Jerilyn Babroff (etsy.com/shop/JerilynnBabroff) has worked in art for over 40 years. She makes contemporary, whimsical ceramics which sell in galleries and stores worldwide. They are in many private collections as well as the Jewish Museum in NYC. These days she has been painting on canvas with acrylic paint with the same whimsy as her ceramics. She likes to bring out the moments in life that have passion.
Sara Beames (beames.com) and her husband Michael started Beames Designs! in 1990. Located in the inspiring Hudson Valley of New York, they produce hand made fused glass Judaica, Home Accessories and Jewelry. Sara is the driving force behind the glass design. With a degree in Art from San Francisco State University and many years in the commercial art world, she has turned her passion for glass and great design into a joyous livelihood. Her work has received three Niche Award Nominations.
Beames Designs! work can be found in galleries and craft shops throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, South Africa, Australia and Japan. Special Collections include an ornament for the White House, Washington DC (now in the Clinton Library), an Eternal Flame sculpture for the Kingston City Hall, Kingston, NY, and a Donor Wall for the JCC of Northern Philadelphia. Their goal is to create artwork that is functional, aesthetically appealing and accessibly priced.
Liz Horn and Ron Zukor (www.lizandronjewelers.com) have been making jewelry professionally since the 1970s. Studies have included such places as Hunter College, fine arts, The Jewellery Workshop, The Arts Students League, The Craft Students League, Parsons School of Design, and The Fashion Institute of Technology.
In 1980 they were participating members in a craft cooperative in Greenwich Village in New York City. They have exhibited their work at numerous juried craft fairs in the Northeast and have had their work displayed at numerous galleries, as well. They have taught jewelry making at The Woodstock Guild. Since 2006 they have participated in a mentorship program sponsored by the local Woodstock school district giving high school students instruction in their studio.
Judith Kerman (etsy.com/shop/MayappleArts and MayapplePress.com) is primarily a poet, but her understanding of the Greek word poesis, “making,” includes handwork of many kinds. As the publisher of Mayapple Press, she has designed more than 100 books of poetry and literary prose. She works in in a variety of media, especially jewelry and small sculptural pieces. She has studied silversmithing and glass lampworking at the Bydcliffe Guild, Snow Farm and Hudson Valley Silverworks.
Lissa Queeney Matthews (www.queeneydesign.net) studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Upon graduation she earned the Jewelry Design Award from Van Cleef & Arpels. After a summer in Europe she returned to work as a designer at Van Cleef & Arpels atelier on Fifth Avenue. Followed by the position of bench jeweler creating Van Cleef & Arpels work at Georges Peyrot.
She was a co-owner of the retail/wholesale jewelry company Spirit of Two; who sold their work to galleries and stores across the United States. They maintained a gallery and studio in the Rondout section of Kingston, NY after moving the business up from the meatpacking district in Manhattan.
Lissa has worked for a handful of noted designers, creating their one-of-a-kinds, and models for production. She currently maintains a studio making jewelry, model making for various companies, and teaching the art of stone setting. Gold, silver, precious and semi-precious gems are all incorporated into her work; which includes bridal, commissions, and one-of-a-kind pieces. She also teaches the many facets of stone setting at Hudson Valley Silverworks in Kingston.
Basha Ruth Nelson (www.basharuthnelson.com) says: “As I bend & form the metal, creating shapes, folds & curves, one strip interacting with the next, I search for harmony…equilibrium.” Sculptor and installation artist Basha Ruth Nelson received her Master of Arts Degree from New York University [NYU]. Her solo exhibitions include the Noho Gallery, 60 Washington Square East Galleries and the Project Space (New York City), York College (Queens NY), Woodstock Artists Association & Museum (Woodstock NY), The Desanti Plaza Public Sculpture Project (Hartsdale NY), Manhattanville College (Purchase NY), Greene County Council on the Arts (Catskill NY), Pritzker Studio & Gallery (Highland NY), Flemington Gallery of the Arts (Flemington NJ), US Embassy (Nassau, Bahamas), Hudson Valley MOCA, formerly HVCCA (Peekskill NY) and Cunneen Hackett Cultural Center (Poughkeepsie NY). Additional recent exhibits include the Trolley Barn and Queen City 15 in Poughkeepsie NY. In Florida, she exhibited at The North Miami Museum and Art Center, Continuum Gallery, Grove House, and Norton Gallery & Museum of the Palm Beaches. In New York, the Woodstock Historical Society (Woodstock), Akin Museum (Pawling) and Hammond Museum (North Salem). Among international group exhibits, her work was shown at the NY Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum (Copenhagen, Denmark), the Biennale in Florence (Italy), the Matinee Art Gallery (Nassau, Bahamas) and Procida (Italy). She was invited to participate at the 2020 Venice Biennial for Architecture and Sculpture.
