan

Fiona Chinkan creates out of her Brooklyn-based studio. She moved to New York City post graduation to pursue a career in graphic design and worked as a digital art director in the fashion industry for 10 years before deciding to pursue art full-time. With several of her upcoming art fairs now postponed, Fiona discussed her newly slowed down pace, her “feel good” home studio (which includes the company of her 19 y/o turtle, Jamie), and her latest series “Communications Between Forms.”

Madeline Walker

Madeline Walker is a Visual Artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. She is currently represented by Dab Art Gallery in Los Angeles, California, and has been featured on platforms such as Projects We Love (Kickstarter), Articulate by PBS, Medium, and La Femme Collective.

She recently settled in Bellevue, Kentucky where she converted her over-sized detached garage into a home studio. She is now working on a new series of sculptural paintings that she plans to exhibit at The Other Art Fair in Brooklyn next Fall.

Jessica Caldas

Jessica Caldas is a Puerto Rican American, Florida and Georgia based, artist, advocate, and activist. She received her Masters of Fine Arts degree at Georgia State University in 2019, her BFA in printmaking from the University of Georgia in 2012 and has participated in numerous emerging artist residencies- including the Vermont Studio Center most recently in 2020.

From leading Karaoke sessions on Instagram to sending out hand-painted snail mail to her followers (with the help of her young daughter Aria), Jessica has been finding alternative ways to create and connect as she continues to find a balance between her home studio, work and family life while social distancing.

Ethan Shoshan

Ethan Shoshan is an an artist, community activist, and nonprofit computer a/v technical consultant born in New York City. He has exhibited and performed on the streets and at the Kitchen, Aljira, Envoy Enterprises, Commonwealth & Council, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Judson Memorial Church, The Center for Book Arts, La Mama La Galleria, Dixon Place, Le Petit Versailles, and other venues. Previous projects have been reviewed in The New York Times, Art In America, LA Weekly, Huffington Post, BlackBook, The Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, Washington Post, among numerous other publications.

He is currently working on a series of humorous, pseudo-architectural drawings while social distancing in his apartment. MOLLY+FRIENDS took a look at Ethan’s pre-COVID-19 creative service projects (including “Art in the Woods” and “WRRQSHOP”), his performance art, and the ongoing interplay of text and visuals in his 2-Dimensional work.

Dara Engler

Dara Engler received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the University of New Hampshire and her Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. She was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, followed by a recipient group show at the Cue Art Foundation in New York, NY. Dara has been included in New American Paintings and Manifest’s International Drawing Annual and has received fellowships to attend the Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony and Saltonstall Foundation residencies. Her work has been shown nationally in galleries and museums, including her most recent solo exhibition at the Gatewood Gallery at the University of North Carolina, in Greensboro. She teaches painting and drawing at Ithaca College.

She reached out to MOLLY+FRIENDS from her home studio in Trumansburg, New York, where she discussed her daily studio rituals, the “humorous, pirate-y” alter-ego at the center of her paintings, and her recent use of alternative mediums that are sourced from both the wilderness and the web.

Rita Jimenez

Rita Jimenez is a multimedia light-based artist from Jersey City, New Jersey. She has a BFA in Photography and recently received an MFA in Light Media from New Jersey City University.

She spoke to MOLLY+FRIENDS about how her creative process has changed post-graduation, the items in her apartment that are inspiring her recent work (including prisms, crystals, mirrors, kaleidoscopes, her new bubble gun and more), and her escape-oriented series, “Portals,” through which she strives to bring her viewers to an imaginative state.

Her experimentation of new mixed media approaches with her photography, videos, projections and more are emblematic of her creatively playful mindset as of late: “There are almost no barriers right now, anything goes.”

David Siever

David Siever is a Brooklyn-based artist with a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramic Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017, he was the Artist in Residence at Arquetopia, in Puebla New Mexico and at A.I. R. Vallauris in Vallauris, France. In 2018, he was a Visiting Artist at the Australian National University in Canberra where he taught and worked on a series of sculptures about the experiences of Australian and Aboriginal soldiers in the First World War, utilizing the archives at the Australian War Memorial. In 2019 he was a Resident Artist at Project Art, working as the teaching artist at the Crown Heights Library. His work is in the permanent collection of the Kinsey Museum as well as A.I.R. Vallauris.

David recently moved his practice into he and his partner’s Brooklyn apartment, having lost access to his studio at Brooklyn College where he is enrolled in the Graduate Program in Early Childhood Art Education. He spoke to MOLLY+FRIENDS about the inspiration behind his ceramics miniatures, the adjustments he’s making in order to produce his work at home, and entering “the history zone” when it’s time to search for new material.

Lori Larusso

Lori Larusso earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a BFA from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). She has consistently exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, and has been awarded numerous residency fellowships. She is a recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council’s Al Smith Fellowship, the Great Meadows Foundation Professional Development Grant, as well numerous grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Lori is the 2019 Kentucky South Arts Fellow.

Lori  reached out to MOLLY+FRIENDS from Louisville, Kentucky, where she discussed the domestic inspiration behind her work, the changes to her residency schedule as a result of COVID-19 and her creative process/ ritual both in the studio and at home.