THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB Artist Fellows


National Arts Club Names New Artist Fellows for 2023-24 have been announced!

The National Arts Club (NAC), currently celebrating its 125th anniversary, is a non-profit organization with the mission to stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fine arts. The Club is situated in Gramercy Park in New York City.

The NAC Artist Fellowship program, established in 2019, provides a select number of established professional artists (21 years of age or older) with 12 months of full membership to the historic club, with the goal of furthering their careers. The chosen Artist Fellows can be working in any one (or more) of the disciplines reflected in the NAC’s arts committees, adhering to the Club’s core values of championing all facets of the evolving American artistic landscape: Archeology, Architecture, Art and Technology, Culinary Arts, Dance, Decorative Arts, Fashion, Film, Fine Arts, Literature, Music, Photography, and Theater.

For any additional questions and to submit your application, please email [email protected].




Introducing the 2023/2024 National Arts Club Artist Fellows

We are excited to announce the selection of the 14 recipients of our Artist Fellowship for 2023/2024. The NAC Artist Fellowship program provides a select number of artists—working in both visual and performing arts—with a 12-month membership to our historic club. Fellows are encouraged to take advantage of the Club’s meeting spaces, engage with other members, and participate in the more than 150 public programs offered throughout the year. 

2023/2024 NAC ARTIST FELLOWS

Jeanette Andrews is an artist, magician and speaker. Andrews’ work focuses on the development of the seemingly impossible via performance, sculpture, installation and audio. She has presented numerous commissioned works with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Quebec City Biennial, presented talks for Cooper Hewitt, Chicago Ideas Week, The British Society of Aesthetics, corporations, and universities, including Columbia, MIT, and Harvard. She has been an artist-in-residence for the University of Houston’s Mitchell Center and Affiliate of metaLab (at) Harvard. Illusion is Andrews’ life’s work and her performances have been praised by the Chicago Tribune, PBS, and the New York Times.

Yacine Boulares is a French-Tunisian saxophonist and composer based in Brooklyn. His many influences urged him to seek his own identity and explore North & West African rhythms, leading to the creation of AJOYO, a mystic brew of African tradition, jazz and soul. In 2019  Yacine was selected to be a part of the  Joe’s Pub Working Group to develop his newest project IFRIQIYA, a multimedia performance exploring the Afro Tunisian rhythmic traditions. In 2021 Yacine co-founded the Habibi Festival in New York, a four day festival dedicated to contemporary Arabic culture.

Lydia Cornett is a Baltimore-born filmmaker currently based in Brooklyn, New York. As a former musician turned film director and composer, she makes work that explores the contours of labor, language and artistic expression across nonfiction and experimental forms.

Rodney Ewing is a visual artist, whose drawings, installations, and mixed media works focus on his need to intersect body and place, memory and fact, and to re- examine human histories, cultural conditions, and trauma. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, The Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, Jack Shainman Gallery: The School, The Drawing Center in NY, Jack Fisher Gallery and most recently at Rena Bransten Gallery. Ewing is a grantee of the Pollock Krasner award (2022) and his work has recently been included in the collections of Tufts University Art Gallery, The Fine Arts Museums San Francisco, and Harvard Art Museums.

Liliana Farber is an Uruguayan-born, New York-based, visual artist. Through research-based processes and digital strategies, Farber investigates notions of land imaginaries, unmappable spaces, utopias, and techno-colonialism. Her works were exhibited at The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Lisbon; The Center for Books Art, New York; Ars Electronica, Linz; Arebyte Gallery, London; Panke Gallery, Berlin; and Oblique Nuage Gallery, Paris. Farber’s work was supported by the Lumen Prize for Art and Technology,  Artis grant, Asylum Arts, Off Site Projects, Wassaic Projects, Nars Foundation, On Curating, and MIT’s Leonardo Journal.

Pala Garcia is a New York based violinist and founding member of Longleash, a critically acclaimed trio specializing in contemporary and experimental chamber music. Her creative work explores the variable nature of interpretation and memory. 

Lindy Giusta (She/They) is a mixed media artist hailing from sunny San Diego and now resides in Brooklyn. Lindy is a passionate, queer, outsider artist depicting portraits in various mediums with a speciality of capturing human emotions and experiences in her work. 

Caroline Golum is a filmmaker and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She is a contributing editor and occasional podcast co-host for Screen Slate. Her debut feature, A Feast of Man, is streaming on Amazon Prime, Vimeo, and Tubi. Her second feature, Revelations of Divine Love, is in post-production.

Eunbi Kim (She/Her) is a pianist creating intimate experiences that transcend the conventions of the piano recital. A winner of the 2023 Astral Artists National Competition, her credits include solo programs at the Kennedy Center, a concert-meditation performance at Lincoln Center, and a TEDx Talk. Kim is also co-founder of bespoken, a mentorship program for female-identifying and non-binary musicians. 

