Artists Preview

Colombian-born artist Alexandra Schoenberg explores the intersection of architectural precision and contemporary art. Originally from Cali, she earned a degree in Architecture from Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá before practicing architecture for over two decades in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. In 2014, she pivoted to fine arts, earning her MFA from Montclair State University, where she began utilizing technical drafting as a primary medium.

In her current practice, Schoenberg uses tropes of architectural representation to "collide" and expose the mechanics of human observation. Based in East Orange, New Jersey, she serves on the Board of Directors for Manufacturers Village Artists and is a member of the Art Gang collective. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Out Left Art and First Street Gallery in New York City, CoAD Gallery (NJIT), Index Art Center, and The Gateway Project in Newark.

"I came to fiber through my mother. Her, through her mother, sisters, and grandmothers. My work continues their maternal creativity and extends into a new generation of shared creative lineage. These works call on the recent history of commercial surface design, reaching back to the turn of the 20th century feed sack fabrics. Cloth feed sacks were printed with flowery patterns that could be repurposed into quilts and clothing. The visual language born in those feed sacks can be seen in contemporary quilting fabric surface design.

The patterns in these pieces all come from two swatches of 1970s quilting cotton from my mom. The pattern elements have been broken down and reconfigured into new variations and colorways. A new generation. The new patterns are recreated in tufted textiles hailing to the care and comfort of a familial space."

Alisha holds a BFA in sculpture and print media from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and completed her MFA in studio art from Stony Brook University where she held the Maurice M Goldberger Fellowship and was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant. She has participated in residency programs through the Vermont Studio Center and the Arrowmont School for the Arts and Crafts Pentaculum. She has also led drawing and embroidery workshops at Bloomsburg University, and East China Normal School, Shanghai. Alisha is a current member of NY Crit Club's 2026-2027 Canopy Program.

Amy Putman is a mixed-media artist whose work incorporates collage, textile, and assemblage to explore social consciousness, identity, and resilience through visual storytelling. After a 17-year career as a Creative Director at CBS News, Putman shifted her focus entirely to fine art following the 2016 United States presidential election. Her work has since been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in numerous private collections. Putman's artwork has been featured in local and national media, including NBC and Newsweek. Her piece She’s Got the Power was selected for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Art of New Jersey exhibition at Newark Liberty International Airport. Putman is represented by the Contemporary Art Modern Project in Miami, is a founding member of the New York Collage Ensemble, and serves as a Trustee of the Montclair Art Museum. She earned her BFA from Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Christina Saj is first generation Ukrainian American contemporary artist whose abstract paintings reveal a fascination with vivid color and rich pattern inspired by her heritage. Her colorful and playful paintings beckon the inner child while remaining in conversation with the Old World traditions in which her work is steeped. Her distinctly recognizable style calls on modernist roots, but unlike a lot of contemporary art, Saj’s work hails beauty to build her vocabulary. She is an iconographer of the future.

Saj continues adapting and innovating her techniques to engage modern audiences in new ways with use of unusual materials which expand her reach as a painter. Her work has been widely exhibited, including such venues as the Museum of Biblical Art (NYC), The National Cathedral, (DC) The Cathedral of St. John the Divine (NYC), Union Theological Seminary (NYC), The Ukrainian Museum (NYC), The Museum of the Ukrainian diaspora (Kyiv, Ukraine),The Museum of Cultural Heritage (Kiev, Ukraine), The National Museum in (Lviv, Ukraine), the American Embassy (Doha, Qatar,) as well as at the White House (DC). Her works reside in private and museum collections in the US and abroad. She maintains an active studio where she welcomes commissions.

Saj holds a BA in Painting from Sarah Lawrence, an MFA from Bard College, and studied Byzantine Art History at Oxford University.

Christine Romanell’s art practice explores the infinite through intricate, ever-expanding circular patterns. Inspired by cosmology and sacred geometry, her work illuminates the tension between physical order and limitless space. She translates digital designs into dynamic sculptures and paintings using laser-cutting and 3D printing, employing rich color gradients to guide viewers through complex, layered forms.

