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 visual arts and creative inspiration in schools and organizations across the globe. Loren has been the recipient of numerous grants and residencies including the Art Center/South Florida (Miami), Anderson Ranch Art Center (Aspen) and this will be her second term with ESKFF at Mana Contemporary (Jersey City). She has also been an artist-in-residence at Art Print International (Spain) and DEDALO Art Center (Italy). Her work has been exhibited in numerous commercial galleries, institutions, collections and art fairs including Christie's (NYC), Dairy Art Center (Colorado), Museo Afroamericano (Venezuela) & Art Basel (Miami Beach). 

Loren has a wild and beautiful imagination that she intends to capture in this next series of paintings entitled 'Metamorphic'.  This series will be researching gems, minerals and crystals to propose sacred, mystical and architectural dwelling spaces.  Loren will be using wide color spectrum and visionary inspirations that invite viewers to consider new ways of congregating in places like temples, churches, synagogues, museums, schools and homes. Loren is hopeful to develop the visual and verbal language for a cultural transformation toward equity, beauty and collective appreciation for everybody.

Suzanne Unrein grew up among swamps, alligators, mossy oaks and hundreds of varieties of birds in the coastal towns of Florida.  Her travels and encounters with animals in Mexico, South Africa, Borneo and Bali have contributed to her vibrant worlds where the animality of humans plays within a world of beasts.  A California native and a current New Yorker, her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S, with solo shows at Rare Gallery in NYC, and Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, and the Hamptons.  Her work was recently spotlighted in The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization (Oxford University Press) and the focus of the short film, Hands & Eyes, that premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival.  She’s the art editor for Figure/Ground magazine and a contributing writer to Delicious Line.  Her first curatorial project, Afflatus, was exhibited in May at the 5-50 Gallery in Long Island City, with co-curator Amy Hill.  Unrein has had past residencies at the Studio Program at P.S. 122 in the East Village, the Jentel Foundation in Banner, WY, and the Can Serrat residency in Le Bruc, Barcelona, Spain.

I have always been interested in people and their stories. As a kid, I would sit in my aunt’s and godmother’s kitchen, respectively, and listen to their stories. The stories were about them and other people, but far from being gossip oriented; they were focused on life experiences and lessons on how to approach life from a kinder perspective.

Those conversations left a seed in me, and I watched it grew through the years and realized how easy it was for me to connect to people emotionally. I had learned to welcome people and their stories. At some point, I considered studying psychology, convinced it was the best way to put this trait to good use, but I turned to painting instead.

Through painting, I am able to connect not only with other people’s stories but also with my own. No painting reveals a specific story, but instead, they are the sum of many stories. My subject matter tends to be broad, and inclusive for this reason. I don’t wish to paint solely about one story or focus on one sentiment. The human experience is a combination of emotions that rise and subside. Therefore, my work can be a mix of heartbreak, love, death, friendship, lust, kindness, sexuality, spirituality among other things, things that as human beings we can relate to.

As an artist, I am intrigued by how we negotiate these aspects of our lives and how we navigate life itself in different times and spaces, always striving to make the best of our lives.

Bryant Small is an Award Winning artist who lives in Jersey City, NJ and balances a social marketing and media career in New York City. Bryant has a love of culture, color and all things sparkling. In his art, he loves to toe the line of free abstraction with vibrant color blending and pushing beyond pretty. His Alcohol Ink pieces are free flowing, unpredictable and levitate from the page. Recognized as a Conception Arts, Global Art Collective 2017 Award For Excellence Winner, and selected as one of International Art Market Magazine’s Gold List of Top Emerging Contemporary Artists, Bryant has shown his work in several collective and individual shows throughout the United States and has pieces that are part of Private Collections around the Globe. He lives by the words: “Broken Crayons Still Color... and a little glitter and sparkle NEVER hurt anybody!” Bryant is constantly creating and being inspired and sharing his work daily on Instagram-@BFLY777.

My Art speaks of the devotion of our ancestors towards the four spirits of our life, honoring the memory of our water, the story of the wind, the sacred land that gave us the body we have, the origin of our nature and the sacred duality of existence. It speaks about sacred moments of ceremonies, about offerings to our ancestors, it speaks to the most ancient spirit that paints everything with light, to the sacred fire of all generations. 
My painting expresses the nature of our origin, the cosmos of the Amerindian cultures, the myths and sacred ceremonials from the kichwa tribes in Ecuador, the legacy of the sacred analogical language, the invisible worlds printed in all of our experiences and visions with our master plants. 
Feathers and other elaborated ornaments are incorporated in some of the Medicinal Art, contrasting with acrylic techniques and deepening in the Ritual and Sacred intimate relation of the family who asked for the painting. Ceremonial songs are also vital part of each vision, of each story of creation, and they are shared with the community as part of the healings within the artwork. 

I live and paint guided by the indigenous cosmology "Suinak Kawsay", which means Live Well" or 'live in Plenitude" This is the Art of living that my ancestors inherited, the knowledge of understanding the balance of our nature, to first learn how to live to then create community; to cultivate our spirit and visions to then express our heart with knowledge and truth to our families and relations. 

Gregg Rosen is an artist who grew up in Hauppauge, NY. He attended the S.U.N.Y Farmindale and the School of Visual Arts. Mr. Rosen is an artist who works in both the abstract and realist/expressionistic styles. He currently has two series that he works on: an abstract one entitled, "Structural Landscape" and "The Diner of Lost Souls."

 Mr. Rosen had a solo show at ShuaSpace in Jersey City and most recently won the People's Choice Award from the 440 Gallery in Brooklyn,NY for their 15th annual small works exhibit. 

From conductor to a creator, Anthony Boone is a multimedia artist based in and native to Jersey City. Boone is known for using unique and unifying materials that create an otherworldly visual experience. Some of Boone’s many mediums include wood, dirt, oil paints, pawprints and whatever feels right at the moment. Boone uses emotion to dominate his canvas and goes beyond the stars as the mixture settles to create a foreign textured terrain that radiates vibrancy and detail, and in turn, brings the canvas to life as if looking at a magnified mystical organism. Evolving past the boundaries of a frame Boone has expanded his work creating sculptures, and fashion. During the years of observing and absorbing the textured scenery of his surroundings as a conductor, it has greatly influenced Boone’s approach to creating art. Taking distorted and reusable pieces of the railroad and turning them into almost unrecognizable sculptures. Drawing inspiration from his family Anthony is no stranger to a brush, as he often helped his father contracting business on various jobs, and was always keen on his mother’s seamstress creations. Cultivating artists and entrepreneurs from all over the community to make art and artists more accessible to the community. Boone’s most recent solo exhibition, “The art of movement” at Base Gym, in downtown Jersey City, featured entrepreneurs from all over the community woven together to bring an experience curated for the community by the community. The event combined sight, sound, smell, and touch for and all around stimulating experience. Boone says, “I want to use my platform to help other entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. I believe art is for everyone,” Boone’s vision for the future is to have Boonartlife Co. become a global lifestyle intended for all walks of life.

Dylan Thomas Coppola is an emerging artist born in Queens, New York, and now lives and works in Wantagh, New York. Coppola attended Nassau Community College in 2014 studying Fine Art, before transferring in 2016 to Adelphi University, where they completed a BFA. Their experimental work has been shown at Adelphi University in the Kappa Pi Art Honors show in April 2019, the BFA Senior Thesis Show in May 2019, as well as at the Walt Whitman Birthplace for the Bicentennial celebration in June of 2019.  They are currently taking part in the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation’s Fall artist residency at the Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey. This is the second residency Coppola has attended, after completing a two-week residency with Art & Soul in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico in August of the same year.

My work talks about the function of art in the contemporary society, often with critics and sarcasm towards arts.

My expressionist painting formation developed in Barcelona, where I was part of local art collectives.

After my experience in Europe, I became part of Nennacanale art collective based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

The line of work created during that time was focused in art and psychiatry, having a residency at the Borda psychiatric hospital in Buenos Ai.

In 2009 I moved to Lima, Peru, where I founded Zona 30, a residency program space in the historical center of Lima. In 4 years of work, over 50 foreign artists took part of the residency and more than 200 local artists displayed their work.

In 2011 I founded Terror Gallery, an art space dedicated to show experimental art proposal in the local scene.

In 2016 I was invited to hava a residency at ESKFF at Mana Contemporary.

During this time I created ´mutando´  a large scale mixed media piece.

2017-2018 I showed mutando in 8 cities across the Americas and Europe.

2019 I moved to Montevideo Uruguay where I founded Hiperespacio, a Co-Gallery and residency space.

Diane Davis was born in rural midwest, Illinois. She relocated with her family to New York as a child. She’s basically self taught although, she has taken courses at various institutions, including the Art Student’s League. Diane began her career as a portrait artist and now enjoys creating through abstract expressionism. Her inspiration comes from Nature’s amazing composition, it’s natural flow systems, it’s dance. She likes to call it Nature’s Math. Diane loves exploring and working in multiple mediums including glass sculpture. Diane is a current resident at the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation; her other residencies includes two through chashama and Ora Lerman Charitable Foundation; Diane was honored by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 1998 as one of “Black New York Artist Of The 20th Century”; her work is in the collection of Mocada Museum, Bklyn, NY. Though the Schomburg and other resources her work has been published in multiple books and other media forms. Diane received a scholarship with The Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and she served as a member on the Governors Board of Directors; she also received a scholarship to the Bead Project in Brooklyn, NY where she learned to sculpt with glass; Diane was a feature artist in the documentary film “Nine by Five” a production of Skyfilms, Director Harlan Whatley.

My name is Danilo Peguero. I was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and made myself an American citizen in 1996. I studied artistic drawing in the National School of Fine Arts in the palace of theMaximo Gomez Ave. with teachers as Painter Gilberto Hernandez Ortega, Manuel Quiroz and the Spaniard Pedro Villenas. After the death of the dictator General Trujillo, I made political cartoons in several magazines and newspapers. I was a sports cartoonist for the newspaper El Caribe for 10 years. I worked as a cartoonist and illustrator in several advertising agencies in Santo Domingo and New York. I worked for the Reuben H. Donnelley company that produced and marketed the New York Yellow Pages. I worked for the General Telephone and Electronics, GTE Páginas Amarillas, in Santo Domingo where I escalated to the position of Production Manager. I have participated in many collective art shows and five solo shows in New York and Santo Domingo. I know very well the concepts of a good portrait and the "Theory of color".

Bea Sarrias (Barcelona, 1978), an artist from the University of Barcelona, has carried out her pictorial artwork in this city, in which she has found the topics and places that have given birth to the most significant lines of her artistic work.

Her whole artwork has been developed through painting, specifically by means of a realistic technique that finds its main references in the American realism of the 20th century; from where she takes interest on the modernity of conceptual terms and pays close attention to the careful handling of perspective, light, color and a clean brushwork regarding formal terms. This is clearly appreciated in her artwork, inspired in the work of architects as Coderch, Saenz de Oiza, Fisac or Richard Neutra.

The artist paints “portraits of the houses”. She tends to represent the interior parts of the house seen as inhabited locations, despite the complete lack of human figures. This allows you to glimpse the intention of bringing the living subjects that have created a memory of the place through the objects that compose the scenes.

A recent Project of Bea’s, “ INSIDE” for the new NATO  headquarter in Brussels. She painted about a week, a portrait about the new headquarter inside itself.

Bea Sarrias has participated in different collective and individual art exhibitions in her native town and Madrid, where the critics and the local media have received her artwork with meaningful acceptance, emphasizing in her conscious and fine use of light and shadows.  She has also exhibited in different European cities as Berlin, Oslo and Brussels.

Dag Knudsen became a professional photographer after assisting the late Alberto Serejo at the turn of the century. Specializing in technical lighting and working with editorials, catalogues and portraits, Knudsen has worked with a variety of clients and projects across the globe. His career has featured advertising campaigns, fashion editorials, portraiture and exhibitions in several countries.

Since 2010 Dag Knudsen has been published in Copenhagen, Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Miami, San Fransisco and New York.

Thomas Nesland Olsen (f. 1977) works with the figurative painting where he combines classical techniques, photorealism, abstraction and drawing.In his motifs you often find everyday objects that at first glance are perceived harmonically – almost naively harmonically – but in this harmony there is often something more subtle, and the possibilities for interpretation are many. The artist often expresses himself through the still life, portrait and landscape where he places the old genres into the present. Nesland Olsen is Norwegian/American. He is classically schooled and the mixture of the technically accurate and motifs associated with our own time makes his art different and very interesting. His latest series of contemporary portraits shows how skilled he is in the tradition oil painting.

Arne Spangereid (b.1981) is known for his cityscapes, and enjoys exploring the effects of combining abstraction and realism. He combines classical techniques with unconventional tools, and his paintings often invite the viewer to fill in parts of the visual story themselves.

Arne comes from Spangereid in Norway, and has studied art with various teachers in Malta, USA and Norway, such as Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia where he studied contemporary realism from 2008-2009. In 2005 he was invited to paint prime minister Alfred Sant live on TV, and also received a commission from Malta International Airport.

His paintings have been exhibited in several galleries in USA and Norway. Arne lives and works in Kristiansand, Norway, and is represented by Galleri Ramfjord in Oslo, Norway

Inspiration from experiences and impressions from my surroundings is fundamental when starting my intuitive work.

My process is a chase for the unexplored; I always seek to discover something new and exciting. The tangible and figurative is not important to me.

Depth and good atmospheres for colour and light is something I work to achieve. I always strive to find the intersection where the light and fragile meets strength and power. I want the elements to unite and communicate, creating tension without bursting.

I do not want to provide guidelines for peoples’ opinions about my paintings, but I hope I can stimulate their imagination and curiosity.

Colours, planes, movements, flows, rhythms. The sky with gauzy clouds floating past. Ripples in the water, the stream, the power. The marbling of the stone. Contrasts between the hard, cold and the beautiful, fragile. Colours in nature and its optimum palette. The organic creating wonderful compositions. Constantly something new appears for inspiration, which I bring in to my painterly world.

Kati Vilim, visual artists works with geometric abstract imagery.

Vilim holds Master of Fine Arts degrees from both the University of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary, and Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey. Her work has been shown at institutions such as Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska; Untitled Art Fair, Miami Beach, Florida; Index Art Center, Newark, New Jersey; Walsh Gallery, Rutgers University, Newark New Jersey, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey; and her work is found in numerous private and public collections.

In her practice, Vilim investigates visual form as an abstract system. Her compositions are non-referential. Working in the visual language of geometric abstraction, she draws on a variety of compositional strategies such as algorithms, geometries and structures composed of ratio and rhythm. 

She works across a range of media, including oil painting, digital animation, and multimedia installation. 

I wish not to say too many words about myself, or my work. Once you say the words you cannot take them back.

Who am I and what do I think about my art? I am a spiritual person. I have created my own Universe, a world of symbols, where the characters and divine apparitions are completed by fantastic landscapes given to me in dreams.

My paintings are mysteries to me. Sometimes, when watching them, studying the colors, looking deep, I can see the wonders appearing from the canvass – they communicate - like they were not mine! And then I cannot stop watching.

My works have to be admired for a long time, until drained.

I have days when I do nothing but stay in my workshop looking at the paintings. It is very hard for me to part from my creations, very hard indeed, but knowing that they will be loved and admired by many gives me strength to go forward.

I live color, joy, passion and a desire to remain in a creative dreaming state.

Ford Crull is an American neo-symbolist abstract artist whose works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art, Seattle Art Museum, and Dayton Arts Institute among other prestigious institutions. Ford has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, Art news, Brooklyn Rail, the Los Angeles Times, Cover magazine and the New Republic.

Crull’s solo and group exhibitions have been shown globally, for example, one of his recent works was an interdisciplinary mural painting in Shanghai, China (2010) where he painted live for the audience. He was among the artists chosen for the historic Painting Beyond the Death of Painting exhibit of American art in the USSR, curated by art historian and critic Donald Kuspit. Noted critic Eleanor Heartney has said, "The key to Crull’s vision is his simultaneous embrace of the uncertainties of the contemporary world and his affirmation of the reality of the individual consciousness within it. In his work, the authentic self remains the last bulwark against an anarchic world."

Crull continues to work on interdisciplinary projects exploring consciousness, the limits of sensory impulse, and creative improvisation by painting blind. His most recent project, Of Sight and Sound, is a collaboration with iconic avant-garde guitarist and composer, Brandon Ross.

Danielle Scott grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey. She attended and graduated from Newark’s Arts High School in 1997 . Where she received the “Congressional Art’s Award” and her first oil painting was placed in The Capital of the United States for a year. Danielle holds a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York, New York. Graduating with a triple major in Fine Arts, Art Therapy and Art Education (Honors Fine Arts). Danielle has taught Art at the Academy of the Art’s at Henry Snyder High school in Jersey City for 17 years .

Danielle is a soft -spoken artist who is starting to explore loud , noise making , thought provoking work . The work is examples of her life and passion. Her latest pieces are strong elements conveying the intense beauty and pain the artist see’s in the world around her . From her paintings , raw photography and eye catching sculptures. The work invites the viewer on a journey to explore a world the lies far from the hustle of everyday life . With influences as diverse as Gladys Barker Grauer , Ben Jones , Betty and Alison Saar and Renee Stout .

The work taps into the relationship between - politics , social justice , equality , human and women’s rights , police brutality , culture and being female , lesbian, Afro-Cuban / Polish Jew . Danielle’s new work depicts today’s culture . She creates using photo montage , found objects , old books and collage .Danielle collects objects that speak to her and how they may convey her message .

