WCA BOARD & COMMITTEES

Sandra D. Davis is an artist that likes to experiment with materials and mediums, with a focus on mixed media, utilizing components like acrylics, found paper, newspaper and magazines, keeping a recycled theme.  Sandra’s current work is a direct response to social issues happening in our country, including present grievances, in- equality and identity of others.

Issues such as Equal Pay, Health disparity, housing and education and the continued assault on men and women of color are all topics that remain a real concern.  In this era of social media, we are bombarded by tweets, instant messaging, Instagram pics are quick snapshots of capturing current events are platforms for inspiration.

The impacted parties are not only the same groups of people, but the fight has been recycled and re-emerged and refocused.  This has created new fraternities and sororities that has a broader reach and now includes a new generation of how society and people in power want to identify.  Her images can be found on various surfaces including tabletops, tote bags and wearable art. Sandra regularly participates in exhibitions throughout Maryland, DC and Virginia.

Sandra serves as the Exhibition Committee Chair for Women’s Caucus for Art Greater Washington. https://wcadc.org, she also serves as a president-elect for the National Women’s Caucus for Art.

Luner’s artwork allows for contemplation and interpretation on a multitude of interrelated levels: visual, intellectual, and historical.
Form, color and craftsmanship are all important factors, even when she uses materials that are not considered conventional art materials. Often, she uses industrial products like styrofoam as a substrate and a variety of organic substances stabilized with acrylic mediums: tortillas, muffin wrappers, coffee filters, dryer lint among many others.

Reinforcing her desire to have the work read on a variety of levels, the titles often reflect an ambivalence towards the viewer/consumer, the interpretation process, the art market, or the piece itself. She also enjoys a humorous approach, often using a play of words or ironic suggestions like in the titles: We Won’t Give or this latex piece might outlive your lifespan. However, her work rarely takes on a purely ironic stance, and when it does, it usually involves some kind of criticism directed at the male dominated art market, the ‘old boys club’, or the male-centric historic narrative. Art For Art’s Sake Is A Luxury Women Just Can’t Afford, a mounted piece of plastic junk, or Holy Baloney, a sausage made from a bible are perfect examples. She might also refrain from titling a work to invite a matter-of-fact approach, refusing to guide the viewer into any pre-fabricated point of view. For example, all the pieces in the styrofoam/packaging-peanut/bandage series are Untitled. In general, she prefers a serial approach, one of which escalated in 1996 into a 256 part series: The Office Coffee And Cake Piece, in which she made a painting for each workday of the year of 1996.

Over the years, her work transformed from the early 1980s figurative expressionist style practiced in Berlin where she studied and received her MFA, to her Super 8 movies, to the abstract feminist works of the 1990s, to her current abstract organic approach. These shifts have been important stages in clarifying and defining her artistic vision. 

In 2016, she moved to Upstate NY and rediscovered her love for plants and mushrooms, and now spends most of her free time gardening and tending her chickens.

As a mixed media, abstract painter living in Davidson, North Carolina, Wynes’s art taps into the personal growth aspect of our emotional and philosophical concerns derived from the issues we face today as a society. Her bold, colorful paintings using organic shapes, patterns and texture, with collage she creates herself, instill a delightful spirit to the viewer while encouraging and empowering them to follow their inner voice. After college she transferred all of her knowledge that she gained from her earlier fabric exploits and experiments in her youth to her passion for painting using and experimenting with acrylic and mixed media on canvas. Graduating Magna Cum Laude from Nazareth College, Rochester, NY she was awarded The Gertrude Ford Award, recognizing one student for excellence in art at graduation. And one of her paintings hangs in their permanent collection. After graduation from college her painting,Women in Art, Where Are They? took 1st place in a 13 county, juried art exhibit at the Cayuga Museum of History and Art in Auburn, NY. And she was off and running. She was just awarded her 3rd Arts and Science Council (ASC) Grant for 2023 for admission into a comprehensive promotion and networking collective for 6 months.

