February 17, 2024
The Imaginarium: Universe of the Mind
The Imaginarium includes the work of 30 visual artists that is fantastical, magical, unreal, visionary, unlikely, fictitious, phantasmagoric, invented, otherworldly, oddly narrative, mythic, bizarre, uncanny and/or impossible.
The work in this exhibit embodies a diverse interpretation of making the “unseen” visible. As Albert Einstein said "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
Imagination is infinite and is at the root of creativity. It can be interpreted through abstract, representational, visionary or other genres. Some of the work in the show focuses on imagery that evolves from within an artist’s psyche, rather than reflecting an observed reality. Other work in the exhibit provides a unique point of view on a subject that gives the viewer an alternate way to think about an idea or issue. The exhibit is a celebration of “inner realities.”
Western art that dealt with “inner reality” burgeoned in the early twentieth century. Artists such as Pablo Picasso began to experiment with expressing deep emotions using abstracted images, often derived from non-western cultures. Artists such as Sonia Delaunay and Hilma af Klint and her associates expressed thoughts, feelings and symbolic meanings through abstract color and forms. Today many artists pursue this path.
Outer reality is exemplified by the work of Renaissance artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Artemisia Gentileschi and Jan van Eyck who gloried in precise observations of the outer world, even when creating symbolic works.
The exhibition banner is designed by Anne Finkelstein showing a portion of a painting by Barbara Slitkin.
The Imaginarium: Universe of the Mind consists of emotionally expressive work that externalizes an artist’s inner world. Such work can be abstract, representational, digital, three dimensional, photographic or something indescribable. Artists that embody imagination for me include: Hilma af Klint and her associates for their fearless abstract paintings about their spiritual world; Friedensreich Hunderwasser for his sinuous visual language that avoided straight lines and “outsider” artists such as Henry Darger, Martin Ramirez, Lee Godie and others who were driven to make visual art that manifested their inner lives, even though their lives were fraught with immense difficulty.
The Imaginarium is a place where the magical, the strange, the never-before-seen, and the unexpected exist. It resides in many places, one of which is my head. The things that inspire me and trigger my imagination are micro and macro science, the sky, current events, and artistic creations ranging from fairy tales to Magic Realism; Roman Polanski's student films, the ascensions in Tiepolo's ceiling frescoes, the inventiveness and use of materials of Gaudi, William Kentridge, Kara Walker and, El Anatsui, and the contemplative and moving works of William Turner, Mark Rothko, and Anselm Keifer. Hopefully, the Imaginarium will also reside in this exhibit.
I was born in Mumbai, India, and immigrated to Pennsylvania with my family at age 11 years old. My cultural background has had a profound impact on my identity as an artist. As a young girl living in India, I fell in love with the patterns of dresses, exotic colors, the sound of music, as well as the spectacle of both theatre and cinema. They were all fluidly interconnected, effectively symbolizing the rhythm of daily life. Indian culture is the starting point of my work. Even though I am far away from home, I continue to explore the boundaries between eastern and western cultural influences.
Ellen Alt is a mixed media artist. She has exhibited her work in the U.S, Germany, Russia, China, England, and the Middle East. One of her pieces was presented to Hillary Clinton on the occasion of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan and is in the collection at the White House. Ms. Alt also organizes community sculpture and mural projects throughout the world, which focus on social change.She holds an MA in studio art from New York University and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and lives in New York City.
A curator, gallery owner/director, educator, and arts advocate, Audrey Frank Anastasi is a prolific visual artist, working mainly in 2-dimensional mediums; painting, drawing, collage, mixed media, and printmaking. Much of Ms. Anastasi's work focuses on the human subject, with boldly painted faces and figures, revealing unspoken and suggested psychological narratives. In these works, she prefers working rapidly from direct observation. Since 1990, as part of her quest to discover and reveal what is most essential, her figurative paintings are painted with her non-dominant left hand. Additionally, Ms. Anastasi has created large bodies of work inspired by the natural worlds of birds, animals, and birch trees.She has an extensive history of 20 solo and approximately 200 group exhibitions. Her "ref-u-gee" series of forced-migration-themed artworks was shown in a solo exhibition from October, 2022 through January 2023 at the Brooklyn College Library Gallery in collaboration with the Valentine Museum of Art (VMoA.) An accompanying monograph with over 180 images will also be published soon. Following two back-to-back solo exhibitions curated by Ivy Jones, from December 2017 through July 2018, Ms. Anastasi became immersed in a collage series which is scheduled to be exhibited at Welancora Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, in May 2019. In 2018, ten paintings were included in the well-received "Painting to Survive," exhibition, curated by Yale critic Jonathan Weinberg, focused on the overlooked, angst-driven figurative paintings created between 1985 and 1995 when AIDS was first decimating broad populations of young New Yorkers.Among her public art installations on permanent display are a portrait of Jo Davidson (installed 2018) for the Trailside Museum and Zoo, Bear Mountain State Park, NY, and the Stations of the Cross (installed 2019) in the newly-renovated auditorium of Our Lady of Angels Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn, NY.Her work is in private and public collections, including the Valentine Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY, the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica, New York, Museum Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil, Pfizer Corporation, NY, Avon Corporation, St. Vincent's Hospital Collection, NYC, and the Museum of Modern Art Photography Archives (for the end-paper drawings in the original limited edition photography book, Sirius Studies in collaboration with Thomas Roma.)In 2016, a book of her "Stations of the Cross" was published by SPQR Press, ISBN: 978-0-9975306-5-0. Her portrait of Otto Neals was used for the cover of BREUCKELEN magazine, with a feature interview. Other recent publications include interviews in ArtVoices and Art Book Guy. Archives include the National Museum of Women in the Arts Library, Washington, DC., the Brooklyn Museum Library, Brooklyn, NY, the White House Curator's Archives, Washington, DC., the Library of Congress, Washington, DC., and Cindy Nemser, “Audrey Frank Anastasi”, catalog of paintings, ISBN: 0-9650442-0-3.
