2024 Artists

Panel Artists

2023 Artists

Installation Artist

Jaleeca R. Yancy, (b.1990) is a contemporary artist working with mixed media, paper, and textiles from Memphis, TN living in New York. Her abstract compositions are rooted in experimentation, radical imagination, and sustainability. She creates contemplative work prompted by self-identity, black culture, and mythology informed by history, literature, music, and spirituality. In the spring of 2022, Yancy presented her series Mother Nature’s Daughter in her first gallery solo exhibition in her hometown, Memphis, TN, at Urèvbu Contemporary. Her works have been exhibited at Knowhere Art Gallery, The National Art Club, Bronx Art Space, Calabar Gallery, and Superchief Gallery. She has created public art murals for The Harlem Community Fridge supporting mutual aid for food insecurity, Paint Memphis, and Uptown Grand Central: Grand Scale Mural Project in Harlem. In the fall of 2022, she completed her first art residency Art Crawl Harlem Studio Residency on Governors Island. Jaleeca Yancy draws inspiration and encouragement from the uninhibited and consistent voice of Faith Ringgold, the exuberant exploration of color theory and vivaciousness of Alma Thomas, and the experimental forms of Sam Gilliam.

Public Art Sculptor

Miguel Otero Fuentes is a Puerto Rico-born USA migrant, university trained architect, and self-taught sculptor specializing in façade system design, 3D modeling and facilitating collaboration between design and engineering teams. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the T. Gordon Little Fellowship, participated in design-build studios, worked as a teaching assistant abroad and was involved in research in the areas of digital design and fabrication. During his academic career he won three first place prizes including the distinguished Portman Prize. He also holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree (with honors) from the University of Puerto Rico.

From 2015 until the start of 2022, Otero Fuentes worked as a facade designer in a New York based engineering firm. He was involved in a range of high profile projects ranging from skyscrapers to cultural institutions such as museums and academic facilities. In these projects, he worked implementing groundbreaking facade design technologies using a range of materials such as concrete, terracotta, stone, glass, aluminum and other metals.

At present, Otero Fuentes works full time in his Brooklyn studio taking on architectural design commissions and sculpture projects experimenting with material, dimension, number, light, space, form, and meaning.

Dance Artist

Salma Kiuhan is a South Florida native, graduating from A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts. She is now based in New York, working towards her BFA in dance performance and philosophy as a Tisch Dean’s Scholar at NYU. Salma is grateful to have performed repertory by George Balanchine, Trisha Brown, Bob Fosse, Darrell Moultrie, Crystal Pite, Peter Stark, Paul Taylor, Gallim (Andrea Miller), among others.

Although very early in her formal philosophical studies, her main interests lie in the philosophy of mind and aesthetics. Salma is particularly interested in mind-body dualism, and hopes to delve deeper into her understanding of the relationship between the body & mind using improvisational dance practices, philosophical concepts, and meditation.

Textile Artists

Diana Cherryholmes is a visual artist working primarily in textiles. She uses improv quilting techniques and traditional patterns. Cherryholmes draws inspiration from mid-century artists, graphics and its sometimes-bright colorways.

She has taken workshops with many noted quilters including Victoria Findley Wolf, Pat Bravo, Tula Pink, Caroline Friedlander, Denise Schmidt, Maria Shell, Caroline Oneonta, and more. She is an active member of the New York City Metro Modern Quilt Guild and the Huntington Quilt Guild.

Cherryholmes’ formative years were in mid-Michigan. Presently, she lives, works, and creates art in her studio on Long Island. She holds an honorary Ph.D. from Five Towns College, a master’s degree in Community Arts Management from the University of Illinois at Springfield and a bachelor’s in history and religious studies from Michigan State University.

