Heather Feiring Binder

Ceramic Artist

Heather Binder is a ceramic artist and dedicated arts educator who is fascinated by patterns and geometries found in places most people pass by without noticing. Her upbringing in Rhode Island can be recognized as a significant reference for her sculptures. She holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Heather has taught art and ceramics in public schools for more than 30 years and is currently is a visiting critic at the Rhode Island School of Design. Heather prefers alternate atmospheres for her work and primarily fires with Chris Gustin in his Japanese style anagama wood kiln. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts, Touchstone Center for Craft and the Pocosin Art and Craft School. Heather Binder’s work can be found in galleries, retail shops, restaurants and private collections around the world.

Ian Cozzens

Print Maker, Sculptor, Quilt Artist, and more...

Ian Cozzens is a visual artist who makes prints, sculptures, quilts, zines, spaces, collections, & shelves, among other things. He is the resident artist mentor in printmaking at New Urban Arts, an afterschool art studio for high schoolers. He learned how to screenprint from friends in Providence, and has designed & printed many posters for underground shows and community events, as well as prints of Providence's urban landscape. As a screenprinter, he loves analog & semi-obsolete methods of creating film positives: hand-drawing letterforms, cutting intricate Rubylith stencil films, and working with ink on mylar.

Over the past ten years, he has built installations incorporating silkscreened paper, wallpaper, and text, as well as shelves, boxes, and constructions, laid out by making perspectival projection drawings by hand. His interests in pattern, geometry, and history have led him to the craft of patchwork and quiltmaking, elements of which have also become part of the installations (as well as part of his daily life). He also repairs & sails small boats, works on his bike & his car, tends to too many plants, and recently has been re-learning how to knit and how to weld. Ian is always trying to bring things together and make it all make more sense, seeking out some kind of unity of content with form, craft, and existence.

www.secretdoorprojects.org

Kathy Hodge

Painter

Kathy Hodge was born in the Washington Park neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island. At the age of 14 she took up her parents’ oil paints, put aside after they graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and started their family of seven children. Like her parents, she attended RISD and majored in painting. After two years she found it necessary to leave school and work for a year to further finance her education. She earned her BFA at Swain School of Design in New Bedford, MA. Returning to Providence, she was inspired by the drama and light effects of the industrial waterfront and began the first of many series of paintings. These included the stark organic forms of the salt marshes which surround her home on Narragansett Bay, as well as man-made environments: church facades, Russian cityscapes, shoemaking machinery and paintings inspired by the view from a train window. More recently she has pursued her interest in the natural landscape through appointments in 15 National Parks and Forests as Artist-in-Residence. She has exhibited her work in many group and one person shows, and was awarded the RI State Council on the Art Fellowship in Painting in 2017. Her work is in private, corporate and National Park collections. Her studio is located in East Providence, Rhode Island.

www.kathyhodge.com

Sarina Mitchel

Drawing and Painting

My name is Sarina Mitchel and I am a visual artist and RISD Alumni based in Providence, RI. I have been drawing and painting since I could hold a pencil. My professional work spans from painting to illustration to graphic design. My most recent paintings are inspired by images from biology and cell research. I’ve shown my work in east coast cities like New York and Boston, as well as in Kansas City and Golden, Colorado, and have participated in many different group and solo shows throughout Rhode Island.

Lev Poplow

A Life Of Renewed Purpose and Meaning

Everything about my life changed on November 11, 2022. That’s the day I began my journey with cancer. I often joke that I didn’t know how close I was to dying until I knew how close I was to dying. I don’t mean to sound trite. This journey has impacted how I see things and compelled me to look at things more closely, to remove the definition that our eyes give us from a normal distance. To see that nothing is as it appears.

This experience has sharpened things I already knew and brought a fresh perspective to how I see things and what I do. On a much deeper level than before I know that life is precious, life is fleeting, life is meant to be lived, and death is not something to fear. What matters to me now is making the most of every day until there are no more days. This adventure into creating more abstract work is an expression of the lack of clarity of our world (especially now) and how we must each create meaning and purpose. It’s also an expression of my changed perception of the world and my place in it. The closer I get to an object the less and less distinct it becomes until what “is” disappears to reveal a another world of perception.

I got lucky and now I carry that altered perception with me every day and it has brought me a renewed sense of purpose and meaning. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared work with the world and I’m excited to share these images that have grown out this journey with you.,.l

Anna Shapiro

Artist, Catalyst

Anna Shapiro is an artist and catalyst with a continuous studio practice for over 30 years. She has catalyzed many creative industries in Boston and Rhode Island including directing art spaces, teaching metal arts, running festivals, helping to manage alternative grocery stores and avant-gardening in mobile hydroponic trailers. She works within a unique community of experienced makers.

Her work connects social and ecological issues that have been important to her since her early employment as a wilderness guide, National Park Ranger, early GIS innovator and environmental activist. Anna has received awards and residencies in Vermont, New York, Brazil and Latvia, has spoken on panels about iron casting and ecofeminism and has published articles on these topics.

For the last ten years Anna has been occupied with family life. She continues to exhibit on a regular basis, maintaining her studio practice and managing her very small real estate business. Her studio is in Providence RI.

annashapiro.com
wavelady.com

Robert Snowden

Painter

Robert Snowden is an abstract/non- objective painter. Works from the subconscious. Inspired by dreams, thoughts, and images seen in everyday life. Breaking down and reconstructing images. Working with a variety of materials including acrylic paint, oil paint, spray paint, pencils, inks, paper, and photographs. Numbers and letters are used to establish language in the art. A lot of the work is street art meets canvas. Robert Snowden resides in Cranston, Rhode Island in the creative community of Edgewood. Lives with his wife, Jennifer, and two Lhasa Apsos, Georgia and Dakota, all of whom serve as a source of inspiration. My work has been shown in galleries In Providence, Pawtucket, and Massachusetts. Robert Snowden is also a filmmaker, photographer, electronic music DJ ,and hiker.