It was a bitterly cold January evening, the night before President-elect Donald J. Trump was to be sentenced in a lower Manhattan courtroom. Chinatown's art gallery is filled with sketches from his trial, filled with unusual figures. .
They were there for the opening of artist Isabel Bruman's show, “Paper Trail.” It's a collection of work she created last year when she joined courtroom sketch artists documenting the political drama surrounding Trump's legal battles in New York.
“Watching her work is like watching HBO for the first time. You're like, 'Is that possible?'” MSNBC News stopped by the opening before heading back to work that night in preparation for Trump's sentencing. Anchor Lawrence O'Donnell said. He interviewed Ms. Bulman last spring about her unique way of portraying past and future presidents in court.
Ms. Bulman, 31, did not miss a day of Mr. Trump's civil fraud trial, capturing Mr. Trump in a frenetic and deeply personal style, complete with scribbled testimony and wild hand gestures. In that case, the judge found Trump liable for conspiring to manipulate net assets and lying about the value of assets in order to obtain favorable terms on loans.
She went on to sketch his Manhattan criminal trial. He was found guilty of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his 2016 campaign.
The opening, held at the Will Schott Gallery, attracted several civil trial lawyers, including Andrew Ammar and Colleen Faherty, who worked on New York Attorney General Letitia James' team. They posed for selfies with the artist.
The exhibition was attended by important figures in the art world, including Drew Sawyer, curator of the upcoming Whitney Biennial, and Max Hollein, director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mr. Hollein said Mr. Bluman's work contains a “palincest of truths, documents, and interpretations.”
Her expressive work differs from the more realistic illustrations courtroom artists typically create for the press in courtrooms where cameras are prohibited. Although she has made no secret of her political opinions (she voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election), her activism has drawn praise from both sides of the aisle. During the civil trial, James, the state's attorney general, praised Bulman for “bringing life to the courtroom.” Trump nodded approvingly and then sat down for a portrait at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida.
The morning after the gallery opened, Bulman was already on his way to sentencing in Trump's criminal case. And later this month, she will head to the presidential inauguration, securing a spot for her easel alongside commercial photographers. She also recently received approval to paint upcoming Senate confirmation hearings for Trump administration appointees such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth. After that, she plans to create a work based on the upcoming trial of Luigi Mangione, who was accused of murdering a medical executive.
“This is a collaboration of personal vision and the chaotic unfolding of history,” Bulman said of her ongoing work documenting the Trump administration. “It’s not so much a question of Trump and his allies as it is a question of process and the freedom to express uncertainty.”
Bulman went to Times Square to recruit men to dress as the Statue of Liberty to welcome visitors to the exhibition for its opening. However, he canceled his appearance at the last minute. “The Statue of Liberty helped me stand up!” Bulman exclaimed at the beginning.
Will Schott, a dealer at the gallery, mostly stands in the back room, talking to visitors and potential buyers about his sketches of playing cards. Their sizes ranged from large posters to the backs of napkins. Prices ranged from $2,250 to $7,250.
Mr. Schott first met Mr. Blueman over the summer, when they played on the same team in the annual Drunk vs. Stoned soccer game in Montauk, New York, where artists and art dealers played together. (Both were part of the drunken team.) The two then discussed the possibility of holding an exhibition in the weeks before Trump's inauguration. However, they did not expect the president-elect to be sentenced the day after the show began.
“I think people are obsessed with her image,” the dealer said. “But this show is more about Isabel than any other subject. It's about her obsession with and infiltration of the political system and how she earned respect from both sides without pandering to either side. It’s a story.”