Cynthia Clark has been a quilter for most of her life. She uses fabric to create warm covers that hold her love and give comfort to family and friends, and to neighbors through community organizations. Working in her backyard studio, she also explores the quilting arts to give expression to what moves her — the world around her. Cynthia is inspired by the network of buildings and city streets, its green spaces and nature, and the intersection of human life and the natural world. Through the conventional processes of piecing and stitching, both by machine and by hand, she interprets and imagines this intersection. And in the process, Cynthia discovers new solutions, such as the use of paint and printed images to provide different textures and effects. While walking in her neighborhood, she observes the changing world around her and then weaves its story.

Cynthia grew up in New Jersey and attended Rutgers University. After traveling the world and living abroad for several years, Cynthia returned to the US and settled in Brooklyn, NY, her current home. She is a member of several quilt guilds, textile organizations, and a local art critique group. All of these connections bring her together with other artists, who are also telling their stories and finding their artistic voice.

William Daniels is an independent curator and visual artist working primarily with textiles. His art quilts and accessories feature traditional quilt blocking and paper piecing techniques, but he sometimes utilizes nontraditional components.

He draws inspiration from urban art practice that confronts contemporary issues and experiments with integrating modern archetypes with historical, societal, or spiritual topics. While some of the concepts in his work are quite unambiguous and literal, others are abstract references to the anthropological experience, individuality, or contain esoteric philosophies and historical references from the coded glyphs of ancient cultures.

Daniels was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Currently, he lives, works, and creates art in the Central Harlem section of New York City. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts from SUNY Empire State College, a Master of Science degree in Business/Project Management from New York University and is currently a PhD candidate pursuing an interdisciplinary degree in Art Theory, Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.

Barbara Danzi is a quilter working improvisationally to design and construct modern quilts with a focus on nature and the feelings it evokes. Danzi works with solid color cotton fabrics, cutting and machine piecing to create the quilt top, then layering the top with wool batting and a cotton fabric backing. Danzi stitches through all three layers using a long-arm quilting machine.

She has studied with master quilter Nancy Crow and has been influenced by the abstract expressionist artists from the Bauhaus period and focuses on the figure/ground relationship for her design principles. Many of her works are connected to themes of social justice and protecting our environment.

Danzi lives in New York City and enjoys visiting museums and galleries to experience art in real life. She has studied design and color through the Rhode Island School of Design’s continuing education program.

Chris Economos is a quilt artist creating primarily with textiles. Her works are a fusion of American traditional and modern quilting methods combined with her own process innovations. Economos’ portfolio is a reflection of life experiences, personal ethics, kinship, and relationship dynamics.

She has spent most of her life in the New York area, punctuated by three years in Central America with the Peace Corps, and two years in Italy doing independent study focusing on painting, sculpture, and religious objects.

Prior to her full-time creative practice, Economos was a writer for several PBS series, including Nature, Nova, and The American Experience. She also had a twenty-five-year tenure as a program administrator and writer at the American Museum of Natural History. She is a member of the NYC MetroMod Quilt Guild, Northern Star Quilt Guild, Modern Quilt Guild, and Studio Art Quilt Associates.

Bruce Goldstone is a quiltmaker who explores lyrical geometry. His works combine improvisational patchwork techniques with mathematical, emotional, and visual content. He builds quilts through resonant repetitions, controlled colors, and expressive lines. He views his textile work as the graphic flip side of his creative work as the author of kids’ books. Like his quilts, many of his books celebrate the joy and fun of mathematics. His works for children and curious adults include Zero Zebras, Great Estimations, The Beastly Feast, Why Is Blue Dog Blue? (with George Rodriguez) and Bip in a Book (with Marcel Marceau).

Goldstone was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He currently lives in New York City and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Sylvia Hernández is a celebrated and self-taught master quilter, and she creates timeless, handcrafted works that address community and human rights issues. Sylvia is currently the president of the Quilters of Color Network of NYC, co-president of the Brooklyn Quilters Guild, and she is a member of the WCQN.She has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally as a part of a number of high profile art exhibitions including Brooklyn Quilts Show, the Made in New York Quilt Show, the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza, Journey of Hope in America: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama, and most recently in We Are the Story: A Visual Response to Racism and currently in Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories. Her work has appeared in multiple publications including the New York Times.