Bascove has had over 30 solo exhibitions in New York & Paris including The Museum of the City of New York, Hudson River Museum, Municipal Art Society, The Jung Institute, The National Arts Club, Noble Maritime Collection, Morris Arts, & The Arsenal in Central Park.
Group exhibition venues include Le Grand Palais, Musée de Cherbourg, Paine Weber Art Gallery, New York Historical Society, Brooklyn Historical Society, Vero Beach Museum of Art, & The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Her political and literary work is in the Permanent Collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum.
Chosen by the US State Department’s Art in Embassies Cultural Exchange, her work was exhibited at the American Embassies of Sofia, Bulgaria, and Muscat, Oman from 2016-19
As a culture writer, she has contributed to Arte Fuse, Stay Thirsty, and New York Arts Magazine.
She received her B.A. from the Philadelphia College of Art.
Three collections of her paintings have been published, accompanied by anthologies of related writings: Sustenance & Desire: A Food Lover’s Anthology of Sensuality & Humor, Where books Fall Open: A Reader’s Anthology of Wit & Passion, and Stone & Steel: Paintings & Writings Celebrating the Bridges of New York City.
Collections
Museum of the City of New York, NY, U. S. Department of State, Art in Embassies, The Norman Rockwell Museum, MA, University of Texas at Tyler, TX, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Linda Lee Alter Collection of Art by Women, PA, The Noble Maritime Collection, NY, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NY, Harry Ransom Collection, University of Texas at Austin, TX, Time Warner Collection, NY, The New York Public Library, NY, MTA Arts for Transit, NY, The Library and National Archives, Canada,Rachofsky Collection, TX,The Wittliff Collections, Texas State University, TX, Norwalk Transit District, Norwalk, CT, Oresman Collection, NY, Washington University in St. Louis, MO, Musée de Cherbourg, France
Lois, a longtime New Yorker, combines her background in art direction and graphic design with personal expression in drawing, watercolor, photography, and printmaking to produce a fresh synthesis of style. Her commercial brand GardenSpiritsNY Designs grew out of her Retail Gift Industry experience and her love of nature. Bender’s art practice explores nature themes in gardens, etc. at residencies in France and The Hamptons, NY, as well as the Women’s Studio Workshop. With a B.A. from Hunter College, NY, and an MFA from Boston University, she teaches art and watercolor techniques in the Metro NY area. She is an Art Professor at Essex County College in Newark, NJ who lives and works in Manhattan and is an urban/garden sketcher who celebrates nature in all its poetic and ephemeral serendipity.
Laurey Bennett-Levy earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts at S.U.N.Y Albany where she studied painting. In addition to exhibiting in NYC & Los Angeles, Bennett-Levy has shown in an extensive number of group juried gallery and museum shows as a featured artist. Her work is collected across the USA in private homes and public spaces.
Her travels influence her practice as she aggregates repetitive grids in nature and urban landscapes as catalysts for her content. Current events tensions and life struggles have impacted her work.
This assemblage series merges her competence as a graphic designer and fine artist using an unusual combined process of photography, cyanotype, digital manipulation, lithography, mono-printing, silkscreening, oil painting, resin, and collage.
In addition to painting, Laurey is an advocate supporting public schools and has directed curriculum-based school-wide art shows and in-class education for the underserved. She has been selected for fellowships by Arts4LA and The LA County Arts Education Collective in the pursuit of quality and equality arts education. Founder of "impART Council", she currently nurtures students and emerging artists who aspire to make a career in visual arts in her free Sunday Speaker Series where she offers expert speakers.
