Welcome to Art and Cake!

Suzanne Gibson is creating new pieces with new energy and focus. At 50+, their work is more self-dedicated—not about what others expect from them. Me painting in Utah, 2024, photo by event photographer, used by permission for personal use and promotion What's actually hard about being an artist at this point?  Being available for themselves. Someone just turned 50 and wants to start making art—what do they tell them? Let's do this. Let's play!!! Do they try to keep up with wh

Laurie Freitag is working on finally creating The Lost Years book that she's self-publishing. At 50+, after many years of photographing childhood and memory through the children she cared for as a nanny, it feels like a natural gathering of everything she's been working toward. In the Garden at Chislehurst #7130, Photography, 10”x12”, 2020, self-portrait 50 Over 50: You Don't Need Permission - Laurie Freitag's Lost Years Laurie Freitag is working on finally creating The Lost

What Miguel Ripoll does is highly unusual. At 57, he's been developing for over 25 years a practice based on technology and traditional materials and techniques. He's working with AI-generated fragments from public domain archives, transforming them through hand-crafted digital collage, and then spending hours hand-drawing with ink and pencil on them. The friction between machine logic and human gesture never gets old. It's not about age for him, but about patience.  In 1999,

By Kristine Schomaker Standing in front of Leonie Weber's cardboard relief at Wönzimer and my brain's trying to sort through everything it's reminding me of—Abstract Expressionism, Nevelson, Bontecou, constructivism, Malevich's Black Square. All these art history touchstones showing up in what's essentially crushed Amazon boxes painted black and mounted on a wall. From a distance it reads as pure gesture—black forms exploding across the surface. But get closer and you see the

By Marina Claire The Middle Becomes Eclectic II is an LA-made small works salon – a large-scale exhibition within an intimate space – of forty Los Angeles area artists. The show’s title is a play on the iconic KCRW alternative radio program that began in LA in 1977. The small works in this exhibit span a wide range of media and styles, all made during the past year, by diverse artists at all career levels, guest curated by Camilla Taylor. The show is on view at The Middle Roo

At 51, Maryam Rohani Vakili is exploring the symbolism of Iranian doors and knockers in increasingly abstract ways. They've been experimenting with layering, texture, and color, especially red and turquoise, to express the tension between memory, silence, and identity. The studio feels vibrant and alive with this dialogue between tradition and contemporary abstraction. They're also deeply engaged with a smaller ongoing project, Care & Share, where they create tiny traditional

At 72, Elaine Carr is painting with gratitude. They lean towards more positive themes now. Their paintings tend to be a composition of beautiful colors that most times seem animated. Known for their bold colors and sometimes playful themes, Elaine's paintings are colorful compositions of still life, landscapes, and portraiture. They're primarily self-taught, having painted since childhood, but now in their retirement years they paint with a goal of creating works that evoke g

Lately in the studio, Jalila Bell is fired up clearing space for new work and diving into their steampunk series—where imagination, invention, and rebellion collide. At 50, hitting that milestone has powered them up and made them bolder. They're being pushier with mixed-media materials, mashing together effigy and new worlds. With their new steampunk series, they're breaking rules about what "their art" looks like, bending reality, and letting their imagination lead the charg