Artists 2025

Joseph Bochynski was born in Buffalo, NY in 1986. Bochynski received a BA in Mathematics and Studio Art from Hobart College in 2008, and an MFA in painting from RISD in 2013. His first artist book was published in 2016 by CEPA Press with support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He has participated in residencies at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2017 and the Vermont Studio Center in 2015. His first public artwork was installed in 2024 through the NYC Percent for Arts Program at an elementary school in Brooklyn. He currently lives and works in Bangor, ME. 

Graciela Cassel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She currently resides in New York City. Cassel holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York (2016), a Master of Arts in Studio Art from New York University (2012), a Master in Education from Yeshiva University in New York (1998), and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Buenos Aires (1980).

Graciela Cassel has been recognized for her work through several awards and fellowships including the 2022 NYFA Work Award, Altamira Museum Fellowship in 2022,  Anklave Fellowship in 2021, and New York Historical Society Fellowship in 2020,  Additionally, she was a Queens Council Grantee in both 2019 and 2016. 

Cassel's work has been displayed at various institutions and galleries such as the Museo de la Naturaleza in Cantabria, Spain 2023, She also had a solo show at NYLAAT Governors Island in 2023, Art Crawl Harlem in 2024 as an installation artist, and showcased her work at the Lilac Museum ship in 2022. In 2023, her work was selected by the City of Paris to be screened during Nuit Blanche Paris. Urban Glass Gallery in Brooklyn in 2020, and the Museo del Barrio in 2016.   Weather the Weather, Hall of Science, New York in 2019.

Cassel's art is represented in the collections of the Schunck Museum in the Netherlands, Museo Sivori in Buenos Aires, New Seguros in Brazil, and Citibank in New York. Her work is also in private collections in Buenos Aires, Brazil, Colombia, and New York. 

Cassel is the founder and director of Transborder Art, which has already released 53 episodes. The mission of Transborder Art, founded in 2014, is to bring art conversations to the general public. The concept behind this TV broadcast is to provide access to contemporary artists and their discussions on interesting topics, creating an archive of contemporary art through these conversations.

Elizabeth Catlett, Legacy Artist (1915–2012) was an American and Mexican artist known for her sculptures and prints featuring African American women.

Elizabeth Catlett was born at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, DC. Both her maternal and paternal grandparents were born enslaved, a family legacy that influenced her art. Catlett knew from a young age that she wanted to be an artist. After Carnegie Mellon rescinded her acceptance due to her race, she attended Howard University, graduating in 1935 with a BS in Art. Following her graduation, she supervised elementary school art programs in Durham, North Carolina. In 1939, she began graduate studies in art at the University of Iowa, where she shifted her focus from painting to sculpture and became the first woman to receive a MFA in sculpture from the University of Iowa. Her master's thesis, a limestone sculpture entitled Negro Mother and Child (1940) won first place in sculpture at the 1940 Chicago American Negro Exposition. Her work often centered on black women.

In 1940, Catlett met her first husband, fellow artist Charles White, in Chicago. The couple married in 1941 and moved to New Orleans, but later relocated to Harlem, New York. In New York, Catlett encountered some of the most famous and influential artists and writers of the time including Loïs Mailou Jones, Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Langston Hughes. She began studying lithography and modernist sculpture and in 1945, she received a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation to produce a body of work focusing on black women. 

In 1946, Catlett and White moved to Mexico where Catlett was a guest artist at the printmaking collective, Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP, People's Graphic Arts Workshop). The artists of TGP used linoleum prints and woodcuts to create didactic sociopolitical art.

While in Mexico, Catlett and White divorced. She remarried Mexican artist Francisco Mora with whom she had three sons. In the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the U.S. embassy in Mexico investigated the TGP and Catlett specifically for her bold artwork, political activism, and communist affiliations. The United States government declared her an “undesirable alien,” which impaired her ability to return to the United States. In 1962, she became a Mexican citizen.

Inspired by the artistic activism within her circle of Mexican artists including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and David Siqueiros, Catlett continued creating images that showed the constant struggle and surprising strength of women, African Americans, those experiencing poverty, and disadvantaged social classes. Throughout her career, Catlett continued to carry these themes through in her bronze, wooden, and terracotta sculptures, prints, and paintings. Her U.S. citizenship was reinstated in 2002. Catlett lived and worked between Cuernavaca, Mexico, and New York City until she died in 2012. Her work has been featured around the world.