Her recent museum projects include the immersive installation Sacred Transition at the Montclair Art Museum and the augmented reality experience Cosmic Crossing at the Hunterdon Art Museum. Based in New Jersey, Romanell organizes Garden State Art Weekend and is the former board president of Manufacturers Village Artists.

A recipient of a 2022 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship and an NEA grant through Chashama, Romanell’s work has been featured on the Smithsonian Channel and highlighted in publications like Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, MIT Technology Review, White Hot Magazine, and Art and Cake. Her artwork is included in public collections at Google, the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, and Memorial Sloan Kettering, as well as the private collection of the late Pat Bell alongside Tom Nussbaum and Willie Cole. She holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Montclair State University.

Corrine Carr is a ceramic artist based at Manufacturers Village in East Orange, NJ. She came to pottery in 2019 with a background in drawing, and quickly found herself blending the two bringing her illustrations into the ceramic surface through playful, unconventional methods.

My work brings the expressive language of illustration into three-dimensional form through clay. Drawing inspiration from the captivating world of nature, my work focuses on the graceful forms of birds.  Capturing their essence through line and then translating that line into tactile, ceramic sculpture. Central to my artistic process is the use of clay as a vehicle for my illustrative vision. By lifting my signature lines off the page and into physical space, I infuse each ceramic piece with the vitality and dynamism of drawing.  Allowing viewers to move around and experience the subject from every angle. Through my work, I seek to remind viewers of the profound connection we share with all living things, offering a testament to the enduring majesty of the natural world.

CYNTHIA J. VAUGHN is a multi-disciplinary artist based out of New Jersey, born and raised in the southward of Newark, NJ. Cynthia's natural talents were evident at the early age of 9 and was nurtured by her elementary school art teacher who inspired her creativity and started her on the journey of shaping her raw and innate talent in painting and illustration. Throughout her formative years, Cynthia stretched her talent as a student at Arts High School, in Newark, NJ, creating beautiful pieces of art using acrylics, oils, pastels, pencils and charcoal. Cynthia's talent and love for fashion, led her path to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York where she studied Fashion Illustration and Design and continued to expand her knowledge and grow her skills. Cynthia's works of art share stories reflecting the sights, sounds and scenes of her culture, heritage and life experiences against the backdrop of a vibrant and eclectic urban setting. An avid lover of jazz, music is a common theme; along with themes of children playing, exploring, and learning and social justice. Cynthia J. Vaughn is a storyteller, and her body of work paints a picture of ideas, messages, and emotions for others to feel and experience. "Through art I can visually share the things I love and have experienced." All forms of Cynthia's artwork, including Denim Pallette, a custom line of wearable art, are available under the banner CJGallery LLC.

Hi, my name is Daniela. I'm an Artist. Improv Quilter. Designer. Tech Editor.

My studio practice has been influenced by our recent pandemic, political climate, as well as my love of pattern and decoration. The seemingly man-made opportunities for disasters affect my perception of our physical and political lives and influence my work, although I am becoming more positive as the world reopens. I believe that the series Requiem explores my current concerns.

In the series Requiem and Landscape of Memory there is lighter then in the previous series, Origin Stories and Monsters Among Us (2020-21) which was reflective of Covid and the politics of last year. My work combines drawing, painting and silkscreen on paper and panel. It is a new take on an earlier set of drawings that I tited Anticipatory Cahoots, started before the pandemic. After I collage the work, I continue to draw and paint on them. I continually reuse my past work, allowing the architecture of the past work to reassert into the new.

I am a mixed media artist, working primarily in acrylic paint and collage. My work looks to connect experiences from Israel, my home land, to my present life. I go back and forth in time, building and adding layers, feelings, experiences, while scratching and uncovering old remnants of what was. Therefore I work in many layers, adding paint and material as well as sanding it down and uncovering earlier layers. Most of my work is abstract, yet recently I've developed semi-abstracted landscapes and a series titled "Bayeet" (Home, in Hebrew), including more representational elements. My art journey and my life are about holding together the past and the present, the lightness with the darkness. It is the weaving together of the longing and the memories with the ongoing life.

My painting and drawing practice is deeply, if not obviously, informed by my background in architecture.

I am fundamentally interested in the forces of order and disorder: how large masses break apart, how particles come together.