CURRICULUM VITAEBA of Fine Arts at S.U.N.Y at Albany Abstract Painter, Printmaker & Graphic Designer in LA & NYC Community Builder, Connector and Art Advocate
Selected Juried & Gallery Exhibitions 2023 “The Yard”, Visionary Projects, Featured Artist, NYC 2023 “Small Time”, Light Space & Time Online Gallery 2023 “Small Works”, James May Gallery, Wisconsin 2022 “Wreaths”, Arsenal Gallery, NYC 2020-23 “Small Time”, “Petite Works", "Indistinct Chatter", "Field of Vision", "Aurora", "Habitual”, "Open Show”, “Interiority”, Gallery 825, CA 2022 “Among Friends”, NYC 2022 “Facade”, Arts 2 Heart Project, Virtual Exhibit 2021-22“Superfine Art Fair”, NYC 2021 “Full Circle”, Woart, NYC 2021 “Mostly Monochrome”, NYC 2021 “Futurology”, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT 2021 “Embody” featured artist, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT 2021 “Urban Escapade" featured artist, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT 2021 "Women in Art”, Las Laguna Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2021 John Wayne Cancer Research Center Lobby, Santa Monica, CA 2020 "New Beginnings”, San Fernando Valley Arts & Cultural Center, Encino, CA 2020 "Art in the Time of Corona”, Dab Art Gallery, Ventura, CA 2020 “Word”, ShockBoxx Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2020 “Interconnected”, Alternative Photography Gallery, VT 2020 "Photography”, Las Laguna Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2020 "USPS Project”, Pelham Art Center, Pelham, NYC & Greenly Art Gallery LA 2020 “Interconnected”, World Cyanotype Day, Virtual Exhibit 2020 "Open Theme”, Light Space & Time Online Gallery 2020-19 “Saatchi's The Other Art Fair”, Santa Monica & DTLA, CA
I am a native New Yorker. My formal training began at the LaGuardia High School for Music and Art. I went on to get my BA at Swarthmore College where I studied painting with Harriet Shorr and majored in psychology.
After college, I lived in Paris for two years where I became fluent in French and pursued an independent study of Art and Culture. Thereafter I spent many years living and working in lower manhattan working in the gourmet food world and painting at night. My work during that time reflected the urban landscape I observed, old and new building construction, and breakdancers in the clubs of NY.
Gradually nature crept back into my work during summer trips out of the city. I developed a steady practice of direct observation painting outside in "Plein Air" while maintaining jobs as a textile designer. During the winters in my studio, I developed an imagined approach to landscape informed by my memories of observed nature. Both practices reflect my deep admiration for nature and my concern for the future of our environment. I married at the end of 1997 and gave birth to twins in 2002. My role as a mother increased my concern for the future of our planet for the next generations. Our family required more space and we made the move from lower Manhattan to Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn where I now live and maintain my studio.
Sandra Cavanagh’s young life was pitched on the growing awareness of political instability, coups d’état, an overbearing patriarchal society and the dangers of state sanctioned brutality and censorship. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to a family of mixed ethnic heritage. She read Social Sciences at the University of Belgrano, Buenos Aires before emigrating to California and later to the UK where she completed a Foundation and a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, University of Kent. She returned to full residency in the United States in 2010 and has worked and resided in New York City ever since. Her effort to find a public platform is very recent.
Amy Cheng was born in Taiwan, and raised in Brazil, Oklahoma, and Texas. She received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. She has exhibited her paintings nationally and internationally; her work is held in a number of corporate and public collections. She has completed over a dozen public art commissions including projects at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Howard St. El Station in Chicago, IL, the Cleveland Street Subway Station in Brooklyn, NY, the 25th Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn, NY, and the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport MetroLink Station, the Jacksonville International Airport, FL, the Slauson Bus Station, Los Angeles, CA, traffic box coverings in downtown Odessa, TX, the Valley Regional Transit Station in Boise, ID, the Patient Services Center at Western State Hospital in Tacoma, WA, and a set of four windscreens located in Charlotte, NC. She received a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to Renmin University, Beijing, the People’s Republic of China in Spring 2017, a P.S. 122 Painting Center Fellowship in New York City for a ten-month residency in 2011-12, and a Senior Lecturer/Research Fulbright fellowship to Brazil in Fall 2008. She has been awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowships and an Arts International travel grant to China. She is a Professor Emerita in the Art Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
January Yoon Cho is an interdisciplinary artist who works with video, photography, drawing, and performance. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and international festivals in the United States and Europe, including the Hammond Museum, New York; Islip Art Museum; Korean Cultural Service NY at Korean Consulate General NY, New York; The Croton Free Public Library, Croton-on-Hudson, New York; McKinsey & Company, New York; Austin Museum of Art, Texas; Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Texas; Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, Florida; Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, Texas; Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Texas; Women & Their Work, Austin, Texas; Penn State University, Pennsylvania; The LAB, San Francisco, California; the University of Texas at Dallas; DiverseWorks, Houston, Texas; Centro de Cultura Contemporanea, Barcelona, Spain; Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain; Triennale di Milano, Italy; and Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Italy.