Bridget Conway is an artist, woodworker, and woodworking teacher based in New York City. She utilizes furniture, sculpture, and print as speculative fiction in hopes of a better understanding of the past, present, and future. Bridget is interested in manipulating physical and historical spaces we inhabit to encourage the viewer towards imagined possibilities for a better future, in addition to using strange and sustainable materials in conversation with folk art and folk architectures, bridging material past and material future, and working in collaborative environments and with collaborative mediums. 

Bridget currently teaches at Makeville Studio in Brooklyn, NY. She has a BA in Studio Art & Comparative Literature from Oberlin College, and has also studied at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME, the Textile Arts Center, the Art Students League, and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Center in New York City, NY. She has exhibited at the Holland Project in Reno, NV, Static Arts Collective in New York City, NY, Baron Gallery in Oberlin, OH, and Baitball in Bari, Italy. Her work is held in collections at the Mary Church Terrell Library in Oberlin, OH, and the Clarence Ward Art Library in Oberlin, OH. She has written for the Cleveland Review of Books and hosts a weekly radio show on KWNK 97.7 FM in Reno, NV.  

Carole Eisner was born in 1937 and raised in New York City. After receiving her BFA from Syracuse University in 1958, Eisner worked as a designer for several fashion houses in New York City, where she garnered industry awards including Mademoiselle Magazine’s “Best Young Designer” in 1961. 

After the first of her five children was born, Eisner began to paint at home. “I didn’t have a studio in our first apartment, so I threw tarps on the sofas and just started to paint,” she says. Shortly after, Eisner began to experiment with scrap metal, welding sculptures that grew in scale as her artistry progressed over the following decades. 

Eisner's longevity as an artist is a testament to the natural marriage between her metal sculptures and works on canvas. Over a 50-year career, Eisner has had dozens of solo exhibitions across the United States and several internationally. She has participated in group shows at The Guggenheim Collection and other notable museums. Eisner is represented in private, public, and corporate collections and has been published in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Who’s Who in American Art, and Vogue. 

Eisner currently resides in Weston, Connecticut with her husband. 

Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1970 iliana emilia García is a painter, printmaker, and installation artist who works in big format drawings on canvas and paper, and escalating installations depicting her most iconic symbol: the chair. Her work often explores concepts of emotional history, collective and ancestral memory, and intimacy. A co-founder of the Dominican York Proyecto GRÁFICA, she holds an AAS from Altos de Chavón School of Design, a BFA from Parsons School of Design | The New School, and an MA in Biography and Memoir from The Graduate Center, CUNY. García has been featured in solo and duo exhibitions at the Art Museum of the Americas, Taller Boricua, Hostos Community College, New York and others. She has participated in the IV Caribbean Biennial, Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan, Latin American Biennial in New York, and international fairs. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, El Museo del Barrio, The Blanton Museum of Art, Texas, El Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo, and others. 

An edited monograph on her work iliana emilia Garcia: the reason/ the word / the object, was published in 2020 by the Art Museum of the Americas, and edited by Olga U. Herrera, PhD. 

Her artist's papers can be found at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

David Karoff has lived in Providence and worked in Rhode Island’s nonprofit sector as an Executive Director, manager, and independent consultant for over thirty-five years. For much of that time, he set aside the making of art for other preoccupations. When, over a decade ago, he had the opportunity to take a year off and explore some of the many things put on the back burner during a busy career (with children), he began making sculptures. Some of the ideas had been dormant on moldering scraps of paper for decades.

He’s also worked extensively on a professional basis with dozens of Rhode Island arts organizations. As a volunteer, he served for two years as an Artist Mentor at New Urban Arts in Providence and six years on the Board of the Steel Yard.

Eunkyung Lee is originally from Seoul, South Korea. She embarked on a transformative, artistic journey after moving to New York in 2000. Traveling extensively throughout Europe, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Czech Republic, and Austria, Lee absorbed diverse cultures, shaping my unique artistic language. My works transcend borders, bridging different traditions and capturing the essence of human experience. Her art invites viewers to explore and reflect, offering glimpses into the beauty found within our shared journey.

Michael Levchenko was born in 1976 in Kyiv, Ukraine. He grew up in an artistic environment, which allowed his creativity to develop. Michael Levchenko started painting at an early age and began sculpting when he was only 15 years old. His first works were mainly figurative, but over the years, his art evolved into abstraction. It was an abstraction that gave the talented artist complete freedom to create his art and share his vision, shaping a space both emotionally and intellectually.

