Alumni Spotlight
Lizzy Alejandro
Lizzy Alejandro is a visual artist from New York City. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media from Lehman College in 2019. Her work explores themes of identity and challenges notions of the status quo. Alejandro’s work has been exhibited at Fordham University, Taller Boricua Gallery, Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx Art Space, Andrew Freedman Home, Lincoln Hospital, the Galleries at Krasdale Foods, the Bronx Latin American Art Biennial, and most recently at Empty Set Gallery. She has been included in publications such as The Bronx Artist Documentary Project and in the Nueva Luz Photographic Journal 2016, Volume 20, “Living Latina: The Bronx Women’s Photo Collective”. Lizzy Alejandro is a member of the BX200.
Judy Giera
Judy Giera (she/her) is a New York City based interdisciplinary abstract artist working through performance, video, costume, and a loose definition of painting to represent complex notions of gender, sexuality, othering, desire, pleasure, violence, power, and transition. Staunchly against any notion of “the death of the author” in any media, Giera’s work is grounded in realities of her existence as a mentally-ill, transgender woman, but doesn’t serve as direct autobiography. Drawing on her past as an extensively trained theatre artist, never quite realized drag queen, and once-and-always queer teen stuck in a catholic school, Giera’s art is materially adventurous, physically layered and holds a general antagonism towards correctness and normativity in all forms through a lens of sardonic pageantry and tongue-in-cheek humor. Giera’s work has been shown at the Hudson River Museum, Bronx Art Space, Trestle Gallery, Ceres Gallery, Local Project, LIC Arts Open, and more and her performance works have been included in programming at Radiator Gallery, Ideal Glass Studios, Dixon Place and SVA, to name a few. Her full length performance and soundscape ‘Blanche On A Winter’s Eve’ was an award winning presentation at the 2016 United Solo Theatre Festival and curated as part of the inaugural programming for the International Human Rights Arts Festival in 2017. She holds an MFA in Art (Painting) from Lehman College/CUNY, MFA in Theatre from Pace University, and spent a year in the Graduate Performance and Performance Studies Department at Pratt Institute. Giera shares a studio space at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts where she also works as Program Manager for EFA Project Space, the foundation's cross-disciplinary gallery program. She resides in Brooklyn with her two cats and a well-worn Hitachi Magic Wand. Her work has been written about in Vellum Magazine, ArtSpiel, and she was a 2019 Top Ten Artists Now - NYC in Art 511 Magazine.
Patrick Perry
Patrick Perry (MA 20’) and a group of former Lehman MFA Graduates launched a new project space, Empty Set, in the Port Morris section of the Bronx this past February. Perry exhibited his MA thesis project as the inaugural exhibition. This season will include solo exhibitions by Rachel Sydlowski (MFA 15'), Peter Hamlin (MFA 16’), Sarah Rowe (MFA 13'), Sima Schloss (MFA 17'), Lizzy Alejandro (MFA 19'), and Vanezza Cruz (MFA 14'). Other exhibitions include Sohhee Oh and “Expect Some Discomfort” curated by David Rios who is the director of education at The Manhattan Children’s Museum. In addition to being a founding member of Empty Set, Perry was recently included in Revelations a group exhibition in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He is trained as a jeweler and has an interdisciplinary art practice that incorporates aspects of photography, printmaking and sculpture.
Ruth Rodriguez
Ruth Rodriguez obtained her MLS in Library Sciences from Queens College in 2013, and her MFA in Fine Arts from Lehman College in 2018, where she focused on Printmaking/Installation. The New York Times wrote an article about Ruth in 2019, How a Bronx Librarian Spends Her Sunday. She was recently in a show at Transmitters Gallery. Earlier in 2020, she was selected to be part of the Bronx Museum AIM fellow for fall 2020. Take a look at her website
Amanda Saviñón
Amanda Saviñón is a Dominican-American photo editor, photographer, and artist from New York City. Since graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Lehman College City University of New York, she has worked with publications such as Vogue, GQ, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, Refinery29, DailyMail.com, and New York Magazine.
In 2014, Amanda founded LoyalNana.com, a lifestyle platform focused on feeding the conscious minds of modern women through storytelling and interviews, popular culture, and self-discovery.
While Amanda has worked primarily in the global fashion and news industries, her personal work focuses on self-knowledge through self portraiture. Visit website.
Currently, Amanda is a Photo Editor at Bloomberg Businessweek and resides in The Bronx.
Sima Schloss
Sima Schloss grew up in a Long Island suburb and has been a New York City resident for the last 25 years. She graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island and received her MFA in painting at Lehman College. Schloss is an adjunct professor teaching Art in Humanities at Hostos Community College in the Bronx.
Sima’s work is in a number of private and corporate collections including those of Horned Dorset Inn and Miss Sixty Inc. She has shown her work in different venues all around the country - from The Prince Street Gallery in New York City, National Wet Paint MFA Biennial 2016 and 2018 at the Zhou B Art Center in Chicago, Illinois. Her work has been featured on the cover of Time Out NY, Artascent and 10010 Magazine. In 2018, she received The Wet Paint Biennial MFA Excellence in Artistic Achievement Award. Sima is represented by the Beacon Gallery.
Sima’s latest body of work explores relationships between people and within themselves. In order to truly know and understand a person takes years, and the unmaksing of many layers. Sima’s process involves creating blind contour drawings, disassembling them before putting them back together in different ways. This process of creation is similar to how human beings process emotions and construct their sense of selves and identities. Sima seeks to visually represent the stories that every person holds within themselves.
Jessica Spence
Jessica Spence is a Jamaican-American artist whose work is inspired by her life, and topics relating to black female identity. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from Hartwick College, and an M.A. in Art Education with a concentration in Painting from Lehman College, The City University of New York (CUNY). She works predominantly in portraiture and is based in New York.
Jessica was recently featured in Beyonce's Black Parade Route as well as O Magazine and The Jealous Curator blog.