Arthur Kwon Lee is a Korean American painter best known for capturing art historical imagery through a combination of gestural mark making, expressive color harmonies and cultural mythologies across the globe. Lee has been awarded by George Washington University, the Overseas National Institute, the Korean Artist Association and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Lee's influences go across the board from his relationship to the Jung Society of Washington, social and financial investment into local religious organizations and a lifelong commitment in martial arts. Before this love of painting, Arthur Kwon was a Division One athlete placing in nationals under the USA Tae Kwon Do Federation for three consecutive years. The intensity Arthur experienced at this time of his life continues through his artwork, the scale and the diversity of dynamic brushstrokes he produces tells the story of a man who needs to use his entire body when painting. Lee's paintings are symbolically evocative whilst making oblique references to the archetypal mythos. The luminous colors, gestural expressionism and philosophical content has made his artwork a sentimentally refreshing representation of the times.

Commit to Memory: The Precipice of Extinction

Commit to Memory: The Precipice of Extinction is a social commentary addressing the shifting and eventual disappearance of our culture using animals as metaphors with overall goal being socially relevant as well as visually compelling.

Using animals on the endangered species list I will create a multi-media graphic audiovisual representation of society teetering on the verge of collapse. Artistic depictions of animal species as victims illustrate the decline of the American democratic system. Use of the word "extinction" throughout the narrative is the blueprint of this project.

Some examples of the animal species imminently in danger of extinction:

The Elephant alludes to the destruction of family and community. Scientists have long used footage of elephant rescues to measure humanities ability to feel empathy. This aspect of the project questions the impulse to kill animals that make us feel “love.”

The Penguin explores the disappearance of societal structures. With the destruction of the artic certain penguins are left with nowhere to go except man-made exploitive habitats such as Sea World. What is life when our last option resembles a prison?  

The Frog alludes to complete extinction caused by disease through globalization. The African Bullfrog was brought to the Americas for one purpose—to be living pregnancy tests for humans. These creatures, used to predict life, eventually became the destruction of an entire species of frogs as they carried a fungus eradicating the indigenous golden frog. This is reminiscent of indigenous peoples succumbing to European diseases.

Commit to Memory: The Precipice of Extinction will continue to bring political, social awareness and sustainability, by using the form of storytelling (narrative) embracing visual explanation

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. 

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.

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 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.

Ry An died once, was resuscitated, then spent the next 11 years painting hundreds of landscapes in rural parts of Japan.  Here there were: fires, earthquakes, landslides, traffic accidents, amnesia, yakuza, ...and matters far worse.  Ry An returned to the US after threats & attempts on his life were made.  He enrolled at the Graduate School of Illustration - AAAU, in order to bring a more narrative element to his art and spent the ensuing years, drawing pictures in near solitude. 

In time, he met a woman whom he fell fabulously in love with, but while Ry An was painting in his own home, she was nearly murdered in hers.  She seemed to go insane and vanished soon after.

Ryan struggled to complete any new work after that incident – associating illustrations and narrative art, circumstantially, with the: insanity, bloodshed, and the loss of a loved one he had witnessed.  After a time of producing no work at all, he learned to make paper-based sculptures, these being far enough removed from two-dimensional art to not trigger the same psychological stresses.  They began as whimsical animals, similar to characters from his earlier illustrations, but shifted to more “dangerous” things.

His current project with the ESKFF Foundation: "the Woods", is an allegorical exploration of some of these terrible experiences told through paintings and sculptures, featuring a cast of (predominantly) animal characters as they try to make their way through a dark forest: 

a small yellow cat, 

a blind horse, 

a moth with tattered wings,

a man lost amongst the trees...

Gabriel Schmitz (*1970 in Dortmund, Germany) studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art from 1990 to 1994, followed by a Master in European Fine Art in Barcelona a year later.

He is a figurative painter influenced initially by German expressionism and by British painters such as Bacon or Auerbach. His main interest is the human figure, freed from narrative and context, to be explored and shown in its dignity and psychological depth. Contemporary dance has turned over the years into one of his main obsessions, leading him to collaborate with various choreographers and working side by side with dancers.

Since the early nineties he has been showing his work on a regular basis in Europe (London, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid or Oslo), and on various occasions in the U.S., with solo shows in Philadelphia and a regular presence at SCOPE Art Fair Miami.

He has been an ESKFF resident in the past, both in Jersey City (2015) and in Miami (2016).

Cathy Condon is an artist who exhibits overseas and annually in Australia, her home country. Her paintings are bold, full of colour and reflective of her everyday life experiences and relationships, often symbolized through landscape and nature.

The result is an immersion in the dynamism of form, structure and gesture whose primary claim to authenticity is the effortless, seemingly casual sense of inevitability that greets the viewer in each of her works.

New York-based artist Chris Bors received his MFA from School of Visual Arts. He has had solo exhibitions at Art During the Occupation in New York and Randall Scott Projects in Washington, D.C. Group exhibitions include MoMA PS1, White Columns, and Tillou Fine Art in New York, Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg, Bahnwarterhaus in Esslingen, Germany, and Bongoût in Berlin. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Time Out New York, and the Brooklyn Rail and featured in Vogue Italia, K48, and zingmagazine. Awards/residencies include Guttenberg Arts, Artist in the Marketplace at the Bronx Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Counsel’s Swing Space, Artists Space’s Independent Project Grant, Aljira Emerge, and the DNA Artist Residency.

George Goodridge is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts, NY and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was awarded the position of Senior Technical Adviser to the Student Body at the School of the Art Institute and has taught Visual Techniques at the School of Visual Arts in New York. 

Best known for his three-dimensional stretched canvas works which he refers to as dimensional paintings or object paintings, the works may question diversity, visual kinetics, identities, or real world concerns. Many of his works could be thought of as somewhat figurative and nonrepresentational while blurring the lines between painting, sculpture and installation.

Currently residing in Brooklyn, his work has been represented nationally in commercial galleries, museums, corporate collections with large scale works commissioned by The Related Group, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Banyan Capital Investments, United Airlines and others.

Mai Lashauri (1986) graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 2009 before embarking on a career in arts and painting.  The young artist has been distinguished with the Outstanding Talent award at the 2015 Al Asmakh International Symposium of Art in Doha, Qatar. Her solo exhibitions have been hosted at venues including T.G. Nili Art Space gallery and TBC Gallery in Tbilisi. Lashauri’s artwork has also been featured at group displays at the Beijing International Art Biennial and MH Art Gallery in Bilbao, among other galleries. Lashauri recently exhibitied at Beijing's National Art Museum in China.
She had her first solo exhibition in Norway at Galleri Ramfjord in September 2017 with huge success. She is also participating at AQUA Art Miami with Galleri Ramfjord in December 2017.

Marit Geraldine Bostad (1976) is an abstract colourist who works and lives in Horten Vestfold County, Norway. Her studio is at an old naval base, where she finds tranquility for her art, surrounded by the natural world and historic buildings.

The artist is represented in UK / London by Flat Space Art, Daniel Raphael Gallery,The Whisper Gallery & Young Jamieson Fine Art. In New York she is represented by Madelyn Jordon Fine Art. In Scandinavia Marit Geraldine is represented by Galleri Fineart in Oslo/Norway, Vault Studios in Bergen/Norway and Lohme Art Gallery in Malmö/Sweden.

Since her debut at The Other Artfair in London in 2016, Marit Geraldine gained great attention from Saatchi Art with features and curations. At the April 2017 London TOAF edition, Chief Curator Rebecca Wilson pointed out her "4 must see artists" from 120 emerging artists. Marit Geraldine was one of them. Early in 2018 she launched a series of Limited Edition Prints presented and sold exclusively by Saatchi Art.

Through series of abstract paintings on canvas, Marit Geraldine Bostad investigates the themes that are central in her artistic research, such as memory and people. She blends her colours by pouring paint right onto the canvas and uses different tools, seldom using the paint brush. This often results in specific details created by the lightness of the tool and produces specific broad strokes. As she moves the paint around the canvas, a consistent blend starts to form. These blended gestures become auras that surround the pure colours. MaritGeraldine is pushing a Nordic Colour Tradition in a bolder and more vibrant direction, blending tone to tone pastels with sparks of fluorescent. Pulling from her past experience of studying psychology, she often elicits and manifests her own personal psychic state onto the canvas. A raw self-expression, removing the unnecessary, and evaluating every detail of her inner being. Building up and breaking down the diverse elements of her personal experiences, and bringing them together in a new dimension. 

Striving to clarify the world we share, Steffany creates work that lures the viewer into pondering their own perception of others and vice versa.  Living in politically tumultuous America, her series “Established 1776” involves the recreation of presidential portraits to shed some light on the history of immigration. Each president’s portrait is replaced with a bouquet of flowers to depict the lineage which formed the president, and therefore, influenced the path on which the country would be lead. Flowers are taken from both maternal and paternal ancestry as well as the state in which the president was born. The series begs the question: How would the history of America have been altered had the families of the most significant leaders not settled there?

Steffany received her BFA in Illustration and Arts Education certification from New Jersey City University. She has had work shown in various galleries throughout New York and New Jersey.  Steffany has presented her work at research seminars, artist talks and education conventions. Currently she teaches high school arts and provides workshops for families and those with special needs whose lives are enriched through artistic exploration. 

Seçkin Pirim was born in 1977 in Ankara, and after graduating in 1995 from the High School of Fine Arts, enrolled at the Mimar Sinan University Fine Arts University Department of Sculpture. Following his graduation in 2000, he also completed hisMaster’s degree at the same institution. As a sculptor and design artist, Seçkin Pirimhas taken part in over 50 group exhibitions, and has held 11 solo exhibitions -9 in Turkey, and 2 abroad. Pirim has won many awards in the fields of sculpture and design, and his works are included in many private and museum collections both in Turkey and abroad. He continues to work at his studio in Istanbul.

Seçkin Pirim’s works are composed of endless layers, follow a minimal language andreveal variations on geometrical forms. The artist impressively transmits the nature of his sculptures into the medium of paper. Although such works are often two- dimensional, Pirim cuts out his works from a three-dimensional block of paper. The viewer sees what has been removed, or the negative form of the idea of the artist. Although references to nature and industry still appear, his work today is more abstract and self-referential. The works no longer represent anything, and appear to be tracing an inner motivation, and this leads to an absolute, abstract visual expression. The formal character of his work could be described both as minimal and narrative. The artist, by constantly questioning potential forms, materials and aesthetic and by including various fields of culture and arts in his works, discovers new means for three- dimensional visual expressions that transcend the traditional boundaries of sculpture.

Pål Gulsrud believes in bringing something good into the world. He points out meanings in things that are full and of importance. His paintings tell a story that everyone can relate to. His paitings are figurative in abstractions. He pulls the lines from ancient Egypt through the renaissance and Barocc up to contemporary art. 

Erlend Mikael Sæverud (1975) is a fine art photographer from Oslo, Norway.

His work is often based on streetphotography and his images are intuitive recognitions of personal reflections - an inner space manifested in the public space. Through photography he aims to see himself and the world for the first time over and over again to get closer to a reality that is not learned through culture. 

Sæverud graduated at Bilder Nordic School of Photography in 2011 and is now represented by several galleries in Norway and abroad. 

Current resident, Mia Gjerdum Helgesen, is a painter , designer and a sculptor. At ESKFF she expands on woodcut techniques and paintings to develop variations in color and texture. The dissolved abstractions in the works reflects the human sense of undefined existence often seek the path of their own identity. Isolated from his ego and influenced, veiled and absorbed by the demands of society in contrast to the inner life of the mind. With her woodcarving art , she is connected to a deeper layer of marks through the physical process of carving, a new technique she investigates during her residency. This technique is inspirers by her many previous work with woodcut graphics.

Raisa Nosova received her BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology and is a current MFA student at NYU Steinhardt. She is the 2012 recipient of the George T. Dorsch Grant and Fannie Kipnes Memorial Award for Oil Painting, 2014. Raisa has also done studies at Vesalius College in Brussels, Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D. C. and the Art Students League of New York.

Solo exhibitions include La Galerie Emeric Hahn, Paris, Parasol Projects, Lower East Side, NYC and Amsterdam International Art Fair. Nosova’s life-size room installations have been a part of You Are So Lucky Halloween Event at the Alder Manor, Yonkers, NY and Yonkers Arts Weekend. Group shows include

Mulberry Street Library, New York, NY Espace Moss, Brussels, Belgium, Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach, and the Whistler Museum, Lowell, MA. Her work has been featured in periodicals including Fresh Paint Magazine and Washington Square Review.

Raisa has just completed an Artist Residency at the Berlin Art Institute and is currently undergoing Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation Artist Residency in Jersey City, NJ. 

Andrea Burgay is a visual artist from Syracuse, NY, currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Burgay’s work combines collage, sculpture and found materials to elevate the overlooked and the mundane via transformative physical processes. Through a process of adding and removing layers of handmade and found materials her work presents a physical manifestation of the passage of time, destruction and decay.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally including; Unimedia Modern Contemporary Art (Genoa, Italy), Galerie Zurcher (Paris, France), BRIC Gallery, Flux Factory, Groundfloor Gallery, Outlet, Materials for the Arts, and STOREFRONT Bushwick (all in NY). Recent exhibits include Destroy Edit Transform, a solo exhibition held in conjunction with her 2016 fellowship at A.I.R. Gallery and Collections, a three-person show at Chashama Gallery. Burgay also teaches in NYC public schools with the non-profit arts organization Studio In A School.

ShinYoung An has created her own art form of portraiture juxtaposing ordinary, routine tasks against a backdrop of current news articles that feature a variety of social, politcal, environmental issues and events. 

She is from South Korea and obtained her B.F.A in South Korea. She has also studied at the Art Students League of NY, U.S. and Cercle Artistic de Sant Lluc in Barcelona, Spain after receiving her M.F.A. in painting from The Graduate School of Figurative Art of the New York Academy of Art in 2001.

Amaia Gómez Marzabal has a B.A. in Fine Arts and a masters degree “Investigation and Creation in Arts: INCREARTE” from the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) Leioa, Basque Country, Spain. She has received grants from the Kutxa Bank, Gobierno Vasco/ Euroregion/ Garapen and Etxepare Institut, Spain.

Her work has been shown in a number of exhibitions in Spain, Italy and USA, including a solo show at the Politecnico de Milano. Gómez Marzabal also works with the “Cerdas Collective”, who publish and exhibit regularly in Spain. Her most recent project is the current artist residency at ESKFF Foundation in NJ, where she is now developing a new body of work.

Her work is held in private collections in Europe.

Born in Cuba, Jonathan Joubert  has a B.A. in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts "San Alejandro", Havana Cuba. 
His work has been shown in a number of exhibitions in Cuba and USA, including a project exhibition with the artistic group "The Wall" in the Center for Cuban Studies "Cuban Art Space" 231 west 29 st suite 401 New York, NY 10001. Currently developing a new body of work in the residency at ESKFF Foundation in MANA Contemporary Jersey City, NJ.

Elaine Defibaugh, born in New Castle, PA has been a fulltime artist with solo exhibitions, invitations and juried shows since 1989.  Her practice has been in NYC since 2006 and Miami since 2013.  From 1993-2006 she worked as an Adjunct Professor at RIT, U of R, and MCC.  Elaine has also taught numerous workshops at various organizations, including the Memorial Art Gallery, Biscayne Institute of Better Health & Living, Turning Base Press, Zion National Park & Perez Art Museum of Miami.   In 2005 she worked as a Proctor for Chashama’s Subsidized Studio Space Program until 2011.  Elaine is a 2x recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant and has received a Constance Saltonstall Foundation Art Grant.  She has been invited to numerous artist residencies, including, Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel Arts Foundation, RAID, CeRRCA Llorenc Del Penedes, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, Fountainhead & Deering Estate.  Currently, she is a residency with the Eileen Kaminsky Foundation.  You will find Elaine’s work in collections such as the Buffalo Bill Historical Center of Cody, Butler Institute of American Art, Kathryn & Dan Mikesell, Elizabeth Collection, Everson Museum, Jewish Homes of Rochester, and various private collectors nationally & Internationally. 

Solo Exhibitions include, Frost Museum of Science, Yasher Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, & Gallery, Miami, FL, Laguardia Community College, LIC, NY, Pyramid Studio Gallery, Miami, FL, Art & Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL, L’espai de’art Les Quintanes, Barcelona, Spain, Pensacola State College, Pensacola, FL, Gallery ID, Miami, FL, Franklin 54 Gallery, New York, NY, Casper College, Casper, WY, Rockefeller University, NY, NY, Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, MN, Jamestown Community College, Weeks Gallery, Jamestown, NY, Chashama-Harlem Gallery, New York, NY, Biscayne Institute, Miami, Florida, Rush Library, Rush, NY, Gallery R, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, Texas Tech University, “Day of the Dead”, Lubbock, TX, Hobart William & Smith College, Geneva, NY, Beall Park Arts Center, Bozeman, MT, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH, Cell Gallery, Writers & Books, Rochester, NY

Pyramid Arts Center, Rochester, NY

Sam Pullin is a multimedia artist and Jersey City native. His work centers on the concepts of urban life, social decay, and the position of human beings in the broader universe.Add Description here

Born in Santiago Chile, on October 17th 1981, the Artist made a name for himself by creating architectural scenes using Photography and Painting to showcase cultural and natural wildlife. Rodolfo earned his degree in Architecture and Urban planning at the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso Chile 2007. As an Architect and Visual Artist he combines his strong desire to project art thru space. He moved to New York City in 2010 to pursue a career in Visual Art; he was invited to study at The Arts Student League of New York in the four year program, he received many grants, invitations, which ultimately led to being acquired into the Institutes permanent collection. Rodolfo Edwards exhibited in Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile.

