Fall Art Salon
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Welcome to the Art Salon! We invite you to explore our artists who are spread out throughout the beautiful Iroquois Hotel bar and lobby. There are drinks and small bites available for purchase at the bar. Enjoy a sweet treat from the fabulous Caroline Tribe and peruse the various artists showcasing their work this evening. There will be performances interspersed throughout the night and we invite you into the atrium to watch.
7:00 Welcome and Wander
7:30 Lux Mea Choir Performance
7:45 Ballaro Dance Performance
8:00 Sip, snack and peruse
8:30 Jhoely Garay Performance
8:45 Lux Mea Choir Performance
9:30 Farewell
Evan Kirby and Hayden Davis
Evan Kirby works in Advertising while Hayden Davis is a Graphic Designer both based in New York City. Whether it's quilts, art prints, tiling, or zines, they create a variety of work in a variety of mediums, always full of color and heart.
Artists
Claire Forste
Illustrator
Claire Forste is an illustrator that explores her love of patterns in a variety of mediums. Whether in wrapping paper or oil paintings, her work features bright colors and vibrant designs. She loves traveling and finding inspiration from new places and stories. Her goal is to create art that adds a little more beauty to the world!
Avery Cuevas
Avery Cuevas (she/her) is a graphic artist and designer from Queens, New York, who enjoys creating work for people that inspires the soul. Her specialities are in illustration, graphic design, and risograph printmaking, which she utilizes to strike a balance between digital and hand-drawn ways of creation. A few of Avery’s non-art interests include curating her tea collection, growing a houseplant family, and treasuring her dog/sister, Blizzard.
Artist
Christina Gaudino
Jeweler
Christina Reres Gaudino has been making handmade jewelry since she was little. She believes her creations can be a small and thoughtful gift to oneself or someone they love. Christina has also been a member of Lux Mea choir since 2021. She lives in New Jersey.
Drew Rane
Artist
Drew Rane (b. 1991, Connecticut) is an artist working primarily in painting and photography. He
received a BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2016. His work frequently centers around the concept of separation, employing veils, transparent
divisions, and hidden elements. Rane's process uses painting, drawing, and photography to
selectively focus on and obscure certain parts of images, introducing areas of ambiguity and
obscurity. His art invites a visual slowdown, to focus the spaces that exist between the visible and the
concealed, the known and the unknown, in a way that mirrors a meditative process.
Ali Rufrano-Ruffner
Artist
Ali Rufrano-Ruffner is a Brooklyn-based artist known for creating sculptures, installations, and public art with a revolutionary ethos. Their work is centered on fostering connections and reimagining a world where people deeply care for each other. One of their notable projects this year is Concrete Jungle (NY,NY), a collaboration with the Metro Transit Authority to revitalize a neglected retail site at the 81st Street–Museum of Natural History subway station. In 2023, they contributed as a mural artist to The Climate Justice in Lenapehoking in Philadelphia, a 400-foot mural addressing environmental injustices and inspiring local solutions for a hopeful future.
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Rufrano-Ruffner's previous works include creating sculptures for the highly regarded Otherworld (Philadelphia), featured in USA Today’s ‘10 Best New Attractions’, and receiving a RADical ImPAct Grant in 2022 for A Monument to Pittsburgh Youth. This project was a community-driven installation made from castings of local students' hands and ceramic tiles, creating a space for youth to gather and engage. Rufrano-Ruffner holds an M.Ed in Art Education and Community Arts Practices from Tyler School of Art + Architecture, as well as a BFA in Sculpture and a BA in Gender Studies from the University of Delaware. Currently, they serve as a teaching artist at the Brooklyn Museum and are an artist member at Vox Populi, continuing to work toward creating equitable and imaginative public art.
Jhoely Garay
Jhoely Garay is a New York-based guitarist, composer, arranger, and educator from Mexico, whose music expresses her passion for straight-ahead swing, contemporary jazz, and musics and rhythms from Latin America. She uses her voice as an artist to educate her audience about climate change and raise awareness about environmental causes.
Garay has become an integral part of the dynamic jazz scene in New York and Mexico, collaborating with iconic artists such as Dee Dee Bridgewater, Steve Wilson, Darcy James Argue, Jim McNeely, among others; and performing at renowned venues, such as Carnegie Hall, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, The MET Museum, The Public Theater, Stanford University, The Clemente Soto Cultural Center, National Arts Center in Mexico, and soon in Berlin, Germany, as a guest composer and conductor of the Berlin Youth Jazz Orchestra for the Fall 2024 season.
