Thursday, February 27-Sunday, March 2: 2025 Outsider Art Fair

The Outsider Art Fair returns again to the Metropolitan Pavilion this year with 66 exhibitors from 40 cities in 9 countries. "The 33rd edition is a testament to the rich diversity of the field and as always embraces art from the fringes,” said Andrew Edlin, the fair’s owner. “As the art world continues to catch on to the power of the work our exhibitors have been championing for decades, a new generation of OAF dealers is discovering artists who will become part of the canon in years to come. 

This year’s Curated Space, Follow My Moves, will be an exhibit of self-taught art from Brazil, curated by São Paulo-based Mateus Nunes, and will feature works by renowned artists such as Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato (1900–1995), Chico da Silva (1910–1985), Conceição dos Bugres (1914-1984), and Maria Lira Marques (b. 1945) Visitors to the fair can also expect to see art by acknowledged masters such as Henry Darger (1892–1973), William Edmondson (1874–1951), Augustin Lesage (1876–1954), Judith Scott (1943-2005), and Bill Traylor (1854-1949), as well as works by living artists such as Noviadi Angkasapura, JJ Cromer, Shuvinai Ashoona, M’onma, Julian Martin, Margot, Dan Miller and Leopold Strobl. Left: Sharon Kerry-Harlan presented by the Claire Oliver Gallery, Booth C2.

Auction houses, museums, and galleries have historically marketed outsider artists to the public by focusing on biography, notes ArtNews magazine. In the case of James Castle, for example, the house noted in its lot description that he was born deaf and mute, and that he could not read. Many have critiqued this tendency, claiming that it exoticizes outsider artists and pointing out that this terminology is disproportionately applied to artists who artists of color, disabled artists, and queer artists.

Most agree, though, that outsider art must be studied differently from work produced by people who are professionally trained. “In some ways this work has always served as a salve or antidote to contemporary art,” Andrew Edlin told ARTnews. “It’s not really hyper-conceptual or based on any art historical trends or references.”

For information on exhibitors, artists, and programs, go here.

Metropolitan Pavilion, 126 West 18^th Street, New York, NY Info

Last chance, Friday, February 28: JIMMY! God’s Black Revolutionary Mouth at the Schomburg

Join NYPL on James Baldwin’s 100th birthday for the opening reception for our newest exhibition JIMMY! God's Black Revolutionary Mouth. Stay for this public program featuring Yahdon Israel, Senior editor at Simon & Schuster and two-time Grammy Award-winning recording hip-hop artist and humanitarian, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, in a conversation about the critical voice of James Baldwin and the use of popular culture to further elevate important figures and ideas. Rhymefest's latest project, James & Nikki: A Conversation, is inspired by and includes clips from the historic 1971 conversation between literary icons

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture presents to the public for the first time selections from the James Baldwin Papers that highlight his literary career and legacy. The items on display—drawn largely from his personal archive, which is held at the Schomburg Center—trace his life and career from childhood to death and are presented alongside items from other research collections that illuminate the passion, brilliance, and courageous spirit of James "Jimmy" Baldwin.

Novelist, essayist, intellectual, and activist James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) is renowned as one of the world’s most influential and prophetic voices of our time. His death in 1987 sent waves of grief around the world. Amiri Baraka’s eulogy, titled “Jimmy!”, spoke of James "Jimmy" Baldwin as “not only a writer, international literary figure” but as a “man, spirit, voice”. Baraka called Baldwin “God’s black revolutionary mouth” which speaks to Baldwin’s enduring legacy of radical truth-telling. 

Organized by Barrye Brown, Curator, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center, 515 Malcolm X Blvd. at 135^th Street, New York, NY Info

Last Chance, March 1: Roxanne Jackson | Unknown Giants at Kern Windows

Roxanne Jackson’s new ceramic underwater creatures transform the gallery’s street-facing windows into an immersive, life-size diorama, inviting viewers into the artist’s meticulously crafted and imagined world. In Jackson’s hands, these vitrines function not just as mere display cases, but as portholes into a submerged ecosystem—a fantastical realm set within a light-teal expanse of open ocean (where you may feel dizzy, not knowing if you are above or below the water’s surface). 

Nearly two dozen mythological creatures are on display, ranging dramatically in form and technique. Each showcases Jackson’s command of the ceramic medium and her fascination with fantasy and lore. There’s remarkable expertise demonstrated in Jackson’s use of scale: see the three-foot tall Nessy–named for its counterpart in Loch Ness–and the eight-foot long Crystal. Crystal is one of the artist’s largest sculptures made to date, and is both dragon and serpent all in one. 