Argentina , Miami , Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York and Shanghai. At The Arts Student League, he received a Merit Scholarship Award 2011, a Red dot Award 2012,  Inducted as part of their Permanent Collection. His work is published in the leagues yearly prestigious magazine. Recently his pieces were shown at the 2014 Southampton New York Art Far, 2013 Clio Art Fair, 2012 Governors Island Art Fair, 2012 Carpe Diem Art Fair at City Hall Philadelphia, 2012 The Bronx Latino-american Biennal, 2012 Pinta Art Fair New York and 2012 Art Context Miami and Art Shanghai 2012. Currently he have been working in Art Residence Programs , Vermont Studio Center in April 2017.

Untitled Space. Shanghai Nov 2017 And invited to Eileen Kaminsky Residence. New Jersey in 2018.

Carolyn Frazier, a New Jersey based artist, received her B.A from Rowan University in graphic design and her M.A. in painting from Kean University.  Carolyn has been a licensed art educator for 19 years in the Jersey City Arts H.S. program, a nationally recognized art conservatory program. Carolyn is also co-founder of Sol Studio, a high school pre-college summer art residency program for underserved students. She has received professional recognition for outstanding teaching from the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers and from the National Foundation for the Advancements of the Arts. In 2017, Carolyn and her National Art Honor Society students worked, in collaboration with the Books and Beyond USA literacy project, to create and publish a preschool ABC book, Under One Moon, Volume 2, distributed to hundreds of Rwandan school children. Currently, Carolyn is an Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation Resident creating a new series of acrylics focused around her struggle with Endometriosis.

In 2006, Carolyn received life saving surgery for Stage 4 Endometriosis, an often misdiagnosed and misunderstood disease that affects 1 in every 10 females yearly in the U.S and nearly 176 million females worldwide.  In her recent series titled “Facing My Life. Period” Carolyn confronts the physical and psychological factors associated with her chronic pain. These abstract acrylics reflect on a myriad of emotions associated with living with Endo - from fear and anger; insecurity and anxiety; and finally, determination and acceptance. Pulling inspiration from personal experiences as well as from those of her Endo sisters and using a build up of textures, colors and lines, Carolyn visually represents the intrusive beautiful roots that endometriosis has permanently left on her body’s landscape.  In this series of work she is on a journey to discover her artistic voice.

“ Providing my students with meaningful experiences helps them see how their efforts and talents can be shared to promote and inspire good in the world. For many of them, life is particularly challenging. Helping them find ways to overcome these challenges pushes them to continuously move forward, to find ways to make life’s lemonade out of life’s lemons. Guiding them in positive directions with positive goals to focus on and strive towards, they are given a means to cope and overcome. It is important to pause, look more closely and carefully at the world and be mindful.”- Carolyn Frazier

The Karpland Chronicles Our World Mirrored in Metaphor

The Karpland Chronicles embraces the issue of gender transitioning/obliteration and the effect that globalization/gentrification has on our society.

In keeping with this premise, I have been exploring, researching, inventing and reinventing content that includes drawings, animation, as well as writing and blogging. This project has been in the making for 13 years.

To begin, the first installment is titled, The Z Factor. The Z Factor introduces and explains how gender obliteration was put into place in the late 20th century resulting in altering the human race and creating a visibly unusual third gender.

The second, Greetings from Karpland encompasses a post-modern format as well as referring to its past and the impact of globalization on our society. In the same perception of Walton Ford and Henry Darger, the work embraces fine art storytelling, adding a bizarre twist, which in many ways is not so different from our perception of reality.

The third installment, Lullaby of Karpland continues to metaphorically mirror our society. It discourses our new political climate, thus amplifying the end of American democracy, as we know it.

Chuck Tisa graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. His awards include, the Philadelphia Mayors Award for Artistic Achievement, the Cresson Traveling Scholarship to Europe, the Alexander Award for Painting, and the Hewlett Packard Prize for Painting. His recent group exhibitions include, “Psychic Dream Girls” at the Spring/Break Art Show in Manhattan NY, “Stone Cold Nasty” at Orgy Park Gallery in Brooklyn NY, “Collect Hudson” at the Dineen Hull Gallery in Jersey City NJ, and “The Philadelphia Story” at the Asheville Museum at Pack Place, Asheville, NC. He is the co-founder of “The Parlour Bushwick” an alternative art space in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, NY.

Visual Artists, Zeal Harris is known for creating seductive, caricaturesque, political, urban-vernacular, story paintings. Currently she is bicoastal between Los Angeles and Miami. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from Otis College of Art & Design. She occasionally teaches painting and leads workshops and has been in recent exhibitions at the Port Au Prince Haiti Ghetto Biennale, Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, the California African-American Museum, 18th Street Arts Center, and the Caribbean Cultural Center of the African Diaspora in New York. Zeal has been mentioned in art reviews or interviewed on Pacifica Radio, Huffington Post, Fabrik Magazine, The Culture Trip, Life in LA, Obsidian Journal, Requited Journal, the Blk Grrrl Show, Clocktower Radyo Shak, the LA Weekly, and The Los Angeles Times. She will also be a featured artist in UCLA professor Paul Von Blum's recently published book on African-American artists in Los Angeles.

Zeal was raised in southern Virginia, in a small town named Phoebus that's adjacent to Hampton University. It was her Great Aunt whom she called "Mama", and the customers of her soul food cafe who first encouraged her to become an artist. After getting encouragement from a high school teacher, Zeal got a job as portrait and caricature artist at the local amusement park, Busch Gardens in Colonial Williamsburg. She worked during the summers and used income from that job to enter Howard University in Washington, DC, where she majored in Theater Technology with a minor in Art.  

After working in make-up design and in various production jobs in theater, opera, television, news, awards shows, for companies such as in Washington DC, and Los Angeles such as BET, Arena Stage Theater, HBO Films, and an Essence Awards Show, Zeal attended UCLA's Graduate Film School. There, she took a painting class for non-majors and was delighted to find that after struggling with becoming a playwright and screenwriter, her storytelling vision came through more clearly and strongly as a painter. While working for a couple of boutique art galleries as an art consultant, she concurrently developed her own body of work which gained her acceptance into Otis College of Art & Design’s Studio Art program.  

Since attaining a graduate degree, Zeal continually creates and exhibits her artwork. In addition to making art, Zeal takes social dancing, international cuisine, fun earrings, and telling jokes pretty seriously. She also wishes that she had more time to read graphic novels, travel, and watch foreign films…all while making art of course.

Danielle Scott grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey. She attended and graduated from Newark’s Arts High School in 1997 . Where she received the “Congressional Art’s Award” and her first oil painting was placed in The Capital of the United States for a year. Danielle holds a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York, New York. Graduating with a triple major in Fine Arts, Art Therapy and Art Education (Honors Fine Arts). Danielle has taught Art at the Academy of the Art’s at Henry Snyder High school in Jersey City for 15 years . !

Danielle is a soft -spoken artist who is starting to explore loud , noise making , thought provoking work . The work is examples of her life and passion. Her latest pieces are strong elements conveying the intense beauty and pain the artist see’s in the world around her . From her paintings , raw photography and eye catching sculptures. The work invites the viewer on a journey to explore a world the lies far from the hustle of everyday life . With influences as diverse as Gladys Barker Grauer , Ben Jones , Betty and Alison Saar and Renee Stout . !

The work taps into the relationship  etween - politics , social justice , equality , human and women’s rights , police brutality, culture and being African American .

Johanne Rahaman is a documentary photographer, working in both digital and film formats since 2002. Her most recent body of work, an ongoing photographic archive of shifting urban and rural spaces occupied by the Black communities throughout the State of Florida, consists of environmental portraits, landscape, architectural and still life images, underscoring the urgency and importance of recording these neighbourhoods that are in a constant state of flux. She started documenting these communities that mirror her hometown-the stigmatized Laventille Hills of Trinidad, out of a sense of duty to offer the public an alternative view of working class Black neighbourhoods as a sense of place-as home, in a project called BlackFlorida. Compelled by a lack of nuance or positive representation of Black communities in media, this project offers a snapshot of everyday moments, highlighting entrepreneurship, beauty, sensuality, aging, mortality, youth, and resilience, as she seeks to amplify the silenced and marginalized Black working class. And at completion, these images will be repatriated to the communities in which they were created, via a trust, to serve as a bridge to the existing archives throughout the state, offering a broader narrative of Black life in Florida.

Rahaman has been featured in the New Yorker Magazine, Jezebel, NPR’s WLRN and WMFE, Miami NewTimes, and CBS4, NBC6. Her Jacksonville series has been published in the Summer issue of the Oxford American Magazine, and a selection of her work throughout the State of Florida will be featured in the fall of 2017 in Mfon: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.

​

Rahaman is a 2017 summer resident artist at the Eileen Kaminsky Family Foundation (ESKFF) first live-work residency program in Miami, at Mana Wynwood.

blackflorida.org

Sy Battle is originally from Newark, New Jersey. He has worked as an educator for over 10 years in Jersey City Public Schools. However, his passion for photography originated after participating in Father's Day pictures with my son. As a result of that shoot, he’s been enamored with all the aspects of photography as it has quickly became his outlet. His goal is to create timeless photos that ignite a special memory.  He is dedicated to learning the craft of photography, and creating photographic memories to the best of my artistic and creative ability. 

Born in Orange County, CA, Painter James Gortner attended Hawaii Pacific University and received his MFA from Columbia University. His paintings feature reversed found wall and floor paint, as well as assemblages of transformed objects and paintings by other artists. Gortner paints and sculpts into the assemblage using a variety of techniques ranging from abstract to hyper-realistic. 

Gortner’s work has been shown at The Fisher Landau Center For The Arts (LIC), Mana Contemporary (Jersey City), Lyons Wier Gallery (New York), Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery (Connecticut), and The Pool Gallery (Berlin). His work has been written about in the Hartford Courant, Men's Journal, The Berliner, and in New American Paintings (Northeast). He belongs to the collections of the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation, Jimenez-Colon Collection, and the Wooster Street Art Collective as well as the private collection of President Jiang Zemin of China and actress Reese Witherspoon, among others. He lives and works out of New York City.

Paintings by artist Yoram Chisin are displayed at EL AL's King David Lounge at Ben-Gurion Airport.

Yoram Chisin has been living in the world of international fashion, surrounded by creativity and passion expressed through textiles, shapes, volumes and colors. This intense creative atmosphere boosted his own creativity that found its expression through the media of painting.

In 1971 Yoram Chisin was born in Toulouse, France, and in 1973 he arrived in Israel, where he lives and works today.

Chisin works mainly on canvas, choosing the type of fabric for his paintings carefully: from cotton to linen, his experience with textiles makes choosing the ideal media an expertise of his. In most of his pieces, Chisin uses oil colors on thick linens. The linen absorbs the oil during a fascinating process: while the color dries it changes in front of the artist, the piece comes to life.  

His artistic process consists of combining the right color with the right fabric.

Through the choice of colors, Chisin expresses the most emotional and personal part of his art: purple, blue and green to convey a sense of peacefulness, deep turquois and gold to convey strength and light.  

Chisin refers to the Jewish tradition of “Avnei Hoshen”, the ritual jewel that ancient Jewish high priests used to wear on their chest. This jewel consists of 12 stones, to represent the 12 tribes of Israel. The “Avnei Hoshen” was crafted in gold and set with colored precious gems. Chisin uses stripes and inserts of gold, blue and purple, colors featured in the “Avnei Hoshen” and that symbolize meditation, spirituality and elevation.

The color as supreme expression of emotion is represented at its best by American painter Mark Rothko: in his paintings, color is the only main player, annihilating drawing, composition, limits, space and borders. The art of Rothko is an immersion in color, an experience of losing limits, falling into the painting and letting go.

Layers and dripping of oil are featured on the canvases of Chisin. Scratches that reveal the colors underneath are a characteristic of his paintings and represent the inner conflict he experiences.

Mindful of the heritage of masters Jackson Pollock and Gerhard Richter, Chisin balances layers of colors with geometric shapes, representing his attempt to control the chaos of thoughts.

The works of Yoram Chisin has been presented in galleries around the globe, recently in Sydney, Melbourne, Miami, New York, Brussels and Antwerp. In Israel his artworks are on display at Art Market by Bruno Art Group in Tel Aviv Port.

Dede is an Israeli artist who has been working in the public sphere since 2006. Dede conducts his way as an urban tourist. The urban landscape, together with the social and the personal questions it evokes are the main drives behind Dede's work. In his works, Dede examines and questions the man-made urban lifestyle, as he reflects on absurd, paradoxical human existence. His body of works concerns problems and mental phenomena shared by individuals in the urban society. Dede uses various techniques and different tools each time; since the ideas leading him arise from within the experience of the dynamic urban life, every question requires a new and fresh approach. His works are often site-specific, both in the theoretical and the practical aspects: they facilitate a meaningful relationship between the concept that generates them, the specific location where they appear, and the materials and methods used to create them. Dede has created and exhibited pieces in many cities around the world, including Tel Aviv, New York, Montreal, London, Vienna and Prague.

Andre Bogart Szabo is currently in residency at ESKFF at MANA Contemporary. Since 2010 he has worked on paper and canvas exploring the nature of line. Consistent throughout his work is the use of black lines on a white background. His practice is inspired by the painting and calligraphy of painter-monks working in the Zen Buddhist tradition.

Andre’s paintings and drawings have been on view at ArtHelix Gallery, Brooklyn, NY / Local Project, Long Island City, NY / Chris Davison Gallery, Newburgh, NY / Greenpoint Gallery,

Brooklyn, NY.

Nitzan Mintz is a street artist and poet from Tel Aviv. She graduated from The Department of Fine Art and the Department of Creative Writing at Minshar College, and the Helicon School of Creative Writing, both in Tel Aviv. Mintz’s process integrates her poetic work and the material that contains it and their physical, actual location in the street. Her poems combine the personal with the political; they are written out of an internal urge to verbalize mental processes which respond to the outside world. Mintz creates collages and assemblages out of words and material, often layering words and materials at the expense of readability. Their aesthetics stems from the outside to the inside, from the urban landscape into the studio. She creates her work in specific selected locations across the city, locations with a greater and longer history than her own. Her method of working consists of assembling words, places, materials and shapes together to create the final piece. Nitzan has created and exhibited pieces in many cities around the world, including Tel Aviv, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, New York and Montreal.

Verdiana Patacchini AKA Virdi, was born in Orvieto, Italy in 1984. She received her MFA from Via di Ripetta Academy of Fine Art in Rome in 2009. In 2011 she took part in the 54th Biennale di Venezia, for the Italian Pavilion and in 2012 her artwork La Veronica won the Catel Prize. On march 2016 the Emmeotto Gallery of Rome presented her solo show Unconscious Mind at the Consul General of Italy in New York. She currently lives and works in New York. 

I seek a primitive impact from a surface when I'm working. I like to create atmospheric effects that transmit to the viewer the sensation of looking through a vaporous and vague surface to discover ambiguous and timeless images within. 

American artist, Serena Bocchino has been recognized by many art institutions for her work and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the PS 1 International Studio Residency, the Artists Space/Artists Grant, the Art Matters Grant, the Brodsky Center Printmaking Residency and the Basil Alkazzi Award, USA. The New Jersey State Council on the Arts has granted her Fellowships in both Painting and Drawing.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York featured Bocchino’s paintings and methodolgyin a film documentary by Monica Scharf .  from 1989-2013 Bocchino’s work has been the subject of six films.

Bocchino’s exhibitions have received critical attention from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artnews, Art in America, Newsday the San Francisco Art Examiner, ArtCritical, On Verge magazine and the Star Ledger. In 2015, her first monograph was released written by Lisa A. Banner, Jonathan Goodman and Lily Zhang.

Serena Bocchino is just back from an exhibition at the Taoxichuan Art Museum of China Central Academy of Fine Arts. She will be at a residency at the the Eileen Kaminsky Family Foundatoin (ESKFF) at MANA Contemporary Art in Jersey City NJ in the Fall 2017.

Public Art Collections that her work is part of include the following:

Art in Embassies Program, Bergen Museum of Art and Science, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Fidelity Investments, Islip Art Museum, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Lotus Museum, Beijing China, McKinsey & Co. Incorporated, Moelis International, Montclair Art Museum, Morris Museum, Newark Public Library, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Noyes Museum, Pfizer Inc, Price, Waterhouse and Coopers, Saks Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, Smithsonian Museum, Irma and Bill Seitz Collection, Washington D.C., Springfield Museum of Art, St. Louis Art Museum,The Prudential, The Brodsky Center, Rutgers University, Trenton State Museum, the Taoxichuan Art Museum of China Central Academy of Fine Arts and The Zimmerli Art Museum.

Jellyfish numbers have exponentially risen globally as a result of humans polluting the oceans. Industries across the globe release nitrates into the water which feed algae which in turn feed the jellyfish. This bloom is particularly apparent around the South China Sea. This population rise mirrors mankind’s own population crisis. I caught a snapshot of this dystopia on two resent trips to China which helped to inspire the ‘Jellyfish’ paintings. The paintings combine jellyfish with the female human form. These compositions push beyond the space that either of these beings would physically inhabit. This extra inhabited space represents the vast tangle of conscious and unconscious states that flows through us all. Our evolutionary adaptations are ill equipped to deal with the fast paced, cognitive dissidence and complexity of the modern world. Through working with human-animal hybrid my work raises questions about inherent human nature and the turbulent relationship that we have with the Earth and it’s other inhabitants. In my residency at ESKFF I am exploring the inhabitance of the deep in a by reimagining deep sea creatures into semi abstract forms. To these forms points of coloured reference are attached like clothes labels. My work walks the line between representational and abstraction. This line or tipping point where the physical meets the psyche is a common thread through out my practice. I conduct residencies in a pathology labs where I make work during human dissections. Whilst questions about mortality are inevitable in such settings, there are also a plethora of other strong emotions and thoughts that crowd the mind. The incredible form and colours that are revealed during the dissections inform the internal aspect of my work whilst live life model, animals and seeds inform the external form. This play between internal and external life can be seen in my sculptural practice as well as my paintings. I am currently artist in residence at the Millennium Seed Bank, Kew, Wakehurst were I have been making work about seed dispersal.

