Philip Kuznicki

Philip Kuznicki was born in Dunkirk, NY, where he spent much of his childhood before moving to California in the late 1970’s. On the west coast, Kuznicki worked as a gallery assistant and fabricator, assisting with work by ceramicist Ulysses Pagliari, architects Zaha Hadid and Michael Graves and many others at the then Phillippe Bonnafont Gallery, while establishing his own body of work. He was also involved in fine paper and binding services and was responsible for the original concept and creation of editioned boxes and portfolios of Davis Gilhooly’s ceramics and prints. In the mid-1990’s, Philip moved to North Carolina, where he was director of Riverdog Gallery, before settling in Buffalo, NY, in 1999. Kuznicki’s source material for his collage work has traveled with him all over the country, often taking precedence over what one may consider more necessary baggage. These include estate sale finds, medical and dental journals, instructional books and much more.

Philip’s work is part of the art collections at US Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; UCLA Library, Los Angeles; Stanford University Library, Palo Alto, CA; and many other personal collections.

Michael Oatman

Michael Oatman is an artist, curator and educator. He studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the University at Albany. He has taught at Harvard, RISD, Williams College, The College of Saint Rose, The University of Vermont and Vermont College. He has been Artist-in-Residence at RPI’s School of Architecture since 1999. Oatman is committed to the culture and sustainable growth of his adopted city, Troy, NY.

His work addresses subjects from eugenics to paradigm shifts in scientific thinking and the role of archives. His installations, collages and public works have been exhibited across North America, in England, Germany, Hungary and Italy. His work has been acquired by MoMA, The Tang Museum, The Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and is in hundreds of private and corporate collections. All Utopias Fell opened at MASS MoCA in 2010 and has seen over 300,000 viewers. In 2015, Oatman was the first artist invited to work with Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s personal archive. The resulting installation, My Father, Neil Armstrong, My Mother, The Moon—was part of Return to Entry—a three-person show, and the most well-attended exhibition in Purdue University’s history.

Oatman’s 2001 Factory Direct residency/exhibition has been re-presented at Artspace in New Haven, CT, and at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. Oatman has curated dozens of exhibitions and in 2024 supervised the creation of The Rensselaereum, a street-side museum in Troy celebrating RPI’s bicentennial. Other projects with students include Rose Ocean: Living with Duchamp, an exhibition for the Tang Museum; and The FOCUS Lab, a project for Troy, NY, based on the British model of an “urban room.” In 2003 Oatman was awarded the Nancy Graves Prize, and in 2024 he received a NYSCA project grant.

Jeff Quinn

Jeff Quinn graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986 with a BFA in Painting and has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He has been commissioned for many private and public environments, including painting the installation for American artist Robert Gober's retrospective at MoMA.  A keen eye toward collaboration, Jeff has worked with a broad array of artists and designers, including David Weeks, David Rockwell and Vladmir Kagan. In 2012 Quinn created a 3000 square foot installation for Ralph Pucci during New York City Design Week and in 2017 painted two gigantic murals for Art Basel Miami Beach.

Jeff Quinn lives and works in New York.

Rodger Stevens

Rodger Stevens is an American artist and sculptor whose principal medium is wire. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Rodger studied at the Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is now an internationally exhibited artist with work in numerous private and institutional collections. His work, while abstract in nature, is firmly rooted in a deep personal narrative and draws heavily upon literature, language, mathematics, human physiology and day to day experience. His hand-crafted sculptural works and wearable pieces embody carefully wrought stories and ideas that are articulated through composition and form. His attention to line and narrative have lead to a body of works that operates like a language of glyphs: aesthetically rich in appearance, and conceptually rewarding upon closer inspection.

Commissions include: The Whitney Museum of Art, The American Folk Art Museum, PS1, Tiffany & Co., Barneys, Sothebys, Starbucks, Nike, West Elm, The Katonah Museum, The Bristol Museum, David Rockwell, West Elm, Jonathan Adler, The New Yorker, Todd Oldham, The W Hotel, Mumm's Champagne, Yohji Yamamoto, The New York Children's Museum of Art, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Stuart Weitzman, Persol, The Hangaram Museum of Art in Seoul, The American Greetings Company, Steelcase, Lindstrom Rugs, BDDW, The Future Perfect, David Weeks Lighting.

Werner Sun

Werner Sun is a visual artist with a background in physics, who lives and works in Ithaca, NY. He uses repetitive manual processes to slowly transform digital images into sculptural objects that evoke the gradual accumulation of knowledge in science. Werner’s work has been featured at Garrison Art Center, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Aon (New York, NY), Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), and the Islip Art Museum. He has been commissioned to create kinetic sculptures for Cornell University’s Mann Library and the Cornell Botanic Gardens. His essays and images have been published in The Brooklyn Rail, Interalia Magazine, and Stone Canoe. He is the 2019 recipient of the Aon-CUE Artist Empowerment Award from the CUE Art Foundation, and a 2017 recipient of a Strategic Opportunity Stipend from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County, NY. Werner’s work has been described as “stimulating and altogether engrossing,” (Ithaca Times), serving as “a reminder that art can be a reflection of the intricacies of physics, and that both belong to the universe at large” (Hyperallergic).

Melissa Zarem

Melissa Zarem grew up with artistic roots in two very different cities, New York City and Savannah, Georgia. She earned a BFA from Cornell University and subsequently relocated to Ithaca in 2006. Zarem has been represented by both Corners Gallery (Ithaca, NY) and Exhibit A, (Corning, NY). She became a featured artist at Ithaca College (2013), Aqua Art Miami (2014), and at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Cornell University (2015) where her work was acquired for their permanent collection. Her work has been exhibited at the Abrons Art Center (New York, NY), the Arnot Museum (Elmira, NY), Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center (Auburn, NY), Novado Gallery (Jersey City, NJ), and SUNY Corning Community College (Corning, NY). Zarem has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts (2016), the Vermont Studio Center (2023), Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County (2016 and 2023) and the Legacy Foundation (2024). Spring Loaded, a book of her black and white drawings was published by EYE Gallery (2016), and her work will be published in the upcoming spring issue of Stone Canoe Literary Journal. Zarem’s recent projects have been in collaboration with other artists, including a pandemic-related project called No Words: a Postcard-Based Conversation Between Two Artists with Elise Nicol. The latter was exhibited at Cornell University’s School of Architecture Art and Planning in Close Work, Distanced: Pandemic Collaborations.