The artists
Kenny Hess aka Yedi Fresh
A self-taught artist. From day one, Kenny Hess aka Yedi Fresh, has been creating. A self-taught artist. From day one, Kenny Hess aka Yedi Fresh, has been creating. Whether it is illustration, painting, digital art, or mural work, he has allowed his creative nature to explode across canvases, notebooks, and even some walls around y'alls. To him, it is a nonstop vision. From an oversized yeti to some cool color therapy, there are always works in progress. Not a day goes by that Yedi can't be found with pencil, brush or can in hand. Always working, always improving. It is this very persistence, the one that keeps him up long hours into the night, that springs his creative worlds into reality. is illustration, painting, digital art, or mural work, he has allowed his creative nature to explode across canvases, notebooks, and even some walls around y'alls. To him, it is a nonstop vision. From an oversized yeti to some cool color therapy, there are always works in progress. Not a day goes by that Yedi can't be found with pencil, brush or can in hand. Always working, always improving. It is this very persistence, the one that keeps him up long hours into the night, that springs his creative worlds into reality.
Dominic Terzilli
Dominic Terzilli received his MFA from Hoffberger School of Painting MICA in 2008 and a BFA from The Cooper Union NYC in 2003. Solo shows include Aver Vero at Vox Populi (Philadelphia) and Zero Hero Yolo Solo at The ICA/Chicken Box (Baltimore). He has also exhibited in London, New York, Washington DC and Delaware amidst other places. He is the founder and manager of the St. Charles Project, which is an extremely successful project space in Baltimore that provides opportunities to emerging and mid career contemporary artists. Dominic was part of the recent Sour Milk Art Exhibition curated by Mr. Quesnel.
Dominic creates narrative paintings with a variety of materials which include castings of everyday objects that he has collected through his travels. He will be teaching students about mold-making and casting while they make a collaborative mural that tells a story about their own experiences.
Kyle Browne
By engaging directly with place, environment, and site, Kyle Browne provides her viewers with opportunities for discovery, imagination, and understanding. Her art is the result of walking, collecting, sitting, and observing. She engages directly with different sites that are of interest to her, and uses them as inspiration in her video works. Kyle will be working with our young artist using Stop Motion Animation. Stop motion animation (also called stop frame animation) is animation that is captured one frame at time, with physical objects that are moved between frames. When you play back the sequence of images rapidly, it creates the illusion of movement. See below links for more information and a great video of her work.
Willie Cole
Willie Cole is a noted contemporary American sculptor, printer, conceptual and visual artist. His work uses contexts of postmodern eclecticism, combining references and appropriation from African and African-American imagery.. His upbringing by both his mother and grandmother in the 1960s has had a lasting impact on his work, as his continued use of irons in his sculptures signifies the domestic role of African women during this time. His fascination with African art developed as he continued his education at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he studied the culture of the Yoruba society. Recently Cole’s work was exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Birmingham Museum of Art and represented by Alexander and Bonin in New York,
Ruben Marroquin
Ruben Marroquin is an artist and textile/surface designer from the Fashion Institute of Technology, he studied at the National Textile Workshop in Paris through a scholarship from F.I.T. He started his career as an artist while studying painting at the Reverón Fine Arts School in Caracas, Venezuela in the late 90’s.
Marroquin works primarily with textiles, enhancing the graphic elements of linear pliable materials through a unique sculptural approach. His process has evolved over 2 decades from traditional hand embroidery to large scale installations in collaboration with renowned interior designers. Marroquin specialized in weaving at F.I.T. and continues to teach weaving workshops in schools, sharing his expertise and involvement with the craft with students and adults.
Marroquin was born in Chicago, ILL. 1979 and grew up between Caracas, Venezuela and the U.S. Of Guatemalan/Venezuelan parents Marroquin lived over three years in Mexico City, where he made regular trips to Guatemala in search of materials. A profound interest in reconnecting with his ancestry motivated his work with textiles, this search continues to be a gravitational force and a catalyst for his art.
Liz Squillace
Liz Squillace, Paradox Ink is devoted to promoting positive change in the environment by bringing art to public places. Liz received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999 and has been drawing, painting and screen printing ever since. Her work bridges the gap between gallery art and street art making it accessible to everyone. Public art brings fine art and creative illusion to the street, whereas her screenprints bring imagery such as powerlines and industrial landscapes to gallery walls. Liz's public art can be seen in White Plains, NY, Stamford, CT and Bridgeport, CT where Liz currently resides. She is also a member of the Loft Artist Association (LAA) in Stamford, CT.
Joseph Fucigna
Joseph Fucigna was born in New Rochelle, New York and grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut. He received his Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from Alfred University School of Art and Design in New York and Masters of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He also attended the Triangle Artist Workshop in Pine Plains, NY and worked with the renowned sculptor Sir Anthony Caro and critic Clement Greenberg. Presently, Fucigna is a full-time Professor of Art at Norwalk Community College and is the Chair of the Studio Arts Program. Fucigna has also taught in the Art Department at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Presently, he resides and works in Weston, CT.
Fucigna has exhibited nationally including shows at the Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts, Real Art Ways in Connecticut, National Weather Center Biennale in Oklahoma, the United Nations, Grounds for Sculpture in New Jersey, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in Connecticut, the New York State Museum in Albany, NY and the Burchfield Art Center in Buffalo NY. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Fred Giampietro Gallery, Sculpture Barn, Norwalk Community College Art Gallery, Artist Space New Haven and the Bannister Gallery at Rhode Island College. Fucigna was also a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.