Her current work, The Walk Project is granted a fiscal sponsorship by New York Foundation for the Arts. The Desert Walk Series, the first installment of The Walk Project received the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund in Feminist Art and Puffin Grant in Environmental Art categories. Cho has worked with K-12 public school students at Women and Their Works (Austin, TX) and Gold Coast Arts Center (Great Neck, NY) by developing workshops and educational family activity guides concurrent with her exhibitions.
She was a visiting artist at Ringling College of Art and Design and has given artist talks and lectures at various institutions including Austin Museum of Art and McKinsey & Company. Cho attended Vermont Studio Center Residency. She also taught at Parsons School of Design, New School University in New York, and Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea as a part-time faculty.
Cho was born in Seoul, Korea and moved to the US as a teenager. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Parsons School of Design. She lives and works in Long Island City, New York.
Irene Christensen divides her time working in her studios in New York City and Oslo, Norway; and for one month each year in Costa Rica.
She has exhibited in both Europe and the United States since 1983. In 2017 Irene Christensen participated in the Personal Structures exhibition organized by the Global Art Affairs Foundation and hosted by the European Cultural Center in the context of the Venice Art Biennale of 2017. Her art has been shown in many museums such as Galeria Nacional, Costa Rica; Norsk Skogbruks Museum, Norway; Norwegische Tage, Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany; EFTA, Brussels, Belgium; Bergen Museum, NJ, USA; Paterson Museum, NJ, USA; Noyes Museum, NJ, USA; Newark Museum, NJ, USA as well as many art centers and galleries including in Brazil, Israel, and Argentina.
She studied at the Art Student League in New York City with Richard Pousette-Dart and Joseph Hirsch, at the Voss School of Fine arts, and at the Institute for Rom Kunst in Oslo, Norway.
She is a member of the Norwegian Association of Professional Visual Artists; Newark Art Council; Sculptors Guild, New York; advisory board member to Everglades Artists in Residence (AIRIE), Florida and Salmagundi Club, NYC
The paintings, accordion books, drawings, and small sculptures are represented in many museums and personal collections in Europe and the USA.
A New York native living in the Hudson Valley and NYC, Friedman's work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Booth Western Art Museum (GA), the James McNeil Whistler Museum (MA), the Galleria Nacional Museum in Costa Rica, and numerous solo shows in New York City including recent exhibits in the Chelsea District.
Her work was featured at juried exhibits including the Annual Hudson Mohawk Regional, the Albany Institute of Art & History, and recently " Alpine & Riverine" at the Woodstock Art Association and Museum (2023).
Friedman received a BA and MFA in Art from Queens College, an Ed.D from Columbia University, and studied at the New York Studio School.
Her work was selected by the U.S. Department of State Art-In-Embassies Program for the US Embassy in Benin, West Africa (2023), Djibouti, East Africa, and Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Friedman's work is in many corporate and private collections including Pfizer, McGraw Hill, IBM, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, Pace University, Ritz Carlton Hotels, and Metropolitan National Bank. She has received seven artist residency grants to paint in Provence (2023) and previously in Spain, Costa Rica, Ireland, Auvillar, France, and New Mexico and a forthcoming residency Spring '24 in Tuscany.
David Friedman has studied and created art throughout his life. His father was his first teacher, instilling in him a love of drawing and painting, setting up still lifes on the picnic table, and painting with him when still a young child. He was always struck by the look of a painting before it was finished when there was still a sense of the mystery of what would unfold. The imagination always seemed to be more engaged at that stage of a painting, with more possibilities for creative interaction with the viewer.
He has also been very involved with music throughout his life, studying piano quite seriously, and composing as well. When he went to college, it was to study music and philosophy, but a strong central chord pulled him back into visual art, and he received his BA in Studio Art from SUNY Albany in 1978. After graduating, his music took him to NYC, where he worked as a musician and composer for modern dance for 12 years, performing extensively in NYC (including LaMama ETC, the Joyce Theater, The Kitchen, Roulette, Dance Theater Workshop, and The Public Theater), in Europe at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, and for many years as a musician/composer at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC and at Jacob's Pillow in MA. Throughout these years he never stopped drawing and painting. While working for a few years in the Dance Department at Connecticut College, he took advantage of the opportunity to study Intaglio Printmaking. Soon after that, he was at a crossroads – he decided to find some way of making a living where he could feel more secure financially, but still, have time to paint and make music.
He moved back to NYC in 1987, went back to school, and began a career in computer software design, focusing on database architecture. Throughout those years, although he never stopped playing music, he also immersed himself more deeply in his artwork. Having left the world of IT in 2020, he now dedicates his time to painting and composing.
Sarah Hauser was born in San Francisco, and has lived in New York since 1979. She works in a variety of media including drawing, printmaking, sculpture, sumi-e ink painting and mixed media. She has exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, and her work is included in the collections of Woodward Gallery, Malloy Family Foundation, RM Fine Arts (London), NY Public Library, NY Historical Society, Spencer Museum, Iowa Biennial Print Exhibition, Portland Art Museum, and KIWA collection (Japan).
