Emerging Artists Series 2020

Jeremy Chance makes paintings, predominantly by way of digital collage, imaging, and drawing. Layers of computer files are built up into developed works and are then produced. “Never simply “printed”, the process of extracting an image from a computer and rendering it into physical material is a fundamental part of the process, where noise, imperfections, and error form types of mark making in their own right,” said Chance.

Robyn Cooper received her M.F.A from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and her B.F.A from Adelphi University. She has participated in numerous exhibitions including group shows at The Heckscher Museum NY, The Art League of Long Island NY, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Gross McCleaf Gallery PA, R. Dixon Gallery NY, and uBe Art in Berkley, CA. Her first solo show, Remembrances, was on view in 2017 at Adelphi University. Her work is in several private collections including The Hershey Trust in Hershey, PA. When not in her studio in Long Island, NY, Robyn can be found teaching as an Adjunct Professor at Adelphi University, Suffolk Community College, and The Nassau County Museum of Art.

Lisa Federici’s work visually depicts the internal workings of the human body “I am committed to exploring the connection and dichotomy between craft, sewing, and fine art,” she said. By using recycled sari ribbons sourced from women’s collectives in India and sewing them both by machine and hand into rudimentary and at times crude facsimiles of the human figure and anatomy, she is “playing with the juxtaposition of traditional women’s roles and modern technologies here and across the globe.”

Aerial photographer Alex Ferrone explores her environment from different (and very high) vantage points. “Photographing from a helicopter, draws me to the genuine designs within the vast landscapes over which I fly. Generally excluding representational elements from my photographs, leaves viewers little or no reference to reality, excites their imagination and interpretation, and challenges their perception of light, shape and form,” she notes. “My images disconnect viewers from present technology as they are not created within the realm of digital design manipulation. Leaving daily discord behind, the viewer is engaged to contemplate the tranquility of nature as they meditate on the forms, texture and colors within the scene. At the same time, a new awareness and appreciation for our fragile ecological systems may be created for them.”

Whether using wire to create drawings in space, mixed media on paper or oil paints, Naomi Grossman’s work is about self-examination. “My work brings up issues of change, loss, displacement, isolation, insecurity and the desire for connection and love,” said Grossman. “Looking in the mirror to create a self-portrait gives me a chance to really examine my face and embrace all the conflicting feelings I have of pride, love, desire, loneliness, fear, loss, and uncertainty in a constantly changing landscape of home, country and world.”

Eve Hammer is a mixed media artist, who primarily works on salvaged wood and wood board. She treats these surfaces as if they are just larger, thicker pieces of paper that she can draw on.

As a graphic designer by training, Roshanak Keyghobadi noted that her art and designs have always been about “clarity, control, structure and simplicity.” She discovered paper making 20 years ago and was drawn to the organic, chaotic and liberating nature of it. “I have always been engaged with language, writing and typography,” Keyghobadi said. “Narratives, sentences, words and letters are the main components of my art in any medium that I choose to work.”

Margaret Minardi’s work tells stories, approaching subjects such as infertility, Bi Polar disease and politics. After becoming allergic to oils, Minardi has made a concerted effort to make colored pencil a more acceptable medium, also using collage and acrylic as adjunct textures. According to Minardi, “A subject for a drawing might also be as simple as a fascination with a bird or animal. I start with a realistic portrait which lends itself to the story. I work in a stream of consciousness. I usually don’t know what a work is about until it unfolds in front of me.”

Melissa Misla is an emerging artist whose works acknowledge both the loss and survival of culture through colonization, immigration, and gentrification. With a specific interest in the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York, she employs mixed media to create immersive works. Primarily using painting and collage in combination with animation and installation, her pieces use imagery related to the precarious nature of the home within a threatened community.

“My recent artwork is a culmination of thirty years of exploration, experimentation and self-education in digital art,” said Kasmira Mohanty. Using digital tools allows Mohanty to “wrestle with recurring and undulating visual questions and content” that fits her interests and style of mark making.  Her work blurs the lines and pushes the boundaries between traditional and cutting-edge techniques. The subtext of her most recent work is “an unfolding exploration of female empowerment.”

Eileen started in photography. She had an extensive darkroom in her parents’ home and spent many hours there honing her craft. She was a budding product/advertising photographer, whose first client paid her with vegetables from their garden. Eileen did eventually find additional clients who did pay in non-vegetable currency. She also participated in a group show at a New York City gallery with work involving Kodachrome slide manipulation. When a fire destroyed most of her work, she decided to pursue other career paths and spent many years in the software world. In 2012, she found renewed interest in photography and started working with digital imaging. “I have been influenced by a lifetime of being bombarded with images. Advertising has affected us all and it is certainly one of my main influences and inspirations,” she said.

Petker-Mintz reports her new series is an outgrowth of a 30 year process, with the autobiographical work entering a new chapter as she is an almost empty-nester.

Rothman states that her paintings are a fusion of collaged, vintage, and digital photographs, abstract drawings, encaustic paint and antique ephemera.

Marie E. Saint-Cyr is an artist whose work explores how we interact within imagined space and evokes the charm and vibrancy of Caribbean pastorals alongside the urgency and layered energy of urban landscapes. Marie migrated to the United States from Haiti at the age of eight and currently makes her art in Wheatley Heights, New York, while also working as an Arts Administrator. Marie studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology and at Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, Italy. Marie currently manages Saint-Cyr Art Studio, a project management business focusing on art and cultural programs and projects.

Tom Sena’s work is a combination of digital manipulation, printmaking, gesture sketching, and collage. Highly influenced by hip-hop culture, Sena works in large-scale formats as a way to “continue that ‘in-your-face’ mentality that makes hip-hop so unique and rebellious. My hope is that it can be appreciated not only by those directly involved with hip-hop, but those who can appreciate art in all formats.” His series “The (Street) Kids are Alright” captures the energy and spirit in images of today’s hip hop youth.

Alisa was always an artist.  Encouraged to be more “practical” in her choice of careers, she took a detour to study occupational therapy and public health before finally landing back to her first love: art.  Now working primarily in watercolor, she says: “I paint in watercolor because it scares me.  I love its quirky unpredictability.  I love the twinge of anxiety I feel every time I put down a color, knowing that I’ve often only got one shot to get it right.  Piggybacking on my Instagram addiction, I paint from my own photographic reference material. I typically pick my subjects based on perceived level of difficulty; if it’s something that I’m not sure I can successfully reproduce in watercolor, then that’s the one I want to paint next.  I am a control freak, and it’s this combination of subject matter and medium that make for an overachieving, perfectionist’s dream, providing just enough of a challenge to make the whole process a tension-filled whirlwind of creative excitement.”

Waldroup describes her work as “exaggerated angles of view and juxtaposition of serendipitously placed elements combined with moody, sometimes dramatic light [that] leave the viewer with a sense of a presence unseen but felt.”

Marching with her daughter in the first Women’s March in Washington DC marked Sloggatt’s first public engagement in protest and gave her courage as an artist to create images that honestly responded to her life experiences as a woman in America.