Artists
I am an abstract painter. After years of painting with fully saturated color and images relating to the forces of nature in the land and sun, my work has moved into the sphere of water and air, pale palettes, and the ephemeral. I cannot say why.
The new imagery has demanded new techniques and media. The mica stone and glass bead jel I use are more visible with their fluctuating sparkle in the physical paintings than the digital images. Some pieces, such as “Resistance” are heavily encrusted; in others these reflective materials are more delicately applied. Brushes are now often replaced by mop heads, trowels, and other tools for the intended, defined line of a brush does not carry enough of the force of nature.
Whether the composition is gently flowing and descending or rising up with furious energy, all these compositions are symbolic of psychological, emotional states within us. Water and air are part of our bodies and our environments, and evocative of the flow and charge of our emotional lives.
Born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic in October 1985, Augusto Fanjul studied visual arts at the National School of Fine Arts in the Dominican Republic (2006-2010). Graphic design at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (UASD), and Fine Arts at Altos de Chavon, School of Design (2012-2014). His work has been shown in many places in the United States, such as the Queens Museum of Art, and the Dominican Republic. ENAV Awarded him the first prize sculpture, painting and the second prize for academic excellence on 2007. He also was selected and awarded by the Qatar Embassy in the Dominican Republic to be part of a yearly art catalog on 2010. Augusto Currently lives and works in New York and is currently doing a painting master degree at the New York Academy of Art in Painting.
Showing a strong interest in drawing and art from a young age, M. Jane Johnson started taking private painting lessons at 7 years old. She went on to receive a BFA concentrating in painting and drawing. Over the years Jane has studied with a number of leading artist both through classes and workshops. Even though she was working full time in sales, she managed to get in painting and drawing when she could. Some of her drawings can even be seen in the Virginia Seasons’ cookbook that she illustrated.
For many years Jane worked in a representational style. She decided to take an abstract workshop and fell in love with abstracts and especially mixed media. The wonderful art papers really captured her! Jane’s mixed media work incorporates her love of oil, acrylic, collage and drawing into a colorful, textured painting. She listens to music while painting and the rhythm and energy often appear in the art.
Jane has a studio at the Workhouse Arts Center. Jane’s work has been shown in both group and solo shows, and art fairs in the Mid-Atlantic. She has won a number of awards and has been reviewed in the Washington Post several times. Her paintings are held in the permanent collection of the Children’s National Medical Center and privately.
Lori Katz is a studio artist in the Washington DC area. Lori's pieces are included in collections throughout the world, including the permanent
collection of the Racine Art Museum, the US Embassy in Bandar Seri Begawan, the IBM Corporation, Amazon Web Services, New York Presbyterian Hospital and in numerous private homes. Lori’s work has been included in definitive shows and art fairs in the US, Europe and Asia. Lori Katz is known for her exploration of surface and texture and for the striking strength and simplicity of her work.
Alise Loebelsohn graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in painting. She studied in France and at the Art Students League in NYC. While at Pratt, she worked for an organization that created murals in hospitals and mental institutions in deep need of beautification. Alise ran the studio for two years, helping with color decisions and also giving others help with technique and process.
While still in college she proposed and created a 132’ long fish mural on the boardwalk in Coney Island. She received a grant from Dewey Albert (owner of the amusement park next door.) and then he hired her to work for him.
Alise then worked for Evergreene Painting Studios for several year, travelling and executing large outdoor murals mainly for the Architect Richard Haas. One job included stenciling the Old Executive Office Building at the White House for over a year. From 1987-1994, Alise worked as the only female billboard painter in NYC. While there she painted the DKNY add on Houston Street. She worked in Times Square and on numerous billboards all over NYC.
I look into the physical as much as mental changes to reflect on life. Seeking to capture the present moment to experience and contemplate the current state of a space, mind, object and ideas. For construction and conception of my artwork I focus on perception, temporariness, light and especially movement. Many of my pieces are inspired by the constant random patterns in nature, like the clouds in the sky. Others are inspired by the transformation of mental images that naturally emerge with the passing of time, new beliefs or simply lost memories.
I use a variety of papers in multiple ways; often arranged in layers or molded into three-dimensional forms, making the work appear as a three-dimensional drawing as well as sculpture. For most of my work I assemble repetitive geometric shapes and forms made of paper and other light materials inside envelopes or boxes of translucent paper. The arrangement is random and unfixed to allow movement and unpredictable composition. Whomever looks at these pieces, sees it for the first time, every time, because what is creating and completing the artwork is always changing; such that light, time, weather, seasons, and forms merge and interact. As a result of these dynamic relationships, the work extends beyond my own art process by continuing to make subtle shifts, sustaining an appearance and composition entirely of its own.
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. My profession as a piano tuner brought me to New York City to work for Steinway & Sons in 2000. I come from a diverse family poets, actors, and visual artists, doctors, and teachers, each inspiring and supporting my artistic nature from a very young age.
I’m largely self taught except for classes with Larry Poons at the Arts Student League in Manhattan as well as classes in ceramics, sculptures and painting at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin.
My works are abstract figurative assemblages. They are synthesis of feelings and ideas that establish a reality accessible to all. I am exploring the universal themes of humans. In particular I am interested in human beings search for peace and equanimity in their lives. A recurring theme would also be the healing power of the garden, and a return to Eden.
Eliana Perez received her MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2018, and did her BFA at Altos de Chavón School of Design and transferred with a full scholarship to finish the degree to Parsons The New School in Fine Arts/Illustration on 2016. Eliana Perez has participated in group exhibitions in the United States and the Dominican Republic. With her recent bodywork, she explores and critiques beauty standards and romanticizes the idea of the beauty in the grotesque. She also freelances as an illustrator and graphic designer and has done design work such as logos, branding, editorial illustrations, and advertisement for companies, websites, and even non-governmental organizations. She currently lives and works in New York.
