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Confined within tiny, ornate frames until inevitably spilling over the edge, Barry Hazard’s expansive landscapes are “spaces for reflecting, contemplation, and surrendering to something larger and more timeless than us,” he says.

Inspired by vast notions such as the relationship between humans and nature and ecological conflict, Hazard (previously) translates broad themes into miniature works. The Brooklyn-based artist employs minuscule frames, wood panel, and acrylic to depict a multitude of scenes from mudslides and flower farms to glaciers and snowy roads. With so much contained in such small compositions, Hazard describes his process as “a simple way to rapidly engage in an artistic process, with an ultra-manageable scale.”

Last year for New York’s Upstate Art Weekend, the artist expanded upon his miniature work, delving into a project on the opposite end of the scale of proportions. “Walk-In Painting” culminates Hazard’s carpentry and muralist experience, uniquely activating his otherwise tiny paintings. Viewers are able to step into a rolling scenery teeming with vibrant blooms, tufts of bushes, and sweeping mountains in the distance, creating an experience that is “both fictional and non-fictional,” the artist explains.

Hazard has also ventured into the realm of batch production through the technique of resin casting. While the artist typically uses more traditional materials for his small works, he has been able to create a sizable amount of gifts for friends and family by creating numerous blank casted bases before painting each by hand.

Find more work on the artist’s website, and take a look into his process on Instagram.

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When Shyama Golden would find herself disappointed as a child, her parents would often respond with “too bad, so sad, maybe next birth.” Invoking reincarnation and the possibilities of an alternative life, this phrase continues to reinvent itself in Golden’s practice.

On view next month at PM/AM, Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth presents a collection of lush paintings filled with surreal details, earthly textures, and a recurring blue-faced character. As with earlier series, the artist invents a vast, magical narrative that flows through each of the works, this time as a four-act performance.

The mythical storyline unfolds with a collection of diptychs comprised of a large-scale scene and a close-up companion offering another perspective. These pairings visualize a sort of alternative past for the artist as she explores the inexorable twining of personal agency and larger forces like fate and collective experiences that shape our identities.

In Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth, Golden opens with her blue-faced alter ego named Maya, a rendition of the Sri Lankan folklore tricksters known as yakkas. Dressed in a fur suit, the character lies in the roadway, her chest split open to reveal a bright red wound. A bag of oranges is littered nearby.

The counterpart to this titular work is a self-portrait of the artist barefoot, posed against the rocky roadside. She stands atop cracked pavement while oranges spill blood-red juice on the ground. Introspective yet invoking the universal, the pair grasps at the tension between unexpected violence and death, whether metaphoric or real, and the ability to find resilience in the face of adversity.

Golden’s series continues to unravel as a series of contrasts. She considers fame, erasure, and where freedom resides within the two, along with the notion of sole creative geniuses mistakenly thought to operate outside the whole. And in “Mexican Texas, 1862,” the artist tackles the porous, if not arbitrarily drawn, boundaries that tie us to states and nations and ultimately, change over time.

In addition to her oil paintings for this exhibition, Golden is collaborating on an animated video project with her husband, the director Paul Trillo, who will build an AI model trained exclusively on Golden’s paintings. Given the hesitation by many artists about the role of artificial intelligence and intellectual property, the pair is interested in confronting the issue from the perspective of influence and the myth of the lone genius. Golden writes:

Many artists who are canonized are actually working in a style that they didn’t invent but that was part of a movement arising out of their time and location. AI is deeply unsettling to artists in the West because we romanticise the artist as a singular figure, who is only influenced by one to three other clearly defined artists, giving them a lineage of artistic inheritance and perceived value.

Golden also ties this idea to “the clout needed to command a price for our work,” which she suggests is simply another narrative device in the act of self-mythologizing.

If you’re in London, Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth runs from May 23 to July 1. Find more from Golden on her website and Instagram.

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A glass mosaic covering 600 square feet of the 2nd Street entrance to the 7 train in Grand Central Station greets commuters with a bold, cosmic map. The work of Sharmistha Ray and Dannielle Tegeder, of the feminist collective Hilma’s Ghost, “Abstract Futures” is a vibrant, three-part portal to transformation.

Named after the visionary artist and mystic Hilma af Klint(1862–1944), the collective formed in 2020 and typically pairs innovative contemporary art practices with spirituality. Their tarot deck has amassed a cult following and shares a name with this new MTA Arts & Design-commissioned project (previously), the group’s first public artwork.

Abstract Futures opens with “The Fool,” a tarot card representing an embrace of new beginnings. Brilliant reds, pinks, and oranges nest together in entrancing, angular forms to invoke courageous, creative intuition at the start of a journey.

In the center is “The Wheel of Fortune,” which is intended to bring this passionate, if not naive, energy back to Earth. Here, grounding greens and browns form a cyclical pattern that reflects a natural rhythm. Concentric orbs and a string of ochre diamonds propel the viewer toward the future.

The last piece in the trio is also the largest, beginning with a celestial blue triangle met by an inverted plane in orange. This pairing draws on “The World,” creating a harmonious, unified relationship between the shadows and wisdom that exist within all of us.

Red, horizontal bars at the far right call on tarot’s suit of wands. Generally associated with fire and primal energy, this final segment symbolizes regeneration and the ability to begin again.

