I am delighted to be showing two concrete “tiles” that were made in 2017 for the first time. They were created during a residency at Vermont Studio Center and are experiments that combine a new material, concrete, with steel that I have been working with for a long time. They were inspired by new surroundings at the residency and a long time curiosity about working with concrete.

In a world that feels increasingly overstimulated and demanding, Breathe offers a space for serenity. Featuring work by members of the New York Artists Circle, the exhibition explores breath not only as a fundamental human necessity, but as an invitation to pause, recenter and find calm.

The artists approach this theme from multiple perspectives. Some focus on the physical act of breathing—its rhythm, vulnerability, and sustaining force—while others employ breath as a metaphor for stillness, resilience, clarity, and the act of claiming space in an often overwhelming world. Together, these works invite viewers to step away from the noise, take a deep breath, and reconnect with a sense of peace, presence, and inner balance.

Breathe will be presented both in person at Westbeth Gallery and online on the New York Artists Circle website (NYartistscircle.com). The in-person exhibition includes an opening reception and a public artist talk.

Carter Burden Gallery starts the year off strong with Winter Mix, a vibrant group exhibition featuring recent works by seventeen of the gallery’s artists. Spanning a wide range of media, including oil on canvas, mixed media, ceramics, interactive sculpture, collage, drawing, printmaking, and more, Winter Mix highlights the diversity and creativity of the gallery’s artists, offering a fresh perspective on contemporary practice across disciplines.

Janet is excited to present three of her twig sculptures created during her residency in Pietrasanta in June, 2025.

Janet started making twig sculptures during covid. During the shutdown, she bought a large spray of plum blossoms at the Union Square Farmers Market. Janet watched as they opened and then slowly fell off the branches. Then she pulled the bare branches apart and made the first of the twig sculptures. As the twig sculptures developed, it was clear that her fiber roots were resurfacing in this work.

The series continued whenever Janet worked out of New York City. When she taught in the art department at Makerere University in Uganda on Fulbright Specialist grant, she used wire and raffia. At a residency in rural Pennsylvania and she made wall sculptures of twigs, raffia, wire, glue. 

In June 2025, during a residency in Pietrasanta, Italy, the twig sculptures came into their own. Made of twigs, wax, thread/cord, she cast three of the small sculptures in bronze. And six more that remain as twigs.

The Paulus Hook Park exhibition is the 2nd venue in the Sculptors Guild show. The title of the show, “5.7” references the 5.7 linear feet of archival material preserved at the Smithsonian, a physical measure of the Guild’s enduring legacy and contributions to American sculpture.

Janet’s welded steel sculpture, Circle (Bead Suite) is on view 24/7 through March, 2026. 

Presented by the Sculptors Guild, the title of the show, “5.7” references the 5.7 linear feet of archival material preserved at the Smithsonian, a physical measure of the Guild’s enduring legacy and contributions to American sculpture. 

Janet began her artistic practice as a fiber artist. While in college, she began weaving during residencies at the Asgard School in Denmark and at Penland in North Carolina. She also participated in a semester program of the Experiment in International Living to Ghana where she wove kente cloth at the University of Ghana in Kumasi.

After graduation, she continued weaving, pushing the boundaries of fiber beyond its traditional two dimensions, creating three-dimensional works that emphasized form, texture, and geometric pattern, as well as experimentation with natural and chemical dyeing. Weaving still plays a role in her welded steel sculptures. Her fiber sensibility is evident in the way she uses texture. And she sometimes weave strips of steel as elements in her sculpture.

Unrestricted Access was a special exhibition celebrating 50 years of SoHo20 Gallery promoting women artists.

SoHo20 is an artist-run, feminist gallery founded in 1973. Janet was a member of the Gallery from 1988-1994. During that time she had 3 solo shows that were instrumental in the development of her artistic practice. She helped the Gallery receive its 501c3 tax status which allowed Soho20 to apply for and receive grants from funding sources in NYC and NY State. These grants allowed Soho20 to host exhibitions for emerging, senior, and under-represented women artists; as well as significant social justice exhibitions. In 1989, Janet traveled to South Africa, to curate South African Mail: Messages from Inside with funds from the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid. The exhibition at SoHo20 presented 400 unique postcard sized works by over 200 South African women of all races and circumstances.  The exhibition toured in the US for five years.

