ON VIEW IN HAL GOMER GALLERY

Participating Artists:

Maria Alejandra. Brito - Maria Brito is a Latin American contemporary artist and activist of the Venezuelan diaspora. She creates through painting, mixed media, and upcycled art. Her love for nature is reflected in her artwork, which express an imaginary nature that seeks to capture one’s attention through movement and vibrant colors. Some of her work also represents memories and struggles of her country, Venezuela, as well as feelings of hope based on religiosity and the search for enlightenment of a country in crisis.

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David Camero - David Camero was born in Caracas Venezuela in 1962. He received his bachelor's in Art from the Central University of Venezuela. David has accomplished many things in his artistic career from working in street theater to acting in commercials on television. David's passions extend outside of being a painter and scenographer. David went on to direct plays, some of his own creations. His poems and essays have appeared in publications such as Prensarte UCV, Latest News, appeared in publications such as Prensarte UCV, Latest News, Excess, Anthology nobody, and Hispanic Poets in Washington. He has also appeared in the Mexican rotating group El Frontera, the observer of the South Border and the Republic.

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Jainson Cedillo - I’m a Queer Ecuadorian American Artist, always trying to my find my place in art. Ecuador is not really represented too much in the media and art since it’s a small country in South America. So I’m trying to make my voice heard with showing bright colors and symbolism of my country flag. We made be a small country, but our culture, voices and people are not small. Thank you, Viva Ecuador.

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Jeannette Fonseca - “Painting challenges me and compels me to examine both myself and my abilities. As a monocular artist, I must push beyond my physical limits to capture depth and perspective. I have a passion for plants, coffee, and food, which is why many of my personal works feature these subjects. I paint for the joy of the process, reveling in the addition of unexpected colors and making them fit harmoniously. My art is a reflection of my expression of color and happiness.”

Blanca Gruber - Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, Blanca Gruber is Multidisciplinary artist, a visual artist, an independent producer and director of theater with a specialty in lighting design and silhouette theater, photographer and an award-winning independent filmmaker. Characteristic of her style is that image and movement and psychological and emotional impact are emphasized, along with the interplay of theatrical elements and the use of unconventional spaces. Of the range of art she creates, sculpture is her most personal and preferred form of artistic self-expression. Blanca began studying sculpture in Caracas at Escuela Cristobal Rojas where she exhibited her work in CANTV. She also studied at the School Maria Curiel. Since her arrival in the United States, she has had a variety of opportunities to study and to work as a sculptor, for example when she was hired to work on the mock Brooklyn Bridge that is part of the New York, New York hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

Elli Maria Hernandez - elli maria is a latinx, mixed-media artist based in baltimore. she experiments across different mediums - blurring the lines between photography, painting, printmaking, drawing, collage, installation, and more - to explore themes of time, memories, identity, and trauma. her distinct visual language is inspired by personal narratives/emotions, nature, & science. she invites viewers to explore imagery that is ambiguous and evocative while constructing their own meanings and interpretations. she received her B.F.A. in Art + Design at Towson University in 2018 and her A.F.A. from Montgomery College in 2015.

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Nadia Lezcano - “Communication is communal, it’s reciprocal, it’s experimental. The marks I leave on my sculptures emphasize the weight of each piece and provide grit for your attention to latch onto. My work is physical not just because I struggle with my voice, but because it is my voice. My work starts from an answer and through the process of sketching and building and re-building, I work myself towards the question. The need for understanding drives every piece I make, yet it doesn’t dictate every way that I make my art. Instead, it works as a representation for the languages that I use: English, Spanish, calm, mature, angry, frustrated, pensive, and fearful, to name a few. I invite others to look at my work and to try to feel where things have been left unsaid and tune in to what questions they are answering.”

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LUSMERLIN - Originally from the Dominican Republic, LUSMERLIN is a multidisciplinary artist and chemical engineer with a background in textile and cement manufacturing management. She currently splits her time between Philadelphia, PA and Columbia, MD and exhibits her work nationally in museums, galleries and impromptu spaces. She is a 2024 Fellow at Mural Arts Philadelphia. LUSMERLIN’s professional background includes achieving record profit ($4.5MM) as plant manager of a slag cement plant, attaining a Project Management Certification (PMP), and being a recipient of the highly selective Global Undergraduate Exchange Program of the US Department of State. LUSMERLIN’s works across media share a thematic interest: womanhood, the immigrant body in space, and the scenes of daily life that accompany her journey of re-discovery in a new land, after she immigrated to the US in 2016. LUSMERLIN's approach to work borrows from Caribbean values, where it’s more important that a person “pops” in a room, rather than blend in. Deeply inclined to community involvement, she regularly volunteers with organizations that support immigrants, disadvantaged populations, and advocacy for the arts.

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Catherine Rupan Mapp - Catherine Mapp is a muralist and fiber artist with a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture currently pursuing an MAT in Art Education. Mapp is currently a lead educator at the Baltimore Museum of Art and has shown her work both locally and internationally in Uruguay, Canada, England, and Hawaii. Her art explores the human experience, especially in relation to music, and how it can foster a sense of connectedness. Her involvement in the DMV electronic music scene as well as her experiences growing up in Miami have shaped her uniquely vibrant personal aesthetic. Listening to music is often the jumping-off point in the studio that induces a trance-like focus on mark-making and color layering, where the hand is directed through painting to interact with different performative mythologies (rituals) and healing practices. Her work speaks to the viewer through the symbolic language of color, memory, ancestral connection, and hieroglyphics often sourced from her Mexican, Cuban, and Guyanese heritage.

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Sandra Pérez-Ramos - Sandra Pérez-Ramos is a Puerto Rican visual artist and community art leader working in the Washington, DC metro area. She is a Resident Artist in Gallery 209, affiliated with Artists & Makers Studios in Rockville, Maryland. Her body of work includes drawings, fiber arts, installation, murals and public art. Throughout her work, the repetition of dots, lines and spirals simbolize interconnection, allude to ancient archetypes, collective unconscious and to the soothing rituals of magic affirmations. Using fiber materials and assemblage Sandra explores identity, otherness, cultural clash, the idea of home, idioms linked to superstitions, mix of languages and spiritual beliefs in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. There is whimsy and humor embued with nostalgia, as she comments on heritage and history, both, results of ancestral patterns of migration, and later, to forced colonization and colonialism.

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Leah Robles - “I’m a 18 yr old Puerto Rican woman who loves art and loves baking, just trying to make it through life and enjoy it as best I can.”

Cindy Roman - Cindy Roman born in Baltimore loved drawing people since young, her inspiration seeing police sketch artists falling in love with portraits, she fell in love with drawing from there on out. It’s not till she got to high school that she discovered other mediums aside from graphite. From there, she experimented with many different mediums. After graduating high school she went to Anne Arundel Comunity College where she can hone her art skills. It was here that she took a class in Illustration that she fells in love with illustrating for children’s books. After taking an illustration class she realized that she could focus her art and illustrate in onto educating the younger generation. When graduating from Community college she applied to VCUarts majoring in Communication Arts. Here she focused on portraits, figures, and way of storytelling through her art.

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Mariela Sosa-Samayoa - Mariela’s painting is a glimpse of the beautiful lake of Atitlan in Guatemala.

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