MEET THE WOMEN ARTISTS OF THE RIVINGTON SCHOOL
The Women Artists of the Rivington School are a diverse group, both locally from The Lower East Side, LES, and internationally. Their expertise range from welding and the 3-D Arts to painting, photography and collage. There is also an exciting group of performers, dancers and musicians.
ARTIST MEMBERS
Who We Are
We are women artists from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities. Our art is diverse and was greatly influenced by our shared experiences in The Rivington School. The Rivington School was an abandoned lot in the lower east side of New York City. It was raw with talent and energy; it was the street alive with the neighborhood kids and families. It was an alternative to the traditional way of seeing and making art.
MAGGIE REILLY
Knowing the realization of the power of art to heal, personally and through the healing of others, I received my masters of arts from Columbia University’s as an Art/Recreation Therapist. From my first interactive art piece, under the auspices of OIA, engaging adolescent residential psychiatric patients from Ward’s Island, to teaching art to New York City’s middle schoolers for over twenty years, I understand the defining principles of my artwork as the power of art to heal through love and engagement.
Before teaching for NYC’s DOE, I had a twenty year run of printing and working with many artists in RAM STUDIO. I printed/crafted limited editions with artists from Bernice Steinbaum Gallery to the Jim Kempner Gallery, and worked with many artists and organizations such as Appearance Press, The Rivington School and Plexus International.
During this time, I not only exhibited my art but also conceived and curated the first art show in The World Trade Center for The Association of Artist Run Galleries( AARG). I also conceived the exhibition "Artists as Workers" for The Cork Gallery at Lincoln Center for employees of DC-37 co-curated with Lowery Stokes Sims of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Other curated exhibitions include: The Ward-Nasse Gallery, The Lever House, RAM STUDIO and The Gallery at Lincoln Center.
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VICTORIA ALEXANDER
I am an artist living and working in the Ottawa Valley area of Ontario, Canada. I have a diploma from The Ontario
College of Art, a BA in Fine Art and English Literature from The University of Guelph and a BEd from Queen's
University from the Artist in Community Education Program. I did my Masters in Fine Art at the University of
Portsmouth in the UK. I lived in New York City for over a decade. During that time I was lucky enough to become
involved with artists whose work spanned a range of styles and influences. I met the Rivington School group
through Andrea Legge and Liz van Opdenbosch. I quickly got involved as friends and co-conspirators, attending
and taking part in events, and showing at every venue possible.
MARGALIT BERRIET
Humanities, Arts and Society is a project by UNESCO - Most - C.I.P.S.H - G.C.A.C - Mémoire de l’Avenir
Born in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, living in Paris since 1988. She is a painter with a Master of Fine Arts from
New York University and has been exhibited internationally in solo and group shows. Since 1984, she
has published several essays and a book, and has initiated multidisciplinary arts events and
conferences in the USA, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, promoting, via the arts, a better
knowledge of cultural diversity and fostering intercultural dialogue. In 2003, she founded Mémoire
de l’Avenir. She has collaborated with public and private institutions, including UNESCO, CIPSH, Musée du quai Branly, Centre George Pompidou, Musee de Louvre, Dapper, Musée d’Arts et d’Histoire de Judaism, the Institute de Monde Arab, and Musée de l’Homme.
TOBEY CROCKETT, PHD
I am a former New Yorker now living the rural life on California's Central Coast. My life has been full of many unusual encounters and experiences. I have been central to the success of several companies and a non-profit, was the managing editor of an art & fashion magazine in New York, am widely published in the fields of art criticism, travel, digital media and fiction, have had my own art gallery as well as being an artist/performer, worked in the food and fashion businesses, taught art history at Cal State Northridge and elsewhere, and have traveled on business to Europe, China, and Canada.
Trained as an art historian and art critic, I like to revisit classical themes from art history but re-imagine them with a playful, celebratory spin. My first big forays in painting occurred in the early '80s, and were very influenced by the neo-expressive movement of the East Village in NYC, where I did some street art and worked in multi-media, including sculpture, interactive objects and performance.
I went through another big spate of painting in the late '90s, and then kicked into high gear around 2000 or so, when I studied landscape oil painting with Margot Lennartz in Los Angeles. I have been painting ever since. These days I am far more likely to use my non-dominant (left) hand than not. I learned about this technique from Dr. Lucia Capacchione, and it opened up a whole world of expressive possibilities and freed me to get outside of my head and into my body.
