EXHIBITIONS

Ceres is a non-profit alternative cultural center dedicated to promoting women in the arts through our two Chelsea exhibition spaces. Follow along for updates on gallery artist shows and group exhibitions

• Liz Ndoye & Jo-Ann Brody-Exhibition

  Liz Ndoye & Jo-Ann Brody-Exhibition

  May 26 – June 20, 2026

  Solo/Duo 3 – Culture and Stance

  Reception:
  Thursday, May 28, 6-8PM

  Ceres Gallery presents Solo/Duo 3 – Culture and Stance, the third collaboration between sculptor Jo‑Ann Brody and mixed media/fiber artist Liz Ndoye. Both artists work figuratively, each bringing a distinct yet complementary approach: Brody explores stance and gesture, while Ndoye creates a fictional cultural world through her dolls.

  

  Liz Ndoye continues her love affair with her doll “creatures” – soft, fabric, humanoid figures that she makes and installs in tandem with her large canvases and drawings in order to depict aspects of their doll culture and existence. In this, her latest show at Ceres, she will attempt to convey and share her passion for and joyous communion with her doll creations. She will make dolls, paint and draw them, and create installations that celebrate their healing, happy qualities.

  View More of the work of Liz Ndoye here.

  

  Brody’s sculptures rely on minimal cues that evoke the human figure, women, through distortion, elongation and exaggeration. Heads are mere punctuation. Working entirely in papier‑mâché with powdered pulp and colored mulberry paper, she creates expressive forms that read as lines in space. This exhibition also marks her return to the book form with two new works, Eyes and Dog Walk Mornings.

  View More of the work of Jo-Ann Brody here.

  ---

• Marilyn Banner-Exhibition

  April 28 – May 23, 2026

  THROUGHLINES 

  Reception:
  Thursday, April 30, 6-8pm

  

  Double Vision, Graphite, conte, charcoal on white kraft paper, 24 x 19″, 2026
  Marilyn Banner’s recent drawings suggest and further develop the throughlines found in her earlier work: darkness, body, nature, guardians, and spirit. Strong and energetic drawings suggest monstrous animal-like creatures, red eyes staring out, protecting the surrounding space. Quieter drawings of African masks, statues, and branches suggest ritual, and secret connections. 
  
  Though the work suggests ancient myth and distant memory, it is contemporary in Banner’s mind. The times are turbulent; there is strong feeling in and around us. Like the angry goddesses of myth and legend, we today are challenged to hold our ground, protect the good and ward off what is evil.

  View additional work by Marilyn Banner here.

  ---

• Mary Alice Orito-Exhibition

  April 28 – May 23, 2026

  bits-n-pieces  

  Reception:
  Thursday, April 30, 6-8pm

  

  Mary Alice Orito’s art and design practice includes mixed media, collage and a background of clothing and costume design in NYC’s garment industry, music videos, and TV costume design. She is a graduate of Parsons School of Design and New York University School of Social Work. Parallel to her art practice of over 20 years, she had a decades old private psychotherapy practice.

  Aware of the waste in all our lives, Orito began saving the cut black construction paper she used in the last few years. This exhibition ‘bits-n-pieces’ at Ceres Gallery focuses on the cut pieces of prior exhibitions.  

  View additional work by Mary Alice Orito here.

  ---

• Tania Kravath-Exhibition

  April 28 – May 23, 2026

  Tending Hope  

  Reception:
  Thursday, April 30, 5-8pm

  

  Tania Kravath’s work is tied to social and political narratives and she has a keen awareness of the fragility of this moment in time.Throughout the many chapters in her art making, Kravath returns to the female form and the theme of women as vessels of knowledge and nurturers of seeds.

  Recent collages and paper sculptures honor our ancestors’ perseverance, the grief experienced from inevitable change and loss, and the emotional connections that nurture, sustain and cultivate hope.

  View additional work by Tania Kravath here.

  ---

• Susan Grabel-Exhibition

  March 31 – April 25, 2026

  Lost My Husband / Can’t Lose My Country 

  Receptions:
  Thursday, April 2, 6-8pm
  Saturday, April 4, 3-5pm
  Saturday, April 25, 3-5pm

  

  Following the death of her husband of fifty-four years, George Rappaport, in May 2024, the artist’s work has undergone a profound transformation. The cast paper and molded cardboard portraits first shown in her exhibition, Reflections, have evolved into meditations on loss and grief. Faces hide,fragment, protrude, or recede, reflecting the disorientation and instability inherent in mourning.