My bodywork is outlined by minimalistic art. It's achievement is revealed with personal references of humanitarian and spiritual concerns, so I use repeatedly the written word and symbols that represent the collective visual universe.

My work includes: Painting, drawing and engraving. Minimalism, conceptualism, pop culture, structuralism and post-structuralism, authors such as Antoni Tàpias, Julião Sarmento, Duchamp, they are all inspirations on my work.

Rajul studied art at the University of Bombay and continued her studies at Beit Berl in Israel. Rajul has developed into a determined artist in her right. Each of her works often produced varied individual interpretations.

The passion and energy displayed helps dictate the rhythm of her artistic life. She displays a unique blend of harmony, sensitivity, and feeling in all her works. Reality versus dreams as well as a combination of traditional and modern art are highlighted throughout her work.

Rajul sees herself as continuing the artistic tradition established by Andy Warhol, who pioneered the post modernistic
form of Pop Art in the 1970′s, with his portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.

Regarding any further involvement in the art of her Indian homeland she says that she has no choice as it is her life in Israel that has given her the unique perspective that has enabled her to reach her present artistic level, which from her point of view incorporates all her daily activities, which contribute also to the art of being a woman. Rajul was among the top artist chosen as Israel’s cultural Ambassador for 2005. Her works are widely shown in distinguished Art Museums, institutes and exhibitions.

Olav Mathisen is a young artist from Lillehammer, Norway. Mathisen has studied Fine Art at Ålesund Kunstfagskole, Strykejernet Kunstskole and   Bergen Academy of art and design (KHIB).

He primarily works with oil and egg tempera on canvas. His subject matter draws from fragments of the human condition; tendenses, roles, both subjectification and objectification of "the self" in different constructed situations. His paintings consists of a variety of techniques. From total abstraction and thick pastose strokes, to more detailed figurative painting conversing on the same surface

Henrik Martensen (b. 1956) is a self-taught painter with an obvious visual talent. In his art , he stands on the shoulders of the Romantic painters who cultivated nature as the great , God created gift to humanity . His ability to depict natural phenomena is second to none . It emerged last of the group exhibition Panorama , which was shown at the Johannes Larsen Museum , Denmark , in the spring of 2016. As few other painters of his time, Henrik Martensen mastering the mimetic method , the ability to transplant nature’s manifestations , so they appear exactly as real phenomena on the surface. He usually work serially and in both large and small formats , and he has a special fondness for clouds , air and sea, so subjects are often shrouded in a spherical , blue color.

Painter and illustrator, proficient in traditional and digital mediums.

Originally from Tromsø in the north of Norway, currently residing in Brooklyn, New York.

Born 1990 in Lillesand, Norway, live and work in Oslo. My main obsession is watercolor, but I also use graphite, ink, acrylics and mixed media in my works. I find beauty and art in details, like the shifting colors and light in the surface of the skin, the fluidity and endlessness in a persons eye, or the imperfections of  that makes us different but yet so alike. I find beauty in the painfully real, delicate and fragile that I find is our very existence.Add Description here

Xevi Solà lives and works in Girona (Spain). He studied Fine Arts in the University of Barcelona. He worked in a psychiatric hospital for years, experience that he considers important to understand his work.

His work has been exhibited in galleries and Art fairs in Spain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Brasil or Taiwan. In 2014 he won the Young Art Award in the Taipei Contemporary Art Fair. 

“My scenes almost always occur in front of a house, a house with large windows, where someone might be watching, without anyone seeing him. This house on the hill becomes a character itself, a silent witness of the scene. 

I search not only the contrast between appearance and intentions of the characters, but I also try to communicate the visual strength, in formal terms, for example with the use of complementary colors or with the use of the contrast between vertical and horizontal lines, or placing the characters standing on a flat landscape to transmit emotional intensity and even some sadness. 

In short, I think the energy that emerges from the vision of any image is closely linked to the use of opposites. The stronger the contrast, the stronger the energy. The use of opposites provides greater visual impact, and makes easier the final reading of the work.”

Luís Bívar is a Portuguese contemporary figurative artist who presently lives and works in Lisbon. He was an Art Director and won the first edition of the European Design Modulex Award, while painting and exhibiting his work.

His long-term pursuit on colour and comic strips had led him to establish himself successfully in Portugal as well as in Northern Europe.

Bivar makes a point of showing imperfection in his paintings for he believes that a work in progress should be spontaneous and that “error” is part of any artists’ expression. He believes that new media is a permanent challenge and explores various techniques in his artwork drawing, mixed media and more recently, sculpting.
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Paul Kuniholm creates art in three dimensions using formal training in steel sculpture, additionally,  two-dimensional art utilizing formal training in textile arts.  Time-based genres are employed to create narrative archives of two- and three-dimensional objective artworks.  The culmination of these interstitial milieu have been commissioned by governments and cultural institutions world-wide, and often accessioned to private collections.  Paul Kuniholm is a fourth-generation Seattle artist active internationally, with concentrated, ongoing, project-based activity in Sweden.

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Julia Krupenia (Winter) - NL/RU

(1965)  in Moscow, Russia.

Lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

I lived about twelve years in Workuta (North Pole). This period inspired me to take on the artist name of Julia Winter. Moving to Moscow and later my emigration to The Netherlands all have been feeding a consciousness of distraction, changing identities and growing knowledge about social and political differences.

The juxtaposition of different worlds is a recurrent theme in my works. I use opposites like male female, past-present or guilt-innocence and transmute them into a poetic or sometimes in a more political reality. In my work I constantly use meaningful layers that are placed over and upon each other.

I enchants, excites, and by mixing seemingly discordant elements, I create new worlds.

Lucien Murat lives and works in Paris. He is graduated from Central Saint Martins. 

His practise, through mixed mediums and particularly tapestries, focus on the concept of chaos and his representation in the collective unconscious from which he extirpates a contemporary mythology. His work, constantly flirting between grotesque and absurd, questions the fears ans the flaws of our society.

He won in 2015 the Arte Beaux Art Magazine Prize. 

Self described as an impulsive painter, Fabricio Suarez (b.1978 in Montevideo, Uruguay) doesn't plan the paintings but rather lets the paintings guide him.

Through intricate brushwork, the new paintings draw from cultural and personal memories. By completely covering the surface and manipulating the paint with

smudges and scrapes, shapes and textures reveal themselves. He then focuses on light and shadows that result in a curious and introspective narrative of mystery and spirituality.

With a focus on South America’s history of violence and religion and community, the work is a mix of modern abstract expressionism and flemish old masters.

Gabriella Kave was born in Israel but for the last 20 years moved a lot and resided in several places. Madison Wisconsin, Nanuet NY, Central Valley NY, Platt city Missouri, Mount Prospect Illinois and for the last four years she lived in Stockholm Sweden before returning to the USA to settle down in Miami Florida.

Her art, using the variety of techniques and mediums, reflects her biography in many ways, dealing with the subject of “Home, a sense of belonging, Roots – desired or rejected?”.

This is the theme of her artwork as one of the ESKFF residency group of 2017.

Gabriella exhibited her work in solo shows and in group shows in Israel, Wisconsin and in New York.

Nikolina Kovalenko received her MFA from Moscow Surikov Art Institute and studied at Universität der Künste Berlin. She holds a Gold Medal from the Russian Art Academy. The artist currently lives and works in New York City.

Nikolina's work is about our fragile connection with nature. Through her dreamy rainforest inspired paintings the artist strives to increase the world’s awareness and expose the consequences our everyday actions have on the

environment. Her paintings are elusive, something we can’t quite grasp or define. They reveal the ephemeral nature of our memory, available to us momentarily, only to recede into the darkness of our subconscious a moment later.

Her exhibition history includes solo shows at Gitana Rosa Gallery and Dacia Gallery. The group shows include Townsend Modern/Contemporary, Cheryl Hazan Contemporary, Mayson Gallery, Select Art Fair and Museum of

Russian Art(NJ). In 2014 she attended LMCC "Artist Summer Institute". Nikolina is a resident artist at ESKFF, MANA Contemporary in spring 2017.

Nikolina’s artwork has been reviewed in art blogs, newspapers and magazines. Her work is in numerous corporate and private collections worldwide.

Laurence de Valmy is a French born, New York based emerging artist. She has followed art classes both in France and the USA and her work has been featured by different publications (Poets and Artists, Ask Artists, Creative Room 4 talk, Saatchi art...). 

The purpose of her work is to share positive snapshots by means of vivid and bright paintings rendered realistically. 

Her POST series revisits art history through imagined painted Instagrams combining an original painting and social media conversation between artists. She shares the stories behind the artworks, highlight the connections between the artists and invites us to enjoy iconic artworks with new interest.

Frédéric Léglise lives and works in Paris. He teaches since 2007 at the ESAD-GV (artschool in Grenoble, France).. His painting, as a student, was first abstract, but for love letters, he made hundreds of erotic watercolors which are the starting point of his current work. The work of Frédéric Léglise is full of girls. His portraits and  nudes, almost all obey the same minimum script. The painter first takes photographs of women he meets in his entourage, and then, he paints portraits from  them. Another part of his work consists of self-portraits, made from  his shadow. The occasional use of gold leaf was worth it to participate the exhibition “GOLD” at Belevedere Museum in Vienna in 2012. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in France and abroad in institutions and galleries as well as in artfairs like FIAC and ART BASEL (Galerie 1900-2000). His work is present in many public collections (Frissiras Museum, Athens, MMSU, Rijeka, La Maison Rouge, Paris.His painting was used for the cover of Beaux Arts Magazine about figurative painting in February 2016

Janice Sloane is a mixed media artist who lives and works in New York City. Her work deals with the body, it’s impermanence, plastic surgery, ritual objects and the process of healing.  Janice has exhibited at Honey Ramka, SRO Gallery, Radiator Gallery, SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW,  The Parlour Bushwick,  The Last Brucennial, The Nightclub, Miami, Newman Popiashvilli Gallery, Galeria La Refaccionaria, Mexico DF,   X Teresa Actual, Mexico DF, El Centro de La Imagen, Mexico DF, White Box , Neue Galerie Graz, ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany, Tel Aviv Artist Studio Gallery, DESTE Foundation, Athens, Greece, Museo de Arte Carillo Gil Mexico DF, Museo Universitario del Chopo Mexico DF, Brooklyn Museum among other spaces in USA, Europe and Mexico. Her work has been  in selected publications such as Hyperallergic, White Hot Magazine, Gothamist,  Sensitive Skin Magazine, Beautiful Decay, Mileno Supplemento Cultural, Mexico DF,  The Herald, Mexico DF, Art New England, NY Times, Ethik & Unterrich, El Periodico del Arte, Harpers Bazaar, Mexico and Uno Mas Uno, Mexico. She has been an artist in residence at the Eileen Kaminsky Foundation Residency Program, Salem2Salem Residency and the Schloss Salem in Salem, Germany and Salem Art Works in Salem NY.

Sam’s Georgia roots grow generations deep on both sides of his family tree. He was raised the son of a Methodist preacher, spending his youth moving from town to town across Northeast Georgia. From an early age he was encouraged to play music and make art and continues to do both with great enthusiasm.

He graduated from the University of Georgia with a fine art major in 1981 and later received an MFA from The University of Texas, Austin in 1985.

Sam has had numerous exhibitions of his paintings in Georgia and New York where he currently resides with his wife Tara.

samseawright.net

Creating forms of conveying a message is an art form I relate with the most. My preferred art craft is screen printing though illustration is where my talent began. 

During graduation year I landed an internship with Gary Lichtenstein Editions which is the avenue that refined my artistry. 

I attained a Graphic Design associates that year as well landed some key relationships. 

I had also learned a great deal about the world of fine art, where my signature fits in it and how to go about harnessing the development of an artist career. 

onlythearts.bigcartel.com

Sandra DeSando’s artwork highlights the constant efforts needed to maintain a healthy environment. Her work investigates the challenges the landscape faces in our ever-changing world. Some of her work shows the hand of man that is evident in harming the earth. In newer artwork she challenges the intolerance of “the other” and asks that we join with the tree in experiencing our 50% shared DNA. Her work at ESKFF will show the efforts the City of Jersey City, corporations and individual homeowners to affect their lives in keeping the city vibrant and ecologically aware.

She received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and a Ludwig Vogelstein and E.D. Foundation grants. She was a member of the Heresies Collective, a women’s group that published, Heresies Magazine On Feminist Art and Politics. Sandra was a Guerrilla Girl, 1985 – 1987 and a Flintridge Foundation Fellow. She attended YADDO, Djerassi and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was also awarded a one-year Residency by the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation and a three-month residency at Kommandandenhaus, Dilsberg, Germany.

Her art was part of the Smithsonian’s Seeing Jazz: Art: Artists and Writers on Jazz.

She was on the Board of Pro Arts, Jersey City

Sandra was the Associate Director of Hibbs Gallery for Lesbian and Gay Art.

She helped established, and was the Manager of the Artist's Community Federal Credit Union at the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Sandra worked as General Manager, for MacArthur winning choreographer, Elizabeth Streb.

sandradesando.wixsite.com/sandra-desando

Laura Karetzky is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work probes the space between relationships as they strive to stay connected over all kinds of distances and examines how technology sustains us in various states of suspended communication. She is recipient of two Yaddo residencies, including The Milton and Sally Michel Avery Endowed Residency for visual arts (2014). Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions including The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (Washington, DC), Arte Laguna (Venice, Italy), and has been reviewed in American Arts Quarterly, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and The Washington Post. She is a founding member and Visual Arts Advisor for The Mayapple Center for the Arts and Humanities, a member of the Brooklyn Information and Culture (BRIC) Contemporary Art Council, and has served as Alumni Advisor to the Academic Affairs Committee for The New York Academy of Art (2006-2012). Ms. Karetzky holds degrees from the New York Academy of Art (MFA) and Carnegie-Mellon University (BFA), with additional training at the School of Visual Arts, the New York Studio School, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She is represented by Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

www.LauraKaretzky.com

My art displays imagined scenes that derive from particular reflections I have on life and relationships. Painting and drawing are at the heart of my creative process using a style that combines figurative painting, expressive line work and mixed media. Human anatomy is a prominent feature and a narrative tool in my work that I often reconfigure in order to alter layers of meaning or a message. As a result, my compositions are often contemplative of human connections and how they are affected by surrounding environments. Born in Cuba, but a NJ resident for over 21 years, I earned a BFA degree at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2002. I have served as an art educator at Newmark High School, NJ for the last 10 years. 

http://walterjohn.weebly.com

Nava is an Israeli artist; currently in New York City. She is a visual artist working mainly in oil and encaustics. She earned her Mster at the New York Academy of Art and graduated from the Jerusalem Studio School. In 2014, Nava received The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award and The Terra Foundation for the Arts Award in France. She also particpated in The International School of Painting and Scultpure Residency in Italy and The Prado Museum in Spain. Nava has been in solo and group exhibitions in New York, Israel, and Italy. 

www.navagidanian.com

Fred Fleisher was born in Pennsylvania and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. After an enlistment in the army he earned a BFA and a BS from Penn State and an MFA from Queens College, CUNY. Currently Rockelmann &, Berlin, Germany and Stuart & Co., Chicago, IL represent his work. He has had recent solo exhibitions at both galleries as well as solo exhibitions at Concepto Hudson, Hudson, NY and at Littlefield Performance + Art Space, Brooklyn, NY. He has also been included in a number of group exhibits working with curators, both nationally and internationally, and has lectured about his work in a number of venues. His work is also in the collection of Mark Waskow, of the Waskowmium, Vermont. Critical review of his work has appeared in numerous publications. Fleisher is an Adjunct Professor at Hudson County Community College, Jersey City, NJ and SUNY, College at Old Westbury. 

www.fredfleisher.net

Gabriel Schmitz (*1970, Dortmund, Germany) took up his studies of painting in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1990 and then proceeded to do a Master in European Fine Art in Barcelona where he has lived and worked since 1994.

Since then he has exhibited on a regular basis in Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, London, Oslo and the United States.

His work shows a profound interest in the human being, either doing portraits or painting figures in loosely defined settings, urban surroundings or interiors, often with a desolate air to it. Cultural icons such as writers, artists or dancers serve as references in other works. His style is often sparse and sketchy, but his figures achieve a strong presence facing the spectator.

Parallel to his painting he has never abandoned the practise of drawing, mostly charcoal on paper, and he also embarks on projects that create new contexts for his work, as for example in his recent series “Walking with Alÿs”, in which he took photographs of two charcoal-drawn figures on the streets of New Jersey and New York.

Fausto Fernandez is a mixed media collage artist living and working in Anthony New Mexico, whose works include a variety of paintings, public art, and community engagement projects, through which he explores the relationship of nature and technology as they intersect with human behavior.

Fernandez’s studio creations are colorful, geometric mixed-media collages on canvas that depict flowers, tools, machines, aviation renderings, and image transfers. Materials used include wallpaper, asphalt, spray paint, acrylic paint and laser jet transfers. Instructional materials, such as schematics and blueprints, provide meaning to his work.

Born in El Paso, Texas, and living in Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua, Mexico, until age 25, Fausto continued his education by crossing the border on a regular basis to study at the University of Texas in El Paso, where he pursued a double major in graphic design and painting. He completed his BFA degrees in 2001, and in 2002, he moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he lived and created art for over a decade before relocating to Los Angeles where he lived for 3 years. Fausto currently lives in New Mexico following his 10 month residency in La Union New Mexico.

Fernandez’s work is represented in Santa Fe New Mexico by Turner Carroll Gallery and has been selected for exhibitions at the Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, California; McNay Museum of Art in San Antonio; Akron Museum in Ohio; Mesa Contemporary Arts at Arizona’s Mesa Arts Center; Tempe Center for the Arts in Arizona; Smithsonian’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York; and Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada. His collages are in the permanent collections at Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona, Phoenix Art Museum, The Heard Museum, The Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso, and The City of El Paso Museums & Cultural Affairs Department.

