Jared C. Deery was born in Philadelphia, Pa in 1980. He moved to New York in 1998 to study at the Pratt Institute. Having received his BFA with honors in 2001 he is currently working towards an MFA at Hunter College in Manhattan. He has participated in exhibitions in New York, Chicago and Italy. www.jareddeery.com

In “Eternally Untitled an attempt to preserve the expression of beauty in the beginning stages of a plant's life is countered directly by the act of preservation itself. In order to preserve the plant or the beauty in the plant, the plant must first be killed. It is placed upon a pedestal of organic and inorganic materials both methodically coated to achieve a balance or unison of form. The distinctively different forms are then brought into a dialogue with each other. This forces the viewer's attention towards the leaf, the inevitable beauty of life within the object, which is ultimately it's death.

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Luke Thorpe's work takes landscape as a framework for exploring themes related to Nature, God, and Self. Born in Cortland, NY, the artist lives and works in New York. He is currently pursuing an MFA at Hunter College.

Scorekeeper is an ongoing series of paintings made using patterns based on the image of hunting targets. Initially the targets are marked with a hole-punch according to a basically defined, pre-determined system. For example, in one target every point of intersection that occurred between grid and radial lines in the image is marked. The perforated hunting target is then used as a stencil, through which spray paint is applied onto a one-foot square painting.

The patterns that emerge from this process are at once rational, ethereal, and oddly perceptual. One aspect of these multi-layered patterns is their relationship to Christian iconography. Like devotional imagery, a target is an icon: an attempt to clarify and to align body, sight, and mind, a representation of the search for center.

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Shawn Powell was born in Washington, Missouri in 1978 and grew up in the rural town of Saint Clair. In 2002 he received an Associate of Arts degree at East Central College. He subsequently attended the Kansas City Art Institute, receiving a BFA in painting and art history. While at KCAI, Shawn was awarded the Daniel Macmorris Scholarship for a painting and drawing major with excellent promise. Presently, Shawn is an MFA candidate at Hunter College in New York City. www.shawnkpowell.com

In Greek Mythology, Hades is considered to be the underworld, their hell, where the souls of the dead are situated. Five rivers converge in this shadowy site: Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, Styx, and Lethe. Acheron, the river of woe, is said to be one of the rivers used by Charon to transport the souls of the dead to the gates of hell. Each river has it's gloomy attribute to affix to the perimeters of Hades. Acheron is one of five paintings relating to these rivers. The titles of these paintings relate to this convergence, as well as to the dark, mysterious, apocalyptic qualities of the paintings themselves.

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Ellie Krakow was born in Boston in 1978, grew up in Los Angeles, and currently lives and works in New York City. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States in galleries including Sikkema Jenkins in New York, Gallery 825, The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and The 18th Street Art Center in Los Angeles. In addition, her performance work has been seen both in Yosemite National Park and at Yale University. Krakow is currently pursuing her MFA at Hunter College, and received her previous art training at Yale University, The Rhode Island School of Design, and through independent study with Debbie Gribbon, former director of the Getty Museum.

Letters Home is part of a body of text based work that includes condolences, love letters and fan mail written to famous and unreachable people. The body of work explores failed, broken, and impossible connections, and reveals the powerful yet pathetic human drive for intimacy. The work questions how we strive to be close and what determines or defines our relationships.

Letters Home is the most personal piece in this body of work. This group of letters to Krakow's deceased mother deals with her wavering belief in the possibility of an ongoing connection with the dead. Through a subtle blending of humor and sincerity, the letters show the complex relationship between honest hope and profound cynicism.

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Aida Sehović was born and raised in Banjaluka, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1977. Subsequently she Lived in Turkey and Germany before moving with her family to the U.S. In 1997 where she continues to live and work. After receiving a B.A. Degree with College Honors from the University of Vermont in 2002. She went on to complete Artist Residency programs at the Vermont Studio Center and at the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico. She is a recipient of the 2006 ArtsLink award and the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship for graduate studies from the U.S Department of Education for 2007.

This video was inspired by feelings of absence, loss and waiting that women of Srebrenica (a small town in Bosnia and Herzegovina) have collectively been coping with ever since they lost male members of their families in the Srebrenica massacre that took place in the Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995. Over a period of several days in July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men, were systematically executed in the UN-safe zone of Srebrenica and the surrounding areas.

The artist first met the Women of Srebrenica in 2004 when the first group of Srebrenica victims was found, identified and laid to rest. ehović began working with the women by collecting small porcelain coffee cups that were used in “sto te nema? interactions during which the cups were filled with coffee on the ground in remembrance of those who were killed. The number of the cups used in each of the interactions corresponds to the number of bodies that have been found, identified and buried to date. All interactions have been set up on July 11th each subsequent year since 2004. in locations such as the public squares in Sarajevo (2004) and Tuzla (2006) in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as the lobby of the United Nations building in New York (2005). The artist will host discussions on her work during the exhibition.

