Featured Artists || Seat at the Table
Featured Artists in the "A Seat at the Table" Exhibit
Following a national call, twenty artists were selected to create chairs for the “A Seat at the Table” exhibit. The chairs represent the stories of both historic and contemporary trailblazers.
The artists represent seven U.S. states — Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and South Carolina — and a range of medium.
- Ashley and Mic Billingsley
- Jane Brucker
- Marc Bushelle
- Jaleel Campbell
- Jeffrey Chandler
- Merill Comeau
- Sally Fine
- Marlon Forrester
- Dwora Fried
- Ellen Hanauer
- Janine Harper
- Brian Holbrook
- Carol Krentzman, Jeff Olsen, and Jason Cheeseman-Meyer
- Verneda Lights
- Kristina McComb
- Patricia Michaels
- Larry Pierce
- Esther Shavon
- Liz Shepherd
- Margot Stage and David Crane
Ashley and Mic Billingsley
Ashley Billingsley’s paintings, drawings and installations address landscape as a site of human vulnerability, turbulence and doubt. Her influences range from martial arts philosophy, practice and cinema to the folklore and sense memories of her home state of Virginia. She maintains a studio in East Boston and works at the local and national levels in Community Action, a network of nonprofit human services organizations creating opportunity for people with low incomes to build economic resilience and thrive. She received a BFA from the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University combined degree program. Select exhibitions include Indefinable Nature: Ashley Billingsley and Sarah Wentworth at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA; An Aesthetics of Slowness at Dorsky Gallery in Long Island City, NY; and On the Streets, an exhibition at JavaArts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, sponsored by apexart, NY. Mic Billingsley is a creative collaborator, problem solver and museum exhibition professional. He works with institutions and individuals to realize projects ranging from one-of-a-kind art objects to large scale installations. He comes to art by way of science, engineering and furniture making, and makes work that revolves around a core interest in identifying individual features and amplifying them to bring forth qualities that are present but often unnoticed. Past projects include casework construction and archival lighting design for the Declaration of Independence at the Massachusetts State Archives; and design and construction of “Underpinnings,” a kinetic, drawing sculpture created in collaboration with artist Ethan Murrow as part of the Currier Museum of Art’s fall 2018 through spring 2019 exhibition “Hauling.”Jane Brucker
Jane Brucker engages the viewer through her reverence for familial and historical memory. In large installations and intimate small-scale sculpture, she touches on the poetry of existence by examining legacy, fragility, and death. Combining found objects and heirlooms with textiles, wood, glass, and cast metals, Brucker reveals her strong tactile sensibility while simultaneously exploring the visceral and the spiritual. She has exhibited in the United States, Nepal, Germany, Scotland, France, Japan and the Czech Republic. She is a professor at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.Marc Bushelle
Marc Bushelle was born in Barbados. Since his father worked for the U.S. Foreign Service, the Bushelle family’s home quickly became different places around the world, including the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. This unique childhood informed his imagination, fostered a love of art, photography and film and enhanced his ability to connect with a large cross-section of society. As an adult, his disruptive thinking coupled with his family’s compelling history and now residing in Brooklyn New York, Marc Bushelle as a photographer and artist, has gravitated to projects focused on the human condition. Delivering a strong message is a constant focus, and, as a father, surrounding his young daughter with positive images is vital. His work shows emotion and he enjoys capturing them and evoking them with his work.Jaleel Campbell
New York-based artist Jaleel Campbell is translating the root of black beauty to the language of the digital age with his stunning portraits. Depicting the scope of the modern brown body –ranging from black love, to Illustrations of stone-faced black men and women – each one is made up of geometric layers and fused together in complementary deep shades. Rich powerful and emotive, his work feels familiar and new all at once. Campbell’s pieces help to create a new expectation for black representation.Jeffrey Chandler
Jeffrey Chandler is a self -taught artist who lives and works in Boston Massachusetts. He creates art from wood that has been reclaimed from things thrown away. He is fascinated by finding an object and problem solving how to transform a discarded piece of junk into a treasure. He uses recycled wood and other materials out of necessity and also as a statement about this “throw away society.” Recycling is necessary to sustain the planet’s resources and his small way of using these materials to be innovative and creative as an artist. Chandler’s artwork often depicts people. Sometimes it is a portrait, at other times a couple dancing , a musician playing an instrument or person singing. Masks are a recurring theme in his work. He is inspired by African and Native American art and often uses symbols from these cultures in his work. (Edited from artist statement.)Merill Comeau
Merill Comeau is a mixed media artist creating installations, murals and garments examining narratives of repair and regeneration. Comeau deconstructs, reconstructs, and alters clothing and linens to disrupt, reorder, and build stories exploring common human concerns. She is known for her work exploring women’s history, gender identity development, and autobiographical narrative. Comeau has participated in over 70 exhibitions including at Fuller Craft Museum, the Danforth Art Museum, Southern New Hampshire University, and FiberArt International 2019. Comeau has completed ten artist residencies including three month-long stays at Weir Farm National Historic Site in CT where she researched Weir family women’s lives to use as art-making inspiration. Comeau’s work has been showcased in numerous publications including TextileArtist.org, Fiber Art Now, Mass Cultural Council’s ArtsSake blog, and World of Threads Artist Interviews. In addition to her solo studio practice, Comeau has extensive experience as a teaching artist. Committed to the use of visual expression as storytelling, transmitting knowledge, and teaching values, she has facilitated over 30 community art projects. Since 2012, she has been a teaching artist for the Department of Youth Services making art with youth at risk involved in the Massachusetts Court system and residing in secure treatment centers.
