An ongoing series of studio visits with LA’s favorite emerging and mid-career artists. We hope this glimpse into their creative spaces links you to our city’s artistic landscape and to your own collecting vision.
Edwin Arzeta
b.1986, Orange, CA
Edwin Arzeta is an artist based in Los Angeles, working at the fluid intersection of drawing, painting, and illustration. We first encountered his work through Zodiac Pictures’ exhibition of his cake series and his use of color, whimsy, and sense of theatre immediately captivated us. The artist’s dedication to material, memory, and transformation has continued to enchant us.
A master of paper, Arzeta’s latest works, which he calls “drawings of paintings,” push the boundaries of medium. He stretches Japanese paper like canvas, smudging pencil marks as if they were paint. Repeated colors and patterns thread his work together, honing a signature style. While beauty is often the entry point, Arteza’s rigorous, layered, process lies just beneath the surface.
Drawing inspiration from fashion illustration, bookmaking, and details of the everyday, Arzeta’s world is acutely tactile. Ribbon-like borders reveal a subconscious echo of schoolyard gates lined with bows from his daily commute that contain soft, glowing abstractions. Flowers also appear throughout his work, delicate and dreamlike.
His studio, filled with racks of handmade paper, books, and intricate paper mache lamps, reflect his deep engagement with craft. The papier mache lamps were included in his show with Zodiac Pictures as functioning light sources. However, the light they produced, much like the light from a birthday candle, is temporary, lasting only until the bulb dies. Once they’ve gone out, the lamps remain as sculptures. These lamps mirror the world Arzeta creates - theatrical and ephemeral, where beauty is fleeting but deeply felt.
Noah schneiderman
b. 1996, Stewardson, IL
Noah Schneiderman is a multidisciplinary artist working in Downtown Los Angeles. His current focus is painting and working with natural dyes. He kindly gave us a sneak peak of the body of work planned for his current show, “The Big Empty,” at Europa, before it shipped off to NYC.
Scheiderman’s process starts with exposing his canvases to natural dyes like logwood or madder root to set the stage for the painting process that comes later on. He’ll modify the dyes with citric acid and iron to get the right combination of color and value but never has full control over the final outcome. The canvas pieces are then sewn together and the seams create an unexpected and exciting surface which act as a North Star for the next stage.
The artist mostly works intuitively through a method of call and response, exploring himself as a filter for his lived experience. Music, dreams, and visual stimuli are taken from the artist’s life and decoded into non-linear, abstract forms. The most literal reference we heard about was to the red sprite phenomenon - large, bright flashes of light that occur high above thunderstorms - which appears most distinctly in the piece “Visitor Map” in his current solo show.
Prior to his space downtown, Noah worked out of a small garage. It was wonderful to see the welcomed change a new studio brought to this body of work. More space meant a completely different perspective, with the ability to stand back and evaluate. However, the impact of these paintings originating in a cramped space remains integral to the vision.
During the visit, the artist aptly quoted the late great David Lynch. “Desire for an idea is like bait. When you’re fishing, you have to have patience. You bait your hook, and then you wait. The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in—those ideas.” Scheiderman’s work is so effective because he is actively practicing what this sentiment preaches – unwavering commitment to the process.
Maya fuhr
b. 1989, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Maya Fuhr is a photographer and sculptor based in Los Angeles. While she’s primarily known for her bold fashion photography, we loved getting an intimate look at Maya’s fine art practice in her Westlake studio.
The artist quickly began working with magazines like VICE, Nylon, and Dazed, photographing prominent musicians, actors, and models. While success was nice, the fleeting nature of the commercial shoot, a hi-and-bye to your subjects, wasn’t scratching the itch. She wanted to get off the computer and back to hands-on projects.
As her practice blossomed, she continued to explore the idea of time and immortalization in photography which led her to her current fixation: latex. In both solo and group shows over the last two years, Maya has played with the fetish culture around latex as well as its more literal, bodily characteristics. She encased her photos in latex and, in a performance piece, had a dominatrix play tug of war with the audience, pulling on a latex-covered, 3D-printed, Chanel boot.