She is currently the president of the Quilters of Color of NYC and the former co-president of the Brooklyn Quilters Guild. She is also a member of the Women of Color Network and is currently a teaching artist at El Puente Academy of Peace and Justice High School. She has quilts in the private collection of Spike Lee, Dr Carolyn Mazloomi, and the Fine Arts Museum of Boston. She works out of her home studio in Williamsburg.”

Christine Janove is a textile artist who enjoys making both traditional and art quilts. Often, her interest is in using an inspiring quote or a one word theme to reflect upon and interpret in fabric art. She has experimented with a variety of fabrics, threads, paints and nontraditional materials in her quilt work.

After growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania, Janove moved to New York City, now making Brooklyn her home. She is a graduate of Seton Hill University, where her degree is a B.S. in Textiles. Quilting is Art is her catchphrase.

Janove is a quilt making instructor who takes great pleasure in introducing people to the basics as well as advanced techniques at the sewing machine. She has designed quilt patterns for specific fabric lines. She is a member of several quilt guilds and textile organizations.

2022 Artists
Exhibition Artists

Gilbert Boro is a sculptor, architect, educator and international design consultant. He was born in New York City and has been involved in the arts since his boyhood. He has had a distinguished career, spanning more than fifty years.

His sculpture is concerned with the interplay of space, place and scale.  He uses various materials, including steel, stone, aluminum, and wood.  He believes the challenge and joys of creation are equally related to visualization and execution.  What art should do is help us regain the creativity we all had as children.

Boro is an active member of the New England Sculptor’s Association, The New York Sculptor’s Guild, Elected Member of Mystic Museum of Art, Silvermine Guild of Artists, and the International Sculpture Cent

Melita Cekani is an NYC-based artist that finds inspiration in diversity, cultural heritage, and personalities. Melita adds three-dimensionality to paintings, by sculpting the oil paint and manipulating its thickness on the canvas. Melita manifests a unique innovation of painting technique, brought up by her and named “CEKANISM”. “Çekan” translates to “hammer” in Albanian, Melita’s native language and background. In a figurative manner, she treats her paintings as sculptures, and carves or sculpts the oil paint using her brush, as one would use a hammer and chisel to make a sculpture.

Melita’s paintings are recognized for the extensive use of Impasto, taken to another level. She makes her paintings 3D with the oil paint sticking out of the canvas and the paint being elevated up to one full inch from the canvas’s level.

As a sculptor, Chandler Davis has made a variety of larger-than-life shells, a number of which were exhibited in Audart’s “Shrines to Fantasy” exhibition, as well as Audart’s curation of the Sandbox at New York’s Information Technology Center in New York city.

From the primordial origins of the shell, to the high-tech present, the process of making seashells has taken Davis on a journey through time and space.

Chandler Davis is an award winning sculptor.  He started his career as an artist in residence in Norwalk, CT and has exhibited at several venues in the metropolitan area, including the Silvermine Guild, the Washington Square Windows Gallery in Manhattan and Art-X Gallery in Stamford. In addition to creating submarine sculptures he has been working on a film, The Shell Maker, a docudrama of the shell’s journey through contemporary society.

Joe Gitterman is an American sculptor. Born in New York, Joe attended the Dalton School and Westminster School, University of Virginia, and Columbia University. He continued his studies at the New School, The Art Students League, and the Pratt Institute. Joe’s 30-year career on Wall Street included private banking internships in London, Cologne, and Paris and brokerage training in Brussels and New York. Joe started sculpting as a hobby in 1969 yet it wasn’t until he retired from Wall Street that he dedicated himself to the full-time pursuit of making art.

Since his first exhibition at a local Connecticut gallery in 2011, Joe’s career has catapulted. He has received commissions from Robert Couturier, Norwegian Cruise Lines, The Riverside Building in London, the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston, and the Robert A.M. Stern-designed Arris building in Washington, D.C., among others. Joe’s sculptures are in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States, Europe, and Australia.

