Growing up in an artistic family outside of Philadelphia, I had the perfect foundation to become an artist. Both my parents went to art school. My father as a cabinetmaker, and my mother for ceramics and textile art. So naturally, art became a language I grew up with.
I always loved ceramics and drawing, but on a whim, I took a figure modeling class when I was 15. It instantly resonated with me. I would work for hours, only to realize later, that I was completely present in the moment. Art became a place of peace and joy. Over the years, my love for creating blossomed, and I began to see beauty all around me. The movement of the birds, the wiggling of roots, people, roads, mountains, I began to see the whole world through a different lens.
As this perspective changed, my work changed too. Dozens of figures, slowly shifted to abstract organic forms. Shapes that represent the beauty I see all around, as well as my perspective and lived experience. Sometimes, I will be so captivated by what I see, that I will create with objects directly from nature. Such as dried leaves in a collage or a pine cone cast in bronze.
I received a BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2007. Sculpture is my passion, but I love it all... photography, drawing, printmaking, painting and mixed media collages.
Though I love art deeply, my greatest passion is teaching. I run an art and enrichment program in Dobbs Ferry, NY called Creative Hearts. Our focus is encouraging love, connection, and confidence through art. I am so incredibly grateful to spend my days with many tiny people that I love.
Please visit our websites for more info: Creative-Hearts.com
I always loved ceramics and drawing, but on a whim, I took a figure modeling class when I was 15. It instantly resonated with me. I would work for hours, only to realize later, that I was completely present in the moment. Art became a place of peace and joy. Over the years, my love for creating blossomed, and I began to see beauty all around me. The movement of the birds, the wiggling of roots, people, roads, mountains, I began to see the whole world through a different lens.
As this perspective changed, my work changed too. Dozens of figures, slowly shifted to abstract organic forms. Shapes that represent the beauty I see all around, as well as my perspective and lived experience. Sometimes, I will be so captivated by what I see, that I will create with objects directly from nature. Such as dried leaves in a collage or a pine cone cast in bronze.
I received a BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2007. Sculpture is my passion, but I love it all... photography, drawing, printmaking, painting and mixed media collages.
Though I love art deeply, my greatest passion is teaching. I run an art and enrichment program in Dobbs Ferry, NY called Creative Hearts. Our focus is encouraging love, connection, and confidence through art. I am so incredibly grateful to spend my days with many tiny people that I love.
Please visit our websites for more info: Creative-Hearts.com
Oh look! Press:
Bee Local Magazine- Spring 2020
TIM LAMORTE/RIVERTOWNS ENTERPRISE
Emily Gosweiler of Irvington works on a bronze sculpture she plans to sell during the studio tour.
RiverArts Studio Tour attracts diverse new talents
BY JACKIE LUPO
April 18, 2014
REGION — They’re painters, potters, or photographers, sculptors in stone, steel or glass, creators of fantasy worlds in fiber or found objects. They’re Rivertowns artists who run the gamut from the traditional to the cutting edge.
Eighty of them will open their doors to the public next weekend, April 26-27, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., for the 21st annual RiverArts Studio Tour. Preview exhibitions of representative works are now on view at the Hastings Municipal Building and the Irvington Public Library. The event is free.
“We have a lot of wonderful artists on the tour,” said Ellen Crane, vice president of RiverArts and organizer of the tour. “Even within the sculptural realm, we have a huge variety.” Crane, a Dobbs Ferry photographer, noted that this year, there are 54 women on the tour, and a mix of artists who are widely known and others who mostly exhibit locally.
“We think we have such a diverse group of artists, but every year we get somebody completely new,” she said. This year, 13 artists are on the tour for the first time. The Enterprise talked with some of these new exhibitors.
Emily Gosweiler is an Irvington multimedia artist who works out of her home studio. She earned her BFA at Purchase College and has been teaching art throughout Westchester for the past 10 years. She is also the owner of Creative Ways, an art and movement school located at South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry.