Her paintings have been chosen in 20 national, juried online exhibitions and 2 international juried exhibits in 2022. 100 Square Inches of Art: 4th Annual Juried Exhibition in November 2022 at 3 Square Art, Fort Collins, CO, her painting, Weather System Upon Us, was awarded honorable mention by Juror: Mary Jane Edwards, Executive Director of the Jentel Foundation. And Artsy.net featured 2 of her paintings in 6 of their emails during the months of Aug.-Sept. 2022. Women’s Caucus of Art has chosen her paintings to appear in their publications 4 times since 2014. In 2021, she will appear a 5th time in their newest publication following the juried exhibition in the CAB Gallery at UNCWilmington. In August 2021, she appeared in a national juried publication called Wild Lands with her painting, “Stretch the Boundaries”. She has also appeared in several editions of Studio Visit Magazine, a national, juried publication and Charlotte Business Journal’s annual “Book of Lists 2013 with her painting on the cover chosen in an art competition. In December 2020, her banner design was one chosen by the Town of Davidson in their juried Banner Project Call for Artists and it will be on a flagpole on Main Street, Davidson through at least Feb. 2023.

Her solo exhibitions include the Northridge CC, Raleigh, NC, in 2019; Davidson Town Hall, Davidson, NC, 2018; & Ellis and Nicholson Gallery, Charleston, NC, 2017. She has appeared in many juried group shows in NC, SC, TN, NY & CA. A competition sponsored by the Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, NC and Creative Loafing Magazine, saw her collage created from pages of that publication, and appear at the Mint Museum during the Romare Bearden exhibition.

 As a multi- media artist, Judith Segall knew she wanted to be an artist when in kindergarten when working with crayons. She began painting while living in Northern Italy in 1972. She continued her studies at Cal State Long Beach, and the Instituto de San Miguel Allende in Mexico, receiving her BFA from Fl Atlantic University with emphasis in printmaking. With Anjal Soler as her mentor, her personal passion developed in the art of papermaking and working with natural fibers.

Judith was the founder of the Women’s Caucus for Art, Central Florida Chapter (the Florida Chapter since 2000) and served as President for decades. As a dedicated promoter of women in the arts, the impact of her unrelenting work has made a positive change in the cultural landscape throughout the region, the state, and the nation. As an administrator from 1994 to 2012, she coordinated regional & national juried art shows for WCA, Seminole Community College, University of Central Florida, Maitland Art Center, Osceola Center for the Arts, ArtWorks Orlando, DeLand Museum of Art, Brick City in Ocala, amongst other locations.Her national service to this cause includes serving as Vice President of the SE region, and on the National Board of Directors from 2001- 2011 and from 2019 which continues to this day.

Since 1989 she taught art with a vast experience statewide, she worked with Broward Community College (Davie, Florida), Florida International University (Miami, Florida), Hollywood Hills High School (Hollywood, Florida), Crealde School of Art (Winter Park, Florida), Maitland Art Center (Maitland, Florida), and many more including working with Artists in Education in several counties.

She has over 30 years of experience as a judge, jury and curator, in the most prestigious art shows and festivals around the state of Florida. Broward Art Guild photo contest (Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 1991), Lisa Coopersmith Gallery (Gulfport, Florida, 1994), Osceola Center of the Arts (Osceola County, Florida, 1998), Mt. Dora Art Festival (Mt. Dora, Florida, 2002), Curate Matriarchs & Madonnas SE regional juried WCA exhibition (Osceola County, Florida, 2008), Casselberry Recycle Exhibit (Casselberry, Florida, 2013), Melbourne Art Festival (Seminole County, Florida, 2012-2018), New Smyrna Artists workshop (New Smyrna, Florida, 2021)

Judith’s reputation as a multimedia artist is two-fold. On one hand is her spiritual work focusing on, but not limited to, Judaica. As of 2018, a piece is proudly in our new Embassy in Jerusalem. But diversification quickly moves from the spiritual into political satire. The range of works can flow from 3-dimensional pulp castings to 2-dimensional pulp paintings. Judith loves the lack of limitations she finds with papermaking. A professor once said, “Limitations are an inherent quality of all art mediums.” Ms. Segall would dispute this.