Bryan Gorneau is an award-winning sculptor and mixed media artist from the Connecticut shoreline. Gorneau plays with events and visuals of pop culture, incorporating elements of traditional Americana like famous images, photographs, street signs, and historic headlines to invite the viewer to rethink various cultural concepts and the status quo. By using clear resin epoxy he has been able to encase delicate material that would otherwise disintegrate, making it completely archival and timeless. Although Gorneau uses different processes throughout his sculpture and mixed media, continuity in his body of work is created through personal exploration of process and methodology.

​All of Gorneau’s art is infused with youthful curiosity and creative exploration as he deftly dismantles both objects and ideas, seeking to find a new way of understanding and portraying the world around him. Through his work, Gorneau highlights and preserves many of the “headlines” that have punctuated our society’s cultural identity, while redefining their messages from his personal artistic perspective.

Gorneau, a student of Lyme Academy of Fine Arts and graduate of the Central Wyoming College of Welding Program, also apprenticed with renowned local sculptor Gilbert Boro and has been his studio manager and sculpture fabricator for over 15 years.

​A past member of the artist’s collaborative Gallery One and frequent contributor to the juried shows at Mystic Museum of Art, Gorneau has shown at various venues throughout the country, including the Hygienic Art Gallery in New London, CT; the Art Spot International Art Fair in Miami, FL; the Art Corridor at Yale, in New Haven, CT; the Guilford Art Center in Guilford, CT; and also the John Lyman Center for Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University.

Linda Griggs was born in Oklahoma and spent summers in South Carolina, areas rich in storytelling. Unsurprisingly, her work incorporates narrative and story in the manner similar to artists she admires such as Faith Ringgold, Dottie Attie, Roger Welch and David Wojnarowicz. Griggs often draws you in with traditional representational painting of familiar images and then contrasts that with darkly humorous text. She works in series, deeply researching topics that engage her such as the effects of early porn viewing and funeral mishaps. Past bodies of work include The First Time is Not like Porn, What to Do with the Body, Narrative Still Life and Family Outing. Her current focus is Comfort and Loss.

Her work has been included in numerous museum, gallery and university exhibitions. She has had solo projects at ADO and Carolyn J Roy Galleries in NYC and Hampden Gallery, UMass Amherst and has exhibited at the Iwami Art Museum in Japan, the Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College, Gahlberg Gallery at the College of DuPage, the Wustum Museum, ABC No Rio, PS122, The Clemente, Sideshow and the New York Public Library. Past fellowships include MacDowell and Millay Colonies and the LES Rotating Studio Program. Her work is included in several public and private collections notably JP Morgan Chase, Eileen Schwab, Therese Lichtenstein, Alix Sloan, Rich Timperio, Paul Bridgewater among others.

Griggs is the founder of E32, an art projection-crit-party and as an artist-curator has curated or assisted on 22 exhibitions and two art fair booths.

Her exhibitions have been reviewed and her own work published in PBS Arts Watch, ARTslant Worldwide, Bedford + Bowery, IdeaSmyth, DART, VisualArts Daily, Cover, Live Mag, WG Williamsburg Greenpoint, The Bark, Hamden Gazette, Philadelphia Inquirer, Artscope Magazine, The Milwaukee Journal and HX.

Multimedia artist Valérie Hallier came to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship after graduating from the ENSAD in her native Paris, France. In NYC, she received a MFA from SVA. Her work is being shown internationally. Main solo shows include “Screened Calls & Slow Portraits” at Medianoche gallery (NYC) and “Portraits Lents” at the ESAM, Caen, France. Group show locations include the LMCC Arts Center, Brooklyn Arts Council, A.I.R. gallery, Housatonic Museum (CT), ACM Siggraph (FL) and SCAN Arts Symposium (PA.) Commissioned by the Drawing Center (NYC) for Draw Now! Hallier was also selected for BRIC Media Arts’ first Biennial. Residencies include LMCC Swing Space on Governor Island, Pioneer Works with the NY Theremin Society and NARS Foundation.

