Bombyx Center for Arts and Equity

130 Pine St, Northampton, MA 01062

Florence, MA (December, 8 2022)

Artists from the Western Massachusetts Present Their Work:

Lisa Iglesias, Angel Abreu, Jessica Scott, Jo Hesse, Kelly Clare

Lisa Iglesias was born and raised in Queens, New York and received her BA from Binghamton University (2001) and MFA from the University of Florida (2006). She has attended residencies at such institutions as Altos de Chavón (Dominican Republic), the Nelimarkka Museum (Finland), the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Nebraska), among others. Lisa has exhibited nationally and internationally at various spaces including El Museo del Barrio (NY), the Queens Museum of Art (NY) and the Orlando Museum of Art (FL). She works both individually as well as collaboratively with her sister, Janelle, under the name Las Hermanas Iglesias. Lisa is currently an Associate Professor at Mount Holyoke College and spends time between Massachusetts and New York. https://www.lashermanasiglesias.com/

Angel Abreu – he/him/his (American, b.1974. Bronx, NY) is an artist, writer and educator who studied philosophy, art history and comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University. Abreu now heads the art collaborative Studio KOS (formerly Tim Rollins and Kids of Survival K.O.S.) that was based in the South Bronx, NY. He originally joined as a 12-year-old in 1986 and has been a steadfast member working on all major works, projects and exhibitions with work represented in over 120 public institutional collections worldwide including Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In addition to Abreu’s work with Studio K.O.S., he continues his individual painting practice based on a study of literature, music and social practice in his Eastworks studio in Easthampton, MA. Abreu is on faculty in both the BFA Fine Arts and MFA Art Practice departments of the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Abreu is also proud to be the Wallace Wilson Teaching Fellow at his alma mater Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, MA.  https://www.angelabreu.com/

Jessica Antonia Casillas Scott is an interdisciplinary visual artist, performer, educator and curator based in Western Massachusetts and NYC. After 20 years living in NYC as a working artist, Jessica returned to school to earn her MFA in Studio Arts at UMass Amherst in 2022. She is now enrolled at UMass as a PhD student in History. In her art practice she uses projection mapping, gelatin, performance, installation, and sculpture to explore the role of private memory within public history, the configurations of mixed race American identities, and site specific speculative ecologies.  Jessicaantoniascott.net

Jo Hesse attended the Freie Hochschule Stuttgart for textile crafts in Germany, before deepening her study of feltmaking under mentorship of Unesco-honored master feltmaker, Mehmet Girgiç, and Theresa Girgiç in Konya, Turkey. She has exhibited at A.P.E. Gallery and been published in Fiber Art Now, and Rug Insider. She teaches at the Bowsprit Foundation in Maine, and Sanborn Mills Farm in New Hampshire, as well as offering group and private workshops at her home studio in Northampton. https://www.theramandtheworm.com/

Kelly Clare is a multidisciplinary artist and poet based in Western Massachusetts. Her recent artwork, scholarship, and poetics question the boundaries between digital technology and materiality, as well as the environmental consequences of hidden infrastructure. She received her MFA in Sculpture from the University of Iowa and has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her visual and literary work appears and is forthcoming in FENCE, Second Factory, Prelude, and New Delta Review. She is an Editor at Ghost Proposal and was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center in 2019.  kellyclare.net