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 nonreprese