Valérie Hallier’s multimedia work consists of series and installations that reflect on the illusion of control. By way of practices and rituals like ranking all people she knows, portraying someone ad nauseam or drawing her every thought – each project explores the absurdity and the poetry of exhaustive study. By exposing technology’s processes along with her own obsessive workings, Hallier’s work renders a contemporary character and generates an exquisite tension between the humanistic and mechanistic sense of Being. Her current explorations with flowers and screaming expand on the exhaustive process while focusing on public interaction and the representation of the feminine.

In 1979, Allen Hansen was awarded an internship to the Mary Boone Gallery in New York from the University of California Irvine. He then decided to stay in New York, with the help of my college professor and mentor Craig Kauffman, and pursue his art career. The Edward Thorpe Gallery included him in several group shows most notably EPIPHANIES IN 1989 with Ross Bleckner, Morris Graves, Joseph Stella and Walter Murch and NOCTURNAL VISIONS in CONTEMPORARY ART at the Whitney Equitable 1989 with Ross Bleekner, Vija Celmins, Eric Fischel, Alex Katz and Joan Nelson. In 1992 he was invited to show at the Proctor Art Gallery Bard College,show title THE DEPICTED UNKNOWN with Jim Sullivan, Ellen Kozak and Rick Klauber. In 1993 he had a solo show at the Carolyn J. Roy Gallery in New York.

Recent exhibitions include a one person show at the Carter Burden Gallery, New York and a solo show at the Lichtundfire Gallery, New York. along with multiple group shows at the Lichtundfire Gallery which was favorably reviewed by Carol Diamond in Delicious Line and favorably reviewed by Jonathan Goodman in Tussle magazine. He has exhibited at the Equity Gallery in a three person show titled “111” with artists Miguel Otero Fuentes and Christpher Stout.

Recent paintings are firmly rooted in neo romantic landscape but rather than representing the sensory geographies of the world outside. Current work has moved beyond representation by conjuring and capturing indeterminate geometries. Hoping to reflect an ontological dynamic not unlike that triggered in Proustian memory, where the past and present elide and become “ real without being actual ,ideal without being abstract, and immediately the permanent and habitually concealed essence of things is liberated “ ( In Search of Lost Time lll 905-06 )

He has maintained certain formal aspects of his earlier landscape paintings most notably an atmospheric light source, a new point of reference, applied to these formal abstractions.

Utilizing a variety of media, Elizabeth Knowles’ sculpture reveals both static and dynamic patterns in nature. Elizabeth has a BA from Pomona College, Claremont, CA and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL.

Recent projects include site-specific installations for Unesco’s Artistes + Science, Monaco, Rockrose Lobby for Chashama, NY, NY, Flat Iron Prow Art Space, NY, NY, Chashama Lobby, NY, NY, the New Canaan Sculpture Trail, CT, NYU Langone, NY, NY and Montefiore Hospital, Bronx, NY. Additionally, Knowles has created projects for Edith Wharton’s House (The Mount in Lenox, MA, Bank of America Plaza, Charlotte, NC, the Housatonic Museum, Bridgeport, CT, Artspace, New Haven, CT, the Painting Center, NY, NY, Five Points Art Center, CT, Studio 80 +Sculpture Grounds, Old Lyme, CT, the Kingston Police Building, Kingston, NY, Chesterwood National Trust for Historic Preservation, Stockbridge, MA and Governor’s Island, NY.

She has collaborated with Saks Fifth Avenue on window installations and VOGUE magazine for the “Last Look” page. Knowles has received numerous grants and residencies including MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists program, Weir Farm Art Center, Puffin Foundation, Miami Beach Cultural Council, Millay Colony, Yaddo, Banff Centre, E. D. Foundation, Artist’s Space, and Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation.

Conrad Levenson – Salvaging scrap materials and obsolete objects, I recompose and repurpose them as works of art. I often combine previously unrelated elements, in new and unexpected ways, and incorporate geometric and anthropomorphic forms, often in balance and motion. 

