Fall Intern Exhibition
light/house
Opening Reception, September 5th 6-8PM, Unison Arts Center, New Paltz, NY
On view until September 18th
In light/house, Studio Interns Ellie Swanson and Ollantay Avila Alcocer and Administrative Assistant Julia Maisel-Berick explore visual patterns and motifs—often rooted in nostalgia—to weave personal narratives into a range of media. light/house embodies dualities, contradictions, and multiplicities that appear both in their life and work. The exhibition is the culmination of five months of living and working in community.
The sweet air, the song of crickets and frogs, the warm light guides us back to the home we’ve made for ourselves this summer. The familiar shadows stretch and dance across the kitchen tile, the fan hums a gentle lullaby, laughter fills the rooms that so many have passed through. As night falls and the fireflies emerge, that home is a constant and a reminder of the time we shared together.
I’ll leave the light on for you.
Meet the Artists
Ollantay Avila Alcocer
Avila Alcocer is a Mexican-American artist, designer, and writer from Dallas, Texas. Interested in ornamentation, collection, and annotation, her practice explores everyday design languages, motifs, and the ways in which we visually communicate identity. She challenges traditional notions of authorship and instead looks towards collaborative, DIY, and open-source communities and modes of making. Through writing and language, typography, photography, collage, and printmaking, she considers layered meanings and balances contradictions–irony and sincerity, efficiency and chaos, analog and digital–to capture a multitudinous, dissonant, yet thoughtful voice. In 2024, she graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design.
ollantay.xyz || @ollantay.xyz
Julia Maisel-Berick
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Julia Maisel-Berick is a multi-media artist currently based in the Hudson Valley. Utilizing paper scraps, paint, fabric and glue, Julia crafts images inspired by medical advertisements, Victorian scrap-book homes, and the communal culture of quilting. Second-hand or repurposed materials often guide her compositions, and she is interested in emphasizing the uncanny nature of the mid-century lifestyle magazines collected from antique malls, neighbors, and street corners over the years. While at WSW, Julia’s work has expanded to include processes in print and papermaking as she finds new ways to piece textiles, found images, text, and paintings together. Grounded in a sense of nostalgia, her work crosses disciplines to evoke both the familiar and the peculiar in domestic settings.
jmaiselberick.wordpress.com/ || @julia.rmb
Ellie Swanson
Ellie Swanson graduated with a BA in Studio Art from the University of Vermont in 2021. She enjoys making interactive, whimsical pieces that present fantastical narratives. Her inspiration comes largely from folktales and her surrounding environment. A large portion of her iconography is taken directly from the rural & coastal Rhode Island landscape she was raised in.
ellieswanson.com || @starsheepz