The Artist, the Curator, the Therapist, and his Patient

Joanne Agabs, Wall in Hell’s Kitchen, 2023. Watercolor on paper, 7 x 20 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 806

By RENÉE RICCARDO, August 25, 2025

An Interview with psychologist Lee Shapiro, conducted by his patient, Renée Riccardo, and her exhibited artist, Joanne Agabs, about the exhibition “WRAP AROUND 24: My Neighborhood” at ARENA at Suite 806, a gallery that Riccardo curates within her therapist’s office.

In this moment when major galleries are closing, museums and artists are being censored, and the art market is in jeopardy, I have continued my practice of adapting spaces for emerging and mid-career artists in unconventional venues. For the past 14 years, I've curated group and solo exhibitions in my therapist’s office at 89 Fifth Ave in New York. This project grew out of being matched with Lee Shapiro at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn when I was diagnosed with cancer. I decided it was a good time to begin therapy with someone who might be able to help me navigate this new reality. 

As I recovered, I considered discontinuing therapy, but he suggested I curate exhibitions in his private practice in Manhattan, bartering as we had in Brooklyn. Coincidentally, I was thinking the same thing and told him I would be interested in that challenge if I could have openings for artists and viewings available by appointment when he wasn't in session to meet collectors. He agreed, and thus ARENA at Suite 806 was born. 

  Joanne Agabs, Twenty-third and Eighth Avenue, 2022. Watercolor on paper, 16 x 11.5 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 806
 

Renée Riccardo: There have been 24 exhibitions titled “WRAP AROUND” that I’ve curated at what I've dubbed ARENA at Suite 806 for over a decade now at your therapy practice. How do you feel the changing exhibitions impact the therapy?

Lee Shapiro: 24, wow! I think they set a tone. This is a curated space. It has coherence, and beauty. Thought and effort has been put into the works that hang on its walls and thought and effort has been put into selecting them and arranging them. The work is compelling, valuable and sophisticated. A therapist's office that is curated as a gallery is cool. I have shared that story with most of my patients. I think it communicates that I am willing to approach things unconventionally and that the therapeutic relationship can be mutually beneficial in many ways. Along with participating in the insurance system, I think it communicates something I believe in deeply that we should not have to be wealthy or feel financially burdened to get good quality care when it comes to our needs. I get it, rent isn’t free, and I have 6 figures in student debt and the degrees to show for it, but I think making therapy accessible and affordable is an ethical imperative. I couldn’t afford to see most of the clinicians I know. I can just say that’s fucked up, or I can do something about it.

RR: Joanne, we recently met at an opening, and you told me that you were an artist. When I looked at your work, I was blown away by your incredible sensitivity to your surroundings with your stunning watercolors. Can you tell us how this current body of work, “My Neighborhood” began? I understand that it was created during the height of the COVID pandemic, when you couldn't go far, but there's a beautiful celebration of what you see every day on the streets, including graffiti. How did it change your perspective of what you see on a daily basis?

Joanne Agabs: Yes, this series began in the beginning of COVID when I decided to keep a visual diary of all the changes happening in my neighborhood. The idea was to create a record for the future so that in 20 years or more, we could look back at these paintings and evoke all the feelings we had during this time. While embarking on this series, I was so inspired I continued to paint my neighborhood for four more years! In the process of painting my neighborhood and throughout COVID, I also realized my deep connection to my adopted home, New York City, where I moved to in 2000. My practice has always been capturing quiet, small moments in time, portraits, or still lifes of otherwise mundane items. In painting these buildings, street corners, and people, I was memorializing a time and place and a community that is very meaningful to me.  

