Bradley Castellanos’ meticulously layered, cinematic landscapes are comparable to the romantic images painted by famed Hudson River School artists—with a twist. Like the 19th century painters whose landscapes reflected concepts of sublime and beauty, Castellanos is fascinated by people’s effect on the landscape. But his thought-provoking, collaged landscapes are more abstract than idyllic. “My work is about celebrating the landscape and what’s unique about it,” he says.

Nature has always been part of Castellanos’ identity so it’s no surprise that the natural world is reflected in his art. Born in Connecticut, he grew up on Florida’s east coast. He trained as a painter, first at Skidmore College and later he received a master’s in fine art from New York City’s School of Visual Arts. In 2016, after living and working in Brooklyn for many years, he and his wife, artist Allison Hawkins, moved with their two daughters to Exeter, New Hampshire. His white-walled, spacious studio, located in a low-slung industrial building, is less distracting than the hustle-bustle of New York City. “The quiet and focus I have here is new,” he says.

Blue Moon, 2016, Acrylic and photo collage on paper mounted on panel 45” x 36”, photo courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE NY 2017.

Castellanos researches and photographs landscapes and structures that interest him; he stages his scene and shoots with a digital camera, using it like a sketching tool. The images are digitally manipulated and collaged, then artfully cut with an X-Acto blade and glued on wood. He then further re-works the image with oil or acrylic paint. The result is a series of highly textured and layered abstractions, both familiar and imagined. “My images may be inspired by the neighborhood, or coming upon something bizarre in the landscape,” Castellanos says. “They’re a play between abstraction and landscape.”

Castellanos’ early work captures desolate, even apocalyptic, images of New York City and the Northeast United States. His urban cityscapes and industrial landscapes were shot using a large format camera. He’s since transitioned to creating more lush, evocative landscapes, reflected in his most recent solo exhibition, Sunshine State, at Manhattan’s Ryan Lee Gallery this past June.

Hunting is Painting, 2017, Oil, acrylic, and photo collage on panel, 47.25” x 60.25”, photo courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE NY, 2017

Although he’s only been in New Hampshire a year, the state’s forested landscape and historic architecture has already impacted his work. Castellanos’ family has vacationed on Lake Winnipesaukee for generations and their lakeside cabin has inspired several paintings. He’s currently creating a series of figurative works. “I think I’m producing the tightest and most technical work now,” he says. “My latest work is always, to me, my most exciting work.”

Bradley Castellanos–artist
Exeter, New Hampshire
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Top image installation view of Sunshine State at RYAN LEE, NY, 2017. All images courtesy the artist and RYAN LEE, NY.

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Maine performance artist Sara Juli makes a point of saying the word vagina at least once a day. “It’s a perfectly lovely word,” Juli says from her home in Portland, Maine, where she in moved in 2014 with her husband and two children after 15 years in Brooklyn.

“It’s not a curse word or an offensive word,” she says. “It’s a body part. How can you empower girls if they can’t say a part of their body? It should be celebrated, not shunned.”

Unfortunately for Juli as a new mother, that vagina gave her a lot of trouble, going into spasms that led to four years of urinary incontinence. Luckily for her as an artist, she found a way to use humor as the basis of a performance piece based on her actual diagnosis of tense vagina, the treatment for it, and the chaotic years of new motherhood.

Sara Juli performing Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis at Asheville Masonic Temple in 2016, photo by Kristofer Alan Thompson

The piece, “Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis,” premiered at the experimental SPACE Gallery in Portland in 2015 and has been touring ever since. “I was quietly suffering,” Juli says. “I assumed that peeing in your pants all the time was part of the experience of having a baby. Women say they suffer their whole life from this. What I love about using humor on a taboo topic is that it allows people to listen to you.”

Treatment for dysfunctional pelvic floor muscles at a pelvic floor rehabilitation center in Portland form the basis of Juli’s piece. At her first visit, she started choreographing her performance. She weaves in what she calls “the underbelly of motherhood, the loneliness in the early years of raising children.”

This hour-long solo uses humor, movement, sounds, songs, text and audience participation, Kegel exercises, and vibrators “in a non-sexualized way,” Juli says. “I think it’s empowering for women to think about their vaginas and what their vaginas need.” In program notes, she includes information about the location of local pelvic floor rehabilitation centers.

A native of Waterford, Connecticut, Juli trained in modern and improvisational dance, graduating from Skidmore College with a degree in dance and anthropology. To Juli, the two fields are related. “Dance is all about connecting with people,” she says, “and anthropology is about connecting with people in all cultures.”

Juli’s work has been performed in New York at such places as Performance Space 122, Danspace Project, Movement Research at Judson Church, and Joe’s Pub as part of the Dancenow/NYC Festival, as well as nationally and internationally. She will perform “Tense Vagina” at Ko Festival of Performance in mid-July in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Juli credits the move to Maine with invigorating her creation of new solo work. “In New York, thousands of voices are similar to yours,” she says. “My career has taken off since I moved to New England. My voice is stronger. The air quality alone makes you feel happy.”

When she is not working on new performance projects, Juli is building a fundraising consulting practice, Surala Consulting. In the practice, she advises national artists and non-profits on strategic fundraising solutions. “The arts are threatened in a major way,” she says, “and making sure that artists have a diverse fundraising profile is critical.”

Sara Juli–performance artist
Portland, Maine
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Top Image Sara Juli performing Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis at American Dance Festival 2016, photo by Grant Halverson

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