NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: David Allyn is an artist whose work is an investigation into the evolution of urban space and culture at the intersection of ceramics and printmaking. His process begins with selecting architectural sites and documenting the locations with photographs as a way to

Jillian Barber, originally from England, grew up in Westerly, Rhode Island. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied ceramics with Norm Schulman and glass with Dale Chihuly. Barber has had a career in ceramic sculpture, mask making and costume design. She brings a passion for portraiture to her mythical and

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Deborah studied textile design and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. As a designer and creative director in the industry in New York City, Los Angeles and Europe she worked with designers and fabric manufacturers in global fashion centers.Based on

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Peter Diepenbrock has achieved a distinguished record of accomplishment as one of Rhode Island’s most prolific contemporary sculptors. Diepenbrock holds a BFA, and a BID in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited his mid-scale work locally

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Gretchen Dow Simpson is the recipient of several prestigious commissions, including assignments from Bostonian Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Absolut Vodka, and Kirin Seagram Company. She has held solo shows and group exhibitions in museums and galleries across the country. Her work is

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Jerry Ehrlich was born in 1952 in Providence, Rhode Island. He has lived in Italy, Japan, Austria, and currently resides in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Travel and a side gig in historic building restoration have helped to inform his work and process. His

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Ana Flores is an award-winning sculptor, ecological designer, and educator. She has been promoting interdisciplinary dialogue and groundbreaking collaborations between the arts and sciences for over two decades. She has worked with communities to design award-winning outdoor installations, parks, and programming that

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: David Frazer Professor Emeritus, Painting Department, Fine Arts Division, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) has a BFA from RISD 1970 and an MA from University of New Mexico (UNM) 1976, both in painting. He taught painting and drawing at RISD 1978

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Born in New York City, Paul Housberg studied painting early in his career, but was drawn to glass for its atmospheric color. After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design,

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: “Layers and repetition are fundamental in my work. While these two words describe the physical aspects of the work, they also describe the act of making them. A shape’s outline is cut repeatedly until there is nothing left, a painting is cut

A multi-disciplinary artist, Lisa Perez makes abstract sculptural paintings, objects and works on paper that investigate attention, perception and spatial dimension. Fusing the subtle edges between mediums, her practice takes a malleable approach to form. The work invokes minimalism initially, but slowly one encounters an unfolding of playful extremes in color, shadow, form, and a

Richard Whitten’s paintings are meticulously crafted images on shaped wood panels. They are definitely painting but teeter at the edge of becoming sculpture. Whitten says, “My paintings imply the existence of places and objects of desire that, like the garden and flowers in Alice in Wonderland, can be glimpsed but  neither reached nor acquired. They

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Boris Bally is a Swiss-trained goldsmith working as a contemporary metalsmith and designer Rhode Island, where he maintains his studio business, Bally Humanufactured. Bally’s work is a disciplined body of objects which vary from eccentric through formal to humorous, provoking thought and

David Barnes is a Newport artist with a long trajectory of success as a painter and teacher in Rhode Island. He received a BFA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. His recent paintings have reflected his interests in the art historical past as well as the technological, fast-paced present—particularly the Internet.

“Nature is my model, sometimes literally, always conceptually. With clay and glaze I imitate nature. With function and form; color and texture; history and need, I attempt a layering of forces and structures similar to that found in natural things like flowers.” Lawrence Bush is a potter, collaborator, and educator who has taught ceramics at the Rhode Island School of

Collage is at the heart of John DeMelim’s art; to him it is the most cohesive way to represent the myriad of differing realities we experience each day. His images derive from extensive travel and study of ancient cultures in the Amazon, New Guinea, and Mexico, as well as visits to Mali, Japan, and Greece, with his late wife.

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: John Dunnigan is a designer, maker, author and educator. His studio work has been shown in more than one hundred exhibitions, including ten solo exhibitions, and is included in private and public collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Julie Gearan is a contemporary American painter based in Providence, RI. Using the conventions of portraiture, still-life and landscape, Gearan creates visual narratives culled from personal, political and historical themes. Her deep love of the complexity, sensitivity, humor, and ultimate strangeness found

Irene Lawrence is a painter, printmaker, and maker of books as well as a musician who studies the cello and the viola da gamba. Born in California, she grew up on Long Island and came to Providence, where she lives, to attend the Rhode Island School of Design. Lawrence’s work is characterized by an integration of rhythmic strokes using monochromatic

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Saberah has a BFA and MFA in Graphic Design, (Panjab University, Lahore, Pakistan), MID, (Master of Industrial Design, Pratt Institute, New York). Her awards include Rhode State Council on Arts’ three-year General Operating Support for Artists grant (GOSA), MacColl Johnson Fellowship in

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: For more than 50 years I’ve been creating images and objects through photography, serigraphy, stained glass, painting, drawing, textiles, and constructions. The catalyst for this work was and is historical, biblical, and personal. Original NetWorks Catalogue Bio: Alan Metnick was born in

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Ilse was born in Frankfurt/Main, Germany in 1932. She grew up in Japan between 1936-1947, returning to Germany at the age of fifteen. In 1954 Ilse began to study fine art at the art academies of Hamburg and Berlin, focussing on lettering

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Jessica Deane Rosner primarily works on paper with ink, gouache, watercolor and pencils to create labor intensive, intricate drawings. Within every series and across media that include paper, thread, and text, she strives for control allowing mistakes and accidents to remain visible,

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: I am a painter. I also design for theatre. I’ve been painting and drawing for a while now around Providence. I am interested in the Narragansett Bay and color and light and zoology and landscape. I read poetry and plays and often