Nancy Ma is an actor, playwright, and filmmaker from Chinatown, New York. She studies grief, memory, language, and home in her art. Her work has been supported by NYFA, BRIC Arts Media, The New Harmony Project, Fresh Ground Pepper, Museum of Chinese in America, and more.

Thomas March is a New York-based poet, essayist, and performer. His current work involves close collaborations with visual and musical artists.

Eto Otitigbe is a polymedia artist whose interdisciplinary practice includes sculpture, performance, installation, and public art. His public art intersects history, community, and biophilic design by using parametric modeling and generative design to transform historical and cultural references into biomorphic forms and patterns that reference nature. Otitigbe’s public works includes temporary installations in Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY) and Randall’s Island Park (New York, NY). He was a member of the Design Team for the  Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at UVA (Charlottesville, VA, 2019). Otitigbe's work has been in solo and group exhibitions that include 2013 Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial, organized by the Bronx Museum and Wave Hill; Abandoned Orchestra, Sound Sculpture installation and performance with Zane Rodulfo, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Golden Hour, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, GA, curated by Oshun D. Layne; and Bronx: Africa, Longwood Gallery, Bronx, NY, curated by Atim Oton and Leronn P. Brooks.

Kebra-Seyoun Charles is a double-bassist, composer, and musician. After winning first prize in the 2022 Sphinx Competition, Charles has quickly made a name for themself by soloing in front of orchestras such as the New World Symphony, Sphinx Virtuosi, Indianapolis Symphony, and the Willmington Symphony. With a strong connection to jazz, gospel, and classical music, Charles’s compositions explore what it means to combine these words into a new musical idiom.

Anastasiya Tarasenko is a Ukrainian-American visual artist based in New York City. She uses primarily oil painting, drawing, watercolor and sculpture to create intricate storytelling scenes inspired by human foibles, folk tales, and mythology.

The NAC Artist Fellowship is a program of the NAC Education Committee, chaired by Catherine Kleszczewski and Paul Schwendener.

The 2023/2024 NAC Artist Fellows were selected by a jury led by Paul Schwendener, member of the NAC Board of Governors. Other jurors included John Mhiripiri, Director of Anthology Film Archives; JoAnne McFarland, artist, poet, curator, and Artistic Director of the Artpoetica Project Space; Yuki James, stylist, fashion editor, and photographer with contributions to Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, The New York Times, and other prominent online publications, as well as solo shows at the Leslie-Lohman Gallery and NAC; David Masello, NAC Board Member, Executive Editor of Milieu, and essayist and poet, with pieces appearing in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Fine Art Connoisseur; and Vanessa Reed, President/CEO of New Music USA.

The press release can be viewed here.



PAST FELLOWS
The National Arts Club 2022/2023 Artist Fellows 

Lola Adesioye is a multi-media musician and singer-songwriter who uses her background as a political writer, commentator, and broadcaster—as well as her lived experience as a global citizen of color—to make a creative impact. She is passionate about fostering cross-cultural connections and believes in consciously nurturing innovative combinations of ideas and influences in order to create thought-provoking experiences. 

Laura Anderson Barbata is a Mexico City-born transdisciplinary artist currently based in New York and Mexico City. Since 1992, she has initiated long term projects and collaborations in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway, and the United States. Her work often combines performance, procession, dance, music, textile arts, costuming, papermaking, zines, and protest. Her work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; el Museo de Arte Moderno, México D.F.; and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. 

Chellis Baird blurs the intersection of painting, sculpture, and textiles. Baird explores the elements of painting by reconstructing handwoven canvases from a unique perspective. Her bespoke process begins with woven structures as her base. Each canvas starts with neutral toned materials that are then painted, dyed, and sculpted into dimensional brushstrokes. She creates tangled compositions through a series of twists, knots, and upcycled textiles. Baird received her BFA in textiles from Rhode Island School of Design and studied studio art at the Art Students League in New York City. 

Silvie Cheng is a Tokyo-born, Manhattan-based, Chinese-Canadian pianist who specializes in classical and contemporary music, and enjoys exploring interdisciplinary projects. Her affinity for collaborating closely with composers of our time has led to nearly 50 world premieres, in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Cornell University, and the National Gallery of Canada. Her chamber discography, recorded on audite and New Focus Recordings, has been featured by WQXR, WCRB Classical Music Boston, BBC Radio Scotland, The Times UK, CBC Radio, and Süddeutsche Zeitung Germany. 

Queen Esther is a multidisciplinary artist. She uses lost American history along with ephemera, a visceral map of How We Got Here and the bluing of the note as a kind of collective cultural evocation to make reclamation driven art from a Southern Black feminist perspective. A member of SAG/AFTRA and Actors Equity as well as the Dramatist's Guild and the Recording Academy, Queen Esther’s work in New York City as a vocalist, lyricist, songwriter, actor, solo performer, playwright and librettist has led to numerous creative collaborations. 