UnRestricted Access features the work of artists who have exhibited at SoHo20 over the past five decades, including Marjorie Abramson, B. Amore, Nancy Azara, Karen Baldner, Milenka Berengolc, Elizabeth Bisbing, Darla Bjork, Elena Borstein, Diane Churchill, Maureen Connor, Linda Cunningham, Martha Edelheit, Anne Elliott, Louise Farrell, Lisa Fischetti, Ginny Fox, Janet Goldner, Lannie Hart, Susan Hockaday, Lucy Hodgson, Gail Hoffman, Eve Ingalls, Carla Rae Johnson, Cynthia Mailman, Ann Marie McDonnell, Elizabeth Michelman, Vernita Nemec, Afarin Rahmanifar, Debbie Rasiel, Lucy Sallick, Rosalind Shaffer, Madelaine Shellaby, Kathy Stark, Judith Steinberg, Georgia Strange, Eleonora Tammes, Gail Tanaka, Virginia Tyler, and Sharon Wybrants.

Janet was thrilled and honored to be selected for the first Sculptors Guild Residency at Tre Luci Studios for the month of June, 2025. Pietrasanta is a sculptors’ town. Pietrasanta means sacred stones. Marble has been worked in the town for over 500 years, since Michelangelo. Most people you meet are sculptors. Stone and bronze sculptures and the materials for sculptures are everywhere. Janet made wax and twig sculptures and cast some of the in bronze. 

Janet was thrilled and honored to be awarded a three week residency at VCCA’s Moulin a Nef Studio Center in Auvillar, France. She worked on Woven Journey, a book project marking her 50 years of connection with Mali. She organized and edited years of writing about Mali, took lots of walks, made  watercolors. And Janet developed a good flow between writing and drawing and reading and looking. 

VanDeb will be showing Handmade Books at the Inaugural Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair. I am happy to be showing two steel books including Triangle, Circle, Square (shown here).

Janet presented Exploring Global Artistic Connections, a Round Table at
TransCultural Exchange’s 2025 International Conference on Opportunities in the Arts: Avenues for Daring

During this unique global gathering, we will consider the pressing need for diversity, political equity, and climate and social justice. Now more than ever. We will do so, while also celebrating the arts’ ability to provide joy, respite, and common ground for dialog. Both here and abroad.

” A cavernous cubbyhole with a variety of enigmatic gunmetal stalagmites emerges from the relative monotony of the urban backdrop of St. John’s Place in Crown Heights.  Janet Goldner’s collection of sculptures, called Zigzags, populate FiveMyles’ exterior space, and while the viewer can enter this space through the gallery, the initial impression of jagged edges, pent-up energy, and the cold solidity of the welded metal objects makes one relieved there is a metal gate between us, the viewer, and them, the sculptures.

I had just seen a lecture on the archeological excavations in the Taş Tepeler region of Turkey, which includes sites like Göbekli Tepe and Karahantepe, human constructions from over ten thousand years ago, and most of those structures were similarly built from large monolithic elements firmly planted in the ground. Either by the creator’s intention or the vicissitudes of history, these ancient stone dolmens now have the characteristics, like Goldner’s, of looming sculptures rising out of the floor. …” William Corwin

Following the highly successful Preserving Mali’s Motion Picture Film Heritage project in 2023, we were excited to be working on the second phase, The Rehabilitation of the Archives Room of the National Center for Cinematography of Mali (CNCM) in Bamako, Mali. The film archives room of the National Center of Cinematography of Mali is an essential pillar in the preservation of Malian cinematographic heritage. In order to guarantee its sustainability and accessibility, a complete rehabilitation is necessary. This project, supported by the US Embassy in Mali, XFR Collective, the CNCM, aims to modernize existing infrastructure, improve the conditions for the conservation of archives and promote access to cinematographic resources. In early 2026, the funding for this project was terminated by the US Department of State.

Circular. Rectangular. Triangular. Zigzags. Sitting and standing like a flock of visiting ancestral spirits, Janet Goldner’s Zigzags gather in silent assembly behind the Plus/Space gate. We can peer in at their hard three-dimensional bodies, dark with patina and age. An alphabet of abstraction.  

These welded steel sculptures are inspired by the artist’s annual research trips to Mali over many years. They reference symbolic writing systems and cultural objects, such as chiwaras, masks and ideograms which are imbued with Malian philosophy. Zigzag symbols in the bamana mileau can represent a road that is not straight but contains many twists, turns and detours. 

Always shown in groupings, Goldner’s Zigzags might feel like an obscure miniature city, the early monuments within its walls, or the language used inside. To look at them means to choose a path. Up, down, left, right, round, around, back again. Our eyes follow their direction to a road around the corner and around the world.  – Ruby Lindsey, Curator https://fivemyles.org/zigzags