Artist statements
Erik Benson
I am interested in paintings in an analog, physical sense. I believe that painting is a visual language made up of thinking, seeing and making. I build my paintings employing a process of pouring acrylic paint onto sheets of glass. Once the shapes have solidified and acquired elasticity, they are peeled off and collaged into larger compositions. These collaged constructions create a certain mimetic relationship between the visual information depicted and the processes in which they are made. This process based painting allows for me to explore how something is made and how it relates to haven been observed and translated into paint.
With my current body of work, L have been interested in the lessons learned from failure. The paintings toggle between the object-ness of sculpture and the vast canon of painting's visual language. My paintings are informed by fragments o0f urban landscape and culture that are found in the everyday. Still lives and landscapes that intervene into totemic monuments, set in precarious settings. The impossible idea of mending a vase with stickers, packing and duct tape. Most of these concerns arise from the unease of our political and environmental predicament. I'm interested in the temporally of these homemade architectural structures, and the impermanence of their fragility and precarious nature. About what they say of our current consumer culture.
Chris Coffin
Chris Coffin is a surfer, ocean lifeguard, and open water swimmer. He is a two-time New York Foundation on the Arts grant recipient, a Rema Hort Mann grant Nominee, and a Fulbright Scholarship nominee. He has been reviewed in the New York Times, Addict Magazine, Long Island Newsday, The New Haven Independent, and the Williamsburg/Greenpoint News+Arts. His work has been lectured on at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In addition, Coffin is a monthly contributor on the podcast, Swell Seasons Surf Radio: The Art6 and Design Series. He resides in Connecticut with his family, and creates his work in and around the waterways of Brooklyn, Long Island, and the New England Coast.
"Cyanomaps: Swimming a Line"
"Cyano Maps utilize a combination of century old photographic and cartographic processes, coupled with modern GPS tracking, bodily movement, and performance. Often, I set out on my open water swims without a plan as I attempt to draw lines on the surface of the ocean with my body; letting nature pull and push me where the currents want me to go. Other times, I plot points, and target landmarks with purpose to discover and explore my surroundings. What are left are my "Water Drawings"; my path and my record, drawn on the surface of the ocean; the residue of a happening erased by wind and waves. Through the cyanotype medium I reference the blue of the ocean as if seen from miles above while simultaneously asking, "What is my relationship to place, and where and how do I leave my mark?"
Sato Yamamoto
Sato is a Japanesse artist inspired by culture and diversity. Born in Meguro, Tokyo- New York artists since 2013. Her unique style of art includes advanced ambidextrous and print-making skills, that she perfected during her time in New York. Growing up in Japan, Sato used ambidextrous technique to create design of the scenic world around her. Upon moving to New York, she noticed the vast diversity and fell in love with the multicultural tones of the city. New York changed her perspective of artistry.
Rauschenburg Medical Emergency Grants/ City Artist Corps (NYS Department of Cultural Affairs). New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) / Japan Women's University Department of Housing and Architecture the 22nd Grants of Alumnus 2020 / IFPDA Print Fair 2018 / Southern Graphic Council International printmaking conference, Portland, OR 2016.
Throughout my life, I had grown tremendously, further developing my craft with the heart art work based on diversity. My artist activities in New York, with hopes of being a pioneer in craft and returned to Japan as a respected and appreciated artist. Kimono, Origami, prints, hand-made paper, traditional pattern, figure drawing, typical 2 dimensional techniques including ambidextrous skill. My artwork rises above the boundaries of discrimination to connect viewers from all backgrounds and I hope to inspire them to embrace uniqueness and multi-cultural experiences.
Esperanza Cortes
Esperanza Cortes is a Colombian born contemporary artist based in New York. Cortes has exhibited in New York City venues including Smack Mellon Gallery, Lehman Collage Art Gallery, Royal Society of American Art, Thomas Hunter Project Space, Taller Boricua Gallery, Bronx Museum of Art, Hunter College, Queens Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, John Jay University Gallery, The Jamaica Center for Art and Learning, MoMa PS1 and Socrates Sculpture Park. National exhibitions include Albright Knox Gallery, Ogden Contempoprary Arts, Turchin Center for The Visual Arts, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Upfor Gallery, McColl Center for Arts + Innovation, Taller Puertorqueno, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art andCleveland Art Museum. nInternational exhibitions include Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Japan, Mexico, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Spain and Greece, in venues such as Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art, International Art Festival of Valencia, and Galeria Ajolote Arte Contemporaneo.
Cortes awards include: Creative Capital 2022 Shortlist, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Hispanic Society Museum and library Artist Research Fellowship, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, U>S> Department of State: Art in Embassies Program Acquisitions, Puffin Foundation Grant, New York State Biennial, New York Foundation for the Arts, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Change Grant and Sustained Achievement in the Visual Arts Award.