My sculptures evoke the former times, places, lives, unique character and embedded energy of their sources materials. I tell their stories, as I explore and mediate the essential relationship between their form and content. 

My sculptures range in size from the intimate to large-scale installations. They vary in height from several inches to fifteen feet and weigh a few ounces up to thousands of pounds. Displayed, indoors and out, often in spaces and settings of my own design, my sculptures connect people, visually and emotionally, to the natural and built environments. 

My sculptures and commissioned works are included in private collections, galleries, and outdoor public art venues. I have exhibited, throughout the region. with the Sculptors Guild, at their Gallery and on Governors Island; the Sculpture Expos in Red Hook, New York; and the Studio 80 Sculpture Grounds, Old Lyme, Connecticut. For the past two summers I have exhibited with the West Harlem Art Fund In Nolan Park on Governors Island, New York. 

I am an artist member of the International Sculpture Center, the Sculptors Guild and Arts Mid- Hudson. 

Elaine Lorenz is a sculptor who is known for her organic abstract work in clay as well as fiber cement, or bronze for larger outdoor sculptures. Her parents were gardeners and landscape painters, who taught her to observe and appreciate the beauty of the natural world, a major focus in her work. Over the years Lorenz has abstracted various aspects of nature, from the large rock formations of the Southwest to tiny seedpods.  Her work has referenced ecological concerns, uplifting joy and repetitive patterns and textures found in nature. Lorenz received her M.F.A. from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and taught sculpture and ceramics at William Paterson University. Lorenz’s awards include: a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowship Grants in 1988 and 1999, Athena Foundation Grant for Socrates Sculpture Park, a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Grant, and a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship. She has numerous commissions including a NJ Percent for Art at the Meadowlands Environmental Center in Lynhurst, NJ and recently installed an 8 ft. bronze sculpture for the town of Piermont, NY.

Elizabeth Miller McCue – I work thematically and predominantly in unique bronze castings ranging in scale from gallery works to corporate, private commissions. Working directly from nature I explore a synthesis of abstraction and realism. Landscapes and waterscape, houses and abodes provide places where we can rest and dream. Sculpture brings the primacy of touch into our world of computer and television screens. Thirty site-specific public, corporate and private commissions have been completed, my first for the Corporate Headquarters of Salomon, Inc., at the former 7 World Trade Center, NY, NY, in 1995; through the recent East Tower Lobby of the Park Towne Place Museum District Residences, Philadelphia, PA; and, the seven Sustainability Award Commissions for the Hotel Association of New York City.                                                                                                                   I have had ten solo exhibitions, and participated in over 75 group exhibitions in the US and abroad.

Dario Mohr is a New York City based interdisciplinary artist who creates interactive sanctuary experiences. Born in 1988, Mohr received a BFA from Buffalo State College, and an MFA from The City College of New York. In addition to work created in painting, sculpture or made digitally, he often includes assembled objects to build immersive “sacred spaces”. These often exist in unexpected places, using mundane objects.  Because objects are endowed with the significance that the viewer blesses it with, his work can provide a lot of space for divergent perspectives and interpretations. The recycling of old work is also fundamental to Mohr’s practice. You will see previously created paintings and sculpture as well as the reuse of the objects, textiles, cushions and other elements in future works. Sometimes a previously used item provides the perfect juxtaposition to enhance or add depth to new explorations. In addition to his individual practice, he is also the Founder and Director of AnkhLave Arts Alliance which is a non-profit for the recognition and representation of BIPOC artists in contemporary art.

R. Douglass Rice was born in La Jolla, California in 1952. He grew up in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. In 1968 his family moved to San Francisco, California. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy where he took his first sculpture class with Richard Lyman. He attended Stanford University where he studied sculpture with Richard Randall and earned a degree in Human Biology in 1974. He also studied painting at the Mendocino Art Center, San Francisco State University and the School for Visual Arts in New York.

