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I Have Myself to Look Up To - Out For
Patchwork Quilt; Assorted fabric, felt, thread, and glitter tulle
24 x 30”
2024

Yet The Serpent Refused to Die
Patchwork Quilt; Assorted fabric, felt, thread, and glitter tulle
45 x 72” (irregular shape)
2024

First Lily
Patchwork Quilt; Assorted fabric, felt, thread, and glitter tulle
12.5 x 36.5”
2024

William PK Carter is a quilter and puppet artist based in Central Valley, New York. She bridges the puppet and fine art worlds by fabricating wondrous creatures that exist at the intersection of queerness and blackness. Following in the footsteps of Black American and Caribbean quilters, Carter’s work serves as a documentation of the current state of our world and provides her own insight into traversing it. She tells stories of finding community- of longing for love- of performing identity- of metamorphosis- of internalized shame- and of being a spectacle. Her work communicates these vulnerable and intense themes by presenting them as beautiful universal truths. Carter believes that human beings are larger and more abstract than their bodies appear to be, and her work gives physicality to that unseen extensivity. Creating works of fantasy allows the audience to relate to other worldly characters, encouraging them to identify with creatures that don't physically resemble themselves.

Carter’s Fellowship project is a response to the abrupt and violent erasure of Queer and Black stories that we’re experiencing right now. Carter writes, “My project celebrates the radiance of Black Queerness by illustrating our likeness in a series of extravagant patchwork quilts. Using glitter tulle, vibrant fabrics, golden thread, and visual language of growth and beauty, this series memorializes our larger-than-life spirits. Capturing our glow in a fantastical style, these powerful depictions will act as a mirror for Queer Black folks in the area, as a reminder that we are more than targets of horrible crimes and silencing. Meant to capture attention and take up space, this series of glittering quilts will mend and strengthen the self-image of our most vulnerable communities. To empower a louder and more confident people, we must see ourselves depicted in that way”.

Carter received her Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from Skidmore College in 2023, and her work has been exhibited at venues including Puppet Showplace Theater (Brookline, MA), La Mama Experimental Theatre Club (New York, NY), Dixon Place (New York, NY), The Old Stone House of Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY), The Ritz Theatre (Newburgh, NY), and The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga Springs, NY). Carter is the recipient of Skidmore College’s President’s Racial Justice Award (2021), the Van Dewater Memorial Award (2022), and the John P. Heins Award: Outstanding Senior Thesis Exhibition (2023), and she is a part of the 2025 cohort of Puppet Showplace’s Creative Residency for Black Puppeteers. 

histérica #4 (hysterical #4)
Wool on monk’s cloth
52.5 x 29”
2020  

histérica #10 (hysterical #10)
Wool on linen
51 x 32”
2021

Ana Maria Farina is a Brazilian artist now based in the Hudson Valley, New York. Using a tufting gun along with needles and hooks, she conjures vibrant objects of comfort in wool that inhabit a mystical pictorial space between abstraction and representation, where painting, sculpture, and textile meet. She is attracted by the creature-like, mythological parts of being human and the untamed primordial wilderness we are taught to suppress. Each piece is a tactile exploration of the hidden, the intangible, and the mythic, inviting viewers to connect with both the familiar and the mysterious. Through texture, form, and color, she brings forth a world that is at once comforting and unfamiliar, where the lines between the physical and psychological are softly blurred.

The focus of Farina’s Fellowship project is to evolve her wall tapestries into interactive free-standing sculptures. She is thinking of our collective need for softness and refuge. What if the most pressing subject matter is not the creature but the "toca"—the burrow, the den? This project will focus on the idea of comfort, refuge, and making peace with our inner creatures, centering the experiences of immigrants, queer individuals, and mothers—who, like herself, navigate complex identities in shifting environments. Farina is also interested in exploring new wool dyeing processes using materials from home such as Brazilwood and Cerqueja and the implications of this for her practice in terms of color and her ability to connect to her ancestry and history.

