CONNOR HENDERSON
Connor Henderson is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, currently working and creating in New York City. Through his work, Connor focuses on interpreting society through a critical feminist lens to analyze social constructions of gender and identity. His practice is rooted in queer theory and very much experimental. Connor teaches visual art at a public high school in Queens and currently lives in The Bronx. Raised in Upstate New York; Connor received his BFA in Photography and BS in Visual Arts Education from the State University of New York at New Paltz and is currently pursuing his MFA in Social Practice at Queens College.
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connorhendersonphoto@gmail.com
RIE OSOGOE
Rie Osogoe is an activist artist born in Japan who works on poverty issues in Japan.
She is exploring how art and poverty issues are connected and what role art can play in society by experiencing actual society. Rie has a 10-year career as a painter and an art teacher for children. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Social Practice at Queens College.
AMY POLLICINO
Amy Pollicino is a trans artist, activist, and educator born and raised in NY. Their current work is largely influenced by educational organizing. Recent community work included Architecture of Internment, North Bend’s ACLU case, and the Equal Justice Initiative marker in Coos County. They are interested in exploring healthy dialog around difficult social issues and promoting positive visibility for the LGBTQIA+ community. Amy is currently pursuing their MFA in Social Practice at Queens College.
CRISTINA FERRIGNO
Cristina Ferrigno’s work deals with personal and philosophical questions of identity and the themes of preservation, memory and heritage. Using various photographic processes, mixed media collage and the archive, she explores the feeling of cultural “in between–ness” and loss. Cristina is a Colombian adoptee, who was raised in Brooklyn and currently lives and works in Queens. She graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009 with a BFA in General Fine Arts and a concentration in Photography. She recently exhibited the newest iteration of the Latinx show for LaBodega Gallery in Brooklyn, New York in May of 2019.
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BRIANNA HARLAN
Brianna Harlan is a multidisciplinary artist and organizer. She uses community organizing, participatory experience, and radical vulnerability to inquire and intervene the effects of social norms and sociopolitical dynamics on health, intimacy, selfhood, and community. Brianna is a Hadley Creative Fellow, Great Meadows grant recipient, and Kentucky Foundation for Women Fire Starter award winner. Her most recent residencies were at Oxbow School of Art and Artists’ Residency and Materia Abierta in Mexico City.
ADAM NADEL
Adam Nadel works at the intersection of science, art, and human rights. His photographic-based practice is grounded in a narrative of human choice and agency, stressing the local and global implications of our individual choices. He creates to excite, inform, and motivate – art that both questions and advocates. His exhibitions on disease, war, and the anthropocene have been presented domestically and internationally at locations such as the Hotel de Ville (Paris), National Museum of Ghana, World Heath Organization headquarters (Geneva), Field Museum (Chicago), Everglades National Park (Florida), and the United Nations Headquarters (NYC). He is the recipient of two NYFA Fellowships in Photography, two first prizes at World Press Photo, and his work has received grants from the National Science Foundation and Magnum Foundation, among others.
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ISIAH POWELL-TAYLOR
Isiah Powell-Taylor is mixed media collage artist and photographer who recently received his BA from Sarah Lawrence College. His work centers around concepts of isolation, surveillance, the Black Family and Afrofuturism. Through the use of his own personal family archive of images and trinkets he produces work that pushes blackness to the forefront, and flips typically held thoughts of black bodies back onto the viewer. He aims to make work that pushes younger black generations to lean into the art world, rather than see it as an impossibility.
Certificate Students
J. KIM
Kim is an artist currently working on a socially engaged project that addresses language, history, and diaspora in Flushing, Queens.
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Alumni
EUNWOO NAM
Uno Nam is a NY-based artist with a BA in Religion and Studio Art from Hunter College. His interest in cultural and social studies brought him to the U.S. from his home country, South Korea. His artistic practice includes performance, video, photography, painting, music and sound production.
CODY ANN HERRMANN
Cody Ann Herrmann is an interdisciplinary artist, native to Flushing, Queens. Guided by her interest in public space, participatory design methods, and urban resilience Cody’s work often explores urban planning processes by applying an iterative, human centered approach to ecological problem solving. Since 2014 her art has focused on her hometown of Flushing, creating projects critiquing policy related to land use, local development, and environmental planning in areas surrounding Flushing Bay and Creek.
