Emerging Artists Series

Dorian Vallejo engages ideas that converge philosophically and aesthetically. He is fascinated by the process of individuation and its potential for archetypal expression.His paintings and drawings often suggest a symbolic narrative. This narrative is meant to represent our mediation between the limits of perceived reality and the quest for authenticity.

Winn Rea’s wall reliefs, works on paper, ephemeral sculpture and video installations are grounded in her time spent in the Adirondack Mountains. Her passion for the environment has led her on a journey exploring the history of soil, the impact of civilizations, and our potential to remember again, our place in the rhythms of the natural world. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, been reviewed in The New York Times and international press, and has received grants from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Puffin Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Art Center. Rea earned her MFA in Painting and Multi-media at the University of Iowa and her BFA in Drawing and Painting, at James Madison University, with additional studies at the Leo Marchutz School of Drawing and Painting in Aix-en-Provence, France. Winn Rea is Associate Professor of Art at Long Island University Post, with studios on Long Island and in the Adirondacks.

Jeremy Grand’s drawings are like vivid dreams; confusing, sometimes scary, sometimes delightful, and occasionally nonsensical. His work is referential to his surroundings, and often lucid dreams, filled with details to allow the viewer to linger and get lost in the confines of the vignettes. He has been making art for decades in various different mediums. The last few years have been focused on these detailed illustrations that are fun to make and fun for the viewer. They are quiet but bold, insightful but accessible, and always a crowd pleaser.

Holly Hunt was born and raised on Long Island, New York. Growing up in a working class family, imagination and creativity occupied her time. Throughout her childhood, fascinated by her grandfather’s  street photography that adorned the walls of the home, she was naturally drawn to her first camera- a Polaroid. However, this interest wasn’t fully cultivated until her late thirties when she purchased her first DSLR and discovered her best images were captured inside a world she only considered a hobby from her college years: exploring the abandoned.

Built on a lifetime studio practice, Bowring’s current paintings culminate lifelong investigations in abstraction that include the structure of gardens, the complexity of pattern and the brilliance of color. Each work is a painting within a painting (a visual puzzle impossible to put together) that asks the viewer to slow down and look carefully. This sustained view provides a wealth of visual enrichment. Crafted formally, intuitively, and at times with contradiction and absurdity, her works incorporate geometric and natural forms. At this point, the organic markings lie under a pile of imperfect geometric shapes. Bowring contrasts chaotic color areas with neutral “landings”, so the visual rhythm is fast with a chance to catch your breath. Bowring’s paintings always retain a sense of place and locality; something loved, and something lived.

Frank is a photo representational painter and art teacher. When painting, he strives for a photographic look, but not necessarily a Trompe l’oeil painting. He believes there is a fine line between photo representational and hyper realism, and prefers to take a step backwards to keep a painterly feel. He shows some brushstrokes so there is no doubt the viewer can see the painter’s touch. Over the past few years, he has also experimented with abstract work that has allowed him to loosen his style.

At the intersection of art and ecology, Carolyn Monastra creates projects and interactive workshops focused on climate change, sustainability, and species extinction. Carolyn’s research-based art is driven by her deeply-felt connections to the land and a long-standing passion for visual storytelling that can engender socio-environmental change. Through her art, community presentations and workshops, Carolyn asks audiences to carefully consider their impact on the environment and to take action to protect our planet. Her current conceptual project, “Divergence of Birds” uses paper cutouts of nearly 400 climate-threatened birds to address the threat of species extinction due to climate disruptions.

Despina Zografos is a visual artist born and raised on the island of Crete, Greece. She works in a variety of mediums including hand cut paper, acrylic painting, cyanotype, photograph and video. Her artwork has been featured in various exhibits in Greece, The Netherlands, Scotland and New York where she currently lives and works.

