CERES GALLERY INVITED GUESTS
Diversity of Women’s Voices Ceres at 40
We thank the following artists for being part of our 40th anniversary celebration at Ceres Gallery:
Michele Benjamin Christine Bethea Nancy Billings Kimberly Callas Mei Mei Chang Ruby Chishti Olga Guerra Zhen Guo Megan Hildebrandt robin holder Kisha Johnson Jesal Kapadia Erin Karp Yoomee Ko Polly Kurasch Lilia Levin Yvette Lewis Jessica Maffia Nicole Marroquin
Nora Moore Lloyd Jaqueline Moses Georgia Rose Murray Jill Nelson Vernita Nemec Sarah Nguyen Elena Osterwalder Raksha Parekh Iris Present Susan Saunders Elinore Schnurr Asma Shikoh Elaine Soto Sandy Styer Shailee Thakkar Heather Topp Penny Treese Doris Vila Shining Zhu
Ceres Gallery, lifting up women’s voices since 1984
Michele Benjamin – Sun Bear in Times Square www.MicheleBenjamin.com
Christine Bethea, Lessons Learned ArtofReuse.blogspot.com
Nancy Billings – Hanging By A Thread www.NancyBDesigns.com
Kimberly Callas – Yarrow-Eyed www.KimberlyCallas.com
Mei Mei Chang – Untitled www.meimeichang.website
Ruby Chishti – A Thousand Flowers Lost and Preserved
Olga Guerra – The Opioid Crisis www.olgaguerra.us
Zhen Guo – Breathing with Joy www.ZhenguoArt.com
Megan Hildebrandt – The Test www.MeganLynnHildebrandt.com
robin holder – One of a Few www.robinholder.work
Kisha Johnson – How To Make It To The Top www.VisualConceptsNYC.com
Jesal Kapadia – So, what are our bonds, and where do we intersect?
Erin Karp - Lightseeker www.ErinMKarp.com
Yoomee Ko – 525600 Minutes www.YoomeeKo.com
Polly Kurasch - Habitat www.PollyKurasch.com
Lilia Levin – Forces www.LiliaLevin.nyc
Yvette Lewis – Cocoons and Wings @yvette.lewis.art
Nora Moore Lloyd – Abandoned Fort www.NativePics.org
Jessica Maffia – Untitled www.JessicaMaffia.com
Nicole Marroquin – Fuck This www.NicoleMarroquin.com
Jacqueline Moses – Memphis MS, I am a Man www.JacquelineMoses.com
Georgia Rose Murray - Virus Polaris www.GeorgiaRoseMurray.com
Jill Nelson – Homegrown
Vernita Nemec – Standing Tough www.ncognita.com
Elena Osterwalder – La Cuna de la Civilización www.ElenaOsterwalder-telier.com
Sarah Nguyen – Combining Form www.SarahNguyenart.com
Raksha Parekh – Your Own Infinitude
Iris Present – Nacre www.IrisPresent.com
Susan Saunders – What Lies Beneath www.SusanSaundersPhotography.com
Elinore Schnurr – The Blues II www.ESchnurrArt.com
Asma Shikoh – Detect, Predict, Assess, Intercept www.asmashikoh.com
Elaine Soto – Brunetella www.ElaineSoto.com
Sandy Styer – Original Matter
Shailee Thakkar – Business Casual www.ShaileeThakkar.com
Heather Topp – Two Expendables www.HeatherTopp.com
Penny Treese – Like a Prayer www.PennyTreese.com
Doris Vila – Delta Prime from the series Holograms for Someone Invisible www.VilaMedia.com
Shining Zhu – From March to May www.ShiningZhu.net
MICHELE BENJAMIN - My professional practice is based on the premise that art plays a significant role in social change reaching the community at large to raise public awareness. All forms of art are universally understood regardless of language, religion, or nationality. My nature-inspired and activist creations are associated with social causes such as wildlife conservation and women's empowerment. CHRISTINE BETHEA - Christine CMC Bethea is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work evokes global references both melding and clashing intersections of Africa, Asia and Europe and celebrating the connectivity of artistic expression and human experience that some deny exists. Often her art challenges historic perception and reimagines tradition, while other works suggest delving into unsolicited and unapologetic truths. Creating in ceramics, fiber, paint, glass, photography or videography, CMC Bethea works in whatever medium or mixture of mediums that best tell the story she wants revealed. NANCY BILLINGS - Creating art is my passion and my studio, the place where I go to achieve my Zen. Layering incongruous fabric, mono-printing, and freehand embroidery are among the techniques which help me achieve specific expressions and emotions. I am honored to participate in this prestigious Ceres 40th Anniversary exhibition. KIMBERLY CALLAS – In my artwork and social practice, I address the disconnect between the science and emotion around the climate crisis. I focus on the human body to consider the ecological self. I see the body as a part of land -the land we always inhabit. I create using water-based mediums: dyed fabrics and resists, India ink, and water-soluble graphite, and cast or 3D printed life-size sculptures and reliefs. This eco-portrait mask, Yarrow-Eyed, is inspired by the British folklore that yarrow leaf pressed against the eyes was believed to give second sight. While at Newforest, a sustainability institute I co-founded, I worked with many herbalists. I was intrigued by an idea that they shared that ‘your healing grows outside your door’. This magical concept that healing plants grew next to the person that would need them spoke to an ecological intimacy that I wanted to share through my artwork. Yarrow is a key herb in the ecological apothecary. MEI MEI CHANG - Among the many symbols of my mind is the awareness of similarities and differences between Eastern and Western cultures. There are connections between internal symbols and connections that stretch out to the external. I believe that there is as much to uncover beneath the surface as to discover on the surface. Our minds occupy a space between the conscious and the subconscious; my work encompasses what is beneath the awareness of consciousness and beyond the passive knowing of subconsciousness, and brings it to life "Another aspect of the human mind that I explore is its freedom from the boundaries of macro and micro scales and its power of infinitesimal infinitude. My work is a place for the mind to move without limits, from the work down through layers of ever more granular complexity." RUBY CHISHTI – Through experimentation in melding the fabrics of found garments and social emory, I engage in establishing an intimate relationship with “fashion detritus, that allows me to initiate conversations about the persistence of the passage of time, communities surviving in hostile socioecological climates, and the collective experience of love, loss and being human. I refigure out-of-fashion clothing from my collection and scraps of discarded fashion garments from my Brooklyn neighborhood thrift shops. This work draws on the variegated legacies of textiles in South Asia; to trace how the history of the Subcontinentʼs textiles is tied to politics, culture, identity, and the British Empire. Exploring womenʼs identity, and exploring Indo-Islamic aesthetic patterns; the work responds to traditional arts where there is a regular scheme of inscribing flowers, leaves, or animals followed certain norms. I follow the pattern of the past but transforming flowers to make room for the women's bodies resting inside; only partially visible. Through the process of dismantling, reassembling the discarded mass-produced fabric of found clothing to produce recycled materials in reweaving of cultural memory and time, I create alternate narratives that bring into focus my critique of patriarchy and exclusion. OLGA GUERRA – Prescription drugs are the most widely used substance in the United States and one of the most abused. Prescription drug abuse has led to increased demand on the street, with users often purchasing fake versions of market drugs that may contain harmful substances. How much prescription drugs cost on the street depends on several factors, most notably what type of drug is being purchased.