Farina’s work has been featured on New American Paintings, Hyperallergic, Highlands Current, I Like Your Work Podcast, Visionary Art Collective, and in venues around the world such as the SPRING/BREAK Art Fair, Future Fair, the Wassaic Project, the Garrison Art Center, the Dorsky Museum, Paradice Palase, Abigail Ogilvy, Susan Eley Fine Art, Woman Made Gallery, Woodstock Museum, Subject Matter Art Gallery (London, UK), and Casa de Criadores (SP, Brazil). Farina attended Columbia University and SUNY New Paltz for her graduate studies and she is the 2021 recipient of the national CAA Fellowship in Visual Arts.

Angels of the Bog Delivering Stars
Acrylic on canvas
32 x 48"
2024

Santa Pajarita (Los Pollitos Dicen)
Acrylic on canvas
94 x 56"
2024

Soil’s Reprieve
Acrylic, clay, metal wire, resin and fabric on wood
12 x 8.5”
2025 Bridget Vasquez is a multidisciplinary artist based in Newburgh, NY, whose practice centers on acrylic painting while extending into printmaking, sculpture, wearable art, and scenic design. Vasquez brings a material curiosity and visual intensity to her work, navigating themes of transformation, girlhood, and diaspora through richly textured surfaces, saturated palettes, and symbolic forms. Influenced by folklore, medieval iconography, and organic structures, Vasquez constructs visual narratives that feel both ancient and immediate. Her compositions frequently feature imposing vessels, layered textures, and evocative shapes, offering a tactile exploration of identity and cultural memory.

Vasquez’s Fellowship project will expand her research into folklore, organic forms, and the feeling of diaspora through the use of painting on and off the canvas, applying printmaking and sculpture techniques with bright, bold color palettes. She plans to produce a series of large-scale works using canvas, shaped wood panels, acrylic paints, resin, clay, and wire, exploring three-dimensional sculpture and canvas protrusions while developing her craft. Having gained substantial freelance experience through commissions, art markets and theatre design, she aims to use the fellowship platform to unify these diverse skills in large-scale artworks with hopes of eventually moving into mural design and execution. Having lived in Newburgh her whole life, Vasquez believes this area to be deserving of vibrant artworks that reflect and celebrate its community.

Vasquez is a 2024 BFA graduate from the Painting and Drawing program at SUNY New Paltz. Her commitment to accessibility and community engagement is reflected in her participation in alternative art spaces throughout the Hudson Valley, including the Cirque Du Creep’s night markets and collaborative exhibitions. Her recent work also includes features at Curio Cabinet of the Hudson Valley, joint gallery shows, and scenic painting for theatrical productions—further extending her interdisciplinary reach.

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Now in our fourth year, the Ann Street Gallery Emerging Artist Fellowship program aims to provide a supportive platform for early-career or under-recognized artists in Newburgh and the Hudson Valley, with a focus on artists from historically marginalized communities. The fellowship provides three artists with opportunities for mentorship, networking, and professional development as well as a $2000 USD materials and supplies allowance, a cohort exhibition in the gallery during Newburgh Open Studios, and individual guidance toward identifying goals and further opportunities.

The Fellowship program supports experimental and substantive growth for a six-month fellowship from June through November 2025. Located in the heart of Newburgh NY, Ann Street Gallery is situated at the nexus of community and the arts. Fellows have direct access to Ann Street Gallery's and Safe Harbors Of the Hudson's exhibitions and programming, can explore the resources offered by Newburgh’s vibrant arts scene and cultural institutions, and have the possibility to connect and engage with arts professionals and practitioners based in Newburgh and surrounding areas, and those participating in Ann Street Gallery and Safe Harbors of the Hudson programming.

We are proud to bolster artists with experimental practices within the visual arts, performance, and interdisciplinary practice as an essential part of our program and mission. The Fellowship places special emphasis on artists exploring narratives aside or sub-current to those formally acknowledged by art historians, especially practices that foster an active exchange with local organizations and communities, or are rooted in exploring aspects of place, history, or non-dominant cultural competencies and practices.

The 2025 program is led by Gallery Director, Alison McNulty and includes the mentorship of regional artists and arts professionals in the form of workshops, conversations, presentations, critiques, studio visits, and trips to regional art institutions and spaces. Emerging Artist Fellows are selected by a jury led by McNulty with members from the region’s arts community from applications submitted during an annual open call.

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Safe Harbors' Ann Street Gallery programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and with funding from the Cowles Charitable Trust, Dominican Sisters of Hope, M&T Charitable Foundation, and TD Charitable Foundation.