Saturday, August 17 at 4 PM

A.I.R. Gallery (155 Plymouth Street)

For this joint gallery talk, Brittany Baldwin, Mel Watkin, and Torey Akers will discuss their work on view. Each exhibition centers works on paper: in Gallery I, Brittany Baldwin creates large-scale acrylic paintings that explore the possibility of shape through continuous gesture; in Gallery II, Mel Watkin presents an immersive drawing installation inspired by a major storm that destroyed thousands of trees in her rural area; and in Gallery III, Torey Akers reimagines the Renaissance-era erotic nude, interrogating the manifold material and affectual iterations of desire through sculptural drawings and a textile-based installation.

Brittany Baldwin received her MFA from Pratt Institute and BFA from Adelphi University. Solo exhibitions include Feedback Loop at A.I.R. Gallery, Serious Fun at Pratt Institute, and BRAINSUGAR at Adelphi University. She has participated in several group exhibitions at Anonymous Society Gallery, Iona University, Fort Tilden, Isadore and Dunn, Knockdown Center, Pratt Institute, Con Artist Gallery, and Adelphi University. Site-specific mural commissions have included Homecoming at Adelphi University, Jump in partnership with 100 Gates Project, Power Strip in partnership with DOT Art, Jamaica Center BID, and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Steinway Cypher at Steinway Playground in partnership with New York City Parks Art in the Parks program, and Bounce in partnership with DOT Art. Grant projects include Artist and Their Tools via the Adjunct Development Grant at Adelphi University. Baldwin is currently participating in NYC Crit Club’s Canopy Program where she was the recipient of The James Bernard Haggarty Scholarship. She lives and works in Queens, NY.

Mel Watkin’s work has been shown nationally with solo exhibitions at Franklin Furnace Archives, New York, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, and the Addison/Ripley Gallery, Washington, D.C. Recent group exhibitions include the American University Museum of Art, Washington, D.C., the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan and Longue Vue House and Garden, New Orleans. In 2023, the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago exhibited three commissioned map-based works and Southern Illinois Healthcare Cancer Institute commissioned eight small works on graph paper. Watkin’s work is in the collections of the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Illinois State Museum, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas at Lawrence, the Book Art Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Franklin Furnace Archives, among other venues. In 2010, she was among 9 artists selected to create a permanent public artwork with Franz Mayer Glassworks of Munich, Germany for the “C” Concourse at Lambert St. Louis International Airport. Grant awards include a 2001 and 2022 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Critical Mass grant, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, and a Pyramid Atlantic artist’s book award. Watkin has completed a number of residencies including the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, Illinois, and Palazzo Rinaldi, Noepoli, Italy.

Torey Akers is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA in Painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and has been an artist-in-residence at Mass MoCA, Penland School of Craft, Vermont Studio Center, AIR Studios Paducah, and, this autumn, at Surf Point. She has shown her work all over the country, most recently at LockerRoom Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. www.toreyakers.com @gertnice_gertrude