Artist Members | Friends of NoMAA
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Artists
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Natalia Alonzo-Brillante
I am an ABT NTC certfied ballet teacher who has been teaching ballet to children in NYC for over 25 years.
Kiri Avelar
Kiri Avelar, MFA, is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, scholar, and activist who focuses her work around collaborative community expression. As a 2020 Jerome Robbins Dance Division Research Fellow for the NYPL for the Performing Arts, her scholarly research “Descubriendo Latinx: The Hidden Text in American Modern Dance”, looks at the absented presence of Latinx holding an integral role in shaping the foundation of modern dance in the United States.
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Mary Baird
Mary Baird, "Maria de los Angeles," began her Flamenco dance studies at Ballet Hispanico with Melinda Marquez in 1998. After apprenticing with the American Bolero Dance Company, at the invitation of founder, Gabriela Granados, she spent two summers at the Cristina Heeren program in Sevilla, studying with Carmen Ledesma, Rafael Campallo and Milagros Menjibar. She attended Jacob’s Pillow, studying with Soledad Barrio and had her tablao debut at Alegrias en La Nacional. She is currently a Flamenco Faculty Member at Ballet Hispanico, and a Teaching Artist with Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana. Chosen as the 2018 Artist in Residence with Flamenco Vivo's AiRe program, she choreographed her first solo piece, The Suffocating Breath. As the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Al Margen Flamenco Company, she conceptualizes, choreographs and performs in full length productions.
Jennifer Boissiere
Artistic Director & Choreographer, DanceBoissiere. Jenny has danced for Jessica Danser/Dansfolk, Kelly Donovan & Dancers, Alaine Handa & Dancers, Banana Peel Dance, and apprenticed for InSpirit: A Dance Company. Jenny's choreography has been shown at Gibney Dance Center, Movement Research, ModArts Dance's Collective Thread, and Brooklyn Ballet's First Look.
James Bosley
Up Theater Company, Founding Artistic Director. James’ plays All the Best Ingredients (2011), Broad Channel (2014) and Epic Poetry (2015) were all given their world premieres at UP Theater Company. He also directed UP's production of Merciful Father by Atar Hadari, and produces the annual DEAD OF WINTER new play reading series. His play Fun, first developed at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, was given its first production at MCC Theater in NYC, and has had many subsequent productions in the U.S and abroad, translated into German, Romanian, Flemish. Fun is published by Dramatic Publishing Company.
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Charlecia Joy Cole
From the bane of my existence I was drawn to colors and visuals that aesthetically caught my eye. As a result, nurturing the arts in myself and others has become a primary focus of my life’s work and calling. I am an art advocate, visual artist, and a New York City public school art educator.
Alison Cuomo
For me, painting is a natural way to immerse myself in the beauty that is everywhere. I see these paintings as landscapes, because they are all places that I inhabit while I am painting them. I paint wet on wet on paper, working with layers of luminous color, which radiate through the paintings. The natural world is stunning. Its endless complexity and richness move me —and I want to share my explorations.
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Lora Danley
Lora Danley is a photographer, a writer, and an educator. Her visual art explores the abstract qualities found in the environment around her whether that be graffiti, paint drippings, crumbling walls, or even the knots on a tree. She has exhibited her photographs in New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. She has written four full length plays, numerous short plays, and a memoir and is currently working on a science fiction novel. Her short plays have been produced throughout the New York City area and her full-length plays have won several awards.
Rose Deler
I am an artist and maker who draws on the skills handed down to me by my ancestors. They were boat builders, carpenters, seamstresses, farmers, and homemakers. As an artist who takes pride in the artisanal quality of my work, I am interested in the labor of art making and craft. My work must bare the mark of my hand as well as my mind. This is a freedom to think and make to change direction or approach as I go along. It is instant and fluid from my head to my hands. There is no need for sketches, explanations or directions. It is private until it is not.
