Artists

Sherwin Banfield is a Queens, NY based mixed-media artist with recent work attempting to explore journeys of identity and ancestry. Sherwin’s creative practice tends to deconstruct the imaginative and physical journey of identity within his preferred subject matter, the human experience. While exploring the journey of his subject, he would seek to draw a connection between their personal stories and established culture, frequently imposing mythological and imaginative ideas as accessories within his sculptures. His portrait busts and figurative works are expressions of mood meant to draw out the inner identity of his subjects. Accompanying each sculptured identity are accessories of light, sound and/or cultural references that hyper realize this identity to compliment the organic design of their facial, skull and anatomical structure. The goal is to create a projection of attitude, aura and lived experience within his sculpted figures. Recent projects build upon experimental ideas of encompassing various mixed materials with traditional sculpture; lighting, sound and solar power that he refers to as Sustainable Sonic Sculpture. His recent public sculpture “Sky’s the Limit in the County of Kings’ fused the identity of Brooklyn Hip-Hop Legend The Notorious B.I.G., with his musical legacy into a sonic monument. The intention is to reintroduce the multi-dimensional contributions of Hip-Hop Legends, through a multi-sensory experience in Monumentality. Banfield holds a BFA with honors from Parsons School of Design and studied figurative sculpture at The Art Students League of New York. He is a recipient of the Augusta Savage Grant with the National Sculpture Society, the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund Grant, the NYC Art in the Parks: Alliance for FMCP Grant, the Socrates Annual Emerging Artist Fellowship, the Fantasy Fund Fellowship at Modern Art Foundry and the Art Students League of New York’s Model to Monument Fellowship. In 2023, Banfield is the AnkhLave Public Artist-In-Residence and will be part of the “Branching Out: Trees as Community Hosts” Exhibition at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (June 17 – October 24, 2023).

Fletcher Benton (American, b.1931), born in Jackson, OH, moved to San Francisco in the 1960s after receiving a BFA from Miami University, Oxford, OH, in 1956. In San Francisco, he taught at California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco Art Institute, and California State University. In his own work, he focused on geometric associations that are apparent in his later, large-scale sculptural works. Benton taught himself sign painting as a young man, and, through this process, became enthralled with the inherent geometric forms that comprise the letters he was painting. Benton initially experimented with abstract painting, but the limitations of the medium drove him toward kinetic sculpture.

Throughout his oeuvre, Benton plays with shapes, lines, balance, and movement to create gravity-defying sculptures of all sizes, as well as abstract geometric works on paper. Benton began his celebrated Alphabet series—comprised of 26 large-scale steel sculptures of the letters of the alphabet—in the 1970s, and the kinetic aspect of his sculptures became less important than its form and medium. In his manipulation of a two-dimensional sheet of metal into a three-dimensional painted steel sculpture, Benton brought a particular life to these letters, imbuing these stationary pieces with the kinetic energy found in his earlier work. In 2008, Benton received the International Sculpture Center Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award.

Kraig Blue was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, politicized in Washington, DC, and liberated in Los Angeles, CA. Kraig Blue is a visual artist, educator, musician, surfer, and photographer. He is a multimedia sculptor using found materials as metaphors to explore complex socially constructed ideologies and paradigms. Confronting issues of social justice and globalized racial injustice; he creates multilayered sculptural assemblages as altars to become vehicles for quiet contemplation and dialogue. 1 Using free floating signifiers, he draws inspiration from cultural phrases, history, and science fiction. Materials are carefully selected, adorned, burned, and reimagined within the formal elements of design to rearrange narratives that combine the invisible historical threads of each object. In deconstructing the concept of the altar as a sacred object, Blue simultaneously incorporates the Orisha mythologies from religions of the African diaspora. He considers his sculptures to be a contemporary representation of an innate ancestral history.

