Lisa Albaugh’s photographs mark the advancement of image-making technologies by functioning as a kind of memento mori. Native pictorial artifacts are described to show how nostalgia creates desire and determines preferences for the look of new image formulas.

Nathan Apffel has a background in Digital Media, and a fascination with complex organic forms. Which has led to an intent to emulate them with 3D modeling and digital distortion. The apparent randomness found in organic structures can be mimicked with computer models like partial systems but cannot replicate the irregular aesthetic experienced with real word objects.

His current works use paint to explore organic forms that can be achieved through action with a liquid medium. They realize complex organic shapes through the use of paint chemistry. The images produced resemble an elemental mixing of the grate or the minuscule. They appear nebulous. Like aerial photography from afar. And then increasingly like complex biological structures when approached.

Rachel Bleiweiss-Sande’s current work uses the traditional, wheel-thrown form to express creativity, emotion, and organic beauty. Her pieces are each thrown by hand, using porcelain or stoneware clay bodies. The artist attempts to engage in a sort of dialogue with the clay as she works, allowing natural imperfections to appear and to persist as she stretches the clay to its limits. Each piece represents a unique process, readily visible in the particular kinks, folds, and dents of the vessel.

Rachel was introduced to the potter’s wheel at the age of eight in her hometown of Berkeley, California. She has spent years learning the technique and craft of throwing, and has experimented with pit-firing, Raku, and a variety of glazes.

After graduating from high school, Rachel relocated to the east coast to attend Princeton University, where she earned a degree in architecture. She is currently working for painter Mary Heilmann.

Bolivares is a NYC-based designer sportswear brand destined for fashion majesty. This sophisticated menswear line pulls influences, from a variety of prime sources: the raw energy of NYC streets, the art and architecture of the bustling metropolis, as well as subtle and subliminal aspects of Latin culture. Their clothes place a premium on quality, function, and design, and each piece is the cultivation of months and months of intense research, thought and creativity.

BOLIVARES- Salud, Dinero Y Amor

Ann Chisholm’s paintings explore the interaction of the subconscious mind and the conscious state.

The artist’s work confronts countervailing concepts; it deals with a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis. For example, with paint, color, and line each representing conflicting ideas. Fate contrasts with free will. Destiny is juxtaposed to chance. And science confronts religion.

Random images are intermixed with designed and planned elements creating compositions with a harmonious disjointedness in which
subject and meaning are partially concealed.

The work that engages me and drives me forward is powered by Black. In applying my research and interest for the history and traditions of Color Theory, Physics, Alchemy, Heavy Metal, Religion and Mythology I am working toward a comprehensive understanding of the interrelation of Black, Darkness, and Matter. Black is the pure and unrepentant mark of information; both the origin of recording thoughts, and the fully saturated realization of all pigment as one. Darkness is the event, or phenomena of Blackness; the threshold over which light can no longer affect a receptor (eye, camera, etc.). Matter is the physical manifestation of Black-made-flesh; the Ka’abah or Black Stone of Mecca, Dark Matter and Black Holes, the Nigredo stage of alchemical transformation. Through these investigations, and together with the history of western painting as defined by Malevich and Reinhardt, the goal of my work is to expand and cross the boundaries which define and divide Black, Darkness and Matter into a unified concept. A Black Singularity.

Born 1985 not many yards from the spot where Kennedy was pronounced dead in 1963. (To follow there was some pretty formative blood, sweat and bed-wetting) Graduated 2007 directly beneath the spot from which Charles Whitman shot and killed 14 people in 1966. Moved to New York thereupon. Making New Work henceforth. Looking for a spot to call my own.

My studio is both a space and an archive of time spent. When in life I am terrifyingly impatient - walking around and eating fruit, getting angry and growing old - making art reminds me that everything is a process.

I like to take my time in the morning even though I might get fired for it. I love to fall asleep with chocolate in my mouth. I have cavities. My work is slowing getting dressed, perhaps rotting from the inside out. With all the earnest arrogance of a confused but dedicated alchemist, I contrive to make magnetic junk out of gold.

Dori Eisenhauer of Ike Designs Jewlery began making jewelry out of economic necessity; from 1991 to 2002, she worked as a professional actress and made barely enough money to survive. In order to facilitate her love of girlie accessories on a cash-poor budget, she started to buy some raw materials at her neighborhood bead store in Philadelphia during the mid 1990s to make her own pieces.

