Biba Bell - March 2024
Biba Bell is a dancer, choreographer, and writer based in Detroit. Her choreographic work, often set in unconventional venues, focuses on domesticity, labor, and architecture. Her current project investigates dance and arts activism as it intersects forest protection and conservation, through the lens of what she theorizes as epiphytic choreographies.
Biba Bell in the Beverly Hallam Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Biba Bell is a dancer, choreographer, and writer based in Detroit. Her choreographic work, often set in unconventional venues, focuses on domesticity, labor, and architecture. Her current project investigates dance and arts activism as it intersects forest protection and conservation, through the lens of what she theorizes as epiphytic choreographies. Bell’s work has been presented at the Kitchen, Danspace Project, Movement Research, Roulette Intermedium, Jack NY, Centre Pompidou, Garage for Contemporary Culture, Jack Hanley Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, Insel Hombroich, amongst others. She has performed with Maria Hassabi and Walter Dundervill and was a founding member of the performance collective Modern Garage Movement (2005-2011, 2021). She earned her PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and is an Associate Professor of Dance at Wayne State University. Of her dancing the New York Times writes "It’s invigorating to watch someone who borders on wild."
Visit Biba Bell’s website here.
Cody Castle-Stack - March 2024
Cody Castle-Stack (born 1994) is an artist and a local arts organizer based in Portland. His artistic practice is an endless painterly exercise, a sandbox to form, and challenge his notions of creation.
Cody Castle-Stack in the Pool Room Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Cody Castle-Stack (born 1994) is an artist and a local arts organizer based in Portland. His artistic practice is an endless painterly exercise, a sandbox to form, and challenge his notions of creation. Together, his paintings aim to elevate immediacy and symbolism, and prioritize aesthetic and conceptual variance over expressions of skill. In 2018, Castle-Stack co-founded New System Exhibitions, a not-for-profit art exhibition space in the beloved New System Laundry building in the West Bayside neighborhood of Portland. The six co-directors, young artists themselves, operate a scaled-back exhibition environment where local emerging artists are given ample space to execute their creative vision and share it with their community. He has exhibited throughout Maine and has received a Mellon Humanities Fellowship and Nellie C. Watterson Fellowship. Currently, Cody works as the director of art and exhibitions at Moss Galleries.
Visit Cody Castle-Stack’s website here.
Marisa Lerer - March 2024
Marisa Lerer, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of modern and contemporary art history and chair of the Art History & Digital Media Art Department at Manhattan College. She specializes in Latin American and Latinx art, public art, and memorials.
Marisa Lerer at Surf Point. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Marisa Lerer, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of modern and contemporary art history and chair of the Art History & Digital Media Art Department at Manhattan College. She specializes in Latin American and Latinx art, public art, and memorials. Her interests in art in the public sphere are reflected in both the content of her courses and in publications, which have focused on art under dictatorship in Latin America, memorials dedicated to victims of state-sponsored terrorism in Argentina and Chile, Contested Monuments to Christopher Columbus and the 19th-century independence leader Juana Azurduy de Padilla in Buenos Aires, and public sculptures in the US southwest by Luis Jiménez. In 2023, she was the George Gurney Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend Grant for her current book project on Latinx public memorials. She has also been honored with fellowships from Fulbright, New York University/Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique, and CUNY’s Center for Place Culture and Politics, among others. She has previously held positions as Assistant Professor of contemporary art at the University of Denver and as a part-time faculty member at Parsons, The New School for Design. She serves on the editorial board of Public Art Dialogue, which functions as a forum for critical discourse and commentary about the practice of public art.
Read more about Marisa Lerer here.
Dan Dowd - February 2024
Dan Dowd is an assemblage artist, photographer and filmmaker living in Phippsburg, Maine since 2001. His artwork has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States.
Dan Dowd. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Dan Dowd is an assemblage artist, photographer, and filmmaker living in Phippsburg, Maine since 2001. His artwork has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. In 2011, Dan was the recipient of a Good Idea Grant for his solo installation “Anna Hepler’s Head” at the Coleman Burke Gallery in Brunswick, ME. In 2020 he was chosen by the Maine Arts Commission to create a found object eagle relief sculpture for the Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham, ME. He is represented by Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, ME and received his bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies from Framingham University. Dan is an active member of the Phippsburg Land Trust and takes film photographs for “Faces of Phippsburg” a fundraising calendar for Phippsburg Historic Preservation (in it’s 17th year).
View Dan Dowd’s work here.
