Stephen Bron

Episode 552 / Stephen BronStephen Bron [b. 1993] is a painter living and working in Brooklyn. He received his BFA in painting at The Cooper Union in 2015, and received his MFA in Painting at NYU in 2017, and attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School in 2014.He’s had solo shows including A Memory That Hangs Suspended with a Sigh, Albert Merola Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2024; The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be, Auxier Kline, New York, NY, 2024; Overnight Garden, Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart, Germany, 2022; Mistaken For A Songbird, Albert Merola Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2022; and Just Another Diamond Day, Albert Merola Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2021.He’s had group exhibitions including Summer Vacation, Auxier Kline, New York, NY, 2024; Queer Naturalism, Auxier Kline, New York, NY, 2024; Small Paintings, Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY, 2022; Flowers, Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart, Germany, 2022; You Got Your Secret On, Quappi Projects, Louisville, KY, 2021 and Pause, Theodore Art, New York, NY, 2021.

Episode 551 / Amy EllingsonAmy Ellingson is an artist interested in contemporary digital experience and modalities of abstraction. Her work has been exhibited nationally and in Tokyo, Japan, and is held in various public collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of California, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the US Embassies in Algeria and Tunisia. She is the recipient of the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship and the Artadia Grant to Individual Artists and has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Ellingson received a B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College and an M.F.A. from CalArts. She was Associate Professor of Art at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2000 to 2011 and has served on the Board of Directors at Root Division, a San Francisco nonprofit arts organization, since 2011.  A Day in the Sun, her commission for San Diego International Airport’s New Terminal 1, opened in September 2025. Other public art commissions include large scale mosaic murals at  the San Francisco International Airport and Sam Houston State University in Conroe, Texas. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Amy Ellingson has lived and worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 2018. She is a contributor to Hyperallergic, covering exhibitions in the Santa Fe region. Her book, On Painting and the Nature of Work, was published by N+Co. in July 2026. She has an upcvoming solo show, “Plastic Hour” at Sho +1 gallery in Tokyo. 

Episode 550 / Steve LockeSteve Locke (b.1963) was born in Cleveland, OH and lives and works in the Hudson Valley, NY. Spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, Locke’s practice critically engages with the Western canon to muse on the connections between desire, identity, and violence.Steve received his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2001. Extending his commitment to a painting practice, he began to seek alternative ways to amplify public engagement around his art, partnering with institutions, municipalities, and even the US Postal Service to reach new audiences.Steve’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including venues such as the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, The Gallatin Galleries at NYU, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the ICA in Boston, the Savannah College of Art and Design and more. Steve has participated in many group exhibitions, including venues such as the MassArt Art Museum (Massachusetts College of Art and Design), The School at Jack Shainman Gallery, the Fruitlands Museum, the Mills Gallery (Boston Center for the Arts), the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art (Harvard University), the Longwood Art Gallery (Bronx Council on the Arts), the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and the Danforth Museum amongst others. He is in the collections of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Colby College Museum of Art, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum (Rollins College), the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the Mead Art Museum (Amherst College), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Rose Art Museum (Brandeis University), and Tufts University Art Galleries. He is the recipient of many grants and awards, including the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant (2026 and 2014); Rappaport Prize from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2022); the Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2020); the LEF Contemporary Work Fund Grant (2009); and the Art Matters Foundation Award (2007). Locke is a Professor and MFA Co-Director in Studio Art at Hunter College in New York. He is also on the Board of Governors at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

Episode 549 / Susan ChenSusan Chen was born and raised in Hong Kong until the age of 12, before receiving a scholarship to go to school abroad in England throughout her teens. She later attended Brown University for her undergrad and studied at Columbia University for her MFA and has lived in the US ever since, becoming a first generation American. She is an artist and painter who currently lives and works in New York City with a studio in Long Island City. Her first museum solo show “Rooms by the Sea” is now on view at the Edward Hopper House Museum in Nyack, New York until February 21, 2027. The show exhibits a body of plein air paintings made on site at Cape Cod, where she has spent time with her husband’s family for the past ten summers. A new catalogue is coming out this week and available for purchase from the museum. She currently has a painting on the 5th floor American Wing at The Brooklyn Museum. Susan works with Night Gallery and Uffner & Liu Gallery, and has previously participated in group shows at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, The Aldrich Museum, Anchorage Museum, among others. Her work has also been featured on the cover of New York Magazine, and she is a 2025 Creative Capital Grant Awardee, Forbes Under 30 and Artsy Vanguard honoree.

