Years: 2022

S. Leigh Thompson is a facilitator, Theatre of the Oppressed Joker, community organizer, equity strategist and coach, and all around joyful trouble-maker who has worked at the intersections of art and activism for over 20 years. A trans, white and Native queer with disabilities, Leigh works with communities to develop creative tools to address issues of power, privilege and oppression and attend to oppression-based trauma. He also works as an equity and justice trainer and strategist and organizational development consultant.

Ramiro Davaro-Comas is an Argentine/American artist with a background in public art and artist residency management. His passions for painting, storytelling, and community work have pushed him to travel throughout his career, collaborating with artists around the world. He is also the creator and served as a director of Dripped on the Road, a traveling artist residency program from 2016 to 2022.

Ramiro is currently co-directing Super Stories, an organization he launched with artist Grace Lang that focuses on art centered story telling projects in community spaces. Their motto is – If you know something, teach it!

www.ramirostudios.com

www.super-stories.org

Sophi is equal parts engineer, playground ride designer, and artist. She currently works as the director of product at Hackaday where she builds partnerships that bring the hardware community closer together. Recent creative projects include a video short about the badgelife phenomenon, a politically focused (and anonymous) art installation, lighter-than-air tiny blimps, and two traveling adult sized sit-n-spins.

Previously as an engineer, she worked in battery and thin film solar research. She is very interested in climate related topics, but is disappointed with the lack of information available about where products begin at “the cradle”. With the climate crisis requiring our full attention, Sophi is looking at the circular economy, sustainability, and how we can evaluate these topics.

PUGG is the youth workforce training program of the Department of Regional Art Workers (The D.R.A.W.). It is a paid, after school work-study program providing job training in art/non-profit management, arts education, leadership and entrepreneurship for Kingston High School students and recent alumni.

https://www.drawkingston.org/pugg

https://sophikravitz.com/project/how-does-it-feel-to-come-back/

PAU Quintanajornet doesn‘t paint pictures. Pau creates worlds – open invitations to a journey into the beauty of Latin American influences and into the spheres of an artist, who with brushes, paint, ink, paper and wood, playfully turns her world inside out. The cleavage between cultures loosens up. From the friction between her Chilean roots and her German home she draws her own symbolism in bright colors and shapes which grows out of the ground like plants rising to the sky. Birds also occupy a large space in Pau‘s World: in her „cosmovision“ they symbolize free spirits of wisdom and peace, spreading their wings and coping with highs and lows of life.

Pau is a collector. Her studio – the sanctum sanatorium – is home to countless keepsakes, ranging from talisman, coins, stones and shells for her altar to plane tickets, drawings and paintings from artist friends. Everything has its place in this world that tells the story of encounters through pieces of a mosaic. This place is her spiritual walk-in memory bank. All these little things eventually turn into her art. Pau‘s paintings are an expression of her inner world. She paints what she lives and feels.

Born in Chile and raised in the former DDR, Pau moved to Berlin at the age of 15 to broaden her horizons and find a creative outlet. She studied communication-design and illustration at the FHTW before taking off to South America. In Valparaiso, Chile, she recharged her batteries and set the course for her future. Falling in love with the Urban Art Movement and Artivism, Pau started to create her first wall pieces down South. Although she eventually returned to Germany, Pau would frequently revisit Latin America – her Motherland – her emotional home. During these returns, she might discover something new about her self or her art, socialize with other artists or improve her techniques. In the collective of the Artivists, Muralistas and Street Artists, Pau found birds of the same feather.

Over the last couple of years Pau has participated in numerous festivals and art projects around the world. These travels and interactions with the people around helped her to find a deeper meaning in her work and get more sensitive for different global realties. Inspired by the words of Pablo Neruda, “The murals are the books of the people “ she started a long term art project called PROJECT WALLFLOWERS in 2013. Her work is found on walls in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, France, The Netherlands, Germany, United States, China, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile … . While Pau‘s walls are on display in public spaces, they are created with the permission of the communities. Her interest lies in sharing her art with people, not creating notoriety for her self.

„Painting walls is something which shapes the environment and makes it more colorful. It‘s a gift to community it should help to nourish our souls – Alimento para el Alma

WWW.THEARTOFPAU.COM

https://projectwallflowers.com

Nell Jungyun Choi was born in Seoul, Korea. Choi received a Master and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture at the State University of New York at New Paltz and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramic at KyungHee University in Korea. Choi is an artist assistant of Marco Maggi who is a New York- and Uruguay-based artist, and works as a shop technician at Lite Brite Neon Studio in Kingston. Choi has participated in group exhibitions such as Sublime Concepts Bethany Arts Community, Export 2019, and Esabitchin’ fall. She focuses on dream and multiverse, especially, the quilted multiverse and string theory. She does interdisciplinary art, recently multi-media art, projection mapping, and installation art.

