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18 | Artist profile: Glenn Goldberg

Glenn Goldberg uses decorative arts, rugs, banners, tapestries, Danish modern furniture, fetish figures, as well as ancient calligraphy as a source of inspiration, providing his work with a sense of varied cultural eclecticism. Goldberg’s compositions, consciously devoid of a narrative context, allow for the discovery of layered visual references ranging from the decorative arts to childhood imagination. The works are charged with a web of multiple dotted lines that delineate the space in rhythmic waves. The embrace of handmade imperfections continues to play an important role in this body of work.

Glenn Goldberg was born in the Bronx in 1953 and attended the New York Studio School and Queens College during his undergraduate education. He later continued his graduate studies at Queens College to receive his MFA. In 1996 he was named the Heilman Artist and since has received grants from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Edward Albee Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and The Joan Mitchell Foundation. Goldberg’s work has been shown extensively throughout the US and internationally, and is held in numerous collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Arts and Letters, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others. Goldberg has taught at various institutions including The Cooper Union, NY Studio School, Brandeis University, Queens College, Parsons School of Design, and Lodestar School of Art in Ireland. He has also been a panelist and visiting artist for MFA painting programs at Yale, Columbia, Boston University, American University, Hunter College, and others. In 2023, Goldberg was commissioned to create a public arts project at the E. 149th Street subway station in the Bronx by the New York MTA Arts and Design Commission. Goldberg lives and works in New York City.

What was the cultural or creative makeup of your family?

It was mostly based around music. My parents loved jazz singers and records were always playing in the apartment. I grew up listening to their favorites who were Ella Fitzgerald, Sara Vaughn, Joe Williams, Billy Eckstine, Johnny Hartman, Mel Torme, Dinah Washington, Lena Horne and Carmen McRae. Art really had no place in the home with just a couple of things on the walls bought to fill up space. The passion was in the music.

What part of the country did you grow up? (urban/rural) and how did that impact your childhood?

I grew up in The Bronx, New York. We hung out on the street corners and in playgrounds in the neighborhood. It was a concrete environment. There were many street games in those days like stickball, skully, punchball, Johnny on the pony, off the stoop and box ball. We would all show up in the park after school, often playing basketball. On the corner was “Jack’s”, the local luncheonette with a soda fountain, magazines and candy. Those were our two favorite spots to hang out and meet up, both boys and girls, maybe about 20 of us in total.

What’s your earliest memory of an encounter with art or design?

Music wise I loved Nick Drake, Eddie Kendricks and a band called Poco. The film West Side Story was a favorite of mine as was the play Golden Boy with Sammy Davis Jr and Lola Falana. I also loved Dr Seuss books as a very young boy and the silly poetry of Ogden Nash…

“I work out of an interest in structure, related hierarchies and moods that exist in nature. My works are invented without viewing either nature or images of nature, but I feel that they are driven by what exists in nature. I can’t prove this, but that is the way that I feel. I am interested in art as a re-ordering of ‘what goes on.’” Jennifer Samet of *Hyperallergic* described Goldberg’s work as “about this meeting point of the ordinary and the other, regularity and refinement… Repetitive mark-making becomes a focused, meditative practice, and a basic indexical sign is transformed into a richly charged visual field.”
Other Place (65)
Acrylic and ink on Canvas
12’ x 9”
2024

When did you start making art, and what inspired you to pursue it as a vocation?

I started drawing quite often when I dropped out of college and hitchhiked around Canada and the US for a year and a half. They were intricate ink drawings made from my imagination. They looked like very elaborate, intricate doodles. They were related to my hippie lifestyle. After that I finished college, took some art classes and then went to The NY Studio School in Manhattan for a year and a summer. That changed my life as it was a very serious place. I got very involved and caught up in drawing and painting. I got hooked and wanted to continue. I remembering thinking I might be able to do it.

You currently live in NYC, How did you end up there?

I was born in The Bronx and have lived in New York most of my life with a couple of stints elsewhere. Over the years I’ve lived in four of the five boroughs in NY city.

What are your favorite neighborhoods or parks to walk in the city?

Central Park, Washington Square Park, Prospect Park and Forest Park. Neighborhoods that I don’t have a favorite neighborhood but I spend most of my time below 14 Street and in Brooklyn and Queens. I usually go uptown to see shows or go to the Met (Metropolitan Museum). Lots of people are downtown oriented.

Detail of Bronx River (2023) © Glenn Goldberg, NYCT E. 149th St. Station. Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design. Photo: John Berens.

Please share what it was like to create a piece for the MTA located at E 149th Street (6) in the Bronx, has your work ever been translated into glass before? It seems like such a beautiful and logical medium for your work.

That was a very rewarding project as the station is close to where I went to high school. Working in that neighborhood brought back memories from my youth. I paid tribute to the Bronx River with a long, winding river theme and animals that lived there in its heyday. Mosaic does suit my work beautifully with its small increments and nuanced color.

Golderg’s daedal designs seem to float off the surfaces and recall outsider art, Tantric art, pointillism, and Aboriginal art, Goldberg cites many, often eclectic, affiliations that fuel his practice and his excitement around artmaking, including Shaker furniture, celadon bowls, Japanese screens, and African textiles.
OP-1
2024
21 x 14 inches

Do you surround yourself with reference materials or colors? What does your studio look like?

I don’t have reference materials in the studio. I improvise on each work without a specific plan but do have a sense of the basic forms I might use. My studio has a bank of windows on one end that look out on trees and school buses. It is longer than it is wide. Ceilings are about 11 feet high. Most importantly, it is very quiet,

Do you keep a journal or sketchbook? I draw frequently but usually not in a book, though I do have several sketchbooks dedicated to drawings of heads. I have a lot of paper and unfinished drawings in my midst at all times.

Finally, What do you need in your surroundings to feel creative and productive?

Not much really…a room with good proportions, my materials and peace and quiet. There is always so much to do. I am blessed to rarely, if ever, feel blocked or unmotivated. I love to work and continue on immersed in the realm of the inexplicable and unpredictable.

Find Glenn on instagram