Zura Bushurishvili is a world-renowned artist for his exceptional sculptures and paintings. His artwork adorns numerous public spaces across NYC, Atlanta – Georgia, and Connecticut, and has found a place of distinction in the private collection of Victor Niederhoffer, an American hedge fund manager. Originally from the Republic of Georgia, Zura spent 14 years honing his artistic skills before pursuing formal studies at the State Academy of Fine Art in Tbilisi. Presently, he calls Brooklyn his second home, where his creative journey continues to flourish within the confines of his Williamsburg studio. Not only does he passionately create masterful sculptures and paintings, but he also imparts his profound knowledge through sculpting classes. Through it all, Zura remains dedicated to his craft, with an unwavering commitment to “the sake of beauty, love, and harmony.”

Enrique Sebastián Carbajal (1947) is the Mexican representative of the most important contemporary sculpture at the international level. His works also include other artistic expressions such as painting, architecture and design. He is better known throughout the world as Sebastián, a nickname adopted very early in his career by the artist from Ciudad Camargo, in Chihuahua, Mexico.

His specialty has to do with monumental urban sculpture, which in modern art refers to large works. This type of art is characterized by being more intended for the public, since it is usually found in outdoor areas.

His works use principles from other scientific areas, as he relies on the use of disciplines such as mathematics and geometry. In addition, sciences such as crystallography or topology have influenced his work.

Enrique Carbajal’s works are easy to identify thanks to his use of geometric shapes and the presence of materials such as steel and concrete. It has more than 200 works in various cities around the world.

Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio Carol Diamond received a B.F.A. in Painting from Cornell University and studied at the New York Studio School. She is a tenured adjunct professor at Pratt Pratt Institute and teaches Graphic Design at CUNY’s City College of Technology. Recent show venues include Zürcher Salon, Equity Gallery, Newbury Fine Arts, Boston, Eyes on Main Street in Wilson, North Carolina, Kent State University, and the Painting Center in NYC. Her artwork is included in public and private collections, including the Portland, Oregon Museum of Art. Diamond was awarded a Purchase Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Invitational Exhibition, two grants from the Pratt Institute Professional Development Fund, and the National Academy Museum’s Edwin Palmer Prize. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Too Much Art, the Manhattan Times, Painting Perceptions, and the Pelham Art Center. Her art writing and reviews are published in Art Critical, Painters on Painting, Two Coats of Paint, and Delicious Line.

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. 2 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.

Miguel Otero Fuentes is a USA migrant, a university trained architect specializing in facade design, and a self- taught sculptor. The aspirational intersection of these experiences informs art projects that are site-specific, scaled and designed to invite human interaction, and most importantly, aimed to communicate civic minded, utopian leanings. The utilitarian materials used to create the work, such as paint, and steel, echo this egalitarian, anti-elitist impulse. Not only are these materials endemic to my architectural design work; employed in art works, their familiar and humble construction grade pedigree (or rather lack thereof) deconstructs the haughty complexity of fine art – and renders the work accessible to everyone. Lastly, the work exploits simple geometric forms, spheres, hollowed-out rims and cylinders, to further heighten this sense of the familiar. But unbeknownst to the participant, these forms are constructed following ratios that appear in nature; for example, the circumferences of circles will be derived from measurements of the moon’s orbit around the earth; hence these sculpted forms radiate a sense of perfection that intimates the divine order of the universe.

Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 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 a MA 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.

Chaim Gross (1902-1991) was a modern American sculptor working in New York City from 1921 until his death in 1991. He was born in 1902 to a Jewish family in Austrian Galicia, in the village of Wolowa in the Carpathian Mountains. In 1911, his family moved to Kolomyia. During World War I, Russian forces invaded Austria-Hungary; amidst the turmoil, the Grosses fled Kolomyia. They returned when Austria retook the town in 1915, refugees of the war. When World War I ended, Gross and brother Avrom-Leib went to Budapest, where Gross attended the city’s art academy and studied with painter Béla Uitz, though within a year a new regime under Miklos Horthy took over and attempted to expel all Jews and foreigners from the country. After being deported from Hungary, Gross began art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna shortly before immigrating to New York City in 1921.

