Humanity, Earth, and the Universe
Curated by: Joe Corbalis, Julie Cousens, and Paul Greco
Location: Yonkers Arts Project Space [216 Lake Ave, Yonkers, NY, 10701]
Exhibition Dates: Thursday, October 8 - Saturday, December 5, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 8, 2026 | Yonkers Arts Project Space - 216 Lake Ave, Yonkers, NY, 10701
We are thrilled to announce Humanity, Earth, and the Universe, a curated exhibition that explores the profound, interconnected triad of human existence, our planetary home, and the boundless cosmos that cradles us all.
The Vision
From the ancient stardust embedded in our DNA to our modern tether to the soil, humanity has always existed in a grand dialogue with the infinite. This exhibition serves as a visual and conceptual bridge between the micro of the human experience and the macro of deep space.
Curators Joe Corbalis, Julie Cousens, and Paul Greco have brought together a diverse collective of visionary creators to examine two parallel, eternal human impulses:
Our Terrestrial Bond: Humanity’s deep, grounded, and often complex relationship with the Earth.
Our Cosmic Fascination: Our relentless, awe-inspired gaze toward the stars and the mysteries of the unknown.
An Interdisciplinary Journey
Featuring works across a wide range of disciplines—from traditional painting and sculpture to digital media and avant-garde installation—this exhibition invites viewers to contemplate their own place within this grand design. The selected pieces translate the relationship between the dirt beneath our feet and the galaxies above, illustrating how humanity acts as the conscious link between the two.
"We are not merely observers of the universe; we are an active, vital part of its ongoing story."
Mezaun Arnone
Mezaun Arnone holds a MS in Psychology and BA in English. She has been in the education field for 11 years teaching STREAM, classical music appreciation and art to all elementary levels. She is an award-winning educator, art therapist, and arts leader, recognized by Hudson Valley News 12, WHUD 100.7, New York State Senator Jamaal Bailey, and Governor Kathy Hochul. She has received multiple Community Votes awards, including Mount Vernon Art Teacher of the Year (2024 & 2025) and Yonkers Community Votes for Veterans Art (2025). She serves on the boards of Blue Door Art Gallery, Mount Vernon Arts and Cultural Society, Yonkers Historical Society, Lions Club and NMAACP member and currently the Education Chair for the United Nations Association of Westchester. Developing programs that foster global awareness and civic engagement is her specialty.
Mezaun is the founder of Healing Art of Valor, NY, providing free therapeutic art programs for military veterans, particularly those experiencing PTSD, and recipient of a My Brother’s Keeper recognition coin from retired Command Sergeant Major Sa’eed Mustafa of West Point. She also leads Eko ni Agbara, a global arts education initiative delivering virtual art programs to children in Africa. Recent recipient of a proclamation for Eko ni Agbara Day from 4 Legislators Mezaun is visual artist and creator of Mezikal, a sustainable clothing and jewelry brand. She is an exhibited artist/ photographer who showed in multiple NY galleries, including Grand Central Station for her world photography. Mezaun integrates creativity, education, and service to empower students, veterans, and communities locally and globally.
Dorothy Cancellieri
Emotions and Imagination are expressed through a kaleidoscope of color in Dorothy’s artwork. The use of vibrant paints has always enriched her and left her with a feeling of peaceful happiness. Bold colors can’t help but capture the viewer when they enter a room.
The figures, animals and landscapes come alive through the excitement and passion of color. The vividness of the canvases helps convey the story, meaning and emotion of the paintings.
Ms. Cancellieri has taught art and yoga enrichment programs in elementary schools throughout Westchester County. She has been a member of the Mamaroneck Artist’s Guild since 1988. Her Works have been shown in numerous exhibits including the Upstream Gallery in Dobbs Ferry and the Brother Chapman Gallery at Iona College.
Cherie Corso
Cherie Corso creates vibrant abstract art influenced by the energy of New York City and her travels around the world. Drawing on her lifelong love of art and fashion and her practice of Reiki, she brings intuition, movement, and a global perspective to each canvas. Through her interactive Pulse of New York project, she brings people together in a shared celebration of the city’s energy and diversity. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Bronx Times, and CanvasRebel.
D.I.A.L.E.K.T.O.
