Exhibition Features Fellows Who Cultivated Their Creativity at Trinity

Seven artists who cultivated their work as fellows of the Trinity College Studio Arts Program join together for a new Bicentennial exhibition at the Widener Gallery titled Rise. The exhibited work stems from close observation of current realities and research directed at future change.

On display from February 26 to April 8, 2024, Rise offers a slate of recent works from two decades of alumni of the postbaccalaureate fellowship program. The fellowships provide support and workspace for recent arts graduates as they shape the direction of their art and prepare for graduate school.

Funded by the Deborah Buck Foundation and the Hilla von Rebay Foundation, fellows work in art studios on the Trinity campus, mentor students, and assist with events and gallery programming over the course of a year.

Exhibiting artists include three Trinity undergraduate alumni, Alison Cofrancesco ’20, Sebastian Ebarb ’06, and Brenda Ordoñez-Guillén ’22, along with Ilana Harris-Babou, Samantha Kasubaski Rosado, Harrison Kinnane Smith, and Nick Van Zanten. Their work spans paintings, prints, installations, videos, textiles, and assemblages.

The exhibition in the gallery of the Austin Arts Center is free and open to the public. A reception will be held during the Bicentennial Spring Symposium, February 28, 2:45 – 4:00 p.m. Visitors can also tour the gallery Monday through Friday, 1:00 – 6:00 p.m., and Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

On March 4, Sebastian Ebarb will give a gallery walk-through with a Q&A from 12:50 – 1:30 p.m., and on March 5, Ebarb will present a lecture titled “Skoden: The Rise of Native American Pop Culture” from 12:15 – 1:30 p.m. in the Reese Room. Visitors can also tour the gallery Monday through Friday, 1:00 – 6:00 p.m., and Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

About the Artists

Still life paintings by Alison Cofrancesco ’20 are an exploration of the objects to which we assign social and sentimental value. By juxtaposing trash and mass-produced items alongside objects of value, the paintings consider their interrelationships and lead to contemplation about what we accumulate and why. Confrancesco’s work has been exhibited at Da Silva Gallery, Ely House, Atticus, and Kehler Liddel Gallery, all in New Haven. Cofrancesco is pursuing an MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington, where she is also an instructor of drawing.

 

Brenda Ordoñez-Guillén ’22 is a Chicana artist based in Hartford. Many of her works delve into the exploration of resilience as a central theme. Her creations weave together visual and sculptural elements to illuminate the diverse facets of resilience within the immigrant experience.

Sebastian Ellington Flying Eagle Ebarb ’06 is a designer based in Boston and a member of the Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb. His beaded, textile, and design work aims to empower individuals and society to push past conventional thinking. He is a professor of design at Northeastern University and co-owner of the design studio Nahi, which means “we” in Apache. His graphic design work has received the Adobe Government Award for Excellence, the Communication Arts Award for Web Design, and numerous GD USA Awards for Excellence in In-House Design. Ebarb holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts.

 

 

Harrison Kinnane Smith’s work explores legal, economic, and racial systems of power. His work has been published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and exhibited at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Smith’s projects have been covered by Hyperallergic, NPR, and Bloomberg CityLab. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale University and is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of California Los Angeles. He was born in Pittsburgh and lives in Los Angeles.

Ilana Harris-Babou’s interdisciplinary work spans sculpture, installation, and video, and has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe, including recent solo exhibitions Needy Machines at Candice Madey and Under My Feet at Storefront for Art and Architecture, both in New York. In May 2023, Harris-Babou’s work Liquid Gold took over the screens of Times Square for the Midnight Moment program. She has been included in the Istanbul Design Biennial (2020) and The Whitney Biennial (2019). Other group exhibitions include The Wellcome Collection in London; California College of the Arts Wattis Institute, San Francisco; and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Harris-Babou lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and Middletown, Connecticut, and holds an MFA from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University.

Nick Van Zanten’s Formfit series explores duality of purpose, as they shift from wall hangings, to suspended sculptures, to articles of clothing. He has exhibited most recently at Random Access in Syracuse, New York, as well as Ugly, Roots & Culture, Comfort Station, Paris London Hong Kong, and Gallery 400, all in Chicago. His artist residencies and fellowships include Monson Arts in Monson, Maine; Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York; and Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin. Van Zanten holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, a BFA from Pratt Institute, and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in New York.

Samantha Kasubaski Rosado is a Puerto Rican, cisgendered, gay woman who works primarily with collage and oil paint on canvas. She is interested in the challenge of color, space development, and compositional relationships and has a passion for cultural storytelling using figures and animals. She completed an artist residency at Anderson Ranch in Smowmass Village, Colorado, and an assistantship at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. She currently teaches fine art and design courses at Central Piedmont Community College and Winthrop University and was recently awarded 2022-2023 Best First-Year Adjunct in the College of Fine Art and Design at Winthrop University.  Kasubaski Rosado lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and holds an MFA from Louisiana State University and a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College.