Today, Michael Levchenko is a prominent Ukrainian abstract sculptor working in stone, granite, sandstone, and marble. His incredible sculptures have been featured at several national and international exhibitions and are in many private and public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roldan (Argentina), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Volterra (Italy), and the International Sculpture Park in Aya Napa (Cyprus). Monumental works by Michael Levchenko are also installed in public spaces in Ukraine, China, Belgium, France, Germany, Norway, Israel, Turkey, Canada, and other countries.

Many of his works belong to private and public collections in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Chile, China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Syria, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, the United States. In 2019, took part in “The Shadow of Dream” cast at Giardini della Biennale” within the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Peter Miller, AIA, LEED-AP, is a partner and co-founder of Palette Architecture, which seeks to create physical spaces that enhance and enrich the daily experience of people’s lives. Peter has taught architecture studios at Washington University in St. Louis and serves as a director on the AIA-NY executive board. 

Peter is a registered architect with 20 years of experience; his notable projects include Grace Farms, the National WWII Museum, the Paper Factory Hotel, More with Less Affordable Housing, and the revitalization of Forest Park. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Washington University and a master’s degree from Columbia University. 

Ayala Naphtali is a NYC-based metalsmith/jewelry maker with a studio in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She began making jewelry as an early teen in NYC.  She studied Gold and Silversmithing at FIT and SUNY NEW PALTZ where she received her BFA.  Ayala was recently awarded as a 2021 Honoree by NYCxDesign. 

Ayala’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in galleries museums shops and design stores. Her work has been collected privately, and in the permanent collection of Cooper Hewitt and Kunsindustriumuseum in Norway, The White House ornament collection. Ayala has exhibited in major national juried art shows such as the American Craft Exposition in Baltimore, SOFA, Cherry Creek Arts Festival, and numerous others annually.  Selected publications include American Craft Magazine, ELLE, The Fashions of The Times, The New York Times, Mademoiselle, Women's Wear Daily, Glamour, and New Women Magazine, New York Post.  Ayala has been a juror for The American Craft Council Craft Shows.

Ayala Naphtali draws inspiration from ancient alphanumeric systems, contemporary architecture, and her own personal, and cultural history. She is intrigued with balance and proportion and feels that each of her pieces must find its axis on the wearer. She creates work with elegance and minimal, bold forms.

The choice of a particular material is often the motivation for the artist to design a specific work. Its texture, color, and versatility influence the result. Some materials are hand-dyed or carved. Other techniques she utilizes include forging, fabricating, and casting. Different combinations of techniques allow her to make jewelry pieces with dimension and volume but without excessive weight.

An interdisciplinary artist, Shervone Neckles makes embellished textiles, prints, sculptures, installations, and public art to retell Afro-Caribbean histories and mythologies. Her multimedia installation—an examination of selfhood and memory—was featured in the 2019 Venice Biennale’s Grenada Pavilion. She also recently created an outdoor installation at the Lewis H. Latimer House Museum (Flushing, Queens) to commemorate the life and legacy of the African-American inventor, which has traveled to Downtown Brooklyn (NY), the Museum of Science (Boston, MA), Chelsea City Hall (Chelsea, MA), and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA). In 2022-2023, her work was presented in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Jacksonville, FL). In 2023, she debuted The Lunar Portal, a permanent public art installation at the University of Pittsburgh Mercy Pavilion Plaza (Pittsburgh, PA), and in the fall of 2024, she unveiled The Land Between Open Water subway installation with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the Westchester Square-East Tremont station (Bronx, NY). She is currently in the group exhibition, Past as Prologue: A Historical Acknowledgement, Part II, presented by the National Academy of Design (New York, NY), which will be on view from February to April 2025. 

An Ngoc Pham was born in Vietnam in 1960. Pham intricately stacks, glues, and carves fibers of wood to create minimalist abstractions of daily objects to provoke poetic contemplations exploring the Eastern philosophies of the I Ching, Ying and Yang, and Taoism. The dualities contained in the philosophies are embedded in the works themselves.  The sculptures play between two and three dimensions where the different colored wood species are used to create the illusion of line and the wood grain pattern and texture are used to create the illusion of space.  The physicality of the works themselves becomes a vehicle to ponder emptiness, stillness, and loss.