In 1998,she arrived in Seattle, WA. Not being able to find any acting work, she became frustrated and found herself without a creative outlet. So, she focused on jewelry-making, and professional opportunities with other designers developed. Ike Designs Jewelry by Dori Eisenhauer was established in Seattle in 1999 and has been steadily growing, participating in trade and craft shows around the country, wholesaling to boutiques and art galleries nationwide and fulfilling custom commissioned work in New York City. In addition, since arriving back on the east coast, Dori is a co-founding member of the Cockeyed Optimists Theatre Company.

Ike Designs Jewelry is comprised of tiny gem beads ranging from garnet to jade to diamond and accented by silver, yellow gold and rose gold. A sense of whimsy and wearability are important in all the designs by Ike, and allow the wearer to wear one piece solo or several for a more luxurious feel.

“…my work is organic, instinctive and intuitive... I don’t work from theory… ..the best things happen when I step aside … allowing moments of creation to evolve the work organically ….this experience reflects my own evolving, experiental life……so when I am working well, my paintings become my life and in this process I’m honest to myself, I’m exposing myself, and I’m opening myself up to my own personal truths… …for me, experience is a “living breathing reality.”

Kevin currently works at Pace Wildenstein Galleries. He just had twins.

Fresh. Bold. Engaging. These words often come to mind upon viewing the artwork of Pop Artist Ed Heck. One is immediately disarmed by the naïve charm of these brightly colored works on paper and canvas.

Ed Heck’s enigmatic canvases were first exhibited in New York City in 1999 and were an instant hit. The viewer response was overwhelming. Reactions ranged from surprised appreciation to pure delight.

Ed Heck’s artwork appeals to a varied audience, from fine art newcomers to serious collectors. His eclectic style combines animation like subject matter with an evocative use of color, coupling a wry sense of humor with generous doses of irony. His images lead us into a place uniquely Heck, filled with weird and wonderful characters, odd landscapes and a quirky visual point of view, quite unlike anything else we’ve seen before.

Welcome to the world of Ed Heck!

A graduate of the Yale School of Art, Paula Heisen has exhibited her work throughout the United States, with solo exhibitions in New York City and Houston. Among the grants and awards she received are an Elizabeth Foundation Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts grant and an Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant, scholarships to Yale, the Skowhegan School and the New York Studio School. She has taught at Oxbow Summer Program, Yale University’s Summer Program and at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and has been a visiting artist at the Art Insitute of Chicago, Cooper Union and Hampton University. She lives and works in New York City.

She is a perceptual painter, and works from still life set-ups that have combinations of unusual objects. Her goal is to create images that are both sensual and psychologically provocative.

Steve Keister is a sculptor and ceramicist. He has exhibited extensively since the 1970’s, including the 1981 Whitney Biennial, and solo exhibitions at the Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne, BlumHelman Gallery, New York, and Feature Inc., New York. He has received numerous grants including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2000. His work is included in many museum collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Most of my works are self-portraits. I always start work with observations of my body in a mirror, studying it until something intrigues me. Though my heroine is a woman, she often takes on masculine features. She is not fragile or pretty, on the contrary, she is strong, athletic, and bold. She appears confident and firm. My characters are always naked, having nothing to hide. They demonstrate independence, or perhaps isolation from the world, contemplating in silence, staring at the viewer.

I approach my work in an intuitive way, painting in my case is a process, a never ending fight with the substance. The more that substance is resistant, the bigger chance the work will be satisfying when finished. A canvas is a living form for me that constantly changes, reacts to my actions. I constantly seek feedback from it.

I am interested in the objects, structures, and decorative devices that we navigate daily, those of the living room, the hallway, and the street outside. I start with a familiar object, and through substitutions in scale, materials and context develop varying levels of abstraction. By focusing on the small details of interior design and street level construction, where our interactions with architecture are personal, the work questions our unexamined relationships with the built environment. I like to think of my work as a parallel architecture, referring to building standards and types of buildings, rather than specific structures, places, or times. Connections are subtle or suggested and remain ambiguous.

David Livingston was born in New York City on October 10th, 1982. He grew up in the city, and graduated from Kenyon College with an undergraduate degree in Studio Arts.

His News Abstraction series consists of newspaper collages painted over with oil abstractions. In these works, he juxtaposes two forms of communication: one, of the logical, and the other, the visceral.