My work is vibrant fusion of Mixtec cultural symbolism and contemporary street-art expression.
years of dedication exploring identity, culture, and social justice, I blend traditional mxitec characters with bold, expressive brushwork, merging heritage with modern urban aesthetics
Pedro Fernandez [Bosk-Tsu]
My name is Pedro Fernandez, an artist originally from New York and now living in Atlanta, Ga. I come from an artistic family where art is in our blood. I've been drawing and painting since I was a kid ... My life is art, and that said, my name and my artist name say it all ... Pure Energy Transmitting Energetic Radiance ... Bringing Out Skillful Knowledge To Serve You ... ( P.E.T.E.R . / BOSK-TSU ) My paintings bring light to those who seek it and to inspire as well ... I've been a professional artist since 2015 and counting ... My form is abstract, street art, and Art Deco... My life is stated artistically and will continue to spread love to the world ....
Luis Fonseca
Luis Fonseca is a Colombian-born multidisciplinary artist based in The Bronx, New York, working across photography, cyanotype, mixed media, sculpture, and installation. His practice explores presence, transformation, collaboration, and the relationship between the human figure, materials, and process. He is particularly known for large-scale cyanotype photograms in which the body interacts directly with light and sensitized paper.
Fonseca’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Hudson Valley MOCA, Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences, Ceres Gallery, Upstream Gallery, Pictorial Foundation, Rye Arts Center, Casa del Arte in Palma de Mallorca, and SwissArtExpo in Zurich. He received a 2025 BRIO Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts. His practice also includes installations, cyanotype workshops, and arts education.
Paul Greco
Paul Greco has been creating artwork since his childhood in Ardsley, New York. He attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. His artistic output is primarily abstract, spanning various mediums including painting, sculpture, collage, and found objects. Greco is a long-time artist member of the Upstream Gallery in Hastings, New York. He has held a solo exhibition at the Hudson River Museum and participated in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Bronx Museum and the Katonah Museum. His work has also been exhibited internationally. Much of Greco's art explores themes related to the ancient world, outer space, and other mysteries.
Livia Gus
I am a Bronx artist named Gail Dressner, who uses the painting name of Livia Gus to present my work. I belong to four art associations in the Westchester and Connecticut areas and have been proudly presented with six awards for my presentations. My work, which I call realistic fantasy, often shows topics of conservation and man's relationship with his environment.
Noel Hefele
Noel Hefele is a landscape painter based in the Bronx, New York, who views painting as research into landscape, its human and non-human inhabitants, and its history. He holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon and an MA in Arts and Ecology from Dartington College of Arts, and was twice Artist in Residence at the Barbuda Archaeological Research Center. From 2000 to 2006 he worked with Collins & Goto Studio in Pittsburgh, where he first encountered daylighting: uncovering buried streams. He works on restoration along Van Cortlandt Park's Putnam rail line, which his grandfather commuted on, and is painting it as New York daylights Tibbetts Brook. Before he moved to the Bronx in 2020, his painting centered on Brooklyn's Prospect Park. His work is held in private collections internationally. He is a 2021 City Artist Corps grantee. His father grew up in Yonkers, and Noel has shown with Yonkers Arts since 2022.
Suzanne Hockstein
I am a mixed-media artist working with paper, wood, metal, found objects and especially rusty things! But I am a paper-cutter at heart, collaging since childhood. I hand paint many of my papers, also using a variety of rice and other specialty papers. Based in The Bronx for nearly 50 years, I have come to embrace the open-air art-supply resource that is New York City! My work deals with the human condition, in its many forms, and with its many effects on the planet. I draw with scissors, and as a collage artist, texture is everything! Cutting away what is not needed to reveal the beauty beneath, stripping away the unnecessary bulk of this tedious existence, to get to the good stuff…
Neil Lavey
Neil Lavey is a Rivertowns-based artist whose practice spans fine art, illustration, and sculpture, shaped by decades of visual storytelling. Born in New York City in 1958 and raised in Dobbs Ferry, he graduated from Cooper Union in 1981 and spent twelve years working in advertising before returning full-time to fine art. He currently works from his home studio in Dobbs Ferry, NY. His work encompasses oil painting, drawing, and sculpture, moving fluidly between expressive figuration, landscape, and narrative imagery. This wide-ranging practice reflects an artist unafraid of experimentation while maintaining a strong command of composition, color, and form. Among his bodies of work, he also creates pieces addressing queer identity and desire, an important thread running throughout his broader artistic output. His sculptural work draws on a long-standing engagement with traditional processes, including bronze casting, while also embracing contemporary methods such as 3D printing, developed in collaboration with Studio Roboto in White Plains. Across both approaches, his sculpture explores form, volume, and surface while remaining grounded in classical thinking. Lavey has been fortunate to study with and learn from notable teachers and mentors, among them Reuben Kadish, Hans Haacke, Stephen Rogers Peck, Robert Beverly Hale, and DC Comics artist Irv Novick, a friend and neighbor. His mediums include drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and digital work in Photoshop and Procreate. EXHIBITION HISTORY His work has been exhibited at the Rockland Center for the Arts, the Edward Hopper House in Nyack, the Blue Door Gallery in Yonkers, the Upstream Gallery in Hastings-on-Hudson, Gallery 66 in Cold Spring, the Katonah Museum of Art, Bethany Arts Community in Ossining, the Riverfront Gallery in Yonkers, and the Bank Art Gallery in Newburgh. In 2016, he presented the solo exhibition Gods and Monsters at the H Gallery in Peekskill. More recently, his work has been seen at the Dobbs Ferry Library, The Rock Shop in Nyack, The Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill, and the Hastings Village Arts Commission’s gallery, where he presented the solo exhibition River Dreamer. Dobbs Ferry, New York.
