Originally form Gorky, Russia, Maria's education is varied: from training in classical drawing, to mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago, to an old-master-style painting apprenticeship in Europe, Maria takes an angle of her own to comment on the human condition. Her figurative images aim to reactivate the spirit of our collective unconscious... All in the hope of conquering what Sontag calls the "relentless melt of time." 

"I want to stop time for people--to let them bask in the eternity of the present moment, and to celebrate it. Painting can be a timeless story, spatially wrapped into a single moment. In my eyes, it's about looking at the vastness of our life slowly and deeply, and connecting to our ecstatic and tragic shared experience-- to our collective human journey." 

Born in Pasadena, California to Armenian parents of Middle Eastern descent, traditions of craftsmanship were a birthright. My work is created in homage to a maternal legacy as a motherless daughter. My mother, Anahid, and paternal Grandmother Baydzar, and I shared love of craft. A couture dressmaker in Lebanon, Anahid drew designs, and impeccably created patterns and garments, adhering to traditions of couture dressmaking. Baydzar, a widow Aleppo, Syria, with 5 children, supported them with her craft of making extraordinary crocheted lace as a masterful artisan. These women’s’ influence through their love of their respective crafts’ is an eternal source of inspiration. Narrative elements of form and content throughout my artistic oeuvre expose these and other issues of maternity with irony with whimsy, also referencing fashion and surrealism of the mid 20th century.

I received my BFA from California College of the Arts (with high distinction, 1995), and an MFA from Pratt Institute (1998). My work has been exhibited bi-coastally and abroad, and included in private collections. Residency awards include LMCC’s World Views Residency Program (1999/2000) and the Bronx Museum of the Arts Artist in the Marketplace Program (2000). As a recipient for the Artslink grant, I was in a residency in Yerevan, Armenia (2001), and additionally participated in exhibitions there in 2000 and 2002. I received an emergency grant from New York Foundation for the Arts (2012) after Hurricane Sandy floodwater decimated my studio and art in W. Chelsea. Currently, I am participating artist in the Eileen S Kaminsky Foundation in Jersey City through November 24, 2014.

Ekaterina has started her art education in a Russian art school in Siberia, and has developed her style at the Art Students League of New York after moving to the US. Mainly a large scale watercolorist, Ekaterina’s main interest is an exploration of the cosmos, it’s influence on human beings and vise versa how human influence on the cosmos around us. She says, “Living on the planet Earth, taking our place on it, being occupied with our daily routine is our destiny as human beings. Each of us is just a little part of the Universe, so versatile and limitless. I would like to understand our place in it, our triviality in the universal and our significance in the planetary scale.”

During the ESKFF studio residency program Ekaterina is working on a set of large paintings that implement interactive electronics. By using various sensors and programming the behavior of an illumination of the artworks, Ekaterina wants to express the idea that everything is in human hands, and we can influence the environment in a better way. By activating the art pieces through your motion or sound while approaching the piece you will in a way influence on the environment created by the artist.

Ekaterina’s future goals include collaborations with scientists, musicians and engineers.

Uri Dotan, a multimedia artist, received his MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He lives and works in Tel Aviv and New York. Uri Dotan explores and works with many different media of art, such as photography, digital prints, paintings, and videos (2D and 3D). 

His solo exhibitions include Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat-Gan, Permanent Video Sculpture Cinematheque Tel-Aviv, Shay Arye Gallery, Tel-Aviv, Paul Rodgers/9W Gallery New York. Group shows Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, Tel-Aviv, The Museum of The Future. Linz, Austria.

Uri Dotan’s work explores themes such as human identity, public and private spaces, and both natural and urban landscapes.

Angela Gram is a painter, writer, and educator living and working in New Jersey.  She received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art and her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design.  Angela has been accepted as an artist in residence by the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny France and by the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation at Mana Contemporary in NJ.  Her work has been shown at Forbes Gallery, Mark Miller gallery, Sotheby’s, Sloan Fine Art, Art Southhampton, the University of Miami, and other venues throughout the east coast.  Her work exists in many private collections and has recently been published by Rizzoli press in “The Figure: Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture” a book showcasing figurative art by established and emerging artists.