In a statement, the artists say they hope the work inspires a new way of looking at the city:

Abstract Futures is about the connection between people, spaces, and time, and intended to provide a powerful reflection of what New York represents to us all. The city is at once a sprawling metropolis with millions of people but also a dynamic network of interconnectivity. As we make our way through a single day in New York, we connect with so many people from so many walks of life. The density of the mural’s imagery, pattern, and color is a metaphor for the endless diversity of the city that is its heartbeat.

Miotto Mosaic Art Studios fabricated the work, and you can explore Hilma’s Ghost’s collaborative projects on its website. (via Hyperallergic)

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Spanning nearly the entire floor of the main space of Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, Liz West’s expansive new installation invites viewers to revel in color and brightness. The artist has reimagined the historic early-19th-century spa promenade room as a vibrant, sensory immersion.

West’s solo exhibition, H.A.P.P.Y, takes inspiration from a common malady known as seasonal affective disorder, or S.A.D., which is a form of depression that often manifests in the fall or winter when the days are shorter and the temperatures drop. It typically recedes in the summer and spring.

Continuing her interest in the effects of light, reflections, and chromatic relationships (previously), the artist created “Our Colour Reflection,” the centerpiece of H.A.P.P.Y, to highlight the emotional, psychological, and physical power of vibrancy and hue.

Composed of 765 multi-colored discs layered in low relief across the floor, the piece transforms the environment into a luminous experience that interacts with natural and artificial light and evolves throughout the day.

H.A.P.P.Y also includes a selection of paintings, drawings, and models for “Our Colour Reflection,” and the exhibition continues through October 5. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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“Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything—except itself,” author May Sarton (1912-1995) wrote in her book Plant Dreaming Deep (1968), a journal about discovering a love of tending to the land. For Carly Glovinski (previously), the sentiment incidentally frames something of a raison d’être for the artist’s remarkable large-scale floral installation at MASS MoCA.

Glovinski was especially moved by Sarton’s book The House by the Sea (1977), which traces the author’s move from New Hampshire to the seacoast of Maine. The vibrancy of gardens spurred the artist’s fascination with flowers, culminating recently in an expansive work titled “Almanac.”

Celebrating the diversity and dynamism of blooms, the piece explores ideas around placemaking and the passage of time. “For Glovinski, the garden is a metaphor for collapsed time and perishable memories,” says an exhibition statement. Along with Sarton, the artist also draws on poet Emily Dickinson’s love for plants, channeling literary reflections on connecting with the simple pleasures—and sublime chaos—of nature.

“Almanac” takes its name from the annual guide that forecasts weather and a provides calendars for astronomical events, tides, and planting. The piece took more than a year to complete and comprises hundreds of pressed flower paintings made with washy acrylic paint applied to both sides of semi-transparent mylar. The gestural brushstrokes on translucent material evoke a sense of lightness and delicacy, like real petals blown up to larger-than-life size. Above the installation, she’s labeled segments with the months the blooms appear.

Glovinski references pressed blossoms that she has grown, harvested, or collected from friends, nodding to Emily Dickinson’s love of the practice. (The poet created a stunning herbarium containing 424 specimens collected around her home in Amherst, Massachusetts.) “By observing, tending, and preserving flowers, ‘Almanac’ becomes both a visual record of the seasons and a commentary on the labor of care,” the museum says.

See more on Glovinski’s website and Instagram.

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You may have heard of the remarkable quilters of Gee’s Bend, but do you know about the Crossroads Quilters, like Gustina Atlas? Or Hystercine Rankin? Mary Mayfair Matthews? You’re in luck if you have a chance to visit Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South at the Mississippi Museum of Art, which shines a light on dozens of incredible Black Southern quilters and takes a celebratory approach to showcasing their myriad styles and techniques.

MMA is home to one of the South’s largest collections of quilts, from which more than 50 handmade and machine-stitched examples were drawn for this expansive exhibition. Merging research, interpretation, and community engagement, curator Dr. Sharbreon Plummer aimed for “a cohesive, experiential study of American art through a Black feminist lens.” The show parses cultural narratives around the art form, spotlighting the impact of the craft across generations and geography.

A wide range of contemporary and historic pieces converge in Of Salt and Spirit, including figurative and narrative works alongside vibrant geometric compositions. Many of the works were acquired by the museum from Roland L. Freeman (1936-2023), a photographer who documented African-American craftspeople and guilds in his work as a stringer for Time magazine and Magnum Photos.

Freeman collected more than 100 quilts, made several of his own, and published a couple of books on the subject. “Quilts have the power to create a virtual web of connections—individual, generational, professional, physical, spiritual, cultural, and historical,” he says in his second book, A Communion of the Spirits (1996).

In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum also highlights the large-scale, ongoing AIDS Memorial Quilt project, which was initiated in 1985 at the height of the epidemic. Paralleling Of Salt and Spirit’s focus on creative expression, identity, and strength, the AIDS quilt—of which a piece devoted to individuals from Jackson will be on display at MMA for a two-week period beginning May 5—honors quilting for its role in resistance and remembrance.

Of Salt and Spirit continues through May 18 in Jackson. Plan your visit on the museum’s website. You may also enjoy a look back at Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers, a monumental survey recognizing the artistic traditions of Black artists.

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