Dumbo Arts Festival Advisory Board: Visual Art Sub-committee

The Dumbo Arts Festival is delighted to announce that we have formulated an Advisory Board of talented professionals with expertise in the arenas of visual art, music, dance, theatre and performance art. Today we are pleased to present the visual art sub-committee of the Advisory Board.

1. Marc Dennis (Chair) is a professional artist, professor, Holocaust researcher and emerging bug chef. His paintings are represented with Hirschl & Adler Modern in New York City. His works are in many private and public collections and his works have been reviewed by many publications including Art News, New York Times, Town & Country, Chicago Tribune and The Boston Globe. He teaches painting and drawing at Elmira College and is also a Holocaust researcher with a focus on clandestine art made by prisoners inside concentration camps. He is also noted for his research on entomophagy and bug cuisine. He and his wife and 14-month-old daughter live and work in Brooklyn, NY. 
2. David Baskin received a BFA from The Cooper Union in 1987. One-person exhibitions include Freight+Volume Gallery, NY, NY; Sculpture Center, NY, NY;  Ingalls & Assoc., Miami, Fl and Black and White Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Group exhibitions include Carriage Trade, NY, NY; Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels, Belgium; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, NY; Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA; Elizabeth Harris Gallery, NY, NY among many others. Baskin has received the Pollock Krasner Grant, the McDowell and Yaddo Fellowships among others. David Baskin was one of the original members of the Brooklyn based non-profit arts organization Smack Mellon and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
3. Nana Deleplanque is a French painter living and working in New York. She uses a wide variety of media to create pictorial pieces that impact the viewer on several physical, mythological and emotional levels. Nana was born in France and immigrated to the United States in 1981. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
4. Amanda Friedman is an artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She has held positions at Pratt Institute, PS1 Contemporary Art Center and the Dumbo Arts Center. She studied art and art history at the University of Vermont and the Glasgow School of Art.
5. Richard Gary attended College in Maryland, where he studied under National Geographic photographer, Ralph Castleman. He worked as the supervisor of the Photography Department at the Mariners’ Museum in Virginia. He has assisted photographers such as Ilan Rubin, Gabriella Imperatori Penn, Greg Heisler and Mark Laita. He is currently a commercial photographer whose clients include: GE, Fedex, Neiman Marcus, W and Blackbook magazine. As an ongoing project Richard has been documenting the disappearing world of his childhood in southern Tidewater, VA.
6. Kathleen Gilrain is the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Smack Mellon where she oversees all aspects of program, planning, and organizational development and an Adjunct Professor in sculpture at Brooklyn College. Previous positions include Director of Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, and teaching positions at Marymount College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and guest lecturer at several universities. Kathleen Gilrain has served on various selection panels throughout New York City. Ms. Gilrain is an artist and has exhibited internationally. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union, NYC and an MFA from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
7. Elizabeth Grady is a curator and critic, Co-Founder and Director of Kunsthalle Galapagos, an Adjunct Professor of Art History at the Fashion Institute of Technology (State University of New York), and Special Assistant to the Estate of Diane Arbus. She has curated numerous exhibitions in the United States, has held positions in the curatorial departments of various institutions, and has had several publications including exhibition catalogues.
8. Kat Griefen has been the director of A.I.R. Gallery, a not-for-profit art gallery for women artists, since 2006. She is the NYC Coordinator for The Feminist Art Project and an independent curator. Most recently, with Dena Muller and Carey Lovelace, Ms. Griefen co-curated A.I.R. Gallery: The History, works and archival materials from 1972 to the present at A.I.R and at the Tracey Barry Gallery, NYU.  
9. Debra Klomp Ching is an owner and director of the KLOMPCHING GALLERY, described as “dynamic” and one of the galleries to watch in NYC. The gallery represents an international roster of emerging and mid-career photographers. Its exhibitions have been positively reviewed in The New Yorker, Hotshoe, New York Magazine, ArtReview, The New York Times and Modern Painters amongst others. Mrs Ching has been an invited reviewer to several notable photography festivals including Houston Fotofest, Review Santa Fe and Rhubarb-Rhubarb. As an experienced juror, she has been a judge for PhotoLucida’s Critical Mass, Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward, American Photo’s Emerging Talent, CPW’s Photography Now and Houston Fotofest’s New Discoveries. Her writing has been published in Magenta Magazine, photo-eye Booklist, Nahtsellen and PDN. She published and edited a monograph, (re)collect, on the photography of Jonathan Shaw (2005) and guest-edited Photography Quarterly (Issue 99, 2010). She is the co-curator of US contemporary photography for the Flash Forward Photography Festival in Toronto (October, 2010). 
10. Elodie Maillet is Director of Photography for Contour by Getty Images. She has also worked as a freelance writer for numerous French and American publications. Maillet received her Master’s degree in philosophy from Paris X Nanterre. A native of Paris, France, she came to the United States to pursue a Master’s in Journalism at Northwestern University.
11. Zannah Mass is the Cultural Affairs Director for Two Trees, managing the company’s philanthropy & leading cultural initiatives, including producing a monthly gallery walk, sponsoring and producing public art and festivals, marketing Dumbo’s cultural events, recruiting more fine art galleries for Dumbo, formalizing a photo district, and liaising with Two Trees’ grantees.  Zannah was previously Executive Director of The PlayGround Theatre in Miami and General Manager of St. Ann’s Warehouse. She received her Master of Public Administration from New York University and her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan.
12. Mick Murray is the founder and Chief Executive of surroundart, a fine art logistics company with offices in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Washington, DC. Mick is a member of the board of directors for DUMBO Arts Center. He and his wife Theresa and son Jack live in DUMBO.
13. Lorie Novak is an artist and Professor of Photography & Imaging at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Affiliated Faculty at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. Her photographs, installations, and Internet projects have been in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world and have been collected by many museums. Novak work explores issues of memory and transmission, identity and loss, presence and absence, shifting cultural meanings of photographs, and the relationship between the intimate and the public.
14. Fran O’Neill is the program director of the New York Studio School. She received her BFA from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She did Post-Graduate work at Monash University and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. She has received numerous awards, exhibited in several group and solo shows and has taught at New York Studio School and privately.
15. Kwabena Slaughter is a visual and performing artist. His photos and videos have been shown at numerous locations including the New Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem. His stage work includes trapeze, stage designing, and production management. He has managed technical systems and events at Smack Mellon Gallery in Brooklyn and at Lincoln Center in Manhattan.
16. Manfred St. Julien is the founder and owner of Future Pace Design Inc., an architectural design studio located in Dumbo, Brooklyn, focused on all aspects of design and project management.  Manfred is currently involved in the reconstruction effort for Haiti.  He received a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
17. David Terry is the Senior Program Officer/Curator in the Programs and Awards Department, and manager of the Fellowships Program at NYFA.  Prior to coming to NYFA Mr. Terry was Assistant Director at the Pelham Art Center.  His professional career covers a wide range of artistic, arts administrative and academic experience.  He has taught a variety of fine arts classes to students of all age ranges. Mr. Terry is a working artist, freelance curator, juror, and a panelist for various institutions.
18. Sarah Walko is currently the Executive Director of Triangle Arts Association, a non-profit arts organization in Brooklyn. She attained her Master of Fine Arts from Savannah College of Art and Design and her Bachelor of Arts from University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. She has participated in numerous artists workshops and residency programs and is Art Director, co- writer and so-editor with the independent film collective Santasombra.