Kemi Ilesanmi - February 2024
Kemi Ilesanmi has been a DMV worker, retail clerk, receptionist, business school dropout, museum curator, foundation officer, and nonprofit administrator. From 2012-2022, she served as executive director for The Laundromat Project (The LP), a community-based arts organization.
Kemi Ilesanmi. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Kemi Ilesanmi has been a DMV worker, retail clerk, receptionist, business school dropout, museum curator, foundation officer, and nonprofit administrator. From 2012-2022, she served as executive director for The Laundromat Project (The LP), a community-based arts organization. Prior to that, Kemi worked at the Walker Art Center and Creative Capital Foundation in curatorial and programming roles, respectively. From 2015-2022, she served on New York City's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, including one term as Chair. She serves on the boards of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Joan Mitchell Foundation. Brooklyn Magazine named her one of the borough's 50 most fascinating people in 2022, and Observer included her on the Arts Power 50 list in 2020. She has been honored by the Metropolitan Museum and Project for Empty Space. She is a graduate of Smith College, NYU, and Coro Leadership NY. Her ongoing commitment to holistic cultural and community care is deeply informed by her Nigerian and Black American roots.
Visit Kemi Ilesanmi’s website here.
Dell Marie Hamilton - January 2024
Artist, writer and curator, Dell Marie Hamilton has performed extensively throughout the Boston and New England area including at the MFA/Boston, the Clark Art Institute, and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.
Dell Marie Hamilton. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Artist, writer and curator, Dell Marie Hamilton has performed extensively throughout the Boston and New England area including at the MFA/Boston, the Clark Art Institute, and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. In 2019, she was a participating artist in the Havana Biennial and is a recipient of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize. Her expansive practice encompasses performance, painting, drawing, installation, video, sculpture, and photography. Her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, Art in America and NKA: Contemporary Journal of African Art as well as on the cover of Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and the Philosophy of Religion, an anthology published by Duke University Press in 2021. Dell is also the acting director of the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.
Visit Dell Marie Hamilton’s website here.
Emulsions in Departure #13 by Dell Marie Hamilton.
Tanja Hollander - January 2024
Tanja Hollander is an artist who works with photography, video, social media and data to understand cultural and visual relationships.
Tanja Hollander. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Tanja Hollander is an artist who works with photography, video, social media and data to understand cultural and visual relationships. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1972 and received a B.A. in photography, film, and feminist studies from Hampshire College in 1994. Her last body of work, Are you really my friend? debuted in its entirety as an exhibition, short documentary and book for a year at MASS MoCA in 2017. Sections were exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Portland Museum of Art (Maine), Virei Viral (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and the Carl-Schurz-Haus (Freiberg, Germany). Receiving international media attention for the project, Hollander was invited to give a TEDxDirigo talk in 2012 and has lectured extensively at The Women’s Leadership Conference (Las Vegas), Demanio Marittimo.Km-278 (Marzocca, Italy), the University of Maryland, Clemson University, SXSW, and Facebook headquarters. In her spare time she is a reproductive justice advocate. She lives and works in Auburn, Maine.
Visit Tanja Hollander’s website here.
Dorian Sylvian - January 2024
Dorian Sylvain is a painter whose color and texture explore ornamentation, pattern, and design as identifiers of cultural and historical foundations.
Dorian Sylvain at Surf Point. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Dorian Sylvain is a painter whose color and texture explore ornamentation, pattern and design as identifiers of cultural and historical foundations. She is a studio painter and muralist, as well as an art educator, curator, and community planner. Much of her public work addresses issues of beautification, inspired by color palettes and patterns found throughout the African diaspora. Core to her practice is nurturing the next generation of “Cultural Keepers” to elevate neighborhood aesthetics and foster shared understanding.
Visit Dorian Sylvain’s website here.
JOJO ABOT - November 2023
JOJO ABOT is an interdisciplinary healer exploring evolving themes of spirituality, identity and community through music, film, fine art, fashion, photography and various other expressions.
JOJO ABOT in the Pool Room. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
JOJO ABOT is an interdisciplinary healer exploring evolving themes of spirituality, identity and community through music, film, fine art, fashion, photography and various other expressions. Committed to a philosophy of "Message Over Medium", the artist aims to provoke larger conversations and actions towards collective elevation, healing and harmony. An Ewe woman born in Ghana and currently based in LA, JOJO ABOT offers intimate invitations into the practice of true freedom, love and re-membering through sacred ceremonies of togetherness, reflection and transformation engaging the self as the starting point to unity, universal connection and ascension. Serving as a bridge between the physically and metaphysically, her offerings invite us into a spiritual dance that allows for a coming together of ancestry, traditions and global cultures.