Amy Myers received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois 1999 and BFA in Painting in Drawing from The Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri 1995.
She states that ‘the perspective of particle physics is one of a universe without “stuff”. All particles exist with the potential to combine with and become different particles. They are intermediate states in a network of interactions and are based upon events, not things.’
Some of her most recent awards include The American Academy in Rome, Visiting Artist, Italy, November – July 2004. The Dora Maar House, Visiting Artist, Menerbes, France, and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, NY, in 2005. And the 2008 ARTwall, mural reproduction, in Kansas City, MO.


Catherine Haggarty, b. 1984 received her M.F.A from Mason Gross School of Art, Rutgers University in 2011.
Catherine has shown at Opera Gallery, The Bowery Gallery, White Box, & A.I.R Gallery in New York City as well as Bridget Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia.

Haggarty has been an Artist in Residence at both Vermont Studio Center and currently with the E.S.K.F.F at Mana Contemporary.  Most recently Catherine was published in the Winter Edition, Volume 24 of Studio Visit Magazine.

Catherine has held teaching positions at Rutgers University, Philadelphia Mural Arts, Princeton Day School and West Orange Public Schools.

Michelle Doll’s paintings capture quiet, intimate moments hinged on personal connections between her subjects, as well as their interactions with the world around them. Doll’s recent works are imbued with femininity and introspection, and explore the themes of love, desire and connection. She earned her BFA from Kent State University and MFA from New York Academy of Art where she graduated Cum Laude on both. Her work has been exhibited and featured worldwide at galleries from New York to St. Barth’s to San Francisco to Basel and London. She currently lives and works in Hoboken, NJ.

Flesh on flesh… fabric on flesh… our body’s connection with nature… our private contact with moments of time and objects of space… these are the tactile experiences of my artwork. Centered on the human figure, I attempt to portray the unspoken, soundless and intimate nature of a soul’s connection to the material world. I am interested in moments of interconnection that contain meaning beyond the setting, and explore the intimate energy that either exists, or is immensely desired, if it does not exist.

The power of love and desire for connection can be found in a simple touch, a fragile unity, or a fleeting moment. Hidden portions of contact hold meaning… the creases, crevices, overlaps, and folds. My intent is to find inspiration and appreciation in seemingly banal, quiet moments and render them monumental.

Through my paintings, I wish to preserve and record the interconnections in my own life, and my personal touch on the world around me. I create the work as meditations for others, who have experienced and desired intimacy in subtle ways, and like me, possibly searched for a further understanding of unity, beauty and love.

Young New York artist Jehdy Vargas creates a unique way of linking the past with the present even as it is being experienced in her head. This process allows her to relieve the moment in a purging process of transformation. Sometimes acting as a therapeutic process. Past and present meet everywhere in a person’s mind most notably geographically and more importantly emotionally. Both are equally appropriate beginnings for Jehdy’s body of work.

Jehdy has always taken a journalistic approach to her work. Her process is composed of shooting, printing, pasting, painting, scanning, paining and repeating until the primary mechanic image is lost. Sometimes, replacing the traditional canvas, there is a necessity to incorporate found objects to carry the picture. Through this process she examines and re-creates past and present. Using photography as an object to create art that exemplifies transfiguration. Past and present experiences take on a new physical form.

Jehdy recently completed a 5 month residency at Mana Contemporary Art center provided through Martin and Lorraine Kaminsky studio program. She has participated in many group shows including: ESKFF 2x2 Exhibition at Mana Contemporary, ESKFF Paddel 8 auction exhibited at Mana Contemporary, booth exhibition at Made In America’s Artist and Culture Village in Philadelphia, The All Female Last Brucennial’s exhibited through Bruce High Quality and Vito Schnabel in New York City, Brooklyn Museum’s Go Open Studios, and Sound of Art Group show at Heath Gallery in Harlem.

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Born in 1959 in Paris France. Received formal training in oil painting, woodcuts, serigraph, and pottery in grade school at Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge Massachusetts. One year as a BFA major at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst with a focus on Art History and Sculpture. He went on to a part-time career in music while mastering trades such as commercial screen-printing and carpentry. After 27 years stopped performing as a musician and redirected full attention to visual arts.  Worked as an art handler since 2007 and phased out carpentry.  Throughout the late 1970s until present there has been a constant production of the artwork and a development of ideas through various mediums. Currently working as an art handler at MANA CONTEMPORARY.