Cody has been the recipient of the More Art Engaging Artists Fellowship, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning Jerome Foundation Artist in Residency Fellowship, and Underwater New York / Works on Water Residency. She has been awarded a Queens Art Fund New Work Grant, Waterfront Alliance City of Water Day Award, and Social Practice Queens Action Art Award. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, and she has given presentations at Open Engagement, Pratt Institute, LaGuardian Community College, and the Godwin-Ternbach Museum. Cody holds an MFA from Social Practice Queens at CUNY Queens College, and undergraduate degree from Parsons School of Design.
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NAOMI KUO
Naomi Kuo hails from Houston, TX and currently lives and works in Queens, NY. She received her MFA in Social Practice from Queens College in 2019, and a BA in Studio Art and English at the University of Texas in Austin in 2013. Kuo’s work explores neighborhood identity formation and Asian American communities. She utilizes drawing, painting, collage, quilting, and various collaborative modes to make connections between societal systems, built environments, and lived experience. Her recent work focuses on community building in Flushing, Queens.
Her work has been presented as part of exhibitions and programs at the Queens Museum Community Partnership Gallery, the American Folk Art Museum Self-Taught Genius Gallery, and the Queens Library at Flushing in collaboration with Queens Memory; the Walls-Ortiz Gallery and Center; Korea Art Forum; and the Local Project Art Space. She was an artist-in-residence then staff with Transform Arts. Kuo is currently the Visual Arts Program Associate at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning.
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TARA HOMASI
Tara Homasi is an Iranian artist based in New York. She received an MFA in Social Practice from Queens College and a BA in Graphic Design. Her work concentrates on the intersection of history and the media. She investigates new media and social platforms and its new byproducts such as cyberpsychology, digital marginalization, and virtual sanctions. She roams in big tech companies arena and produces critical works with online materials like video, reviews, online gaming, commenting in live forums, and etcetera, in an effort to make a dialog with other content users/makers to draw attention on the techniques have been enforced by tech companies to manipulate and hack our digital existence and the course of history.
ZAID ISLAM
Coming from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Zaid primarily works with photography, but also uses video, text, installation, and performance. His work is oriented toward collaborative public actions and interventions in an intensely dense city of 17 million people. A former student of a photography school in Dhaka, as well as former photo journalist with a mainstream newspaper, Zaid’s practice has involved interventions outside these constricting institutional walls. As Dhaka becomes increasingly congested and over-developed, sacrificing human relations for the sake of speed, Zaid tries to bring people’s gazes back to the small, the ordinary, and the human.
His interventionist work in in Dhaka can be seen on his website. As part of the Alal O Dulal activist community, Zaid writes blog posts on issues like commercialization of folk festivals at Lalon Fakir akhra, protests the disasters in the garment manufacturing industry, and remembers spiritual gurus like Mowla Boksh who has shaped his views.
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SETARE ARASHLOO
Setare Arashloo is a painter by training, but uses an array of media including animation, video and installation to explore and expand on issues that are very personal, yet engage larger social issues. She is a member of Workers Art Coalition collective, currently creating an oral history archive about IBEW Local 3 electricians for the library of congress. Her documentaries,“Workers Art Coalition” and “ Precarious Workers Pageant,” both on issues of labor, has been screened at United Film Festival 2016 and Queens Museum, Queens Council on the Arts and Astoria Historical Society at 2015. Her works have been exhibited in Iran, US, Afghanistan and Australia.
Setare was born and raised in Tehran, graduated with a BA in Painting from the University of Tehran, and received a post baccalaureate certificate in Fine Art at Maryland Institute College of Art and MFA in Studio Art at Queens College, CUNY, New York. Setare works as freelance artist, teaching fellow at Henry Van Arsdel Center for Labor Studies and as museum and collection assistant at Godwin Ternbach Museum. Setare is an AIM fellow at Bronx Museum and is represented by Azad Gallery in Tehran, Iran.
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PAULA FRISCH
Paula is inspired by the visual patterns and rhythms that comprise communities and their physical world. She creates work that engages with viewers and physical space using intricate compilations of images and detailed mark making to evoke the multifaceted links to which she responds. Her aim is to create a dialogue about preservation and empowerment by using collaborative and interactive components in her work. Paula received her BA in Environmental Studies and Studio Art. She was born and raised in New York City and has also lived within communities in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma.
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BETHANY FANCHER
Bethany Fancher is a transdisciplinary artist who works in sculpture, photography, video, performance, and community-based projects. Fancher’s practice is informed by her osteopathic background, as well as movement training, sound art, and permaculture studies. She and a former student who Fancher taught for several years in India are currently developing a series of short films that use comedy, specifically Charlie Chaplin movies, as a transformative agent for addressing and exploring social stigmas in India. Since receiving her BA from Empire State College, Fancher has been awarded numerous residencies, including: Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, Wyoming; The McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, North Carolina; TAJ Residency, Bangalore , India; and the Horse and Art Research Program, Barnag, Hungary. Fancher was born and raised in Liberty Corner, New Jersey, and splits her time between Astoria, Queens, New York; Nashville, TN; Long Island, New York; and Hyderabad and Bangalore, India.