ZHEN GUO - My art is amalgamation of tradition and innovation, speaking to the very fabric of our society. It is a reflection of the triumphs and struggles, the silenced voices and injustices that we so often encounter. Through ink and brush, I strive to bring attention to these urgent matters, offering spaces of contemplation and evoking a sense of unity and hope. MEGAN HILDEBRANDT - I am a cancer survivor and mother. These life events have significantly impacted my creative practice. Confronting my own mortality at age 25 and then experiencing the fragility and strength of birth, I have become obsessed with tracking time- documenting the small, routine moments of my life and my children’s lives. I am interested in content and parts of life that loop and repeat. I want to give the viewer intimate, personal moments that capture the both fleeting and endless seconds of being alive. ROBIN HOLDER – robin holder’s practice is centered on cultural Identity: how racial, ethnic, gender, religious, and economic status determines our experiences of entitlement and/or victimization. Her intention is to convey how all of us are impacted by societal injustice and privilege. holder uses drawing, painting, linoleum block printing, collage, digital imaging, large format archival printing, foil stamping, lithography, mono-printing and photo transfer techniques on paper, wood and fabric. Her images are developed in series of works. This approach provides the latitude necessary to contemplate a particular theme until she has exhausted the concept. She selects specific techniques that are appropriate for each series. This approach prevents her creative experience from becoming predictable or repetitive. KISHA JOHNSON - Kisha Johnson, a multimedia artist specializing in photography, abstract painting, and digital design. Although born in Brooklyn, she spent her formative years in Virginia Beach, VA, where her passion for art was nurtured and cultivated by her mother and high school art teacher. Kisha is a strong believer in the power of art for transformative healing and is dedicated to using her creative work as a tool for social change. She has been involved in "Brownsville Matters," an exhibition that showcases emerging artists from Brooklyn interpreting East Brooklyn's cultural identity to promote community building through public art. This exhibition received support from various organizations, including the NEA, The Municipal Art Society of New York, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Brownsville Community Justice Center. It was curated by Rujeko Hockley, the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Kisha has had two solo shows, including "Through The Eyes of Beauty" in July 2014 that showcased her digital designs. In 2019 Kisha presented a body of work she entitled “The Believer Series”, showcasing her abstract painting and photography. JESAL KAPADIA - Jesal Kapadia is an artist living between New York City and Bombay. Using photography, experimental film & video, writing, poetry and performance, her work explores the potential forms of non-capitalist subjectivities. She has been organizing, living and thinking together with different communities of care (Casablu; Autonomous Center for Art Time; Feminist Research on Violence; Revolutionary Health and Health for Revolution) to collectively hold spaces and situations through which to refuse, re-arrange and re-enchant the capacity of art in creating new knowledges and new sensibilities for being together. Practices of commoning - weaving the intelligence of friendship and affection in the connective fabric that allows for removing conscious and unconscious dynamics of patriarchy from our bodies - has been central to these experiments. Contact: jesalkapadia@gmail.com ERIN KARP - I made this photograph in Sintra, Portugal at Pena Palace in September 2023. I hadn't been there in 20 years & was so excited to return to photograph it for the first time. As expected, I was overjoyed by the colors & the incredible architecture, but this quiet moment also struck me; an abstract image reflecting my appreciation of light, shadow, shape, & texture. There's a sense of warmth in the light, movement in the shadows, & history in the texture. Pena Palace was overrun with tourists & tough to photograph the way I do, so moments like these were truly respite from the chaos, for which I was so grateful. For me, photography is a way to slow down & breathe in my surroundings, to seek out tranquility amidst chaos, & to find beauty in an oftentimes ugly world. I see elegance in architectural details that others typically fail to notice, as I embrace momentary juxtapositions of light, shadow, shape, & color that collectively make my heart sing. This is a new piece from my first European adventure since October 2019 & I'm thrilled to be showing it at Ceres! YOOME KO – www.YooMeeKo.com
