Madeline Hope Arthurs creates one-of-a-kind handmade books that reveal her internal landscapes and psyche-scapes. She takes inspiration from psychotherapy and uses it as a tool to bring visibility to neurodivergence. Arthurs’ practice expresses various emotions through drawings, painting, cutting, folding, and glueing that she describes as a “cathartic journey exploring my emotional mind.”
This exhibition showcases Arthurs’ innovative bookmaking including such innovative forms as scrolls, tunnel books, Turkish map fold books, carousel books and others. The illustrations that formed the content of each book display Arthurs’ mastery of watercolor, ink and pencil. Haunted dreamscapes, mental institutions, self-portraits and the animal kingdom, are among the subjects of the artist’s body of work.
Arthurs has a BA from Smith College (Massachusetts), a BFA and an MFA with honors from the School of Visual Arts (NYC). She also graduated from Teachers College (NYC) with a MA in Art and Art Education. Madeleine has exhibited her work in group shows at New York City venues such as Ronald Feldman Gallery, Exit Art, School of Visual Arts Galleries, Fountain House Gallery, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, El Barrio Art Space, and Culture Lab. Her artist books are included in permanent collections at such places as the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC), Bowdoin College, and the Center for Book Arts (NYC).
Orange Li’s artistic practice involves an ongoing exploration of her memories and dreams. It reveals her experience of an intuitive connection between body and mind. Li’s drawings examine and express personal psychological moments that she describes as having “erupted from my volcanic body.”
This exhibition focuses on ink drawings on amate paper. According to the artist the paper was first chosen for its roughness of texture and the feeling of antiquity it projects. She later discovered that this kind of paper had direct ties to ritual and spiritual texts, a discovery that reawakened her memories of the traditions of her heritage. Li also notes that “the ink too carries a thread back to my grandfather who taught me calligraphy as a child.”
Born in Taiwan in 1988, Orange Li now lives and works in New York and Jersey City. She received her MFA degree from the School of Visual Arts in 2024. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including The Drawing Center Benefit Show, New York (2024); Taiwanese American Arts Council, Government Island (2023); Mana Contemporary, Jersey City (2021); Monira Foundation, Jersey City (2021). Scintilla of Nigredo is her first solo show.