Jesse Burke is a New England native and currently lives in Rhode Island with his wife and their three girls—Clover, Poppy, and Honey. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he is a faculty member, and his BFA from the University of Arizona. Burke’s work deals with themes related to

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Michael McCoy Glancy, Sr. (1950 – 2020) was born in Detroit, Michigan, and later earned a BFA from the University of Denver in 1973 and a BFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1977. Enticed by the

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Tracy Mahaffey has been a professional stone carver for nearly twenty-five years. The concentration of Mahaffey’s work is hand-carved memorials and gravestones, as well as inscriptional architectural carvings and sculptural pieces. Though stone is her first love, she has recently been exploring

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: With a fifty-year plus career as an artist, Paula Martiesian has been painting her entire adult life. A native Rhode Islander, she attended RISD both as a child and later as an adult, graduating in 1976. The former exhibitions curator for the

Sculpture and science intersect in the work of Stephen Metcalf, whose large, often kinetic works derive from a structural principle called ‘tensegrity’—defined by inventor Buckminster Fuller as ‘tensional integrity’ or contemporary sculptor Kenneth Snelson, as ‘floating compression.’ Since his student days at the Kansas City Art Institute, from which he received his BFA in 1972,

As the founder and president of Morris Nathanson Design, with offices in New York, Boston and Providence, Morris Nathanson has led projects all over the world. He has won many awards for his hospitality venues and restaurants. In 1986, after decades of business travel, Nathanson settled down in his native city, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Allison Paschke lives and works in Providence RI. Her delicate and sculptural wall pieces and installations explore geometry using translucent and reflective materials such as mirrors, resin, acrylic gels, and porcelain. Paschke earned a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an

Peter Prip, the son of Danish master metalsmith John Prip, was born in Denmark, shortly before his father came to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design. Prip attended the Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Craftsmen, and after an apprenticeship with Ronald Pearson, launched a career as a studio metalsmith and jeweler.

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Anthony Russo is freelance illustrator. His clients include the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Esquire, Random House, LA Times, Vanity Fair etc. Original NetWorks Catalogue Bio: Anthony Russo graduated from the University of Rhode

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Dean Snyder was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. he received a b.fa.  in photography and sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1974. In 1975-76 Snyder received a British Arts Council Fellowship for postgraduate work in sculpture at Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry, UK.

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: A designer, professor and academic leader, Rosanne Somerson has been advancing art and design for decades. After launching a successful studio design practice, she returned to RISD to teach and then founded the Furniture Design Department before serving as Provost, interim President,

Judyth vanAmringe’s art is based on years of design work as well as the intricacies of artistic process. She is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and has attended the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. For many years vanAmringe worked in New York City as a designer, running a business that made accessories

Best known as the creator and, since 1994, the artistic and executive director of WaterFire, Barnaby Evans received his BS in biology and environmental science from Brown University in 1975. He had an early career as a photographer, exhibiting his work nationally and internationally. Today WaterFire epitomizes Evans’ mission to create innovative art works that

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Nilton Cardenas was born in Lima, Peru; he embarked on an academic journey nurturing his passion for painting at the renowned Institute Superior Jose Sabogal in Lima. In 1993, his family set foot in Miami, Florida, seeking new opportunities, and eventually settled

Nancy Friese obtained her BS in nursing from the University of North Dakota, in the state where she was born and maintains a farmstead studio. She changed her career course and studied painting and printmaking at different venues, culminating in an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1980. Primarily a landscape painter

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Philip Jamoulis Jameson (1930-2022) was a large format black and white photographer who specialized in natural landscapes and the built environment. He worked in Italy, Greece, Switzerland, the American West and New England. In his later years he enjoyed working primarily in

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Shawn Kenney (BFA RISD ‘93) has called Rhode Island his home for the past 30 years. He maintains a studio in Pawtucket, and is passionately engaged in the state’s richly diverse creative & culinary communities. Original NetWorks Catalogue Bio: Shawn Kenney, born

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Scott Lapham was born in North Adams Massachusetts and came to Providence RI to attend the Rhode Island School of Design. His photographic and sculptural bodies of work have most often explored life in urban neighborhoods, environmental and cultural trends. Through personal

A multi-faceted artist and musician, Andrew Moon Bain was born in 1974 in Texas and grew up in the Pacific Northwest, playing classical music in the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. Since receiving a BFA in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Bain has become an active part of the Providence arts community as

Janet Prip, the daughter of Danish master metalsmith John Prip, was born in 1950 in New York. By the time her father was concluding his teaching career at the Rhode Island School of Design, she enrolled as a student, lucky enough to study with her father for four years. Prip began her career as a

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Andrew Raftery is an artist specializing in fictional and autobiographical narratives of contemporary American life. Andrew loves prints for their ubiquitous role in our world: on wallpaper, ceramics, textiles, and other functional objects, such as bandboxes. He welcomes the challenge of using

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Duane Slick is an artist of Native American descent, the Meskwaki Nation of Iowa and the Ho-Chunk Nation of Nebraska. His paintings blend the subjects of oral and visual Native American traditions with a focus on trickster strategies and modernist/post-modernist painting histories.

NetWorks Rhode Island and the Chazan Collection Exhibition, WaterFire Arts Center (2024) Bio: Esther Solondz is a visual artist who lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. She received an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, as well as doing graduate work in film at New York University. She has been the recipient of

Mark Taber’s artistic world is one of other people’s “junk” assembled to create fantastical chariots. These assemblages of everyday objects that the Rhode Island native, born in 1943, has been making for over twenty years are often whimsical but also a trip into “a parallel reality,” as Taber says. Music informs Taber’s visions as well, sometimes