Public art works produced by Fausto Fernandez include the production site-specific artwork at the Scottsdale waterfront in Arizona, which was commissioned by the city of Scottsdale Public Art with special participation from the Salt River Project; the 10,000-square-foot terrazzo floor design at the Sky Train Station at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, commissioned by The City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture using aviation-specific art funds; and a community arts project in San Pedro, California – partnered with members of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, as well as pile drivers, bridge dockers, and wharf builders – to produce an installation commissioned by Angels Gate Cultural Center for the Main Gallery. Fernandez is one of 49 artist selected by Los Angeles County Arts Commission for the civic artists prequalified list and is currently working on a public art project at East Rancho Dominguez Park.

In August 2014, Fausto Fernandez was the artist in residence at the Border Art Residency in La Union, New Mexico, for 10 months.

Christophe Maunoury, born in 1962, works and lives in Paris. He has always been passionate about art. Visiting the many art museums and shows in Paris inspired him to become a painter.

He developed his art interests at Ateliers des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (Atelier Montparnasse) from 1999 to 2004. He is an abstract painter and loves to explore the interaction between paint and different textures of paper. His painting is very physical and spontaneous, his gesture quick and precise. His continued exploration of deconstructive processes in his painting is unrivaled. A video on his creative processes has been realized after his last solo exhibition at A2Z Art Showroom in Paris in 2015. He has been selected for a Residency by the ESKFF at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, NJ. Christophe Maunoury has had several solo exhibitions across France and has also been included in group shows. His work is held in private and corporate collections throughout France and Europe.

Born in Moscow 1983, I work as a film and theatre  art director/set decorator and a portret painter

as well.

I started to paint since I was 17 - studied in Saint-Petersburg Art Academy and Muchin Art Colledge  for a couple of years, but from the very beginning the only thing that I was passionate about was a human face. I’ve been painting portraits and self-portraits for almost 10 years now and I’m still amazed by that subject.

 I’ve done several projects consisting series of portraits of groups of people. The most remarkable are The Beholders (The young viewers of Praktika Theatre in Moscow ,2012); Kids of the World (Portraits of 100 kids from 10 different countries, 2011-2013); Gogol Centre People (20 portraits of actors and workers of Gogol Centre Theatre in Moscow, 2016)

Also I’ve been doing private portrait orders from people on regular basis all that time - from a  small single portraits to a big group family portraits .

What am I to say then? Human creatures - with their soul, spirit energy - is a mystery and a wonder, and there is no one like another one, each is a whole universe.

Katya Scheglova artworks

scheglovision.tumblr.com

kidsoftheworld2012.tumblr.com

During this 3 month residency I am primarily working with the industrial housing material, Tyvek, which I discovered in 2008 wrapped on houses, I begin with handcutting (without prior sketching) marks that cannot be erased. I'm interested in advancing the material

using process of making it unrecognizable from its original purpose and function, which is to seal and protect. 

In intervening with positive and negative space, and pushing the form with manipulation, I am engaged in what it 

is to stretch and develop a material's potential, as a symbol for change and transformation

led by chance, control and uncertainty, elements of both life and art.  

In drawing, gesture, and layering, making is part of the content.-- 

http://ulaeinstein.com

BIO

A Swiss born, NYC-based multi-disciplinary artist, Üla’s work is internationally exhibited in galleries, museums, and non-profit art spaces, and included among numerous collectors.  In an expanded practice, she is exploring material intervention and culture, material abstraction, surface tension and dichotomy of absence/presence, shadow/light, substance/fragility.  

In 2017 Einstein's work is scheduled to exhibit in Two Artists - Lakefront Gallery, Robert Wood Johnson University, NJ and in Text/ure at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center at BMCC, NYC . Her work in 2016 is currently included in Chewing Tar – Industrial Materials in the Service of Art, Lichtundfire Gallery, 175 Rivington St., NYC through October 23rd 2015 Included exhibiting in The 21st Century Artist is a Nomad – the inaugural FLUX Art Fair, NYC.  All/Together/Different at the Manny Cantor Center, NYC included her work among selected downtown NYC artists. In 2014 Einstein's work was included in No Longer Empty's If You Build It, invited by Art in Flux. The Object as a Living Thing a 3-artist exhibition at DeKalb Gallery, Pratt Institute, NY. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including The Delaware Center for The Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE; Everhart Museum of Art and Science in Scranton, PA, L’Adodart – Paris, France, Goya Girl Contemporary Art, MD, La Maison d'Art, NYC, Garrison Art Center, Hudson Valley, NY Heidi Cho Gallery, NYC, Safe-T-Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, The Griffin Museum, Winchester, MA, Maloney Art Gallery, NJ; Towson University Art, Gallery, MD, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield CT; the London Biennale; the Oakland Museum of CA, Oakland, CA; the Tryon Center for the Arts, Charlotte, NC; the McAllen International Art Museum, McAllen TX; the Museum of Vancouver,BC; the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles,CA; and the Zentralbibliothek, Zürich, Switzerland. Deakin University Gallery, Victoria, Australia. She has presented work and participated in the panel on Towards Anarchitecture at the New York Center for Architecture. Fellowship residencies include The Santa Fe Art Institute, and Eileen S. Kaminsky Foundation / MANA Contemporary.

Einstein's work has been featured in several publications, radio, and online magazines including The New York Times, the Village Voice, Hyperallergic, and both the Easthampton and Southampton Press. She is a featured artist in the White Hall Productions film Artists in Conversation, and interviewed often in print and online.  She was interviewed in the studio about her work and process for LaBiennaleTV. Her photographs from The Unwinding Destiny Project are included in the book Infinite Instances, Studies and Images of Time, currently in 6 languages, Mark Batty Publisher. Libro Arte/Abierto”, which can be roughly translated as “Open Book Art”, publication of the book is coordinated by Dr. Hortensia Minguez, professor of art at University of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Allan Gorman is a Wikipedia-listed artist with a history that includes over six dozen exhibition showings in galleries, museum exhibitions, and major art fairs including:

Hyperrealism at The Illinois Institute of Art - Chicago; “Re-Presenting Realism” at the Arnot Art Museum (Elmira, NY),  ArtPrize 2014 and 2015 in Grand Rapids, MI: The ArtHampton Art Fair; Art Palm Springs; Art Palm Beach; The International Guild of Realism Masterworks Traveling Museum Tour, and "Something More Than Realism at Galeria ArteLibre in Zaragoza, Spain.  

In 2013, Gorman was awarded a Fellowship for Painting from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.  In 2011, he was awarded a resident fellowship to Vermont Studio Center and was invited back for a second time in 2014, and was selected for a fellowship residency by the ESKFF Foundation at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, NJ.

Brandy Kraft is an emerging artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently

engaged in several different painting series that communicate the complexities of parenthood.

She is the mother of two young children in whom she finds constant inspiration.

Kraft attended the conceptual art school, SAIC in Chicago, IL and the classical atelier, SARA in Stockholm, Sweden. The visual imagery she creates is compelling in its significance and technicality. Her work radiates sincerity, beauty and earnestness as it explores her intricate

journey through motherhood.

Tun Myaing was born in Rangoon, Burma and moved to the United States in 1994. He received a MFA from the New York Academy of Art and a BFA from Fashion Institute of Technology.  His work has been shown throughout New York and exists in many private collections.  He has also curated many successful group shows and is the director of the project space  Art Foundry US. Tun Myaing lives and works in Queens, New York City.

The Swedish artist Sylvia Naimark was born in Malmö Sweden. She mainly works with paint and graphite on canvas wood or paper. Sylvia Naimark graduated from Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design in Stockholm and the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. Sylvia Naimark has exhibited her works in numerous cities in Sweden and internationally including a group show at Nancy Margolis NY 2015.
Her next Solo Show is scheduled for 2017 at Galleri Ping - Pong Malmö Sweden .

EKATERINA ABRAMOVA is an artist, specializing in painting and graphic arts in mixed as well as traditional techniques using oil, acrylic, markers, etc.

Although being a multifaceted artist, her style could be described as going in two major directions: the 21st century Post-Expressionism, and Spiritual Ornamental paintings drawn on symbolic folk art of various peoples, most notably on Russian and Indian mythology. Born in 1979 in Moscow, she graduated from an art school with honors and continued her studies at the Vasnetsov College of Fine Arts, Moscow. In 2007 she received her MFA from the I.E. Repin State Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Russia. Her numerous awards include Gold Medal “250th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Arts,” Gold Medal “National Treasure” of the International Charity Fund “Philanthropists of the Century”, citation from the Russian Academy of Fine Arts for the participation in the exhibition dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the Academy, the Peacekeeper Fund Medal, among others. She was nominated for the State Presidential Scholarship in the Arts. She is a member of the Union of Russian Artists, Art Fund International, Creative Union of Professional Artists, Art Indulge Foundation.

STEEN LARSEN (1960)

Steen Larsen is educated at Dartington College of Arts UK. In january 2015 exhibiting at the Annual Eskiff Auktion at Mana Contemporary NYC. In December 2014 he is exhibiting at Haupt in Basel, Switzerland. Lately, he has held solo exhibitions at Gallery NB Viborg, Denmark 2014. Art Centre Sophienholm, Denmark 2012, Art Centre Silkeborg Bad, Denmark 2012. And in Group exhibitions Galleri Ramfjord 16 Years Anniversary Exhibition, Oslo, Norway 2014. Painting and Its Contexts, Contemporary Art Center Vilnius, Lithuania 2013. ”Danish Landscapes” Astley Hall Art Gallery, Manchester, England 2006, Halmstad Artmuseum Sveden 2006

In the book ROAD from 2012 Steen Larsen says:

“When you drive on the Atlantic Ocean Road, that work of human engineers that is the E45, and feel the rhythmical hum of the car as it twists over the islets lining the sea, you have come to the end of the world. Then you are grasped by a sense of awe. This entire infrastructure of bridges along the edge of the great nothing is a miracle created by human hands, joining Norway – and Europe – together. The idea that such an artery winds its way down through Europe, from right up by somewhere north” 

My focus artistically has long been characterized by streets, almost without people. Now I feel, however, the need to paint people, and for me it is important to put the focus on youths. I have always been concerned with the inner feelings and thoughts that we all carry on. This may seem complicated for a person who transforms from child to adult. Not only the physical change that everyone undergoes, but  all the uncertainty they feel. All the questions they are asking themselves; Who am I, What am I to become, what do the others think about me.

Born in Lisbon in 1965, lives and works in Estoril.

Luis Bivar is a Portuguese contemporary figurative artist who presently lives and works in Lisbon. He was an Art Director and won the first edition of the European Design Modulex Award, while painting and exhibiting his work. His long-term pursuit on colour and comic strips had led him to establish himself successfully in Portugal as well as in Northern Europe. Greatly influenced by the Pop Art movement, his work reflects stereotyping in a unique manner that characterizes him well. Bivar also worked in several projects with artists Vitor Pires Vieira and Nikias Skapinakis, both of which were responsible for his presence in the contemporary art world.

Bivar makes a point of showing imperfection in his paintings for he believes that a work in progress should be spontaneous and that "error" is part of any artists' expression. He believes that new media is a permanent challenge and explores various techniques in his artwork drawing, mixed media and more recently, sculpting. Private and public collections in Lisbon include: Champalimaud Foundation, Portuguese Aids Foundation,

Banco Espirito Santo and Embassy for the Republic of Angola; also in Gortex Russia and AMEX Norway. Bivar is currently working on his latest collection "Face It".

"FACE IT represents a series human emotions, dubious expressions that convey the awe I feel upon the mysterious feminine. It is an ongoing expression of human behaviour, which I have been developing over the past few years. As an observer, every woman tells a tale; a fantasy that may be reinvented by the spectator that does not necessarily meet my personal experiences. Emotions are rare these days in the cold grey era we are living and this collection is a call to face your emotions now. I picked large and medium formats where one can fell free to create powerful contrast combining graffiti, collage and black and white to enhance the coloured expressions. In these series, I only used comic strips on the eyes and mouth; two important elements that define the human expression." (Luis Bivar)

Studied visual arts in  The NB Haifa School of Design

I think of myself as a kind of visual icon hunter, that arrange the urbanic view and landscape in new order.  I shoot urban closeup photos, of visuals that nobody pay attention to, while walking in the streets, and make an art work pieces that everybody want to look at. I captures the mood of the moment, create a new language which I translates into soaring pieces of art that convey turbulent movement, rhythm and sound. My photography is not an independent body of artistry or documentary, but rather captured as background material that cumulates into a wealth of potential imagery. My art contains secret and encrypted codes whose messages provide a real challenge for viewers to decipher. when words are rearranged, put back together, and creates a pleasurable experience.

All of the photos that I use in my art are taken by me in New York city and they are the basic materials of the artworks. The photos are printed directly on small pieces of wood in the shapes of squares and rectangles. These individual pieces are modern icons that are than glued in a collage form onto a large slab of wood. Each piece has his own unique concept and message. The artwork is all made by hand.

PERSONAL HISTORY

I used to work fulltime as an employed graphic designer for 15 years, with art as a sidekick.

In 2011, I chose to quit my line of work and started working as a fulltime, self-employed artist.

Already in 2010 I had my first collaboration with a Danish gallery, where my first exhibition got

sold out, and this was maybe the first step into the fulltime artist direction.

Since that day I participated in several group and solo exhibitions. My artwork has been

Represented in museums and galleries - both national and abroad. My last group exhibition

was in Miami during December 2015, and an upcoming solo exhibition will be in Norway by the

end of January 2016.

I also participated at Art Copenhagen, Tappehallerne (Carlsberg Brewery, CPH.) and

Art Herning, local Danish art fairs for an international audience. Here I sensed the wide

audience for my art, which is still increasing.

I am educated as a graphic designer and after a while I started the design agency Blanke Ark, which I managed for 23 years. I sold the agency in 2012, and now I have got a atelier at Vøyenenga in Bærum, near by Oslo and I work as a full-time artist.

I am inspired by : WHAT IS TIME?

Is time as a straight line or a circle?

Absolutely central to our western culture is the idea that time moves. Things are changing. Every moment moves forward and divides the time in the past, present and future. A common notion is that time moves like a river, with no possibility to stop or turn. The past is thus locked. The future we can not do anything about, it is completely open and anything can happen. We can only get there by letting us drive down the river. If we change the past, we also change present.

If you travel back in time so you always have existed in the past. We can not travel back in our own timeline… Perhaps there are multiple universes?

If the future already exist?

There are many who are researching this with time. Experiments show that there is no absolute time, such as Newton thought. Present is an illusion created in our own minds. If future, present and past coexist, will that remove the possibility that a human being has free will. If the future already exists, it does no longer matter what choices you make. Elections has already been provided.

Technically I work with photography as a background for the paintings. Afterwards, the motives are worked on in Photoshop, then painted with acrylic on canvas.

I have done a number of exhibitions, I am represented by several professional galleries and I have a large audience. I work with photography, Photoshop, collage, acrylic paint, oil crayon, mixed media and lithography. I experiment with different techniques, which together becomes my personal expression.

“In my works I always portray human faces; I arrange them near images related to myths, initiation rituals, natural phenomena and manifestations of wild nature. In this way I intend to relate the human figure both to the grand scheme of things and to their own inner and oneiric nature”.

Born in Italy, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, she lives in a little village on the Italian Alps.

His work has been exhibited at the 54th VENICE BIENNALE at the Italian Pavilion, MANIFESTA 9 Parallel Event in Belgium, MEAM European Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, MUSEUM DES MERVEILLE in France, MENEGAZ FOUNDATION in Italy.

She has participated in many collective and personal exhibitions including THE BERLIN WALL with The Promenade Gallery in Vlore in Albania, WHITE BOX with the Gallery Biasutti, RESIDENT ARTISTS at MLZ Dep Art Gallery in Trieste, ART and SPORT in Kobe in Japan and at the Victor Saavedra Gallery in Spain at Barcelona and at the Ramfjiord Gallery in Oslo (Norway).

She was selected as a participant a several competitions including  the IV PRIZE CAIRO COMMUNICATION, the COMBAT PRIZE, in 2014 the MOD PORTRAIT in Spain and  STIPENDUTSTILLING in Norway.

Its main collectors are MACBA Museum of contemporary art in Barcelona, COLLECTION GAIA, ASICS ITALY, CRC Foundation Cassa di Risparmio di and COLLECTION ARTAN SHABANI.

Communication . That is what I seek when I am designing. Growing up I spent most of my time by myself; my parents worked and my siblings studied . I remember boredom was the reason that I started drawing. Each time I complete a drawing, I would get the rush of excitement and wanted to show everyone what I had done. But there was always comment, and usually negative, that put me down. It felt like a thorn piercing through my skin. I would stand there and just laugh off the pain that those comments inflicted.After  I completed my first piece  “Vision From Two Points” a girl said to me “ Wow dude I think you have OCD.” To my surprise, I actually questioned myself as to whether I should agree with her. Then, I thought, No, I am just passionate about Space and Line.

My series explores the interaction of the imaginative and the real space. My “Vision” series is filled with practice perspective, geometric form and the quality of exact precision. It is about what I like to do with line and how I enjoy being accurate. My “Perception” series is more about breaking boundaries of what people expect or perceive about me and my work. I explore more open spaces, use curved organic lines that mirror my expressions and feelings. The overlaps of lines and Forms appear chaotic but when you look closer you can see that there is a plan. Each line was carefully chosen; I decided where it would go and the kind of line it should be.

