“When people say they can’t afford to collect art, I tell them anyone can do it. Regardless of your budget, you can find something. You may not find it in Basel where booths are $50,000, but you can find a $100 drawing in a smaller fair. Paying less doesn’t mean the artists aren’t talented.”
Connect+Collect artists are based in Baltimore, but have achieved national
acclaim in the form of gallery and museum exhibitions, public collections,
competitive residencies, grants, awards, and/or press.
These artists are not represented by a gallery in Baltimore,
however their work is being collected and exhibited all over the world
and is poised for collection by Baltimore-based museums and collectors.
C+C does not represent artists exclusively and works collaboratively with Baltimore-based galleries.
our inaugural Artist Cohort includes:
Christopher Bathgate, Erick Benitez, Amy Boone-McCreesh, Zoë Charlton, Oletha DeVane, Elliot Doughtie,
Erin Fostel, Taha Heydari, Phaan Howng, Antonio McAfee, Jackie Milad, & René Treviño
Featured C+C Artists
Amy Boone-McCreesh
Amy Boone-McCreesh
Website: amyboonemccreesh.com | IG:@amytothemax
“My maximal visual decision making aims to explore the lines that are drawn to signify markers of luxury, mass production, and the defining features of access and beauty in Western culture.”
Amy Boone-McCreesh holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design (2007) and a Masters of Fine Arts from Towson University in Maryland (2010). She completed a two-year fellowship for emerging artists with Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington DC (2014), where she exhibited and was included in Scope, Miami and (e)merge DC art fairs (2012,2013).
Her work has also been included in exhibitions across the country including a site-specific installation at Mixed Greens (NY, New York, 2015), Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn, NY, 2015), Transformer Gallery (Washington DC (2015), Dickinson College visiting artist and exhibition (Carlisle, PA 2015), and completed a collaborative site- specific public installation at School 33 in Baltimore, MD (2014) funded by the Rauschenberg Foundation Grant awarded to the non- profit. Recent collections include the Department of State, U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico (Art in Embassies, 2013) and Capital One (2018). Recent publications and features include New American Paintings (issues 106 and 118) and The Handmade Life, published by Thames and Hudson (2016). Amy was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Dickinson College and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at faculty at Franklin & Marshall College, as well as the Founder and Editor of Inertia Studio Visits, a website featuring a variety of visual artists.
Christopher Bathgate
Christopher Bathgate
Web: www.chrisbathgate.com | IG @c_bathgate
Chris Bathgate is a self taught machinist sculptor exploring concepts surrounding the adoption of industrial technology and the intersections this creates between the worlds of fine art, studio craft, and design. He has spent 15 years building, modifying and using a variety of metalworking tools and machinery. He has assembled an elaborate machine shop of repurposed and homemade robotic and manual machine tools, along with a multitude of other unique equipment and inventions.
Bathgate’s works have been exhibited in a variety of museums and galleries across the United States, including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the American Craftsmanship Museum, and the Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum. Bathgate’s sculptures are held in numerous private collections throughout the United States and abroad.
Bathgate has been featured in American Craft Magazine, Make Magazine, the Russian edition of Popular Mechanics, Sculptures Pacific, and Best of American Sculpture Volume II. He was awarded grants in 2007 and 2011 from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation. He has also earned recognition in his own hometown, having received the Mary Sawyers Baker Prize in 2014, a Baltimore “B” grant in 2011, and a Creative Baltimore grant in 2008.
Zoë Charlton
Zoë Charlton
Web: www.zoecharlton.com | IG: @zoe.charlton.studio
Zoë Charlton (Baltimore, MD) creates drawings that explore the ironies of contemporary social and cultural stereotypes. She depicts her subject’s relationship with their world by combining images of culturally loaded objects and landscapes with undressed bodies. She received her MFA degree from the University of Texas at Austin and participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting (Skowhegan, ME, 2001), Creative Alliance (Baltimore, MD, 2003), and Art342 (Fort Collins, CO, 2010).