Thomas Maceranka
Thomas Art is an abstract artist from the Bronx, New York, who developed his love for art at a young age through the influence of graffiti and street art. Growing up surrounded by the energy and creativity of the Bronx shaped his artistic style, imagination, and visual language. His work combines abstract and three-dimensional forms with themes inspired by trees, nature, landscapes, aliens, UFOs, and weird biology. He transforms familiar natural elements into unusual and imaginative compositions.
Thomas works in charcoal, black ink, acrylic, spray paint, mixed media, and digital art. His charcoal and black ink sketches focus on expressive lines and scribbled abstract portraits. Graffiti remains an important influence, especially through his “TOM” sticker art, also known as slaps, connecting his work to graffiti’s evolving sticker culture and reflecting his continuing artistic vision and imagination.
Susan MacMurdy
Susan MacMurdy is a Bronx-based artist and former educator. She has exhibited her work in solo, curated and juried exhibitions throughout the New York metropolitan area. Her collages, woodblock and linoleum prints have appeared on book covers, in poetry journals and in publications focused on nonviolent spirituality, social and earth justice. Her recent work contemplates the complex relationship between Nature and the urban environment; a relationship characterized by fragility, beauty, and resilience. In the city or beyond, Nature is her starting point. She is a member of the Upstream Gallery in Hastings-on-Hudson and maintains her studio at Yoho Studios in Yonkers, NY.
Linda Mendelson
For 51 years, as a pioneering textile artist, I have redefined the boundary between wearable art and literary expression. Celebrated for my masterful loom-knitted and crocheted garments, I transform clothing into a canvas for the written word, intricately weaving poetry and prose directly into the structural fabric of my coats and jackets. My innovative approach and vibrant geometric typography have earned me global recognition, with masterworks proudly held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Never static, I have recently expanded my oeuvre onto paper. In this new medium, I explore asemic writing—abstract, wordless calligraphy that mirrors the rhythm of language without semantic meaning. My evolution bridges the tactile logic of textiles with the fluid freedom of graphic art.
Nancy Mendez
Nancy Mendez is a visual artist and educator based in Westchester, New York. Inspired by her Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican heritage, music, nature, and mysticism, she blends mixed media with raw emotion to create enchanting worlds that invite personal connection.
Nancy holds an MA in Art Education from Lehman College and shares her passion with students, believing in art’s power to nurture, unite, and bring meaning to life.
Mittul Mishra
Mittul Mishra is an artist and software architect whose life bridges Indian and American cultures. A self-taught painter with a background in Electrical Engineering and a Diploma in Computer Science, she brings both analytical precision and intuitive creativity to her work. Whether designing complex software systems or composing a painting, Mittul approaches creation as a form of alchemy—transforming simple elements into something meaningful and expressive.
Her artistic practice is deeply inspired by the rich textile heritage of India. The luminous shimmer of Banarasi silk, the rhythmic geometry of Rajasthan’s block prints, and the storytelling traditions of Mithila art inform her visual language. Through layered textures, vibrant color palettes, and flowing forms, she translates these cultural influences onto canvas, creating works that feel both contemporary and rooted in tradition.