Joan Kim Suzuki is an Asian-American artist living in Long Island. Her work is a reflection of her childhood, growing up hearing stories of the culture she never experienced. She always felt confused about whether she was American or Asian, until she had children of her own and a long time of soul-searching realized that she can be both Asian and American. Her art tells a story, and each piece has a memory painted into it.

Andrew is a licensed architect currently living and working in Chicago, IL. When not designing buildings, he enjoys creating watercolor paintings from reference photographs taken during travels, work commute, and any other time shadows present themselves, often unexpectedly.

Andrew’s paintings are part of an ongoing series that has taken shape over the last few years, with the goal to study shadow, its form, and its relationship to architectural objects and structures. Many of the subjects serving as the source material are rather ordinary and utilitarian, yet they are seen anew when the shadow-play is filtered through abstraction. The distillation of each image into moments of light and shadow not only allows for the celebration of each object and structure, but also facilitates the appreciation of the many intricacies that cause the light to move in unexpected ways.

Brian Ortmann is a self-taught artist who grew up and lives in Springs, East Hampton on the South Fork of Long Island. Growing up there has given him a love for nature and the water. He is a graduate of Stony Brook University with a Bachelor’s degree in Art and enjoy’s working in a broad range of mediums including drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Ellen Starr Lyon is a painter. Working on these paintings and her Gemini series of double self-portraits has focused her on deep work while also working full-time outside the home and parenting children through an ongoing global crisis. She says, “As a mother, I am overwhelmed by the intensity of the teenage years. Most often I am kept at arm’s length, and can offer only support – at best helpful, but often left feeling helpless. With that comes the need to explore and portray my experience of being a woman/wife/mother. My roles are ever changing, and I use self-portraiture to reflect that. During this time of constant change and fear of the unknown, I find myself looking more and more inward to make sense of the world.”

In combining movement with stillness, Mark Van Wagner’s artworks reference and combine various archeological, architectural, anthropomorphic characteristics, and various investigations of the inner and outer landscape. Over the years, he has collected natural and pigmented sands from around the world, incorporating this substance into his layered-relief paintings and sculptures. In the exploration of applying mixed-media/assemblage into his artwork, he has recognized sand to be the most literal medium to capture material decomposition – its essence defining impermanence related to time, place and gross matter. Thick and thin spontaneous-gestural applications of glue adhesives and primers are sprinkled with innumerable sand particles and flotsam that simultaneously mimic a pointilist-pixelationist approach. His deconstructive abstract paintings and sculptures are made of natural and pigmented sands that poignantly remind us of life’s cycles and the bridge between man and nature.

John Lynch is a photographer, he says, “Photography is a visual conversation. How I communicate is portrayed in my images. To quote Gordon Parks, ‘if you don’t have anything to say, your photographs aren’t going to say much.’ Composition, balance, and light are tools to bring forth the message. People are the message. What they do, what they build, and how they exist.”

RJT Haynes is an artist that has always, “loved the alchemy of line and colour, and hunting for the spark that makes all the difference to an image.” He states, “Whatever the initial idea, a picture shouldn’t turn out exactly as originally conceived: I’m not in control of the process, nor would I want to be – it’s the journey that’s interesting, and discoveries made along the way. My work is uncompromisingly figurative, but I will change my technique or the colours on my palette if it starts to feel too familiar & comfortable: the materials & subject have a say in what becomes of them, and painting is always a form of negotiation or collaboration between us. I don’t want to get clever enough to know the formula.”

Judith Kaufman Weiner’s work explores multiple concepts of movement, space, time and light, frequently developing and manipulating the spaces between spaces. Light and movement and the push and pull of competing forces are presented as a continuum in sets of multiples. Sometimes infused washes of color are juxtaposed with the markings of the hand on wood panels….rolling light away from darkness and darkness away from light.

Toxic/Nature Studios features environmental photography that celebrates the majesty of nature and laments its demise, in small moments. Using close-up macro techniques, the photographs express appreciation for and concern about the environment. All photos are taken by Scott Schneider, with an iPhone, thereby leveraging the power of technology to observe rather than to distract.

