Steven Easton
Steven Easton majored in glass at the Rhode Island School of Design and has lived in Rhode Island for over four decades. Easton uses the lost wax / lost foam process to achieve crisp detail in his kiln-cast glass portraits, and architecturally – influenced constructions. His work can be seen at the Corning Museum of Glass, The Musee Des Arts Decoratifs in Lucerne, Switzerland, the Newport Art Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY. The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and in “Spectrum”, a permanent installation at the Nulman Lewis Student Center at the Wheeler School in Providence.
Wendy Edwards
Wendy Edwards moved to Providence in 1980 to teach painting at Brown University and retired in 2020 following a survey of her work titled ‘LUSCIOUS: Paintings and drawings by Wendy Edwards’ at David Winton Bell Gallery. Her work has been included in exhibitions at The RISD Museum, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Bowdoin College Museum, Mystic Museum, Newport Art Museum, Palmer Museum at Penn State, Fullerton Museum, China National Academy of Painting in Beijing, as well as numerous other group and one person exhibitions throughout the US and abroad. Her work is included in Museums and private collections.
Jerry Ehrlich
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 bemusement by life’s contradictions and those moments you catch out of the corner of your eye remain his inspiration. He has work in museums, universities, corporate headquarters, public places, and private collections. His family jokes about that final day when they find him beneath another piece that he should never been working on alone.
Yizhak Elyashiv
Born in Israel in 1964, Yizhak Elyashiv received a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives in Providence and teaches Foundation studies at RISD and Rhode Island College.
Barnaby Evans
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 transform places and inspire people. He sees his canvas as the urban landscape and his palette as people interacting with public space. Evans has brought WaterFire to many cities, created other public art installations and received numerous awards and commendations for his work.
Walter Feldman (1925 – 2017)
Walter Feldman was born in 1925 in Lynn, Massachusetts, and grew up in a Russian-Polish-Jewish community. After high school, Feldman attended the Yale School of the Fine Arts but his education was interrupted by World War II. Following his exemplary service, Feldman returned to Yale in 1946 and completed his BFA in 1950. In 1957, Feldman studied mosaics and stained glass in Italy on a Senior Fulbright Fellowship. His art flourished during this year, and he received two major commissions: a multicolor woodcut for the International Graphic Arts Society and a series of exterior mosaic pavements for the Temple Beth-El in Providence. Feldman’s artistic style broke from realism, using lush color, collaging onto his canvases, and creating a fractured visual space. Feldman continued to produce as a tireless painter, printmaker, and mosaicist in the 1960s. He executed a large exterior mosaic mural for Temple Emanu-El in Providence and was awarded the George A. and Eliza Gardener Howard Fellowship. In 1968, Feldman designed and painted a 32-panel mural for the new meeting hall of Temple Emanu-el in Providence. Feldman was promoted to Professor of Art at Brown University in 1961 and was a beloved teacher for over 50 years. From 1985 on, Feldman divided his time between painting and as a designer and publisher of artists’ books under the Ziggurat press imprint. Feldman’s works are in over 150 public collections, and he created the Walter S. Feldman Trust for Artwork at Brown University to maintain his works and provide funds for the institution. Feldman retired from teaching in 2007 and kept creating art and publishing prints and books up until his death in Providence in 2017.
Ann Fessler
Ann Fessler is a photographer, installation artist, filmmaker and author. Her non-fiction work brings the stories of ordinary people into the public sphere. For the last 35 years Fessler has focused on the subject of adoption. The work in this exhibition is based on her book-in-progress, “The Things He Gave Me and The Things I Took,” which combines her writing and photographs with photographs taken by her adoptive father, Cliff. Her previous work focused on the stories of women who lost children to adoption in the 1950s–1970s, due to the social pressures of the time. Her documentary film, A GIRL LIKE HER (Women Make Movies, NY) was screened internationally and subtitled in five languages, and her non-fiction book, “The Girls Who Went Away” (Penguin Press), was chosen as one of the top 5 non-fiction books of 2006 by the National Book Critics Circle, and it was awarded the Ballard Book Prize, given annually to a female author who advances the dialogue about women’s rights. She has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the LEF and Rhode Island Foundations, and a Radcliffe Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Fessler is Professor Emerita at Rhode Island School of Design where she taught for 25 years and served as both the Head of the Photography Department and the Director of the Graduate Program in Photography.
Richard Fishman
Richard Fishman is a sculptor whose work is represented in numerous private and public collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Skirball Museum, the Rose Art Museum, Brandies University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the course of his career he has had 28 one-person exhibitions, more than 50 group exhibitions, and is the recipient of many awards including a Howard Foundation award and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Fishman is a Professor Emeritus at Brown University and was the Founding Director of the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University.