The artist’s most recent work is still focused on celebrity culture, but this time, she turned it on its head. In one series, Fuhr photographs celebrity card board cut outs from behind. It might be Matt Damon or Jennifer Lopez, but she hides their identity, and with that their power, by only capturing their silhouette. A second series also highlights humanization, consisting of portraits of the undervalued, less-seen domestic and service workers of the glamorous city of Palm Springs. As always, Maya’s practice is picking away at what is underneath, and letting us in on what’s revealed.
cindy phenix
b. 1989, Montreal, Canada
Cindy Phenix is a Los Angeles based painter and sculptor whose work magically marries reality and fantasy. Phenix received a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal and came to the US for her MFA in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University in 2020.
Upon entering Cindy’s studio, mazes of color wash over you, with a psychedelic first impression. But that feeling is quickly replaced by a draw to get almost inappropriately close to her paintings. Once there, Phenix’s long and winding narratives, full of characters and puzzle pieces, awaken. Her carefully webbed collages reference Baroque theater, climate change, mythology, psychology, the banal, the beautiful, and the grotesque all at once. All of these layers build up stories that the viewer can translate into their own experience.
The artist’s process begins with photoshop, creating a blueprint for the painting by quilting dozens of sourced images to set the scene. From there Phenix projects the collage onto the canvas and traces the images. After that she begins painting, and it is this final step that blends and breathes life into the work. The sections Phenix chooses to leave as negative space are just as important as the ones she douses in color.
The artist’s fascination with the Anthropocene has a huge presence in her current work. In an interview with Surface Magazine, Cindy says, “While eco-climate anxiety and grief presents itself through my narrative, the realization of our interconnection and sense of collectivity between human, creature, animal, insects, flora, mineral, and bacterium, evokes an unfamiliar and new sense of hope.” You can expect to see meditations on this anxiety and sustained hope in Phenix’s upcoming presentation with Makasiini Contemporary at Untitled Art Miami Beach this December.
zack rosebrugh
b. 1993, Baltimore, MD
Zack Rosebrugh is a painter and illustrator based in Los Angeles, CA. As a self taught artist, Rosebrugh’s practice is anchored by what’s in front of him.
Zack identified his illustration practice and painting practice as two different modes - he paints to investigate the big questions of flatness vs depth, light vs dark etc, while illustration begs for less exploration. Light, especially Los Angeles light, is a guiding force in Zack’s painting. His work is unmistakably drawn from the sand, seas, pools, parks, and overall essence of Southern California. In the microcosm that is his studio, Rosebrugh studies the light that shines through his window at every hour of the day.
Rosebrugh often depicts figures, and when he’s lucky, has sitters he can draw and paint in real time. At first glance, there’s an air of voyeurism to his work, like someone’s being observed without their knowing. But as you sit with the work, this delicate, Diebenkornian respect for the subject and their natural existence is revealed. The work lacks manipulation, projection, and ego, leaving plenty of space for honest, vulnerable talent to shine through.
Growing up in the Phoenix skate scene as a filmer, Zack was always capturing movement, personality, and performance in front of him. This onlooking survives through his painting, where, somehow, immortalizing the grand and simple moments of others holds up a mirror to the artist himself.
MICHAEL ASSIFF
b. 1983, Petersburg, FL
Queens based painter, Michael Assiff, is the first artist to expand Studio Sundays beyond Los Angeles. As an avid student of botany, and more specifically weeds, Assiff’s work inspires his viewers to not only absorb the painting in front of them, but to look down at what cohabitates at their feet as they walk through city and country alike.
The artist’s fascination with weeds has been nurtured by an overgrown cemetery near his studio, a place to take joy in foraging within New York City (as ill advised as that sounds.) This enchantment grew when he decided to begin accompanying his long haul trucker friend on their month long journeys across the country. Pulling over to take snap shots of greenery growing through the cracks of concrete and rubble along the highway spoke to the tension between the industrial and natural world in Assiff’s work. With the truck as his research vessel, a new narrative was unlocked.
