Early work and exhibitions Mastrangelo focused on the human figure in her early career. On an individual level, critics noted them for their lumpy humor and unnerving emotional impact, while describing the effect
en masse as both macabre and communal. For the 2003, New York
Vision Festival, Mastrangelo created an installation of large-scale, highly hung heads constructed out of plaster, wood, paint, burlap, hemp, wire and resin that reviewer Tina Seligman likened to departed souls or an ancient
Greek chorus "silently echoing despair, anger, strength and resilience." In 2019, after turning to other work for more than a decade, she returned to the heads in installations at the City-Museum of
Neuötting and Schauraum K3 in Germany. Taking a range of forms—flat, freestanding fiberglass and fabric figures, drawings on mylar or hanging scrim, linocut prints Her monoprints exhibit a similar impulse, featuring simple organic shapes made with mylar templates that overlap through multiple printings to create a sense of immediacy and spiraling, urban energy and color (e.g.,
Breaking Barriers #7, 2020). Working intuitively, she "drew" on wood panels with upholstery cording of various weights using the energy of robust, sinuous lines to dictate the rhythms, biomorphic shapes and voids of the compositions (e.g.,
Shining Lights, 2021). Over these drawings, she painted and collaged with patterned fabrics and meshes, developing a dense, complex pictorial vocabulary with ''trompe l'oeil
, shadowing, depth and textural effects. In an Artforum'' review of the solo show, "Safe At Home" (2021, 490 Atlantic),
Barry Schwabsky wrote of this work, "These meshes expand, contract, twist and overlap, lending the compositions their delicious convolutions. More than a hundred years after the fact, Mastrangelo shows there’s still inspiration to be drawn from, of all things,
Synthetic Cubism." ==Recognition==