Daniel Maidman was raised in Toronto, Jerusalem, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. He attended Claude Watson School for the Arts in Toronto, Canada and completed an undergraduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill. He lived in Los Angeles for eight years, during which time he pursued life drawing and anatomical dissection studies. Drawings from his anatomical atlas are in use in the U.S. Army’s forensics field manual.

Robert Christian Malmberg was bred in Florida and broken in Kentucky. After a seven year love affair with California the boy birthed a passion for studio art and photography. His Collodian-Alternative process studio hosts his unique inclinations, and here you can find him constructing gallery projects, preparing glass plates with exotic chemistry, and taking commissioned portraits with an 8x10’ wet-plate era camera he calls “Brenda”. Both are currently working in Greenpoint, Brooklyn..

Arthur May’s work is comprised of small, abstract, carefully crafted paintings.The images deal with reality, but at a studied distance. They are involved in formalist issues such as, balance, proportion, and scale. Color is used for it’s emotional impact. Space and spatial resolution are primary criteria. A level of spatial ambiguity is sought, serving to expand perceptual possibilities. The paintings draw primarily from artists who worked in the first half of the twentieth century. The work is executed in oil on canvas or panel, and is primarily small 24”x 24” or 30”x 30”. He creates a group of paintings that can serve to reassert the case for a non-minimal abstract art. Although Arthur May is essentially a self-taught artist, he holds degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Pennsylvania where he studied painting with George Rickey, and Neil Welliver. He is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome where he presented a one-man show of paintings and drawings at the completion of his fellowship.

In my small figurative oil paintings there is a dialogue between the plastic qualities inherent to painting and the stillness of the ‘still’ photograph. In my process, I am especially interested in portraying ideas and emotions that are difficult to express through words, and so find their outlet through physical gesture, posture and facial expression.

Using myself as model (and occasionally other persons) I perform emotional theater - enacting and documenting those gestures that seem to capture most succinctly my initial conception for a project, while at the same time allowing for the accidental. By using the ‘instant capture’ made possible by photography I look for those awkward moments which exist when a person’s countenance seems unmade and therefore is at its most fragile. I then reconstruct the chosen images in paint, emphasizing the ‘skin’ of the painting: the surface is puckered, pulled - even torn through to reveal the imprimatura - magnifying the initial gesture and the emotion of the subject. Thus I allow the viewer to experience an emotional climax captured photographically but drawn out – attenuated through the medium of painting - a single moment swelling to encompass a larger emotional precedent.

Cheryl Molnar received a BFA in graphic design from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. Cheryl’s collage and installation work has been exhibited at Caren Golden Fine Art, The General Electric Corporate Headquarters, McCaig-Welles Rosenthal Galleries in Brooklyn and San Francisco, Platform Gallery in Chelsea.

Ms. Robertson was born in 1975 and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BA from UC Berkeley and a MFA in 2005 from Yale University.

Her recent solo exhibitions include: Nudes, Still Lives and Landscapes, 2007, Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY; Please lie down and take a nap with me in my grave, 2006, Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY

Mariah has also participated in numerous group exhibitions.

Her bibliography includes the following articles: Leung, Cynthia. Naked Ambition. Tokion, Spring 2008: 29; Coburn, Tyler. Mariah Robertson:Nudes, Still Lives, and Landscapes. Art Review, January 2008: 122; Leung, Cynthia. Cynthia Leung Talks to Mariah Robertson. NY ARTS Magazine. Nov/Dec 2007, pp.36-37; Supernature Times Nature. Rocket Magazine, May 2007; Thorson, Alice, A Crisis of Self”. The Kansas City Star, December 23, 2006.

Paul Valdez was raised in Phoenix AZ. He initially studied Welding Technologies and Metalsmithing at Yavapai Community College in Prescott, AZ and was employed for several years as a welder and fabricator for the aerospace and microchip industries. He later returned to school and received his BFA in Metalsmithing from Syracuse University in 2004. He later studied metals at RIT’s School for American Craftsman. He now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Currently he is working on a series of vessels that are both decorative and sculptural using both traditional silversmithing techniques and modern manufacturing tools.

Zane York’s paintings look like things; not necessarily beautiful things, not necessarily ugly things, but intensely visual things. Be it still life, landscape, figuration, or other, his paintings conjure a uniquely visual experience that is specific in subject, yet richly indirect in content.

Zane York was born in Fremont, Nebraska. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art. Zane lives and paints in Greenpoint.