Cortes residencies include: McColl Center for Arts + Innovation, Children's Museum of Manhattan, Museum of Arts and Design, BRIC Workspace, Caldera Residency, Sculpture Space, Joan Mitchell Center, Webb School of Knoxville, Fountainhead Residency, AIM Program Bronx Museum, MoMa PS1 Residency, Socrates Sculpture Park, Longwood Arts Project Residency, Altos de Chavon, Can Serrat and Bielska BWA Gallery.
Cortes has created programs as a museum educator, artist in residence and community artist through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Artist Space Gallery, Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn Children's Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, Wave Hill, Museum of modern Art and the Whitney Museum of Art.
Cortes work has been reviewed by Artforum, ARTEFUSE, Artnews, Artnet, The Art Newspaper, Whitehot, Hyperallergic, New York Times, BELatina, New Art Examiner and Art in America. International reviews include multiple media platforms in Europe and Latin America.
Cortes work is in private and public collections including the American Embassy in Monterey, Mexico.
Ami Park
​Ami Park (b. 1991 Seoul, Korea) lives and works in NYC. She received a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons The School of Design in New York. Ami works with unique textile techniques influencing irregular and infinitely variable natural forms driven by deep scientific and spiritual curiosity. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at New York Live Arts, Project V Gallery, Ethan Cohen Kube, The Royal Society of American Art, LIC-A in NY; The Holy Art Gallery and La Galleria Pall Mall in London; Gallerie Diese in Paris; CICA Museum in Korea among others. Her wearable art collection contributed to a multi-disciplinary project at the Museum of Modern Art and Bronx Museum. Ami was recently granted by the Puffin Foundation and was awarded Immigrant Artists Program by the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is also the latest resident artist for Interdisciplinary Practices in Bio Art at the School of Visual Arts. Her work is in private and corporate collections.
I believe thoughts, emotions, and objects hold different vibrations and are all inter-connected. Being genuinely interested in the universe as the source of all things, I approach my work through science and spirituality, investigating the measurable and immeasurable.
My work explores the vibration between the human minds and things.
This relationship, which I conceptualize as a spiritual link, is expressed in fiber materials such as yarn and rope, signaling the continuous spinning of thread and the structure of a web. This approach exists across all medium in my practice: painting, drawing and mixed media.
The labor-intensive hand embroidery process I employ is an intuitive expression of my imagination and my engagement with patience as a force in my work.
Having a background in fashion design I respect slow craftsmanship.
The repetitive gesture is a meditative practice to drive through boredom, find my authentic self and expand my source energy. Through creating repeating textures and colors, I delve into themes of self-awareness and human psychology.
Kristen Schiele
Kristen Schiele creates bold, immersive and semi-abstract paintings, collages and installations. She is inspired by stage sets, cinema, allegory and storytelling that is theatrical and playful. Most comfortable at large-scale, she uses a range of materials which are anchored by architecture or pattern.
Schiele holds a BA in Visual arts from Indiana University, a MFA from the American University in Washington DC, and has studied at the Univeritat der Kunste Berlin. Her works on paper and silkscreen graphic novel is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. She has been selected for the Provincetown Work Center Residency, Bronx AIM Artist in the Marketplace, the Workspace Residency Program of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, Ucross, Fountainhead, DNA and Wassaic Art Residencies. She has exhibited in the Torrence Art Museum, Corcoran Museum of Art, Printed Matter Book Fair at PS1 MoMa and the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. She has been reviewed in the New York Times, Berliner Morgenpost, the Brooklyn Rail, Modern Painters among others. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
Sam Heydt
The edge is closer than we think, but illusion won't free us from reality, even as the sustained narrative of tabloids becomes history and the myth of progress continues to perpetuate inequality. As the natural world is liquidated and substitutes with an artificial one, public discourse is being defined by even narrower bandwidths. While social processes defy the logic of individualism in global capitalism, the underbelly of profitability fueling globalization emerges as exploitation.
In a time marked by mass extinction, product fetishism, diminishing resources, and patented seeds, we find ourselves in a world exploited beyond use, a world increasingly reduced to a bottom line. Concerns for which are drowned out by the white noise of the media and the empty promises it proposes for the future it truncates.
Working across different media- film, video, installation, photography, sculpture, sound and text. Heydt presents an abstract proposition for a world on the periphery of history, one that not only appears haunted by the ghosts of the past, but built on it. Heydt's layered imagery conflate time and place, colliding and merging generations of possibilities, and disrupting logical relationships between occurrences. Combing images of destruction with portrayals of the virtues born from the American Dream, Heydt confronts the disillusionment of our time with the ecological and existential nightmare it is responsible for.
Sam Heydt (born April 20, 1986) is an American social practice and recycled media artist born/raised in New York City. Although currently residing in Vienna, Heydt has lived/worked in Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Athens, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Reykjavik and Rajastan.
Her academic career traversed Parsons School of Design, The New School, Cooper Union, University of Amsterdam, Universitdad of Buenos Aires and La Sorbonne. In 2012, Heydt launched Jane Street Studion, L.L.C. in Manhattan. Since established, the photo studio has broadened its performance to provide both design and marketing consultation in addition to art direction. It's growing roster of clients span Europe, North and South America, Asia and Oceania.
In addition to this entrepreneurial undertaking, Heydt has attended artist residencies in Iceland, Australia and New Zealand; where she has documented different forms of environmental exploitation. A published author, producer and lifelong activist, Heydt has undertaken a range of altruistic, non-profit work. Her art, anchored in social advocacy, attempts to give a voice to the veiled, forgotten, exiled, and silenced.
In her practice, she works across a spectrum of different media-film, video, installation, photography, sculpture, sound, merchandize, text- and employs a range of materials often reinventing or trespassing their associative use. Heydts vision looks beyond the ordinary. Esteemed as one of the pioneers of the recycled media movement, Heydt's work has been shown in galleries, museums, art fairs and film festivals worldwide.
David Opdyke
Born in post-industrial Schenectady, New York in 1969, artist David Opdyke makes artwork that explores globalization, consumerism, and civilization's abusive relationship with the environment. His work is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and The Washington Convention Center in DC. His latest project will be featured in Climate Week NYC 2022 at the Javits Center, and will also be installed in a pop-up collaboration with the Clmate Museum in Soho, NYC in October 2022. In 2020, Monacelli Press/Phaidon published a book based on his large scale postcard project This Land, including essays by Lawrence Weschler and Maya Wiley. He lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens.
Jaynie Gillman Crimmins
The decorative surfaces of my work contain thousands of tiny components. Each incorporates a fragment of information or imagery from mass marketing tools that are re-contextualized to represent personal, domestic and cultural narratives.
By repurposing solicitations, security envelopes, and catalogs that are difficult to recycle (because their inks have high concentrations of heavy metals), I create sustainable objects using a repetitive practice mirroring domestic tasks. Shredding these promotional materials breaks down their physical and ascribed compositions so I can roll, fold, sew and fabricate the shreds into intimate sculptural reliefs.
Nothing seemed to make it into the trash in the apartment of my Eastern European grandparents. Discarded clothing became crocheted rugs. Old curtains became aprons. Leftovers became the ingredients for new meals. Nothing was wasted, everything possible was reused. Castoff items became novel and compelling in their metamorphosis.
Combining this sensibility with the shredding of junk mail illuminates the physical acts of deconstructing and repurposing. I feel a responsibility to up-cycle the materials that have been imposed upon me by marketers. The power of transformation, frugality, ingenuity and hand-made quality drive my practice.
Jaynie Gillman Crimmins, a New York City based artist, creates alternative narratives from quotidian materials. Her work has been shown at Art on Paper, NYC; exhibited at the Sharjah Museum of Art during the Islamic Arts Festival in the United Arab Emirates: Spring Break Art Show, NYC; Governor's Island Art Fair, NYC; the National Museum of Romanian Literature in addition to museums throughout the United States including the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, VA;Hunterdon Art Museum, NJ; Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, GA.
Crimmins has a long history of community work. Prior to the pandemic, she was volunteering in the Guggenheim Museum's Learning Through Art Program. She holds two degrees in Art Education- a BS from the State University College at Buffalo and MS from the College of New Rochelle, with a minor in Art Therapy. She is represented by K. Imperial Fine Art, San Francisco, CA and Thomas Deans Fine Art in Atlanta, GA and shows with the Front Room Gallery, Azure Arts, Art LIves Here and Pardice Palase in NYC.
Seren Morey
Seren Morey is a New York City based artist who makes sculptural paintings informed by quantum mechanics and fairy tales. Her biological/botanical hybrids reference the universality of particle energy through forms that can be strange and exotic, referencing the cyclical pattern of growth and decay. Morey's work has been shown recently with The Painting Center, Rick Wester Fine Art, NYC Culture Club, The Royal Society of American Art, De Buck Gallery in NYC and France, LA Art Show, David & Schweitzer Contemporary, Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Field Projects Gallery and Anthony Philip Fine Art. Her work has been Acquired by multiple private and public collections including Angela Missoni, Middlebury College Museum of Art and Williamsburg Art and Historical Center. She has been reviewed by Robin Pogrebin, Barry Schwabsky and Helen A Harrison of the New York Times. Morey received a BA from Bard College, NY and an MFA from Pratt Institute, NYC. She is a partner in Guerra Paint & Pigment Corp., a specialty resource store for artists.