She studied drawing at the Art Students League and Spring Studio; sumi-e painting with Sensei Koho Yamamoto, Sung-Sook Setton and Gan Yu; gilding with Bill Gauthier; and drawing, painting, printmaking and papermaking at Cooper Union, Manhattan Graphics, the Lower East Side Printshop and Dieu Donne Papermill. Her exhibitions have included Woodward Gallery (NYC), International Print Center of New York, Barrett House, Noho Gallery (NYC), Pen and Brush Gallery (NYC), Purdue University, Woman Made Gallery, Hiram Blauvelt Museum, Target Gallery at Torpedo Factory Art Center, Washington Printmakers Gallery, Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts (California), Nommo Gallery in Kampala, and KIWA Exhibition and Tour in Japan. Her work has been published in CALYX, Printmakers Today, Simple Printmaking and Japanese Woodblock Printing. As animals are a subject very close to her heart, Sarah has donated work to such groups as Delta Society, PAWS/LA, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, the Primate Conservation and Welfare Society, Tree House Animal Foundation, the Gorilla Foundation, Texas Snow Monkey Sanctuary and Jane Goodall Institute.
Monroe Hodder exhibits internationally and is in 8 museum collections. She has been a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome on five occasionsand was awarded UK citizenship as an artist. Her studio is now on W 39th Street in Manhattan and she lives in Nyack on the Hudson.
Eileen Hoffman was born and raised in northern NJ. She studied art at Skidmore College, where she graduated with honors in art. She continued her textile studies at The Fashion Institute of Technology and received her MFA from Indiana University. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows throughout the United States and internationally including the Denise Bibro Gallery, The Morris Museum, the Noyes Museum, and the Bishkek Collection, Russia. Her outdoor installations include the Connective Project Installation, Art In Odd Places, and Prayers for the Pandemic. Her work is also featured in Surface Design Journal’s annual International Exhibition in Print, 2018, UPPERCASE Magazine, and numerous blogs. Hoffman currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Yvonne Lamar-Rogers is a mixed media artist / jewelry designer/ and teaching artist, based in New York City. For many years, Yvonne's main focus has been sharing her gifts of creativity as a teaching artist. At this time in her life, her passion for creating her own art has been renewed. Yvonne is best known for creating mixed media art that tells vivid, textural stories that are mostly inspired by her own experiences and memories of growing up in culturally rich Detroit, MI during the 50s & 60s. She now has new experiences and memories as additional inspiration for her art making.
Yvonne curates Women Celebrate Women, an annual, multi generational exhibition that features the true diversity of NY based female artists as they share their creative visions that celebrate women.
Noted exhibitions include; Heath Gallery, NY, NY. El Barrio's Art Space, PS 109,NY, NY., Ann Street Gallery, Newburg, NY., The Charles H. Wright Museum Of African American History in Detroit, MI., The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland, OH., The National & Cultural African American Museum in Wilberforce, OH., Rutgers, John Cotton Dana Library in Newark, NJ.
The greatest concentration of Yvonne's formal art education was at the College For Creative Studies in Detroit, MI. She earned her BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Art Education from Marymount Manhattan College in New York.
Christina Maile is a writer, printmaker, and landscape architect. Formerly a playwright, she –co-founded the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective - one of the first feminist theater groups in the USA. Their work is now in the collection of the New-York Historical Society.
Her landscape architectural designs have appeared in Garden Design Magazine, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. She was the Deputy Director of Manhattan Construction for the NYC Parks Dept overseeing major projects such as the Harlem Meer in Central Park, and Morningside Park.
For her printmaking and painting work, she received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Studio Grant. In 2018 she was awarded a Miriam Chaikin Foundation Grant for Writing. She is currently a member of the performance and writing group, Stories Around the Table. For 14 years she served on the Westbeth Artists Residents Council. Recently she was elected to the Westbeth Artist Housing Board of Directors.
Her visual work has been featured in literary journals, the International Print Center in New York City, numerous galleries, included in the Feminist Artists Collection at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, and is represented in many private collections. During the pandemic, she has been using recycled wood from Carmine St Guitars to build houses for solitary bees. www.christinamaile.com.
Aida holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and had a career in Information technology, before returning to her first love, art. She loved art ever since the first kindergarten day when colored pencils and paper were distributed and she never forgot how fun that was. Life made it easier to go into a science field to escape the civil war and leave the country she grew up in. She feels fortunate to be able to return to art and to have participated in a few group exhibits in New York and in Berlin. She is a member of OPA (Oil Painters of America), AIS (American Impressionist Society), and NOAPS (National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society).
Douglas Newton is a realist painter specializing in contemporary still life. He paints in oil on canvas and works directly from life, not using photographs.
Douglas is noted for his colorful closeups of candy and their wrappers, capturing the reflections and transparency of the foils and cellophane. There is a pop-art influence in the paintings of candy.
He also paints still lives of food, toys, dolls and anything else that is visually interesting and evokes memories. His paintings have the rich beauty of oil paint, instead of the dryness of photo realism.