After completing these series I am excited and I realize that I do not have to try so hard to take the criticisms toward me seriously. I am confident that I want to pursue architecture in college. For me, architecture is constantly changing just like the fashion trend; When there is a change, there will be comments toward that change. Therefore, I learn to accept comments and use it as inspiration for a new approach to my designs.

Gabriele Grones is a visual artist. He was born in Italy in 1983. In 2009 he received his MFA in

painting and visual arts from the Academy of Fine Arts, Venice, Italy.

With very detailed paintings in oil on canvas Grones inquires deeply into the subjects, giving

shape to every single detail that can evoke the complexity of reality. His portraits represent the

subjects in intense and iconic images with a metaphysical atmosphere. The compositions and

details of nature reflect on the dialogue with the elements of our experience, pointing out how

everything contains a poetical aspect and a deep essence in itself.

Grones has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions, in venues including National

Portrait Gallery (London, UK); Venice Biennale (Italy); Mall Galleries (London, UK); MEAM

(Barcelona, Spain); Galerie MZ (Augsburg, Germany); MART (Italy); Fort Wayne Museum (IN,

USA). In 2015 Grones has his first solo show in USA at Bernarducci Meisel Gallery in New York.

His paintings have been selected for numerous art prizes and his works are included in several

public and private collections.

www.gabrielegrones.com

Elisa Bertaglia is an Italian visual artist. She was born in Rovigo in1983. In 2002 she attended the Venice Academy of Fine Arts under Carlo Di Raco and graduated in painting the second level with distinctionin 2009.

From 2007 she has been invited to take part in different national and foreign shows, collaborating with several art curators and art galleries, or exhibiting her artwork in Museums or Public and Private Collections.

She took part in several solo and group shows, including: “Arte Scienza e Scuola”, Museo Guggenheim (Venice, Italy); “The State of Art”, 54° Venice Biennial, Academy Pavilion;“Metamorphosis”, MZ Gallery (Augsburg, Germany); “Plateau Project”, Dolomiti Contemporanee (Belluno, Italy); “Bindwood”, Banca Sistema (Milan, Italy); “A.R.T.”, Sant’Andrea della ZiradaChurch(Venice, Italy), in collaboration withBanca Sistema and Christie’s Italia; “Brutal Imagination”, Weber & Weber Gallery (Turin,Italy). 

Elisa Bertaglia’s artistic research, displayed into big and small paintings and drawings on paper, is mostly focused on the main theme that speaks about the strong passage from childhood into the adult age. Based on a oneiric and symbolic language, the artist portrays young children, swimming-dressed, fully immersed into imaginary landscapes. According to the influence of some important Classics (such as “Le Metamorfosi” by Ovid, “De Rerum Natura” by Lucrethius, “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman, and “Brutal Imagination”by Cornelius Eady) the atmosphere of the paintings is deeply lyric and illusory and the composition is made by both abstract and realistic elements. 

http://elisabertaglia.com

Klimentina Jauleska Vasilev began her education at the Mathematics and Natural Sciences school in Struga, Macedonia, where she was born; followed by completing an extensive art program in paining at the Faculty of Fine Arts of St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia. Right before her arrival in the United States, she received a full MFA scholarship from Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey. Jauleska Vasilev has exhibited her work internationally.

Her current body of work explores the threshold between digital and material realities by merging 2D and 3D spaces together, in a work that opens up a realm where the two are equally present and competitive. The human body as a central element is clearly evident in Jauleska Vasilev’s work, which projects a subjective view on its relationship with these spaces. 

www.jauleska.com

Miryana Todorova (b.1984 Sofia, Bulgaria) is a visual artist who lives and works between Sofia and NY. The major concern in her work is questioning the politics of public space and how people occupy it. Her projects combine painting, performance, video, movable architecture and public interventions. Miryana holds an MFA Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts, NY. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Europe and the US among which: ‘Movables’ at frosch&portmann gallery, NY, ‘Being’ at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, NY, ‘Movement of the Whole’ at INDA gallery, Budapest, ‘Disconsent’ at the Center for Contemporary Art- the Ancient Bath, Plovdiv, and ‘dissident desire’ at DISTRICT Kunst- und Kulturförderung, Berlin. Miryana is the recipient of the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for Young Artist (2011) and was a resident and fellow at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2012), ZK/U-Center for Art & Urbanistics (2013), and BRIC Visual Artist Residency (2014).

http://www.miryanatodorova.com/

MARIE LETKOWSKI, born in 1984 in Halle/Saale (Germany), lives in Berlin. EXHIBITIONS (solo):

le sous-commun, look at me like a friend would do (exhibition/performance in collaboration with

Janine Eisenächer), Berlin/DE (2016); Bar du Bois, vielleicht heisst ja (exhibition in collaboration

with Anne Arlt), Vienna/AU (2015); M+R Fricke gallery, Aus: Zimmer Nr. 2 (Fundstücke), Berlin/DE

(2013); M+R Fricke gallery, Zimmer Nr.1 (2.Fassung), Berlin/DE (2012); Mastul gallery, Zimmer Nr.

1, Berlin/DE, 2011

MARIE LETKOWSKI examine within her work the performative aspects in painting. Using the

painting as a transformative element within the actual space, she focusses on the very act of

seeing in a self-determined way.

www.marieletkowski.net

Im Joaquin Goldstein, argentinian-peruvian painter and performance artist. My work talks about the function of art in the contemporary society, often with critics and sarcasm towards arts.

My expressionist painting formation developed first in the Studio of Juan Astica in Buenos Aires and them in Barcelona, where i was part of local art collectives. After my experience in Europe, I became part of Nennacanale art collective based in Buenos Aires , Argentina. The line of work created during that time was focused in art and psychiatry, having  a residency at the Borda psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires.

In 2009 I moved to Lima, Peru,  where I founded Zona  30, a residency program space in the historical center of Lima. In 5 years of work, over 50  foreign artists took part of the residency and more than 200 local artists displayed their works.

In 2011 I founded Terror Gallery, an  art space dedicated to show experimental art proposal in the local scene. Curation working with Terror Gallery exhibited in Miami, New york, Quito Ecuador and Peru Lima

Since 2010 I have been traveling to New York every year, with different paint and performance proposals and residences.

My work was been exhibited in Spain, Italy, Argentina, Peru and United States.
 

Call Of Duty:

Human vision can be overshadowed in the virtual reality of a war video game, where the participant is part of the game and is immersed in the situation in question. But should war be contextualized as a game? Has our perspective on war been reduced to a simple computer game (always an intangible choice between 0’s and 1’s, but infinitely complex in its manifestation)?

I'm interested in the deconstruction of the images generated by these war-themed games. These video stills from the game are filled with graphical errors and render an abstract merging of war landscape and the transition from the previous frame in the game. The result is a fragmented depiction of what war really is.

The work mocks war’s meaning, as the game does: errors in a war that cost lives and show the darker side of humanity… Instead here is a work of art.

To work on the pieces in “Call of Duty,” which are based on images of past wars from the videogame of the same name, I would like to rethink and explore this mix of old images created again, in a completely new technological context.

Antoni Maznevski: 1963 – Born in Skopje; 1991 – BFA, Faculty of fine arts, Skopje; 1995 – Residency at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria; 1997 – CEC ArtsLink Residency, New York, NY; 2011 – MFA, Faculty of Fine Arts, Skopje; 1991-2003 – Freelance artist; 2003-present – Full Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, teaching Drawing and Painting at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Studies;  2003-present  – Mentor at Postgraduate Studies; He lives and works in Skopje, Macedonia.

Selected Solo Shows:  2005 – Mozzart’s Boat, Pallazo Zorzi, Macedonian Pavilion, 51th Venice Biennale, Venice;   2011 – Patterns of Probability , Palais Porcia, Vienna; 2009 – Bio-Geo-Theo, MC Galery, New York; 2003  – Wooden sculptures, Gallery of E.M.Sandoz & M.David-Weill, Paris; 2009 – Crossways, Prima Center, Berlin; 1996 – THE END, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje;

Selected Group Shows: 2003 – Blood & Honey, Sammlung Essl Musem,  Vienna (curated by Harald Szeemann); 2002 – 40 Years of FLUXUS, Wiesbaden(curated by Rene Block); 2000 –  Radiations, Japan Foundation Forum, Tokyo; 2003– In the Gorges of the Balkans, Fridericianum Museum, Kassel; 2004 – October Salon, ULUS, Belgrade;

Collections: A SE ESSE, Sammlung Essl Museum Collection, Vienna;  TV Landscape, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje; Geramartix, CEC Artslink Collection, New York; Wondering Library, Alexandrian Library, Alexandria; TV Test, Modern Gallery Museum, Rieka;

Born in Leninogorsk in a very small but picturesque town in Russia . 

Daria has been influenced by her architectural studies at Sgasy Architecture College in Russia and inspired from her extensive travels in Spain, Thailand and Maldives. A published photographer with her own studio in LA. Daria couldn't be stopped from finding time to pursue her true passion ; the need to share her personal feelings and the beauty she sees in the World through the canvas. "I have to paint. I can't stop in the same way I can't stop breathing. It's my reason for being. My pictures tell a story. A story that comes from a hidden part of the Universe which I do not fully control. Unless I am Sharing I cannot be happy." Daria's current focus is on oil painting but is experimenting with drawing, ink and acrylic. She has been recently influenced by Egyptian geometric and architectural design and its ability to survive millenniums of time.

December 2015 - resident at ESKFF residency program at 
Mana Contemporary Art Gallery, Jersey City

http://www.portraitofarts.gallery

Gianluca Bianchino is a multimedia artist living and working in Northern New Jersey. Originally from Italy, Gianluca attended an Architectural magnet school in Avellino before relocating to the US where he enrolled at New Jersey City University to receive a BFA in painting. In 2011 he completed his studies with an MFA from Montclair State University focused on sculpture/installation.

Gianluca has maintained a studio practice for over ten years in Northern New Jersey, for nearly a decade in the thriving arts district of Newark NJ, and currently in Jersey City.

Bianchino exhibits regularly throughout the greater New York area. Recent exhibits include The Painting Center, NY and at Chashama Chelsea Project Space, NY and a solo exhibit at Index Art Center, Newark, NJ which is reviewed in the April 2013 edition of Sculpture Magazine.

Gianluca’s current body of work is inspired by cosmology and physics.  His work can be viewed at www.gianlucabianchino.com

Juan Carlos Ortiz (Whoahn) is a contemporary and multi-disciplined artist based in Jersey City, New Jersey, working in various fields such as illustration, fine art, animation, and character design.

From his background in Illustration, Whoahn produces painting and sculpture to examine the threads of experiences - the distresses and prevalent perceptions - surrounding the western world.  At ESKFF, he restructured his direction through narrative illustration and psychology creating an outlet to depict his fascination with the human condition, specifically with conflict of emotion.

“The human experience and the paths of self-exploration via social connections always have fascinated me. What makes us relatable to each other are the emotions, both past and present, that constantly shape who we are. My art focuses on presenting the relatable yet personal hardships of life, specifically by examining memories of troubled events in my life and evaluating them to understand the effects they have. I combine this with historical symbolism to create the language of scenic imagery.”

In 2013, he received a BFA in Illustration from Parsons The New School for Design. He has exhibited work at Parsons The New School for Design, Gallery Hanahou, Mana Contemporary, JCAST, The Majestic Theatre, Lowes Theatre. He has been featured in 3 X 3 The Magazine of Contemporary Illustration and American Illustration.

www.whoahn.com (Fine Art)

www.ortijnyc.com (Illustration)

From a background in Architecture, Natacha Mankowski employs painting and video to examine the boundary between real and artificial space. She sees space as a power and an information system. She experiments with scale, volume, contrast, and patterns to questions the public on how contemporary digital aesthetics become mapped onto and become part of the space around us. 

The mental spaces she presents in her work contain personal stories, that she actualize into form, color and space. Even if they are emptied from direct human representations, those spaces seems to be inhabited by a presence. Through this, she integrates the audience. She creates dialogues between people, the virtual space and reality, researching what she calls an “archaeology of space”.

Natacha Mankowski holds a Master in Architecture from the Ecole Spéciale in Paris. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Tony Garnier Prize. Her paintings have been shown at 104 in Paris as well as in the Watermill Center in New York, among other. Her films have been played in Toulouse as part of the Transverse Film Festival as well as in Berlin at the Berghain. This year she will be part of Only Lovers, an collective show at Le Coeur in Paris. 

Kevin Wixted’s paintings and drawings have appeared nationally and internationally in numerous exhibitions.  His shows have been written about in Artforum, Art in America, ArtNews, The New York Times, Boston Globe, New York Observer, and the Hudson Review among others. His work is represented in public collections including the State Museum of Pennsylvania, Mississippi Museum of Art, Chase Manhattan Bank, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Noruma Securities, Societe Generale, and Time Warner.

Wixted’s awards include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, Cite Internationale des Arts/Paris Residency, Alfred University International Fellowship Faculty Grant/Dusseldorf Germany, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency, MacDowell Colony Residency, Patrick Allen Frazier of Hospitalfield Foundation Residency/ Scotland, and the Excellence in Teaching Award from Alfred University.

Wixted lives and paints in New York City and the North Fork of Long Island. He spends time each year in the Yucatan Peninsula, where he has designed and built a home/studio. Wixted is Professor of Drawing and Painting in the School of Art and Design at Alfred University. He received his MA and BA in Studio Art from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Verdiana Patacchini, ALIAS Virdi.
Virdi's work ranges from painting to sculptures. Departing each piece as a platform for continuous research of materials transforming visual perceptions and poetry into painting and sculptures. Her subject is amorphous representation of the human figure with even classical references; it is through a complex investigation of the quality of colors and a diverse exploration of materials that Virdi reveals her images.

Born in Orvieto, Italy, Virdi lives and works between Rome and New York. She studied in Rome at the Via Ripetta Academy of Fine Art. In 2011 she was selected for the Italy Pavillon at the Venice Biennale. It is in 2012 that her artwork La Veronica won the second Catel Prize of Rome. Now her work is showed in Europe and USA.

My work is obsessed by research; I feel I am in a fight between my intimacy and the constant necessity to find new solutions.

In the work of Virdi, one senses a search, an existential exploration with no discernible map or direction. The amorphous quality of each work is simultaneously punctuated with symbols, word and vague images representing a dream-like state, while each work possesses a depth and passion in the desire to reveal her journey inward. Nadesha Mijoba. 

“I seek to create an opulent feeling through rendering sparkling surfaces, saturated colors, and textures of our fashion and technology-conscious society. My paintings rely on the viewer’s desire to see pleasing images. Yet, within the lush imagery resides a psychological element – a memory, some light-hearted social commentary, or an ironic or surrealistic aspect that is encountered upon closer inspection.  My most recent paintings combine elements of still life and portraiture.”

Lisa Ficarelli-Halpern is a New Jersey based artist and educator. She received her BFA in surface design from Parsons the New School for Design, and earned her MFA in painting from New Jersey City University. Prior to receiving her graduate degree in fine art, Lisa served as an executive designer for the Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, overseeing all areas of home design, with particular emphasis on textile products.  Her expertise and affinity for pattern is a consistent, conceptual thread in her paintings and prints.

Ficarelli-Halpern has widely exhibited in numerous solo and group juried exhibitions, in venues including The Shirin New York Gallery, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, City Without Walls and The Gateway Art Center in Newark, the George Segal Gallery at Montclair State University, and the Zhou B. Art Center in Chicago. She was voted artist of the month by the Arts Guild of New Jersey in June of 2013. She has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine Vol.10 and has won numerous awards, including a Geraldine Dodge Fellowship. Her work is included in the upcoming New Jersey Arts Annual Exhibition, sponsored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, opening in April 2016 at the Noyes Museum of Art, Stockton University.

Dana Melamed was born in Israel in 1972. She studied architecture and art history at Ort Technicum Givatayim, Isreal in 1990 and graduated from the Tel Aviv School of Visual art in 1995. Since her first solo exhibition "When Dawn Breaks" at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, New York, NY in 2006, Melamed has had 8 solo exhibitions in NYC and participated in multiple group shows around the world. Her work has been on display in venues such as The Durst Organization (2008, 2010) Lesley Heller Workspace (2011) , Von Lintel Gallery (2013) and Stux Gallery (2014). Her works are part of public permanent collections such as the Frenkels Foundation for the Arts and the University of Michigan Museum, as well as in numerous international private collections around the world. 
The wall sculptures of Dana Melamed are concerned with the urban environment as a many layers product of human endeavor...memory made manifested. However, the link to pictorial spaces is maintained in spite of it's touching the 3rd dimension with occasional low relief structures. In the new works Melamed vigorously occupies real space with accretions of her signature scorched, scarred and painted materials. The resulting wall sculptures become embodiments of a paradox: Graphic elements coax the eye to project into pictorial space but are held in check by a complex structure approximating symphonic music. The textures, details like a Piranesi etching, are parallel to a string section or chorus whose individual voices, though perceptible, are fused into grater melodic line. The sense of construction/destruction that the heavily stressed materials convey is transfigured from industrial mayhem into a parable of human history building upon itself over time

Kristianne is a Filipino-American conceptual artist, addressing social issues in her generation through different mediums. Her creative outlets consist of painting, photography, animation, video, costume designs, and book arts. Her work is also heavily influenced and inspired by art and literary research and creative writing. During her ESKFF residency at Mana Contemporary she learns how to use natural pigments and dyes into the repertoire of her visual language. Her current series of work is a visual commentary on the ironies between hyper-consumerism, quick fashion trends, handmade crafts, and a woman’s body tangled within its social dogmas.

In 2013, Kristianne received her BFA in visual arts from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Kristianne is a recipient of the Anthony S. Guadadielo Scholarship in 2008. Since then, she has exhibited her work at the Mason Gross Galleries, Mana Contemporary, Parsons the New School of Design, Montclair Galleries, the Majestic Theatre, Lowes Theatre, and the Barrow Mansion in Jersey City. In 2014, Kristianne founded K.EIGHT, a line of handmade functional art objects, wearable art and book arts in limited editions. 

