CFW
Artists-
in-Residence
Explore
"The
Unfinished Work"

The Center for Faith & Work is pleased to announce our Spring 2017 Artists-In-Residence: visual artist Jerry Dienes and performance artist Lea Fulton.

The two artists were chosen from invited proposals that explored the idea of “The Unfinished Work”, partially inspired by Lincoln’s use of the phrase in his Gettysburg Address.  Each resident artist is now in the process of creating a brand new work on that theme, as it’s uniquely expressed through their respective mediums. Fulton’s work will explore “the unfinished work” through an immersive installation centered on the experience of forgiveness, where Dienes work will employ the trompe l’oeil painting technique to visually explore the theological territory of Tolkien’s famous short story “Leaf by Niggle.”

CFW’s artist-in-residence program has a two-pronged purpose: to support emerging and established local artists through the commissioning of new work, and to celebrate and contribute to the intrinsic value of the arts as a vital fabric of the city. Being devoted to the flourishing of all New York City, the Center for Faith & Work is proud to offer selected resident artists the opportunity, resources, financing, and support to create works of art that contribute to the excellency of New York’s rich and creative culture.

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1961, Jerry Dienes has lived and worked in New York City since 1984. After initially training at the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio, Jerry came to NY both to pursue classical art education and gallery representation. Taking classes at the New York Academy of Art and The Printmakers Workshop in 1987 and 1988, he later studied figure painting and drawing with Jacob Collins at The Water Street Atelier, as well as figure drawing with Dan Thompson, Michael Grimaldi, and Ephraim Rubenstein at the Art Student’s League. Supplementary to working on his paintings at his studio in New York, he has most recently studied part-time with Justin Wood at the Grand Central Atelier in New York. Jerry creates classical & realistic paintings of still life, portraits, landscapes, nudes, trompe l’oeils, interiors, religious narratives and murals. He has also done numerous portraits and paintings on commission. His paintings are included in the collections of Benicio Del Toro, Rev. David Wilkerson Estate, and The Canadian Imperial Bank, among others. He has shown in several of the annual Small Works Shows at NYU galleries (receiving Honorable Mention in 1991). His narrative paintings have been on tour, largely in the metropolitan Dallas area, from 1997 to 2005. They have been written about in several newspapers there. He has had religious paintings published in two books by Macmillan, Who Do You Say That I Am? and Blessed Art Thou Among Women, books about Jesus and Mary, respectively.

A southern California native, Brooklyn is now home for performance artist Lea Fulton. She is an investigator of movement for small and neglected spaces, creating pieces for stairwells, buses on the move, windowsills, storefront windows and apartments.  She recently enjoyed a long term performance experience with Third Rail Projects in the immersive theater show, The Grand Paradise. She created her own immersive theater project for the 2008 Philly Fringe Festival with co-collaborator Ryan Ross. She is deeply interested in the intersection of performance and presence. Teaching experience includes:  working as a movement coach for actors on films in two upcoming short narrative films with the director Benjamin Stamper, workshops in Community Building through Somatic Listening and a current endeavor teaching technique and composition with Alexandra Beller at DanceWave in Brooklyn. Continuously fascinated by the genre of dance on film, she has choreographed videos for the bands The Loom, Apollo Run, and  electronic music artist Nadia Ali, as well as co-creating a dancefilm "Chloes" that was selected for the Dance on Camera Film Festival in 2010.  In 2014, she choreographed "Rivers",  a multi-disciplinary, evening length work that premiered in Philadelphia with composer Joshua Stamper and filmmaker Ben Stamper.  She's also performed in the work of choreographers Faye Driscoll, David Dorfman, Christine Suarez, Laura Peterson, and Jillian Peña among others. Currently, she is a part of the collaborative The Space We Make, a group of musicians, dancers and writers who make site-specific work, as well as a collaborator in Motley Dance and Alexandra Beller/Dances.  Her undergraduate degree is in Theology and Communication Arts from Wheaton College, Illinois.  She is pursuing a Master's Degree at SUNY Empire State that investigates the intersection of somatic movement therapy and trauma studies. She currently teaches Embodied Yoga at Align Brooklyn and at a program for the homeless through All Angels' Church on the Upper West Side. She is exploring, in research, the intersection of PTSD and mindfulness/movement and believes deeply in the power of movement to access the resilience of the human spirit.

The works produced by Jerry Dienes and Lea Fulton will be shared with the Redeemer community in the coming months as they are completed.