Douglas lives and works in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. His paintings can be seen by appointment there or on his website: douglasnewtonpaintings.com. His paintings have been in numerous one and group shows and are in many private collections.
Vicki began her first job when she was only 16, as an apprentice typesetter, moving on to illustration, graphic design, and later as Associate Art Director for Vogue magazine. Freelance beckoned, and she follows and thrives until one day decides to sketch in a life class again. This return to roots frees her into a diversity of body image, shape, age, size, and color, and leads to an exhibition of her first series: “WaterColoredWomen”.
After too many years in the fashion, beauty, and fragrance industry, Vicki escaped. She found herself at the Women’s Rites Center in NYC, studying feminist theology, anthropology, depth psychology, and ancient and contemporary ritual. She designed and facilitated “Women Spirited Recovery”, a support group blending ritual with recovery methods; a sensory approach for healing in the community.
Vicki introduces “Seeing Each Other into Beauty” at Union Theological Seminary, NYC on International Women’s Day 2003. This workshop uses the artist/model relationship as an experiential setting, inviting each participant to embody both the art and the art-making. Clothing is optional and becomes a container for shifting body image issues. The WaterColoredWomen series has been used by the Institute of Core Energetics in group therapy to facilitate reparative, somatic healing processes.
Expanding into abstraction, collage, and mixed media, the Fates bring an irresistible interruption: a chance to paint in classical Renaissance style, the carved horses of a 1922 carousel restoration in Dumbo. Jane’s Carousel is now on view in Brooklyn Bridge Park. During this yearlong project, she begins to exhibit her paintings in Dumbo, onto Chelsea, circling out through New York, New Jersey, and California.
Born in Mumbai 1976, India, Avani Patel was immigrated to Pennsylvania with her family at 11 years old. She holds a BA from the Penn State University and an MFA from Tyler School of Arts (Temple University). Her cultural background has had a profound impact on the forging of her identity as an artist. As a young girl living in India, she fell in love with the patterns of dresses, exotic colors, the sound of music, as well as the spectacle of both theatre and cinema. They were all fluidly interconnected, effectively symbolizing the rhythm of daily life. Indian culture is the starting point of her work. The range of Indian culture expressed through film, theatre, music, and performance are all sources of artistic inspiration for her. Even though from far away from home, she continue to explore the boundaries between Eastern and Western cultural influences.Her paintings have been exhibited in New York, Providence, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Chicago, Dubai, Panama, Portugal, and Mexico. She was invited in 2005 by the American Embassy in Panama to hold workshops in schools and art centers, creating collaborative art installations about everyday objects in my personal life. Collin Powell and Laura Bush invited her to honor American artists at the Art in Embassies in 2005, alongside 50 other artists and gallerists. She worked on the public project America’s Chinatown Voices at Columbus Park in New York City, organized by the Asian American Art Center in 2008 and 2009. Three hundred panels illustrating stories of Asian Americans in New York were publicly displayed in Chinatown New York City. The Philadelphia Museum of Art proudly exhibited two of her paintings from 2002 to 2008. She has done residency with Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Chashama Visual Arts, and Triangle Workshop.
Leah Poller was born in Pennsylvania. She received classical training in sculpture at the prestigious Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, France. Partaking in a rich, multi-cultural environment, Poller interacted with foremost members of the international arts communities of France, Spain, Italy, and Latin America during her 20 years in Paris. Returning to the United States in 1992, Poller opened her studio and gallery, The Art Alliance, in a consummate Soho loft. There she specialized in introducing "New to America" mid and late-career artists (Jacques Soisson, Ipousteguy, Ugo Attardi, Bernardo Torrens, Mario Murua, etc.). Her Salon evenings were the rage, presented in the grand tradition of the European Salon, while "Frame it, Its Yours" and "Yin-yang - A social/cultural Laboratory" were precursors to current trends in-gallery activities. Poller has curated more than 140 exhibitions worldwide. Simultaneously, she began the series of “Beds” which has been exhibited in galleries and institutions in Europe, Mexico, China, and throughout the United States in over 40 individual and group exhibitions.
In 2003, she was named Director of “Intercambios de Arte y Cultural Internacionale”, a not-for-profit furthering cultural exchanges between the Americas and spearheading the restoration of a major twentieth-century mural, recently revealed by Poller to be the work of Philip Guston.
In 2009 Poller moved to Harlem where she continues to work on “Bed” and its social media component "Bed Unmade” (www.bedunmade.com), a collection of unmade bed photos from around the world.
From her classical training as a portraitist, Poller has executed major portrait commissions in which the thoughts of the subject are transformed from internal to external, appearing as “headdresses” on her subjects in her portrait series “Warrior Women” and “Eyes of the Soul.