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Michelle Orsi Gordon
Michelle Orsi Gordon is a visual artist and lifelong New Yorker. She received a BFA from Parsons School of Design and a MFA from Montclair State University. Michelle has work experience in non-profits at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Socrates Sculpture Park and is currently the Executive Coordinator at the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance.
Wilhelmina Grant-Cooper
Wilhelmina ‘Obatola’ Grant-Cooper is a self-taught, Harlem-based visual artist, arts instructor and author. Wilhelmina creates assemblages using mixed-media and found objects which she repurposes into visual art. Many of the ideas that stimulate the creation of her work are reflective of her interpretations of contemporary social concerns, namely: urban issues, and women’s health matters with a focus on breast cancer awareness. Wilhelmina has mounted numerous solo exhibitions in Harlem, Texas and Alaska, and has participated in group exhibitions at numerous venues throughout New York, the east coast and Alabama.
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Takashi Harada
I believe the forms of cells of living things, including plants and animals, have similarities in structures. I propose those images (as in my paintings) are double micro and macro images of nature itself. By looking at the images, people fall into their memories of the past. Those senses provide people more calm feelings and common sense of each other, beyond the difference of cultures.
Maggie Hernandez
Maggie Hernández is an abstract artist with a passion for strong color and movement. She is an intuitive painter whose images are highly influenced by her immediate surroundings. Moods inspired by music, spaces, events, and people are represented in her paintings by an iconography of contrasting shapes and colors. Bold strokes, crosses, spheres, lines, and drips are visible components of the hidden language present in Maggie’s work.
Gleidson Hoffmann
Gleidson Vasconcelos Hoffmann is an internationally award winning dancer, teacher and choreographer. He was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil and started training at Studio Arte Danca and Ballet Liudmila Palonskaya, before winning a full scholarship to the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton, Florida. He danced professionally for Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami, Ballet Arizona, and New Jersey Ballet. His repertoire includes ensemble and lead roles in Harlequinade, La Esmeralda, Giselle, Coppelia, Romeo and Juliet, Flames of Paris, La Vivandiere, The Fairy Doll, Cinderella, The Cavalry Halt, Serenade, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Concerto Barroco, Rubies, Carnival of the Animals, Carmen, Porgy and Bass, Raymonda, Petit Elfs, Blue Danube Waltz, Staccato, La Fille Mal Gardee, Excerpt from my Life, Charlie Chaplin, Time out of Memory, Mambo Italiano, Topia, Diversions, Sweet Fields, Oceans Motion, The Fugue, Whimsical InterludeLe Corsaire, La Bayadere, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Paquita, Additionally, he has 14 years teaching experience, including at the Rock School for Dance Education, Princeton Dance and Theatre, Philadelphia High School for the Performing and Creative Arts, Philadelphia Dance Theatre, Ballet Tech, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Greenwich Conservatory Classical Ballet, Cynthia King Dance Studio, American Youth Dance Theater.
Jeff Hoppa
Jeff Hoppa is a New York-based visual artist. His oil paintings on panel and works on paper celebrate the history of exploration, the natural world and the metamorphic potential of abstraction. His inspirations run the gamut from rock formations at Joshua Tree National Park to the inner ear bones of narwhals at The American Museum of Natural History. Hoppa was an adjunct Professor of drawing at New York Institute of Technology from 2004 to 2009, a member of EFA Studios at The Elizabeth Foundation from 2006 to 2013, and curated exhibitions at Indian Road Café in Inwood as "Indian Road Shows" from 2014 to 2019. In 2015, he created cornerstone STUDIOS, an artist's studio work space at 178 Bennett Avenue in Washington Heights.
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Christine Japely
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David Kalal
Margaret Kelly
Maggie Kelly is a dance artist from Ontario, Canada. She is currently living in NYC, frequently performing, and pursuing her artist visa. Maggie loves nothing more than being onstage, and has competed both nationally and internationally in over 100 competitions across Canada and the United States.