Jennifer Caviola
With an earnest commitment to contribute to the conversation of universal recovery from generational trauma, Caviola’s work seeks to explore the role of painting as facilitator of ancestral clearing. She uses portraiture as a vehicle for delivery and as means of recording elusive states of existence that can sometimes get lost in passing, with the goal of each painting to have had complete transference onto the material of wood panel through acrylic paint via brushwork. The act of painting becomes a salve, and once completed, the resulted portrait exists with autonomy, and with that the promising possibility for a private exchange with the person who encounters it.
Jennifer received her BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 2002 and her MFA from Parsons in New York City in 2007. She has had solo shows in New York City, Brooklyn, and California and has participated in group shows throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East. She has been featured in publications such as Vogue, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Complex Magazine, Papermag, Juxtapoz and High Fructose.
Alejandro Durán
Alejandro collects the international trash washing up on the Caribbean coast of Mexico and transforms it into aesthetic yet disquieting art works that wake us to the threat of plastic pollution. Through photography and installation his long-term project, “Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape”, examines the fraught intersections of man and nature, revealing the pervasive impact of consumer culture on the natural world. Durán also engages audiences through environmental, community-based art-making and speaking engagements. As National Geographic’s Becky Harlan said, “A gorgeous UNESCO World Heritage site has a serious problem with ocean trash, and artist Alejandro Durán wants to inspire us into action.”
Born in Mexico City in 1974, Alejandro is now based between Brooklyn, New York and Sian Ka’an, México where he continues to gather trash for the project. He received an MA in Teaching from Tufts University and an MFA in poetry from the New School for Social Research. As an educator Durán has taught youth and adult classes in photography and video at The Museum of Modern Art and The International Center of Photography. His media production company, Luma Projects, includes clients such as MoMA, Microsoft, UNICEF, and the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture.
Tyler Green
Tyler is a Connecticut based artist and the owner of Creative Genius LLC. He is an inventor of consumer gadgets and accessories. With an intuitive and innovative approach to the creative process, he uses his artistic ability and skills to work within a variety of industries requiring his expertise in SFX Makeup and Education. Tyler’s incredible and unique talents and achievements have been featured over the years in newspapers, magazines, and on radio and television.
Tyler was a finalist on SyFy's season six of Face Off, which is a competition/elimination series, where special effects make-up artists participate in elaborate challenges for a grand prize and the honor of being Hollywood's next great effects artist. He was also casted back to the show for season eleven's All Star series.
Peter D. Cook a design principal at HGA architects with an outstanding portfolio of design leadership and award-winning projects throughout the United States—particularly in the D.C. area—encompassing museums, memorials, embassies, libraries, cultural and learning centers, and mixed-used corporate and neighborhood master planning.
Among Cook’s high-profile projects are the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Watha T. Daniel / Shaw Neighborhood Library, Embassy of South Africa, and Saint Elizabeths East Gateway Pavilion.
In addition to working with HGA’s clients in the Washington, D.C. area, Cook will serve as a national design leader with emphasis on cultural, civic, and federal projects across the country.Cook is a member of the American Institute of Architects, Washington, D.C. Chapter and the National Organization of Minority Architects. He holds a Master of Architecture from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, and a Bachelor of Arts in Visual & Environmental Studies from Harvard University.
Peter follows in the tradition of his grand uncle, prominent African-American architect, Julian Francis Abele. Mr. Abele designed more than 400 buildings, including the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University, Parkway Central Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the west campus of Duke University and the Duke University Chapel. His work influenced Peter early on in his career and continues to be a source of inspiration.
SPURSE : Matthew Friday and Ian Kerr - members . We are a creative design consultancy that focuses on social, infrastructures, and ecologies with tools and adaptive solutions for system-wide change. Drawing upon our diverse backgrounds that span the fields of science, art, and design, we utilize unique immersive methods to co-produce new ecologies, urban environments, public art, experimental visioning, strategic development, alternative educational models, and expanded configurations of the commons.We work with individuals, groups, institutions, on various scales of systems to facilitate new possibilities.
Our Team: Members of SPURSE have a diversity of backgrounds that include urbanism, philosophy, architecture, ecology, geology, furniture design, art, music, computer programming, food practices, community development, BMX, educational programing, skateboarding and systems design. We wear many more hats than such a list can capture. We are linked by shared interests, passions, and curiosities (and the occasional soccer game…)
http://www.ecological and ethical transformation. We work to empower communities, institutions, spurse.org
ROCCO NATALE
Newington-Cropsey Fellowship recipient for dramatic writing and research, Rocco is a playwright and director. His plays have been performed internationally and stateside he has had the pleasure of working at The Cherry Lane Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop's 4th Street Theatre and Arena Stage. Rocco's adaptations of GREAT EXPECTATIONS and K.C.@BAT (a musical commission for the National Boys & Girls Club of America) are published by YOUTHPlays. His play SMOKE SIGNALS holds the distinction of receiving the Siff Grant for educational performance and was developed to tour with Hospital Audiences, Inc. A semi-finalist in the Eugene O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference and Premiere Stages, Rocco has had the pleasure of working with Signature Theatre Company, Arena Stage, Urban Stages, Inside Broadway, Mirror Repertory Company, The University of Connecticut and Shakespeare on the Sound. BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. MA: New York University; BA: New York University, CAS: The University of Bridgeport. www.RoccoNatale.com
