CAA News Today

Polly Apfelbaum, image credit: Nicole Eisenman, Apfelbaum, 2019, Paper pulp drawing, Paper dimensions: 30 1/2 x 22 1/2 in, Courtesy the artist and Anton Kern Gallery.
David Pagel.

We are excited to announce that one of this year’s Artists’ Interviews will feature Polly Apfelbaum, interviewed by David Pagel.  

Beginning in 1997, the Annual Artists’ Interviews were established to provide the opportunity for esteemed artists to have one-on-one conversations with colleagues at the Annual Conference.  

Each year, the Services to Artists Committee identifies two distinguished artists to participate. The interviews, held as part of the Services to Artists Program, provide a unique opportunity for members to hear insights from artists in dialogue with the interviewer.  Access to this program content requires free registration for “Free and Open Sessions” and is included in paid registration. This year’s Artists’ Interviews are supported by a generous grant from the NEA.

Speaker Biographies

New York-based artist Polly Apfelbaum’s (b.1955) work has situated itself as a hybrid of painting, sculpture, and installation over a career spanning 30-plus years. Exploring the intricacies of color, Apfelbaum weaves her way, both literally and conceptually, through ideas of Minimalism, Pop aesthetics, and Color Field painting to blur the lines between two-and three-dimensional art making. Apfelbaum graduated from the Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. She has exhibited consistently since her first solo show in 1986. Her work has recently been recognized with a Pew Center for Arts Grant, a Creative Capital Award, and the 2012 Rome Prize at the American Academy. She has also received a Joan Mitchell Grant, The Diebenkorn Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Recent solo exhibitions include: “Waiting For the UFO’s (a space between a landscape and a bunch of flowers)” at the Kemper Museum, Kansas City, and the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2019); “Haystack Hands” at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Deer Isle, ME; “Happiness Runs” at Belvedere 21, in Vienna, Austria (2018); “Dubuffet’s Feet, My Hands” at Frith Gallery, London, UK (2017); “The Potential of Women” at Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY (2017); “Face (Geometry)(Naked) Eyes,” Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA (2016); and “Deep Purple, Red Shoes,” Be-Part, Waregem, Belgium (2015). She is represented in numerous collections including: Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.  

David Pagel is an art critic who lives in Los Angeles and regularly contributes to the Los Angeles Times. He is a professor of art theory and history at Claremont Graduate University and an adjunct curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY, where he has organized “Telling Stories: Changing the Narratives” (2020) and “Unfinished Business: Paintings from the 1970s and 1980s by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl and David Salle” (2016).  

Recent publications include “Jim Shaw” (Lund Humphries, 2019) and “Talking Beauty: A Conversation Between Joseph Raffael and David Pagel About Art, Love, Death, and Creativity” (Zero+, 2019). An avid cyclist, he is a seven-time winner of the California Triple Crown.   

Apfelbaum and Pagel’s pre-recorded conversation will be available starting on February 5, 2021. They will host a live online Q&A on Friday, February 12 at 5:30pm EST.