His earlier artworks in oil painting and light sculpture were originally shown in the 1990s as part of the Asian-American artist-activist group known as Godzilla and in group shows alongside other Vietnamese artists. Pham honed his skills by working as a carpenter for over 25 years and he was influenced as an artist assistant to sculptors such as the late Richard Artschwager and Dan Flavin. His works are ingrained with the views and recollections of growing up during the war in Vietnam and his experience as a refugee in Queens.

Pham grew up in a war-torn Vietnam and escaped to the US in 1979 as a refugee after being one the survivors of a disastrous boat trip.  The refugee boat from Vietnam sank off the coast of Malaysia leaving behind 150 people drowned including family members.  Pham’s art reflects the experience and the personal impact of political policy-making that regards little account of the common man.  Pham’s work is a chronicle of the journey, somewhat quiet, marking my history as a witness to the modern changing political landscape from his homeland to the current issues in the Middle East to today’s controversial American policies.

Michael Poast, a NYC sculptor, has both classical music and visual art backgrounds and holds degrees from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, and The City University of New York, was mentored by the famous sculptor, Mark Di Suvero, during a studio residency at Socrates Sculpture Park, in Long Island City, NYC. Poast demonstrated his use of steel formats in solo sculpture exhibitions entitled Space Time at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, and Hudson Guild Gallery, NYC, and is affiliated with the Denise Bibro Fine Art Gallery, Chelsea, NY. 

Michael Poast’s steel sculpture Bastille acquired into the permanent collection of the El Paso Museum of Art, Texas; Venus, painted steel, permanent public artwork commissioned by the City of Yonkers, NY; ZIG on Broad Avenue in Leonia, New Jersey, three large steel pieces presented at the Mosaic Art Space in LIC, NY, refurbished installations at the UNISON Art Center in New Paltz, NY, along with his sculpture “Figured Bass’ at the Water Street Market, and most currently, the re-location of “Water Music” his large steel public art sculpture in the City of Yonkers, NYC. are among his most current collected and sited sculptures. 

The New Jersey Stage press hailed Poast’s sculpture as “Exciting New Art” and “Art Thrives” by amNY news, are honors received that include awards and grants from the Gottlieb and Beta Foundations, Artists Space, New York Foundation for the Arts, City Artist Grants, CCNY Art Career Achievement Award, the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Alliance for Downtown New York, New York State Council on the Arts, and Queens Council on the Arts. 

Current commissions, exhibitions, and events include a solo exhibition of his small steel pieces at St. John’s University, Dept. of Communication Studies, and upcoming sculpture installations in New Paltz, NY, along with group exhibitions and additional sculpture installations in 2024. 

Michael Poast teaches and lectures on his art and music, at such venues as Pratt Institute, City University of New York, Parrish Art Museum, Rutgers University, and the Julliard School, and is currently on faculty.

Abigail Regner graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art in ceramics from the University of Colorado, Boulder in the spring of 2019. Through her education, she has refined her skills in wheel throwing, hand building, slip casting, formulating glazes, and firing kilns at multiple temperature ranges and atmospheres. For the past three years, Regner has worked as a professional ceramic artist in New York City. She spent two years working as a production assistant for designer Christopher Spitzmiller making high-end ceramic lamps and tableware. She has been teaching at Mugi for three years and has since moved into a managerial role. For the past nine years, she has been practicing ceramics and is currently interested in large-scale throwing, experimental glaze formulation, and surface texture by layering bas-relief to create dynamic surfaces on clay.

Miller has concentrated on transforming the non-material into the material, utilizing sacred geometry and numerology, sculptural and architectural form, text, and cross-continental exchange. He draws on African and African-American artistic heritage, such as beading and quilting. Yet, his use of new technologies, as in much Afrofuturism, traverses the so-called digital divide, which associates blackness with technological disadvantage. Along with many Afrofuturist thinkers, he is conscious of a long line of “Blacks in Science,” under-recognized black inventors and innovators, and he experiments with sound, kinetic energy, solar-power, 3D animation, and holography. His emphasis on light, both represented and used as an artistic medium, undermines historical associations of blackness with darkness, and reinforces Afrofuturist metaphysical concepts. On the other hand, his sculptures and his monumental architectural commissions are imposingly physical, despite employing metaphysical concepts. In recent work, he intends to reverse the excesses of materialism by returning material to source–that which sacred geometry represents as the invisible.