Sally Fine
Sally Fine is a washashore to Cape Cod from a town just west of Chicago. She holds a BFA from Ohio University and an MFA from Boston University. Fine’s sculpture is constructed of a wide array of materials, ranging from wood, metal, glass and new media. Her work is represented in local and international collections both private and public. Fine exhibits her work locally at Boston Sculpture Gallery in Boston’s South End.Marlon Forrester
Marlon Forrester, born in Guyana, South America, is an artist and educator raised in Boston, MA. Forrester is a graduate of School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, B.A and Yale School of Art, M.F.A. 2010. He is currently a painting lecturer at School of The Museum of Fine Arts Boston at Tufts University and BPS Visual Arts Teacher. He is a resident artist at African-American Masters Artist Residency Program (AAMARP) adjunct to the Department of African-American Studies in association with Northeastern University. He is an artist who explores through painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation the corporate use of the black male body, or the body as logo through the lens of basketball.Dwora Fried
Dwora Fried is an assemblage artist creating mixed media sculptural spaces in wooden boxes. Her small rooms evoke what it was like to grow up as an outsider in postwar Vienna: being Jewish, lesbian, and a child of Holocaust survivors, she learned to see everything through the prism of loss, danger, and secrecy. Dwora studied art at Anvi School of Fine Arts in Tel Aviv, Israel. She has had solo shows in London, England; Venice, Italy; and at the Jewish Museum, Vienna. Austria (her art is in the permanent collection of Austria’s MUSA Museum); and Los Angles, California. She has exhibited in Chicago’s Elmhurst Art Museum, Grafiska Sallskapet in Stockholm, Sweden, San Francisco’s Arc gallery, and Orange County Center for the Performing Arts. Her work was shown at Launch LA/Korean Cultural Center, Irvine Fine Arts, and her newly opened MASH gallery in Downtown LA. Her life-size interactive installations were part of her solo show at the Los Angeles Art Association and a political group show at Fullerton College Art.Ellen Hanauer
Ellen Hanauer is a sculptor and installation artist who has focused much of her work on science-based art, gender issues, interior spatial relationships of the natural world and, most recently, the human condition. In the past four years, she has worked primarily in fiber and digital arts and has been traveling her continually expanding exhibition, Transform. Hanauer has exhibited nationally and internationally in museums, universities and galleries where she has had several one person exhibitions. Her work has been included in many scientific conferences overseas and she has been awarded the First Theoretical Prize from Oxford University, UK. Hanauer’s national commissions have been exhibited in Tarpon Springs, FL and throughout the tristate area including Rockefeller Center and Riverside Park. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Noyes Museum of Art, NJ; Montclair Art Museum Education Collection, NJ; (the late) Ivan Karp, OK Harris Gallery, NY; The Princeton Review, NY; Organon, NJ; Lynda Zycherman, Chief Conservator of Sculpture, MoMA, NY; Kevah Konner Bus Company, NJ; Atlanticare Foundation NJ, and National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.Janine Harper
Janine Harper worked for many years as a journalist. She covered breaking news throughout the western hemisphere, and then she went onto a career in tech. Harper became interested in the Shirley Chisholm legacy when she and her husband did a project called the Heroine’s Project. She also guides visitors to the Brooklyn Art Museum through virtual reality experiences and digital arts installations.Brian Holbrook
Brian Holbrook started building weird things when he was young. He enjoys playing with angles and how everyday things are perceived. He studied at the Vermont Woodworking School and has been doing fine woodworking for three years. (Edited from artist statement.)Carol Krentzman, Jeff Olsen, Jason Cheeseman-Meyer
Carol Krentzman has been creating public art for many years with a focus on stained glass and mosaics. She has studied with numerous mosaic and stained glass artists in many locations. Carol uses a variety of tiles, individually made fused glass, clay elements and other materials when fabricating her indoor and outdoor mosaics. Carol creates commission mosaics, leads community mosaic projects, and teaches mosaics to many different age groups. Jeff Olsen is a carpenter, woodworker, and remodeling contractor by trade who has been making furniture, mobiles, and sculpture for over thirty years. Jeff particularly enjoys repurposing things that have been thrown out, like the base of the chair he will be using for this project, which he found by the side of the road in Waltham. The chair is intended to evoke the benches and chairs Bethune made herself from discarded crates to furnish her first school. Jason Cheeseman-Meyer’s oil paintings blend the tactile and illusionistic natures of paint to capture motion and depict human bonds and aspirations. Jason has studied painting on both coasts and works as an illustrator and a portraitist. (Note: Carol will be creating a mosaic timeline of Bethune’s life to go into the seat of a wooden chair made by Jeff, with paintings on the front and the back of the chair by Jason.)