Ash Goh Hua is a filmmaker and cultural worker from Singapore, based in New York. By challenging dominant ideologies in their storytelling, often through intentional usage of archives and anachronistic formats, Goh’s films show different imaginations to demonstrate the possibility of liberated futures. Their films have screened and won awards at film festivals internationally, and have been distributed by PBS and Third World Newsreel. Goh has been supported by programs and fellowships by Sundance, Jacob Burns Creative Culture, NeXtDoc, If/Then, and NYFA. 

Savannah Knoop is a New York-based artist, and educator working in film, sculpture, writing, and performance. Knoop has studied dance and martial arts for over 20 years. Movement and choreography is at the core of their practice. They received their BA at CunyBa under the mentorship of Vito Acconci, and their MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in Sculpture and Extended Media. They have shown their work and performed at the Whitney, MoMA, the ICA Philly, Bell Gallery at Brown University,Movement Research, the Leslie Lohman Museum, and ACP in Los Angeles. 

Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster is a New York-based painter who holds a BFA in Fine Art Photography from the Corcoran College of Art + Design and an MFA in Studio Art from New York University. Her work has been exhibited internationally in France, Japan, and throughout the United States. She has attended residencies in Key West, FL and New York City and has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, and New American Paintings. 

JoAnne McFarland is an artist, poet, and curator, and is the Artistic Director of the Artpoetica Project Space in Gowanus, Brooklyn which focuses on work that is both literary and highly visual. The heart of her practice is working beyond fear; more specifically, living outside the fear–state that is the centrifugal force of much of American culture. McFarland’s mission as an artist is to tell the sometimes brutal truth about what she sees around her, and to honor and celebrate her own and others’ ability to thrive, sometimes in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. 

Barkha Patel is a kathak dancer, choreographer, educator, and the Artistic Director of Barkha Dance Company based in New York City. Barkha has performed at dance festivals in India and the U.S. Her work has been presented at venues such as Dance Theatre Harlem, Erasing Borders Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Joyce Theatre, Lincoln Center: Out of Doors, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has been awarded a choreographic fellowship with NJPAC and an Individual Artist grant from Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and New Jersey State Council of the Arts through which she is developing a new work based on the poetry of 14th century Kashmiri poetess, Lal Ded.

Cynthia Talmadge is a New York-based artist known for paintings, photographs, and installations featuring subject matter from the romantic dark side of contemporary Americana and tabloid culture. Talmadge’s work exhibits a fascination with heightened emotional states, mediated portrayals of those states, and particularly the places where both converge. In addition to worldwide group exhibitions, she has exhibited solo at 56 Henry, Halsey McKay Gallery, and NADA Miami. 

Cassandra Zampini  is a New York-based photographer turned new media artist. She creates internet-mined artworks from social media and other internet sources that aim to stimulate introspection about the temporary and permanent effects of our ever-evolving technological world. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, most recently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; The Center for Creative Photography, at the University of Arizona; and is an invitee for the current traveling show, A Yellow Rose Project. 



PAST FELLOWS
The National Arts Club 2020/2021 Artist Fellows 

Lara Knutson is an artist, industrial designer and architect who believes her work is informed by the interplay of light, space, materials and structure that unite these two disciplines.

Kala Pierson is a composer and sound artist. Her music is vivid, full-throated, and rooted in the joy and urgency of communication. 

Makeba Rainey is a Harlem based artist inspired by building community through art. Her bright and inspired work explores social justice elements.

Duke Riley is an artist best know for Fly By Night, in which he released pigeons over the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and repalced their small leg bands with tiny LED lights, illuminating the sky in a transcendent union of public art and nature.  

Aliza Shvarts is an artist and writer who works in performance, video, and installation. Her art and writing explore queer and feminist understandings of reproduction and duration.

Brea Souders is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with photography. Her work has been shown internationally, including solo exhibitions at Abrons Arts Center, and Bruce Silverstein Gallery. 

Shani Jamila is a Brooklyn based artist whose work explores identity, genealogy and the idea of home.  Her travels to nearly fifty countries deeply inform her painting, photography and collage practice. 

Carol Salmanson is a Brooklyn-based light artist working with LEDs & reflective materials to create installations, light sculptures, wall pieces and public art.

Rachel Elizabeth Seed is a London-born, Brooklyn-based nonfiction storyteller working in film, photography and writing. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, TIME, New York Magazine, and BBC.

Sugar Vendil is a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist. Her artistic practice is strongly rooted in rigorous discipline as a musician.  She is a proud second generation Filipinx American. 


The National Arts Club 2019 Artist Fellows

Sarah Kirkland Snider (Composer)
Sahra Motalebi (Performance artist)
Kyle Staver (Visual artist)
Emily Nemens (Writer, editor)
Natalia Fedner (Fashion designer)