Category: Art

Ann Lewis is a multidisciplinary activist artist using painting, installation, social practice, and participatory performance in our public spaces to explore themes related to American identity, power structures, and justice. Her work interrogates power imbalances such as mass incarceration, police brutality, and the desecration of women’s and trans rights. Ann’s data-driven art uses concept-specific materials to offer fact-based experiences for her participants. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, her career began in the street art world of New York City and has evolved into large-scale public works. Her mural See Her received an Americans for the Arts 2018 Public Art Network (PAN) Award. Ann’s art has been acquired by the New York Historical Society Museum and the US Library of Congress. It has been discussed in Hyperallergic, Artnet, The LA Times, and The Guardian. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the US and abroad, including shows at Petzel Gallery in New York, Seyhoun Gallery in Tehran, Iran, and the Obama White House. Her most recent work, To Be Human, commissioned by Duolingo, spans 17,000 sq ft and instigated a dialogue producing a sizable public art grant supporting artists in Pittsburgh, PA.

https://annlew.is

Brian Kaspr is an artist and graphic designer NYC area. Growing up in Milwaukee solidified his appreciation for traditional American craft and the desire to work with his hands. Attending the Maryland Institute College of Art and working as a design professional focused his early influences into a specific aesthetic style that is artfully cognizant, rooted in traditional quality, and full of character. Kaspr’s artistic practice has evolved into energetic and colorful abstract paintings that utilize lettering as a means of mark making and structure. Kaspr creates original lettering, logotypes, patterns, and one-of-a-kind customized objects for his design clients. He strives to honor classic commercial design and elevate it while maintaining an accessible sense of style and craft.

Kaspr’s work is set apart by its ability to adapt seamlessly from conceptually strong two dimensional graphic design into singular installations, activations, and environmental experiences. This integration of skills creates the most original and authentic content for an audience.

Kaspr has worked with a variety of clients, including: Maybelline, Kate Spade, Universal Music, Ban.do, Aldo, Nordstrom, Victoria’s Secret, Ray Ban, North Face, Away, American Express, Urban Outfitters, Pop Sugar, The Infatuation, Nike, MoMA, Refinery 29, Baggu, Bon Appetit, Facebook, Madewell, L’Oreal, Goop, Rebecca Minkoff, Yahoo!, Delpozo, Afar Magazine, Fleur du Mal, & I Love Dust.

Along with his personal work, Kaspr co-founded the critically acclaimed wallpaper and fabric design studio Flat Vernacular.

bkaspr.com

Marielena Ferrer is a socially engaged visual artist and art educator. She serves on the Kingston Arts Commission and Diversity Equity and Inclusion Task Force. Ferrer studied architecture at Central University of Venezuela and later earned a certificate of distinction in “Leadership and Empowerment” from Spain’s Polytechnic University of Valencia and a diploma in “Gender Leadership” through the EQUAL Transnational Cooperation Community Initiative of the European Social Fund. In addition, she earned a University Expert Diploma in “Mental Health, Cultural Processes and Psychological Interventions With Immigrants, Minorities and the Socially Excluded” from the University of Barcelona. Ferrer is currently completing a BFA in sculpture from SUNY New Paltz makes art to “assist people in becoming aware of themselves and their environment as fully as possible.”

marielenaferrer.myportfolio.com

David Najib Kasir is an Artist/Painter/Muralist/Curator who lives and works in Milwaukee WI. His work comprises of personal narratives in life and cultural history or events. In recent years, Kasir’s work draws from stories from his parents’ journey to the U.S. and the current crisis from where they migrated from (Syria-Mother/Iraq- Father). As an American born artists, Kasir reveals his cultural identity in paint and designs to inform the viewers on the recent wars in Syria, in hopes viewers can grow an understanding of the millions of voiceless Arabs now living in chaos and disarray. By using beautiful traditional Arab designs called Zellige to dress the figures in his work, Kasir shows the beauty of a culture and the tragedy as families try to hold on to it and hold on to each other as everything around them falls apart. Kasir has a BFA in painting from Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design from 2001 and the proud father of two teenage daughters (one being an artist herself).

davidnajibkasir.com

Stephanie Loveless is a sound and media artist whose research centers on listening and vocal embodiment. Her recent projects include a mobile web-app for geo-located listening, and sound works that channel the voices of plants, animals, and musical divas.