Once back in the studio, Assiff works through a three step process to achieve his floral masterpieces. It begins with an under drawing directly onto the canvas. He then methodically pipes liquid methacrylic plastic onto his drawing to create a 3D relief which is followed by a coat of latex over the entire canvas. Lastly, Assiff hand paints the surface, tending to each delicate petal, to give his work that final “pop.”
The artist’s love for finding natural beauty in our man-made world is partially inspired by the greats that came before him, but the passion primarily stems from an effort to honestly depict the ecological moments he faces on a daily basis.
Whether you’re strolling through your urban jungle or taking a drive through endless open plains, let Assiff’s paintings serve as reminders of our complex and beautiful relationship with the great outdoors.
NICHOLAS SHAKE
b. 1981, Northridge, CA
Nicolas Shake is a painter, sculptor, and photographer based in Los Angeles, CA. As a third generation native, California culture is inextricable from his practice.
Nicolas has plenty of traditional technique under his belt—having received his undergraduate degree at RISD and his graduate degree at Claremont—but it was his surroundings as a child that birthed his practice. Growing up in the desert, Nicolas could see the bright lights of Los Angeles just beyond the hills. With a child actor grandfather, a father in aerospace, and his own work at an auto shop right out of high school, Nicolas’ lineage embodies Americana.
Shake has always had a painting practice, but as other aspirations kept coming into view, he felt his new concepts were being tampered with by his traditional techniques. During his time at Claremont, Shake ventured into the Mojave deserts to take casts of various objects, observing how they’d changed color with exposure to the elements. Shake realized then that he had to work in a “destructive, fugitive manner” to get the results he wanted.
At the 2019 Chinati Foundation residency, in Marfa, Texas, Shake utilized his backyard as a breeding ground for experimentation, taking drop cloths and industrial fabric dye outside for extended sun exposure. Certain aspects were successful, the colors and materials, but the work was still missing ownership from Shake himself. That’s when the artist’s past photographs of local signage entered his current creative universe. He laid out cardboard templates of his photographs on fabric in the desert for months to produce something totally unique. When asked about how many pieces make it back intact, Shake explained that his process is much like setting cattle out for pasture—you might lose a few along the way.
As a follower of the California Light and Space movement, Shake’s commitment to innovative materials and Californian motifs are central to his work. There’s a certain power harnessed by the artist’s embrace of his family roots, and that power will wash over you the moment you lay eyes on his creations.
ELANA BOWSHER
b. 1990, San Francisco, CA
Elana Bowsher is a Los Angeles based painter whose work evokes a sensual experience akin to squinting your eyes and letting the world blur into abstract, organic forms. Coasting in the moment between soft and hard, we enter the artist’s world of constant evolution, where color, scale, and movement take the lead.
In Bowsher’s creative space, new paintings refer to older works, each building off one another to create an entire ecosystem. Specifically, she crops her existing work to create new, zoomed in, finite pieces . Her technique balances tightness and looseness, with some works detailed and others embracing a more scrubby, blurry aesthetic. The transition from her older work to more recent work is thoughtfully managed, anchored in the reoccurring “plume” form that acts as a bridge for her viewers to access new visual pathways.
Visiting Bowsher’s studio reveals her deep, inescapable connection to her practice. She’s constantly in her studio, dotting the space with urgent notes on inspirations and references. The artist said that working in Los Angeles gives her the spatial freedom to create larger works, further exploring transcendental and nature-inspired themes.
BEN QUINN
b. 1991, Dayton, OH
Ben Quinn is a painter based in Los Angeles. He holds a BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design and an MFA from California College of the Arts.
The artist self identifies as an abstractionist, and lately, more specifically, a geometric abstractionist. His most recent symbolic muse is the star, a shape that holds much personal meaning for the artist.