Her exhibitions include ConnerSmith. (Washington, DC, 2013), The Delaware Contemporary (Wilmington, DE, 2009), and Wendy Cooper Gallery (Chicago, IL, 2006). Her work has been included in national and international exhibitions including the Harvey B. Gantt Center (Charlotte, NC, 2015), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR, 2014), Studio Museum of Harlem (NYC, NY, 2012), Contemporary Art Museum (Houston, TX, 2000), the Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw, Poland 2006), and Haas & Fischer Gallery (Zurich, Switzerland, 2006).
She is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner grant (2012) and Rubys grant (2014), and was a finalist for the 2015 Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize. She received nominations in 2014 for both the Anonymous Was a Woman and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. Charlton is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art at American University in Washington, DC.
Oletha DeVane
oletha devane
Web: Oethadevane.com | IG: @devanekojzar
Oletha DeVane is an accomplished multidisciplinary artist who explores diverse political, social identities and cultural interpretations. She is a passionate advocate for arts education. Her work has been in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the U.S. and in the United Arab Emirates. See her work currently on exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Traces of the Spirit, up through Oct. 20, 2019.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Oletha DeVane received her B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art and M.F.A. in painting from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Her first major exhibition was at the Springfield Museum of Art in Massachusetts in 1976. Since then, her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Maryland and along the East Coast. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture in Baltimore commissioned Ms. DeVane to create a video installation documenting Maryland’s history of lynching in 2003. The piece was inspired by an earlier silent video installation of the same subject at Maryland Art Place (2002).
An artist and educator, Ms. DeVane, is currently the head of visual arts in the Upper School at McDonogh School in Owings Mills. She explores the personal, historical and spiritual ideas in her work through paintings, printmaking, installations, and sculpture.
Elliot Doughtie
elliot doughtie
Web: www.elliotdoughtie.com | IG: @elliotdoughtie
“Doughtie creates sculptures and installations often using found materials and cast plaster. Themes of cosmic landscapes and bathroom plumbing are used as metaphors for the body in transition in his own explorations of the fluidity of gender and sexuality.”
Recent awards include a 2018 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award Sculptors Grant. Doughtie’s recent exhibitions include a group show at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX.
Erin Fostel
erin fostel
Web: www.erinfostel.com | IG: @erinfostel
Erin Fostel (b. 1981, Baltimore, MD) spent the first few years of life navigating the world with blurred vision. Since the moment she first wore glasses and seeing things in focus for the very first time, she has been consumed with the joy of observation and a love of drawing. In 2004, Fostel earned a BFA in Drawing at the Maryland Institute Collect of Art.
Her work has been featured numerous solo exhibitions, including an exhibit at the Baltimore City Hall North Gallery, Katz Gallery at Friends School, Terrault Contemporary in Baltimore, and Rosenberg Gallery at Goucher College. She was awarded a 2018 Maryland State Art Council Individual Artist Award and a 2019 Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Travel Prize. Fostel’s drawings have been included a number of publications, as well as private and institutional collections. Her studio is based in Baltimore.
Taha Heydari
Taha Heydari
Web: tahaheydari.com | IG: @taha_hey
Taha Heydari’s striking, large-scale canvases examine the power of images—and the role of the spectator—in politics, propaganda, and the shaping of culture and identity. Particularly of interest to Heydari are the ways in which the seductive power of media imagery is being used to shape perceptions and outcomes in the the United States and the Middle East. Heydari is an Iranian-born Baltimore-based artist who explores issues of technology, surveillance, technology, and media in his paintings and drawings. He is an MFA graduate of MICA’s Hoffberger School of Painting.
In his most recent series of works, Heydari draws from covers of the Iranian women’s magazine Zan-e Rooz (Woman of Today) published just before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with glossy pages featuring modern, secular, cosmopolitan women of their time.
Heydari received his BFA from the Art University of Tehran and an MFA from the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute of College of Art in Baltimore. His work has been presented in solo exhibitions in Iran, New York, and San Francisco, including his first institutional solo at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC in 2017; as well as group exhibitions in Baltimore, Amsterdam, Dubai, London, Antwerp and Berlin. He has been nominated for the prestigious Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize (2017), and the Bethesda Painting Awards (2019).
Phaan Howng
Phaan Howng
Web:phaan.com | Instagram: @phaanlove
Phaan Howng 洪恭凡 (United States, b. 1982) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work centers around various narratives and landscapes that show the planet thriving in a utopian post-human future, or what she terms an “optimistic post-apocalypse.” Howng places the viewer in this satirical imagined future to encourage reflection on current conditions fostered by extractive global capitalism. Her explorations in current philosophy, anthropology, and history, ground these investigations that interrogate Western concepts of nature, the human, and time. Through painting, sculpture, installation, and performance, Howng’s work speaks to issues of environmental, political, and social exploitation.
Phaan Howng lives and works in Baltimore, MD. She received her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Multi-Disciplinary Art at MICA in 2015, and her BFA in Painting from Boston University in 2004. Howng’s solo exhibitions and projects include, The Succession of Nature at the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD 2017-2018), Niagara, special project for The Long Conversation at the Smithsonian Arts and Industry Museum (Washington D.C. 2018), You’re In Good Hands, special project for Spring Break Art Show (New York, NY 2019), Effigy, Elegy, Eulogy at Arlington Arts Center (Arlington, VA, 2018), and Biological Controls: If it Bleeds We Can Kill It at School 33 (Baltimore, MD 2017). She was also a 2017 Rubys Artist Project Grant recipient in Media Arts and Performing Arts and was a 2018 Sondheim Art Prize Semi-Finalist, 2018 Trawick Prize Semi-Finalist, and 2019 Greater Baltimore Culture Alliance Baker Prize Finalist.
Antonio McAfee
antonio mcafee
Web: antoniomcafee.net | IG: @antonioemca
Antonio McAfee is a photographer raised and based in Baltimore, MD. He received his BFA in Fine Art Photography from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. He received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Art in Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). Recent exhibition venues include University of Maryland, College Park's Stamp Gallery, George Washington University's Gallery 102, and Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Vitae:
* 2019 Time and Place The Walters Art Museum
* 2020 Through the Layers Pt. 2, Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County, (UMBC) Baltimore, MD
* 2019 Ordinary People, Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington, DC
* 2019 Through the Layers Pt. 1 (In the Round), Rotunda Gallery, American University, Washington, DC
Jackie Milad
Jackie maría Ibrahim Milad
Web: www.jackiemilad.com | Instagram: @_jackie_milad_
My current works on paper, examine the complexities of identity-making for people of mixed race, and mixed ethnic backgrounds. Much of my life has been spent finding difference between my immigrant parents, and not able to fully identify with either. In this current series I have constructed a new visual language, a mash-up of actual and invented symbols associated with my Egyptian and Honduran background and personal family history. This work is about creating my own mythologies and language - my own identity.
Vitae:
* C. Grimaldis Gallery, "Chaos Comes and Goes", solo exhibition, Baltimore MD – up through * The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, “Painting Is Its Own Country”, group exhibition curated by Dexter Wimberly. Charlotte, NC
* The Walters Art Museum, “Sondheim Finalist Exhibition”, Jurors Laylah Ali, Regine Basha and William Powhida, Baltimore, MD
* Facebook AIR Program - Mural commission for DC Headquarters
René Treviño
rené trevińo
Web: renetrevino.com | IG: @renetrevino
“Throughout my work are themes of identity; I am interested in challenging traditional ideas of race and sexual orientation. I feel compelled to make thoughtful and beautiful work that confronts societal assumptions, gives new insight into our human experience, and gives voice to historically under-represented queer Latinos.”
Treviño received his BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2003 and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2005. He has shown at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, CT; the Baltimore Museum of Art, Goliath Visual Space in Brooklyn, NY; White Box in New York; the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art; the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore, MD; and Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia,PA. He was also included in the 2007 WPA/Corcoran OPTIONS Biennial in Washington DC and was awarded a 2009 Baltimore Creative Fund Individual Artist Grant and won the 2009 Trawick Prize.
He was an artist-in-residence at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA and the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD and has been invited to participate in the AIR Serenbe program in Serenbe, GA in 2015. His work has been featured in Art Papers, New American Painters, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City Paper, Philadelphia Enquirer, Washington Blade, Washington Post as well as several online publications. Treviño had two solo exhibitions in 2019: Stelae, at the Julio Fine Arts Gallery at Loyola University Maryland and Gran Fury at Montpelier Art Center in Laurel, MD.