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Cheryl Gross
Medium; Abstractgraphic-narrativeism, Ballpoint, India ink, water based mixed media on paper
Born in Brooklyn, NY
Currently in Jersey City, NJ
Professor at Pratt Institute, writer, illustrator, painter and motion artist.
Artem Mirolevich
Artem Mirolevich was born in 1976, in the city of Minsk, Belarus. At the age of 17, Artem and his family moved to the States. Soon after his arrival, Mirolevich enrolled in the School of Visual Art, in New York City, and was granted a full scholarship from the Department of Illustration. One of Artem’s greatest inspirations during his four years as studies was a semester spent in Amsterdam at the Rietvield Academy of Art. City’s cultural and architectural landscape inspired Mirolevich to produce many works of art, including images of a post-apocalyptic city submerged deep under water. Artem returned to New York to complete his studies, and graduated in 1999 with a bachelor’s in Fine Art and Illustration. Invigorated by his experience abroad, he was drawn to the idea of exploring other countries of the world. Mirolevich has had over 100 exhibitions in galleries, museum and art fairs around the world in U.S.A, Europe, Russia and Asia including the New Museum, Neuberger Museum of Art, Chelsea Art Museum, The Museum of Russian Art. Mirolevich is the founder and curator of the Russian Pavilion which showcases emerging and established artists from Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Baltic regions during leading international art fairs. Artem is a recipient of numerous art grants and awards including the National Endowment for the Arts Grant, New York State Council on the Arts Grant, Illustrator of the Future Award.
Mirolevich is trained as an illustrator, and his high skill for extreme detail is present in all his works, whether etchings or oils on canvas. Each work is a tale of its own, a surrealist tale of otherworldly places, people, unusual compositions, where the artist’s imagination is completely set free. Directly drawing inspiration from Piranesi to Dali to the Manga comic tradition, Mirolevich’s work is a portal to the bizarre, meta-civilization, where doom and hope co-exist. The artist is not afraid to make political statements on global governance, war and conflict or decadence, thus offering more layers that the eye can examine in his very richly worked compositions.
Artem Mirolevich, through his in uniquely creative vision and a superb technical skill, is taking us all around our world and beyond, bridging our past with our future in all its terror and glory, revealing the superhuman in us all.
Loren Abbate
Loren Abbate is a mixed media artist based in the greater New York City area.
Loren is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts and attended Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy. She has had a lengthy career teaching fine art in secondary schools and colleges nationwide. She has been awarded multiple scholarships to attend residencies at ESKFF Mana Contemporary (New Jersey), The Newark Printshop (New Jersey), Art Center/South Florida (Miami), Art Print International (Spain), DEDALO Art Center in (Italy) and Anderson Ranch Art Center (Colorado).
Loren has exhibited in numerous commercial galleries, art fairs and institutions including Christie’s (New York), Dairy Arts Center (Colorado), SCOPE Art Fair (Miami) and The Vernissage Art Basel Miami Beach 2016.
Loren seeks to make work that contributes to a larger conversation about human consciousness. She interprets the universal human experience, imagination and inspiration of spiritual awakening and make connections across cultures and time.
She currently lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Gordon Kindlon
Gordon Kindlon has worn a few hats, and one hairnet, before arriving in ESKFF’s studios at MANA. Trained in the visual arts at University of Illinois, his earlier careers ranged from industrial design sculptor in the burgeoning tech world of 1990’s San Francisco, to international aid and United Nations worker in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. Gordon began unfolding his aesthetic in NYC with the one-of-a-kind vegan cafe, Urban Spring, a Brooklyn favorite from 2006 - 2009. A true gem, crafted from the neo-gothic remains of NYC’s Peace Church, Urban Spring was a oasis of kindness and health for a few sweet years in Fort Greene forever ago. Things turned, as they often do, upon the birth of his bright child, Sky. Mr. Kindlon shuttered Urban Spring and ventured alone on UN contract to Sudan, “saving the world 7,000 miles from home,” in exchange for stacks of money that evaporated nearly as fast as they showed up. That final assignment was the beginning of the end, and before long, after returning to New York to fall flat on his career and family face, broke down, broken up and reeling, Kindlon found himself pitching blenders in a hairnet at Costco. Granted it wasn’t any blender, it was the one-and-only-stainless-steel-life-support-system-with-a seven-year-warranty-and-a-twenty-year-life-from-Cleveland, Ohio, known and revered by millions of kitchen cognoscenti as -- the Vitamix. And Kindlon, to his credit, was no ordinary blender busker. The dapper matter-of-fact polyglot could spot a Rafiq-jan from Afghanistan, or an Albanian, from across the polished floor in any of those big box stores, from Maui to Long Island. This knack led to a short-lived stint as a talk show host, and begat the unfolding of his streetart, poetic, moonlit magnum opus, UNLOK. The UNLOK symbol was Gordon’s eureka moment of self expression, that would tie together his artistic urge, cultural experience, and incisive editorial expertise into one simple, infinitely powerful signpost and mirror for all of us, in the midst of the great challenges of this time. In 2016, giant UNLOKS were spotted on scores of Brooklyn and Manhattan water towers, thrown up in solidarity with water protectors displaying themselves across the land. #UNLOK4PREZ was a noble if doomed hashtag, and UNLOK 2016 bumperstickers and wheatpaste posters went up all along the streetart whistlestop presidential tour, from NYC-DC-PHILA-SAV-CHAS-MIA-NOLA. Despite the boldness of the actions and statement, UNLOK the street artist skated clean, until he got caught with a 3 inch UNLOK rubber stamp, and literally, “Got Busted For Rubber Stamping.” (The poem wrote itself; you can read it on the www.unlok.space website.) Those arrests helped to clarify and refine the UNLOK vision, and accordingly, the artist has deepened his ties to the permaculture and indigenous prayer community as a positive way forward through times deceit, upheaval, and great beauty. Gordon will pursue these themes in poetic and inspired art pieces during these three months at ESKFF/MANA.
Eileen Ferara
Eileen Ferara is a visual artist who incorporates a variety of media in her work, including printmaking, book arts, drawing, and paper making. She has exhibited her work in numerous venues in the US and Europe. Recent projects include Radunarsi, a two person exhibit at Casa Colombo in Jersey City and 'Freed Formats: the book reconsidered' a 2019 traveling exhibit curated by Chris Perry and Alice Walsh. Awards include a 2017 Puffin Foundation grant for her 'invasion' print project on trapa Natans L. an invasive water plant. Her work is in the collection of the William Paterson University Galleries, The King St Stephens Museum of Hungary, and various private collections.
Born in NYC, Ferara has an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She currently lives and works in Jersey City.