A recurring finding among Quinn’s work is an acute center point, drawing the viewer closer in an almost hypnotic trance. His range of color use is endless, but the recent neon palette allows us onlookers to be further transported into the artist’s psychedelic yet technical world. It came as no surprise that he mentioned the work of Alex De Corte and Michael Williams as inspiration.
When asked about the dynamic of his home studio, Ben said, without hesitation “I like to be close to the work.” That dedication to his craft was easy to see from the moment we entered the space. With the sheer diversity and amount of work he creates, you’d assume this artist has a robust staff. And the work does not stop at painting- in 2021 Quinn collaborated with the fashion brand Acne Studios to create his own version of the classic Musubi Bag. His latest venture has been creating a line of hand made candles, the first scent being “Bugs 002”, inspired by the focus of another body of paintings.
Simply put, Ben Quinn is an artists’ artist, constantly exploring new meditative obsessions and ways to further connect with himself, his practice, and, lucky for us, the world outside his studio.
ALLI CONRAD
b. 1995, Raleigh, NC
Alli Conrad is a Chinese-American painter based in Los Angeles. Her painting style is distinctly figurative yet subtly flat, always leaving some of the image’s narrative to the viewer’s imagination.
Being in Conrad’s home studio made it clear that she is meticulous but allows room for the external world to take control. For example, the artist journals every day without fail, but when asked about her color choices, Conrad said they come naturally. It’s as if the subjects of the work pick their favorite colors and the artist listens.
Although Conrad moved around a lot growing up, LA has begun to feel like home in her adult life. She mentioned the city’s old-school charm being a quality that has not only kept her around but plays a keen role in her work. It became clear that the nostalgia of “golden age thinking” ignites Conrad’s creative spirit.
Conrad’s upcoming solo show at Bozo Mag (@bozomag) in Los Angeles will include her “Four Loves” series loosely inspired by C. S. Lewis’s novel The Four Loves. Conrad is deeply inspired by storytelling, history, and literature, so much so that each piece in the exhibition will accompany a short story written by the artist. We spoke a lot about Conrad’s figures in her paintings, many of which are portraits that do not include faces. The artist explained that, although her short stories give a fictional background on who she’s depicting, the viewer should always be permitted to cast their own opinion and ideas on what, and who, they see in her work.
Julie Curtiss, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Domenico Gnoli were just a few artists Conrad mentioned as role models for her career. It is easy to see the overlap with these great talents, but it is even more fun to inspect how Conrad’s light, movement, materials, and artistry are ferociously her own.
IDA BADAL
b. 1989, White Plains, NY
Ida Badal is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union in New York in 2013.
The press release accompanying the artist’s show at Smart Objects in late 2023, written by Christie Hayden, says it perfectly: Ida Badal paints subject matter that the mind mostly knows, but met under less lucid circumstances.
Ida’s home/studio is a beautiful oasis tucked away on a hillside. The studio structure was also built by the artist and exists much like a greenhouse: vulnerable to the elements but still a safe haven for what’s growing inside. As a painter and woodworker, the studio serves as a perfect display of Badal’s multifaceted practice.
There is a certain language that the artist has become proficient in, that she continues to build and build off of to create her paintings. Each painting is, in some way or another, in conversation with the last. By mixing her paint with wax and scrubbing into the surface of the canvas, Badal gets this very satisfying fuzzy, matte look. This complements the artist’s boundary testing of how much can be done with as little as possible.
Badal’s practice is existential but never too acutely defined - her newest chapter has been placing her wood sculptures and paintings in conversation with one another, giving the viewer a totally new perspective on her work.
Disorienting the viewer is part of the end goal. Ida experiments with scale: intentionally making small things big and big things small. She also sees the color blocks that fence her paintings as denial of full entry into the works themselves. These subversive visions are what make Badal’s work undeniably engaging, no matter how, where, or when you’re experiencing them.
MICHAEL MCGREGOR
b. 1983, Connecticut
Walking into Los Angeles based painter Michael McGregor’s studio feels like entering every vacation you’ve ever dreamed of taking, all at once. Whether to a different city or a different decade, McGregor is a pro at transporting his viewers.