In 2010 Poller began an extensive collaboration with the largest bronze casting foundry in the world located in China. Subsequently, she has received major recognition and multiple exhibitions in galleries, art fairs, and institutions in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Poller was selected as the ONLY foreigner, the only American to exhibit at the Beijing Biennale of Female Sculptors. She has been featured on CNN, Fox Television, and in numerous art publications. She has lectured extensively and held workshops on creativity.
Poller is currently Guest Editor for New Observations, a literary/art journal that began in the 1980s.
Poller was recently inducted as one of 23 3-Dimensional artists in the New York Society of Women Artists in its 95th year. She was also welcomed by Silvermine Artists Guild and New York Artists Equity.
Poller travels extensively with Harlem as her base.
Kristin Reed is a Brooklyn-based artist who has been creating abstract paintings and collages since 2009. She currently has a studio residency in Chashama’s program A Space to Create at The Brooklyn Army Terminal.
After an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1982 Reed's was known for activist street art in the 80s-90s including stencils, bus posters, street posters, artist books, community murals, and billboards as well as studio drawings and paintings often with environmental and socio-political themes.
In 1989 Reed was included in a collection called Lines of Vision: Drawings by Contemporary Women curated by Judy K. Collischan Van Wagner. She was then part of an exhibition entitled The Realm of the Coin: Money in Contemporary Art curated by Barbara Coller for The Hofstra Museum on Long Island in 1991. The show was then picked up by The Smithsonian Museum’s SITE program, traveling to major museums around the US from 1992–1995, including The Queens Museum of Art in New York City. A street billboard on The Lower East Side was recreated for The SOHO DIA Foundation’s exhibit of Martha Rosler’s If You Lived Here: Homelessness and Other Venues. The catalog of the exhibition led to being invited to recreate the piece for Not Yet: On the Reinvention of Documentary and the Critique of Modernism curated in 2015 by Jorge Ribalta at The Reina Sofia Cultural Center in Madrid, Spain, and in Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery in Chelsea, NYC for Rosler’s 2016 If You Can’t Afford to Live Here M-O-O-OVE and If You Lived Here Still: Housing is a Human Right curated by Yoko Ott at The New Foundation in Seattle, WA in 2016.
Since beginning a meditation and Reiki practice in 2005 Reed’s work made a turn toward the abstract and spiritual. More recently images have started making their way back into the work through collage, reconnecting it to earlier activist work with themes of ecology, climate change, and the extinction of species.
As usual, my sheets/pages are actual images made with traditional misc. media, then often scanned into the computer to change. Asemic and visual poems start with marks made with pens and brushes, templates, inks, and gouache. When these works are scanned into the computer, edition pages and artists' books/book works emerge. My works are in virtual exhibitions, on blogs, and in web publications, reviews, as well as collected by museum and university libraries.
Barbara Swanson Sherman, a native New Yorker, began drawing at an early age and never stopped. Spending the last two years of high school in northern Vermont opened her eyes to the natural world and the small visual nuances within it.
A gift of a Koh-i-Noor drafting pen led to a fascination, rather an obsession, with fine detail. Moving back to Manhattan after college she found the Art Students League where she studied etching with Roberto De Lamonica, Michael Ponce de Leon, and Robert Blackburn.
Later on, Sherman extended her practice to writing as well. Today, she writes a weekly blog on art and autobiography. Since 2008, Sherman has been the director of Art At First, NYC.
Barbara’s art is influenced by an urge to understand the meaning of superconsciousness. She experiments with concepts and visions to hasten communication from within out. She is a process artist uncovering sensitive material through the inner workings of the psyche.
As well as drawing and painting since she was five years old. Barbara Slitkin has been a model, a student of metaphysics, a wife, and a mother. She has performed, taught, and studied at various venues, art schools, and colleges. Received awards and honors for her art, written up in numerous publications, Barbara shows her work generously in the New York City area and is in private and Museum Collections worldwide.
"Barbara Slitkin is the blend of a skilled visual artist, a fun-loving performer, and a dedicated mystic." -Dagen Julty
New York artist Maria Spector has an M.F.A. in Painting from Queens College, an Ed.M. in Counseling and Consulting Psychology from Harvard, and a B.A. in Art and Psychology from Binghamton University. She received Individual Artist Support Grants from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. She has taken part in museum, gallery, and university shows at the Anchorage Museum, Purdue University Galleries, Islip Art Museum, NUTUREart Gallery, Plaxall Space, and the Knockdown Center. Recently, her work was featured in the exhibits Girlhood at the Howland Center in Beacon, NY, Every Woman Biennial at La Mama La Galleria, and Feminine Identity at St. Joseph’s College Gallery. In addition to creating paintings and multidisciplinary art, she has worked extensively as a curator, juror, and is an active teaching artist. In response to the current coronavirus pandemic emergency, she has accepted a position as a contact tracer in New York State because we need art, we need artists, and we need our galleries, colleges, and museums to gather together in person again.
Darcy Spitz was born in Chicago and grew up in both the city and the suburb of Skokie. She started drawing as a child and never stopped.
