Emma Fineman in Conversation with Alexandria Smith
Friday, October 4, 2024 | 6pm
Eric Firestone Gallery
4 Great Jones Street, Third Floor, New York, NY 10012
Emma Fineman (b. Berkeley, CA, 1991) is a painter who explores religion, domesticity, and personal experience in figurative abstractions painted entirely from memory. Fineman lives and works in London, UK. In 2018 she graduated with distinction as an MA In Painting from Royal College of Art, London, and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013. Fineman’s works have been selected for several prestigious awards including the Presidential Fellowship Grant; Anderson Ranch Arts Center; Aspen, CO (2013), as well as the Harley Open Judges Prize; Welbeck Estates, Harley Museum and Foundation; Nottingham, UK (2017), the London Bronze Editions Prize; London Bronze Casting; London, UK (2020), New American Paintings Pacific Coast Competition (2020), and as a finalist for the Hopper Prize (2021). She has been granted residencies at the Vermont Studio Center; Johnson, VT (2013), Anderson Ranch Arts Center Residency Workshop; Snowmass, CO (2013) Palazzo Monti Residency; Brescia, Italy (2019), and The Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, U.K (2020 and 2024) among others.
Alexandria Smith was born in the Bronx, New York and earned her BFA in illustration from Syracuse University, New York; MA in art education from New York University; and MFA from Parsons The New School for Design. Alexandria was a public and charter school art teacher in Harlem and the South Bronx for over a decade. She served as co-organizer of the collective Black Women Artists for Black Lives (BWA for BL) from 2017–2018. Smith was the Head of Painting at the Royal College of Art, London from 2019–2023. Smith is the recipient of many awards, fellowships and residencies such as the Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation and Fine Arts Work Center Fellowships, MacDowell, Yaddo and LMCC residencies and a Pollock-Krasner Grant. Smith lives and works in New York and is Director of Undergraduate Studies in Studio Art and Assistant Professor in Painting and Printmaking at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Most recently, Alexandria had her third solo exhibition with Gagosian entitled “Stirrings of a Polymorphous Bloom” in Hong Kong.