“From the time I can remember, my hands were in something,” she said. “I’d make sculptures out of dirt.”
Nowadays she has better media at her disposal, such as bronze, stone, clay and ceramic. The finished product might be a small bronze sculpture featuring interconnected human forms contorted into a circle, or an installation of abstract swirling tentacles paved with mosaic. “I love organic, twisting forms,” she said.
Kristin Javier’s passion for ancient tile work led her to study Roman mosaics in their original locations, including examples from the time Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed.
“The very first mosaic I ever saw was in Venice, at the church of San Marco,” she said. “I hope for my work to possess a timeless quality, like a mosaic from an archaeological dig, or a panel from a stained-glass window discovered in an attic.”
She uses materials such as marble and Venetian glass. One of her works is a bird, replicating a 5th-century mosaic detail on the ceiling of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. Others are original compositions. “It’s a very peaceful process for me when I’m making a mosaic but a very intense process,” she said. She starts with a sketch, but is also influenced by how the glass behaves when she cuts it, resulting in unexpected shapes.
Hastings glass artist Andrew Bearnot, a 2004 graduate of Hastings High School, holds dual degrees in materials engineering from Brown University and glass making from Rhode Island School of Design. He traveled to Scandinavia on a Fulbright fellowship to study glass techniques.
“Glass is particularly remarkable in the way it captures modernist ideals,” he said. “It’s transparent; it’s efficient; it’s light as air. It’s really a utopian material.”
His latest project was inspired by the field of fractology, which is the study of crack formation. He has created a new glass-breaking ritual for weddings, inspired by Jewish tradition but resulting in an artifact of the event. Recently, he has been working with a studio in Brooklyn to etch text into the glass, in the tradition of the ketubah or Jewish marriage contract.
Bearnot has also designed utilitarian glassware whose bases demonstrate special optics that turn each tumbler and carafe into a camera obscura. He is accepting orders for sets of the glassware.
Hastings sculptor David Press spent 30 years as a math and science teacher in the Blind Brook School District. For almost as long, he has been creating intricate string and wood kinetic sculptures that would have looked familiar to mathematicians of two centuries ago. In fact, the Smithsonian Institution called upon Press when they needed an expert in string sculpture to restore some models made by mathematicians of the late 1700s.
Press shows his work internationally and contributes to journals that specialize in art and mathematics.
His work features an intricate interplay of the lines created by the string and the curving forms of the wood frames. Hung as mobiles, they move either via air currents or motors, sometimes accompanied by light shows and music.
They are large but lightweight. Sometimes a second wood frame will float inside the main sculpture, suspended by a network of string. “Defying gravity is a big thing with me,” he said.
Photography is the process for Hastings artist Josefa Mulaire, but that’s only the beginning. Responding to what she considers the contemporary world’s “oversaturation of images,” Mulaire creates works that are labyrinths of layers, inviting the viewer to peer into the depths. In each work of her latest series, she uses a month’s worth of photographs to create a multilayered image. “Usually it’s busy and complicated and overwhelming, and that’s what I feel,” she said. “I feel that’s what contemporary life is doing to me.” The works are not collages, but are made digitally for a collage-like effect.
Mixed-media artist Eleni LaSenna of Irvington gets ideas from the textures of object she finds in everyday life. Some, such as birds’ nests and feathers, tree bark, lichens or seedpods, come from nature. Others, such as rusted metal, are manmade. “I’m always looking for something interesting,” she said. “Somehow a pattern or some detail will emerge in my work.”
Her display will be outdoors in the garden she designed herself, alongside some of the objects that inspired her.
Most of her work is abstract, executed in ink, acrylic and mixed media. “I like focusing on getting into how the materials I use work together,” she said. “I find it very meditative to do certain pieces.”