In 1987 Rice moved with his family to New York and raised their two children in New York City’s Soho District. He worked in his high end residential company from 1987 to 2015. During this same time, Rice maintained a studio in Tribeca. He has exhibited in numerous galleries over the last thirty years, including two shows at the National Arts Club. Rice was a board member of the Bronx Museum of the Arts for ten years and served as its Chair from 2009 until 2013. He is currently Chair Emeritus of the museum. In addition, he is an elected artist of the Mystic Museum of Art, The Artist League of Rhode Island and the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts.

In 2016 Rice moved to Stonington, Connecticut. He now paints and sculpts full time and shows at local museums and galleries.

Margaret Roleke is a contemporary mixed media artist. Roleke currently has outdoor sculptures at ArtPort Kingston, NY and The Norwalk Art Space, Norwalk, Connecticut. Roleke has exhibited at the Aldrich, Real Art Ways, ArtSpace New Haven, and Pen+Brush Gallery, NY among other venues.This year she had a solo exhibit at The Camp Gallery , Westport and has an upcoming solo exhibit at Five Points Gallery in Torrington, CT. Roleke has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, ArtNet, and additional publications and most recently , in February 2022 in Whitehot Magazine. 

Dianne Smith is an abstract painter, sculptor, and installation artist. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in New York City’s Soho and Chelsea art districts as well as, numerous galleries and institutions throughout the United States, and abroad. She is an arts educator in the field of Aesthetic Education at Lincoln Center Education, which is part of New York City’s Lincoln Center For the Performing Arts. Since the invitation to join the Institute almost a decade ago she has taught pre k-12 in public schools throughout the Tri-State area. Her work as an arts educator also extends to undergraduate and graduate courses in various colleges and universities in the New York City area. She has taught at Lehman College, Brooklyn College, Columbia University Teachers College, City College, and St. John’s University.

In 2007, she was one of the artists featured in the Boondoggle Film documentary Colored Frames. The film took a look back at 50 years in African-American Art, and also featured other artists such as Benny Andrews, Ed Clark and Danny Simmons. That same year the historical Abyssinian Baptist Church, which is New York’s oldest African-American church, commissioned Smith to create the artwork commemorating their 2008 bicentennial. In addition, she co-produced an online radio show the New Palette, for ArtonAir.org Art International Radio dedicated to visual artists of color. Her private collectors include: Poet Dr. Maya Angelou, Broadway choreographer George Faison, Danny Simmons, Vivica A. Fox, Rev. and Mrs. Calvin O. Butts, III, Cicely Tyson, Arthur Mitchell, Tasha Smith and Terry McMillan. Dianne Smith is a Bronx native of Belizean descent. She attended LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, the Otis Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Smith completed her MFA at Transart Institute in Berlin, Germany. She currently lives and works in Harlem, New York. She is a frequent exhibitor at Curious Art Gallery and she is always seeking for new forms and new media the likes of drawing, painting, handmade jewelry.

2021 Artists
Exhibition Artists

Sagarika Sundaram (b. Kolkata) creates felted textiles and objects that investigate the materiality of wool and its relationship to human biology and psyche. By estranging what is familiar, she creates work that possesses its own unique life. Her work has been exhibited at Frieze New York with Jhaveri Contemporary (2021), Nature Morte (Delhi, 2021), Mana Contemporary (NJ, 2020), Mexico City Art Week (2020). In 2021 Sundaram won a South Asian Arts Resiliency Fund grant and was a finalist for the UC Berkeley South Asia Art Prize. In 2020 she was awarded a Tishman Award for Excellence in Climate, Environmental Justice & Sustainability and a Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design. She has an MFA in Textiles from Parsons School of Design, NY, and studied visual communication at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She also studied at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Sundaram is based between New York and Bangalore.

Yi Hsuan Sung is a textile designer who recently earned her MFA in Textiles from Parsons School of Design in 2020. As a curious maker who loves to integrate handcraft and technology to create biodegradable textiles, and who enjoys discovering the littlest surprises from the natural world, she has been cooking, knitting, weaving, braiding and gardening a glorious world of flowers from agar and food waste. Her inspiration derives from a respect to natural materials and the love of organic colors and textures. Yi Hsuan focuses on making floral pendent lamps with agar. She creates textile lamp shade base by knitting with handmade agar yarn, and decorates the knitted bases with agar flowers cast from 3D printed molds she designed. Yi Hsuan’s goal is to bring nature’s beauty into interior spaces with a more sustainable material and fabrication process.

Yalan Wen is a visual artist based in New York City who works on computational images, new media installations, and motion graphics. Born and raised in Taiwan, she developed her curiosity about art and science by observing nature. Her work explores the subtle events that happen beyond the surface, finding the balance between simplicity and subtle philosophical interpretations. Graphic design is the foundation of her visual language, which she continued to develop in the MFA Computer Arts program at the School of Visual Arts. Her most recent artworks incorporate creative programming, experimental music composition, visual graphics, and paintings.

Multimedia artist Valérie Hallier came to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship from her native Paris, France. She later graduated from the School of Visual Arts (Computer Arts). Through visualizing sounds such as screaming or serializing autobiographical data such as her own reproductive history, Hallier’s work redefines portraiture in the forms of mixed-media series, immersive installations and interactive public art. Her work challenges the patriarchal segregation created between the natural, the human and the technological realms despite their inherent fusion. Hallier current explorations with flower petals extends to gender roles and the notion of deflowering, as in French, losing one’s freshness.

Kraig Blue was born in 1968 in The Bronx, New York, politicized in Washington, DC, and liberated in Los Angeles, CA. He is a multimedia sculptor using found materials as metaphors to explore complex socially constructed ideologies and paradigms; creating multilayered sculptural assemblages as altars to become vehicles for quiet contemplation and dialogue.

After graduating Mount Saint Michael Academy, at sixteen years old, he attended New York Institute of Technology as an architecture major, but soon realized his true freedom existed in image making; he took a year off and applied to Fashion Institute of Technology, and in 1989 was accepted as an illustration major. At “FIT” he was able to learn portraiture, figure drawing and painting, oils, acrylics, watercolor, graphic design, and a commercially driven work ethic.

For twenty-five years he has been a published illustrator, arts educator, and exhibiting visual artist. In 2015 he received his BFA at the Laguna College of Art & Design in figurative sculpture, painting, and drawing. While there he received the Plotkin Award for Excellence in Fine Art.

In December 2019 he received his MFA in Studio Art from The City College of New York. He has been the recipient of two Conner Scholarship awards and in 2018 the Therese McCabe Ralston Conner Fellowship to study abroad throughout Cuba.

Currently he is working at the Brooklyn Museum with their criminal justice diversion program Project Reset.

Jannette Jwahir Hawkins is an artist who lives and works in Harlem, New York City. Sensitive to multilayered visual rhythms, Jwahir’s work relies on a gestalt of compositions using trees, text and textiles to express movement and stillness as one. An award-winning alumni of the City College of New York with a MFA in Studio Art, Jwahir recently completed a post-graduate Studio Art residency at City College with advanced studies in Community Engaged Art (Art Education), in addition to facilitating T Art (Talking Art) Salon, a student intellectual discussion group. An artist- educator with the Whitney Museum of American Art (until the pandemic), Jwahir is a lifelong devotee of indigenous music and dance, an arts consultant for a long-running creative music series, and an Artist-in-Residence with the West Harlem Art Fund.

Dario Mohr is a painter, assemblage and installation artist. He is a Brooklyn, NY based artist born in 1988.  Mohr combines nostalgic personal objects of varying heights with found materials to form shrines. These occupy the space in varying ways, leaning against walls, hanging from the ceiling, and existing as free standing sculptures with an architectural aesthetic.  They also contain altars with organic offerings, symbolically designating them as devotional objects. Although created from a personal vantage point, the work functions publicly to open the audience’s perspective to ways they can reimagine nostalgic objects as symbols for memories, people, and experiences that can take on a spirituality of their own when revered in a way that is decontextualized from religion.