June 11 – August 2, 2024

Featuring Larry Dobens, Lauren Drescher, Valerie Hammond, Blaise Hayward, Mark Johnson and Victory Garden Art

View works in the exhibition here.

Larry Dobens is currently in a two-person show, Communication, at the Cynthia Winings Gallery in Blue Hill, Maine, opening May 26. His work is in collections of the Yale University, The Provincetown Art Association, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among numerous other private collections. Last year, Dobens was commissioned to paint the National Headquarters of the Henry St Settlement in New York City. Dobens recently (2023) retired as an art teacher for the NYC Dept. of Education (where he taught for several decades). He has also taught for A Studio in a School, Parsons School, and City University of NY. He received his art degrees from Parsons School of Design (BFA,1976) and Yale University (MFA, 1979).

Lauren Drescher was born in New York City and now resides between Auckland, New Zealand, and the French Pyrenees. Her work includes drawing, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and artist books. Her techniques are derived from studio-based practices but adapted for travel, so they can be made out of a suitcase. Recycling and found objects, such as antique paper, are reoccurring themes in her work.

Over the past few years, her prints have been created using plant milk boxes as a matrix. The resulting Tetra-Pak prints are drypoint prints composed of a collage of elements. The Swimmers series began as drawings. There is a growing body of characters and elements that create a narrative. Most of her prints are unique or made in limited editions due to the transience of the materials. 

Valerie Hammond lives and works in New York City, NY. Hammond received her MFA from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was awarded the Eisner Award. Her work is included in public and private collections such as the Walker Art Center; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Library of Congress; the New York Public Library’s Print and Drawing Collection; The Getty Museum; the Progressive Collection; the Chazen Museum of Art; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; the Grand Palais Museum; and Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection.

Blaise Hayward is a photographer and sculptor based in New York. In 1996 he moved to the United States from Canada, where he has maintained a commercial photography studio for decades. Throughout this time he also produced fine-art photography, and over the past few years this increasingly has become the focus of his time and energy, as has creating mobiles and sculptures in both bronze and stone. His work resides in private collections, but only recently, in 2021, has Hayward begun to publicly exhibit his art and present it to a wider audience. 

Mark Johnson was born in New York City and currently lives and works in New York and Portland, Maine. He received a BA from Oberlin College and an MA from New York University. His paintings and prints have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including Susan Maasch Fine Art (Portland, ME) International Print Center New York, and an upcoming 2022 exhibition at Planthouse Gallery in New York City. His work is included in the Color: A Workshop for Artists and Designers by David Hornung. Mark also has an ongoing involvement in architecture, including designing and building a residential house and small cabins.

Victory Garden Collective (Louise Eastman, Jess Frost, Tara Geer, Katie Michel, Wendy Small, and Janis Stemmermann), formed in 2016 in response to the presidential primaries. Their projects take cues from suffragette movements, with a mission to galvanize women to keep pushing for change.