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PEDRO FELIPE VINTIMILLA
Pedro Felipe Vintimilla is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City for the past 12 years. With two Bachelor degrees (Communications and Visual Arts) from Ecuador and the United States. He is currently running two projects: Art & Design Instructor at St. Anthony High School in New Jersey; and, A.I.M. Lab (Artistic Inspiration Methods) a Laboratory of Inspiration and Creativity, opening the world of art expression to different communities both in Ecuador and New York.
In the last five years he has shaped his career as an Art and Creative Director, collaborating with different artists and institutions on individual, group and community based projects.
As part of his desire to explore new artistic domains, beyond his fine arts production, he has found new creative outlets, including: video, writing, design, and performance. Combining manual ability and job experience gathered throughout his life and work with artists and designers in NYC, he has found that his artistic process must be balanced between personal projects and the community.
JULIAN PHILLIPS
Julian Louis Phillips (he/him) is a New York-based artist working in performance, sculpture, and public interventions. Phillips has exhibited and performed throughout the region, including the South East Queens Biennial, Microscope Gallery, and New York Live Arts. He has been a JCAL Jerome Foundation Artist in Residence, More Art Engaging Artist Fellow, and NARS Foundation Artist in Residence. Phillips is a graduate of Social Practice Queens at CUNY Queens College and Saint Joseph’s University. Since 2018 Phillips has focused on making performance that questions the beliefs that uphold carceral thinking.
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ERIN TURNER
Erin Turner is a site-specific installation artist who was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Inspired by travel, landscape, and weather, she has installed her work across the globe in locations such as the Grand Canyon, the Cahokia Mounds, the Mohave Desert, Moab, Chicago, Kansas City, San Francisco, New York, Oklahoma, India, Thailand, Saint Guilhem le Desert, The Netherlands, and Argentina. She is interested in the examination of the concept of landscape as it relates to the symbolic, the cultural, and the historic. Her work ranges from sculpture and light, installation, painting, photography, video, and collaborative dance and performance. Interconnectivity, ecology, and sustainability are at the basis of her current investigations.
She has attended Pratt Institute, Escola de la Llotja, Barcelona, The University of Tulsa, and La Universidad del Museo Social Argentino, Buenos Aires, with emphasis in the visual arts and arts education with prison and post-prison populations. She has worked with a variety of organizations and contemporary art centers and festivals such as Tierraviva NGO in Argentina, CODA Museum in The Netherlands, SCOPE International Gallery Festival, NYC, The Tulsa Performing Arts Center, The Living Arts of Tulsa, Tanguey Studio France, This Land Press, Cain’s Ballroom, and the Tulsa Children’s Museum. She is currently based out of Brooklyn, NY.
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FLOOR GROOTENHUIS
Floor Grootenhuis is a Dutch-Kenyan contemporary artist based in NY. Her contemporary and performative practice is focused on invitation, connection and identity. Floor has lived and worked across the world including Kenya, The Netherlands, Spain, Indonesia, and now NYC. Her upbringing and professional work in the field of humanitarian assistance influence her contemporary, performative and collaborative practice.
In her work Floor values the common experience within our diverse society. She has a desire to listen, learn, and intimately connect with others through an open and experimental platform. Her collaborative research-based approach uses a variety of media. The communities she is connected to are her key collaborators. Her art deals with the body and our collective relationship to each other. In her latest works, Floor partnered with biologists to bring science and art closer to the public. All of her engagements are made possible by nurturing and developing social connections ranging from university department directors to biology science majors, custodial staff, cafe managers, and legal departments.
Floor is currently an artist-in-residence/research scholar at the Raper Lab in the Hunter College Department of Biological Sciences. She has an MFA in Social Practice from Queens College, CUNY and was a More Art Engaging Artist 2017 fellow and part of the NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentorship Program 2018/19. She has a Masters in Human Geography from the University of the Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Floor has received grants from Social Practice Queens through the Arts, Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and Vilcek Foundation and Queens Art Intervention. The Queens Museum, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum and Five Myles Gallery in New York have exhibited her work as well as the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona, Spain. Floor’s pieces live in private collections in Kenya, South Africa, Australia, USA, Thailand, Indonesia and the Netherlands.