Through this lens, I have looked at landscapes, geologic forms, swarming cells, cosmic bodies, pebbles on the beach, textiles, fireworks, and faces. Hebrew texts - sometimes tne actual words - have been a motif. Evoking tools, and various objects, became important to me during the Covid lockdown, and it still is.

Jamie Lehrhoff Levine creates highly detailed, labor-intensive art designed to provoke dialogue and impact the world beyond the gallery space. Exploring the tension between the beautiful and the grotesque, her practice centers on fragility, vulnerability, and cosmic connectivity. Her diverse forty-year career ranges from textiles at Syracuse University and genetic hybrids at SVA’s Bio Art Lab, to current painting and sculpture addressing Monarch butterfly preservation.

Levine’s latest clay and rope sculptures are deeply informed by marine biology and environmental hair mats used for ocean oil-spill remediation, transforming these ecological concepts into formal visual provocations.

A New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellow and recipient of an Excellence in Jewelry Award from Montclair State University, Levine also completed a BMW Guggenheim Lab research project with the ecological collective SPURSE. She has exhibited her work widely, including international shows in London, Berlin, and Italy.

maker + curator

Our textiles are a story of family. In the littlest and biggest sense of the word.

Our story started in Sweden. Growing up in her mother’s atelier, Johanna developed a keen design eye and a firm belief in buying things to last.

Johanna moved to the US, working as a successful clothing designer In Los Angeles and New York. Here she developed a love of textiles and a knack for color. When she encouraged her family to start a new adventure in home décor, she took these passions with her.

Johanna Howard Home started with a simple idea – throws and pillows should be designed for humans, not just homes. Designs that capture moods and memories, textiles that crave to be touched, and colors that change your day.

Designing for people means being good to people. We use sustainable baby alpaca, cotton and wool, weaving textiles that are made to last. We work with artisan weavers and family-owned mills in Peru and Portugal, rewarding them fairly, and exchanging skills and knowledge.

Our collection was born from a small family idea that blossomed into a big family story.

Joyce Korotkin is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is exhibited both nationally and internationally in museums, galleries, art fairs, event venues, domes and the metaverse. Her work is included in museum and public collections. Korotkin has written extensively on art for internationally published art journals including Tema Celeste Contemporary Art, ArtReview, and ArtNews, has written catalog text for numerous artists and galleries, and co-authored a book distributed internationally by DAP, "NeoBaroque!" (Charta, 2005). An Independent Curator, she has curated a number of art exhibitions in galleries and corporate spaces both nationally and internationally. Additionally, Korotkin has been Scenic Designer for an Opera company, and co-founded the nationally renowned art curriculum, Young Curators, in conjunction with the Montclair Art Museum.

My mixed-media paintings and collages speak of colors bold and subtle, compositions wild and restrained, marks loud and delicate. I am willing to jump into a painting or collage without fully knowing what’s coming or what it’s about. My compass is “Does it feel joyful, free, and expansive?” My art is about more color, more joy, more love. Now, more than ever, I create because I need more of that energy, and who doesn’t?

Exposed to textiles from an early age through my family’s fabric store, I am drawn to varieties of color and pattern, and am inspired to investigate differences, juxtapositions, and repetitions of color, line, and shape.

In exploring the tension of opposites, harmonies, and

subtleties, I cover and make space for depth, inner and

outer resonance, and/or conversation among the

elements. Relying on the spirit of play, experimentation,

and intuition to surprise, my process is one of risk-taking

and discovery.

Laura Lou Levy has a BA in Fine Arts from Indiana University,

Bloomington and Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and an MFA

in Painting from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. A native of Kentucky, she

spent years in Brooklyn and Manhattan before migrating to New

Jersey to raise her family. Levy has shown her drawings and

paintings for decades in museums, galleries, and nonprofit spaces,

including the Newark Museum of Art. Her 36 years as a "Hedcut"

Illustrator for The Wall Street Journal gave her the unusual pleasure of

making a living drawing pictures. Her work has been mentioned, featured,

and reviewed in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker,

Jersey City Times, njarts.net, The Star Ledger, and American Artist.

