Current Studio Access Residents
The Visual Arts Center of Richmond’s Studio Access Residency is designed to support emerging and established visual artists as they develop new ideas and to foster artistic exploration by providing free access to VisArts’ 17 communal studio spaces.
Alezendria Decking
Alezendria Decking is a Brazilian-American artist whose primary disciplines are oil painting and ceramics. She received her BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.
She seeks to portray a sort of suggestive reality in her work in hopes of sparking emotion and memory within viewers. She concocts an imagery that any person can imagine themselves taking part in. The narrative scenes in her paintings are constructed from things she has witnessed that may not hold significance to most. This is because the instances which she finds herself paying attention to are often unsolicited; like the facial expression of someone checking their grocery list at a store, or the passing of an object from one set of hands to another.
She views the mundanity of many instances as romantic in this way. Can’t anything be a spectacle if you’re looking close enough? As often overlooked as they may be, the cropped moments of which figures take place in her paintings force viewers to analyze their expressions and experience the vulnerability that people have when existing within a crowd or solitude itself.
Ashley White
Ashley White is a multidisciplinary artist and founder of Styledentity, a brand specializing in handmade jewelry that combines unique materials and innovative design. Her work reflects a commitment to craftsmanship and individuality, often incorporating personal narratives and cultural influences into each piece. In addition to jewelry, Ashley is expanding her artistic exploration into collages and housewares, using these mediums to foster connections and tell stories. As a participant in the Studio Access Residency at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, she looks forward to further developing her artistic expression and experimenting with new techniques in her work.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/styledentity/
Asia Rorick
Asia Rorick (she/her) is a local Richmond illustrator. She recently graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Communication Arts. Asia loves to play with shapes, organic textures, and bright colors, creating a sense of traditional media in her digital work. She also enjoys incorporating hand lettering, and has recently been exploring other creative outlets like clay sculpture. She draws inspiration from outdoor walks, her garden (and its small bug and critter residents), and her two cats. Most recently, Asia was awarded 1st place in the Richmond Office of Elections’ 2024 “I Voted” sticker contest. Her sticker features Richmond’s unofficial mascot, the opossum, and is being used at all 72 polling places throughout the city in the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Instagram – @liloposs // Website: https://asiarorick.com/
Davi Leventhal
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and raised on Roosevelt Island in New York City, Davi Leventhal is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is heavily based on people.
Beginning his art studies at Pratt Institute and going on to study at School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union, Ringling School of Art and Design, and the Art Students League of NY, Davi has advanced his education and techniques in a unique way. Having acquired Old Masters techniques in his studies, Davi brings a diverse approach to his work, which has helped him to develop a focused vision and style all his own while simultaneously creating a community-based art engagement aspect within his art practice called, The Fuxico Project. This community-based art initiative is founded on the power of art, to help further amplify social impact through a popular Brazilian craft Davi grew up around called, fuxicos, helping build bridges between others and strengthen communities.
Davi also has experience curating exhibitions and working on international collaborative art projects while continuing to exhibit his own works in both the United States and Brazil. Recent exhibitions include the Plaxall Gallery (NYC), The Arts Center in Orange (Orange, VA), Baker Gallery (Orange, VA) and Firnew Farms Artists’ Circle (Hood, VA) to name a few.
Davi Leventhal site – www.davileventhal.com
Fuxico Project site – www.fuxicoproject.com
Davi’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/davileventhal/
Elsa Barrientos
Elsa Barrientos is an interdisciplinary artist and recent graduate of Printmaking and Sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her body of work explores the environmental and cultural visuals of Perú, the country of her father, abstracting them into compositions and objects to represent the beauty of Latin America in the context of our increasingly technological world. Many of her forms and colors are derived from the abstraction of the Spanish language itself.
Website/socials: elsabarrientos.com
Instagram: @elsabarrientos.m
Isaiah Mamo
Isaiah Mamo, digitally known as lightpainterr, is a lens-based artist residing in Richmond, Virginia. Their work seeks to queer the photographic process through alternative methods such as light painting, collage, anthotype, scanography, and film to both create and abstract images. They weave elements of mysticism, horror, and fantasy in their work to elevate and communicate through photographs. Conceptually exploring themes of occultism, Ethiopian magic, and the transformation of natural materials into photographs, their work is a technicolored world of alternative expression. Situated in the depths of Queer club culture, their photography is a loud celebration of Queer identity and expression.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lightpainterr
Justice Dwight
Justice Dwight Is a self-taught visual artist who was born in Plainfield New Jersey but raised in Richmond Virginia. Dwight’s first experiences as an artist stem from watching his father paint. His father’s portraits surged his initial interest in creating art at six years old. Also, his mother, who is an avid doll collector, inspired his use of color theory because she always styled her dolls in cool, color-blocked ways.