Visit JOJO ABOT’s website here.
Cecile Chong - November 2023
Cecile Chong was born in Ecuador to Chinese parents and grew up in Quito and Macau. Her public art installation EL DORADO - The New Forty Niners was installed in the five boroughs of NYC (2017-2022).
Cecile Chong at Surf Point. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Cecile Chong was born in Ecuador to Chinese parents and grew up in Quito and Macau. Her public art installation EL DORADO - The New Forty Niners was installed in the five boroughs of NYC (2017-2022). Solo exhibitions include Kates-Ferri Projects, Selenas Mountain, Smack Mellon, ICFAC at Pinta Miami, Kenise Barnes, BRIC, FiveMyles, and Emerson Gallery Berlin. Fellowships and residencies include Dieu Donné Workspace, NYSCA, LMCC Creative Engagement, The Hispanic Society, Urban Field Station, Block Gallery Bronx Museum, BRIC Media Arts, Joan Mitchell Center, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant and the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant. Chong’s work is in the collections of El Museo, Museum of Chinese in America, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Center for Book Arts, Bryn Mawr Hospital, Citibank Art Advisory, and private collections internationally. She received an MFA from Parsons, an MA in education from Hunter College, and a BA in Studio Art from Queens College.
Visit Cecile Chong’s website here.
Athena LaTocha - November 2023
Athena LaTocha (b. Anchorage, Alaska) is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds, in the wake of Earthworks artists from the 1960s and 1970s.
Athena LaTocha at Surf Point. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Athena LaTocha (b. Anchorage, Alaska) is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds, in the wake of Earthworks artists from the 1960s and 1970s. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth and wood, while looking at correlations between mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. Her works are informed by her upbringing in the wilderness of Alaska. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments, while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic histories that are rooted in place.
Visit Athena LaTocha’s website here.
Micaela Martegani - November 2023
As More Art’s founder, Executive Director, and Chief Curator, Micaela Martegani has deep experience working with both emerging and established artists at every stage of conceptualizing and producing new public art works.
Micaela Martegani in the Sunrise Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
As More Art’s founder, Executive Director, and Chief Curator, Micaela Martegani has deep experience working with both emerging and established artists at every stage of conceptualizing and producing new public art works. Martegani established More Art in 2004, and has developed over 50 projects since the organization’s inception. For over 25 years, she has worked in the field of Modern and Contemporary Art as an Art Historian, Independent Curator, Art Advisor, and Teacher.
Visit More Art’s website here.
Meg Alexander - October 2023
Alexander creates images and objects that are inspired by natural forms and systems. Her drawing projects are rooted in close looking at the objects or fields that are her subjects.
Meg Alexander at Surf Point. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Meg Alexander is a visual artist whose work is based in drawing. Alexander creates images and objects that are inspired by natural forms and systems. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Meg exhibits regularly in Boston and New England, and her work is included in many private and corporate collections throughout the world. She lives and works in Concord, Massachusetts, and is represented by the Ellen Miller Gallery, Boston.
Visit Meg Alexander’s website here.
Ryan Cardoso - October 2023
Ryan Cardoso is a visual artist exploring portraiture through photography and filmmaking and its importance in archiving the elegance, domesticity, and relationships of black life.
Ryan Cardoso in the Pool Room. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Ryan Cardoso is a visual artist exploring portraiture through photography and filmmaking and its importance in archiving the elegance, domesticity, and relationships of black life.
Visit Ryan Cardoso’s website here.
Stina Puotinen - October 2023
Stina Puotinen is an artist, educator and occasional curator from New York City.
Stina Puotinen in the Sunrise Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Stina Puotinen is an artist, educator and occasional curator from New York City. Earning her BFA at Vassar College in Studio Art and Art History, she has taught at major arts institutions including MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum for adults and children of all abilities. She lived in Manchester, UK while earning an MFA in Collaborative Practice from Manchester School of Art 2015 - 2017; her work has been featured most recently at Untitled Art Fair (Miami), Material Art Fair (CDMX), Vane Gallery (UK), and Beverly’s (NYC) as well as in Apogee Journal.
Visit Stina Puotinen’s website here.
Audrey Stone - October 2023
Audrey Stone is an abstract painter whose work is informed by light and color. She received her MFA from Hunter College and her BFA from Pratt Institute, both in painting.