http://cogitodaydream.wixsite.com/nellchoi

Maxine Leu is an interdisciplinary artist, art educator, and environmentalist from Taiwan. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Tainan University of Technology (TUT), Tainan, Taiwan and her Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Her work focuses on the environment, communication, and identity.

https://www.maxineleu.com/

Corina Willette received her MFA from SUNY New Paltz in 2020 and BFA in Painting from New England College (formally The New Hampshire Institute of Art) in 2011. Willette is a figurative narrative artist whose subjects represent emotional territory. Currently, Willette is making art in the Hudson Valley and is an adjunct at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

https://www.corinawillette.com/

Jeff Mertz is a Kingston-based multidisciplinary filmmaker, photographer, and video artist with a focus on nonfiction storytelling. His work often aims to render in miniature the effects of large-scale environmental and social paradigms, and he’s particularly drawn to telling stories that galvanize discussion in the realms of environmental conservation and justice, food systems, mental health, and history. He runs a boutique production company, Moonbow Imaging, and is now in post-production on the feature documentary Seven Sentinels: Lighthouses of the Hudson River.

moonbowimaging.com

Ana O’Keefe and Allie Fair Keel draw inspiration from the feminist Surrealists and female artist collectives of history, building on their friendship and experience as mutidisciplinary artists to create in collaboration as The House Opposite. Their connection stems from almost two decades of friendship after meeting at 18 during the first days of art school in New York City. They quickly bonded as friends, roommates, and classmates, developing their skill and aesthetic, collaborating in student shows, and encouraging each other’s artistic growth.

Ana completed a graduate program in Art Education and developed a passion for community-arts practice and social activism. As a K-12 art teacher she has worked in schools and with the artist collective Los Muralistas de El Puente in Brooklyn, NY. Allie Fair worked as a craftsperson for many years with the John Derian Company in NYC before embarking on a masters program and becoming a school counselor providing holistic support and advocacy for students and their families.

After moves abroad and around the country, years both working in education, and becoming mothers within a week of each other, Allie Fair and Ana found themselves once again living close by. Maintaining connection over years and distance has never been hard but their recent proximity was a catalyst for reconnecting with the generative parts of themselves, welcome ,motivation to create in partnership as The House Opposite.

house-opposite.com

Harvey Opgenorth was born in Milwaukee, WI 1977 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. They have been employed in the museum field for over two decades and have worked as an art handler/preparator for major contemporary museums and galleries in Los Angeles for the past decade. Opgenorth’s multi-disciplinary studio practice is informed by their museum work and environment. By utilizing those observations and experiences they seamlessly fold that fodder into a rigorous personal studio practice.

Opgenorth has exhibited artwork internationally, including venues:
La Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain),
Caja Madrid (Zaragoza, Spain),
Espai Cultural Caja Madrid (Barcelona, Spain),
Museo del Patrimonio Municipal – MUPAM (Málaga, Spain),
Helsinki Contemporary (Helsinki, Finland),
Milwaukee Art Museum (Milwaukee, Wisconsin),
Haggery Museum of Art (Milwaukee, Wisconsin),
Krannert Art Museum (Urbana,Illinois),
The Renaissance Society (Chicago, Illinois),
The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, Minnesota),
Woodbury University Hollywood Exhibitions (Los Angeles, California),
Cordesa Fine Art (Los Angeles, California),
Vanity Projects (NYC, New York & Miami, Florida),
Mireille Mosler Ltd. (NYC, New York),
Bodybuilder & Sportsman (Chicago, Illinois),
Betty Reimer Gallery (Chicago, Illinois),
Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery (Kalamazoo, Michigan), and
Useable Space (Milwaukee, Wisconsin).

Opgenorth’s work has been the subject of articles and reviews, including publications: Art Forum International, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, Bridge Magazine, Smithsonian’s Eye Level, Milwaukee Magazine, Disruptive Pattern Material, The Word is Art, and Camoupedia.

They have been awarded the Mary L. Nohl Established Artist Fellowship in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and have lectured at Northwestern University (Illinois), University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Rapids), Figure One Gallery (Illinois), Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (Wisconsin), and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Education and residencies include:
1998 New York Studio Residency Program (AICAD)
1999 Milwaukee Institute of Art And Design – BFA
2014-2015 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2011 MKE<->LAX Residency
2017 Vermont Studio Center Residency

http://harveyopgenorth.com/

Goodnight Stetz is a multi disciplinary New York based rambler and full time mixed media artist.

Ranging in style and technique the artwork of Stetz has been featured in galleries, private collections, and museums all over the globe. His artistic endeavors often break away from traditional studio works to roam the world painting large scale murals and creating fully immersive installations for all age groups to enjoy. The culmination of these practices come together in an organic rhythm of flora and fauna set in a vivid technicolor and sometimes dark ethereal landscape representing all walks of life both vertebrate and invertebrate.

stetzism.com