Besides being inspired by his family, he looks up to Black artists like Barkley Hendricks, Bisa Butler, and Derrick Adams. Even though he’s not formally trained, Dwight kept drawing and painting daily to nourish his skills. He primarily works with acrylic paint and mixed media items such as glitter, fabric, and rhinestones on canvas.
Most recently Justice had the pleasure of being commissioned by the US embassy to create a mural in Cuba for an independent project. This mural showcased black and queer beauty at its highest form which is one of Justices focus points in his work. Justice Dwighthas had the pleasure of being involved in several group shows at The Well art gallery, Barcode, and Atlas. While also being in group shows, he’s had the pleasure of sharing his art online which has given me the opportunity to create work for the University of Maryland and celebrities such as Issa Rae, Big freedia , and Azealia banks.
https://justicedwightart.bigcartel.com
Kimberly English
Kimberly English is an artist and educator with a practice based in fiber. Her work explores the connection between the individual and the collective through historical, personal, and perceptual interrogations of textile structure. Through woven and quilted textile forms that emphasize and obfuscate found material, her work synthesizes narratives informed by the American South and globalized labor.
Expanding upon her undergraduate textiles education from Savannah College of Art and Design, Kimberly English (b. 1994) earned her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Studio Art as a Carolina Digital Humanities Fellow in 2018. Kimberly is currently the Emerging Artist Fellow in Fiber at Virginia Commonwealth University and runs a weaving residency, Tabby Studio, out of the shared studio space on her property in Canton, North Carolina.
Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/kimberly__english/
Website: https://www.kimberly-english.com/
Leigh Bartenstein
Leigh Bartenstein is an artist from Richmond, Virginia with a background in painting and printmaking. During the pandemic she bought her first sewing machine and fell in love with quilting. Recently she has been exploring quilting using second-hand, linen fabric – either thrifted or from her own closet. By using pre-loved fabrics, piecing quilts intuitively, and quilting by hand, she hopes to infuse her textiles with evidence of their own making. She enjoys playing with color and sees her quilts as paintings with fabric.
Website/Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/lfb_quilts/
Peleona
Peleona is an ongoing multimedia project based in Richmond, Virginia. Primarily rooted in a path of mutual aid, the works in this project are portals of ancestry and oral testimony. The life of this project asks what it means to move through space and time in relationship with the intersections of existence – in a world that asks us to distance ourselves so much from our bodies and spirits in the interest of survival.
Instagram: @peleona
Website: www.peleona.com
Melissa Athey
Melissa Athey is a glass and mixed media artist. Originally from out West, she received her BFA in Fibers from Colorado State University and attended Virginia Commonwealth University where she received her MFA in Craft and Material Studies with a specialty in glass. After graduating with her MFA, Melissa worked for 10 years managing an industrial machine shop in Richmond, VA.
Melissa’s work aims to reflect her experience of living with chronic illness and explores themes of medicine and science and how they intersect with disability. She is interested in how society perceives illness, especially “invisible illness,” and how that contrasts with a person’s view of themselves.
Website: www.melissaathey.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissaathey_art
Sarah K Patro
A printmaking artist and aspiring ceramicist dedicated to hand-carving and the joy of creative play. I love to consider how the ancient printmaking process connects us to our creative ancestors, and I love using modern methods and tools to play with old practices in new and interesting ways.
For the past 15 years, I’ve been an independent graphic designer for small businesses. Recently, I’ve committed to creating hand-carved prints and other work in my own printmaking style, which I create under the name “Make For Good.” I started with hand-carving 100 blocks in the first 100 days of 2024, and I recently completed a print collection called “A New Chapter.” I’m so excited to create new work in this next season at VisArts!
Website: https://www.makeforgood.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makeforgood
Sterling Frost
Sterling Frost is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose work spans many different practices, including illustration, ceramics, and sound design. Using techniques originally developed for traditional american tattooing, Frost’s work explores the visual dynamics and tropes of both fantasy and reality through a playful and optimistic, yet challenging lens.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sterlingxfrost/
Sydney Kay
Sydney Kay is a multimedia artist working in photography, video and screen-printing. Originally from the Eastern Shore in Maryland, she received my Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2021. She currently works in creative production. She has won numerous awards including a 2024-25 Fall Winter Residency at Visual Arts Center of Richmond, 2024 Denbo Fellowship, 2023 Zygote Press Residency, 2021 Red Bull micro-grant and the 2021 Bivens Fellowship. She has always been interested in new ideas and processes or what she would call “learning to fold the blanket in a different way”. Her goal is to create work that communicates her stories and to share the stories of those who are often under-represented.
William Okaily
William Okaily (b. Beirut, Lebanon; lives in Richmond, VA) is an artist whose work deconstructs various artistic media, primarily painting. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) from the American University of Beirut (AUB). William’s artistic journey spans performing arts, installation, sculpture, and painting, all driven by his commitment to understanding art’s contemporary relevance. He is dedicated to making art criticism more approachable and explores innovative ways to engage the public with art and history.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/williamokaily/