HANDS ON FIRE
JUDY MANNARINO | JOANNE McFARLAND | FARAH MOHAMMAD | KAREN J. REVIS
Open to the public:
Monday, June 8, 2026 - Friday, September 11, 2026
UPCOMING: CLOSING EVENT FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 6-8PM
Curator and arts planner Jennifer McGregor will lead the artists in conversation in the gallery
Open hours:
Monday - Thursday, 11am - 5pm
Note: summer Fridays 11 am - 2pm
HANDS ON FIRE brings together the works of four artists based in New York City—Judy Mannarino, JoAnne McFarland, Farah Mohammad, and Karen J. Revis. Curated by Michelle Weinberg and Leslie Kerby, the exhibition taps into the physicality and energy of each artist's handiwork whether they are collaging, stitching, glazing, firing, cutting, pasting or printing.
Their collected works energize and amplify the intersection of the inner lives of women with the challenges and triumphs they face from the external environment, encompassing physical landscape, social and historical contexts. Collectively their dazzling, concentrated energies and activities ignite many fires!
Leading our artists conversation is Jennifer McGregor, a curator and arts planner with an ongoing artistic practice based on her archive and experiences. Her place-based curating focuses on ecological, historical, and cultural concerns. Based in New York, she works nationally to activate public spaces and create opportunities for artists to engage diverse audiences. She is currently working with the University of Pittsburgh to identify and manage three commissions for permanent artwork and is curating the third Bay Ridge Ecological and Public Art Biennial with Stand4 Gallery in Brooklyn. Previously she was the Senior Director and Curator of Arts at Wave Hill in the Bronx where she oversaw exhibitions, commissions, residencies and performances working with over 1,000 artists.
About the artists:
Referencing floral corsages worn by women in times past, Judy Mannarino makes complex, intimately-scaled objects out of porcelain. Her studio is a laboratory in which she constructs “set pieces”, each inspired by a story from current events or personal history—rich depositories of memory and sentiment that are deftly wrought, elaborately colored and assiduously re-worked to arrive at their final completed states. These small works embody and attract power far greater than their physical size suggests, working on us as fetishes, vibrating between painted image and three-dimensional ornament.
JoAnne McFarland actively engages with her collage work as a sketchbook she has been developing over twenty-five years. The tactile aspect of laying her hands onto various found papers and assembling them into dresses that serve as a reservoir of female agency is akin to the process of composing words into poetry, which is another of McFarland's creative outputs.
Each dress is redolent of history, gleaned from its texts, patterns and colorations. Made from wallpaper, book pages in French and English, rice and origami papers, comics, antique sheet music, silk fabric and beads, they radiate complex psychological states and address political and cultural issues all mapped and tailored onto the female silhouette.
The source of Karen J. Revis’s fire is her identity as a Black woman, channeling the experience of her communities in Washington, DC and New York City into iconography that conveys the history of our country. A consummate printmaker, Revis creates powerful works by carving and incising linoleum, layering images using collagraph, lithography and etching.
Through her work, she processes the violence of slavery and capitalism, transforming this history into exultant imagery that radiates a profound beauty. Her bold patterns and colors are influenced by African symbols and the legacy of African design, and she employs handmade papers created with a variety of fibers to produce moving statements.
Farah Mohammad actively breaks down and rebuilds her images over long periods of time, applying a variety of printmaking techniques and intricate drawing skills to create a new visual reality that expands to contain multiple identities and viewpoints. She invests her observations of both the natural landscape and urban environments with emotional power and luster that reflect change over time, referencing equally the organic forces of erosion and accumulation. Deeply saturated colors, patterns and abstract shapes form heightened spaces that are open to interpretation and appear to be continuously on the cusp of change.
Link to artist bios and additional information.
Contact: Leslie Kerby or Michelle Weinberg
projectartspacenyc@gmail.com
Founded in 2011, Project: ARTspaceis an interdisciplinary creative project space. Our organization programs events and exhibition where curators and artists of all levels have the chance to meet, engage and promote new collaborative projects.
projectartspace.com@project.artspace
High resolution images available upon request
Judy Mannarino Bunch 2026
glazed porcelain 14 × 9 × 8 inches
Karen J. Revis Sixty Three
2024 linocut and collage 30 x 24 inches
Farah Mohammed Learning Not to Pull the Thread
2026 Woodcut, monotype and intaglio prints, collaged and hand-sewn 34 x 30 inches
JoAnne McFarland Show of Hands Dress
2024 paper collage 20 x 16 inches
Click HERE for additional installation photos by MichaelHnatov