From the Vaults! Episode 2 of the Podcast recorded April 2016 with Matthew. On the occasion of his solo show, "Cold Meat, Cake, and a Variety of All the Finest Fruits in Season; MATTHEW RONAY September 10 – October 24, 2026 we dug deep to unearth the second S&V podcast. Go check out his show, he's an amazing artist and music is a big part of his life as well. Matthew Ronay (born 1976) is an American artist who lives and works in New York. Born in 1976 in Louisville, Kentucky, Ronay studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art, before earning his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University in 2000.Ronay has exhibited at institutions including Kunstverein Lingen, Germany; University of Louisville, Kentucky; Artspace, San Antonio; Serpentine Gallery, London; Sculpture Center, New York; Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, and Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London. Ronay participated in the 2013 Lyon Biennale, curated by Gunnar Kvaran, and the 2004 Whitney Biennial. In 2017 his work was the subject of solo-presentations at the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, Texas and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida.

Episode 547 / Michelle Paterok Michelle Paterok is a Canadian visual artist working in painting. She received an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Western Ontario in 2022 and a BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta in 2016. Her work has been supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Ontario Arts Council, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. In 2018 she was the Canadian Artist in Residence at the Vorres Museum in Paiania, Greece, and in 2023 completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. She has held recent solo exhibitions at Duran Contemporain in Montreal and SHRINE in New York City. She lives and works in Montreal.(Our collab playlist mentioned in our conversation:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37HIj0M1PxM45CQMR4ciYL?si=a490bbadddb74dfe)

Episode 546 / Sizhu LiSizhu Li is a Chinese-born kinetic installation artist based in Houston. She holds a BFA from Central Academy of Fine Arts and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art with the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. She has exhibited her works at the Staten Island Museum, Morris Museum, Attleboro Arts Museum, Spring/Break, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Flux Factory, Governors Island Art Fair & Public Art Project, Baltimore–Washington International Airport, Chashama Gallery, amongst other venues.  Since 2020, her pandemic-inspired touring project Moonment has been well received at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Missouri State University, the Lille Grand Palais in France, the Viborg Kunsthal in Denmark, the Maryland HoCo Arts Council and many other places.

Episode 545 / Robert Yarber (on A.I. & Technology in art)A sit down with artist, painter and early purveyor of the use of technology merged into analog art practices, Robert Yarber for a discussion about adopting tech into an art practice, the advent of AI and the complicated relationship artists have with it. We traverse his history of using tools to take his work to new places and we speak about the ethics and concerns of the future with super intelligence. 

Episode 544 / Falon StutzmanFalon Stutzman is an artist born in Silver Springs, Maryland who lives and works in Omaha, Nebraska. She received her BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in 2009. She’s had solo shows atKishka Gallery in Vermont, The Door in Brooklyn, Saints and Poets curated by John Plypchuck at Megan Mulrooney Gallery in LA and she has a current solo show right now at Megan Mulrooney, The End of a Long Line, that is up until October 24th. Her work has been featured in Artmaze and New American Paintings. 

Episode 543 / Kiwha LeeKiwha Lee was born in Seoul and raised across four continents, Lee received her MFA in Painting from Hunter College in 2022. Her New York solo debut, Light Punch, at CHART in 2024 was selected as an Artforum “Must See” and named by Artsy among five standout exhibitions at small galleries worldwide. Later that year, her first European solo exhibition, Reverse Universe, opened at Monti8 in Rome and was selected by Exibart as a must-see exhibition in Rome. In 2025, Lee was selected for a solo presentation in the Main Section of Arte Fiera in Bologna, Italy’s longest-running modern and contemporary art fair.Lee has exhibited at Mindy Solomon Gallery, CHART, Fergus McCaffrey, Thierry Goldberg, Monti8, Ortega y Gasset Projects, COL Gallery, and other venues in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She was nominated for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in 2018 and was named one of ARTCUBE Discoveries’ Top 100 Early-Career Artists for 2023–2024. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Artsy, Artribune, New American Paintings, Two Coats of Paint, Vulture,Asian Art News, and Harper’s BAZAAR, among other publications. Her paintings are held in theMorgan Stanley Art Collection and private collections internationally.Kiwha Lee x Julia Kunin: Electromagnetic SignatureOpening this Thursday in Miami, September 10th, 6:30 - 8pm September 10 - October 10, 2026 Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami