Archives: Alumnus

Born on a family farm in upstate New York, Justin Suarez is an artist who brings together the rural and the urban. Celebrating wildlife, he paints flora and fauna flawlessly over concrete and brick. The animals he paints come to life as the viewer is drawn into the world of the painting. With over 15 years experience, he has painted murals across the US, and his work has been exhibited around the world. Justin Suarez brings the intensity of a raptor to his artistic endeavors, as well as his work as valued handler of birds of prey at Wild Wings Animal Sanctuary outside Rochester, NY, he is able to capture the majesty of the natural world through his explosive graphics and remarkable technique. He also works well with humans, with a rich history of collaborating with other artists on a vast array of murals. He is responsible, punctual, a master of logistics and a born team player.
In the fall of 2015, Suarez co-founded Roc Paint Division, the City of Rochester’s Youth Mural Arts Program.” Roc Paint is just that and yet so much more. Under the leadership of local artists, Justin Suarez, Lisa Barker and Sarah Rutherford, Roc Paint Division’s mission was to beautify the city’s R-Centers through mural arts while providing employment and training opportunities to young developing artists. What developed through the initial 13-week pilot program in 2016 was nothing short of phenomenal. A team of seven youth created murals at 6 of the City’s R-Centers. The murals were unified by their common theme of growth, chosen in part to acknowledge the major role that the R-Centers play in the lives of the young people who spend time there during their formative years. The project not only provided the seven youth with work experience, it resulted in breath-taking artistic depictions of youth, energy and hope that glow like beacons from the corners of the community that they shine from.

www.mrprvrt.com

“Family Business,” Sunday, Oct. 8 with performances at 4:30 p.m., 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., ARTBAR Gallery, 674 Broadway

Come to ARTBAR for this intergenerational performance of “FAMILY BUSINESS”. Enter and you will be a customer in this family run restaurant, a 20-minute play in motion. Why is the chef refusing to cook? Why does the bartender want to quit? And who is the hostess in the gold turban, trying to get you to eat homemade chopped liver? Come find out. Each performance will be different.

Amy Poux is an arts advocate who believes that the arts belong in every walk of life for us to sustain diversity as part of human existence. She has spent her adult life dedicated to this issue as a theater director of multigenerational devised theater and as an arts educator.

As a theater director she has been developing original theater with young people and adults for twenty-five years. She most recently formed the Youth Ensemble Theater (YET) which provides multi generational people ages 10 to 82 with opportunities to play close the edge in their art form, and gain pre-professional acting/performance skills. Venues have included: Off-Broadway in NYC Labyrinth Theater Company, Hudson Valley: Richard B. Fisher Center at Bard College, partnership with The Ford’s Theatre, Washington D.C., High Meadow Performing Arts Center, NY Stage & Film/Powerhouse Theater.

As an arts educator she has worked to build artistic forums into the daily life of schools, that otherwise would not provide an arts education to their students. Currently the Director of Education at Film Society of Lincoln Center, her work has reached thousands of students in dilapidated school communities.

http://www.youthensembletheater.com

Enz is a graffiti muralist and graphic artist. Born and raised in rural NY under the cultural shadow of Gotham City, he has always felt the influence of dark gritty urban street art but merges this with wilderness themes as well as comic book, pop, musical, and fantastical imagery. His art is based on his nom de plume letters: ENZ. He arrived at this moniker when he first began vandalizing with spray paint at the age of 14. It is an abbreviation of the word “enzyme” defined as a catalyst. Nothing happens metabolically without enzymes and this is a metaphor for the art of Enz as stimulating artistic expression. Today, Enz remains addicted to the art form of graffiti but, has branched out to produce commercially viable murals and graphic art.

Actor and educator Caley Vickerman is passionate about the intersection of arts, education and community building. She is an actor specializing in interactive and improvisational performance, a storyteller and, most recently, a poet-enabler. She is a believer in the power of words to connect us to ourselves, to each other and to our neighborhoods and public spaces.

In an effort to connect her many areas of interest, she founded the Guerilla Haiku Movement, a public art experience that has traveled the country since 2011 joining communities in creative play using the short form poetry, haiku, as the tool for connection and engagement. Through Guerilla Haiku she offers programs tailored towards educational and arts institutions for creative literacy programming, arts integration, internal team-building, and professional development. But the underlying mission is to connect strangers and to deepen conversations inside all of our neighborhoods.

www.ghm575.org

https://vimeo.com/40755720

Matt Goldpaugh is a Kingston native, who spent a 9 year stint in NYC, only to happily return to Kingston in 2012, in order to spend more time focusing on his musical endeavors as well as visual arts full-time. A graduate of SUNY Purchase College ‘s Visual Arts program in 2005, Matt has continued working in visual arts over the years and even worked as a Forensic Photographer for the City Of New York from 2007-2008. Pursuing music primarily, while still relying on that fine art background, Matt plays a custom upright bass which he designed himself and helped to build, (playable art if you will). He is responsible for most of the art and branding for the bands he plays in: Lara Hope and the Ark-Tones, The Gold Hope Duo, and The Arkhams.

Matthew spends the majority of his time on the sketching and composition phase of a piece. Once the composition has been completed and the final product can begin – in his mind, all the hard work is done. At this point he sees it as a sort of paint by numbers project, this value here, this value there, as he already knows what it is going to look like so he can sit back and allow it to happen. He finds a certain level of relaxation in the repetition of the dense layering of the cross-hatching.

http://www.matthewpleva.com/Home.html