Auction on the Alley

Andrea Limauro

ANDREA LIMAURO (b. Rome, Italy – lives in Silver Spring, MD) is a visual artist and city planner whose work explores issues of migration and migrant identity, nationalistic narratives, gun violence, climate change and other political and social issues.  Limauro’s work has been exhibited widely in the Washington, DC region including at the Art Museum of the Americas, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center,  Arts & Artists at Hillyer, as well as at the Painting Center in New York City, New York and the US Ambassador’s Residence in Vienna, Austria. His paintings have been included in New American Paintings N.148 and Studio Visit Magazine Vol. 50 and have been reviewed by the Washington Post and the Washington City Paper on several occasions. Limauro was a Finalist for the Albero Andronico Art Award in Rome, Italy (2019) and a Semi-Finalist for the Bethesda Painting Awards in Maryland (2020 & 2022).  His public speaking engagement include the Hirshhorn Museum and American University Museum/Katzen Arts Center. Limauro served as a Board Member of the Washington Project for the Arts for seven years, holds a BA in Politics and Sociology from Essex University, UK, a Graduate Diploma in International Development from the University of Padua, Italy and a Masters Degree in Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Anna U Davis

Anna U Davis (b. Lund, Sweden) is known for her bold, colorful mixed-media paintings, where she explores social inequalities. Davis began expanding her artistic practice and developing her signature “Frocasian” characters after moving to Washington, D.C. in the 1990s. Frocasians appear in her art as abstracted grey-toned figures, inspired by her interracial marriage and her strongly held belief in social justice. Davis is a two-time recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and has received multiple fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2020, Davis was featured on the cover of the scholarly journal Feminist Studies. Recent solo shows include the Swedish American Museum (Chicago), Galerie Myrtis (Baltimore), the Embassy of Sweden (Washington, D.C.), and Davis Gallery (Copenhagen). Her work has been shown in additional solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Cuba (13th Havana Biennial) and Qatar and is held in public and private collections.

Cianne Fragione

Throughout her career, Cianne Fragione has followed a deep, irresistible instinct that impels her to combine materials and content in unexpected ways, achieving a full and sustained realization in art that embodies the most intimate kinds of encounters between nature and culture. Cianne was an Artist-in-Residence at DVI State Prison in Tracy, CA, from 1980-1983, with a project co-funded by the California Arts Council, Sacramento, and Williams James Association, Santa Cruz, CA. In 2005 she was a fellow through Spoleto Study Abroad in Spoleto, Italy; an Artist-in-Residence in Soaring Gardens, Laceyville, PA (a project of the Ora Lerman Trust, New York, NY), in 2010 and in 2012; and a two-month artist residency at Lo Studio dei Nipoti in Monasterace, Italy, a small Calabrian coastal town. Her art has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions (including traveling exhibitions) throughout the United States in California; New York; Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Baltimore, MD; Washington DC; Boston; Louisville, KY; and Virginia, among others; and internationally in galleries and museum in Italy, as well as American embassies in Sofia, Bulgaria; and Vilnius, Lithuania; as part of the State Department’s Art in Embassies program.

David Allen Harris

David Allen Harris is a descendent of Underground Railroad Conductor Frank Wanzer, a fine art artist and musician. He grew up in the San Francisco bay area during the 1970’s where he was exposed to a variety of artistic influences which informed his own path of creative self-expression. Back then, sketching was my primary passion in art classes, but I also took a lot of science classes. In the 1980s, Harris left California and moved to Washington DC to attend school where he majored in Computer Science. During this period, his explorations of the creative process became evident in the expression of computer software algorithms. Upon graduation, he became a software developer and later took up photography. After 12 years of just shooting for the joy of composition, he was encouraged by artist Michael Platt to exhibit his work. In 2007, his work was on display in Artomatic, and would eventually show his work at numerous venues, including a solo exhibition at Hillyer in July 2023.

Elaine Qiu

Elaine Qiu is a multidisciplinary artist who works in painting, printmaking, installation, and video. Hovering between abstraction and representation, her work explores the liminal spaces between reality and fiction, past and present, and physical and psychological, tells stories about memory, time, and change. In her work, Qiu offers a meditation between life’s seen and unseen, draws attention to the tension and flow between the personal and the public. Qiu holds her MFA from University of Maryland, and a BFA from George Mason University. Qiu had solo, two person and group shows at galleries including Great Reston Art Center, Torpedo Factory Art Center, Riverview Artspace and Brentwood Arts Exchange. Her work is held in public and private collections across the United States.

Gerardo Bravo

Born in Mexico City in 1964, Bravo lives and works between the United States and Mexico City. He studied at the Academia Nacional de Artes de San Carlos in Mexico City from 1994 to 1999. His work has been exhibited in institutions such as the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City, the Mexican Cultural Institutes in Ottawa, San Francisco and Miami, and in the VIII Rufino Tamayo Biennial at the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City, and It is part of numerous public and private collections such as the World Bank in Washington D.C., the Mexican Embassy in Berlin, the Museum of Oaxacan Painters in the city of Oaxaca, the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City and the International Bank of Miami Florida. to name a few.

