Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center presents Onaje Benjamin, Suzanne Rees and Erin Sullivan in the Reception Room Gallery – 12 Vassar Street

July 1 – July 31, 2021

These exhibits will be on display during the CHAC Is Back! A Summer Arts & Crafts Fair taking place on Saturday, July 31 from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm. 

Onaje Benjamin is a photographer whose work reflects a passion for social justice and activism. His images range from street taggers and muralist to portraits of street people and the structural and architectural evolution symbolizing gentrification and the uprooting of disenfranchised communities. They also capture urban settings and the cultural and artistic tensions that evolve in these rapidly changing environments.  He is the owner of Ujamaa Studios whose mission is to support the work of historically disenfranchised artists especially those incarcerated in America’s system of mass incarceration.

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Suzanne Rees combines painting and collage to create interior spaces that can feel inchoate and elemental like weather or music. Using various papers and different ways of mark making, she builds her paintings in a kind of call and response. Just as she purposely truncates the space, not allowing it to become real or rendered, she does the same to the images, stopping them before they become something recognizable, containing them in the suggestive. Suzanne earned a BFA from Parsons School of Design and a MFA from Maryland Institute School of Art/ Rinehart School of Sculpture. She has exhibited widely in and around the Hudson Valley. https://www.suzannerees.com/

Artwork by Suzanne Rees

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Erin Sullivan is a creative artist currently living in Poughkeepsie, NY. She loves playing in different mediums from watercolor and encaustic to acrylic and writing. In her work, she uses an intuitive approach to capture a feeling, mood, aura, or moment.https://erinsullivan.love/

Artwork by Erin Sullivan