Luke Schumacher was born in 1978 in Eagle Butte, South Dakota but raised in rural New Hampshire, where he set his roots playing in the northern forests and countryside. However, when his family moved to the Mojave Desert, California, Luke came to feel lost in the barren and alien landscape. When the opportunity to learn welding presented itself, working with metal became Luke's means of conceptualizing the structures and textures of the unpredictable world around him. His aptitude as an artist revealed itself as he finished trade school, where, by focusing on the surface textures, curves, and patinas of the metal finishes of his work, he sculpted a world that made sense to him. Luke’s works are graceful with flowing energy, and sensitivity to lines and geometric shapes. He takes his influence from nature and many of his pieces have playful themes to them. Schumacher has worked in private collections on the east and west coast of the US, Europe, and part of the permanent collections of Cerro Coso College, California, and The Space, New York City. 

David Sheldon lives and works in Asheville, North Carolina. A multi- disciplined artist, his work has evolved over the years as both a painter and a sculptor.
 
Sheldon received a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1984. His time at RISD included a formative year spent painting in Rome, Italy, as part of RISD’s European Honors Program. As a grad student, he brought sculpture into the mix. His thesis show for his MFA in 1990 at the University of Maryland incorporated large-scale, mixed-media paintings, as well as sculptural works. Mentors included internationally acclaimed sculptor, Anne Truitt, and monumental sculptor James Sanborn.

Sheldon worked as an assistant to Sanborn on "Kryptos", installed at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, 1990. Sheldon continues to create cutting-edge sculptural works in metal, as well as provocative public art.
Modernist sculpture, with its emphasis on the dynamics of form and space, continues to be a major influence in his work.

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. She received her MFA from Transart Institute, Berlin, Germany in August 2012 MFA. She currently lives and works in Harlem.

Dianne’s intriguing and compelling minimalist abstracts are haunting and beautiful. Her sculptures and installations are an extension of that beauty. Dianne’s work represents her inner connection to self, which reflects the artistic and spiritual journey that has enabled her to find her voice as an artist. Her work incites our emotions with lush palettes, expressive brushstrokes, texture, and form. She creates provocative and meaningful imagery that challenges the viewer to see and consider pure color, movement, and organic shapes. While her work remains rooted in her African origins, its purpose is more universal. She puts it this way: “Human civilizations and cultures all have Africa as their mother and are therefore more similar than we realize. I want my work to justly portray that connection, the essence of human existence, and thereby possibly affecting the whole of humankind for the better.” She has exhibited with noted artists including Norman Lewis, Samella Lewis, Chakai Booker, and Howardena Pindell. She also presented esteemed Poet and Author, Dr. Maya Angelou and Broadway Dance Choreographer George Faison each with one of her most celebrated pieces: Spirit of My Ancestors “I” and “II.” 

Her works are also in the private collections of Danny Simmons, UFA Gallery, Vivica A. Fox, Rev. and Mrs. Calvin O. Butts, III, Cicely Tyson, Arthur Mitchell and Terry McMillian.

ByeongDoo Moon is a Korean sculptor who over the decades has been using stainless steel wire to express the coexistence of humans and nature in this small universe. From acquiring a sense of unity through countless bending and welding of sharp and cold wires, he has created work that inquires into the temperature of living creatures and metal, and the symbiosis between humans and nature. Since he recently moved to New York, he has been trying to recount his life experience through his work, enmeshing his stories with metal.

Su Hyun Nam is an interdisciplinary media artist and researcher working at the intersection of art, technology, science, and philosophy, exploring a nonlinguistic, experiential, and affective relationship with digital media. Her work, including experimental video, interactive media, 3D game art, and media performance, has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues from Spain, UAE, Greece, and Singapore to South Korea. Her theoretical papers have been presented at international conferences, including SIGGRAPH Asia, ISEA, and Videojogos. Su Hyun Nam earned an M.F.A in art and technology studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Media Study from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Transmedia and the director of the computer gaming program at Syracuse University.

Svetlana Onipko is a photographer and a classical dancer with the Ukraine National Opera. She studied for 9 years in the Kiev Choreography School before being accepted in the National Opera. She has danced with the National Opera in countries such as Germany, Italy, France, Greece, Japan, and Taiwan. In 2018, inspired by her travels, she began her career as a portrait photographer shooting solely on film.