Rona Lesser did not start out as an artist, but originally got her degree in Elementary Education, specializing in Special Ed. As a young mother, she took her first drawing classes and fell in love with drawing people. She continued to take classes part time for many years, concentrating on figure drawing and painting and learning different media. At the same time, she continued her involvement in education, teaching life skills to special needs adults and then adult basic education to welfare clients part time, always reserving a morning for art classes.

As her children got older, she began teaching for City ArtWorks, a nonprofit afterschool art program, applying her love of teaching to her new love of art making. Through teaching she learned art history and many new art techniques.
She also worked for Young Audiences as a teaching artist in the schools. Teaching remains her passion, and she continues to work in various capacities as an art educator. One role is as a longtime docent at the Blaffer Art Museum of the University of Houston, which has been a window to understanding contemporary art. She is also working with Jewish educators in the arts to create curriculum and training for including the arts in lessons.
Currently she works mostly in watercolor, with some work in pastel and acrylic. Her subjects are mostly figures done from life, and landscapes done both plein- air and from her travel photos. She has had work in many juried exhibits in Houston, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

She became involved at the national level of WCA as chair of the Jewish Women’s Art Network about 20 years ago and served on the national board as a chapter representative, JWAN chair, and S.W Regional Chair. She has also in the past served on the board in Houston of the Women in the Visual and Literary Arts. She is a member of the Watercolor Society of Houston, the Visual Arts Alliance in Houston, and WIVLA, as well as serving on the board of the new WCA Texas chapter.

Sahiti Bonam is in her second year of her MA in Art History/Arts Management. She is an artist, designer, and cultural worker and has worked with several Philadelphia-based arts and culture organizations over the past 5 years.

Sahiti is the Manager of the Graphics Media Center at Temple University, a student-run design and print agency. Additionally, she is a Fox Board Fellow with Asian Arts Initiative.

Deb Slowey’s paintings engage the viewer with stories about myths and legends, living in a moment, in an imagined space, yet rooted in mathematical principles and formulas. The Fibonacci sequence, the Golden Ratio, and Phi paired with Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity all inform her work. The stories can take place in the past or the future.

Deb Slowey lives and works in the Tampa Bay region of Florida. She studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, aesthetics at the Barnes Foundation School of Art, and printmaking at Bob Blackburn’s PMW. For nearly two decades, Slowey lived and worked in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City under the mentorship of Will Barnet.

Slowey had solo exhibitions at notable galleries such as Chuck Levitan Gallery (New York, NY) and The Stone House Museum (Hasbrouck, NY). Her work is also in prominent permanent collections such as the US Embassy in Paris, France, The Printmaking Workshop Collection (New York, NY), St. Mary’s College (Maryland), Parana Curitiba (Brazil), and many more. She has also been a Registered Nurse for nearly two decades.

Amanda Banks is a multidisciplinary artist local to Huntsville, AL. Her inspiration comes from the pattern language of life and her artistic practice explores how patterns can be combined to create new realities. She has enjoyed a varied practice across her 15 year career and enjoys working across many forms of media. Amanda has led arts-based academic research under the direction of the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Justice (DOJ), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Currently, Amanda lives in North Alabama with her partner and their two teenage children. She works from her sensory-friendly home studio and is available by appointment.

Dr. Rachel Epp Buller is a visual artist, feminist art historian, professor, and mother of three. Her artistic and scholarly pursuits often address these intersections, including exhibitions and publications that focus on the maternal body and feminist care in contemporary art contexts. Her current research-creation project, Acts of Listening: Art and Relational Attunement, addresses listening as artistic method in contemporary art. Most of the works in this exhibition were created during a 2021-22 fellowship as Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Arts and Humanities at the University of Alberta.

She has exhibited her artwork in solo and group exhibitions in the US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, and in 2016 she curated and wrote the exhibition catalogue for the first-ever retrospective of German artist Alice Lex-Nerlinger, hosted by Das Verborgene Museum in Berlin. She is a board member of the National Women’s Caucus for Art, regional coordinator of The Feminist Art Project, certified practitioner in Deep Listening, and Professor of Visual Arts and Design at Bethel College (KS).