One's choices in life oftentimes are limited by individual circumstances and abilities. One's mind however is limitless and full of vast potentials. Life is dreamlike: an illusion. The human condition at the relative level is full of absurdities and contradictions. This is enough to sustain an artist's career. Focus on the way things are. Apply emotions. Find what has meaning. Find a source of ideas that have meaning to you. Seek things that give one inspiration. Make things. Share. After actively following this for some time the ideas flow and the work seems to produce itself. Yes.

Eve K Tremblay grew up between Val-David and Montreal. After studies in French Literature at the University of Montreal she attended the The Neighborhood Playhouse School of The Theater in New York from 1994 to 1995. She holds a BFA with a major in photography from Concordia University in Montreal (2000). She also lived in Berlin and New York and attended long term artist residencies in Basel (iaab), Strasbourg (CEAAC) et New York (RU). In her work, the thematic of awareness is approached from a poetic point of view, inspired by literature, cinema, science, serendipity and a love for small things. The majority of her works are photographic but other ones explore videos, performances, texts, books, and mixed medias. Her works have been exhibited and published internationally.  Among others, she was awarded with many grants from the Grand Conseil des Arts du Canada and  the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec. She is currently doing an artist residency with grant from the Eileen S. Kaminsky Familly Foundation, at Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ (15.2-30.6)

She is consultant for the exhibition center Occurrence in Montreal, Qc as well as for the new artist residency (Re)-Create au lac Hayden in Idaho

Cecilia Collantes (Lima, 1982) is a multidisciplinary artist.

Her work focuses in reflecting the portrait of today's individual, wondering about the impact of heritage and ancient cultures in todays society. 

Thus, she observes and portrays individuals of the metropolis, like New York or Bangkok, while imagining the life of ancient peoples, searching for an essence outside of time, and the pursuit to balance the spiritual and the physical realms.

Her performance work often refers to ceremonial practices linked to memories of her home country in Perú, archaeology, ambivalence, assumption and reinterpretation of evidences of the past for the reconstruction history.

She received her training in Fine Arts and Contemporary Dance in Peru, Germany and Indonesia, at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin and the Traditional Arts Institute of Surakarta in Indonesia. 

Her painting and performance work has been shown in Cecilia Gonzales Gallery in Lima, Biasa Art Space in Jakarta, The Tempelhof Theater Festival in Berlin, the Hagen Museum in Germany, among others. 

She has been awarded residencies including the Eileen Kaminsky Residency Program at Mana Contemporary in the United States, Residencias Artísticas por Intercambio in Mexico, the Thaillywood Artist Residency in Thailand, as well as the Darmasiwa Scholarship in Indonesia.

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Japanese artist KAORUKO draws upon both the rich cultural history of her homeland as well as her experiences as a former Japanese pop star to create her large-scale, graphically illustrated paintings, which depict women in their private domestic spaces. Her highly codified motifs sourced from traditional woodblock prints and textiles are juxtaposed with figures defiant against the contemporary Japanese construct of kawaii, which values the feminine in terms of ‘cuteness’ and ‘adorability.’ Using acrylic paint, gold leaf, traditional sumi calligraphy techniques and silkscreened kimono patterns on canvas, she explores the complexity of the modern Japanese woman in terms of her relationship with herself and Japanese tradition.

Sarah G. Sharp is an artist and curator whose interests include alternative social histories, language, place, technology and craft. She is the recipient of a Getty Library Research Grant, a BRIC Arts Media Fellowship and residency awards at Cortijada Los Gázquez in Almeria, Spain, The Vermont Studio Center and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. Her exhibitions include The Aldrich Museum, CT, The Hampden Gallery at UMass Amherst, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, Stephan Stoyanov Gallery and Radiator Arts, NY. Sarah holds an MFA and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism and Theory from Purchase College, SUNY. Sarah is the co-founder of Cohort artist’s collective and faculty in the Art Practice MFA Program at School of Visual Arts in New York. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. 

Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Robert is a multidisciplinary artist and art handler in the NY metropolitan area.  His art explores the personal narrative, using art as a mechanism to express or give voice to the human condition.  He views art-making as a holistic process and vehicle to heal the self.  Found objects, trash, and locally gathered detritus are the muse for sculpture, photography, and installation work. The artist has exhibited his work in many solo, group, and site-specific projects.  He graduated from New Jersey City University with a BFA in sculpture (2012).  This past year he was commissioned by the Atlantic City Alliance, and Fung Collaboratives for his first public art project, Refuge Nest Colony, for the Atlantic sculpture park in Atlantic City, NJ.