Margaret Roleke is a contemporary mixed media artist. She creates sculptures, installations and prints that deal with current issues; gun control, womens rights and war are often explored in her practice. Her work has been exhibited widely in New York City including at Pen+ Brush , ODETTA Gallery, AHA Fine Art, and Hewitt Gallery at Marymount Manhattan College. Roleke’s outdoor pieces have been exhibited on Governors Island several times as well as at the University of Connecticut at Avery Point and several other venues. Roleke also had a residency on Governors Island through the 5 organization 4 Heads and was part of a group exhibit on the island through the West Harlem Art Fund in 2022.

Born in Los Angeles on February 5, 1956, Alison Saar was raised in an artistic environment created by both her parents. Much has been made of the influence of her mother—African, Native American, and Irish in ancestry—who gave her clay to play with and took her to see Simon Rodia’s folk-art towers in the Watts neighborhood. Saar herself, however, also pointed to the impact of her father, Richard, a white art conservator and writer who took her to museums and asked her to help out in his workshop. It was through working with her father that Saar began to learn about different materials and about the art of various cultures. She also began to carve wood.

Saar enrolled at Scripps College in Claremont, California, outside Los Angeles, receiving her B.A. in 1978. She studied with Samella Lewis, a prominent black art historian, and wrote her senior thesis on African-American folk art. Saar moved on to the Master of Fine Arts program at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, and it was in the final stages of her studies there that she began to forge a style independent of her mother’s. Shortly before her thesis exhibition—a major scholastic hurdle during which a student received the most important evaluations of his or her work—she discarded the works she had planned to display, and, as curator Elizabeth Shepherd in the Secrets, Dialogues, Revelations: The Art of Betye and Alison Saar catalogue later put it, “rapidly produced a group of robust and coarsely carved sculptures inspired by her studies of folk art and her desire to make art she herself would want to own.”

Luke Schumacher was born in 1978 at Eagle Butte, South Dakota but raised in rural New Hampshire, where he set his roots playing in the northern forests and countryside. However, when his family moved to the Mojave Desert, California, Luke came to feel lost in the barren and alien landscape. When the opportunity to learn welding presented itself, working with metal became Luke's means of conceptualizing the structures and textures of the unpredictable world around him. His aptitude as an artist revealed itself as he finished trade school, where, by focusing on the surface textures, curves, and patinas of the metal finishes of his work, he sculpted a world that made sense to him. Luke’s works are very graceful with flowing energy, sensitivity to lines and geometric shapes. He takes his influence from nature and many of his pieces have playful theme to them. Schumacher has work in private collections on the east and west coast of the US, Europe and part of the permanent collections of Cerro Coso College, California and The Space, New York City.

In 2021 Reuben Sinha recently retired from teaching in the NYC public school system to pursue his being a full time artist. He immigrated to the US from India at 8, and has since lived in NY. After receiving a BFA from NYU, he studied visual art at the Art Students League of New York, and eventually an MA and EdM from Teachers College, Columbia University. His awards include the MacDowell Traveling Scholarship and a Fulbright Fellowship, among many others. He has been an exhibiting artist for over three decades. His work is in numerous private and public collections in the UK, India, Russia, Japan, Germany and the United States, including Columbia University, and the Fulbright House, New Delhi. Between 2004 and 2012, Sinha organized near 100 artists annually for The Harlem Open Artist Studio Tour. He created and directed artHARLEM, a 501(C)3 community arts organization, to raise money for these studio tours. Along with teaching art in public high schools in East Harlem and the Bronx, Sinha taught adult drawing and anatomy at the Art Students League of New York and Spring Studio, and has given demonstrations in ceramics. Sinha currently lives and works in Harlem, New York.

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. She received her MFA from Transart Institute, Berlin, Germany in August 2012 MFA. She currently lives and works in Harlem.

Dianne's intriguing and compelling minimalist abstracts are haunting and beautiful. Her sculptures and installations are an extension of that beauty. Dianne's work represents her inner connection to self, which reflects the artistic and spiritual journey that has enabled her to find her voice as an artist. Her work incites our emotions with lush palettes, expressive brushstrokes, texture and form. She creates provocative and meaningful imagery that challenges the viewer to see and consider pure color, movement and organic shapes. While her work remains rooted in her African origins, its purpose is more universal. She puts it this way: "human civilizations and cultures all have Africa as their mother and are therefore more similar than we realize. I want my work to justly portray that connection, the essence of human existence, and thereby possibly affecting the whole of humankind for the better." She has exhibited with noted artists including Norman Lewis, Samella Lewis, Chakai Booker, and Howardena Pindell. She also presented esteemed Poet and Author, Dr. Maya Angelou and Broadway Dance Choreographer George Faison each with one of her most celebrated pieces: Spirit of My Ancestors "I" and "II." 