Bruce Robbins, a longtime faculty member at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, has his studio nearby on Main Street. His teaching has ranged from visual arts to stagecraft to video production to puppetry, and his own creative projects are informed by all these disciplines.
On the tour, visitors will see many of the puppetry projects he has produced over the years, along with an interactive installation where they can manipulate a fish puppet in an underwater environment. Most of the puppets are either hand-and-rod puppets or hand puppets, created out of many different types of materials such as fabric and foam. “Some even have old sofa stuffing,” he said. “Basically, everything can be a puppet. I’ve used plastic bags to create shows.”
For Robbins, puppetry brings it all together. “I was never able to decide on one kind of art form I loved,” he said. “Puppetry gives me an opportunity to explore the things I love doing.”
Returning to the tour this year are such artists as Hastings mixed-media painter/collagist Diane Brawarsky, photographer John Maggiotto, painter and book artist Allen M. Hart, realistic oil painter Peggie Blizard, and her husband, graphite artist Larry Blizard. At 145 Palisade Street in Dobbs Ferry, a former brewery on the Hudson River, 35 artists will occupy working studios, including pastelist Lea Carmichael, printmaker Pepe Coronado, folk artist Madge Scott, and oil painter Vicente Saavedra.
For a complete list of artists and a map of the open studios, see the brochure included in this edition of the Enterprise or visit RiverArts.org.
BY JACKIE LUPO
April 18, 2014
REGION — They’re painters, potters, or photographers, sculptors in stone, steel or glass, creators of fantasy worlds in fiber or found objects. They’re Rivertowns artists who run the gamut from the traditional to the cutting edge.
Eighty of them will open their doors to the public next weekend, April 26-27, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., for the 21st annual RiverArts Studio Tour. Preview exhibitions of representative works are now on view at the Hastings Municipal Building and the Irvington Public Library. The event is free.
“We have a lot of wonderful artists on the tour,” said Ellen Crane, vice president of RiverArts and organizer of the tour. “Even within the sculptural realm, we have a huge variety.” Crane, a Dobbs Ferry photographer, noted that this year, there are 54 women on the tour, and a mix of artists who are widely known and others who mostly exhibit locally.
“We think we have such a diverse group of artists, but every year we get somebody completely new,” she said. This year, 13 artists are on the tour for the first time. The Enterprise talked with some of these new exhibitors.
Emily Gosweiler is an Irvington multimedia artist who works out of her home studio. She earned her BFA at Purchase College and has been teaching art throughout Westchester for the past 10 years. She is also the owner of Creative Ways, an art and movement school located at South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry.
“From the time I can remember, my hands were in something,” she said. “I’d make sculptures out of dirt.”
Nowadays she has better media at her disposal, such as bronze, stone, clay and ceramic. The finished product might be a small bronze sculpture featuring interconnected human forms contorted into a circle, or an installation of abstract swirling tentacles paved with mosaic. “I love organic, twisting forms,” she said.
Kristin Javier’s passion for ancient tile work led her to study Roman mosaics in their original locations, including examples from the time Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed.
“The very first mosaic I ever saw was in Venice, at the church of San Marco,” she said. “I hope for my work to possess a timeless quality, like a mosaic from an archaeological dig, or a panel from a stained-glass window discovered in an attic.”
She uses materials such as marble and Venetian glass. One of her works is a bird, replicating a 5th-century mosaic detail on the ceiling of the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. Others are original compositions. “It’s a very peaceful process for me when I’m making a mosaic but a very intense process,” she said. She starts with a sketch, but is also influenced by how the glass behaves when she cuts it, resulting in unexpected shapes.
Hastings glass artist Andrew Bearnot, a 2004 graduate of Hastings High School, holds dual degrees in materials engineering from Brown University and glass making from Rhode Island School of Design. He traveled to Scandinavia on a Fulbright fellowship to study glass techniques.
“Glass is particularly remarkable in the way it captures modernist ideals,” he said. “It’s transparent; it’s efficient; it’s light as air. It’s really a utopian material.”
