About the work
Participating Artists
Mike Childs
I am an artist from Toronto living and working in the Bronx. Working at night I produce various series of works on paper that I think of as night drawings which are a separate project from my works on canvas. In this series from 2019 called “The Traps” I created a series of images all made by limiting my colors to three. I used india ink (one of the oldest pigments in art history), a rich sepia ink I made from an old Black Walnut tree in my neighborhood park, and thirdly the white of the watercolor paper itself that modifies all the various uses of the ink on top of it. “The Traps” was a series of ongoing drawings (stopping at #20) where I returned to my first childhood love of free association drawing. Riffs on forms and spaces are relatable to New York’s urban structures, urban chaos, and the tumultuous US societal realities. References also crop up from the 1970 comic book artists from whom I first learned to draw by copying. Off balance structures, patterns and Ink pours relate physically to the city streets. The title itself refers to my view of a onlookers relationship to a drawing, in which we are in fact trapped into interpreting a given language a certain way
Deanna Lee
Deanna Lee was born in Putnam County, New York, to parents from China and Taiwan, and raised in suburban Boston. She grew up spending time in her mother’s biology lab and taking classical-music lessons on several instruments for 14 years. Comprising drawings, paintings, site-specific installations, and public artworks, her art interprets everyday traces of transformation in natural systems and the built environment. Numerous venues have shown her work, including Robert Henry Contemporary, Wave Hill, the Drawing Center, and the New York Hall of Science. Among her honors are awards from the Pollock- Krasner Foundation, Asia Society, National Academy, Millay Colony, and Saltonstall Foundation. In addition to her visual-art practice, Lee is a member of the Balinese ensemble, Gamelan Dharma Swara.
Keisha Prioleau-Martin
Keisha Prioleau-Martin is an artist based in Queens, N.Y. She earned her BFA at SUNY Purchase in 2017. Keisha’s work has shown in a lighthearted 2-person show at Ortega y Gasset (Footloose) and was included in Tiger Strikes Asteroid’s Flat File Year 5. Keisha is also a co-director at Underdonk in Bushwick. Her work sheds light on the inner glowing life of individuals, while promoting healthy ways to reflect on self.
Rafael Melendez
Visual Artist Rafael Melendez is preoccupied with the convergence and transformation of personal, spiritual and art historical subject matter, basing his eye catching supernatural works-on-paper on studies of the visual language of ancient civilizations. He is especially interested in iconography’s power to immediately communicate a message of complex emotions via anthropomorphic swirly and geometrical lines and color, Melendez attempts to distill universal truths through observation, notation, and layered realities like sacred carvings or Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs. His work has been exhibited in Museums, Galleries and alternatives spaces throughout the United States, Europe and Great Britain including: Susquehanna Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Oakland University Art Gallery, Diego Rivera Gallery, Longwood Art Gallery, Bronx Art Space, Hell Gate Arts, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, AC Institute, Space776, Present Company, Momenta, and the Accessible Art Fair Brussels. He currently lives and works in London, England.
Benjamin Pritchard
Benjamin Pritchard hails from Detroit, Michigan. He attended the New York Studio School and graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts Schools in London, UK in 2009. Since 2011 Benjamin has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY.
Sharmistha Ray
Sharmistha Ray is an artist, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn. Sharmistha’s practice, which consists of paintings, drawings, printmaking, sculptures, installations, photographs, and hybrid texts, is experiential, research and project-based, theoretical, and interdisciplinary. Her work emerges out of the experiences of war, migration, and love’s longing to engage themes of intimacy, displacement, and survival through the lens of queerness, language, memory, and spirituality. She is a recipient of awards including a TED Fellowship, Montblanc Young Artists Worldwide Patronage Award, and Joan Mitchell MFA Grant, amongst others. She has had solo and group exhibitions across the world, in New York, Singapore, and India. Born in Kolkata, Sharmistha did her growing up in Kuwait, before moving to the United States in 1997. She holds a BA from Williams College, and dual degree MS/MFA in Theory, Criticism, and History of Art, Design, and Architecture/Painting from Pratt Institute.
Melissa Staiger
Melissa Staiger is an artist, independent curator and educator. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her mediums include acrylic paint, gouache, collage, assemblage, printmaking and ceramics. The work explores color as a central theme with organic and hard-edge shapes and high texture. Staiger has had solo exhibitions at the Pratt Institute, SCPS Art Gallery, Kent Place Gallery in Summit, NJ, and Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. She was nominated and attended the Robert Rauschenberg Artist Residency in Captiva, Florida, The Wassaic Project Residency and DNA Artist Residency. She is a member of the American Abstract Artists and serves on the board of ABC No Rio.
Julie Torres
Julie Torres is a Painter and Curator living in Hudson NY. She has frequently exhibited her work which has been featured at New York Center for Art and Media Studies (New York, NY), Index Art Center (Newark, NJ), and in a collaborative art-making event that she led at Heiner Contemporary (DC). In 2012, Torres enjoyed three solo installations: Close Encounters at the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, CA; Bold As Love at Taller Boricua Art Space in East Harlem; and Ghost in the Machine at Storefront Bushwick Gallery in Brooklyn. She co-runs the LABspace gallery, an artist run space in Hillsdale NY.