Her mother and her mother’s identical twin sister discussed color frequently — whether it was the rich, magical colors of gems, clothing, or home furnishings. As a child, Darcy spent many hours looking at pattern books from her aunt and uncle’s custom drapery business. She was fascinated by how an identical pattern could feel completely different if presented in different colorways.
She earned a BFA in Painting at the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana and an MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. She moved to New York City after graduate school.
She has had one-person shows at Ten Worlds Gallery (New York City); Marc Miller Gallery (New York City) and the New York Public Library in addition to many groups shows. Her work is included in private collections as well as the Chase Manhattan Collection. An article about her work appeared in the Village Voice. She is also a Macdowell Colony and Millay Colony fellow.
Miriam Stern is a painter, printmaker, mixed media, and installation artist. She has exhibited in the United States, Europe, and Israel, and has won numerous awards and prizes. Ms. Stern usually works in a series of prints and paintings on a specific theme. Her art has been reproduced in magazines and books of poetry. In addition to producing art, she has curated several art exhibitions and lectures about the relationship of art to Jewish interpretations of texts and ideas.
Sandra Taggart, a visual artist based in Brooklyn has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her oeuvre is based on explorations of the sciences and of the human condition. Taggart is the recipient of a Brooklyn Arts Council CAF grant and was awarded Best Acrylic Painting in Show at BWAC, Brooklyn. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the US including FiveMyles Gallery (Brooklyn), Baruch College Gallery (Manhattan), Hammond Museum (Salem, MA), Wiseman Gallery, Rogue College (Grants Pass, OR), Grace Institute (Manhattan), Kentler Intl. Drawing Space (Brooklyn), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Austin Museum of Art (TX). Taggart's work has been reviewed in The Record-Review, New Art International Annual, Art Buzz, and The Brooklyn Paper. Her work is in the collection of the Brooklyn Art Library
CV
Born in Chicago, IL; Live and work in Brooklyn, NY
Education
BFA School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the University of Chicago
Additional Studies:
Awards and Grants
2014
2010
Performance Art
2015
Solo Exhibitions
Selected Group Exhibitions
2021
2020
2018
2017
2016
2013
2012
2011
2008
2007
2002
Bibliography
Dancer and Performer
Public Collections
I was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin, studied painting at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. But, I really learned my craft when I moved to New York City and then to New Jersey and back again to Brooklyn, New York, my current home.
There are several things that have influenced my work over the years. I can't focus on one medium- I jump around from painting to cut paper to paper sculpture, to mobiles and screens. Currently, I am working on developing my skills doing drypoint printing.
Getting back to things that influence me, I am fascinated by the natural world- the diversity of plant life in particular and therefore, I worry about its future.
I am an avid student of the folk art traditions of Jewish Paper cuts and the religious/cultural teachings that often inspire my work. Finally, I can't ignore the conflicts and complexities of the World, and often my art is a reaction to the things that concern me most; peace and conflict in the Middle East and environmental challenges.
Here are some details about my art career:
My latest major solo show was at the Museum at Eldridge Street, New York City from 2018-19. I have shown many times at the Hebrew Union College art exhibitions with shows that are curated by Laura Kruger. I have had work in shows all over the Tri-State area.
In 2000, I was given the opportunity to create a set of stained glass windows, an Eternal Light and Torah covers for a small chapel in New Jersey. This introduced me to the work of artisans like metal workers, glass blowers, and fabric artists and expanded my artistic world.
In the '90s, I was recognized as a Master paper cutter by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In 2017-2019 I received a grant to mentor a young apprentice and I worked with her, teaching her about the techniques, art, and customs of traditional Jewish Papercutting. This rich tradition goes back hundreds of years and was found primarily in Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Italy.
My work appeared in the catalog "Slash; under the knife", the exhibition of work in a cut paper that was held at the Museum of Art and Design 2009-10.
I teach workshops and give lectures about Jewish Papercutting and Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts.
Here are some interviews about my process and my work:
On Scissors and Shavuot. Jewish Standard, Times of Israel. April 2021
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/on-scissors-and-shavuot/
Dreaming of a Third Eye: Deborah Ugoretz on art and Spirituality
http://www.star-revue.com/dreaming-of-a-third-eye-deborah-ugoretz-on-art-and-spirituality/#sthash.yzvUb64G.dpbs
The most recent article and interview about my inspiration and processes and a story about the Master/Apprentice program sponsored by the New Jersey Council on the Arts;
PASSING IT ON: New Jersey State Council on the Arts. 2019
https://conta.cc/2JJkWLN
Deborah Uses Papercuts to heal Wounds: Lilith Magazine blog post. 2019
https://www.lilith.org/blog/2019/05/deborah-ugoretz-heals-wounds-with-paper-cuts/
My studio is located in Red Hook, Brooklyn. For a complete view of my CV, visit my website; www.ugoretzart.com
Here is my Instagram handle:@debugoretz
You can view my Instagram account which focuses on my Ketubah collection: @ketubah_for_life
www.deborahugoretz.com