His latest project was inspired by the field of fractology, which is the study of crack formation. He has created a new glass-breaking ritual for weddings, inspired by Jewish tradition but resulting in an artifact of the event. Recently, he has been working with a studio in Brooklyn to etch text into the glass, in the tradition of the ketubah or Jewish marriage contract.
Bearnot has also designed utilitarian glassware whose bases demonstrate special optics that turn each tumbler and carafe into a camera obscura. He is accepting orders for sets of the glassware.
Hastings sculptor David Press spent 30 years as a math and science teacher in the Blind Brook School District. For almost as long, he has been creating intricate string and wood kinetic sculptures that would have looked familiar to mathematicians of two centuries ago. In fact, the Smithsonian Institution called upon Press when they needed an expert in string sculpture to restore some models made by mathematicians of the late 1700s.
Press shows his work internationally and contributes to journals that specialize in art and mathematics.
His work features an intricate interplay of the lines created by the string and the curving forms of the wood frames. Hung as mobiles, they move either via air currents or motors, sometimes accompanied by light shows and music.
They are large but lightweight. Sometimes a second wood frame will float inside the main sculpture, suspended by a network of string. “Defying gravity is a big thing with me,” he said.
Photography is the process for Hastings artist Josefa Mulaire, but that’s only the beginning. Responding to what she considers the contemporary world’s “oversaturation of images,” Mulaire creates works that are labyrinths of layers, inviting the viewer to peer into the depths. In each work of her latest series, she uses a month’s worth of photographs to create a multilayered image. “Usually it’s busy and complicated and overwhelming, and that’s what I feel,” she said. “I feel that’s what contemporary life is doing to me.” The works are not collages, but are made digitally for a collage-like effect.
Mixed-media artist Eleni LaSenna of Irvington gets ideas from the textures of object she finds in everyday life. Some, such as birds’ nests and feathers, tree bark, lichens or seedpods, come from nature. Others, such as rusted metal, are manmade. “I’m always looking for something interesting,” she said. “Somehow a pattern or some detail will emerge in my work.”
Her display will be outdoors in the garden she designed herself, alongside some of the objects that inspired her.
Most of her work is abstract, executed in ink, acrylic and mixed media. “I like focusing on getting into how the materials I use work together,” she said. “I find it very meditative to do certain pieces.”
Bruce Robbins, a longtime faculty member at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, has his studio nearby on Main Street. His teaching has ranged from visual arts to stagecraft to video production to puppetry, and his own creative projects are informed by all these disciplines.
On the tour, visitors will see many of the puppetry projects he has produced over the years, along with an interactive installation where they can manipulate a fish puppet in an underwater environment. Most of the puppets are either hand-and-rod puppets or hand puppets, created out of many different types of materials such as fabric and foam. “Some even have old sofa stuffing,” he said. “Basically, everything can be a puppet. I’ve used plastic bags to create shows.”
For Robbins, puppetry brings it all together. “I was never able to decide on one kind of art form I loved,” he said. “Puppetry gives me an opportunity to explore the things I love doing.”
Returning to the tour this year are such artists as Hastings mixed-media painter/collagist Diane Brawarsky, photographer John Maggiotto, painter and book artist Allen M. Hart, realistic oil painter Peggie Blizard, and her husband, graphite artist Larry Blizard. At 145 Palisade Street in Dobbs Ferry, a former brewery on the Hudson River, 35 artists will occupy working studios, including pastelist Lea Carmichael, printmaker Pepe Coronado, folk artist Madge Scott, and oil painter Vicente Saavedra.
For a complete list of artists and a map of the open studios, see the brochure included in this edition of the Enterprise or visit RiverArts.org.
Bronze Casting
From 2004 - 2017 I worked as a teaching assistant in the Bronze Casting class at SUNY Purchase. There I cast many students work, including all of my own bronze sculptures.
