Agonza is a Latina artist from Providence Rhode Island. She’s drawn her whole life. She came from a family of creative fine motor skills. Now she’s turned to her drawing skills into paintings as well as she fell in love with blending paints together to create a smooth or textured surface. Acrylic paint on canvas and walls has been my primary go-to passion.
“The ability to absorb and feel the environment around where I will be painting has become a tradition within my creations. As well as all the conversations and feedback from those who spend most of their time around the area. In some cases, (not all) I tend to incorporate a figure that has a combination of resemblance to many who I believe may spend time in this area and it may resonate to. Mostly those who may put a smile on their face or simply give them motivation during the time around the painting.”
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Gabrielle Banks was born in Nassau, Bahamas. She received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design with a completed semester in the Independent Studio Program at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, England. Gabrielle has exhibited in the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, including her solo show “The Mark of a Woman” and most recent participation in the NE10 Exhibition “MERCY”. She has contributed work to the first all-female auction at Sotheby’s Auction House, “By Women, For Tomorrow’s Women”. Gabrielle has completed fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont and Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY. In addition to her painting practice, Banks works as the Galleries Assistant for AS220 Galleries. She currently lives and works in Providence, RI.
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Julio Berroa (BER ROH-uh) was born in Salcedo (s-aa-l-s-EH-d-oh), Dominican Republic, Providence resident since 2012. Berroa earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Digital Media Design and a minor in Photography. His passions include the Arts, Sex and HIV Education, and Youth Advocacy. All of this drives him to share his experiences through Art to help advocate for young aspiring artists of color. He hopes to inspire and influence his viewers. Berroa has participated in multiple group exhibitions with his advanced photography class, was awarded a scholarship, and participated in a group exhibition at the Providence Art Club.
Berroa participated in the Andrew Mellon Summer Internship as a Creative Production intern at the RISD Museum in the summer of 2020 and 2021 Rhode Island College Senior Art Award Recipient. In 2021 Berroa along with a group of friends opened Rhode Island’s first-ever youth shelter for Queer and BIPOC young adults ages 18 to 24 called Haus of Codec.
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Daniel Cano Restrepo from Medellin, Colombia, now residing in Newport with my husband and cat. With a background in industrial design, I’m passionate about all things arts-related. Currently, I work with Newport Pride, contributing to the LGBTQ community in Newport. And I’m thrilled to contribute to the Womxn Project through this initiative.
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Claudeline Chery brings nearly two decades of professional success in engaging communities and stakeholders across Greater Boston and now in Providence. She is critical in opening the door to RISD’s relationships across Providence and Rhode Island. She works to align RISD’s faculty, staff, students, alums, resources, and mission in creating new partnerships and advancing relationships with local organizations, groups, and residents to support more robust, thriving, and resilient communities across the state.
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Alana Rose Fredda Kaplan Robles Conlin is originally from San Francisco, California. Alana is a 2008 graduate of Massachusetts College of Art & Design in Boston. She is a multidisciplinary artist who has created art for public projects in California, New Mexico, Rhode Island & Massachusetts. She and her family teach art, lead workshops, and create visual displays on public buildings in Rhode Island.
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Karen Conway is an arts professional who has worked in various capacities: as curator, gallery director, educator, collections manager, research consultant at numerous institutions and galleries. This includes the Whitney Museum, Newport Art Museum, Heritage Museums and Gardens, and most recently the Jamestown Arts Center, Rhode Island. She has been Exhibition Director at the JAC for over 8 years. Conway also was on the Newburgh Arts and cultural commission where she was head of public art and percent for art. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Leeds and Harvard University, where she has been a guest lecturer.
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Leela Corman is a painter, educator, and graphic-novel creator, working in the realm of diaspora Ashkenazi culture and third-generation restorative work. Her books include Unterzakhn, which was nominated for an Eisner Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Le Prix Artémisia; won the 2015 Romics Prize for Best Anglo-American Comic; and received a 2023 MoCCA Arts Festival Award of Excellence, and the short comics collections You Are Not a Guest and We All Wish for Deadly Force. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The Believer, Nautilus, and The Nib. She is a founding instructor at Sequential Artists Workshop and an instructor at Rhode Island School of Design.
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Jeff Foye was born in Arcadia, California and earned his BA in Theater and Dance from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and his MFA in Sculpture and Intermedia from California State University at Long Beach. At CSU Long Beach he helped establish the graduate student-run exhibition, the Greater Los Angeles Masters of Fine Arts exhibition (GLAMFA), which is now in its 17th year.
Jeff is the Lead Preparator and Performance Curator at the Jamestown Arts Center as well as Director of Exhibitions for Rhode Island Airports. He collaborates with the artist Gordon Winiemko under the collective name, JEFF&GORDON. The work deals with the social structures that exist between people and how these influence interactions and connections between people. Foye have exhibited across the Los Angeles area and internationally and is on the board of directors for the Providence Biennial.
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GEM (They, Them) graduate of Johnson & Wales University and a graduate of the Leadership Rhode Island 2020 Pi II class, Gem has worked in the field of youth development in the non-profit sector for well over a decade with such agencies as The Greater Providence YMCA, AIDS Care Ocean State, Youth Pride Inc., Big Brothers Big Sisters of Rhode Island and House of Hope CDC. Their life’s passions include adding to their extensive library of local art, and advocacy surrounding public health, specifically HIV & STI prevention.