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ALIX CAMACHO
Alix Camacho is an artist from Bogota, Colombia, where she obtained a BFA (Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano – 2009) and a Postgraduate degree in Artistic Education (Universidad Nacional de Colombia – 2011). She was co-founder and part of the editorial committee of the contemporary Art Magazine {{em_rgencia} from 2011 to 2014. Her current artistic practice involves individual and collective projects in performance, sculpture, urban intervention, graphic production and video. She is part of the colombian artistic group The Trans that works around the problematic of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO). Her individual processes deal with the political potential of the everyday life to ‘hack’ economical, social and cultural established logics. She attends the MFA in Social Practices at Queens College as a Fulbright/Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia grantee.
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JEFF KASPER
Jeff Kasper is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, organizer, educator, and designer. His primary focus is art and design as social action. He designs pathways for a trauma-informed culture shift, prototyping conflict transformation, platforms for collaboration, and peer support processes through objects, tools, social spaces, and workshops.
Over the last decade, he partnered with numerous cultural, grassroots, and social planning organizations in New York City to design over 300 cultural experiences, including public programs, publications, and exhibitions with hundreds of artists, non-arts experts, and community members. Civic Art Lab, the public pedagogy platform he co-founded in 2010, brings together hundreds of sustainability advocates each year. As a peer-mentor and fellowship director with organizations, New York Foundation for the Arts and More Art, he has supported the work of nearly 200 individual artist-activists. Kasper retains an active arts organizing and design facilitation practice where he works on strategic planning, instigating cultures of accessibility, and creating programs for community outreach, arts support infrastructure, disability culture, and artist services.
Kasper has chaired and presented his research at numerous conferences and professional forums including College Art Assocation (CAA), Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (FATE), Interaction Design and Children Conference at Sesame Workshop and New York Hall of Science, “Teaching Social Practice” at UMass Dartmouth, MoMA Department of Education “Prime Time Exchange”, AIGA Phoenix Design Week, and the Art Directors Club.
He is currently completing a monograph workbook (2020); a contemporary reader on William Morris and social justice (2022); and a textbook on trauma-sensitivity in art and design-based learning. (2023-24)
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GINA MINIELLI
Gina Minielli is a Queens-based photographer with an M.F.A. from Queens College and a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts. Ms. Minielli is currently teaching Photography as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Queens College and Molloy College. Upon graduation, she was the Chief Photographer of the New York Mets Baseball Team. Later became the First Assistant to the internationally-renowned environmental portrait photographer, Arnold Newman.
She photographed and co-produced the book, Incidental Heroes, showcasing black and white portraits and biographies of inspirational people who are living successful lives with multiple sclerosis. With over 250,000 copies in print, Incidental Heroes was covered by Photo District News, NBC News, Lifetime Television, Self Magazine, We Magazine and the New York Daily News.
In 2020, Professor Minielli was featured on PBS for her photography portrait series on the Religious Diversity of Flushing, with ceramicist Nancy Bruno, entitled The Beacon of Pluralism. She was a presenter at the College Art Association Annual Conference in Chicago. She and her colleague, Jenny LaMonica, led a discussion on Mindfulness and Contemplative Pedagogy in the Classroom.
website: https://gmgphoto.myportfolio.com/
instagram: ginaminielli
NICOLE MOURIÑO
Nicole Mouriño received her BFA in Painting from Pratt Institute of Art and considers herself to be a Creative Synthesist; engaged in full-time Studio and Administrative work. Mouriño was a YoungArts Awardee in ’06 and in ’12 participated as a Hunter College YoungArts Fellow with Mentor Illana Hester, and Curators Mariluz Hoyos, and Michelle Yun. Nicky has assisted in the elaboration of exhibitions with various studios and arts organizations including, but not limited to; The Hunter College Art Galleries, Teresita Fernandez Studio, and Matthew Barney Studio. She currently lives and works in Queens, NY. www.nicolemourino.com
SCOTT BRAUN
Scott Braun is a visual artist from New York, NY. His multi-media sculptures draw on a background in furniture design and woodworking, frequently combining the highly crafted with the ready-made. Recent projects include a collaborative and interactive sculpture at Queens Museum exploring the concept of “righteousness” as it is measured in the Old and New Testaments, and a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to create public sculptures throughout Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
He was artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch in Colorado (2012) and Haystack in Maine (2014). His work has been exhibited in the Queens Museum, the Benton/Nyce Gallery, the Pei-Ling Chen Sculpture Garden at Savannah College of Art and Design, Rye Arts Center gallery, and the American University Museum. His teaching experience includes an appointment as Lecturer in Sculpture at Yale School of Art (2009-2012), Faculty/Critic at New York School of Interior Design (2012-present), and visiting artist/critic at Parsons School of Design, University of the Arts, Lehigh University, and Pratt Institute. He holds a BA in Music from the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
FRANCISCO KARMELIC
Francisco Karmelić studied architecture in Santiago, Chile. Over the last years, his interests have focused on the diverse range of cultural practices that engage actively and creatively with people. With the creation of his first participatory art project back in his hometown, he was able to work actively in public space as well as within cultural centers, schools and neighborhoods.
Understanding art as “an experimental practice involved in the transformation of our world” as Suely Rolnik defines it, Francisco joined the MFA in Social Practice at Queens College determined to explore possibilities in the combination of art, architecture and education.
SOL ARAMENDI
Sol Aramendi is a New York based Argentinean artist working in photography and installation. Sol has merged her artistic work with Social Practice. She is the founder of the Project Luz Photography Program for New Immigrants. Using photography as a tool of empowerment, creating a dialogue of understanding, connecting people with communities and their creativity. Her work is currently on view at the Museum of the Americas in Washington DC. She was featured at El Museo del Barrio’s 2011″(S) Files,” the museum’s sixth biennial of art created by Latino artists living in NY. Sol’s work has been shown widely in New York, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Los Angeles, Tolouse, Barcelona, Madrid, Utrecht, and Split.
BARRIE CLINE
Barrie Cline was involved in the NYC homesteading/squatter movement in the Lower East Side in the early 80s, and worked with graffiti writers in the South Bronx on video projects at Planned Parenthood, and then ran an arts program that served children and youth ranging from home schooled to the shelter system through a sliding scale system. During this time, she began to work in ceramics, and eventually created youth-oriented participatory public programming around the idea of re-making the city using the engagement with materials and play as the starting point- building this out in collaboration with housing organizers and educators.
Her involvement and later scholarship on subway graffiti and the role of class in the spatial politics of NYC led to teaching classes at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies on public art to union construction workers. Over the years, she developed the course and several public art projects platforming the work, which along with the SPQ program, lead to the formation of the Workers Art Coalition (WAC). WAC continues to function as a collective of union construction workers and artists who are working collaboratively to increase blue collar presence and cultural expression in the public sphere as well as exploring ways art might have a greater role in the labor movement-and visa versa.
Now, as faculty at Van Arsdale, Barrie has grown the arts program within its labor studies curriculum to include worker filmmaking and climate justice, and WAC has developed a number of public commissions and exhibitions-with buy in from within art circles and unions. WAC members are currently Santa Fe Art Institute fellows, and their public sculpture Muscle Memory was just recently moved from Socrates Sculpture Park to its permanent home at The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local # 3 headquarters in Flushing. Barrie is currently part of EFA’s Shift Residency (2020-2021) cohort.
SETH AYLMER
Seth Aylmer is a public sculptor and philosopher, and a former Presidential Scholar of the Arts with a degree in Philosophy from Colby College. In 2010 his sculpture, The Helper, was installed in Marcy Green South Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he also lives. The Helper is part of a series of works inspired by 2000-year old native American petroglyphs in his native Maine, and served as as a source of inspiration to community members in Williamsburg working to improve the park and surrounding areas. In 2010, he was selected as a George Mitchell Scholar for his video art. In 2011, he installed a temporary sculpture at the Burning Man art festival in the Nevada Desert. Seth has started working with Corona community members on a a series of public sculptures.
JOSE SERRANO MCCLAIN
Jose Serrano-McClain is an organizer and art-doer interested in the economics of the creative spirit. He currently holds a position as director with HR&A Advisors Conslting Firm.
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Teaching positions held by SPQ grads:
Jeff Kasper Assistant Professor U. of Mass:
Barry Cline PT faculty Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies, SUNY
Setare Arashloo, Adjunct Instructor SUNY
FLoor Grootenhuis, Hunter College, CUNY
Pedro Felipe Vintimilla, Gina Minielli: Queens College, CUNY
Scott Braun, Assistant Professor, Area Head in Wood, VCUArts, Craft/Material Studies Department
Other leadership positions in art field held by SPQ grads:
Naomi Kuo | Visual Arts Program Associate, Jamaica Arts Center, NY
Julian Louis Philips, MORE Art residency program 2019
Cody Hermann, studio assistant to Martha Rosler
Erin Turner, public art restorer, Foyil, Oklahoma
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