Greater Gravity

Ophelia Arc is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Using sculpture, video and installation Arc seeks to challenge societal norms and provoke thought through her use of crochet as a primary medium. Her work defies traditional notions one would often associate with craftwork and calls into question the viewer's preconceptions of “woman’s work”.

Arcs’ pieces explore taboo subject matter, including themes of mutilation, body image, and vulnerability. She employs the combination of yarn, latex, and personal mementos to evoke a sense of abjection that elicits an emotional and psychological response from the viewer. Arcs’ choices in subject matter and materials are purposefully chosen to spark reflection and challenge societal norms. Through her art, Arc invites viewers to engage with uncomfortable truths, confront inner turmoil and contemplate the boundaries of what is considered acceptable within a contemporary art space.

Anny Chen handbuilt landscapes are influenced by traditional Chinese crafts and motifs central to the Chinese-American diaspora. Through her work, Anny questions what it means to belong to a family, a community, or a place, along with the responsibilities attached to those relationships. She was born in New York, New York, and raised between Nowata, Oklahoma and Fuzhou, China. Anny holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has studied at the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China. While in residence at Clay Art Center, she has focused on how to transform her climate anxiety into action.
 

Michelle Chun is a visual maker born and raised in Southern California. She received a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MAR in Visual and Material Culture from Yale Divinity School. Through excavation of familial archive and historical references, her practice is an assemblage of precarious nostalgia, glass prayers, and treasured fragments from the immigrant’s longings for eschatological belonging.  She is a HATCH resident at the Chicago Arts Coalition and has shown at Helen J Gallery in Los Angeles, Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, and Gelman Gallery in Rhode Island among other exhibitions.  

Seth Ellison work reflects his personal experiences concerning his upbringing in the rural South. It is a place that has been relegated to the margins of American history and culture, a position that left him with a sharp awareness of his own identity and its connection to it. Ellison revives and expresses the region’s struggles and contradictions, interweaving his own personal narrative within its sociological mythology. What emerges is darkly comedic and allegorical, composed of isolating landscapes that are inhabited by tragic and exploited figures uncovered from the recesses of the American psyche.
 

Dalit Gurevich artistic practice is based on personal engagement with landscape and has an experimental approach at its heart. She is fascinated by the details of organic things, and her work celebrates and carries the essence of what she experiences in the natural world. Starting with a plywood surface and following its textures, Dalit uses acrylic paint to create organic patterns, shapes, and textures that explore the inherent beauty of the environment. She incorporates woven materials into the paintings. She experiments with different fibers, employs natural dyes, and weaves to create grouped surfaces. These dense surfaces focus her response to a landscape, forming tangible links to the places they were inspired by. Using this technique requires time. It involves a slow, meditative, and intimate process. It is a way to connect with and understand the world and her place in it.  
 

Jac Lahav is an artist, curator, writer, and foster care advocate living in Lyme CT. Their work uses plant sculptures to investigate narratives of trauma, repair, and growth. These stories focus on Lahav’s own journey as a foster parent. 

Lahav's solo museum shows include the Richmond Art Museum IN, Longview MFA TX, Saginaw Art Museum MI, Florence Griswold Museum CT among others, and their work can be found in multiple public collections, including the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, Mount Holyoke Art Museum, and more. 

David Ma (b. 2000 New York City, NY) is a conceptual artist whose interdisciplinary work explores how the charged potential of images can reveal heterotopias, these are cultural/institutional/and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other'. They're worlds-within-worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. Ma received a BFA from New York University. 

Ma’s work has been exhibited and supported by 80WSE, The Institute of Fine Arts, Ice Cream Social, and FABnyc, among others. Ma has notably received the Martin Wong Scholarship from the Martin Wong Foundation and the Richard Hirsch Memorial for Students in the Arts from New York University.
 

Margaret Pinto is a visual artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BFA in painting and drawing from SUNY Purchase. Her work draws on imagery from city life and the natural world and explores themes of perception, consciousness, and human behavior.

Her current series of sculptures, “Armor” asks the question “How does fear manifest itself in our physical environment?” Drawing from medieval armor, riot gear, cages, fencing as well as myriad forms of armor in the natural world such as crab shells, thorns, and insect casings the “Armor” series explores concepts of fear, protection, vulnerability, and violence in a modern world where it seems ever more important to protect ourselves from dangerous forces.

Rose Silberman-Gorn is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Queens, New York. She exhibits work frequently, appearing in recent group shows at Local Project, Ethan Cohen Kube, and Ely Center of Contemporary Art. She is currently working towards her MFA at Parsons School of Design.

Rose makes surreal, cute polymer clay sculptures which explore emotional experiences resulting from childhood trauma. With their soft, organic shapes and adorable visages, these cartoonish figures are reminiscent of dolls, clowns, and childhood nostalgia which is often tainted by something darker. Within the figures, she often utilizes multiple faces or contrasting emotions as a means of conveying how trauma can fracture emotions and identity.

Shai Tingo is a re-emerging artist working with a wide range of materials and processes. From non silver photography to installation sculptures and metalworking. Their work explores emotions surrounding gender identity and confronting the internal shame felt around their body growing up in a strict catholic home. Tingo graduated with a BFA in Photography from Purchase College and has since been working in art fabrication and architectural furniture design. They have shown pieces like “Don't Make a Mess on My Couch'' at Gallery North and have an upcoming group exhibition with Ice Cream Social where they will be displaying new sculpture and photos within these themes.
 

Mary Tooley Parker makes textile art using a time-intensive, historic rug making technique. Parker is a true fiber artist having been enthralled with every fiber related making format since the age of 8 and is mostly self-taught. She has no visual art education, rather trained as a dancer, and studied music for many years. Her basic process includes hand dyeing wool yardage, cutting it into strips, and pulling strips up through a linen foundation using a primitive, wood handled hook. This slow making allows her time to adjust, revise, and enjoy the making.