Gem is originally from Rhode Island and has been a loud voice in political spaces sharing their own story of housing insecurities, mental health journey, and living with HIV. Gem continues its work in public health through Rhode Island’s HIV and STI Prevention Coalition and organizes Haus of Codec’s Monthly LGBTQQIA+ Art Marketplaces.
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Tom Hart is a cartoonist has been the Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop, a school and arts organization in Gainesville, Florida since 2012.
His 2016 memoir, Rosalie Lightning, debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List and was featured on many Best-Of-2016 lists. His Hutch Owen series of graphic novels and books, were nominated for all the major industry awards.
Hart’s The Collected Hutch Owen was nominated for best graphic novel in 2000. He was an early recipient of a Xeric Grant for self-publishing cartoonists, and has been on many best-of lists in the Comics Journal and other comix publications. He has been called “One of the great underrated cartoonists of our time” by Eddie Campbell and “One of my favorite cartoonists of the decade” by Scott McCloud. His daily Hutch Owen comic strip ran for 2 years in newspapers in New York and Boston, and his “Ali’s House”, co-created with Margo Dabaie was picked up by King Features Syndicate. He was a core instructor at New York City’s School of Visual Arts for 10 years, teaching cartooning to undergraduates, working adults and teens alike. Among his students were Dash Shaw, Sarah Glidden Box Brown and other published cartoonists like Leslie Stein, Jessica Fink,Josh Bayer, Brendan Leachand many others. He has taught comix and sequential art at schools and institutions all around New York City for more than 10 years, and has conducted week-long workshops from Maine to Hawaii.
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Kirstin Lamb is a painter living in Providence, Rhode Island and working in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Kirstin studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with an MFA in 2005, and she received her AB in Visual Art and Literatures in English from Brown University in 2001.
Kirstin’s work has been shown in venues across the country, recently showing at Jennifer Terzian Gallery in Litchfield, CT, Cade Tompkins Projects in Providence, RI, the Spring Break Art Fair in NY, the Wassaic Project in Amenia, NY, the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA and Providence College Galleries in Providence, RI, among others. She has attended residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Bunker Projects, the Wassaic Project, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, The Ora Lerman Trust Soaring Gardens Artist Residency, and the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation.
Kirstin has taught painting, drawing and art theory at a range of New England colleges including most recently Salve Regina University in Newport, RI and Clark University in Worcester, MA. Her work is in the collections of Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA, the Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA, and Providence College, Providence, RI, among others.
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Jonathan Pitts-Wiley is a portrait photographer and co-founder of the Rhode Island-based Black photographer collective, The Vanta Guild. In the summer of 2021, Jonathan collaborated with renowned photographer Mary Beth Meehan to produce Witness, an exhibition that explores the life and times of his late grandmother, Annye Raye Pitts.
In December 2022, his was one of five portraits selected for the City of Providence’s “Who We Are Now” public art banner project. His first solo exhibition, All the Worlds, opened in September 2023 at World’s Fair Gallery in Providence.
A Yale graduate, Jonathan is the Creative Director at Curiosity Store in Jamestown, Rhode Island and has, since 2010, been the Artistic Director of Pawtucket, RI’s Mixed Magic Theatre. Jonathan is married to Mixed Magic’s music director, Kim Morrison Pitts-Wiley. The couple has two children.
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Bonnie Schwerin is the Founder of Get Organized Brooklyn by Day (“GOBK By Day”). In 2017, GOBK By Day began as an informal, inclusive, weekly meeting with mail or phone activism projects that could be completed in the room in the hour. After thousands of hours of volunteering and tens of thousands of postcards sent, the group continues to reach out to voters throughout the US in support of healthcare access, common sense gun control, and more.
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Natalie Tyson is an art intern for the Womxn Project helping launch our Conversation Booth. She is a fourth year in the Brown RISD Dual Degree Program, and is studying textiles at RISD and Public Policy at Brown. Natalie is excited to collaborate and bring new ideas to the table! She is originally from Charlotte, NC and is passionate about fair housing and artivism.
While in Providence, she loves to weave, knit, and occasionally walk through the RISD Museum. Her art portfolio consists of emotionally charged vibrant weavings and paintings with symbolic messages. Natalie is looking forward to bringing her talents and creativity to help curate the “Advocacy is Love” Postcard Exhibition.
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Bradley Wester (New York/Rhode Island) is a visual artist and writer. His visual artwork has been exhibited extensively in New York, other parts U.S., and Europe. His recent solo exhibitions: DISCOlour, Newport Art Museum; DISCOrd #1, farm projects, MA; DISCOurse #2, Pavel Zoubok, NY; DISCOurse #3, Yellow Peril, Providence. Other solo & group shows: Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago; Jamestown Arts Center, RI; Margalef & Gipponi, Antwerp; PIASA, Paris; Lyonswier Gallery, NY & Artists Space, NY; Future Tenant, Pittsburgh. Awards include Specialist Fulbright Japan, Visiting Artist American Academy in Rome, a Hermitage Fellow, two MacDowell Fellowships, and a Pollock-Krasner.
He’s taught or lectured at RISD, Dartmouth, Tulane, Ringling, CalArts, and NYU. Wester is a contributing art writer for Filthy Dreams and WhiteHot Magazine for Contemporary Art. His creative nonfiction essay, “Shiny Object,” read last June at the Newport Art Museum, was just nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
