Owner and Director, Signs and Symbols, New York, NY

Salvador Jimenez-Flores is an interdisciplinary artist. Born and raised in Jalisco, México, he is also an Assistant Professor in Ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL.

Kalup Linzy is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and one of our esteemed CVA Mentors currently based in Tulsa, OK.

The Leon and Gloria Plevin Family Museum Director Lecture with Brooke Davis Anderson, Edna S. Tuttleman Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA.

Shervone Neckles, an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and community worker, lives and works in New York.

Julia Bottoms, Artist, lives and works in Buffalo, NY.

Chris Friday is an interdisciplinary artist who currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. Chris is an alumni of or 2019 program. Using the internet as a source for archival material, Chris Friday investigates themes of Identity, Race, Gender, Sexuality and the affects of popular culture and iconography on the perceptions of brown bodies. Identifying […]

Seph Rodney, Writer, Editor and Museum Scholar, lives and works in Bronx, NY.

Sheetal Prajapati, Artist, Educator, and Arts and Culture Advisor living and working in Brooklyn, NY.

Miguel Luciano is a multimedia visual artist whose work explores themes of history, popular culture, social justice and migration, through sculpture, painting and socially engaged public art projects. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he lives and works in New York, NY.

Dr. Joe Stahlman is the Director of Seneca Nation’s Seneca-Iroquois National Museum-Onöhsagwë:de' Culture Center. Joe is a scholar and researcher of Tuscarora descent. He has over 20 years of research experience working with First Peoples. His research focuses on culture and history, as well as ongoing socio-economic and health & wellness related endeavors with Native […]

Derek Fordjour was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1974 to parents of Ghanaian heritage. Fordjour earned his BA at Morehouse College, MA in Art Education at Harvard University and an MFA in Painting at Hunter College. His work has been exhibited at notable institutions nationally and internationally. He received commissions for public projects including a […]

Alpesh Kantilal Patel is a contemporary art historian, critic, and curator based at Florida International University, Miami, where he directed the MFA program in Visual Arts from 2012-2017. His lecture will be loosely connected to the workshop, a description of which is below, that he leads during the summer. “Storytelling and Worldmaking.” Artworks can be part […]

Dr. Erika Wong is the founder of To Practise_Practice, a digital-discovery platform that gives early-career artists the toolkit they need to survive in the real world of the art industry. Additionally, she is a practicing artist, podcast cohost of Hyde or Practise and lecturer teaching the value of creative thinking to business students at the […]

Abby Chen is the Senior Associate Curator and Head of Contemporary Art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Prior to taking on this position, she served for over a decade as the Curator and Artistic Director at the Chinese Culture Center and Foundation of San Francisco. Abby Chen was the Asian Cultural Council […]

Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, the Executive Director of the Queens Council on the Arts, believes in the power of the arts to mobilize and transform community. She was a member of the Transition Team for Mayor DiBlasio, serves on Tony Bennett’s Exploring the Arts Foundation and sits on many grant panels across the country. Hoong […]

An activist and environmentalist, John Sabraw’s paintings, drawings and collaborative installations are produced in an eco-conscious manner, and he continually works toward a fully sustainable practice. He collaborates with scientists on many projects, and one of his current collaborations involves creating paint and paintings from iron oxide extracted in the process of remediating polluted streams. […]

Asia Freeman co-founded the non-profit multidisciplinary art space, Bunnell Street Arts Center in Homer, Alaska where she serves as Artistic Director today. Asia writes, curates, teaches and speaks about art. Asia’s paintings are represented in Alaskan museums and private collections worldwide. She serves on the Boards of National Performance Network and Alaska Arts and Culture […]

Squeak Carnwath draws upon the philosophical and mundane experiences of daily life in her paintings and prints, which can be identified by lush fields of color combined with text, patterns, and identifiable images. She has received numerous awards including the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award from San Francisco Museum of Modern […]

Jean Alexander Frater experiments with the materials inherent to painting and then integrates other histories, traditions and language into this form. Alexander Frater is represented by Engage Projects Gallery in Chicago. She was a 2017-2018 Chicago Artists BOLT resident, received an MFA from School of Art the Institute of Chicago, and a BA in Philosophy, […]

Hakim Bishara is an editor and writer for the online art publication Hyperallergic. He is also a co-director at Soloway Gallery, an artist-run space in Brooklyn, and a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Bishara is a recipient of the 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation and Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant and he […]

