TINA STIPANOVIC is a multi media installation artist and a founder of AlterWork Studios. Her art explore the themes of historical authenticity, preservation and archiving. Professionally she has spent much of her career fostering growing art communities by creating opportunities for artists of all genres to make and exhibit work, network and grow.
WEBSITE: www.tinaandthewolf.com
TIM KELLY is an Astoria-based artist working in geometric abstraction and pattern making. Tim earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Fordham University in 2017 and received the college's Nemetscheker Award for excellence in architectural design. Tim joined the AW community in 2018 when he completed a 6-month residency in the space. Tim currently serves as AW’s studio manager.
DIANA ALSIP is a multi-disciplinary artist, currently focusing on printmaking and ceramics. Traditionally a photographer and an illustrator, she received her BFA in Photography in 2008, she has recently become more drawn to physical, tactile objects that one can hold. Even with the printmaking side of her work, the blocks she carves the designs into are themselves an art object.
STELLA PSILLIDES is a NYC based, Queens raised potter. She simply likes playing with clay and enjoys working on the wheel as well as handbuilding. She takes inspiration from the world around her, especially the neighborhood. Stella’s work is playful and gritty and her style has a fun, functional aesthetic. She mostly makes functional pieces that she hopes bring joy to the people that use them.
DAN STAFFORD is a visual display artist and potter. Being familiar with most art mediums he had created props and installations for Saks Fifth Avenue for 7 years and now for Nordstrom. Dan studied Fine Art and Photography at Delaware Tech, however clay is really his calling. He was a potter throughout high school and after college, he moved to NYC. It wasn't till he saw the wheels inside AlterWork Studios did his passion for pottery reignite. His pottery ranges from being functional to unique shapes, but his favorite part is his combinations in glazes.
LORIENNE SOLASKI is a mutli-disciplinary artist and teacher living in Astoria Queens. Lorienne spent three years as a woodshop apprentice and ceramic fabricator in Brooklyn, NY. She received her Masters in Art Education from RISD in 2019 and now teaches art at a public high school. Since becoming a member at Alterworks she's been exploring the interaction between glaze, illustration and wheel-thrown pottery forms.
Hailing from Staten Island, JOHN ROSE found pottery as a way to channel his stress and make friends in high school. Like many others, he only recently picked it up again as an adult. JR Ceramics tends to be a bit whimsical, often inspired by nature and the elements. Mugs and planters are his favorite items to make, often testing the limits of mixing various clay bodies and glazes.
REBECCA SHERMAN is an artist and designer based in Queens, New York. She received a BFA degree in Studio Art from New York University and an AAS degree in Communication Design from The New School/ Parsons School of Design. Her paintings feature architectural structures and transcendental spaces in an urban landscape suffused with color and illumination. Each painting smashes planes, color, and light together to compress time into one flat surface. Her artwork is designed to capture the moment and become a dual representation of our internal states and external experiences. Our perception and memory change as the space around us changes.
JACQUELINE GURGUI is from Kingston, NY but is currently based in Sunnyside, Queens and has been making ceramics since Spring of 2021. Her style is budding but she really enjoys playing with floral designs and adding handbuilt elements to her pieces. She admires simplicity, but also detail. She’s always open to experimenting and challenging herself to new techniques. She has a BA from Binghamton University, is a former film industry professional, currently works at an education nonprofit that supports high school students, and is also a photography enthusiast.
MARTA SMITH's solutions are based on unconventional strategies that draw upon vernaculars and contradictions of place and human condition. She endeavors to analyze, improve and simplify the confluence of creative processes that form objects and the built environment.
DANIEL CORDANI received his Masters in Art Education from Brooklyn College and Bachelors in Psychology from University of Delaware. Through his multidisciplinary approach he has exhibited for over 20 years, facilitated art workshops, donated paintings to hospitals, and designed work for music labels. He has recently published an art/poetry book with author Robert Booras entitled “The Infected Nucleus” for the Brooklyn-based label Upset Press.
MARY FALCO is currently working on pulling her designs off the page and introducing color. Creating two- and three-dimensional pieces using multiple mediums. She displays shadows of the circles and lines by using acrylic markers to paint on multiple sheets of glass which are then layered and presented in a shadow box. The shadows can then move per the viewers’ movements and the light directed on the box.
“I have been given a gift that I can share with others by creating my art. What inspires me is the happiness I feel while creating my art especially when it comes together. I have been influenced by many artists; Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Lazlo Moholy Nagy, Kurt Schwitters, Sonia Delaunay, Louise Nevelson, Jean Tinguely, Joan Miro and Barbara Hepworth. Thank you Mrs. Cohen Bayside H.S. for telling my parents I had to go to art school for college.”
ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
JOAN RYAN
November 2025 - December 2025
Joan Ryan is a Boston/NY based artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Ryan believes the arts are an essential part of a society’s survival and growth. In the creative process, there is an act of discovery that reveals and reflects reality, but also the potential of humanity. Ryan’s art is her attempt to provide an enduring experience that illuminates the human condition. Ryan has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Drawing Award 2022, The Puffin Foundation, George Sugarman Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In her solo exhibition “What We Forgot to Remember” at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn Ryan’s paintings and drawing used nostalgic images of childhood that crashed into present day realities. In 2011 she was awarded the Lillian Orlowsky and Willian Freed Grant from the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. She was Artist in Residence at DADA Post, Berlin Germany where she exhibited, he works. Her work was also included in and exhibition “Myth Busters” at the Schultz Gallery, Berlin. In 2017, she was awarded a solo Exhibition at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury CT. Her residencies include Mass MOCA, Santa Fe Museum of Contemporary Art, Byrdcilff and most recently Arts, Letters and Numbers.
KHAILA BATTA
March 2026 - April 2026
Khaila Batts is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice weaves painting, digital collage, and printmaking into layered explorations of identity, memory, and technology. Drawing from archival imagery and lived experiences, her work situates the Black body in surreal, fragmented spaces that both challenge and reframe narratives of belonging. Batts has exhibited widely in New York and beyond, and her residencies include MASS MoCA, Wassaic Project, and the upcoming Playa Residency in 2025.
MARYAM MONALISA GHARAVI
February 2026 - June 2026
Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is an artist and poet whose work explores the asymptotic limits of knowledge. Exhibitions and performances include Pioneer Works, Sonic Acts, Nottingham Contemporary, Serpentine Cinema, Paço das Artes, Recess, ZKM Karlsruhe, among others. Book publications include The Distancing Effect, Secret Catalan Poem, Alphabet of an Unknown City, the co-authored books Dictionary of Night and Oil News 1989-2020; and a translation of Waly Salomão’s Algaravias: Echo Chamber, nominated for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Her book Bio is the first to be written on a social media platform while bypassing “big tech” data storage sites. She is the founder of Oil Research Group (ORG), a one-woman collective investigating oil, data, and extractive economies; in 2023, ORG was awarded an Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Art Grant. She completed a Ph.D. at Harvard University, an M.F.A. at Bard College, held a postdoctoral Fulbright at Birzeit University, served as visiting professor and guest studio critic at a dozen institutions, and is currently a faculty member at School for Visual Arts . She is a prompt engineer in the field of generative AI. Her translation of Waly Salomão’s Border Fare is forthcoming from World Poetry Books.