In New York City, Gross’s studies continued at the Educational Alliance Art School on the Lower East Side, led by Russian-American etcher Abbo Ostrowsky. Gross first began to exhibit his work as a student at the Alliance in 1922 (in the late 1920s, he joined their faculty). Gross also attended the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design from 1922-25, where he studied sculpture with Elie Nadelman and others, and at the Art Students League in 1926, with sculptor Robert Laurent.  In 1926, Gross began to exhibit his sculpture at the Jewish Art Center (then in the Bronx), and in 1927, at the Salons of America exhibitions at the Anderson Galleries at 59th Street and Park Avenue. Beginning in 1928, he exhibited at the Whitney Studio Club at 10 West 8th Street (the precursor to the Whitney Museum of American Art), showing a watercolor “Circus” in their 13th Annual Exhibition of Paintings. In March 1932 Gross had his first solo exhibition of sculpture at Gallery 144 in New York City. Also in 1932, Gross married Renee Nechin (1909-2005), and they had two children, Yehudah and Mimi (Mimi Gross is a New York-based artist, and was married to the artist Red Grooms from 1963-1976).

In 1933, Gross joined the government’s PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures for schools and public colleges, and created works for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the 1937 Exposition universelle in Paris. Chaim Gross, Sculptor by Josef Vincent Lombardo, the first major book on Gross, came out in 1949 and included a catalogue raisonne of his sculpture.

In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. In 1959, a survey of Gross’s sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibit Four American Expressionists curated by Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with work by Abraham Rattner, Doris Caesar, and Karl Knaths. In 1963, Gross and his family moved from their longtime residence at 30 W. 105th Street to Greenwich Village, following the purchase of a four-story historic townhouse at 526 LaGuardia Place, which is now the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.

Richard Hunt was born in 1935 in Chicago, Illinois, where he continues to live and work. He has exhibited extensively, including recent solo exhibitions at KANEKO, Omaha, Nebraska (2022); Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California (2022); The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (2020–21); Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens (2018); Koehnline Museum of Art, Oakton College, Illinois (2018); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Illinois (2014–15); Galesburg Civic Art Center, Galesburg, Illinois (2013); Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso, Indiana (2012); Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, Virginia (2011); and David Findlay Jr Gallery, New York (2011). His work is held in over 100 public collections including Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California; MFA Houston, Texas; MoMA, New York; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Hunt is the recipient of numerous awards, among which are the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1962–63); the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center (2009); the Fifth Star Award from the City of Chicago (2014); and the Legends and Legacy Award from the Art Institute of Chicago (2022).

Felipe Jácome is a photographer born in Ecuador. After finishing his studies at the London School of Economics, his work has focused on issues of human mobility and human rights. In 2010 he won the Young Reporter Competition of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Jacome’s photos have appeared in publications such as Foreign Policy 4 Magazine, The Guardian, Vice Magazine, CNN Photo Blog and the Miami Herald. Jacome’s work has also been exhibited in London, Amsterdam, Beirut, Geneva, Amsterdam, Quito, and Washington DC.

Ben La Rocco is a teacher, writer and artist. He has exhibited his sculpture and painting throughout New York City and in Europe. He is the recipient of a Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program Fellowship and the S J Wallace Truman Award for Painting at the National Academy Museum. He has published art criticism at artcritical.com, Hyperallergic and the Brooklyn Rail, where he was managing arts editor from 2006 to 2011. He lives with his family in Brooklyn where he teaches drawing at Pratt Institute.