“To me, art is the ability to visually capture a luminous instant of my soul.” The objective of this open project is to try to reveal, throughout spiritual and emotional energy, the dual relationship of humans and the universe, using love as a connecting energy between their soul and their destiny. Every instant belongs to the past and it deposits in thin layers, which make up our unrelenting physical, ever-changing, and subconscious experience, which has a physical beginning and end that is totally foreseeable. In my work I try to experiment on my own soul to be able to show it in a visual manner using photography as a tool. This is often referred to as “illumination”. My objective is to motivate others and consequently to connect their supra-physical and spiritual realities."
When I first flew in an airplane, I was struck by the color, shapes and shadows created by the light from the sun. The sun influenced everything, infusing the already rich palette of the landscapes and seascapes with what felt like a supernatural light. As the plane moved, the images seemed to move as well. The shapes bounced and swayed in their own rhythmic way.
This was all very exciting to me and the experience has informed my artwork ever since. Light, color and movement are basic elements of all of my paintings. My work has also been strongly influenced by the coastline of Massachusetts. I grew up there and have always felt tremendous happiness and excitement at the beach.
Pleasure is a large part of my process and a critical part of the finished piece. My paintings are places of happiness.
"I make mixed media explorations of nature. Currently my focus is on Trees. The work is intended to provide a tactile entrance into the lives of trees. Tree bark shares some of the same properties as human skin, reacting to forces from within and without and is a vehicle for new growth and aging. Its possible to identify tree bark as one would identify a human face. Clay Drawings are topographical reliefs of living trees, made with slabs of clay. I take the clay to the tree then start by selecting a part of the tree to lift like a print. Like photography, the image isn’t clear until it has been developed: fired, glazed, and fired again. Trees are powerful metaphors that project stillness at the same moment that they are centers of energy. Through photosynthesis, they provide life-giving oxygen and nourishment to all in the world. In their community each tree holds a story of race, age, damage and survival."
Ezequiel Taveras Nace en Santo Domingo, República Dominicana en 1965.
Ha sido Profesor de Diseño en Tres Dimensiones y Grabado en la Escuela de Diseño Altos de Chavón, La Romana, Rep. Dom. Ha sido Coordinador de la I y II Trienal Internacional del Tile Cerámico (elit-tile) y del Encuentro Internacional de Grabado en Pequeño Formato, a coordinado y desarrollado talleres de Grabado y Fabricación de Papel tanto en la ciudad de Santo Domingo como en el interior del país, vive y trabaja en la Republica Dominicana.
El trabajo de Ezequiel Taveras ha sido alabado por reconocidos curadores y criticos de arte en más de una ocasión, otorgandole asi un espacio muy especial en el arte Dominicano.
My second camera was a Kodak Instamatic 104, back in 1966. It was a wonderful camera that I received as a gift. The model of the first one I can't remember, but it definitely was also a Kodak. My name is José Thomas Kingsley, I was born in the
middle of the 20th century. For almost all my life I have devoted myself to take pictures, so perhaps it could be said that I am a photographer.
As a child, I got my first camera at a time when, in the Dominican Republic, the country where I was born, it was uncommon to have camera, much less for a child. The story about the manner in which I got that first camera is worthy of an Agatha Christie story.
My training as a photographer has been somewhat eclectic: first I was self-trained; after that I went through seminars, courses and workshops until I started formal academic training at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, although I must confess that I continue being self-taught, because it is all constant learning.
In addition to being a photographer, I studied cartography in Fort Clayton, an American institution in the Panama Canal Zone. As a cartographer, I keep a compass, I enjoy topography; plains and slight elevations ease my rapport with the landscape. For a long time I dedicated myself to commercial photography, but I believe that my true calling is photography as aesthetic expression. Somehow I have received confirmation of this: I have obtained some awards, I have participated in various exhibitions, my photos have been admitted to biennials, and I have the privilege of appearing in the "History of Dominican Photography" authored by art critic Jeannette Miller. In recognition of my pictures in the field of architecture, the Society of Architects of the Dominican Republic awarded me honorary membership. I am also a member of Fotogrupo and of the Federation Internationale de L'Art Photographique (FIAP).
Today I am working on several photographic projects, among them a study of light on micro-objects, as well as a book of images of Central Park, even though my main project is to continue to live.
After a career in dance, and then in art production at Vanity Fair and GQ magazines, Parker left New York City for a more rural environment north of the city. She then began pursuing an interest in textiles of different forms. This led her eventually to the one indigenous American folk art of hooking “rugs.”
Parker am an artist using textiles as paint. Her work focuses on realistic interpretations of people and nature, whether from memories, dreams, or images. Incorporated in her work are new and recycled wool, cotton and silk fabric, handspun and mill spun yarn, fleece, silk fiber, and metallic fibers. She also uses natural and synthetic dyes to dye these materials into the colors she wants. Textile art is received by the viewer in a different way than fine art, and there is science showing that a different part of the brain is stimulated when viewing a textile. It appeals to the senses, especially touch, and gives a feeling of warmth and familiarity before the brain even registers the visual image. Working in this simple medium affords her a strong connection not only to the fibers running through her fingertips, but also to the women who used this medium to speak during what was a much more difficult time. Using this form as a creative expression of her experience carries the tradition into the contemporary art world.
Founded in 2013 by artist Julio Valdez, JVS Project Space provides NYC exhibiting opportunities and other services for emerging artists by artists.