In 1973 Bruce Stiglich received his BFA from Philadelphia College of Art Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He was awarded the Art Achievement Award. In 1987 he received his MFA from the University of Albany, Albany, N.Y.

He was awarded the Presidents Award. Bruce has received the Adolphe Gottlieb Grant,and the Rockwell Visiting Artist Grant.He  been a Professor at Parsons School of Art and Design since 2002, He has taught Advanced painting at Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art. He has also maintained a career as a Visual Merchandizing and Fashion Director/Consultant for companies such as: Bloomingdales, Cartier, Calvin Klein, Ralph, LaurenConsultant, Lacoste, BananaRepublic, the Limited Inc., .He now runs his own Visual Company while continuing to pursue his career as a Fine Artist. Stiglich's Installations deal with notions of memory, loss, obsession and How process can develope into an observed form of abstraction.

An accomplished figurative painter, Marshall Jones was the recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant in 2008.  He was also awarded the Phylis Mason Grant and The Jean Gates Grant.  As a scholarship member of the Salmagundi Club, he has been twice awarded the Richard Pionk award at the annual members show.  In 2010 he was awarded the Fanatasy Fountain Fund Travel Scholarship which enabled him to study at the Paris American Academy.  

Marshall Jones work has shown extensively in New York including The (UN)Fair 2013 and 2014, Mark Miller Gallery, Denise Bibro Gallery, Objects and Images and the Salmagundi Club.  

Marshall Jones has taught figure drawing and painting at the Art Students League of New York, the Salmagundi Club, and Studio 371 in Jersey City.  He works and teaches out of his studio in Hell's Kitchen.      

It is through experiential investigation that one moves toward understanding . With this in mind , we continually seek out intimate corners of spaces that may initially appear foreign . By isolating the various fragments found in foreign spaces through 5 different mediums such as : painting , photographs , writing , sound , & found-objects , we arrive at a collective + linear story .

The work is interactive , sight-specific , & multi-media based . Our intention is that visitors arrive closer to an understanding of both the common & universal interconnectivity that hovers inside fragile moments of everyday things or behind cultural façades .

During the residency with ESKFF at Mana Contemporary , Projet VALISE , by GABRIELLE MEYEROWITZ (NYC) & KATHRIN HANGA (VIE) , will turn gathered-material from the Atlantic Coast of France ( c.2O13 ) into book-form .

Ekaterina Abramova is an artist, specializing in painting and graphic arts in mixed as well as traditional techniques using oil, acrylic, markers, etc.

Although being a multifaceted artist, her style could be described as going in two major directions: the 21st century Post-Expressionism, and Spiritual Ornamental paintings drawn on symbolic folk art of various peoples, most notably on Russian and Indian mythology. Born in 1979 in Moscow, she graduated from an art school with honors and continued her studies at the Vasnetsov College of Fine Arts, Moscow. In 2007 she received her MFA from the I.E. Repin State Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Russia. Her numerous awards include Gold Medal “250th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Arts,” Gold Medal “National Endowment for the Arts” of the International Charity Fund “Philanthropists of the Century”, citation from the Russian Academy of Fine Arts for the participation in the exhibition dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the Academy, the Peacekeeper Fund Medal, among others. She was nominated for the State Presidential Scholarship in the Arts. She is a member of the Union of Russian Artists, Art Fund International, Creative Union of Professional Artists, Art Indulge Foundation.

In 2014, she was awarded an International Artist Residency in Hyderabad, India, organized by the State Fine Art Gallery and Kalanirvana Foundation, to represent Russia among 20 other artists from all over the world; as well as similar artist residency in Goa Chitra Museum, Goa, India.

And in 2015, she has been awarded a 3-month International Artist Residency, curated by Eileen Kaminsky Foundation at Mana Contemporary Art Complex in Jersey City, NJ, during which she will make 10 paintings of her new series Placenta starting September 2016.

Among her most recent exhibitions are: Art Cocktail Exhibition at D.E.V.E. Gallery, Bruges, Belgium, 2013; Exhibition Artistry at Artery Fine Art Gallery, Chicago, USA, 2014; Exhibition ArtExpo New York, New York City, USA, 2014; Exhibition On The Right Way, Central Artist’s House, Moscow, 2014; Woman’s Academy, Moscow, 2014; Exhibition Art Through Light II at the State Gallery of Fine Art, Hyderabad, India, September 2014; Exhibition Innovation of Color, Westside Park Art Gallery, New York City, USA, October 2014; Exhibition Golden Age, Russian Cultural Centre, Berlin, Germany, November 2014; Art India Festival, Mumbai, India, November 2014; Kolkata Art Biennale, Kolkata, India, April 2015; Exhibition ArtExpo New York, New York City, USA, April 2015; Exhibition “Expressions” at Gateway Arts Center, New York City, USA, May 2015; Exhibition “Take Your Breath Away” at the Victoria Space, Art Factory, Paterson , NJ, USA, June 2015.

She has had numerous personal exhibitions of her art all over Europe, India, China, and USA.

Her works are in private collections in UK, France, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, China, India, and USA.

She lives in USA (New York), India (Goa), and Russia (Moscow).

Constanza Giuliani (1984) Born in Mendoza, Argentina. Studied Art at the National University of Cuyo, annual scholarship recipient for The Artists Program in DiTella University Buenos Aires 2012. Her work has been shown in Argentina, Chile, Perú and Spain. As a gallerist s​he founded and directed her own art gallery in Argentina, “Costado Galería.” The gallery became an important node in Mendoza, a platform for many invited artists to show, teach, and offer workshops. It was awarded in 2009 as best young gallery by the prestigious art fair ArteBa and the Government of Mendoza declared it of cultural interest.

“With an interest in gesture, attitude and action, I draw and paint people in order to understand myself and my desires. Exploring t​he relatio​nship between representational and figurative drawing, my work pushes formal aspects of painting. The loose materiality of spray paint, airbrush, and charcoal lend themselves to describing the human body: flesh and mind. Intelligence, communication, morality, and behavior are all important thematically. Conceptually the work conveys a fluidity between control and lack thereof, both in the execution of the idea, and the idea itself. With this in mind ​I sometimes discover myself flirting organically with abstraction.”

https://www.flickr.com/photos/costan/ 

Instagram @chuliani

Alessandro Brighetti was born in 1978 in Bologna, in a family entirely composed by doctors, from whom he absorbed the scientific research attitude. After different and coloured experiences, in 2008 he applied the Academy of fine art in Bologna, painting section. The scientific cultural imprinting recriminates its space in the artist’s work: from the first series of paintings representing histological sections to the second series, in which the election medium is the x-rays, to the third, kinetic sculptures based on the interaction of magnetic fields and a liquid capable to react them, to the latest, in which kinetic sculpture is brought to self-sufficiency, Brighetti’s ouvre orbits the sinergy of Art and Science, research and its formalization.

Born in Stockholm, Sweden.

Lives and works in Malaga, Spain.

He is a fifth-generation and internationally recognized artist, exhibited in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Elmhurst/Chicago, Miami, London, Berlin, Milan, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Zurich, Amsterdam and Stockholm (to name a few cities).

 “Evocative artist Johan Wahlstrom aims to encourage the celebration of daily life and incite happiness through the acceptance of reality. His emotionally charged neoexpressionist paintings are a contemporary hybrid of Jean DuBuffet’s chaotic geometric canvases and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s subversively scrawled social critiques. Wahlstrom works in series that function as pointed signifiers to his artistic intention. His work aims to elucidate the uncontrollable nature of reality in an effort to embrace the small sufferings that signify life. Wahlstrom’s work continues to gain attention fuelled by his overwhelming desire to connect with humanity in the hopes of provoking conversation. Pushing his abilities to the limit, Wahlstrom transcribes visual stories to enact societal change by illustrating the erratic and confusing nature of human existence.”

Painting  as an exercise where the in-gredients play the main role, appearedin the American abstract expressionism,lets thinking the drips of Pollock, canvasthat accumulated pictoric material, thebig strokes of Willem de Kooning in hisintermittent neo-figurative and abstractoffer. The absorbed ingredients of thecanvas by Helen Frankenthaler or theveils of colors that proposed MorrisLouis. An adventure of action and ges-ture as an exercise that restore the rit-ual aspects of the artistic creation andrandomly awards to the chance and thecasually validness to patent results.Particular mithologies have taken alarge sector of thought and the artisticpractice. Within the painting exercise ithas been perceived as a propitious areato execute such presuppose. Paintingas an objective in itself, and as a prac-tice of other languages, as the one doneby the video art, performance and in-stallation. Painting in all its te remained ya me y guy txt itself andanalysing not only of its own environ-ment but its own condition. Each timethe way art is materialized becomemore suspicious due to the demand ofthe multiple motivations that hurry theartistic practicey, if we said that manytimes the results have motivated post-conceptual results, in the desire to re-construct the past, giving new breathsand incorporating actualized data, insoconstructing pertinent reflections of con-temporary circumstances. The painting of Juan Guillermo Re-strepo expands details of the medievalminiatures of the illustrated books. Ab-stracts the fine and cittle figuration, en-larging them for his flower canvas. Withlive and contrasting colors, the designsbecome decorative and control theimage, so they become an undulatingand continuous concern new composi-tions. The other group of paintingspraise the color and ingredient to bemixed, paint out areas of color, andfavours the contoled accident as an in-herent practice to the work. The big for-mats and clear facture are other of theappeals of this proposal suited to thehigh quality of the painting marked byits luminosity and elegant presence.

Stephanie Pflaum was born in Vienna, Austria. She currently lives in Vienna and Lower Austria

In 1998, she went tot he University of Applied Art, Vienna where she studied art history and philosophy

Previous exhibitions include places from; Vienna, Austria; Salzburg, Austria; Berlin, Germany; Kassel, Germany; New York, Usa; Houston, Texas, Usa; and New Delhi, India.

Awards given to Stephanie include; Female Artist Award, Frauenkunstpreis 2003, The Ministry of Education; Science and Culture, Parliament, Vienna, Austria; and the Recognition award  2015 of  the Government of the Land of Lower Austria

At the first encounter, Formoe´s paintings seem obvious, innocent and public. Erik Formoe is a riddle teller. Each image may be thousand pictures. Each question he poses can lead to thousand responses, or a thousand new questions.

People in Erik Formoe’s images are silent storytellers. They are anonymous figures who might meet, or maybe not. Apparently they are introverted melancholics.They know something. You can take part in their secrets, if you are curious enough. Memories are eternal, even if they are created only once. Erik Formoe’s paintings
dwell on this subject.

Olav Mathisen (1990) is a young artist from Lillehammer, Norway. Mathisen has studied Fine Art at Ålesund Kunstfagskole, Strykjernet Kunstskole and is currently studying at Bergen academy of art and design.

He primarily works with oil and egg tempera on canvas. His subjectmather draws from fragments of the human condition; tendenses, roles, both subjectification and objectification of "the self" in different constructed situations.

His paintings consits of a variety of techniques. From total abstraction and thick pastose strokes, to more detailed figurative painting conversing on the same surface.

Christina Disington (1980)  is a self-taught artist whose creative production revolves around the figure, the duality in the human mind and human relations.
She uses her own photos as inspiration, often self portraits and pictures of family and close friends. 

The main key of the paintings is disturbing and gloomy, almost morbid. In this universe children look like adults and adults look like children.  The figurative and trivial in the motives are often disturbed and broken down by the surreal.

Joelle Perry is a representational artist, who studied art under the atelier tradition of Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy. She now aims in her career to become a contemporary sacred artist, her passion being Christian theology and prayer. Although she holds representational art as the truest or most beautiful form of art, she also uses other styles. These, she recognizes, can have the ability to convey deeper messages and ask deeper questions than representational art. 

Jan Davidoff was born 1976 in Norden / Germany and reached his diploma in painting with Prof. Günther Förg at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, München in 2009. He lives and works in Munich / Germany.  

It would be too easy to follow one’s first impression and dismiss Jan Davidoff’s paintings as “figurative art”. In fact, his works are to be positioned on a level between concreteness and abstraction, on which real life scenes are confronted with a deeper meaning. Therefore photographs of travel experiences are being adapted on the computer back at the studio and then reduced to silhouettes, exaggerated and layered in various pictorial planes to set them into re-evaluating and significant contexts.

For example, the crowd paintings are inspired by Davidoff’s experiences in the tourist strongholds all over the world. But at the same time the indifferent background detaches the masses from their object relations and implements a second level of meaning. It is not about a real scene in front of a mighty cathedral or at a strongly frequented fair, it is more about the crowd itself and the role of the individual in its middle. The often used golden background intensifies this detachedness from content by evoking an association with the early Medieval religious icons, in which saints – enraptured from the material world – are painted in front of a golden background. Hence the viewer is confronted with the question about the relation between the individual and the almost overpowering mass. In Davidoff’s paintings the one or other person stands out, because of extraordinary clothing or a specially exposed position. But on the whole the individual person gets lost and only the dominating human crowd remains to be seen, analogical to a beehive. That conjures up a feeling of being lost, but at the same time the will to self-assertion. This way Jan Davidoff manages to communicate one of the most fundamental desires of today’s society, the perception as a unique individual, in his at first so easily as solely “figurative” classified paintings. Soon it is evident, that Davidoff’s works aren’t mere travel impressions, but an evaluation of the constellations of today’s society.

Gabriel Schmitz (*1970, Dortmund, Germany) took up his studies of painting in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1990 and then proceeded to do a Master in European Fine Art in Barcelona where he has lived and worked since 1994.

Since then he has exhibited on a regular basis in Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, London, Oslo and the United States.

His work shows a profound interest in the human being, either doing portraits or painting figures in loosely defined settings, urban surroundings or interiors, often with a desolate air to it. Cultural icons such as writers, artists or dancers serve as references in other works. His style is often sparse and sketchy, but his figures achieve a strong presence facing the spectator.

Parallel to his painting he has never abandoned the practise of drawing, mostly charcoal on paper, and he also embarks on projects that create new contexts for his work, as for example in his recent series “Walking with Alÿs”, in which he took photographs of two charcoal-drawn figures on the streets of New Jersey and New York.

Tenesh Webber is a Canadian artist living in Jersey City. She studied at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, and at OCAD University, in Toronto, where she received an AOCA Degree. Webber works in black and white abstract photography. She is currently focusing on medium scale photograms. Webber has exhibited her work nationally and internationally; including solo exhibits at Margaret Thatcher Projects, Yossi Milo Gallery, and at Resources Transfer, in New York City, and at Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, Ma. She has received many grants and awards for her work, notably two Canada Council Grants, a grant from Art Matters Inc, and several grants from Artist's Space. Her current studio is located in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  Webber has an upcoming solo exhibit at The Victory Hall Drawing Rooms, in Jersey City, in May 2015.

Singaporean contemporary artist Jahan Loh forayed into street art in the early '90s. Counterculture yet well ahead of times, Jahan is a visual artist whose roots are firmly entrenched in both fine and street art. Jahan paints, invades, reinvents and paradises modern culture and popular iconography with a barrage of imagery laden with socio-political undertones. Devoted to breaking the banal momentum and didactic approach to art and life, his works often overload the senses with collages of contextual riddles. Offering an alternative universe where nothing is sacred and everything else is subverted, he conceives theories through his neo-pop aesthetics and subliminal social narratives.

His works have been featured at art exhibitions internationally. Jahan was also one of eight Singapore contemporary artists selected for 8Q-RATE, the inaugural exhibition for the opening of Singapore's 8Q museum in 2008.

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. 

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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Gianluca Bianchino is a multimedia artist living and working in Northern New Jersey. Originally from Italy, Gianluca attended an Architectural magnet school in Avellino before relocating to the US where he enrolled at New Jersey City University to receive a BFA in painting. In 2011 he completed his studies with an MFA from Montclair State University focused on sculpture/installation.

Gianluca has maintained a studio practice for over ten years in Northern New Jersey, for nearly a decade in the thriving arts district of Newark NJ, and currently in Jersey City.

Bianchino exhibits regularly throughout the greater New York area. Recent exhibits include The Painting Center, NY and at Chashama Chelsea Project Space, NY and a solo exhibit at Index Art Center, Newark, NJ which is reviewed in the April 2013 edition of Sculpture Magazine.

Gianluca’s current body of work is inspired by cosmology and physics.  

Maria Pia Binazzi’s artistic evolution is comprehensive: she graduated with honours in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome where she was born in 1979 and completed a MFA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. She moved then to Leipzig and to Berlin, where she currently lives: in Germany she made important experiences which greatly influenced her “artistic path”. She has had group exhibitions and solo shows, the first of which she made when she was 22 years old. She started publishing her illustrations in catalogues for museums and scientific journals at 25. In her works, she is continuously inspired by and refers to the natural world of Flora and Fauna. Her artistic path is coherent and goes throughout the continuous improvement of a personal research. It started with the predominant use of the graphic technique and evolved via other techniques and by the use of different materials like recycled glass and wood. Her artworks show also references to architectural sketches and drawings, scientific drawings and geographical and urban maps.

Tom McGlynn is an artist, writer, independent curator and teacher based in the NYC area. His work is represented in many national and international collections including the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Cooper- Hewitt National Design Museum of the Smithsonian. His art has been reproduced for the cover of Artforum magazine and featured in articles in the New York Times. He is a contributing writer to the ARTSEEN section of the Brooklyn Rail and in various online arts journals.

Mr. McGlynn has taught as an Assistant Professor at Castleton State College, Vermont, and has previously been a Visiting Artist Lecturer at the Mason Gross School of Fine Arts at Rutgers University, NJ. He is currently a visiting lecturer at  Parsons/The New School in New York City and at The New Centre for Theory and Practice .

