August 2025
Emerging Artist Showcase
Local emerging artists
August 2 - August 23
Opening Reception on Arts Night Out
The Self is an integral part of art, serving as a mirror to the complexities of human identity - from the personal, political and cultural. Coming from various backgrounds and identities, each artist in this exhibit connects to the world uniquely. Together they create a melting pot of socio-political art that spans across mediums. They show that our identities matter, as they not only reflect upon the viewers lives, but what the artists wish others understood about themselves. Freed from societal constraints, artists mold, capture, and share their identities through their artworks. Allowing space for emerging artists to just be, is one step towards radical acceptance.
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Acadia (she/her) has always been interested in the natural cycles of the world. Her wandering brain was never meant for the structure of science, but her interest in it never waivered, now she bridges the gap between science and art. Currently, she’s interested in sustainability in artmaking. Her recent work features wood salvaged from burn bins, logged forests, and roadsides which she reassembles, paints, and allows to grow into something new, similar to how the process of decomposition allows for new life and growth.
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For Amy (she/they), art has always been a salvation, a means of relaxing her nervous system, and a way to express both her dreams and her discomfort. While she did attend art high school in NY and started college as an art major, she has spent most of her adult life career vacillating between dance, puppetry, fine art, fitness and teaching. Since becoming a mom 14 years ago, fine art has taken the front seat again, where she creates in vivid color, magical land/dreamscapes, and utilizes small shapes to create larger images.
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Chanel (she/they) has had a love for art since she was young, but during the pandemic, she discovered a passion for bringing pictures to life using pencil, ink, and acrylic. Over the years, she has found ways to incorporate her favorite holiday, Halloween, into upcycled prints and lithographs that had been left behind and forgotten. She reimagines these pieces with the spirit of core memories and lost loved ones who never truly leave us, capturing that happy, peaceful feeling we experience in our favorite places. The ghosts in her work symbolize the idea that our energy has a significant impact on all aspects of life and highlight just how powerful it can be.
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Claudia (she/her) is a multifaceted artist: musician, dancer, and photographer. Claudia es una immigrante Mexicana, raised in Los Angeles, CA, Claudia uses the lens to showcase places in time that once seemed inaccessible to her. Raised in a working-class community, once undocumented, Claudia never thought she’d see, visit, and experience places that she once imagined. She photographs and showcases experiences for others who have traversed nations for a better life.
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Jamie(she/her) is a painter and papermaker with a background in ceramics, raised in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts. Influenced by her parents, she developed an appreciation for the brilliance and healing properties of plants.
Her work often tackles challenging themes, such as the impact of absence, white supremacy, misogyny, and the complexities of borders and private property. Recently, she has focused on the materials in her art, exploring papermaking with plant materials that she harvests and processes herself.
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Jacob (he/him) is a local, self-taught artist who uses visual media as means to communicate his experience living for decades as a closeted transgender man in America. A recent transplant to the Pioneer Valley, his black and white photo series Paradise City POV focuses on the intangible imprint that the glaring public display of acceptance in Northampton, Massachusetts, will have on those navigating a difficult path in life.
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Kendall (she/they) is an oil painter and mixed media artist who explores the intersections of femininity, identity, and queerness. Working from personal experiences, studies of mythology and historical references, they embody an interest in symbolism and the ways in which the past informs the present. They recently received their Bachelor of Arts in Art Studio at Mount Holyoke College.
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Robin (she/her), unsatisfied with most social conventions, sought authenticity in a place she'd never find it--in Fresno, CA. One day, while swimming in a pool, she ruminated to the sky and wished for an interesting life. This wish led her to escape via Naval Intelligence, ultimately arriving in western Massachusetts in 1985. She knew immediately that she had come home.
In June 2023, Robin began her visual migraine journal. Although the pain can be intense, it does get the pen/pencil/brush in her hand, and the blessing is that it allows Robin to step outside of the pain and befuddlement for a few minutes. As she worked on this project, visually documenting her chronic migraines over the course of the year, her relationship with them began to shift. She discovered a growing gratitude for them, since they presented themselves in a language she understood, set her on this path, and, like it or not, they walk with her, so she has learned to make peace with them.
Robin can usually be found in her studio, which is the room formerly known as the living room, with her lucky studio gremlin at her feet. Upstairs, her roommate, also named Robin, is dancing. -
Paige (she/her) is an arts educator, community builder, and artist of whimsy who cannot pick just one hobby. She grapples with her reality of making too much art about cats and is always plotting her next formal execution of a new recipe. Her art tends to reflect her ever-loving affair with ecology and the natural world while also experimenting with alternative materials and techniques.
IG@Paigesquinn