 Joanne Agabs, Westside Tavern, 2024. Watercolor on paper, 14.5 x 10.5 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 806
 

RR: When I walk around the city between your neighborhood of Chelsea and Union Square where your exhibition, “Wrap Around 24: Joanne Agabs: My Neighborhood” that I curated and is currently on view at ARENA at Suite 806 I started seeing the surrounding urban landscape in 2D as depicted in your paintings - everything is hyperreal and in technicolor watercolors. I've always embraced this city in all its glory and grit. Do you feel that this body of work is the most personal that you've created in a series? I could see this going on for years. 

JA: Yes, this series is very personal to me because I live and work among these street corners. I have always worked in pencil, charcoal, and watercolor because I feel these media evoke an energy and intimacy unlike oil or acrylic. You can feel the energy of the artist through works on paper that are unique to works on canvas. This series is similar to a self-portrait of a period in my life, without having my likeness in any of them, as well as an homage to my adopted home that I cherish.

  Joanne Agabs, Chelsea, 2023. Watercolor on paper, 11.5 x 9 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 806
 

RR: Lee, you've mentioned that Joanne Agabs’ exhibition has had a resonance with the other patients. Why do you think that is the case? Is it because the images, which are intimate portraits of people on the streets in the nearby Chelsea neighborhood during the height of the COVID pandemic, strike a certain universal connection?

LS: When we first set out, we kind of agreed that works would be primarily abstract and not directly evoke narrative.  I think a patient used the words “more literal” to distinguish this exhibition from the others they had seen. I would agree, they have a literary quality. Like an impeccably illustrated book about Chelsea during COVID. The colors and tones are somehow both bright and soft, and the story they tell about the neighborhood a few blocks west of this office, which took place a few years before now, is very relatable. The graffiti, the subways, the cabs, the signage, the reflections in the puddles, the diversity, you could sew the works together into a beautiful quilt, and feel like you are wrapped in New York City. Her craftsmanship and skill are incredible. I could never do what she does. I think that layer can sometimes be lost in more abstract works. It’s very impressive.

 Joanne Agabs, Chelsea Papaya, 2022. Watercolor on paper, 21 x 16 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 806
 

RR: Joanne, this particular series of watercolors has had a powerful impact on collectors who have bought them. Even the patients at ARENA at Suite 806 have responded in a very engaged way. Why do you think that your watercolors have commanded this intense reaction? 

JA: The paintings are very illustrative in nature, so you can almost see yourself there and start thinking of a story in your mind. I think that anyone who loves New York, or is familiar with Chelsea, would find something to relate to. A unique aspect of New York City is that people walk everywhere, so storefronts, buildings, and other New Yorkers walking are part of our daily life. Also, many blocks in Chelsea are well-known and iconic for different reasons, which can also strike a chord with the viewer. 

One of the reasons I like watercolor as a medium is that I think it translates to the viewer as deeply personal. The way the light is conveyed, the layers of pigment and water marks is very intimate. Unlike oil or acrylics, there is no correction; the brush and water do the work themselves.

 Joanne Agabs, Chelsea Square Market, 2024. Watercolor on paper, 22 x 17 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 806
 

RR: How have you chosen to depict certain people and places in “My Neighborhood”?

JA: This series of paintings depicts people and places in a very realistic way. From far away, they can appear as photos, but from a closer stance, they are more illustrative. The color and light are dramatic as I seek to watercolor on very bright sunny days (creating bright colors and dark cast shadows) and on rainy nights, when there are bright reflections in the puddles and wet streets.

The people are, for the most part, gazing away from the viewer because they are supposed to represent the New Yorkers we see every day on the streets, allowing the viewer to create their own story in their mind.

Initially, many of the locations were chosen because of the new graffiti, an iconic local neighborhood restaurant, or a store. Then it also became times of the day when the light was different. The people were always involved in a small moment, like walking down the street on an errand, waiting for the bus, or lingering outside a bar or deli. Small, private, insignificant moments that make up part of our days and existence, always with the backdrop of NYC.

 Joanne Agabs, Eighth Avenue, 2023. Watercolor on paper, 22 x 17 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 806
 

RR: Lee, how did this project of exhibitions within your therapy office begin? 