McGlynn's projects take into account the role of the artist in the expanded field of interdisciplinary practice to include socially oriented sculptural installation, abstract painting derived from social semiotics, and photography that blurs the line between quotidian documentation and generic repetition.

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico – and raised in New Jersey. In 2009, I completed my undergraduate degree at Rutgers University (Newark Campus), earning a BFA in Painting and a Minor in Art History. While attending Rutgers I earned the Creative Achievement in Fine Arts Award – for outstanding accomplishment in fine arts reflecting creativity and dedication. In 2012, I earned an MFA in Painting from Montclair State University. I have shown my work in Newark (New Jersey), Montclair (New Jersey), London (England), Miami (FL), Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The core of my art practice is the development of a quasi-spiritual universe. I make large scale painted work on interior and exterior architecture. My process and artwork involves the re-appropriation of the visual language religious cultures to explore a broad spectrum of themes and ideas. I draw inspiration directly from my environment, and my work loosely references disparate sources – my attempt to compress graphic design, pop culture, religion and the fine arts.

The current series of paintings focus on abstract orbs that originate from my interest in prayer beads, which are used by members of various religious traditions. These orbs are usually in an orientation resembling symbols like Lemniscates, Analemmas, Circles, knots and other similar symbols. The colors of these beads reference the western adaptation of the psycho-spiritual belief system of Chakras. These three aspects; the abstract beads, symbol(s), and color(s) help activate a surface (i.e. an interior and/or exterior wall). 

Complicated with intentional glitches, I use performance, video and installation to navigate and discover social patterns and manipulate the absorption of culture into propaganda. Sexual structures, technological evolution of body movement and Feminine paradigm shifts become language that breaks through the expectations of dance and enters into an interruptive discomfort. Performance and technology become tools for acknowledging a grounding reality.

The body processes information regardless of the choice to do so, so manifests personality as well as psychosis. I am drawn to those who have let their bodies move away from the mind; drug induced nod outs, half-active and intoxicated. I am not interested in glamorizing or promoting this behavior, but navigating the choice to speak its body language. Thus, my work addresses control in liminal spaces of this particular processing terminal, as performance, installation and video. 

Ritual and ceremony are paramount in the complex narratives the American-based artist Minka Sicklinger

weaves into her work. An observation of everyday forms, the subconscious as well as inspiration drawn

from a lifetime of collecting highly decorated textiles and jewelry translates into geometric patterns and

shapes. These serve to form a timeless matrix in which humans and animals dance, fly and worship,

offering reverence and mysticism to the everyday. 

I started the Flat People series a couple of years ago with the intention of making sex happen and bodily fluids take over. But the figures are so flat and the charcoal so dusty that sensuality never kicks in. Only a vague idea of the actions represented makes it through the flatness of the paper, suggesting that representation requires mechanics of its own in order to create true pictures, folded over the semantics of the drawing. By illustrating with candid flatness, I am able to instantly rearrange and inject new tensions into a pre-existing web of meanings.

Some Silly Stories, an animated web series in collaboration with musician Flavien Berger, employed the semantics of Flat People with a renewed focus on using humor to engage viewers in real time. With Some Silly Stories, I piled up peripheral emotions, disregarded notes, repressed drawings, and the leftovers of everyday life into small volcanoes of vulnerability and tenderness. The episodes are generous and emotional, provoking equally charged responses from its viewers, although the nature of the emotions vary from person to person. These diverse reactions function as an ongoing critique that redefines and challenges systems of representation and communication—demonstrating that a language as straightforward as cartoons becomes multi-dimensional and political when confronted with a diversity of opinions.

This Summer in Morocco, I began to explore the multidimensionality of political and social frameworks after my first encounter with Fardaous Funjab.

Imagine the end of a funeral: everyone is exhausted with grief. The psalmodiers are still psalmoding and some people are chewing almonds. Towards the end, my mother shares a dream she had. She says:

I had a dream that mama wanted to start wearing the hijab and I was so mad at her. I said “You taught us, Faith is in your heart; not around your ears. You are a modern woman.” But mama said her decision was made, she would wear the hijab from now on. I wanted to rebel against her so I took Meriem and put her back inside my belly.

In the middle of this insanity, I look at the woman sitting next to me. She is wearing a hijab but seemsunconcerned by my mother’s dream. Too busy texting. The woman introduces herself as Fardaous Funjab, a successful designer who has made a fortune selling Haute Couture hijabs. Her spicy perfume smells like an intoxicating gateway into the mysterious world of covered women. She projects a monstrous, complicatedbreath, an impossible synthesis of hysterical Coran and silent giggles. I compliment her hair, although most of it is hidden underneath her headscarf. She says: “Oh thank you, my hairdresser, Najat, said I would look like the Moroccan Mariah Carey if I let her bleach some of the implants. You live in America right? So you would know! They will believe you! Tell them I look exactly like her. ***wink!”

I look at her thick hair implants. Fardaous seems to be held vertical by them. She would probably sit differently if she were balding. She looks around the crowded living room in grief, and majestically inhales as though she feels the pressure of every single person against her breasts.

I was raised by uncovered Muslim women, with topless beach summers and competing cleavage. Everything about Fardaous seemed to redefine my inherited antagonism towards the hijab. Fardaous Funjab represented the diametrical opposite of my system of values. And yet the raging stream of thickly covered sensuality pouring out of this woman began to wash away the validity of my mother’s judgmental reaction towards the hijab.

Two days later, I meet with Fardaous again and she agrees to let me document two months of her life. I filmed her getting ready in the morning, tracing her eyebrows with her eyes closed, tanning through her mesh body suit, reinventing a mini golf course in her garden and making sales in her million dollar house. The documentation explores the aesthetics of sexiness and reality TV through the lens of a hijab designer.

From the flatness of indulgent cartoons to silly not-so-silly stories, I have focused on the dissolution of tropes and questioning systems of representation through a strategy of magical realism and humor as an unreliable pacifier. My practice has now entered a deeply transitional phase, exploring the encounter of fashion and religion with a focus on the aesthetics of sexuality/sexiness in a contemporary Muslim context. 

Floating through pastel heterotopias, eating fro-yoTM still-lifes and running down a concrete treadmill, my

work is a product of the millennial condition. Paper sculptures become vast landscapes, structural

elements are rendered in a balanced static space and photographic planes emulate the world behind the

screen. That #ffffffffffffffff color space I’m in all the time. A buzzing glow that gets louder and louder as day

turns to night and I’m still hunched over in front of it. An odd simultaneity of soothing rhythm cloaked in a

dull anxiety and the firewire bursts when I finally squeeze my eyes shut. I open them on something real

and my hands are dirty.

I use digital technologies to design the spaces of painting and photography. Existing between

abstraction, graphic art, Adobe CS and the screen, the work aims for a place where the supposedly

discrete states–flatness and dimensionality–analogue and digital–are merged. By cruising the feedback

loop between digital and material space in the studio, pictorial planes collapse and unify. I deal with this

compression, the flat space of design, through familiar tropes–the still life, tableaus of abstract structures,

formalism, cubism and op art.

The frame, the lens, the borderline separating me from you. Two people pass through portals and come

together across the fish net of time and space to listen to steel drums with sweaty palms. I look through

the airbrushed haze and see Ed Ruscha sending a text message two-million years too late, floating on

the horizon line, cutting through the acrylic smog and sitting on the edge of a frame, sunbathing. The

entryway is friendly and round and oh so smooth. Miami Dolphins on cruise control. 

The House of ia locates itself amid a nomadic nucleus.

ia, as subject, carries a curious intent to participate in information as expression, in performance as discursive.

Our ‘House’ renders interest in fabricating a practice of intimate experimentation by queering the social and interpersonal rituals of relating, and engaging in resistance as a form of generation.

Entwined within the thin shroud amidst condition and creation, we deploy process as a working strategy to explore alterity, a leaping into the void, resisting a legacy towards anterior archetypes and dominant designs.

ia, as object, locates itself in breaking through seemingly fixed ideas that limit and marginalize the concepts and methodology constituting a calculation of ‘art’ , with an intention to expand the platform for tracking, discovering, and interpreting ‘newness’.

The House of ia was founded in 2012 and is the collaborative works of Jillayne Hunter and kb Thomason.

“We find our selves creating in the edges, falling through grey space separating intent and decision. Betwixt binaries, amid arrival and departure, male and female, internal and external, we find slippery useful, perspicuity in vague, and locus in flux. Ignited by the balmy states between here and there, we are a planet in transit ever engrossed in the process of ‘being’ in ‘becoming’.” 

"I first commissioned Lilly in the mid-2000’s to create a series of paintings that promoted productivity in my office. My staff and I both benefited from the serene environment her work facilitated." -Steven Fraggioli (CEO).

"Lilly's paintings don't just speak they breathe." -Laura Parsons (Interior Designer)

"I am the Regional Manager at ReVisions LTD and was at the corporate office when the first Lilly Walden arrived. When we put it up, I really couldn't see the difference between her painting and the one before, but after a few weeks I have to say I did felt more productive, more focused and calmer in general. I'm not sure if it was the painting or what but my co-worker Steph had a similar experience. Hopefully corporate approves one for my branch." -Kyle Englehart (Regional Manager)

"I wanted to make a wallpaper from her work for the interior of my house but Lilly politely declined. I do respect that Lilly is interested in producing and reproducing energetic environments through her paintings. Though it really would have looked nice in my bathroom..." -Jennifer Mason (Home Owner)

"A friend of mine who has practice upstate hung a Lilly Walden in the waiting room to calm patients before surgery. I thought if it worked there it might work for my employees. Turns out it has transformed the ambience in the office. I have even ordered one for my mother in law!" -Gwen Lewis (Executive Director) 

In a slurry of conceptual fragments and gestures, my interests in the abstract, the screen, and zoning out,

tie my practice together. Conceptually my work plays off painting and lava lamp tropes, resulting in

sculptural installation, video, painting, and bookworks. Screensavers, after-images, eye floaters,

minimalism, and optics, influence my visual language, drifting from swirlly to gridded and modular.

Pursuing a techy minimalist re-enchantment of space, my installations are kind of abstract esoteric zones,

using frames, and video to delineate space. Columns made from lenses placed on low-rise plinths

simultaneously evoke the permanence of architectural space and become ethereal, in their transparent

distortion.

Working with light as an effect, process, and image, the works crystalize into either physically or digitally

layered prints on plastic and fabric. Abstract fields from both analogue and digital processes explore

physicality and mediation. The physical boundary of the flatness of the screen and physicality of fabric

and plastic give sensation as the eye wanders in fully saturated layers. Evidence of the hand is captured

in the images as smudges and debris on my scanner are left through process. Vibrating between flat and

dimensional, the seriality of images suggests the infinite and subjective. Using imagery of static and

reflective materials, there is no referent to image or object in the real world. I love how one can get lost in

the peripheral border of an image, find one’s self focused in the center, or floating in the static of spatial

dimensions until you hit the edge of the frame. 

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 Artlantic sculpture park in Atlantic City, NJ.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gianluca Bianchino is a multimedia artist living and working in Northern New Jersey. Originally from Italy, Gianluca attended an Architectural magnet school in Avellino before relocating to the US where he enrolled at New Jersey City University to receive a BFA in painting. In 2011 he completed his studies with an MFA from Montclair State University focused on sculpture/installation.

Gianluca has maintained a studio practice for over ten years in Northern New Jersey, for nearly a decade in the thriving arts district of Newark NJ, and currently in Jersey City.

Bianchino exhibits regularly throughout the greater New York area. Recent exhibits include The Painting Center, NY and at Chashama Chelsea Project Space, NY and a solo exhibit at Index Art Center, Newark, NJ which is reviewed in the April 2013 edition of Sculpture Magazine.

Gianluca’s current body of work is inspired by cosmology and physics. 

Functioning as sculptural objects, my flat painted characters become the subjects of a scene. I photograph these figures (those who inspire me, collaborators) installed in different environments. Showing both the sculptures and the photos, I end up making work about representation and fantasy.

To experience the tableaux in person is to understand the sculptural nature of the wooden cutouts. My figures are more like props or toys than “finished” works, as I repurpose them over and over in new spaces.

My first tableaux, 3 years ago, involved driving 20 paintings to New Orleans and submerging them in a swimming pool, which only my assistants had the opportunity to see. Understanding from this experience that interacting with the sculpture was part of my aim, I tried to expose the act of making as the subject itself.

This led to the development of my Camera Obscura for the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. This format allowed me to exhibit the sculptures outdoors and have the audience move through the installation while being observed voyeuristically by viewers inside the Camera. The natural projection of the sculptures occurred upside down, a visual abstraction as a reflection on the experience of seeing.

Recently I have begun to incorporate living bodies inside my artworks as pieces of a sculptural performance. “The Birth of the Minotaur” questions vulnerability and sexual power by posing a nude human of either sex within a wooden bull. The title hearkens to the Greek myth, in which Daedalus was commissioned to build a sex-suit for Queen Pasiphae to copulate with a bull her husband refused to sacrifice.

Samuel Evensen lives and works in New York. He received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and recently completed a residency at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China. He is a three-time recipient of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance Grant, JP Morgan Chase Foundation and a recipient of the Prince of Wales Fellowship Residency, Chateau de Balleroy, France. Recent exhibitions include Kirkland Gallery, New York, NY; MOUart Gallery, Beijing, China; the Edward Hopper Museum, Nyack, NY; Fuse Gallery, New York, NY; Boltax Gallery, Long Island, NY; Artists’ House Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; and Phillips de Pury, New York, NY. He was included in Biennial: Contemporary American Realism at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, IN and has taught painting and drawing as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and at The New York Academy of Art. Private collections include HRH the Prince of Wales.

Lilian Kreutzberger, the Netherlands 1984, received a BFA at the Royal Academy of Art, the Hague (2007) and she received a Fulbright for her Master of Fine Arts programme at Parsons New School, New York (May 2013. She currently lives and works in New York and is an Artist in Residence at the ESKFF.

I make highly formed graphite drawings then adorn the works with collage, paint, and negation. The imagery created is rooted in fashion advertising tropes and the subversive collaborative process of vandalism and graffiti. By collapsing these pictorial spaces I aim to disrupt the slick austerity of objectification. I have begun to install my hand drawn objects in public spaces to encourage their defacement. By this direct engagement in the collapse of beauty my work exposes the inherent veneer of illusion and desire.

Azikiwe Mohammed graduated from Bard College where he studied photography under the tutelege of 
Larry Fink, Stephen Shore and An-My Le'. Shooting his way 
thru the city and working on a photo essay entitled Pictures My Dad Took, he freelance prints for a variety of clients. 
Some past clients have included but are not limited to Arthur Elgort, Bill Fredericks, Primary Photographic and The Small Darkroom. 
A digital and film shooter, Azikiwe currently works at the Camera Club of New York and teaches photography at The Educational Alliance.  As a resident of ESKFF he has been honing his artistic skills as a painter.

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.

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 focus on Art History and Sculpture. 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 artwork and a development of ideas through various mediums. Currently working as an art handler at MANA CONTEMPORARY.

One's choices in life often times 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.

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.

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." 

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.

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.

Art has always been an integral part of Elemuel Dean Richards’ life. Growing up in an artistic family influenced his decision to pursue a career as an artist. Richards received his B.A. in Studio Art from Queens College in 2001, where he honed his draftsmanship, painting skills and other explored mediums. Richard’s work reflects the fact that he grew in Long Island during the Hip-hop and Graffiti era. His art work successfully melds human forms with street art elements. Street art always fascinated Elemuel D. Richards with its vivid colors and array of styles. This art form fueled Richards’ desires to create his own type of expression using similar principles from street art. Richards realized his style would transcend the typical graffiti lettering in favor of abstract human forms. The end result is a brand of work, which draws the viewer into a labyrinth of lines that at first glance are as puzzling as the forms themselves. As the viewer spends more time looking at the works, the different layers of forms and colors become more apparent. Richards’ work is reminiscent of jazz because of the many layered elements that become visible under close inspection. His forms bend, twist and pose, which adds to the dance like quality of the works. Working mainly in ink, acrylic, oil and spray paint, nothing discarded if it enhances Richards’ vision. As of recent Richards began transforming discarded objects into art elements, such as fruit baskets, door panels and anything he deemed worthy of being converted into art. Another style he also incorporates into his work is street collage. In this process, Richards combines news papers and other sources as well as scrapes of paper off the urban land scape. This allows Richards to create unique pieces of work that blends his human forms with those of collage, giving these works their own and metropolitan flavor.

Marcin Cieński is a Polish-born, New York-based visual artist, figurative painter, and curator.  In 2001, Cieński graduated from the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland. He has since shown his paintings across Europe and the United States. His works have been exhibited in solo gallery shows and as part of exhibitions at prestigious centers and museums for contemporary art in Poland, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Great Britain, France, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark, and Belgium. In 2013, he had his first solo show in the United States and later that year became a resident of the Eileen Kaminsky Family Foundation’s studio program at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City.

Cieński’s works are in several important collections, including the Collezione Coppola in Italy, Hauser & Wirth in Switzerland, Thomas Rusche’s SØr Sammlung in Germany, and the Tim Campbell Collection and Eileen Kaminsky Collection in the United States. Since 2013, he has been represented in the United States by Envoy Enterprises Gallery in New York.

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.


Cecilia Collantes is a Peruvian visual and performance artist. Through her work, she discusses and emphasizes selected signs and symbols from social media and fashion, that pertain to the subject of social change and self presentation, appropriating and representing contemporary social visual codes that influence the individual, its behavior, thoughts and identity.

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

She received her education in fine arts and performance at the University of the Arts in Berlin and Universidad Católica in Lima. She was also formerly trained as a contemporary dancer. She has exhibited work in Berlin, Jakarta, Lima and Bangkok.

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

Click here to read about Eve's experience here at Eskff!