Loveless’ sound, video and performance work has been presented widely in festivals, galleries, museums and artist-run centers in North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East. She currently lives and works in upstate New York where she is a Lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the Department of Arts, and Director of the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer.

stephanieloveless.ca

Kat Howard was born in Rochester, New York in 1984. She earned a BA in Creative Writing and Art History from Brandeis University in 2006, and worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art as their first Manager of Interactive Media until 2010, when she left the museum world to pursue two MFAs contingently in Studio Art: Book & Paper Art and Creative Writing: Poetry, which she received from Mills College in 2013. Since graduating, she has been working as an independent artist. Howard’s practice focuses on fiber art. She has been featured in DesignSponge, Houzz, Architectural Digest, and Chronogram. Her work is available through the artist directly, and through Lawton Mull in New York. Howard lives and works in Kingston, New York.

https://www.kat-howard.com/

Elisabeth Motley is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, scholar, and teacher whose work is concerned with neurodivergence, crip theory, and disability as choreographic sites. Motley is a 2019-2021 Movement Research Artist in Residence, a 2020 Dance/NYC Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellow and was a recipient of the 2018-2019 Fulbright US-UK Scholar Award. Motley teaches choreography at Marymount Manhattan College and is studying toward a Dance Practice-as-Research Ph.D. at University of Roehampton in the UK. Motley has shared her work at Center for Performance Research, Danspace Project’s DraftWork, Gibney Dance, HERE, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Movement Research at Judson, Festival Oltre Passo – Italy, Springboard Danse Montreal, and The Whitney Museum among others.

https://www.elisabethmotley.com/

The Hudson Valley Bee Habitat is a Kingston, NY based, woman-led arts organization saing the pollinators through the arts. Our mission is to utilize our expertise as artists and mindful educators to cultivate public engagement with pollinators, the environment, and each other in order to help both humans and pollinators thrive. We engage the public in the very important endeavor of pollinator care and conservation by engaging their hearts, hands, and curiosity through the arts. We believe that when people are empowered in their creativity, they can imagine new possibilities for the future.

Emily Puthoff is a sculptor, bee habitat designer, art educator for over twenty years, and beekeeper. When she took up beekeeping ‘by accident’ a few years ago, she rediscovered the beauty and wonder of the natural world and she committed to leveraging her creativity to save the bees. Emily is a 2016-2017 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow, 2017-2018 Good Work Institute Fellow and a 2017-2018 Sustainability Faculty Fellow at SUNY New Paltz, where she heads the Sculpture Program.

Elena Sniezek is an artist, educator, and beekeeper. She has over twenty years experience as a teaching artist (Pre-K to College) in Chicago, Arizona, and New York. As a resident of Kingston since 2005, Elena is excited to collaborate with educators, youth and community members with projects involving art, environmental education, and bees.

www.hvbeehabitat.org

Cave Dogs principal members are Suzanne Stokes, James Fossett, Adam Mastropaolo, Dillon Paul, Ted Conway and Alchemy Mastropaolo. Grammy Award winner Dean Jones creates the soundtracks, with additional audio by Emerson Fossett.

We embrace the collaborative process, possess a strong work ethic and are invested in creating and sustaining community. We are dedicated to expanding and strengthening our technical and conceptual skills to produce innovative work. Each member brings specific strengths to the collective. Together, we acknowledge the unexpected, celebrate the surprise, and allow the work to take shape from it.

Cave Dogs performances include: Liquid States (2019), Sure-Minded Uncertainties (2013), Archaeology of a Storm (2008), Ferrous City (2002), How to Build a Raft (1998), Emily’s Circus (1994), Sustenance (1993), Fall of Perception (1992), and Shadows of Doubt and Other Precarious Truths (1991).

Our name, Cave Dogs, originated from performing in the Widow Jane Mine; a cavernous cement mine in Rosendale, New York. Cave Dogs performs in the Hudson Valley, nationally, and internationally in a variety of venues: from pristine 16th century cathedrals in Scandinavia to William Kentridge’s the Center for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, South Africa.

International performances include; Reykjavik Fringe Festival, (Iceland), Sibikwa Arts Centre (Benoni, S.Africa), The Centre for The Less Good Idea (Johannesburg, South Africa), The Skissernas Museum (Lund, Sweden), The Academy for Untamed Creativity (Copenhagen, Denmark),The Malmo (Sweden) Cultural Festival. US performances include: Rochester Fringe (Rochester, NY), The Brooklyn Children’s Museum (NY), Fringe NYC (New York, NY), New Orleans Fringe (New Orleans, LA), Alfred University (Alfred, NY), PortFringe (Portland, ME), Womens Studio Workshop (Rosendale, NY), The Woodstock Fringe Festival (Woodstock, NY), P.S. 122 (NYC), Henry Street Settlement (NYC), HERE (NYC), McKenna Theatre, (New Paltz, NY), The New Orleans Fringe Festival, Mobius (Boston), SMFA (Boston, MA), MassArt (Boston, MA), and The Center for Contemporary Art (Santa Fe, NM).

We have received multiple grants from Franklin Furnace (NYC), The Jim Henson Foundation (NYC), The NLT Foundation (Boston, MA).

cavedogs.org