Ana Flores
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 engage people with the history of their local landscapes and the landscapes they carry within- as cultural heritage. Flores’s interest in deep ecology and the complex history of place is rooted in her own experiences of displacement; she was born in Cuba and arrived with her family in the United States as refugees. She now lives and has her studio in Charlestown, Rhode Island, surrounded by forest that is ancient Narragansett land.
Lucas Foglia
Lucas Foglia is a fine art photographer who makes stories about people in nature. His work is published and exhibited internationally. His prints and public installations are represented by Fredericks & Freiser Gallery in New York, Micamera in Milan, and Michael Hoppen Gallery in London.
David Frazer
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 the University of New Mexico (UNM) 1976, both in painting. He taught painting and drawing at RISD 1978 – 2020 and was Chair of the Painting Department for nine years. Frazer was appointed Chief Critic for the RISD European Honors Program and lived in Rome from 1995-’98. He continued to return to Rome and teach summer courses in painting and drawing at the Palazzetto Cenci Roma, for the next eight years. In 1989 he did sponsored research at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, China, now the Central Academy of Art (CAA). Since 2014 he has had exhibitions in Shenyang, Hangzhou, Jinan, Urumqi, Karamay, Hami, and Beijing.
Recent solo exhibitions: Qualia Contemporary, Palo Alto, CA 2021 and 2023
Nancy Devine Gallery, Warren, RI 2024
Mark Freedman
I was born in New York City and moved upstate with my family when I was five. I have always loved painting and drawing. I love the minutiae of everyday urban /postindustrial life. I like brief bios and statements, believing that the artwork is where the communication takes place. That’s my statement and i’m sticking to it.
Nancy Friese
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 and printmaker, Friese is currently working in watercolor on large-scale landscapes. A recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and artist residencies, Friese has exhibited her paintings and prints nationally and internationally. She is a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she has taught since 1990.
Julie Gearan
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 within the history of painting inspires her endlessly.
Hank Gilpin
Hank Gilpin enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design to do graduate work in photojournalism after serving as a photojournalist in Vietnam. He instead discovered the joy of woodworking under the influence of instructor Tage Frid, who convinced Gilpin to enter the world of studio furniture. After apprenticing with Frid, Gilpin established his shop in Lincoln, Rhode Island, where he has built a business of fine furniture design and achieved great respect for his knowledge of wood technology and historical furniture. Gilpin’s love for domestic woods is inherent in his creative process. As well as using exotic and high quality woods like redwood and ebony, he loves what is considered waste or low quality woods such as pallet wood. Gilpin has made pieces for clients throughout the United States and exhibited his work in museum and gallery exhibitions.
Michael M. Glancy (1950-2020)
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 “smoke and fire” of glassblowing, Glancy continued his education with glass artist Dale Chihuly, earning an MFA in glass from RISD in 1980. In 1982, while teaching at Chihuly’s Pilchuck Glass School, he discovered sandblasting and cold-working techniques. He adopted the thick, heavy glass construction of the Italian sommerso and Scandinavian grail, better suited for deep reliefs (in contrast to the Venetian method of blowing paper-thin vessels). Glancy rarely created stand-alone objects, preferring instead to create dynamic pairings of sculpted objects and the complementary bases on which they were placed. The object and its display platform were thus conceived as forming an aesthetic whole. His signature technique was an electroforming process that creates a thin layer of metal on the glass. The artist (or his assistant) stencil-painted his creations with electrically conductive paint, attached electrodes to the object, and placed the object in a chemical bath of metallic compounds. Introducing an electrical current to the chemical bath transferred the metal plating to the painted surface of the glass, producing a clean and defined separation between the two mediums and resulting in the intricately layered texture of each piece. Glancy adopted the Murano model of collaboration between master glass artists and glassblowers first brought to the U.S. by Dale Chihuly. In his own studio in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, he worked predominantly with two assistants, Myles Baer and Adrianne Evans. Baer, who had been with Glancy since the age of sixteen, specialized in cold-working glass techniques such as cutting, grinding, engraving, and sandblasting. Evans developed the lost-wax molds used to cast pate de verre glass and later bronze and stainless steel all metal objects. He collaborated with other glass artists as well. His association with the Pilchuck Glass School introduced him to influential European glass masters and led to a long and fruitful partnership with Swedish glass artist and master glassblower, Jan-Erik Ritzman of Transjo Sweden, with whom he forged a multi-decade collaboration. Glancy was an Adjunct Faculty Member and Senior Critic at RISD in the Jewelry & Metalsmithing department where he taught electroforming from 1982 until his death, and was a multi-session invited faculty member at Pilchuck. A National Endowment for the Arts Award Recipient, his work has been exhibited and collected around the world and is included in many prominent museum collections nationally and internationally.
Richard Goulis
Richard Goulis is a multimedia and performance artist who has been a fixture on the local art scene since he first arrived in Providence in 1980 to study at RISD. Between 2008 and 2016 Goulis produced and directed over 100 videos as part of NetWorks Rhode Island.