LS: As I was winding my time working at Woodhull Hospital down to exclusively work in private practice, I think we were both thinking of how we might continue our work together.  It felt like a bit of an intuitive mind meld, where we were both contemplating the same solution, and I have no idea which one of us said it out loud first. There were four blank walls to be filled. I knew about your history of curating unconventional spaces, and we were already in a barter situation through the Artist’s Access program, which feels more at home in Oslo or Stockholm, but was in place in North Brooklyn.  It just seemed to make sense. I mean, if the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation was able to come up with an innovative, mutually beneficial way of providing needed care…

 Joanne Agabs, Eleventh Avenue, 2022. Watercolor on paper, 22 x 17 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 806

 

RR: Have the shows sparked your interest in learning more about contemporary art?

L.S.: I am a 3rd-generation resident of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My parents weren’t bohemian, but they were cultured and intellectually curious, downtown people, both teachers in the New York City Public Schools.  They spent what money they had on education, sleep-away camp, and Hebrew school, so there were no valuable original works of art on our walls, and the aesthetics of the space were not a top priority. But at both the schools I went to (two different private Quaker schools, Brooklyn Friends for K-8 and Friends Seminary for high school), and my college (Vassar), and living downtown, I was exposed to art, artists, gallerists, curators, and collectors. I felt an impulse to name-drop here, and that impulse actually articulates what art has often been for me, an expression of status and class, something that has “othered” me or that I have shared in order to signal status and sophistication to others. Seeing art through your eyes and having you curate this space has brought me closer to art and to you. I have met your spouse [Paul Laster], who has helped with installations, your friends, and all these cool artists and their loved ones. It’s been great. I do not think it has detracted from our therapy, but it has added an uncommon dimension to our relationship. That has helped me gain perspective on the importance and meaning of boundaries between patient and clinician that you don’t get through rigid, mindless orthodox compliance. I guess it's a little edgy and irreverent. I like that.

RR: Joanne, do you think your work is representative of how people in our city constantly face navigating their experiences with all the decisions we have to make on a daily basis, given the multitude of things going on around us? 

JA: This series depicts the background of New York City, where people exist and conduct their lives. I also tried to capture a specific neighborhood (Chelsea) at different times of the day, showing businesses and people going about their mundane errands, things we often don't think about but that make up a significant part of our day. The people in the paintings are like a snapshot of a larger picture, a larger moment, but for right now, they are crossing the street, or pausing in front of a store or bar.

 Joanne Agabs, Chelsea Diner, 2024. Watercolor on paper, 22 x 17 in. Courtesy the artist and ARENA at Suite 80

RR: Lee, you've always given me free rein to exhibit what I wanted at your practice. That amount of trust is very special. Why is that the case?

LS: The foundation of any healthy, beneficial relationship of choice is trust, and the single greatest contributing factor to desirable therapeutic outcomes is the quality of the relationship. The relationship is the therapy, and without trust between a therapist and patient, there is no relationship. I also don’t really know fuck all about art and think that you are a true believer with an incomparable reservoir of unpretentious artistic wisdom derived from your lived experience. I have decent taste and can recognize quality, but have little comprehension of value, and feel very comfortable deferring to your curation when it comes to aesthetics. It’s an expression of equity. You have always been very respectful of me and allowed me to help you in a way that is consistent with my abilities. You did manage to include the art of an ex-girlfriend in one of the installations (insert blushing face emoji).  I’m guessing not many therapists have had the art of one of their exes on the wall of their office because a patient decided to put it there without knowing the history. From my end, this barter is predicated on my understanding of the value you bring. The fact that you think our therapy has been worth the effort you have made, and comparable to the value you have brought to my practice and this space, is a very high compliment. As long as it feels worth it to you. I am very happy for it to continue. Therapy is a co-creation—for us, so is my office. WM