EILEEN DOSTER
EiLeen Doster is a painter, poet, and community gardener in New York City. She has resided on the Lower East Side of NYC since 1985 and after being gentrified out of all the best neighborhoods, she paints in a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Lately, her work can be seen at La Mama Galleria, The Theresa Burns Gallery and Theater for the New City. Currently, her poetry has been published in Howling Women, Big Hammer, Typewriter Tales and Shrew. She is a widow with 3 children, Eamon, Ambrose and Avelicia Doster-Schellenbaum.
RAKEN LEAVES
When I was 14, I dug up the bones of my old pet guinea pig that I had buried as a girl. I cleaned up the bones & glued them together so that the skeleton was sitting up in a tiny chair with its legs crossed, reading a tiny newspaper and wearing tiny sandals that I had made for it.
There is great pleasure in working with organic mediums. Things that once were alive, that have an energy of their own creation. Wood, leather, hair, metal, fiber, bones, glass, feather, clay… Shifting their original nature ever so slightly.
I’ve worked making glass vessels, creating small contained dioramas that are covered in an organic mix, for example, of beer & pulverized pretzels, that would allow a furry mold to grow and change the landscape of the pieces over time. An evolving piece, changing from fluffy cloudlike whites, greens & blues to a darker denser cover.
My carved wood and leather covered “ritualistic objects” made in the past have given way to large square heads keeping that same primitive feel, with tacks, nails, marbles, leather and found objects filling in for features.
ANNE JEPSEN
I grew up in a small old Danish town near the German border, on the flatlands near the coast. Lots of sky and history, but not much else.
At 19, I arrived in the States. Eventually, I got into SAIC (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and graduated from there with both a BFA and a MFA.
In a drive-away car I got to NYC, and instantly felt at home. So I ended up living there for awhile.
Lower East Side was boiling with energy, there for the taking. I loved it! Survival was quite easy, rents were cheap, and the whole world was there! I was in many many group shows, and a solo-show at Civilian Warfare Gallery.
The Rivington School was the most anarchistic space, non-commercial, free, wild, FUN! Full of creative energy, and constantly evolving. I was shown how to weld, and did attach a small piece to the growing structure.
The tone was macho and tough, but not hostile, and I liked it.
LIZ KRESCH
Brooklyn born painter, grew up steeped in rich lineages of poetry, art and jazz and started painting in the post punk music and art scene of the New York 80’s. Equal parts observer, documentarian, dreamer and functional protector she finds the shape, angle, color and conjures the subjects that populate the heady fascial flow of our world-over creative pulse.
Elizabeth studied painting at the New York Studio School, Sarah-Lawrence College and Chautauqua Institute as well as Bennington College, and has contributed to group shows at Noho M55 Gallery, Wendigo Gallery, Gershwin Hotel, Tactile Bosch in Cardiff, Wales, & Portrait Gallery in London. In February 2019, she had a solo show at Love, Henry entitled Entropy & Eternity and in July she embarked on a collaboration with visionary Yoshiko Chuma at HACO Gallery in Brooklyn as well as the Invisible Dog Gallery, 92nd St Y & 2020 live-streams for LaMama most recently from a residency at Mount Tremper Arts.
CRISTA GAMPER
Crista performed "POOL At The Pool" a renegade water ballet conceived and directed by Brad Taylor in September 1983. A collective performance by our "pickup" performance group POOL at the Hamilton Fish Recreation Center on Houston and Pitt Streets, NYC.
In later years she taught Modern creative dance for teens and young people. Her philosophy was to train the body in
a harmonious way so that a holistic awareness could be developed. Improvisation, composition and choreography, the movement ideas discovered in improvisation lessons are individually designed and developed into short compositions.
It’s also a great opportunity to highlight how this person is an asset to the team.
INGRID LINDFORS
The Rivington School was made up of Pioneers, inventors and creators carving our own paths. We were all like a family, feeding off each other, initiating and encouraging ideas with our art and music.
I spent a good amount of my time making art and participating in most everything that was going on during those years on Rivington Street. Since I lived on the corner of Rivington and Ridge, I could just wander down almost daily after school to just see what was going on or to make some art or drink some beer and just hang with my then “family”.
Everything we were creating then was pretty cutting edge shit that was not really acceptable in the art community as “normal sellable art.” We were pioneering new ways of our own and created our own galleries to show our art which eventually gained recognition from the established Gallery world.
SALLY YOUNG
Sally Young is a mixed-media Artist/Photographer/Muralist and “Landscape” Painter/ Constructivist. After a short stint in TriBecA that introduced her to the abandoned West Side Highway and the Twin Towers’ landfill that became “the beach” she arrived to the Bowery. From there to the East Village/LES. Curiosity of buildings, their landscape, and eventually their history became part of her life. Her subject matter is Home and is often influenced by the landscape and the architecture of the Lower East Side of NYC where she has lived and worked as an artist since 1980. Other influences are the landscape of Detroit, where she grew up, and towns in partial decay, that she photographs from train windows while traveling. Home/loss of Home/where and what is Home, is always a central theme in her work.