As a passionate gardener, Mary Ahern’s art is as intricately entwined as the gardens surrounding her studio. Cultivating and tending these gardens is the first stage of creating the art that grows in her studio. Flowers represent to a microcosm of the universe in their cycles of living and loving, families and relationships as well as their quest for survival, eventual senescence and rebirth. With a duality of external and internal vision, she invites the viewer to see, larger than life, the beauty and intricacy of flowers and in their boldness she suggests a contemplation of their relevance and ours in the social order of our universe.

Mallory Shotwell is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her desire to work in and with the communities around her affects everything she does – from large scale interactive art projects, connecting with artists across the country, to teaching art at local food pantries and community centers. Her social engagement installation work is informed by her years as a Montessori teacher, where she honed skills of observation and manipulating the environment to suit various sensorial needs.  She incorporates different learning styles into interactive work, video and audio art, and installations, ensuring that viewers become participants in the gallery or public art experience. Mallory’s current body of work is a visual articulation of the breast cancer experience spanning across the Midwest.

As an artist, Helen Murdock-Prep seeks only to inspire. In attempting to keep her followers engaged, her posts are chock full of both watercolor art and different styles of calligraphy. She is an artist that loves to demo in person whether being in a classroom or teaching on Zoom with watercolor and lettering. She engages the public and teaches them about the lost art of lettering and reminds them that while texting and typing are important in today’s society, getting back to the “power of the pen” has its own wonderful rewards.

Mary Jane Tenerelli is an artist using macro nature photography. Her work is mostly botanical, inviting the viewer to notice the beautiful intricacies of the natural world that are usually unseen.

Christine D’Addario combines her extreme love of art and the beach in her exploration of seascape oil paintings. Her ultimate goal is to form a connection with the viewer by conveying the wide range of powerful feelings experienced at the shore. Through harmonious color, luminous light, and mesmerizing details, she gives the viewer a visual cue to take a moment for inner reflection and to refuel the mind and spirit.

Raised in western New York, Ron’s talent was supported and nurtured by his parents and teachers. He majored in art at Niagara County Community College, helping to solidify techniques in drawing and painting.

As a realist, Ron uses color and variety of tones to create drama, inviting the viewer into the painting. Exploring new techniques and ways to work with mediums to express the nature of his heart and soul, Ron focuses on environments that illicit a feeling of calm, serenity, beauty and the divine.

For 5 years, Ron was the President of the Deer Park Arts Council, a non-profit charity that advocates for the visual and performing arts in the Deer Park School District. Ron has used his college training to create and offer drawing and painting classes for residents in nursing homes, hospitals and in his studio.

Heidi Howard (born 1986) is an American painter born, raised, and currently based in Queens, New York. They received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MFA from Columbia University. Howard makes portraits; they paint, whenever possible, with the sitter in the room. Their process and style changes with each person, reflecting the color feelings of both Howard and the sitter, their shared aesthetics, and images that emerge over the course of the sitting. In 2018, Howard painted a 40 foot high by 100 foot long portrait of their mother Liz Phillips in the atrium of the Queens Museum. This installation, titled “Relative Fields in a Garden”, combined Howard’s painting about their family and their garden with Phillip’s field recordings of the garden over the four seasons. In 2019, Howard organized their first performance “Relative Fields in Motion” extending Howard and Phillips’ exploration of the politics of relation and simultaneity found in the domestic sphere of the garden, further activating their work’s synesthetic interplay of sound, image, and movement. Recent projects include another performance with Liz Phillips “Sea Gestures: Sound Swim” (2022) where live painting and processing of water sounds are activated by aquatic and human movement, “Vaccination Stories” (2022) for Epicenter NYC, “Exchange Place Portraits”(2022) for Exchange Place Alliance and “Nature Remembers Love”(2022) for Meta Open Arts.