Interview: Alexis Neider
Alexis Neider is a painter, print-maker, and NYC public school teacher. Alexis holds dear experiences where her dual careers as artist and educator merge including: Whitney Teacher Exchange (Whitney Museum), Learning through the Arts: Creativity Project Team (Guggenheim Museum), Steering Committee Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts, and New York City Department of Education Arts Liaison. Alexis has exhibited with galleries across NYC and the country including Artspace (New Haven), Monica King Contemporary (New York), Local Project (Queens), and Golding Yang Gallery (Kentucky). Residencies include Can Serrat (Spain), A.I.R. Budapest, Fowler Dune Shack Residency, and Catwalk Artist residency. She has an upcoming artist talk on April 11th, 2024, Masks: In Conversation, at Vassar College’s Lehman Loeb Art Center. Alexis lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Alexis holds a B.A. from Vassar College and an M.S.T. from Fordham University.
Read our interview with Alexis below!
Alexis with her piece Sheetmask: Body Masks 1, acrylic and graphite on paper, 52 x 65 inches, 2023
PP: Walk us through a typical day in your studio or generally through your process to make new work.
AN: My process is iterative, with performance, photography, and drawing taking place before I start to paint. There’s a back-and-forth between home and studio, and at times home becomes studio. In my recent work, the Sheetmask series, I apply sheetmasks to as many body parts as I can: face, boobs, hands, feet, butt. I ask my partner or mom to photograph me in incredibly raw moments, including while giving myself IVF injections. I squeeze a roll of belly fat (as I learned to do through instructional videos), inject the needle all the way in, and push in the medicine. It’s painful, and the tension in the photos is palpable. I’ve realized that I can’t wear hand masks while doing that!
I tape paper up on the wall in my bedroom and project part of the image onto the paper, and I use pencil to draw this portion. I take that down, tape up another paper, and shift the projector slightly to hit another part of the body, knowing that I might be repeating some parts. I don’t know the final composition until I put all of the papers together. Some turn out better than others but I like leaving that part uncontrolled.
I pack up the drawings and schlep them to the studio. I have a ritual that feels really calming. Each day when I get to the studio, I take out my sketchbook and write the date and my goals for the day (like, “do the hair,” or “fix that weird hand”). This helps me focus and not feel overwhelmed by the painting. Going back through the sketchbook also reminds me of previous ideas and also reminds me of what I’ve accomplished.
Then, I paint!
Blue Sheetmask 2, acrylic and graphite on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2020
Yellow Sheetmask 3, acrylic and graphite on paper, 22 x 30 inches, 2020
PP: What motivates you to make art?
AN: It would be easier to stop making art, to just put that part of me aside, but I’m not able to. I believe there is a very strong painter inside of me. I’m a really stubborn person, and I’ll push to get to that painter and to those paintings.
Politics is also motivating. Currently, the Alabama IVF ruling has made my paintings feel both prescient and pressing. Sharing these pieces feels very vulnerable, and also very necessary. This ruling is pushing me to get to work on new pieces in this series.
PP: What is one goal you are aiming to achieve this year for your art practice?
AN: By the end of 2024, I’d like to have finished 10 multi-paneled Sheetmask paintings. I want to be ready with a full body of work for whatever opportunities (group shows, solo show, etc) come my way.
Work in progress studio view; Sheetmask: IVF 2, acrylic and graphite on paper, 30 x 44 inches, 2024
PP: Who or what has had the biggest impact on your creative practice?
AN: My mom Joan Fitzsimmons (@joanfitzsimmonsphotography) is a photographer and my dad Alan Neider (@aneider52) is a painter, so I’ve been surrounded by art my whole life. We always lived in live/work spaces with studios and darkrooms. When I was young I made photograms with my mom and Jackson Pollock-esque paintings with my dad. Galleries and museums were a big part of my childhood too. We still meet for openings and shows today. My parents give me lots of (solicited) critiques of my work, suggest artists to look at, and talk about their own processes and work.
PP: Favorite hobby outside of art?
AN: I like to bake elaborate cakes for friends’ birthdays and celebrations. There is a similarity between baking and painting in the materiality, the mess, and the creation of something new and hopefully desirable. For my Cakes series, I’d often photograph these cakes as muses for my paintings, drawings, and prints.
To learn more about Alexis’s work, see her Instagram and Website