Past ART CART Artists’ Working Partners

Maria is a painter based in Ridgewood, Queens. She grew up and studied art in the Carolinas, earning a BFA from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC and her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been awarded artist residencies at Byrdcliffe, Vermont Studio Center, and Petrified Forest National Park. Maria’s abstract paintings on old floral bed sheets incorporate hand sewn elements which allow her to manipulate the surfaces of her paintings into bumpy patterns and radiating wrinkles.

Born in Los Angeles and reared in the Pacific Northwest, Janna is presently based in New York, which has proved fruitful to her variety of work as an artist and curator in photography, interdisciplinary collaboration, sound, installation, writing, and drawing. She is currently pursuing a Master in Fine Arts at Hunter College, and she is a graduate of Asbury University, has studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and completed an artist residency in Beijing, China, with Art International Residency Projects. She is the former Center Coordinator at the New York Center for Art & Media Studies (NYCAMS) and was the Collaborative Visual Arts Curator for the 2012 Chelsea Music Festival, which included, among other shows, curating OPEN CAGE: NEW YORK, a 75-person performance at Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology, [ON SILENCE], a group exhibition at NYCAMS, and Silence, an interdisciplinary collaborative performance at the Rubin Museum of Art. She has exhibited her work nationally and is currently exploring new works, surrounding the topics of Metamodernism, technology and intimacy, collaboration, and community-formation. She is a contributing writer to Sftpwr.com, a web-based cultural digest on issues related to women in the art world.

(To be updated.) 

Carol is a working artist living and showing in New York City. She grew up in southern Ohio, received a BFA from Miami University, and migrated to Brooklyn, earning a MFA from Pratt. She shows with Denise Bibro Fine Art, a commercial gallery located in Chelsea. Between the two galleries she has had 20+ solo shows, exhibiting lyrical welded steel sculpture and most recently, hand built clay sculpture. As the years roll by, she sees the great value in documenting a lifetime of art production through Art Cart.

Following in the footsteps of her mother and father who are painters, Susannah is an artist working in mixed media. She graduated from Cooper Union, taught adults with developmental disabilities how to paint and draw, made films using motion graphics, made a living as a commercial illustrator in her youth, and now enjoys in her later years the luxury of making complex and decorative art.

Cynthia began photographing in the 1970s, doing personal work as well as assignments for national magazines. In 1979 her 26 page feature in GEO magazine led to a 15-year freelance stint producing feature stories capturing the moods and lifestyles of the sporting world for the “country” half of Town & Country magazine. While filling magazines’ pages with color images, she never abandoned her passion for working in classic black & white and continues to this day printing and toning her own silver gelatin prints. Her photographs have been acquired by museums, corporations, and private collectors; exhibited in solo exhibits at the Chatellier Fine Arts Gallery (Millbrook, NY) as well as in many group shows including at the Candace Perich Gallery (Katona, NY); Phyllis Lucas Gallery (NYC) and the National Arts Club (NYC).

Michael lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited in the United States and Internationally. Installations include: 2012-13, Mike Metz, curated by Joseph Masheck, CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY. 2012, Sculpture by Mike Metz, furniture by Hewitson Kong, pieces by Susan Smith, Bull and Ram, Bushwick, NY. 2011, Snared-trapped and concealed, T-space, Rhinebeck, NY. 2007, Venice Wall, (What is intellect?) at the 52nd Venice Biennale, curated by Gavin Wade, Venice, Italy. 2005, City Art: New York’s Percent for Art Program, The Center for Architecture, New York, NY. 2002, Strike, curated by Gavin Wade, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, London, England. 2000, Artist Books, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY. 1999. In the Midst of Things, curated by Gavin Wade, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England. 1992, Letter S Road: Re-marks on Site, Art Omi, Columbia County, NY. 1985, New Work New York Smart Art, curated by Joseph Mascheck, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 1974, Bunker / Beacon, The Kitchen, New York, NY. 1971, Trying to hit the mark, 112 Greene Street Gallery, New York, NY. 1971, Blueprint for Performance / Extended but Camouflaged, Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY. 1972, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Nova Scotia, Canada.

