Monday March 20th, 2023
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM EST (Zoom)
Roselli is creating a historical visual record with Pandora’s BoxX Project by placing contemporary and recent historical creators in their rightful place —at the forefront of artistic creation; readily visible and accessible to the community at large.
The feminist and civil rights movements that took hold of our society in the 1960’s, six decades ago, kicked open the door for womxn, giving them the opportunity to create the art that would redefine our era. While womxn have fundamentally changed how we experience art and culture since the 1960’s, their histories of artistic achievement have been under-recognized or near invisible. Documenting and presenting the story of womxn finally being recognized for their place in contemporary culture, is critical.
Womxn photographed for Pandora’s BoxX Project span generations, races, ethnicities, geographic locations and art genres. They are trailblazers in our culture. With the expanding ripples of their art, they offer beauty, humanity, knowledge and innovation to the hearts and minds of their communities and the public at large.
Moderator: Grace Roselli
Brooklyn, New York based painter and photographer Grace Roselli has been combining photographic portraiture with the narrative of women’s impact and legacy over the past 4 decades. Her previous photographic series, Naked Bike, documenting womxn motorcyclists, was exhibited in 2017 at MotorGrrl, a womxn owned motorcycle shop in Brooklyn, NY. This installation championed womxn-owned small business and brought together a broad, and diverse audience comprised of bikers, local community members and art world insiders. It was well received with press across motorcycle, art, and general media.
Roselli received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), graduating with honors in 1982. She was awarded residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, 1981; Empire State Studios in New York, New York in 1984; followed by travel to Venice, Italy where she studied with the painter, Emilio Vedova at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts.
Since 1991 Roselli’s artwork has been included in a variety of publications and exhibited both nationally and internationally including exhibitions in New York City, NY; Westport, CT; Philadelphia, PA and the Netherlands. Artwork from her exhibitions and sales are in private collections in the U.S. and Europe.
Pandora’s BoxX Project was accepted as a fiscally sponsored project by the NewYork Foundation for the Arts in 2022. Roselli has been awarded a 2023 New York State Council on the Arts award as well as 2022 grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Puffin Foundation. She was also nominated for a 2023 Anonymous Was A Woman Award and was a 2023 finalist for the Harpo Foundation Award.
Babs Reingold
Venezuela-born American artist Babs Reingold creates sculptures, drawings, and installations focusing on the environment and poverty.
Reingold has an extensive showing history including 16 solo exhibitions and over 75 group exhibitions ranging from museums, universities, alternative spaces and galleries. Solo exhibits include New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Savannah, St. Petersburg FL, Jersey City and Buffalo NY. Museum exhibits include the Newark Museum NJ, Jersey City Museum, Albright-Knox Buffalo NY, Burchfield Penney Buffalo NY, Tampa Museum and Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg. She has work in museum and private collections throughout the United States. Museums and Private collections include: The Newark Museum, New Jersey, Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, Florida, The Burchfield Penney Art Center Buffalo, New York and Savannah College of Art and Design.
Awards include: a Florida state fellowship, two fellowships from Pinellas County, Guest Editor for issue of arts journal New Observations, Atlantic Center for the Arts residency and a nominee for the Joan Mitchell Fellowship.
Reingold has an MFA from SUNY-Buffalo and BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art. She lives and works in St Petersburg FL with viewing space in New York City. She is represented by Johnson Lowe Gallery Atlanta GA and Florida Mining Gallery in Jacksonville FL.
Vinnie Bagwell
VINNIE BAGWELL is an American sculptor based in Yonkers, New York. A representational-figurative artist, Vinnie uses traditional bas-relief techniques as visual narratives to expand her storytelling. She casts in bronze and bronze resin. She has won numerous public-art commissions and awards around the United States.
In fall 2021, Vinnie Bagwell completed “The Enslaved Africans’ Rain Garden”, an urban-heritage public-art project featuring five life-sized bronzes, for the City of Yonkers, to commemorate the legacy of the first enslaved Africans to be manumitted by law in the United States, 64 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. She will also begin creating “Victory...” an 18’ angel outside New York City’s Central Park on Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street. In 2020, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation commissioned the 7’ “Sojourner Truth” to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and the Women’s Suffrage Movement for the Walkway Over the Hudson in Highland.
The District of Columbia Department of General Services commissioned “What’s Going On!”, music-icon Marvin Gaye, “The Man in the Arena” (Theodore Roosevelt), “Contraband”, and “The Immortals”. The City of Memphis commissioned “Legacies” at Chickasaw Heritage Park, and Hofstra University commissioned “Frederick Douglass Circle”, the 24” h. maquette is the centerpiece for the Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center in Highland Beach, MD. Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson sought Vinnie Bagwell out to create the piano artwork for August Wilson’s play, “The Piano Lesson” for the on-Broadway Signature Theatre in New York City. “Liberté”, a 22” h. bronze was exhibited in the inaugural, year-long exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides at the new Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery.
Moko Fukuyama
Moko Fukuyama is a Japanese artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Fukuyama has received grants, fellowships, residencies and commissions from Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Foundation For Contemporary Arts, Jerome Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, Stoneleaf Retreat, Recess, The Shed, The Kitchen,International Studio & Curatorial and more. She was a 2021 fellow at Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, Minnesota and Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, New York. Her recent exhibitions include Streaming Surface, curated by Rachel Vera Steinberg at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, New York, On The Ground, curated by River Valley Arts Collective at Al Held Foundation in Boiceville, New York. This year, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
Cydney Williams
Cydney Williams lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Cydney explores themes of interconnectivity and balance between boundless landscape and the confined societal pressures of the modern world. She conducts the essence of the outdoors through careful composition, charging visual space with intimate embodied life and nature.
Cydney was a resident at Monira Foundation through Mana Contemporary from 2019 through 2021 in Jersey City, NJ. She went on to spend 6 months in residency at Radiate Light Residency in Eldorado, NM, developing an understanding of the relationship between awe & ownership and exploring the interconnection between home, freedom, and visitation of both people and land. In August 2022, Cydney moved to Culver City, California, where she currently works and resides. She has shown in various galleries in Los Angeles, New York City, Jersey City, Miami, and Vermont, and the 2018 Pinta Art Fair during Art Basel, Miami. Cydney has curated a total of three exhibitions including Monira Foundation Presents: Longing for Something at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, NJ.
Cydney holds a B.S. in Art Education from the University of Vermont and has been trained and mentored by NYC artist Dorothea Rockburne. She created the Tip N’ Tell podcast in 2018 to foster casual conversation with professional artists, empowering emerging creatives of all ages. Cydney is dedicated to not only creating space within her work for the viewer to explore their own expansion, but also has a passion for creating spaces to support other artists.