It is in private and corporate collections in the US, Spain, England, France,

and Israel, and the National Portrait Gallery.

Based in the Northeastern U.S., I am a mid-career visual artist working across drawing, printmaking, painting, and installation. Holding a B.S. in Advertising and Design and an MFA, my practice is anchored in my studio at Manufacturers Village in East Orange, NJ, and my home printmaking lab. Driven by a pure love of making—complemented by a grounding, unexhibited ceramic practice—I select mediums fluidly to best serve each evolving body of work.

Intuition is the foundation of my practice. Inspired by the organizing power and interconnectivity of the natural world, I explore the interplay between human-made constructs and organic systems. Built and natural architecture become metaphors for personal and shared space, crafted through a process that balances deliberate intention with spontaneous discovery, continually shifting between observation and memory.

Currently, my focus centers on form, color, and relationships within a series of monoprints blending block-printing and painting. These works depict abandoned places to evoke a quiet, instinctive familiarity. As the illusion of time dissolves, the images ground the viewer in the vivid present, offering a sense of peace and beauty born from intuition.

Mona Brody’s paintings, including her body of work Portals, Apparitions, and Other Voices, convey a mysterious and ineffable beauty. Her extensive solo exhibitions include the Montclair Art Museum, The Painting Center (NYC), and Pratt Institute. Brody’s work is held in prominent public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art Library, the Zimmerli Art Museum, and the New Jersey State Museum.

The recipient of three Geraldine Dodge Foundation Fellowships, she was nominated for a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and received the New Jersey Governor’s Award in Art Education. Named Professor Emeritus by Pratt Institute in 2024, Brody holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. A foundational trailblazer and board member at Manufacturers Village Artists in East Orange, she continues to maintain her studio there as a community leader and mentor.

Nan Ring is a visual artist, poet and author. In her artwork and writing, she focuses on ideas of vastness within the intimate, small moment. Ring received a Monmouth Museum Juror’s Award in their Annual Jured Exhibition, 2025, Vermont Studio Center Artist’s Fellowship Award, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation/NEA Fellowship Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists’ Fellowship Award. She has been awarded numerous artist-in-residencies, including Hambidge, I-Park, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ucross Foundation, Djerrassi, Vermont Studio Center, MASSMoCA. and Millay Arts, among others. Her national art exhibitions include Monmouth Museum, The Painting Center, NYC, Susan Eley Gallery, Hudon, NY, and 14C Art Fair, NJ among others. Her poetry has been published on Gray Sparrow Press, About Place Journal, Mom Egg Review, and is included in the anthology "The Color Wheel", Terrapin Books. She was a finalist for the Barbara Deming Fund for Women Grant in Poetry, 2025. Ring wrote and illustrated the critically acclaimed memoir, Walking On Walnuts, Bantam, 1996. She earned her MFA in Painting from The University of the Arts, PA, and her BFA in Studio Art from Syracuse University School of Visual and Performing Arts. She is co-director of the Hostetter Gallery in Basking Ridge, N.J. To learn more about Nan Ring, please visit nanringstudio.com or on Instagram @ring.nancy

Born In Bogota, Colombia NYU, BFA Tisch School of the Arts, New York, NY

Drawing from a wide spectrum of influences—personal and collective, virtual and spiritual—Patti Samper's work explores the relationship between light and matter, color, texture and emotion. Her paintings investigate the intangible forces that shape contemporary life, reflecting on her ongoing interest with technology and the environment. At the heart of her practice is an exploration of the fragility within these interconnected systems and their profound impact on our shared humanity.

Patti Samper exhibits her work throughout the United States and internationally. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums and is held in numerous private collections. In addition to her studio practice, she has completed large-scale public art commissions. Her paintings and curatorial projects have been featured in various publications, including Hyperallergic and The Critic's Notebook.