James Pervin has lived in New York since 1987. He studied English literature at the University of Texas (Austin), the University of Chicago, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and now works as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader.

John Reddick has long been involved in Harlem’s preservation and planning issues. Over the past decade his efforts have included the spearheading and oversight through construction of monuments honoring Ralph Ellison, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass at significant public sites in that neighborhood. Mr. Reddick’s interest in Harlem’s architectural history has led him to explore its associated cultural history as well. Currently the exhibition, Harlem’s Black & Jewish Music Culture 1890-1930, curated and drawn from his sheet music collection of Harlem’s performing artists of the period has drawn rave reviews from The New York Times, The Jewish Daily Forward and the Columbia Spectator.

Marco is an Italian photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been exhibited in Europe and USA, including New York Photo Festival, Galleria Civica (Modena, IT), Galerie Villa Des Tourelle (Paris, FR), Grid Photography Biennial (Amsterdam, NL), and Mala Stanica National Gallery (Skopje, MK), among others. His editorial work has been published by international magazines including Vogue, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Vice, among others.

Regina Silvers has spent her whole life involved in art: as an art teacher, jewelry designer, arts council Board member; founding gallery chairman/director/ curator; art consultant, museum publicist/ advertising manager; founding director of TOAST (Tribeca Open Artist Studio Tour, Inc.), and always as a practicing artist. She has maintained studios in both Tribeca (NYC) and until recently in upstate New York, for more than 20 years. Working with nature-based and figurative subject matter, she has participated in over forty exhibitions, and her work appears in dozens of corporate and private collections throughout the United States.

Pianist Carl Banner is founder and director of Washington Musica Viva, a cutting-edge performance series which began in 1998 in the Kensington warehouse art studio of his artist wife, Marilyn Banner. A musician since childhood, Banner studied with Leon Fleisher and Leonard Shure among others, and performed as soloist with the St. Louis Symphony in 1962. He continued to perform regularly while returning to school and earning a PhD in cell biology from Harvard University in 1982. Banner has performed numerous times at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, as well as at the embassies of Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Denmark, Israel and the European Union. Additional significant venues include the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage in DC, as well as the Czech Center, Carnegie Hall and Brooklyn Conservatory in New York.

“My artwork emerges from my feelings about who I am, my life experiences at any particular point in time and what I believe. I am essentially a woman of African descent, a self-taught artist, embarking on my third career in my 82 years of living. While working first as a nursing educator (1957-1983), then later as an anthropologist (1984-2006), art was my avocation. After retiring in 2006, I began to devote most of my time to my textile and digital art creations that commemorate past life lessons, explore the transformational power of Spirit and interrogate the finite nature of our material existence. In 2010, Spirit Visions, my solo exhibition at the Art Club of Washington brought these themes together. With grants from the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities in FY09, FY10, FY11 and FY12, I founded and initiated Seniors Textile Arts Renaissance Society (STARS) that engages seniors in creative art experiences. Currently, I am devoting most of my time to being the working partner of Art Cart Artist James Brown Jr.”