Her works are also in the private collections of Danny Simmons, UFA Gallery, Vivica A. Fox, Rev. and Mrs. Calvin O. Butts, III, Cicely Tyson, Arthur Mitchell and Terry McMillian.

Motohiro Takeda (b.1982) was born in Hamamatsu, Japan. He primarily works in photography, ceramics, and sculpture to create site-responsive installations. By utilizing abstraction through the distillation of the medium’s materiality and magnifying their inherited metaphors, Takeda’s work explores the ephemeral and transient nature of time and memory, life and death, and the space between man and nature on a personal and universal scale. 

Takeda was awarded the Tierney Fellowship in 2008. He participated in the Artist in Residency program at Baxter St. CCNY in 2011 and at Woodstock Center for Photography in 2015. His photographic work has been exhibited in various venues, including Unseen Photo Festival in Amsterdam, PhotoLondon, New York Photo Festival, Photo España in Madrid, Ibasho Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium, Camera Club of New York, Houston Center for Photography, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Colorado, Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco, among others. 

He received his BFA in photography from Parsons The New School for Design in 2008 and his MFA in studio art from Columbia University in 2023. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Sheena Vaughn is a multifaceted artist, educator, curator, and community advocate, hailing from Queens, NY. With a background in fine arts, she honed her skills at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) before earning her degree from Hunter College. Recently, she furthered her education by obtaining an MBA in Business, blending her artistic talents with a strong foundation in entrepreneurship.

Vaughn’s artistic vision is deeply rooted in her surroundings and life experiences, drawing inspiration from textures, geometric forms, and silhouettes. Her body of work reflects a creative and intuitive exploration of these elements, resulting in visually captivating pieces that resonate with viewers.

Her dedication and talent have earned her recognition and support from various institutions and programs. Vaughn has been awarded grants from the Queens Council on the Arts and the City Artist Corps, highlighting her contributions to the cultural landscape of her community. She was also selected as one of four artists for the DFR artist commissioning program, tasked with creating murals in downtown Far Rockaway, further cementing her impact on public art.

Beam Center aims to help New York City kids and teens set and achieve ambitious goals in school, at work, and in life by making mentorship, creation, and collaboration central to their out-of-classroom learning and college or work-preparatory experiences. At Beam Center, we believe that engaging all young people to unlock their potential and to continue toward a career path or continued education is an issue of social and economic justice.

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For 30 years, the Broadway Mall Association (BMA) has worked to beautify and maintain the malls. Initially founded as a community organization in 1980 by Eugene Hide to address the neglect of the malls stemming from the City’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s, the BMA became a not-for-profit organization in 1987. Today, BMA remains committed to carrying out Eugene Hide’s vision of the Broadway malls as a beautiful stretch of greenery uniting the diverse neighborhoods along Broadway.

Broadway Mall Association serves millions of New Yorkers who live and work in the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and Washington Heights. BMA also works to plant the seeds of economic development by upgrading and maintaining the malls and by providing winter lighting and public art exhibitions along Upper Broadway.

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At GL Square Consulting, our mission is to empower nonprofits and businesses by delivering innovative consulting, tailored training, and resource solutions. We are dedicated to fostering growth, strengthening community bonds, and building a sustainable future through expert consulting, grant writing, and entrepreneurial development services. By partnering with organizations across New York City’s five boroughs, we aim to cultivate talent and ignite success for a brighter tomorrow.

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The Lewis H. Latimer Fund, Inc. was established to preserve and promote the legacy of Lewis Howard Latimer, and other innovators of color who made extraordinary contributions to technology and American life. The Lewis Latimer House offers STEAM educational programs, exhibitions, and public programs in poetry, arts, technology, and social justice. Latimer's life story is used as a point of departure to examine issues of race, class, immigration, and contemporary events.

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New York Restoration Project (NYRP) works collaboratively with residents in communities across the five boroughs to renovate gardens, restore parks, plant trees, promote urban agriculture, and build partnerships that transform the city’s landscape. We value the unique experiences, knowledge, and resources that each community member brings to our work. We are committed to creating a greener, more resilient city for all.