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Born in 1981, St. Ann, Jamaica. Alicia Brown is a contemporary realist oil painter. She received her BFA in Painting, and a diploma in Art Education from Edna Manley College of the Visual Performing Arts and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. She has been a recipient of the Dawn Scott Memorial award from the Jamaica Biennial, two Elizabeth Foundation Grants, the Joan Brady Foundation Grant and an LCU Foundation Grant. Alicia has attended residencies at the Leipzig International Art Program in Germany and the Cutty Hunk Island Artists’ residency in Massachusetts. Exhibitions have included the Jamaica Biennial, Prizm Art Fair Miami, Jamaica Spiritual London, and the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been featured in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, American Art Collector, Painting the Figure Now SHOUT MIAMI, ARTIT voice of Artists, Caribbean Quarterly Journal and other publications.
Marianne Chapel is an artist, an instructor of Fine Art at the Ringling College of Art and Design, and the founder of a new art gallery with art studios in Sarasota called SPAACES. At SPAACES, Marianne specializes in high caliber, new forms of contemporary art and community collaborations. She has her Masters in Fine Art Painting from Indiana University and has been instructing art at the college level for over 20 years. Marianne has an extensive exhibition and grant record, and a working art studio in downtown Sarasota. She is currently practicing a form of art new to Sarasota called Socially Engaged Art. She is a dedicated advocate for artists and is building SPAACES to provide better working conditions and studios for Sarasota artists.
Cassia Kite is an interdisciplinary artist who created Soundstitching, a multimedia project that transforms color from a hand-stitched image into a musical composition that can be interpreted by a musician and/or performance artist. Kite has collaboratively produced large-scale work for chamber ensemble and dancers using color-coded graphic scores derived from her hand-stitched tapestries. Kite’s work was premiered at KANEKO in Omaha, Nebraska in July of 2017. She has been featured as an experimental composer and visual artist in music festivals, museums and universities. Kite has been awarded artist in residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in 2018 and The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences Residency Program in 2019. She is the recipient of the Paul J. Smith Excellence in Fibers Award from the Fiber Art Network 2018 and the Dixon Ticonderoga Award of Excellence from the Florida Art Education Association in 2019.
Jessica Mowery is a practicing contemporary artist with a Spaaces studio. She has a varied professional background that has included selling vehicular armor, running an accomplished interior architecture studio and is currently a cryptocurrency analyst. Jessica is also the co-founder of a private NFT investment fund launching in 2022. The fund is committed to bringing together unique talent and licensing opportunities for artists, creators and investors. Jessica will provide a broad overview of the NFT market. She will break things down in layman’s terms explaining the technical basics, why NFT’s are important to the art market and how to comfortably purchase your first NFT.
Instagram: @jessica_e_mowery
Growing up in Oklahoma, I found refuge in the magnificent sunsets and storms of the Great Plains. There I discovered my love of the purely aesthetic/abstract/wordless experience that I express through my artwork. Working in various media including water-mixable oils and colored markers, I focus on color, pattern, and strict systems to develop non-representational paintings. My work highlights the gap between “what is” and “what could be”. It is an homage to hope and possibility.
Laine holds a BS in math from the University of Tennessee and a BFA in painting from the University of South Florida. Her work is in the collections of RBC Wealth Management, SRQ Media, and Hillsborough Community College. She is the recipient of the 2017 John Ringling Towers Fund and Hermitage Artist Retreat residency award.
Claudia Ryan was born in Washington, D.C. in 1952. She received a Certificate of Fine Art from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California in 1984, a BFA from the Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, Florida in 2002 and an MFA from the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida in 2006. She explains her artistic approach as follows: “I don’t start with a final image in mind, although sometimes I have a feeling about what I want to come out. I work until something does, or I keep trying. I expect failure. I get anxious, so I do something. I am drawn to my own private world.” She lives in Bradenton, Florida and works in Sarasota, Florida at SPAACES studios.
Christine D’Andrea Gahagan is a sculptor from Vermont who studied under Elliot Offner and A. Lee Burns at Smith College, and more recently with Brett Harvey, Philippe Farault and Stephen Perkins. She strives for a likeness in portraits, inspired by realism and is fascinated by capturing emotion in micro expressions and gesture. When not in the studio, Christy is learning dance, paint, and leaves shiny gifts for the curious crow in her backyard.
A versatile artist with expertise in sculpture, painting, and drawing, demonstrates an exceptional understanding of human anatomy that imbues his creations with unparalleled beauty and energy. Merging the ageless arts and techniques of the past with contemporary processes allows his work to transcend time.
Artists often define themselves through the choices they make in selecting mentors. In pursuit of mastering his craft, Stephen sought the guidance of the most distinguished painters and sculptors of his time. His journey began under the tutelage of Henry Hensche at the renowned Cape Cod School of Art. He then apprenticed with Lesley Posey, an esteemed academic sculptor, followed by Walker Hancock, whose iconic monuments adorn various regions of the country, including the Capitol. Stephen also found inspiration in the works of Deane Keller and Nelson Shanks.
Throughout his career, Stephen has been dedicated to imparting his in-depth technical knowledge to others. He has taught at prestigious institutions such as The New York Academy of Art, The Water Street Atelier, The Grand Central Academy of Art, and Janus Collaborative School of Art in Manhattan, as well as the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Additionally, he has conducted numerous workshops across the United States and internationally.
Ender, a native of Sarasota, earned a BA in Fine Arts with a minor in Classics from New College of
Florida in 2016. While continuing her studio practice, she remained in Sarasota working as The Ringling
Underground’s Artist Liaison and Exhibitions & Marketing Coordinator for Art Center Sarasota. Aa an activist
she has been engaged with Kiskeya International, a non-profit organization focused on reforestation through
syntropic farming to help the world’s most at-risk communities.
Currently, Ender is committed to an experience-based studio practice. In late 2020 she erected and painted
portions of a 90’ canvas scroll while driving from Florida to Washington state. She painted at several National
Forests, highway rest areas, and on public lands across the nation. With these recent experiences, she aims
to describe the national identity or mythos of the United States through striking figures and indigenous flora.
Cutting through the ideology of nineteenth-century American landscape painting, my paintings uproot the myth of a world polarized between pure wilderness and urban wasteland. Though it has shifted with time, this myth continues to influence our values and biases. It promises the existence of a distant paradise to which we can escape while obscuring the realities of environmental issues.
By borrowing and subverting traditions from past landscape artists, I use levity to challenge this notion of division and explore the ways in which humans and nature interact. The moments I depict are anchored together by contradictions. Beauty clashes with humor, and anxiety is tempered by nostalgia. Unnatural hues push my landscapes past the bounds of reality and the quotidian to the realm of absurdity. I present a relationship between nature and humans that is not of opposition or division, but of complication, anxiety, affection, and humor.
Margaux Albiez currently has no website.
Amanda Walters is a writer, sculptor, and textile artist from South Florida. Her work explores the strange and well-manicured history of her home state, the intersections of landscape and capitalism, social ecology, and the fantasies embedded in tourism. She is an avid gardener and looks to nature for better examples of social engagement and mutual aid.
Walters received her MFA in Studio Practice and MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts, and her BFA with emphasis in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Berkeley Art Center, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Southern Exposure in San Francisco, among other places.
Nicholas Keen pursued a successful career in Technology in the banking sector. Concurrently, to pursue his artistic goals, Nicholas studied figure drawing under Olga Nielsen. Nicholas supplemented his classes with weekly figure drawing studios in the northern Delaware countryside, helping to coordinate these sessions as needed. He started to paint, first in watercolors and then in oils. He entered his work in the local art center shows, winning first and second prizes at the non-professional level for his figure drawings.
Now living in Lakewood Ranch, Florida, Nicholas seeks to expand his technical expertise and range of work. He continues his studies, most recently under Stephen Perkins. His goal is to further develop his skills in figures, portraits and landscapes so that he can build a body of work that is narrative driven.
Nicholas Keen currently has no website.
Studios are rented to each artist on a price per square foot basis.
Three (3) distinct rental categories have been created according to artists yearly income.
1. 12×12: $331.20
($2.30 per square foot w/ tax $6.62) $337.82
2. 12×12: $352.80
($2.45 per square foot w/ tax $7.05) $359.85
3. 12×12: $403.20
($2.80 per square foot w/ tax $8.06) $411.26
4. 12 x 12: $460.80
($3.20 per square foot w/ tax $9.21) $470.01
1. 12×14: $386.40
($2.30 per square foot plus tax $7.72) $394.12
2. 12×14: $411.60
($2.45 per square foot plus tax $8.23) $419.83
3. 12×14: $470.40
($2.80 per square foot plus tax $9.40) $479.80
4. 12×14: $537.60
($3.20 per square foot plus tax $10.75) $548.35