E. Lynn Coates was born in tobacco country, St. Mary’s County, Maryland in 1967. Coates expresses her love for all elements of nature through landscapes, portraits and still lifes in the mediums of oil, acrylic and pastel. After studying finance at Hampton University and gaining almost a decade in corporate experience in accounting and finance, she began exploring her artistic aspirations by enrolling in drawing and figure/portrait oil painting classes at the Smithsonian Institute (Washington, DC) and the Art Student League in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2007, Coates joined the Arlington Artist Alliance, where she has served on the Board of Directors and as Grant Chairperson from 2008-2010. She has participated in group exhibitions in various venues in Arlington, Virginia, as well as, serving as an Alliance curator for the Lenox Club Apartments (Arlington, Virginia). Her work has been exhibited in a solo show at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis in Jan 2013 – Feb 2013. Coates is serving as a working partner to Washington sculptor, painter and history maker, Lilian Thomas Burwell, in the ART CART program. Saving the Legacy program, a documentation project of aging professional Coates is married, a home teacher to her 14-year-old daughter and lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Lois K. Cohen is a research sociologist by profession who retired from the National Institutes of Health in June 2006, where she last served as Associate Director for International Health at the National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research. She currently is a consultant and is a Paul G. Rogers Ambassador for Global Health Research. A collector of print art and fine craft art, she is honored to work with and learn from her friend and fellow alumna (Philadelphia High School for Girls), Lila Oliver Asher.

Pam Eichner is a mixed media artist who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. A native Californian, Eichner is greatly influenced by her years spent in Hawaii and Japan, where she was inspired by the volcanoes of the Big Island and the fibrous washi paper of Tokyo. She studied printmaking and sculpture at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco and took the “Artists in Hospitals” course at Montgomery College. Eichner has been a volunteer for three years with the gallery director at Iona Senior Services. After a 25-year career as physical therapist working with the elderly, Eichner retired in 2012. She became friends with her Art Cart partner, Rose Mosner, when she helped prepare the 80 paintings, collages, and wood sculptures for Rose’s artist residency at Iona two years ago.

Since 2006, Antoinette Ford has put her energy into building The Double Nickels Theatre Company, a reminiscence theatre led by seniors. She plays tennis and takes cello lessons in order to enhance her storytelling performances. She is a volunteer at the Town Hall Education Arts and Recreation Campus (THEARC) and a former member of the board of directors of the DC Public Library Foundation.

Ford has an MBA degree from Harvard Business School, was a Fellow at the Harvard University Institute of Politics, holds an MS degree from The American University and was a National Foundation Fellow in Oceanography at Stanford University. She earned her BS degree from Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was also selected as a White House Fellow.

Ayanna Fox is a native of Washington, DC. She studied Theatre/Musical Theatre at the University of the District of Columbia and Bowie State University. Currently, Fox works in the wardrobe department of Arena Stage in Washington, DC. She has worked on productions at The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage and The Lincoln Theatre, to name a few.

Rohulamin Quander is husband and art partner to Carmen Torruella Quander. He holds two degrees from Howard University (B.A., 1966; J.D., 1969), and retired in May 2011, as a Senior Administrative Judge for the District of Columbia. As well, Judge Quander also served as the Mayor’s Agent for Historic Preservation for 12 years (1998-2010). Judge Quander is the author of two published books: The Quander Quality: The True Story of a Black Trailblazing Diabetic, The Life of James W. Quander (2006), and Nellie Quander, An Alpha Kappa Alpha Pearl (2008), the story of the first national president of the sorority.

He is currently writing two other books, one featuring the historic Quander Family, and the other, his memoirs, which also focuses upon his 50 years+ of affiliation, devotion and membership in the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. A world traveler who accompanies Carmen to both exciting and remote places on the globe, he is also her biggest artistic fan. They have three adult children and one grandchild and reside in Washington, DC.

“I grew up as an only-child in Hollywood, California under fairly comfortable circumstances given the Great Depression at the time. I was drafted into the Army at the tail end of WWII, which delayed college for two years, but gave me some maturity to better decide on what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up with a PhD in psychology from Duke University where I met, courted and married Ann Zahn. A year after graduation, I got a position as a research scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, where I studied psychophysiology and cognitive functions in patients with a variety of psychiatric disorders, but chiefly schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder. This was an absorbing and exciting job that paid well enough to support our growing family and give Ann time to pursue her art career. These were busy years what with the demands of my job and foreign and domestic travel including cross-country camping trips with our four children. I remained full time at NIMH until I retired at 70, and stayed on in a part-time unpaid status for another 10 years while finishing up my work.”