POLLY KURASCH - In my present work I use embroidery thread as a drawing material on fabric. The abstracted, surreal humans and animals may interact with an encroaching garden. LILIA LEVIN – My drawings are a reaction to the uncertainty in the world and the ambiguity of the news we receive. They are about a earning for safety and need for understanding. People everywhere deserve to be understood and to understand. I would like to think that some hope is expressed in my drawings. YVETTE LEWIS – Lewis’s paintings contain images of seeds and seed pods, cocoons and wings showing the smallest of life and revealing the power of the beginning. She presents images that interweave emotional automatic drawing with observational drawings. The abstract layers of images and colors of the natural and mystical world create a complex and surreal juxtaposition of these elements expressing a journey through life. JESSICA MAFFIA - is a visual artist born and raised in New York City. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and is currently in the Flat Files of Pierogi Gallery. Maffia created the artwork for two of musician Childish Gambino’s singles. She is the recipient of 13 artist residency fellowships and two grants from the Hell’s Kitchen Foundation. The artist’s public art installation, “Lanterns for Peace” was exhibited in various sites throughout the US in response to the 2016 elections. She created a permanent semisculptural mural on Broadway and 173rd for the Audubon Society’s Mural Project as well as a large mixed media mural in the lobby of Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation. She is currently in the design phase of a NYC Percent for Art permanent installation in a new public school. NICOLE MARROQUIN - My drawings of pissed off women are based on my cousin, my mother, Beyonce and girls I went to highschool with. They showed me how to harness anger as a source of power. This is for femmes who got kicked out of class for refusing to “fix their face.” To see the series or buy a poster visit HOOFPRINTCHICAGO.COM NORA MOORE LLOYD - Although she grew up in the Chicago area, Nora now divides her time between the city and her Wisconsin home where she is an enrolled member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Nation. Her artistic focus is documenting stories of Indigenous elders, cultural practices related to harvesting birchbark and wild rice and the natural world. Her work has been shown nationally at state museums and galleries and is represented in corporate and university collections. She has also exhibited at national museums in Bolivia and Guatemala and her work has been featured in several nature-related and Native publications. Nora has been an active member of Chicago’s Native American community for decades and now volunteers rescuing injured raptors. JACQUELINE MOSES – www.JacquelineMoses.com GEORGIA ROSE MURRAY - Virus Polaris’ was created in response to the incredible polar colours which Georgia witnessed erupting in the landscape during a research expedition to Ny Alesund, where she worked alongside polar scientists during a period of sunrise. Investigating and responding to Arctic colour, light and darkness, is at the centre of Georgia Rose Murray’s work. Her expressive, painterly application of mediums, and the symbolic compositions she creates, hint at how the landscape and atmosphere are shifting due to climate change. For more information visit www.georgiarosemurray.com. JILL NELSON - After a long career as a journalist and writer, I started making collage a decade ago when words started to feel clumsy and in articulate. Learning a visual language has been fascinating, challenging, frustrating, and at times exhilarating. I didn’t know that words needed a break, or that I needed one too. VERNITA NEMEC For me, the making of art is like having a dream-- coming from within, the outpouring having a life of its own. In my role as artist I am but a messenger, a shaman. My concern about the environment is currently my primary motive for my artmaking and as much as possible, I use trash & recycled material to make my art. I explore chance connections by making art of lowly materials, of beautiful detritus and use my art as a way to maybe understand, to perhaps convince people to never throw anything away. Currently, I am most concerned with the plastic that is clogging our environment & so am creating art from plastic detritus. It is said that 90% of natural water contains microscopic plastic
SARAH NGUYEN - "Indo" is part of an ongoing series using storytelling as a safe place to heal and explore family trauma. The hand -cut, intricate compositions are mostly landscape based and feature symbolic motifs—flora, fauna, and an ever-changing moon—to elicit childhood memories of myths, fables, and folklore. The large sheets are hung from the ceiling and away from the wall so that directed light casts strong shadows behind them, a nod to the flickering, fire-lit rituals of our paleo ancestors. Fiber cutting is a means of making drawing three-dimensional for the lacy panels entices us with their complexity and content. This work is inspired by family lore and images surrounding the people I love. ELENA OSTERWALDER - My studio is full of sealed glass jars containing yellows, reds, blues, purples different organic dyes made out of flowers, leaves, insects, and different mordants. Jars that stay hermetically sealed till the moment when they will be poured onto handmade – bark paper – AMATE. -* and left to dry protected with either wax paper or bubble wrap. The results are unpredictable but always a surprise. They are a blend of lines, shapes, textures, colors a formal composition shaped by an organic approach. The element of surprise is multi-faceted from the color that is produced to the myriad of interpretations of the piece from the eyes of thebeholder. * Amate = bark paper and the organic colors have their roots in the pre- Hispanic traditions of Meso America, where the artist was born. RAKSHA PAREKH - Raksha Parekh is a Los Angeles based artist. She migrated with her family to the United States from Southern Africa. She is a third generation Indian of her family to be born in Southern Africa. Drawing from her Indian cultural heritage, Parekh creates textured visual images that reflect, question and remind us who we really are. We see our relationship to the elements around us, how we are reflections of the very earth we come from and the unstoppable potential for life to emerge from the most deceptively barren of places, the never ending cycle of life. Life implies death and death implies life. Using materials from nature which already have their own deep history embedded in them, such as ashes from redwoods burnt down in fires, sand and pigments from layers of sediment laid down by ancient oceans, mud dug out by river crabs on a sandy bank etc. All this implies an unmistakable connection to the whole of existence. IRIS PRESENT - My work is inspired by nature, utilizing a color vocabulary that I hope encourages the viewer to experience an emotional response. I try to convey a feeling of peace, a balm to the nervous system, that also stimulates joy. SUSAN SAUNDERS - Photography has been a life-long passion. I acquired my first camera when I was 12 and used it to chronicle my days growing up in south Texas. I started photographing seriously when I was in college in Manhattan, and I created an extensive archive of NYC street photographs from the 1970s and ‘80s. Several of these were included in a recent NY Times article about city life in the ‘70s, as well as in various internet collections like Vintage Everyday. For the past year, I’ve been working with a mirrorless camera converted to capture infrared light. My photographs can be seen at the William Ris Gallery on the North Fork of Long Island, in Jamesport NY. ELINOR SCHNURR - "It was a corporate party; all sizes and shapes participating in a spontaneous conviviality of dancing with fellow workers. The implied motion that I’m expressing causes us, the viewers of the painting, to visually experience the dancing figures in pieces that move in and about, creating new configurations that mimic the figures in motion.” ASMA SHIKOH – In her mixed media works, Asma investigates the connections between the physical and the spiritual - the memories of the body that reside in the soul. As a woman she searches for ownership within displacement, setting up home in temporary permanence, and discovering deeper meanings in fleeting connections with the cities she lives in and its peoples. In and outside these drawings, Asma strives to find ‘home’ as tranquility in the innermost intimate space i.e. the heart. This needs to be protected and fortified. ELAINE SOTO - La Brunettella is a linocut print representative of my work on Black Madonnas worldwide. I started researching and painting the Black Madonna in 1992. My work is documented in my memoir, My Journey to the Black Madonna, published in 2022. La Brunettella is from my recent
pilgrimage to Black Madonna sites in Southern Italy, led by Alessandra Belloni. Alessandra is an Italian singer, percussionist, and author devoted to the Black Madonna. This Madonna is one of the seven sisters. They are Black Madonnas known for healing in southern Italy. She is in a mountain Church in Moiano. When we visited, Alessandra sang with a group of women from the area, musicians played bagpipes, and we played frame drums in honor of the Black Madonna. Healing happened as all the group members had tears in their eyes. Some sobbed as they prayed. I felt a great release of sadness and tension in my right shoulder, and I cried. Early settlers in the area were Egyptian, and she is Isis. SANDY STYER - Since kindergarten, I’ve been a collage artist; my first work was a drawing of a clothesline under a blue crayon sky, with tiny cutout fabric shirts and skirts glued along the line. Years passed, life happened, and I returned