Joan Belmar

Joan Belmar was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1970. He left Chile for Spain at the age of 24. He began painting professionally in Spain, using the Catalan name Joan for his first name John. He came to Washington, DC, four years later in 1999, was granted permanent residency in the US based on extraordinary artistic merit in 2003, and became a citizen in 2010. Joan Belmar is well known for his unique technique of 3-D painting, in which he combines his former painting and collage techniques with both painted and untreated Mylar/paper strips in circles and curvilinear shapes. This technique produces variations in transparency, as light and the viewer move in relation to the work.  He was a Mayor’s Art Award Finalist in 2007 as an outstanding emerging artist in Washington, DC. The DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities recognized him with an Artist Fellowship Program grant in 2009, and in 2011 he was awarded an Individual Artist Grant by the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, MD. He is a two-time recipient of the Maryland Arts Council Individual Artist Grant in Visual Arts: Painting, in 2010 and 2013. Belmar’s work is part of many private and public collections, including the University of Maine Museum of Art’s Permanent Collection. In 2016 he won first place, from among 2240 received artworks, for best Original Work in the prestigious Osten Biennial of Drawing in Macedonia.

Nikki Brugnoli

Nikki Brugnoli is an artist, educator, and curator who received her BFA from Seton Hill University (2004) and her MFA from The Ohio State University (2007). Brugnoli serves on the faculty at Flint Hill School in Oakton, VA. She teaches Studio Art in the Upper School and runs the Art School/College recruiting program. Previously, she served on the faculty at George Mason University and was the Assistant Graduate Programs Coordinator and Graduate Advisor in the School of Art. In addition, she helped coordinate Visual Voices, Visiting Artist Program. Nikki was the Exhibitions Coordinator for the Art Lab at the Lorton Workhouse, Lorton, VA and currently serves on the Hillyer IA&A Advisory Council, Washington D.C. Brugnoli is currently exhibiting at The Athenaeum: Forces Fleeting with Anne C. Smith and VisArt: Suspended Inter-Spaces; group exhibition.

Pat Goslee

Pat Goslee has maintained an active studio practice in Washington, DC, producing work that has been acquired by numerous public and private collections, including the US Embassies in Nepal and Ethiopia and the City Hall Art Collection at the John A. Wilson Building. She has exhibited widely, showing at commercial venues, universities, alternative art spaces, and art fairs from Miami to New York City. Goslee is a 2009 recipient of a Visual Artist Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She has served on the board of directors for the Washington Arts Museum and DCAC. She holds an MFA from Catholic University and a BFA from the University of Georgia.

Redeat Wondemu

Redeat Wondemu’s journey began in 2005 in a university darkroom where she shot film for the first time. After a decade hiatus, she re-entered the darkroom and began to refine her printing skills through internships and residencies. Traveling to her home country of Ethiopia has since allowed her to tell long-form, visual stories of women using both digital and film techniques.

Redeat is currently a scholar in residence at the Hillwood Museum and a faculty member at Photoworks, where she recently served as an Artist in Residence. She just became a Humanities DC: Community Culture and Heritage grant recipient for her photography series, “The Games We Played”. Redeat’s photography has shown in many solo and group exhibitions across the DMV and she continues to prioritize community engagement alongside. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and numerous other local and national publications.

Sean Riley

Sean Riley is an artist living and working in Washington, DC. In 1999, Riley received his BFA in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In 2004, he received an MFA in sculpture from the University of Pennsylvania. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the Northeast including: Danese/Corey in New York City, TSA NY in Brooklyn, NY, Gallery 263 in Cambridge, MA, Lamont Gallery in Exeter, NH, Arthur Ross Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY, and several others. He has received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Berkshire Taconic Foundation. Riley has been an artist in residence at the Joan Mitchell Center, Yaddo, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Sookkyung Park

Sookkyung Park established an Arts & Crafts studio in 1982 and maintained the studio for 25 years in South Korea. In 2011, she emigrated to the U.S. in her 50’s and received a B.A. in Studio Arts from University of Maryland, College Park in 2016. After graduating, she joined the HMAA GW (Han-Mee Artists Association of the Great Washington DC). She was selected in several regional and international juried exhibitions. Her works have been featured in many publications, including The Washington Post, The Korea Times, East City Art, Bmore Art, MAP, WSG news, AA&CC, Maryland State Arts Council and etc. She was awarded the Best Award twice from the CAGO (Contemporary Art Gallery Online) for 3-D Category Part in 2020 and 2021. Park is currently the Member of Washington Sculptors Group, President of the HMAA GW and TU MFA Candidate in 2023.

Tom Wolff

Tom Wolff studied painting at the now defunct School of Practical Art in Boston, and Arts Students League in New York. He studied photography at George Washington University, Color Theory at Harvard University, Linear Design at MIT, and photography at Photoworks at Glen Echo Park. Wolff has worked as a freelance photographer, adjunct professor at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, and professor at Photoworks, Glen Echo Park. His work has been published in Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Vogue, Newsweek, House & Garden, Garden Design, Smithsonian, Audubon, New York Times Magazine/Sophisticated Traveler, etc. His work was featured in "Listening to the Prairie," a traveling exhibition by the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History, the Municipal Arts Society of New York, Spectrum Gallery, Under the Influence, 2005, The R Street Gallery, PORTRAITS, 2006,  Washington, DC, and Organization of American States, 2006, and the Hillyer Contemporary Art Space (IA&A at Hillyer). Hi works are in the collection of the Baltimore Museum and Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio.