In her structures, silicone molds are cast from both natural and hand-made forms, including clay coils, volcanic rock patterns, seaweed, and the artist’s own fingerprints. Leaving the human trace evident through the repetition of shapes and textures in both the natural and man-made elements, provides a measure of stability, a reference point. These manmade and natural forms merge, revealing our inexplicable dependence on nature. Through this melding of two entities, new life is breathed into the art object.

Paper as a primary medium allows Schwartz to sculpt, draw and paint simultaneously. The flow of the pulp (a natural phenomenon in itself) meshes with the molded forms creating a structure that seems to rest on the edge between painting and sculpture. The duality between light and heavy, interior and exterior, planned and accidental, order and chaos, leading ultimately to a sense of life.

Based in NYC, Sylvia Schwartz works with paper, plaster, resin and photography.Schwartz has worked extensively at Dieu Donne Papermill; casting primarily with molds made directly from findings on the beach. With nature as a starting point, Schwartz’s work transforms something that is no longer living into the present moment.

Schwartz received a degree in fine art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and later studied sculpture at Columbia University. Her work has been seen in group exhibitions in Manhattan, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, including BWAC, Nurture Art, ODETTA, Lesley Heller Gallery and the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. Her work was featured in the book Attachments by Anne Marie Dannenberg.

Ryan Sarah Murphy’s creative practice is intuitive and process-driven, prompted by the found ephemera in her daily experience. Responding to the inherent energy within discarded and repurposed objects, she allows the material to act as the guide, moving through the construction of a piece with no set plan or intended outcome. These collages, suggesting odd terrains and shifting perspectives, are the result of a subconscious examination of space – both the concrete environment of the city and the interior dwelling of the self. Much like the various landscapes we both inhabit and construct, these structuresserve as a tenuous meeting point of architectural and abstract elements.

Living and working in New York, Ryan is a 2014 recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant and has held residencies at the I-Park Foundation (East Haddam, CT) and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the US including ODETTA Gallery (Brooklyn); Platform Gallery (Seattle); Lesley Heller Workspace (NY); Mixed Greens (NY); Liliana Bloch Gallery (Dallas); and The Holter Museum of Art (Montana). Ryan’s work has been featured in several online and print publications including Artnews, Maake Magazine, Tory Burch Daily, Embark Magazine and the New York Times.

Architecture and functional objects inform the vocabulary of Richard Bottwin’s sculpture. The plywood surfaces, laminated with wood veneers or painted with acrylic colors, are configured to reveal surprising shapes and patterns with shifts in the viewer’s perspective. A sense of disorientation, weightlessness and implied physical gesture are created by the reductive forms and subvert the modernist vocabulary of the simple constructions.

Richard Bottwiin lives and works in New York City and has maintained his sculpture studio in Brooklyn since 1990. Bottwin’s solo exhibitions include shows at OK Harris Gallery in New York,Metaphor Gallery in Brooklyn and Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia. He has participated in group exhibitions at Bunsen/ Götz Galerie, Nuremberg, Galleri Tom Christoffersen, Copenhagen, Art Forum Ute Barth, Zurich ODETTA, Brooklyn, and DM Contemporary Gallery, New York. Bottwin’s museum exhibitions include group shows at The Neuer Kunstverein, Aschaffenburg, Germany, The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit NJ, Moma PS 1 in Long Island City, NY and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Bottwin has also created site-specific installations at The Sculpture Center in Long Island City, NY, The Pratt Institute Campus in Brooklyn New York and In Fairmont Park, Philadelphia with the Philadelphia Art Alliance. His work in public collections includes the Bayerische Landesbank headquarters in NYC and The Pratt Institute outdoor sculpture collection in Brooklyn. Richard Bottwin has received two artist’s grants from the State of Pennsylvania and one from New York State and he was awarded a residency at the Edward Albee Foundation, Montauk NY.

His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Brooklyn Rail.