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Jo Wilmot was born in Birmingham, England in 1975, she lives and works in London and gained her MA from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2005. Since then she has exhibited extensively throughout the UK and Europe. Recent shows include Intersection, Galerie Resy Mujisers,The Netherlands and The Painting Room, Transition Gallery, London. She is currently working toward a two person show at Studio 1.1 in London. Wilmot is a regular contributor to Garageland Magazine.

Wilmot is absorbed by luxury and degradation and explores these themes through dripping, melting paint. Her handling of paint creates work which seems over-ripe, claustrophobic and nauseating. Wilmot revels in the medium, playing with paint to create dramatic yet understated scenes, whilst walking a line between desire and repulsion. Within the work there is a tension between the gestural handling of the paint and the subject, the ultimate consumer object – the car.

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Ryan Roa was born in 1974 and raised in New Jersey. He attended the University of Arizona in 1993 to study painting.In 1999 he enrolled in SUNY New Paltz, where he studied Art Education and Sculpture. Having joined the US Army Reserve he was called to active duty one semester before Graduation in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He served for One Year in Baghdad.Upon his returned Ryan completed his degrees with honors. He currently works in New York and exhibits throughout the United States. www.ryanroa.com

Ritual Shift is a site specific work, created to bring the viewer into greater awareness of his or her surroundings. In St. George's Church Chapel Roa has replaced three existing objects with three fabricated representations. The objects create a visual line that flows through the Chapel without disrupting it. In choosing to construct three objects Roa references the Trinity in a place of worship. These objects are made of plywood and 2x4’s which are construction based materials. This is done to make the objects stand out visually due to their raw quality and roughness but more importantly because they are representational of a skeletal support that is made to hold up the built structure of contemporary life. This installation places the normally hidden internal construction materials into a dialogue with the outside world.

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Lara Duren graduated from California State University, Chico in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramic sculpture. She is a current Master of Fine Arts candidate in combined media at Hunter College.

Modern life consists of a multiplicity of constructs, both material and ideological, resulting in a variety of ways to satiate basic biological and emotional needs and desires. These constructs and their infinite combinations are one of the ways in which humans assemble their collective and individual identities and thus reality. Duren is interested in playing with these constructs, switching them around, looking to their arbitrary natures as a way to connect rather than divide, a way to create meaning rather than point to meaninglessness.

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Vivienne Griffin was born in Dublin in 1975. She graduated with a BFA from Crawford College in Cork in 2004 and is currently on a Fulbright Scholarship, mid way through an MFA at Hunter College, New York. Griffin's multi-disciplinary practice employs a variety of materials and media. Often motivated by place or circumstances, her work has been primarily site specific, utilizing, at times, video, found electronic equipment, drawing, and text. Exploiting familiar objects and languages, her work reinvents their everyday meaning through personal manipulation and humor.Her work has been compared to tragic comedy and has been described as a quiet riot. Recent shows include a solo show in FOUR,(Dublin), House projects in Brooklyn and Go Go Miami with Dos Pestañeos.

This piece came about when the artist was asked to make a site specific work. The notion of site is an ever changing context that can influence how a work is made or comes about. Griffin wanted a work to exist in that space and to be part of a public arena without being public art work in the traditional sense. 100 one dollar bills were altered to change the text "In God we trust" to "In God we trusted", painted with watercolors. They were sold as per normal on everyday exchanges to circulate them into the public space.

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Darren Jones was born and raised in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1974. After studying in Edinburgh He moved to London where he completed his undergraduate degree at Central Saint Martin's College in 1997. His first solo show, entitled Iconoclasm, took place in Edinburgh in 2004 and subsequently he exhibited throughout the UK. In 2006 he relocated to New York City. He was recently awarded the Scottish International Education Trust Grant for Artists. He has exhibited recently at Victoria Arts Gallery in Canada, Athens institute of Contemporary Art, Georgia and The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. www.darrenjonesart.com

'By Fire' is a site specific remembrance piece which revisits a long dormant moment from the artist's past. It was an experience of equal measures peace and fear. A defining moment in a child's life when he was exposed to ritual and tradition he could not understand. The piece attempts to return to that moment and tries to come to terms with the opposing impacts it created. This moment exists somewhere between the comfort of spirituality and the fear of the unknown. The work inhabits the space between the exclusivity and the inclusiveness of religion.

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