Mittul is also inspired by the techniques of the Old Masters and often experiments with methods such as impasto to build depth and tactile presence in her paintings. For her, a painting is not a static object but a living presence—one that evolves with light, time, and the viewer’s perspective. Her work celebrates heritage, emotion, and the enduring power of creativity to connect memory, craft, and imagination.
Debbie G. Quinn
“Always have your camera ready to capture those everyday moments that will never
occur again.”
Debbie Quinn is a Riverdale-based photographer whose work includes the candid storytelling of the extraordinary in everyday life in street photography, and the surreal reflections in lensball photography. Moving through the city or her travels with a sensitive observant eye, Debbie captures human moments, bold geometry in architecture, and the unexpected poetry of everyday life. Her lensball images add a dreamlike twist – turning brilliant vivid sunsets into sharp, inverted scenes suspended in glass. Debbie’ work has appeared in local exhibitions and community arts showcases, where viewers often described the images as compelling and unique with a Zen-like calm. While Debbie continues to explore how small moments can lay bare the soul of a situation, these two styles remain distinct, yet together they reveal her devotion to finding magic in both the ordinary and the ephemeral.
Deborah Ryan
I am an artist with little formal training though I’ve been making art for many years. I consider myself to be primarily self-taught. My style tends to fluctuate between realism, abstraction and everything in between. I don’t always have a “vision” when making art. My desire to create is more of an urge, an internal excitement that I need to satisfy. I don’t feel my art always has to have a meaning or a title. Much of it starts with just a desire to create using paint, paper or any other media I have on hand and sometimes from there an idea evolves. For me a big part of creating is experimentation. I’m excited by trying different styles and sometimes find inspiration through other artist’s works. I have tried my hand at many different techniques using all sorts of different media. I don’t consider myself belonging to any one style.
Lily Schor
I have worked in clay for the past 50 years, exhibiting both functional and sculptural works. As a recipient of Westchester Arts Council Arts AliveProject Grant,
my sculptures have been on display in Hartsdale, Yonkers and Greenburgh. I am currently have my studio at Yoho, Yonkers, N.Y. and am a member of the Clay Arts Center, Port Chester. My work is often on display at the Blue Door Gallery, Yonkers , Upstream Gallery Hastings and the Art Gallery at the Rockefeller State Park Preserve.
Madge Scott
Madge Scott is an Awards winning, Storytelling artist of History, Folk and Contemporary Art. A mixed media artist, her work depicts, culture, nature, and her own spiritual identity.
A self taught artist, her painting career began in the 1990's when one of her children went missing. Her work has appeared in Galleries and Museums in California, Louisiana and New York and she have exhibited overseas. Her work is known and collected nationally and internationally. Madge is a member of the Upstream Gallery and lives in Hastings on Hudson.
Dennis Shelton
Dennis L. Shelton is a graduate of the High School of Art and Design, and has undergraduate and graduate degrees in art education, and printmaking from Lehman College. Mr. Shelton was an adjunct professor in the Education Department at Lehman College.
Mr. Shelton has had solo and group shows at various venues, among others, the 2 nd Floor Community Art Space in the State Office Building in Harlem; Blue Door Art Center, Riverfront Gallery, and Yonkers Arts Gallery in Yonkers; and Gallery 505 in Riverdale. He is the former president of the Riverdale Art Association.
Known for his bold colors and interesting patterns, Mr. Shelton creates art through collage, wood assemblage, and mixed media, using unrelated and found materials to make new creations. He is inspired and influenced by Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Henri Matisse, and Paul Cézanne, and in the medium of wood assemblage, by Louise Nevelson and Beverly Buchanan.
Jeannie Yun
Jeannie Yun, born in Masan South Korea and grew up in different countries.
My father was a diplomat and my mother was an artist in oriental paintings. My sister worked at UNICEF.
As a child I travelled to many countries where my father held diplomatic posts, therby, exposing to a universal range of artistic directions. My heritage and multinational art training are reflected in my work.
My family encouraged me to pursue my interest in art and supported my creativity and artwork as well as my love for nature.
I studied arts in various places like Leonardo Da Vinchi art school in Italy, Royal art University in Cairo Egypt, Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva Switzerland, Parsons Art School, Students League in NYC, Famous Artist School of Arts, Silvermine Artists Guild in Connecticut. Westchester Art.