to collage about fifteen years ago through a chance encounter with Alexandra Sheldon at a workshop at New England’s Snow Farm. My goal in every collage is to create something of interest which will draw the viewer in over and over again. I work almost exclusively with hand painted papers and fond papers, markers and some paint on Bristol. In this Original Matter series my challenge to myself was to make images which were as expressive as possible, using as few pieces of material as possible. This piece is simply paper on paper. I was introduced to the beautiful Ceres Gallery by Shirley Steele, a longtime friend and extraordinary artist, and have taken part in the gallery’s Exposures shows from time to time, as well as showing in numerous other galleries including the Montclair Art Museum, the Taos Art Museum, and The Art Students League. In addition, I’ve made and sent over 500 unique original postcards for various campaigns in the Postcards to Voters project. SHAILEE THAKKAR - I am an emerging visual artist who uses sketchbooks to incubate ideas and experiment. This has led me to create densely-packed pen and watercolor drawings with repetitive lines as a way to work through some personal challenges. This particular piece was inspired by a sketch of a stranger's wrinkled white shirt. I am excited to publicly share a piece from my first body of work and I am eager to continue growing as an artist. HEATHER TOPP - I have some words that seem to hang in the air like cartoon bubbles over so much of the time I spend when working on my art. It becomes not just shaping, manipulating the medium with my hands but the constant inner conversations that ebb and flow and turn and often not just about coercing desired results. I love working in clay but it is a non-renewable resource. And in my garden, in the fall, I pull out and compost all the beautiful flowers that colored and textured my space and in the spring, one of the exercises I can barely stand is thinning carrots from the earth that nurtures and feeds, deciding who stays who grows. Expendable is a word that often bubbles up. “Two Expendables” is a visual translation, with stoneware, iron oxide and copper wire, nonrenewable resources extracted from the earth ...Two of many, they talk to me of the expansive powers justifying oppression poverty war climate inequality religion gender bias... all these words expose and extinguish existence. and more from the bubbles... deliberate neglect, economic oppression, a global for profit economy of extraction, numbers missing, bodies counted no names. “Two Expendables” PENNY TREESE - Penny Treese’s artistic exploration is an odyssey of self-discovery and naturecentered inspiration. During a transformative painting retreat in Costa Rica, she ventured into the ocean, allowing the sea to saturate a raw canvas wrapped around her body. This immersive experience drew her nearer to an uninhibited version of herself, guiding her to imprint the canvas with her sand-covered body, giving birth to the inception of her evocative artwork series, “Lift You Like a Prayer”. Treese’s creative process is deeply rooted in the indigenous elements of her surroundings, where sand, clay, rainwater, flora, and even fire embers become both pigments and muses. Her art unfolds as a narrative that maintains an element of unpredictability, yet remains deliberately dedicated to incorporating primarily natural elements. “Lift You Like a Prayer” and her other female-inspired works often unveil sensual figures, their arms outstretched, inviting observers to celebrate the glory of the divine female. Each piece is born from her life’s journey and her deep connection to source. Treese’s ultimate dream is for her art to give each viewer a vivid realization of their rare beauty and an uncharted sense of freedom. Through her creations,
she endeavors to provide transformative awakenings, inviting each observer to embrace their uniqueness and illuminate the beauty that resides within. DORIS VILA - stitches together high and low tech to build narrative spaces. In her responsive environments viewers' bodies trigger sounds, video and holographic imagery. Story elements stretch out in space as well as time. In recent work, words swarm like birds, flying in and out of linear readability through an artificial-life algorithm. Born in Miami of Cuban family, she studied at University of California, Berkeley, and Hunter College. She frequently shows internationally, lectures widely, and is a longtime observer of bird flocks. www.vilamedia.com SHINING ZHU - I see myself in the knotted twine - holding so much tension yet appearing to be at ease. Upon first glance, the twine accumulations seem quiet and delicate, yet they insist on hanging in gravity with resoluteness. As I continue to leave my traces on the materials, the materials leave their marks on my hands. My hands remember where they met.
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