Her gifts as both a guitarist and composer have earned her numerous accolades, including five Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation awards, the Stanford Jazz Mentor Fellowship, and the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble Prize. She was selected to participate in the Woodshed Network Residency directed by the Tony Award-winning NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater and participated in the International Workshop for Jazz and Creative Music at The Banff Centre in Canada.
Garay has received recognition as a composer from ASCAP, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New Music USA, New York City Artist Corps, American Composers Forum and the National Fund for Culture and the Arts in Mexico, and her commitment to fostering musical talent extends to her role as a Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation Ambassador.
Guitarist
Caroline Tribe
Pastry Chef and Food Stylist
Caroline Tribe is a food stylist and pastry chef based in New York City. Her love of food has taken her from working in professional kitchens, to living on a farm in Ireland, and now food and prop styling full time. She is very passionate about zero waste cooking and teaches children in classrooms about the importance of soil and composting.
Ballaro Dance
NYC-based Ballaro Dance values community and collaboration at its core. Through ongoing opportunities to SEE, MOVE, & SHARE together in and through dance, the Company takes pride in cultivating an approachable, welcoming environment. Through each project and collaboration, Ballaro Dance continues to redefine how to effectively share dance through unique sensory-based, multidisciplinary experiences while inviting audience members to act as participants, generating a longer-lasting impact on community. This Season, Ballaro Dance celebrates ten years of innovation, creativity, and collaboration with its community. Join the Company in November for the anniversary performance event, TEN: A Decade of Ballaro Dance, and in December for the annual winter collaboration with Lux Mea. More information can be found at ballarodance.com or on IG. We dance to engage with people; we choreograph to tell stories; we produce art to build community.
Marisa f. Ballaro
Choreographer
A proud Buffalonian, Marisa f. Ballaro is Founding Artistic Director of NYC-based Ballaro Dance. Passionate about bringing sensory-rich dance experiences to new audiences and first-time MOVERS, she values community-based and collaborative projects at the heart of her artistic vision. Marisa received her Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Montclair State University while selected to be the Convocation Speaker for the College of the Arts; she graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Brockport. Marisa taught at The Brearley School in Manhattan for 12 years, developing K-12 curriculum and producing annual productions for the community. Marisa presented her research on identity-based composition structures in Denver, CO at the National NDEO Conference (2023) and at the regional NYSDEA Conference at Hunter College (2024.) Her collaborative film "The Distance" was awarded Best Choreography at the Experimental Dance & Music Film Festival (2023) and she was selected to present a multidisciplinary dance and technology piece at the St. Louis Contemporary Dance Festival in June. Marisa was awarded a $9,575 Impact Grant by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to lead a nation-wide virtual project that culminated in performance in NYC this summer; she has been awarded a second year of funding to complete the project again in 2025. Her most recent project titled She Who Inspires was a site-specific, multidisciplinary performance tour throughout an old post office building in Rochester, NY while collaborating with cello, film, visual art, and poetry culminating a week-long residency in August. She is a lifelong, passionate Buffalo Bills fan!
Hannah Dillenbeck
Hannah Dillenbeck is a dancer and certified Pilates instructor based in NYC. Originally from Rochester, NY, she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oklahoma with a BFA in Modern Dance Performance and a BS in Biology/Neurobiology in December 2020; she trained with LimónLaunch in spring of 2023. Hannah has worked with MUMOS, Forza Dance Company, Alison Cook Beatty Dance, and visual artist, Reza Farkondeh. During her studies, Hannah learned and performed work by José Limón, Merce Cunningham, Jirí Kylián, Tommie Waheed Evans, Robert Battle, Garth Fagan, and David Hochoy; she performed at International Dance Conferences in Beijing, China and Barcelona, Spain. Hannah was introduced to Dance for Parkinson’s Disease classes during college and has found a passion in volunteering for, and teaching, these community outreach classes. Growing up in Western New York, Hannah has a love of hiking and spending time outdoors. Hannah joined Ballaro Dance in 2021.
Marina Vianello
Company MOVER
Marina Vianello is an NYC-based dancer, choreographer, and arts administrator from Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from George Mason University (BFA Dance & Global Systems Minor), where she performed works by Alejandro Cerrudo, Robert Battle, Lar Lubovitch, and Christopher d’Amboise. Past professional credits include the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and Yoo & Dancers, and she has performed internationally at the Chateaux en Fetes (Festival of Castles) in Dordogne, France. She teaches dance and is the Operations Director for Pony Box Dance Theatre. In addition to Ballaro Dance, she currently dances with Mari Meade Dance Collective, Arsenal Movement Dance Project, and Terre Dance Collective. Her choreography has been presented at Arts on Site and the Tada Theater in NYC, and at the Gem Theater in Kansas City. She is fluent in French, and is a lover of animals and pasta.
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