We work here
Join us for the opening reception
Thursday, 11/18
5:30 - 7:30pm
We work here-
Krista Dragomer
Sean Naftel
Erin Treacy
—The Art Dept.
Enjoy refreshments and art by art exhibition staff and then at 8 we’ll turn down the lights and be treated to the soulful blues of our @marakaye back from the west coast!
The pieces in this show are selections from her new work collectively titled Night Work. These pieces explore the ways in which the pandemic has impacted individual and collective experiences of night. The ink drawings in the figurative series, Restless Sleep, were created after a period of insomnia: Krista clipped the phone to her headboard and let the video run as she tossed and turned, got up, stretched and paced. In the morning she made simple line drawings from the videos, laying figures on each other to capture the waves of stillness and movement. The Moon is a Portal is a series of small studies done in tandem with some larger works that explore black on black drawing and painting mediums and reflected light. The Pandemic Changed the Night is both a text work in itself and a means of contextualizing the other works in the Night Work series. Shadowed is from a series of plant drawings done at Brooklyn Bridge Park and Coffey Park, some of the only places to go for much of the pandemic.
Krista Dragomer is an artist and independent educator who offers classes and workshops in creative mentorship and sense-based exploratory learning. Her work is deeply interdisciplinary, moving between visual and sound art practices, and is informed by research into cultural history, human and non-human sense studies, speculative and feminist ecology, and multi-species research. She has worked in collaboration with experimental filmmakers, new media artists, musicians, and academics in the fields of religion, philosophy, and anthropology. Her work has been presented in a diverse range of platforms including academic conferences, art galleries and museums, science museums, concert venues, public parks, and alongside bio-hackers and eco-interventionists at underground, DIY, and artist-run spaces. She holds an MFA from the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory from the University of British Columbia, where she also worked extensively with the School of Music.
Krista’s sound design for a multimedia site-responsive installation entitled "A Father’s Lullaby" by filmmaker Rashin Fahandej was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica 2021 Award of Distinction in the Digital Musics category. This work has been shown in several art venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston). Selected individual and collaborative shows include: Windham Fine Arts, Kilroy Metal Ceiling/Princeton Environmental Institute, Mass Art Film Society, 2015 AS220 Providence, RI, Southampton Center, Field Projects, Proteus Gowanus, UCLA Wright Gallery, The Western Front: Vancouver New Music Festival, Vancouver, BC, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris.
The work shown here is from his Polishing Fruit series. They are inspired by the rich architecture of Kaunas, Lithuania. The layered history in the neighborhoods of Kaunas are visible in the agglomeration of multiple design movements residing together in contemporary culture. In Polishing Fruit each piece is isolated, a pedestal of hope and home, together the series pays homage to the collective potential.
Sean Naftel received a BA at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in ceramics and sculpture, and an MFA from the Burren College of Art in Visual Art & Theory in Ballyvaughan, Ireland.
Sean has shown work at De Buck Gallery (New York), Kunsthal (Aarhus, Denmark), Monster Truck Gallery (Dublin), SEVEN Art Fair (Miami), Emerge Art Fair (Washington DC), Contemporary Museum (Baltimore), Bard College at Simon’s Rock (Massachusetts) and VOLTA Art Fair (New York). He was a featured artist from Queens for the television show ArtTrek NYC (2011). His collaborative installation Yard Sale (2014) at De Buck Gallery was featured in the New York Times and on New York Public Radio (WNYC).
Naftel has been awarded residencies at the Wassaic Project (NY), The Ora Lerman Trust (Pa), as well as throughout Europe: Finland, Italy, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. He has curated exhibitions throughout the US and Europe, is the co-founder of Roving Project; a wandering creative proposition, founded in 2008 in rural Ireland. Its objective was to occupy slack spaces, transforming them into short-term sites of contemporary art. Roving Project’s goal was to bring high quality, contemporary art to communities that may not have access otherwise; diffusing some of the fear and/or resentment towards contemporary art practice by creating a venue for conversation and education. Roving Project has become an open-source curatorial template for young curators, artists, and cultural producers that may not know how to go about building an exhibition or event. (i.e. press release, media contact, website, stable of artists, etc.)
Softening the line between naturalism and abstraction, inspired by textures in the stratum of landscape, and guided by intuition, Erin develops dense compositions and unexpected palettes. She is interested in how our environment depicts time through layers of growth and decay, and how this can serve as visual metaphor for our own internal worlds. Both are in constant states of change – morphing and diverging to meet the needs of the present situation.
Select solo and two person exhibitions include NAVA Contemporary, NY, NY (2020), Long Island Arts Council, Freeport, NY (2020), Blue Table Post, Brooklyn, NY, (2019), Reservoir Art Space, Brooklyn, NY (2017), Boxheart Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pa (2009, 2011, 2015, 2020). Selected Group Exhibitions include Hope Horn Gallery at the University of Scranton (2020-2021), Eubie Blake Cultural Center, Baltimore, Md (2019), BRIC, Brooklyn, NY (2016) and more. Treacy’s work has been reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, NY1, ArtnetNews, and the Huffington Post.
Erin has earned numerous residencies and grant, some of the most influential were MICA PT Faculty Grant (2020), Windy Mowing Residency, VT (2019), Queens Council on the Arts, Arthotel Residency & Grant, Queens, NY (2017), The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY (2017), 2 Rooms Contemporary Art Project, Newfoundland, Canada (2016), and the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation, New Berlin, NY (2012). She was a Fulbright Fellow in painting to Ireland, 2009-10.
Erin has served as the Fulbright Program advisor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) for the last decade, where she also teaches Professional Studio Practices and a graduate seminar on Grant Writing.