While the creatures are bizarre and monstrous, they are also opulent and alluring, like the pregnant mermaid, left. There are also slimy conch shells; tentacled starfish; a one-eyed anemone; vibrant clownfish; and multiple mermaids with names like Llarona and Cordelia whose siren calls beckon you deeper, urging you to explore their barnacled and mysterious realm. 

 Anton Kern Gallery Windows, 91 Walker Street, New York, NY Info

Sunday, March 2, Noon-4pm: Scribbles | The Art of Emerging at Great Hall Gallery

Scribbles: The Art of Emerging celebrates the instinctive marks and lines that flow from an artist’s hand as images emerge. Whether unfinished nonsense or finished visions, such scribbles may feel as primeval as a child’s drawing or as mysterious as secret messages, codes, or startling revelations. More than just a language of lines, these acrobatic marks express an urgency that reveals an artist’s inner life or response to the visual feasts before their eyes.

Artists respond to this theme with humor or profundity, conscious or unconscious wanderings, spontaneity or improvisation, revealing creative thinking, style, processes and personal connections to their inspirations. The show, curated by Lois Bender, assisted by Laurey Bennett-Levy and Stacy Bogdonoff, includes works by Ellen Alt,  Emily Barnett,  Fran Beallor,  Alli Berman,  Walter Brown,  Arcadia Caraballo,  January Yoon Cho,  Diane Churchill,  Stephen Cox,  Elisa Decker,  Bonnie C. Epstein,  Madeline Farr,  Jodie Fink,  Lynne Friedman,  Robin Glassman, Norma Greenwood,  Barbara Griffiths,  Ellen Grossman,  Susan Grucci,  Alice Harrison,  Sarah Hauser,  Paula Heisen, Janet Morgan,  Cathy O’Keefe,  Carol Paik,  Cade Pemberton,  Joyce Raimondo,  Peggy Roalf,  Maria Mimma Scarpini, Barbara Swanson Sherman,  Regina Silvers,  Darcy Spitz,  Anne Stanner,  Geoffrey Stein,  Miriam Stern,  Danielle Warren. 
Above: Peggy Roalf, Twister, from the Elements series, 2022; acrylic on board, 12” x 18”. She writes, "Elements is a series of paintings based on extreme weather and geological conditions. Through overlapping shapes, scribbles and textures, I attempt to express the chaotic nature of unstable elements that comprise the landscapes I observe in my mind’s eye."

The exhibition is open to visitors during gallery hours 12 - 4pm from March 5 to April 24; on Sundays, March 2 and April 13; and on Wednesdays and Thursdays from March 5 to April 24, from 12–4 PM. [You can call ahead to confirm hours: 212-675-6150]. 
The mission of the New York Artists Circle is to create a thriving community of independent artists, united by creative objectives and a commitment to mutual support. By sharing our collective knowledge, we inspire each other, fostering growth, collaboration, and artistic excellence. To read more about the New York Artists Circle Click Here. Follow NYAC on Facebook and Instagram at @nyartistscircle 
Save the date: Sunday April 13, noon-4pm, curator's walkthrough.
The Great Hall Gallery, First Presbyterian Church, 12 West 12th Street, New York, NY  Info

Friday, March 7, 6-9pm: Lesley Bodzy | Levity and Depth at M. Cavid

"There’s no counterbalancing without something on either side of some semblance of a balance. The counterpoint to a point only expresses its full significance if the point in question has been expressed sufficiently enough to be meaningfully countered. ‘This one here’ makes more demonstrative sense if there’s also a ‘that one there’", says Lesley Bodzy of her new work on view at Brooklyn’s M. David & Company @ Art Cake.

Bodzy’s interests in material convergence and thematic divergence furnish the aesthetic backbone for the artist’s solo exhibition of new sculptures at M. David & Co. Gallery. The artist has created a multivalent body of work conceived, on the one hand, counterbalanced couplings of formally interconnected pieces and, on the other, counterpointing aggregations of autonomous objects. Arranged in various configurations from floor to ceiling, Bodzy’s curiously amorphous works hover, loom and dangle in an atmosphere of cavernous shadow-play, suspended kinetics, and ecstatic, somewhat sci-fi theatrics.
Gallery hours: Friday / Saturday, 1 - 6 pm and by appointment

M.David & Co. @ Art Cake (Gallery B), 214 40th St, Brooklyn, NY Info