Philemona Williamson’s narrative paintings explore the tenuous bridge between adolescence & adulthood. She has shown widely, with solo shows at Semiose (Paris), June Kelly (NYC), Jenkins-Johnson (CA) & a mid-career retrospective at The Montclair Museum (NJ). A recipient of numerous awards & residencies including Joan Mitchell Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, National Endowment For The Arts, NY Foundation For The Arts, Millay Colony, Anonymous Was A Woman & MacDowell. Represented in private/public collections including French National Contemporary Art Collection (CNAP); Kalamazoo Art Institute; Mint Museum; Smith College Museum & The Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection. Her public works include fused-glass murals created for a Brooklyn subway station & mosaic murals for a school in Queens. She created a series of paintings for the children’s book “Lubaya’s Quiet Roar” from Penguin Random House. Philemona has taught Painting & Drawing at Hunter, Pratt, SVA, Bard, RISD, Cooper Union & Parsons. She has served on the advisory board of the Getty Center for Education and is currently on the board of Doing Art Together in NYC and The Visual Arts Center of NJ.

I’m a contemporary abstract artist. My paintings and wall sculptures explore the meanings we form through lived experiences and the ways those meanings evolve over time. I’m especially drawn to the traces transformation leaves behind.

I view the natural world as an archetype of the human experience. Nature persists, reveals, conceals, destroys, and renews without judgment. My work exists at the intersection of the objective rhythms of nature and the innately human need to make sense of life.

This relationship between transformation and perception extends into my materials. I use fire to alter paint, ink, wood, and Yupo—a synthetic substrate—leaving permanent marks, texture, and evidence of passage.

While my process is guided by intention, fire behaves according to its own nature, introducing an unpredictability I can never fully anticipate or repeat. I welcome this uncertainty, because it requires me to work in conversation with the material.

I’m drawn to the paradox of using Yupo to create organic sculptural forms that evoke flora, detritus, and weathering from natural elements. Fire scorches and sculpts the Yupo until it occupies an ambiguous space between the manufactured and the organic, challenging viewers’ perception of materiality.

Rather than offering fixed narratives, my artwork invites contemplation, creating space where viewers might encounter questions rather than conclusions. My work reflects a belief that beauty is found not in perfection or resolution but in the messiness of the human experience.

Ruth Borgenicht initially studied mathematics at Rutgers University before discovering a deeper capacity for visual creativity through clay. Twenty-five years later, earning an MFA launched a new direction for their practice, focusing on socially engaged and participatory projects that expand the role of the artwork within the community.

Deeply collaborative,Ruth Borgenicht’s ceramic expertise has been shaped by a robust network of community residencies, including Hunter College, Anderson Ranch, Greenwich House Pottery, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, William Paterson University, Chester Springs Studio, and the University of the Arts.

A recipient of two New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships, they have taught workshops and served as a visiting artist at numerous institutions. They currently teach at Montclair State University and The Art School at Old Church in Demarest, New Jersey.

Sarah Canfield is a multidisciplinary artist merging painting and digital photography to create visual environments that reverberate between reality and illusion. Her paintings, pastels, collages, wall sculptures and mixed media works fuse organic and artificial images to reveal the growing encroachment of technology into the natural world. Her art has been exhibited widely in galleries, museums and nonprofit venues including the Montclair Art Museum, the Morris Museum, the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, the Pennsylvania State Museum, the Woodmere Art Museum, the Delaware Contemporary and the gallery at FIT in New York. Canfield holds a BFA in painting from Alfred University and she is an instructor at the Montclair Art Museum. She has given guest lectures and demonstrations at institutions including Pratt Institute, Caldwell University the Newark Academy and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her art has been featured in the Quiet Lunch, ANTE curatorial and Art Spiel art blogs as well as the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times. She is the recipient of a 2022 Fellowship in Painting from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Shayna Miller received her MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College, New York, and her BA from Drew University, Madison, NJ. Miller has presented solo exhibitions of her work at the Korn Gallery at Drew University, Madison, NJ and the Hostetter Gallery at Pingry, Basking Ridge, NJ. Her work has been featured at My Pet Ram in New York, NY and included in the group exhibitions Small Devotion at Elza Kayal Gallery, New York, NY (curated by Michael Reid), Mutable Landscapes at MAMA Projects, New York, NY, Material Girl at Athens Cultural Center in Athens, NY (curated by Lisa Corinne Davis), It’s Getting to a Point at Thomas Van Dyke Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (curated by Alex Feim and Jack Arthur Wood), and Facture Fracture at CHART in New York, NY.