Audrey Stone in the Hallam Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Audrey Stone is an abstract painter whose work is informed by light and color. She received her MFA from Hunter College and her BFA from Pratt Institute, both in painting. She also studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and was selected for the Artist in The Marketplace program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Stone recently became a member of the artist-run American Abstract Artists organization. Her work has been exhibited across the United States, as well as in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, England, France and Japan. She has shown in exhibitions at the Andy Warhol Museum, the Arkansas Art Center, The Columbus Museum, the Flinn Gallery, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, the Kentler International Drawing Space, McKenzie Fine Art, Morgan Lehman Gallery, ODETTA Gallery and Winston Wachter Seattle. Her work is in the collections of the Amateras Foundation, Charles Schwab Print Program, Cleveland Clinic, Credit Suisse, Fidelity Investments, and New York Presbyterian Hospital amongst others. Stone’s work is represented by Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York City and Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, CT. Audrey was born and raised in New York City and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Visit Audrey Stone’s website here.
Audrey Stone, No, Know, No, 2023, acrylic on 4 canvases 30x20 each, 60x40
cameron clayborn - September 2023
cameron clayborn (b. 1992, Pine Bluff, Arkansas) lives and works in New Haven, CT. clayborn’s practice pulls from personal history and lived experience, creating multivalent sculptures that are tender and intimate, abject and erotic.
cameron clayborn at Surf Point. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
cameron clayborn (b. 1992, Pine Bluff, Arkansas) lives and works in New Haven, CT. clayborn’s practice pulls from personal history and lived experience, creating multivalent works that are tender and intimate, abject and erotic.
Visit cameron clayborn’s website here.
roompiercer (with a mended form) #2, 2023
Bronze
4.5 x 2.75 x 4.5 inches
Denae Howard (#Artschoolscammer) - September 2023
Denae Howard (#Artschoolscammer) is a Brooklyn-based Conceptual artist, visionary, educator, curator and advisor.
Denae Howard. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Denae Howard (#Artschoolscammer) is a Brooklyn-based Conceptual artist, visionary, educator, curator and advisor.
Her/Their work promotes principles of sustainability and cultural equity by creating solutions. Foraging tools to navigate social, economic and environmental injustices - while problem solving with collaboration and play.
Her/Their works focus on imagining and illustrating the limitless opportunities of joyous existence for black and indigenous people. Highlighting imagery of anarchy, trickster-isms, taboo, confusion and ambiguity.
Her/ Their development is principal-ed in the transition of cultural institutions and museums as spaces run and maintained by Artists, Farmers, Griots, Healers and Revolutionaries to establish a narrative that uplifts and protects truth sharerer-s of our culture. By affirming community efforts, she anticipates to walk the path of trailblazers and stewards of the arts not as a collected silent voice.
https://www.dayonesart.com/
https://www.artschoolscammer.com/
Veronica Perez - September 2023
Veronica Perez is an artist who works alongside the community to speak about erasure, identity, and interdependency.
Veronica Perez in the Pool Room. Photo by Kerry Constantino.
Veronica Perez is an artist who works alongside the community to speak about erasure, identity, and interdependency.
As a visual artist that is also a social and cultural worker, Perez uses these frames of reference to situate their work deep within intimate stories and experiences – and share them with a wider audience through sculpture and story.
In 2020, they were awarded the Ellis-Beaureguard Visual Arts Fellowship. In 2021 they were the inaugural fellow at the David C. Driskell Black Seed Studio. And In 2022, they were a fellow at the Lunder Institute at Colby College. Perez also subsequently had their first solo exhibition titled voices whispering at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.
They are currently the Artists in Residence at the University of Southern Maine, teaching and working with students and the community in Southern Maine. Perez works as the Administrative Assistant at Indigo Arts Alliance, a Black-led arts and residency organization in Portland, Maine. They are also a co-organizer in Tender Table, an organization focused on uplifting the Black and Brown community in Maine through storytelling and food. Presently, Perez lives with her child and partner in Westbrook, Maine
Visit Veronica Perez’s website here.
Elana Adler - August 2023
Elana Adler is a multidisciplinary artist. She uses the grid as a tactical mapping system, and a geometric configuration inherited from the past.
Elana Adler in the Pool Room. Photo by Heather Henriksen.
Elana Adler is a multidisciplinary artist. She uses the grid as a tactical mapping system, and a geometric configuration inherited from the past. It is a constant variable that is continually translated and transformed. Utilizing the grid as an accessible visual language, Adler makes work inspired by complex systems and structures of power while challenging expectation through material potential. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Adler received a BFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 and a MFA in Fibers & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. She currently lives and works in Portland, ME.
Visit Elana Adler’s website here.
Giggle by Elana Adler