Shirley Wegner is a multidisciplinary artist focusing on photography. In her work, she explores photography’s dialogue with other disciplines like painting, sculpture, video and installation. Wegner was born in Tel Aviv and lived in New York for many years before returning to Israel in 2016. She holds an MFA from Yale University School of Art […]

Executive Director, Sarasota Art Museum Virginia Shearer has devoted her 25 years in museum leadership to catalyzing meaningful connections with art and artists for people of all ages, backgrounds and experience with the arts. Virginia comes to us from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, where she most recently served as Director of Education. […]

Judy Barie is an artist who creates contemporary abstract works. Inspired by the likes of Brice Marden and Elizabeth Murray, Barie combines layers of color, gestural marks and rich patterns on birch panels. For over 30 years, Barie has developed a visual vocabulary of her particular mark making that exists in both singular paintings and […]

James Hunter is an Award winning Design Director with the Wiseman Group, a nationally renowned interior design firm based in San Francisco, California. He earned a Masters Degree in Art Education and has completed postgraduate work in textile design and surface printing from State University College at Buffalo, NY. His body of residential client work […]

Anina Major (she/her) is a visual artist from the Bahamas. Her decision to establish a home contrary to the location in which she was born and raised motivates her to investigate the relationship between self and place as a site of negotiation. By utilizing the vernacular of craft to reclaim experiences and relocate displaced objects, […]

"Materiality and Abstraction" Kevin Umaña was born in 1989 and grew up in El Salvador and Los Angeles. He received a BFA from San Francisco State University in 2014. Umaña is the co-founder of The Ekru Project, an artist-run Kansas City gallery focused on contemporary, emerging, and underrepresented artists. In 2017, he created a permanent installation at […]

"Disentangling the Interwoven Relations of Race, Gender, and Capitalism" Alex Callender works in drawing, painting, and installation to trace and remap historical materials as a means to explore with both criticality and care, how we disentangle the interwoven relations of race, gender, and capitalism. Drawing largely from archival sources her work engages with mythic and […]

"Carving the Figure" Sachiko Akiyama received her MFA in sculpture at Boston University and continued her studies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Akiyama lives and works in Portsmouth, NH. Her proximity to the ocean, woods, and wildlife has deepened her connections to the natural themes prevalent in her work.  Akiyama has had recent solo […]

"Painting the Figure and Light" Susan Lichtman is a figurative painter of domestic spaces, working out of her home studio in southeastern Massachusetts. She graduated from Brown University and received an MFA in Painting from Yale University School of Art. Lichtman has had solo exhibitions at Steven Harvey Fine Arts Projects, (NY, NY); Fahrenheit Gallery […]

"Observing Time in Painting" Stephanie Pierce’s paintings explore relationships between light, time, and perception as it is reconsidered over time. Her work has been exhibited at The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; The Staten Island Museum, NY; and Asheville Art Museum, NC. Her work is represented by Jupiter Contemporary in Miami, Alpha Gallery in Boston, and […]

"Exploring the Concept of Place" Elizabeth Mooney is a visual artist that explores the construct of landscape through painting, printmaking, and kinetic sculpture. She received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from California College of the Arts, and her BFA from the Art Institute of Boston. Elizabeth was a Visual Artist Fellow at the Provincetown Fine […]

Rebecca McCabe Ibel is the owner and director of Contemporary Art Matters. Originally from Columbus, she graduated from The Branson School in Marin County, California. She received her BA in Art History at The American University of Paris. Her career in the arts began at Sotheby’s auction house in New York and worked in Berlin […]

"Disruptions of Identity by Migration" Cosmo Whyte (b.) 1982, Jamaica, attended Bennington College in Vermont for his BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art for his Post-Baccalaureate Certificate and the University of Michigan for his MFA. Whyte has exhibited his works in the United States, Jamaica, Norway, England, France, and South Africa. His most recent exhibitions of […]

"Traversing Painting and Creating Community in the Arts" Erika b Hess is a painter, host of the popular art podcast- I Like Your Work, and Artistic Director of Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution.  Hess’s work has been exhibited nationally with recent exhibitions in L.A., Philadelphia, and Columbus, OH. Hess's work has been featured in various […]

Jessica Pinsky grew up in Akron, Ohio and moved to Cleveland in 2011 after receiving a BFA from New York University in 2006 and an MFA from Boston University in 2009. Her artwork bridges painting, weaving and sculpture and she is represented by Hedge Gallery in Cleveland, OH.  In 2012, she worked closely with Cleveland […]