Algernon Miller is a father of Afrofuturist art. Educated at the School of Visual Arts (1965-67) and The New School (1967-68) during America’s cultural revolution, Miller’s Downtown art world included happenings and Pop, Fluxus and Warhol films, the Beat poets and jazz. Uptown, he absorbed African drumming, African-American dance, and Afrocentric fashion. At Slug’s Saloon on East 3rd Street, Miller was among the prominent artists, musicians, writers, and celebrities who gathered on Monday nights to hear the Afrofuturist jazz of Sun Ra. Inspired by Sun Ra’s cosmic grooves, Miller evolved what he calls a “transformationist” consciousness that synthesized Past, Present, and Future. His Present embraced cutting-edge technology and spirituality, and he envisaged an alternative future that transcended the alienation of race-based identity, while remaining “hooked into” his African heritage. These defining elements of Afrofuturism continue to resonate in his work. 

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.

Born in the Bronx and raised along the New York/New Jersey border, siblings Eric and Ian Miller have had music on their mind since childhood. Having both cut their teeth as members of the New York State Student Music Association (NYSSMA), as well as participating in various musical theater performances throughout high school and college, both Eric and Ian have carried their love and passion for music into their adulthood.

Eric, now Connecticut-based, has been a cornerstone member of his local church choir for nearly a decade, as well as performing with several student and local bands throughout Connecticut. New Jersey-based Ian was previously a disc jockey and board member of his university radio station, and continued to produce music and DJ for community events in and around New York City and the tri-state area.

Passionate for both the history and innovation of music both old and new, the brothers continue to ground their compositions in their shared musical experiences as children, as well as taking from their individual experiences in an effort to create works both familiar and new.

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.

Dario Mohr is a first generation Grenadian, U.S. Citizen with West African and Italian heritage, born in 1988. Based in New York City, Mohr is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and non profit leader. He received a BFA in Painting from Buffalo State College, an MFA in Studio Art from The City College of New York and an Advanced Certificate in At Education from Queens College. His work involves the creation of “sacred spaces” referencing his heritage, and expressing commentary on the cultural zeitgeist through immersive sanctuary experiences. His practice is interdisciplinary, converging painting,sculpture, installation, digital art and film. In addition to his individual art practice, he is also the Founder and Director of AnkhLave Arts Alliance, Inc. which is a non-profit arts organization for the recognition and representation of BIPOC artists in contemporary art.

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.

Debra Swack is a digital and sound artist with degrees in art and computer science who creates transformative participatory experiences about the most important issues of our time. Her writings have been published by MIT Press, and she is included in Art and Innovation at Xerox Parc (MIT Press, 1999).

In July 2019, she was selected by the New York Academy of Science, Pratt Institute and Guerilla Science, to participate in Conveying Science Through Art Public Engagement, supported by the Sloan Foundation, Science Sandbox and the National Science Foundation, who believe that public engagement in science is critical to a well-functioning society.

Her work is a catalyst for change, innovation, and collaboration in helping to solve world problems. For example, Bloom addresses plant consciousness, The Emotions after Charles Darwin addresses universality of emotions on a neuro-biological level regardless of race, age and gender, and the consequences of CRISPR, Cloud Mapping Project addresses climate change, surveillance, artificial intelligence, and Animal Patterning Project addresses climate change, genetics, environmental displacement through urbanization, our co-existence in urban spaces, and the rise of infectious diseases such as COVID.