In addition to teaching art and “everything she knows” to young students at Greenwich House Youth Services in Greenwich Village… Sally continues to paint and make art, photograph and research buildings as well as the people who lived in them, write research papers, and somehow combine all of this in to paintings, photographs, mixed-media collages and constructions that enlighten the truth revealed in research and how all of this juxtaposes each other and at the same time connects.
GLORIA MCLEAN
Gloria McLean is the Director of Lifedance, where she has created & assembled many dance performances as
choreographer and dancer. She is a Teaching Artist at Warshaw Studio and a Teaching Artist at 92nd Street Y in New York City. Her studies include Dance Studies, Choreography and Aesthetics at Hollins University
She lives in New York, New York.
ARLEEN SCHLOSS---"A"
Schloss gained attention in the 70s as a critically acclaimed performance artist and has gone on to create groundbreaking work in a variety of mediums including film, video, sound poetry, new music, composing, books, and mail art. She co-founded A’s—an interdisciplinary loft space that was a hub for music, exhibitions, performance art, films and videos. A hotbed of experimentation, A’s featured works from Eric Bogosian, Glenn Branca, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Richard Hambleton, Liquid Liquid, Carolee Schneemann, The Coachmen, Kim Gordon, Phoebe Legere, Mania D, Thurston Moore, Shirin Neshat, Lee Ranaldo, Sur Rodney (Sur), Alan Vega and Ai Weiwei.
Shifting from one genre to another, she has created a finely interwoven body of work. Always on the cutting edge, Schloss fused new forms of creative expression and technology into her film, video, cyber art and performance work.
Schloss’s performances possess a spirit described by Linda Burnham as “a contagious sense of wonder.” These presentations, which could involve Schloss’s cyclical recitation of the alphabet, live painting, closed-circuit video, and music all at once, combine the anti-art whimsy of Fluxus, scientific exploration, Cageian indeterminacy, and a site-specific empathy that makes every act unique.
NINA SOBELL
Nina Sobell is a New York-based multimedia artist who pioneered the use of EEG technology, closed-circuit television, and Internet communication in art. Focusing on experimental forms of interaction and performance, she has explored how technology mediates psychic transformations and modulates the perception of space and time. Sobell was a Visiting Lecturer at the Goldsmiths College (London) and taught at UCLA. She has been involved in extensive collaborative work and is the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from the NEA the New York State Council, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work is part of prominent video archives, museums, and private collections.
SUE STRANDE
Susan Strande received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has been a long time Lower East Side resident since attending the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. She has often worked as an educator and was Assistant to the Director of Jus de pomme Gallery in the East Village. Sue raised two children in the LES and her work has been exhibited at LaMama Gallery, Jus de Pomme Gallery, Salley Hawkins Gallery, Nada Gallery, EM Donahue Gallery, The Centre des arts contemporains in Port au Prince, Haiti and The Turun Kulturikeskus in Turku, Finland.
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MARY CAMPBELL
Mary Campbell has been a cultural producer for over 40 years, creating visual art, performance, video and as a curator. After graduating from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY she was active in the 1980’s NYC East Village art scene. Her work at that time was a study of the concepts of the human heart and she was featured on the Spectacular sign in Times Square in 1984.
In 1985 as a organizing member of the Art Against Apartheid group she organized exhibits at the Riverside Church (NYC) and Penn State University and spoke as their representative at the United Nations (Special session in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre)
Presently through the creation of collage, installation, video and performance art her work examines aspects of ritual, social politics and public interaction. Recent video work includes “They Say This Helps” created for Hotel Dada Fluxfest 2020, Argentina and “Hand Movement” a selection of the 2020 Downtown Film Festival.
She is a performer/organizer of Day de Dada, a NYC fluxus based, dada inspired performance art collective for twenty years. Her performance work engages the audience capitalizing on the element of chance. She has participated as part of the contemporary Fluxus community at the MCA in Chicago and the 2011 Lithuanian Biennale. Day de Dada has performed throughout the metro NY area as well as in Berlin, Germany as part of the 2014 Month of Performance Art, coordinated two galas for the Staten Island Museum and presented "What do you Wish" exhibit and performances at the SI Arts Culture Lounge in the SI Ferry Terminal- summer 2015.
Present studio space is in Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island.
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