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Tafy LaPlanche
Just an Afro-Latina artist creating vibrant and dope portraits for vibrant and dope people. Born and raised in NYC, I was always surrounded by diversity. It made me curious about other cultures and people’s heritage. That upbringing prompted me to travel in order to meet all kinds of people. And made me passionate in showcasing that within my art.
Being both Puerto Rican and Haitian, throughout my life people always tried to place me in a box of one or the other. With my portraits, I showcase unique individuals who embrace both their culture and who they are. Despite the stereotypes, they face purely based on the color of their skin.
When people see my paintings, I want them to feel like they too can be their unapologetically beautiful selves.
Being both Puerto Rican and Haitian, throughout my life people always tried to place me in a box of one or the other. With my portraits, I showcase unique individuals who embrace both their culture and who they are. Despite the stereotypes, they face purely based on the color of their skin.
When people see my paintings, I want them to feel like they too can be their unapologetically beautiful selves.
Marne Lucas
Marne Lucas is a multidisciplinary artist investigating nature and culture with photography, video and installation to present unique aesthetic philosophies. Her social justice related projects include ‘Bardo ∞ Project’ an ongoing exploration of creativity as a form of spiritual end of life care.
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Michelle Manzanales
Michelle Manzanales is a choreographer, dedicated dance educator of nearly 30 years, and co-founder of the Latinx Dance Educators Alliance. CriticalDance writes that Manzanales’ choreography “…isn’t just about one girl’s experience; it applies to everyone, of any gender, and of any culture.” Her choreography for Ballet Hispánico, Con Brazos Abiertos, described as a “savvy but deeply sincere meditation on her Mexican-American background” (-Marina Harss, New York Times), premiered in 2017, and has since toured worldwide to critical acclaim including an inclusion in New York City Center’s 2018 Fall for Dance Festival. Manzanales’ current commissions set to premiere in 2021 include a new work for the Paul Taylor Dance Company and a restaging for Ballet Hispánico of her 2010 homage to Frida Kahlo, Paloma Querida, which was hailed a "visual masterpiece" by the Chicago Tribune and described by the Chicago Sun-Times as a “gorgeously designed, richly hallucinatory, multi-faceted vision of the artist.”
RoughAcres RL McKee
Redemptive Human Being Awaiting Global Citizenship Artist/Blogger/Photographer
Martin Meccouri
When the lights go down in a performance hall, we find ourselves in a rich liminal space. A space where discomfort, bravery and radical possibility converge. Let’s make more of these spaces. Producer. Actor. Fundraiser. Marketer. Award-winning teacher. Currently forming a diverse performing arts programming entity.
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Rosa Naparstek
I am a visual artist and a political activist. I work with found objects, paint, and original text to challenge culturally accepted meanings. The most unlikely objects become treasures in the quest to explore distortions and prejudices. My mixed-media sculptures and collages are a connection between art and its power for personal and political transformation. I believe art is crucial to community building. My artwork gives people opportunity to explore feelings, deepen connections with one another, and ultimately build strong communities.
Eva Nikolova
My work grows out of a sense of place - a place which, while it is very much part of me, I am no longer a part of. The deep affinity I feel for emblematically Balkan structures and sites is the corollary to the rapid homogenization of space in a world madly rushing towards cultural and economic singularity. But the intense gravitational pull of these images on my immigrant’s imagination is also rooted in a sense of personal dislocation – as much cultural as physical. In grappling with the meaning of “Home”, the house – the archetypal image of home – takes on narratives of memory, longing, desire, and ultimately opens up onto issues of identity. Architecture becomes the allegorical guise through which I explore the connections between iconic cultural objects and the construction of identity and memory - personal and collective, individual and national.
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Cathy O'Keefe
I paint what I feel. I paint with energy and fire. My works are filled with rhythm and movement. Improvisation is my method of creating art. I explore internally for long periods of time and then paint quickly, explosively. The result is abstract but often recognizable. I love to paint.