After stints in Mexico City, Brooklyn, and Greece, the artist landed in Los Angeles in 2019. For Michael, LA means work, and work means studio time. He rarely drives his car, and if he is leaving the studio it’s only to play tennis or walk to the neighborhood bar. It’s a simple life that leaves a lot of room for travel. While he never said this explicitly, we got a sense the artist’s happy place is an oasis called Corfu, a little island in Greece, ideally enjoyed with Henry Miller’s “Colossus of Maroussi” in one hand and a glass of ouzo in the other.
While McGregor’s paintings are inspired by his own personal travels, the artist mentioned that he wants his work to feel visually accessible, including beloved brands and restaurants that many can connect in a matter of seconds. Whether it’s the Moor’s Heads in Sicily or the iconic plates of Bistrot Paul Bert in Paris, McGregor invites you to accompany him on the intimate moments we share when far from home.
When asked why he likes to depict food in his work, the artist said “I find it hard, so I like to do it.” The same goes for his attempts to capture the allure of fashion magazines- the juxtaposition of yearning for challenge and maintaining a very relaxed ethos is what makes Michael McGregor so unique. There’s a push and pull in his work that’s hard to look away from.
MAX HERTZ
b. 1996, Los Angeles, CA
Max Hertz is a sculptor born and raised in LA. After graduating from RISD in 2019, Hertz returned home to re root his practice in the place where his career began.
The artist explained to us that his practice started with painting middle school and high school, but that flat creation never scratched the itch. The translation from 2 dimensional to 3 dimensional is what really sparked Max’s excitement.
Hertz is very involved with the physical manifestation of his works - the way they take up space and how viewers connect with them. “I’m always looking for ways to make the interaction with the work easier,” he said, and went on to explain how all his sculptures are made to be easily transported, packing down to flatter, more mobile forms.
When Max isn’t in his studio he’s teaching at the elementary school he attended in Santa Monica. As a teacher, Max gets to study the art of play, a concept that is deeply rooted in his work. The artists palette of primary colors is very childlike, with works even resembling block and tile games we all played with as kids.
Drawing upon the work of Isamu Noguchi, Alma Allen, and Alexander Calder, Hertz gracefully blurs the lines of art and object and encourages his viewers to question their differences.
SASKIA BADEN
b. 1992, North Carolina
Saskia Baden is a multifaceted artist whose practice spans mediums - primarily large-format photography and immersive installations. Her work explores embodiment, eroticism, and ecology.
This Studio Sundays feature is quite unique because, after graduating from her MFA at UCLA in 2023, Saskia was left without a studio space to call her own. When Fairground requested the visit, she’d only been in her new space for a little over a week. That’s not to say she hadn’t been working - Saskia’s last year has been filled with ferocious creation, mainly revolving around the artist’s muse of the last two years, a rock off the PCH.
Baden has been photographing the rock multiple times a week and explained how simply showing up as regularly as possible has been a huge catalyst for new work. It’s become a ritualistic commitment extending beyond documentation; these visits have become a performative act, an expression of an epic quest for existential inquiry.
“I was originally attracted to the rock because of how the body fits into it” Saskia told us. The artist thinks about the human tendency to personify nature around us and is inspired by writers who explore ideas of queerness, nature and science. A copy of Sabrina Imbler’s “Dyke (Geology)”, a tale of a newly queer Hawaiian volcano, was sitting on the artist’s desk.
It was clear, even from Baden’s brief time in this studio, that having a space to filter through her archive has opened a world of possibilities - a safe haven for her thoughts after long expeditions at sea.
JOHNNY LE
b. 1987, Los Angeles, CA
Johnny Le is a Vietnamese American fine art photographer and curator with a studio practice in Los Angeles. While chatting with Fairground, however, Johnny admitted that most of his time hasn't been spent in LA. His diaristic style of photography is heavily connected to a passion for travel and telling others’ stories by capturing them at the source.