Corey Grayhorse
A native Californian born in 1980, Corey Grayhorse came to Rhode Island in 2002. She brought with her a California flair for fantasy that emerges in her photographs of costumed participants wearing tutus, dayglo outfits, or animal masks, evoking her own Alice in Wonderland scenario and often drawing on popular culture. Grayhorse, who studied photography at Santa Monica College, wants to recreate her imagined inner visions, which usually evoke humor rather than pathos: they have a clown-like sensibility. Grayhorse makes her living as a commercial photographer and possesses a mastery of digital enhancement techniques.
Malcolm Grear (1931- 2016)
Malcolm Grear was born in Kentucky in 1931, trained as a welder in the Navy and studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He was Professor Emeritus in Graphic Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he taught for thirty-eight years, and is known for his “visual identity” work through his firm, Malcolm Grear Designers, in Providence.
Bunny Harvey
Bunny Harvey lives and paints in studios in Providence, Tunbridge VT, and NYC. A graduate of RISD (BFA’67 and MFA ’72) she is also a recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. She taught Painting at Wellesley College for 39 years during which time she had exclusive gallery affiliations in NYC. She retired from teaching and is painting full-time now.
Tayo Heuser
Tayo Heuser was born in Washington D.C., and grew up in North, East, and West Africa and Europe. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI and her master’s degree from Vermont College in Montpelier, VT. Currently, she lives and works in Providence and Mallorca.
Heuser’s works are included in the collections of the Phillips Collection Museum, the Hammer Museum, the Rhode Island School of Museum, the Weatherspoon Museum N.Carolina, the American Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Leeds Foundation, the Werner Kramarsky Collection, Duke Energy Art Collection, the Progressive Art Collection, Fidelity Investments art collection, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Liberty Mutual, amongst many other public and private collections.
Paul Housberg
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, he studied in England with Patrick Reyntiens, a pioneer in contemporary stained glass and the author of an international standard work on the technique. Later, as a Fulbright Scholar, Housberg pursued his exploration of glass at the International Center of Glass Research (CIRVA) in Marseille, France. Housberg’s career focus has been on the creation of site-specific works in architectural glass for public spaces which can be seen on his website at paulhousberg.com. His current practice includes watercolors that reflect the transparency and color of his work in glass. Housberg lives and works in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
Philip J. Jameson (1930-2022)
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 his beloved city of Providence. His choice of subject often accommodated his desire to depict extremely fine detail in order to capture an essence of texture and tactility that seems at times to go beyond ones recollection of nature. Effects of natural light play a central role in the unfolding drama, and no parcel of the print, however subordinate is allowed the luxury of devaluation: information is available in the darkest darks and often in the whitest whites as well. His works are in the permanent collections of many museums throughout the United States.
Shawn Kenney
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.
Scott Lapham
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 and environmental and cultural trends. Through personal relationships, he looks to find the emotional value, historical relevance, and an appreciation for lives being lived in places that are often underappreciated. Lapham’s art educational work has included co-founding the AS220 Community Darkroom, directing the Princes 2 Kings mentorship program and teaching youth from predominately underserved communities. In addition to free-lance photography, he is currently producing a gun violence prevention public art project titled “One Gun Gone.”
Irene Lawrence
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 colors and has been influenced both by music and writing. Her printmaking, enhanced by concentrated study at the Crown Point Press in San Francisco, has pushed her to total abstraction in all her work. Lawrence is a member of American Abstract Artists, New York, and has exhibited in the United States and Europe, including locally at the David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, and RISD.
Eugene Lee (1939-2023)
Eugene Lee (1939-2023) was a set designer for theatre, film, and television. He is currently represented on Broadway by the musical Wicked. Other Broadway credits include Candide, Sweeney Todd, Show Boat, and Ragtime. Eugene’s film work includes Coppola’s Hammett, Huston’s Mr. North, and Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street. For NBC, Eugene designed over 45 seasons of Saturday Night Live, as well as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night With Seth Meyers. Regional theatre credits include Long Wharf Theatre, Dallas Theatre Center, Arena Stage, Seattle Rep, The Goodman Theatre, and Trinity Rep, where he was a resident designer for over 50 years. He lived in Providence with his wife, Brooke, and their 2 sons.
Meg Little
Meg Little successfully combines function with fine art in her handtufted rugs with designs inspired by ancient petroglyphs as well as modern art. Little received her BFA from Tyler School of Art and an MAE from the Rhode Island School of Design. She taught at Plymouth College of Art and Design in England for several years before beginning to make rugs. Little has exhibited extensively in Rhode Island as well as in national venues including the Fuller Craft Museum, American Craft Museum, Smithsonian Craft Show, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show. She has been an elected juror of the American Craft Council, a juror of Crafts at the Castle, Boston, and has taught at the Penland School of Crafts, as well as at the Newport Art Museum where she recently had a solo exhibition.