V Tineo (V) is a versatile and talented interdisciplinary artist hailing from New York but with ancestral ties to the Dominican Republic. Their artistic endeavors encompass a wide range of mediums, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, printmaking, and installations. Through these diverse forms of expression, V seeks to convey various ideas, touching upon themes such as home, family, body, and society. Their artwork acts as a language, communicating powerful narratives that emphasize the significance of these concepts. V’s recent exhibitions have brought their work to the attention of a broader audience. Some noteworthy exhibitions include “Stand Up” at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, MN, “Hope/Revolution” at Stay Home Gallery in Paris, TN, “Your Flowers Are So Lovely They Have Made Me Well Again” at STAR – Storefront Arts Recovery, a project of Tribeca Film Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and participation in the “Black Arts Matters Festival” 6 at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, MA. Additionally, she was a shortlist finalist for the Community Mural Project, organized by NYC Health + Hospitals’ Communities. In 2021 and 2019, V released “French Windows,” a limited edition silk screen print, and “Art Totes” for Les Amis de ART YARD in Norwalk, CT. Notably, in 2020, V served as the Senior Curator for “In Reflection” at Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn, NY. V is also actively involved in the artistic community as an ART YARD Teaching Artist and Video Program Manager. She is a member of the Manhattan Graphics Center and Figureworks Drawing Group, affiliations that further enrich their artistic journey. V’s academic background includes a BFA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, which has undoubtedly influenced their artistic vision and creativity. As a testament to their cultural fluency, she is proficient in both Spanish and English. Furthermore, V is currently pursuing a master’s degree in fine art at Queen College, reflecting their commitment to continuous growth and development as an artist. In summary, V Tineo (V) is a gifted artist whose work explores diverse themes and challenges viewers’ perspectives. Through their artistic language, she narrates stories that demand to be heard, fostering an expanded and enriched experience for those who engage with their creations.

Cody Umans (b. New York, NY) is currently based in Queens, NY. He has exhibited his work with the support of residencies, grants, collaborations with artists, and via community spaces like parks and gardens. Cody’s pursuit is to share his art in “unconventional spaces” and invite the public to share the experience of the creative process. Out of the incontrollable dynamic between art, the environment, and community, a deeper understanding of trust can be experienced. A significant part of his life and art practice is centered around building community, and being an ally to direct action communities. Cody’s practice is supported by working for art and artisan organizations in his community as a carpenter, metalworker, and general contractor. He has been hired to paint custom signs and murals as well.

Heather Williams was born in St. Croix US Virgin Islands and raised in Brooklyn , NY. She was always interested in becoming an artist but her parents who were first generation from Trinidad and Grenada encouraged her to find a job. She followed their advice and studied finance in undergrad but ultimately changed careers to become an Art Therapist. She worked with the domestic violence population for over ten years providing group and individual therapy. Later, she became a mother and a certified Montessori Primary teacher. After several years of teaching she resigned and returned to grad school, this time to fulfill her dream of focusing on her art. Heather earned a Masters in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. She has been awarded the Paula Rhodes memorial award for exceptional achievement in MFA Art Practice. Her short film, Safe Passage was awarded honorable mention at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. She has also been awarded residencies at Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation (ESKFF) at Mana Contemporary, 7 ArtCrawl Harlem at Governors Island, NY and a Sustainable Arts Fellowship at Gallery Aferro, NJ. She currently works out of her studio in Newark, NJ. She has exhibited in many group exhibitions including Rise at Heath Gallery in NY, and solo shows Damage and Repair at Akwaaba Gallery in Newark, NJ and Protective Spirits at The Bridge Art Gallery, NJ. Her sculptures and abstract paintings are in many collections which include The Colored Girls Museum, PA and work commissioned by The Newark Museum.

Jaleeca R. Yancy (b.1990) is a zealous, multi-disciplinary artist developing a visual abstract language rooted in experimentation, imagination, and sustainability practices. From Memphis, Tennessee, she currently lives and works in New York. Throughout her body of work, Yancy explores identity, culture, mythology, and layers these themes with references to literature, music, nature, and spirituality. She is innovative and unafraid to challenge tradition by utilizing various mediums and materials to depict diasporic radical imagination. Currently, Yancy is developing art that explores sustainable materials and design processes using natural pigments and botanical dyes. She has been experimenting with textiles and works on paper to depict leisure, movement, and freedom. Her goal is to link ancestral and modern art to showcase work that is rich in color, form, and texture. 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. 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, 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. Most recently she completed Ma’s House art studio residency based on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton, New York. 8