Her sculptures and works on paper are exhibited widely in the United States and abroad, and are held in public and private collections including Hudson Valley MOCA-Riverfront Green Park, Peekskill, NY; Hammond Museum, North Salem, NY; Woodstock Artists Association and Museum (WAAM), Woodstock, NY; Brooklyn Art Library, NY; Coral Springs Museum & Cultural Center, Coral Springs, FL; New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, NYC; Woodstock Historical Society, Woodstock, NY; US Embassy, Nassau, Bahamas.
Awards include the Lorenzo Il Magnifico Sculpture Award from the Biennale in Florence, Italy and the Welfred McGibben from the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, FL. Her work was published in The Sourcebook of Architectural & Interior Art, 20th Edition; New Art International; Gallery Guide; Who’s Who in American Art (since 1991); numerous newspapers and magazines from local to international. She lives in Ulster County and her studio is at the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Shelley Parriott (www.ColorFieldSculpture.com) has exhibited and has work in collections in New York City and throughout the Hudson Valley, the USA and Europe. Parriott’s sculpture has received numerous honors and awards. She began working with two dimensional media, but her materials continued to expand into space. She says: “I love to create large-scale interactive installations that invite the public to walk into and through transparent shapes and colors.”
Designed as patterns of multiples, these prismatic structures have the potential to be developed up to any scale … indoors or outdoors. Participants spontaneously walk into and through shimmering forms which may extend as far as the site or the project permits. Perforated sheer metal structures appear to be delicate and airy as if they are made of glass or fabric, but industrial materials and proper site-specific installation in any size or color provide the solidity, structural strength and durability to withstand outdoor weather conditions and support interactions with the public.
Landscapes and urban spaces are transformed by expansive fields of color. Imbued with light, transparent multi-hued structures redefine, merge into, and emerge from, the environment, transforming the atmosphere. Monumental in size and visual impact, yet illusory, overlapping layers create environments that immerse the surroundings and the spirit in vibrant inter-active multi-dimensional experiences of light and space. Shapes appear and disappear one behind another. Visually and conceptually, these colorful constructions simultaneously present a dichotomy and an integration between the corporeal and the ephemeral—our physical and spiritual aspects—and the transitory nature of form.
Naomi Schmidt (naomigraphics.com) reports: Going way back, when I was a teen ager I used to go to parks and sketch people. I also loved doing batik. Throughout my life I have done water colors off and on, but because of time, especially in recent years, I have not done anything other than a bit of sketching. But I have been a graphic designer for the last 30 years+. Working on websites and print, both have their limitations, but especially these days, you can be more creative with web design. It can also be fun to work with those limitations and see what I can do anyway.
Gloria Waslyn (www.facebook.com › gloria.waslyn) has a family of blue and gold macaws that have been the primary subjects of her documentary photography. Gloria was a VP of the Professional Womens Photography Association in NYC for years before moving upstate when her parrots had their first of now three children. Her exhibitions throughout NYC and at the United Nations focused exclusively on the portraits of people holding the peace parrots at various peace, ecology and educational events where the parrots would lecture on the inter-relatedness of a living Mother Earth and all lifeforms that create our conscious cosmos. While the peace parrots are at home Gloria is often seen photographing local people and activities as well as curating various art and music events and fringe festivals. Her Parrots For Peace documentary subjects, Ms. Merlin, Mr. Baby and their three children, Peace-nik, Ara, and Hope live with her in Ruby, NY, along with her family of five cats (a mom and her kittens before they all got fixed).