Elizabeth Olson
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Sky Pape
Sky Pape’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Tiffany & Co., Le Cirque du Soleil, and other public, corporate, and private collections. Pape’s awards and honors include residency fellowships in Italy at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center and The Bogliasco Foundation’s Liguria Study Center for the Arts & Humanities, as well as grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (twice), the Canada Council for the Arts, the E.D. Foundation, the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation, and the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (three grants). Her artwork was selected by the Art in Embassies Program of the United States Department of State for exhibition in Uruguay, and has been shown internationally since the 1980s. She is represented by June Kelly Gallery in New York City.
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Barry Ritter
I do photography – my camera is my third eye and any image from a camera is only the start of the process of seeing.
Lizzie Ross
I’m a children’s book author, writing fantasy and historical fiction. My novel, Kenning Magic (2013), is a fantasy for readers 9–14 years old.
Kathryn Ruby
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Jennifer Sanchez
I live and paint in NYC. During the pandemic, I’ve been making more collages out of necessity. In the beginning, supplies were limited. Plus, I needed a quick creation fix to deal with the anxiety of everything. Collaging is spontaneous, with patterns and ideas coming fast and plenty. I’m also painting even more color sketches. Playing with basic color theories to create dramatic spectrums
Both processes are easy going, playful and restorative; some much needed pandemic art therapy. But all my work is some sort of bright collage or mashup of ideas. All in the service of creating something that delights the eye.
I use colorful geometric patterns to create paintings that dazzle. Visual impact is what I’m after; the macro and the micro. They look precise from a distance, but get closer and you’ll see their looseness. Each mark reveals the rhythm and attention needed to craft the painting, and provides a sneak peak into the studio. Wobbly grids, sinuous blobs and transparent colors indicate little desire for perfection, but great care in organizing. That discord interests me.
Both processes are easy going, playful and restorative; some much needed pandemic art therapy. But all my work is some sort of bright collage or mashup of ideas. All in the service of creating something that delights the eye.
I use colorful geometric patterns to create paintings that dazzle. Visual impact is what I’m after; the macro and the micro. They look precise from a distance, but get closer and you’ll see their looseness. Each mark reveals the rhythm and attention needed to craft the painting, and provides a sneak peak into the studio. Wobbly grids, sinuous blobs and transparent colors indicate little desire for perfection, but great care in organizing. That discord interests me.
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Sirin Thada
Sirin Thada is an artist and illustrator who creates colorful paintings and mixed media works. As an outdoor enthusiast, she finds inspiration in the places she visits, documenting the flora, fauna, colors and patterns from nature walks and hiking adventures. She works primarily with acrylic and watercolor, and often incorporates bits of antique papers and trims, and other reclaimed materials.
Joyce Tsai
As a visual artist, my inspirations include the natural world and humanity's place within it. As a creator, I both lose myself and find myself in the terror and the infinite possibility presented by a blank surface, the searching and decisiveness of the line, and the sensual pleasure and toil of process - the laying down of color and texture, subtle and bold. I aspire to observe keenly, to appreciate the individuality evident upon close observation of every natural thing, and to refract my visual sensation through the prism of personal emotional response to produce something that represents and communicates both.
Curtis Turney
Curtis Turney is a Trombonist, Percussionist, Bandleader, Producer, Language Service Provider and Science Educator. He leads his Salsa band “Son De La 104” and is currently producing their first album. He freelances as a trombonist, an interpreter and a translator.
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Junius Vazquez-Rodriguez
I am an unpublished writer, who has managed to develop a continuous collection of writing. The writing that I have developed, is better known, as the (Permission to Speak©) Collections. My inspiration for writing comes from the relationship that I have with my mother, as her primary caregiver. Writing has been my outlet for self-care and never-ending support to my mother (Irma).
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Carla Zanoni
Writer, Poet, Journalist, Flâneuse, spiritual explorer and generally curious soul. Poet heart, journalist brain. Writing helps me sort the two. Born in Argentina, grew up in New Jersey, New Yorker since 1995. I am a cat and a dog person. I still don’t know how to whistle.