Allicette Torres is a Puerto Rican artist, curator, and arts writer who has lived in Harlem for over 20 years. As a photographer and visual composer, the core of her work is about memory. She includes aspects of film, performance art, and sculpture in her schemes.

Orchestrating scenarios that imbue the pain of the past and its ramifications in the present. Often, she explores highly charged themes such as repression, history, and race; her photographs ask, How does history coupled with choices or inactions shape the fabric and legacy of who we are.

Shantay Robinson was a participant in the inaugural class of Burnaway Magazine’s Art Writers Mentorship Program. She was a fellow in Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies Digital Publishing Project Editorial Fellowship. She was also chosen for the CUE Art Foundation’s Art Critic Mentoring program. In 2020, she served as visual arts judge in Shreveport Regional Council’s Critical Mass 8 Art Competition.

She was Resident Scholar at Black Art in America, and she was a freelance writer at Burnaway, Arts ATL, Nashville Scene, ARTS.BLACK, AFROPUNK, Sugarcane Magazine and Number, Inc. She also published scholarly articles in Teaching Artist Journal and International Review of African American Art. She currently writes for Smithsonian Magazine and Washington City Paper.

Shantay presented papers about art and education at SCAD’s (Savannah College of Art and Design) Symposium on Art and Fashion, Georgia State University’s New Voices Graduate Student Conference, Georgia State University’s Glorious Hair and Academic Identities Conference, Northeast Modern Languages Association Conference, Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference, and New York African Studies Association Conference. In 2019, she sat on a panel at Prizm Art Fair during Miami Art Week.

Cathy Salser is a national leader in the emerging field of durational art, dedicated to incubating individual and community-driven art activations as a modality for supporting social change.
As founder of A Window Between Worlds (AWBW), Salser has spent 31+ years co-creating a circle of arts-based change-makers innovating journeys to transform trauma that lives in our bodies, relationships, communities and systems. Through this work, Salser has invited hundreds of thousands of adults and children who have experienced domestic violence, homelessness, child abuse, incarceration, sexual assault, substance abuse, community violence, and intergenerational trauma to pilot their own art practices that anchor change. The scope of this work today includes over 300 active community sites engaging over 60,000+ participants annually in 40+ states as well as Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa and Venezuela.

Salser served for a decade on the board of directors of the Liberty Hill Foundation, a partnership of donors and community activists working to address issues of social, racial, and economic inequality. She served for five years on the board of the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art, and currently serves on the board of the national Women’s Caucus for Art.

At AWBW, she serves as Strategic Vision and Partnership Advisor, supporting key initiatives to uplift community voices, center social justice and embed sustainability in organizational practices. Recent cornerstone projects include:
• #PrisonersToo, a project created by individuals living in custody within South Carolina women’s prisons designed to shift institutional culture and practices around rape, sexual assault and trauma.
• Act of Hate  Activate, a Los Angeles based project incubated within LAvsHate, supporting a cohort of community leaders to prototype art-based practices to ground community action, breaking isolation and standing against hate.

Salser’s lifelong inquiry is:
• How can we use art to anchor transformation?
• What does that unique journey look like for a given individual and/or community?
• How can we build a circle innovating, interconnecting and practicing art as a resource for connecting deeply to ourselves and each other in the face of violence and trauma?

She honors each partner, facilitator and participant as the innovator of art-based practices to serve their own journeys, contexts and needs. As community partners uplift and interconnect voices, these projects invite and embody a co-creative fabric of change.

Salser earned her BA in Studio Art at Williams College, where she was valedictorian of her class of 1988 and was awarded the college’s Bicentennial Medal in 2006. She was also valedictorian of her high school class and she received the Future Masters Award from the City of Los Angeles and was one of four National Presidential Scholars in the Visual Arts for which she was honored at the White House. Additional awards and recognition include: Women’s Caucus for Art President’s Award for Art & Activism, Bank of America Local Heroes Award, Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund Award, Betty Fisher Award from the Los Angeles Domestic Violence Council, and Karen Cooper Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence.