Art Opening Receptions: Friday, September 5, 2025 / 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Valerie Berner – Victorian Gallery @ 9 Vassar Street

Flotation by Valerie Berner

Valerie Berner, who hails from Rochester, NY, is a painter whose style is characterized by bold colors, sharp edges, and settings that consist of dozens of overlapping layers of paint. Her paintings evoke dynamic moods, but they rarely reveal the entire storyline. “My exhibition at the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center, entitled Scenes and Scenery from Untold Stories, features a collection of paintings whose stories are both ready to be discovered yet happy to remain untold,” remarks Berner. “There is a story that emerges from each of my paintings…sometimes it is a plot twist or a revelation of which I become aware much later, and other times it is something that lingers in the mind of the viewer.” Her aim for each show is for the imagery to “lead viewers to wonder and wander.”  Berner received her undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University, where she double majored in Psychology and Fine Arts, with a specialization in painting. She earned a master’s degree in Art Therapy from Nazareth College. Several years later, she received national board certification and state licensure as a Creative Arts Therapist. Berner has regularly displayed her artwork since 2008 in solo, juried, invitational, and group exhibitions.

Inna Ivanovskaya and Tatiana Rhinevault – Reception Gallery @ 12 Vassar Street

Inna Ivanovskaya

Inna Ivanovskaya is an independent filmmaker and an analog photographer based in New York’s Hudson Valley. Receiving her B.A. in Film Production from Brooklyn College, Inna is known as the director and editor of her poetic non-fiction film essays as well as analog photo series of Alien Numbers and That is The Silence. Her work explores human relationships, the notions of home and belonging, and cultural identity as well as the role of introspection in life. Inna’s practice is informed by her upbringing in post Soviet Russia and the immigrant experience.  “I immigrated to the United States in 2017 to escape an authoritarian political regime, to expand my world outlook and to grow as an artist,” she conveys. “I’ve always been passionate about people, their unique experiences and stories…narrative forms of other people’s experiences entertain us in ways that help us see things from a different perspective, understand each other better and grow.” Her latest work That is the Silence is a short documentary and a series of analog photographs which take you on an intimate and immersive journey through the spirit forcing you to reflect alongside the film on your own inner desires and ask – “What does it mean to listen…”

Main Street Hyde Park NY by Tatiana Rhinevault

Tatiana Rhinevault was born in Moscow and received her master’s degree in art from the Moscow Institute. She works in several mediums including watercolor, acrylic and oil, and utilizes rich dark colors in combination with diffused window light to create a calming but magnetic space. She creates windows through which one can see the old streets and monuments of Europe and often includes paintings within her paintings. “I spent much of my childhood playing in Sokolniki Park, watching artists paint day-in and day-out,” she explains. “Because of my exposure to Moscow’s many museums, theaters, and art studios, the arts played a huge role in my childhood and, ultimately, in my paintings.”  As a studied cellist, Rhinevault’s love of all the Renaissance Arts is reflected in her work with most of her paintings containing a musical instrument or score, paintbrushes or palette or literature of some kind.  Her work is also influenced by her elder brother, a musician, who instilled in her a love for American Jazz and her many friends who are classical musicians.  In addition to her illustrious career as a painter, she has also been a makeup artist at the famous Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow when she was 17 years of age, a specialist in restoring icons in Moscow’s old churches as well as painting new ones, and in 1990 worked on The English Map of Moscow for the U.S. Embassy. It was at that time she met her husband and moved with him to the United States. They currently reside in Hyde Park, NY with their son.

Lisa Weinblatt – Hancock Gallery @ 12 Vassar Street

Artwork from School Lunch Series by Lisa Weinblatt

Lisa Weinblatt is a figurative painter who received her M.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts, NYC and earned her B.A., Magna Cum laude, Art Department Honors, at Queens College/CUNY.  Her School Lunch exhibition at the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center is a visual essay of contemporary student life in real educational settings with the imagery informed through direct observation, memory and personal experience. “Visual Imagery has the power to transform and enlarge our perceptions, as well as confirm identity and validate experience and the paintings in this series present images concerning the nature and passions of human relationship,” she explains. “Current cross-cultural and social issues, and their emotional attitudes, are explored in the shared experience of school lunch and are generated from observation, drawing on-site, in lunchrooms and campuses of High Schools and Colleges…each individual in my paintings, drawn in the moment, is an actual person; the drawings are the genesis of my paintings.”  Weinblatt’s School Lunch painting series has been exhibited in over 40 solo exhibitions, including the NYC Armory Show, Waterworks Art Center/ Museum (NC), Karpeles Museum (NY), Morris Graves Museum (CA), Woodstock Museum (NY), Delaplaine Art Center (MD), Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts (PA), and Judy Black Memorial Gallery/Gardens (CT).  Most notably, her School Lunch #4 painting was awarded ‘Best In Show’ at the Flinn Gallery (Greenwich, CT) in August 2023 by Claire Davies who is the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.