After so much movement, Le planted himself in LA, making the studio a home base and editing room where he could finally sit with everything he had gathered. The artist sees LA as a place to stop and think—to dream and pioneer concepts.
Le mentioned inspirations like photographers Moyra Davey, Luigi Ghirri, and woodworker Francis Cape, but what stuck out most was his fascination with Isamu Noguchi’s playscapes. He recently provided the album artwork to an Italy-based music duo for their forthcoming electronic album exploring the concept of play, using his photographs of Noguchi’s playground in Atlanta, GA, and early maquettes at The Noguchi Museum in New York.
He walked us through his “Traveling Box” from 2022, where an artisan woodworker created a small wooden box filled with postcard-sized photo prints, stacked in a sequence that tells the story of the best kind of travel—scrumptious food, chance encounters, exploration with friends, and beautiful in-between moments someone else might not choose to honor.
Le’s studio gives him the grace to be spontaneous yet intentional: a nomad with a camera.
OLIVE DIAMOND
b. 1998, Los Angeles, CA
Olive Diamond is an LA based artist working primarily in ceramics and painting.
Diamond thrives in one of the hardest dynamics - living where you work. The artist’s home/studio has a true life of it’s own, covered in knickknacks from flea markets, an extensive book collection, and most of all, glazing tiles.
Olive quickly told fairground that discovering new glazes is her favorite part of her practice. As a multi disciplinary artist, she explained that while her paintings are more esoteric and free, her ceramics speak in true narrative.
Diamond’s inspiration is deeply rooted in the oral and physical histories of Judaism and Los Angeles, both individually and as a pair. The stories told in her ceramics, which she calls tablets of revisionist history, often follow the migration of her own family to Los Angeles.
When looking at the psychedelic skies and gumdrop colors in her ceramics and paintings, it’s clear that Los Angeles’ unique light and color palette has proved artistically invaluable. The artist guides you down the yellow brick road to Old Hollywood - a place largely built by Jewish migration.
We discussed Olive’s main influences – Viola Frey, Marc Chagall, Alice Neel, and Leonora Carrington – all of whom have inspired her artistic voice on surrealism, family histories, and the sublime.
Diamond’s work has been exhibited at the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, Fall River, MA (2021); Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2022); Soho House, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Japanese American Cultural Community Centre, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles, CA (2021) Unit London, London, United Kingdom (2022); South Willard Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2022); 1969 Gallery, New York, NY (2023); and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA (2024).
SALIM GREEN
Salim Green is an LA based multidisciplinary artist exploring themes of relational politics, hiding, and the built environment. We visited the artist at his UCLA MFA studio during his final months in the program.
Salim’s studio feels like a living, breathing being– a space where the art and artist morph. In a display of true talent, the artist’s measured and intentional practice results in artworks that are punchy and bold. It’s clear Green’s background in sociology informs his musings on Los Angeles and the public sphere as a whole. Much like one of his biggest inspirations, William Pope.L, it’s as though the artist has an open door policy for the city and everyone in in.
Green’s work has been exhibited at Carlye Packer, Sculpture Center, and Bellyman. His work has been featured in publications including New American Paintings and Office Magazine. His work resides in notable collections including the Getty Research Institute, The Kinsey Collection, and The Underground Museum. He has lectured at universities such as Wesleyan University and MassArt.
LORENZO LORENZETTI
b. 1995, Detroit, MI
Sculptor Lorenzo Lorenzetti is a Detroit native living and working in Los Angeles since 2021.
His studio is one fourth of a wood shop in Inglewood which he shares with upholsters and carpenters. Their individual crafts inspire the artists’ love for sculpting with found materials, most recently in a series of upholstered chairs and lion heads cast in old saw dust from the factory machines.
Materials from the outside world also enter the studio for Lorenzo’s busts made from tennis ball fuzz which he‘s collected while teaching the sport.
Lorenzo’s sculptures are a direct product of his surroundings, making this Studio Sundays feature a perfect way for viewers to experience the artists’ overflowing creativity with ephemeral materials.