  This personal reckoning is intertwined with the artist’s anger and anguish over what she sees as the ongoing assault on the nation—its institutions and its Constitution—by the current administration. Using Photoshop collages, flyers, and images drawn from public resistance and protest, she constructs visual backdrops that mirror a broader collective unrest. These layered environments situate private loss within a larger landscape of national fracture, where individual grief and public disquiet converge.

  Susan Grabel grew up in Brooklyn, NY and is currently based on Staten Island. Grabel completed her studies at Brooklyn College and the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1963 and 1964.. Her debut solo show occurred in 1969 at Pace College Gallery in New York City. Since the 1970s, Grabel has been involved with fusing both feminist and social issues into her sculpted forms. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s she was active in the Soho figurative co-op gallery movement. She has exhibited her work at galleries and museums across the country and currently shows at Ceres Gallery. Her work is included in many museum and private collections.

  View additional work by Susan Grabel here.

  ---

• Melanie Hickerson-Exhibition

  March 31 – April 25, 2026

  Miracles

  Receptions: 
  Thursday, April 2, 6-8pm

  Saturday, April 4, 3-5pm

  

  Melanie Hickerson is a painter whose work blends narrative, metaphor, and lived experience into richly colored, disciplined compositions. She earned her MFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 1985 and has exhibited extensively in New York and Texas, including long-time exhibitions at Ceres Gallery. Her recent series, Ribbon of Life and Homage to Miracles, explores ecological loss and interconnectedness through dream-like, surreal imagery. Hickerson’s work is held in the permanent collections of the University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas Lutheran University in Seguin. She lives and works in Austin, Texas.

  View additional work by Melanie Hickerson here.

  ---

• Micaela de Vivero-Exhibition

  March 3 – 28, 2026

  Qhapaq Ñan

  

  Ceres Gallery is pleased to present Qhapaq Ñan.  Micaela de Vivero’s art is never simple, never unidimensional, never a finished thing, and never to be underestimated.  Your participation, in fact, is critical to the way in which its meaning grows and expands. Vivero asks us to think about how meaning is made across the vagaries of oceans, centuries, belief systems, colonial powers, materials, and even systems of communication. Vivero’s art is deeply informed by the strand of decolonial thought that suggests the only positive way to repair societies fundamentally damaged by colonialism is to ‘delink’ them from the colonial paradigm and to reassess pre-colonial culture on its own terms. Rather than simply negating the colonial matrices of power, decolonial thought is the essential frame for recognizing colonial social, political, cultural, and religious impositions as co-optation or subjugation strategies that alter targeted cultures, sometimes irrevocably; it accordingly concludes that repair is difficult, transcultural, and complex. These refrains are threaded, sometimes quite literally, throughout Vivero’s work, in this case in the form of Inkan khipus and tocapus. For this exhibition, Vivero has focused on two intricate Inkan forms of material communication, khipus and tocapus, as source material for her work.

  Both khipus and tocapus functioned in Inkan imperial culture to uphold and maintain the complex structures of power and order. Their deeply embedded visual codes depended wholly on specific bodies of very precise cultural and intellectual knowledge, and the recursive impact of those codes at very specific times, places, and in very particular contexts. The original meanings of these objects in their time and place can no longer be reconstructed. Very few survive, most were hidden, lost, or destroyed after colonization by the Spanish, but a few were transported to Europe where they gained new meaning as imperial trophies or treasures. There is one such treasure, the imperial tunic held by Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, on which Vivero bases her tocapus, have been reclaimed today by Andean peoples in many forms of reproduction, along with a cluster of new national meanings.

  Micaela de Vivero’s installation is a subtle and sophisticated commentary on the life, the significance, and the power of images, objects, places, and on ways in which both dominant and subversive forms of visuality can correspond, can converse, and can create a productive new discourse, especially when they meet in diplomatic congress. Her art is as complex and ineffable as it and its khipus and tocapus are beautiful.
  Text by Joy Sperling

  View additional work by Micaela de Vivero here.

• Jayne Bentley Gaskins-Exhibition

  Heartbeat of the City

  Multi-Sensory Fiber Art Exhibition

  March 3 – 28, 2026

  

  Heartbeat of the City: Multi-Sensory Fiber Art Exhibition by Jayne Bentley Gaskins is on view this month at Ceres Gallery. Gaskins’ work combines visual storytelling with integrated sounds to create a multi-sensory environment that echoes the rhythm of fast-paced metropolitan life.

  Gaskins contends that, “People are the lifeblood of cities, so it follows that the streets, sidewalks, subways, cars and taxis are the veins and arteries carrying them through the organism. The speed they travel, therefore, creates each city’s unique heartbeat.”

  Jayne Bentley Gaskins’ work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and has earned numerous awards. Her art can be found in both private and museum collections and has been shown at the Xe Triennale Internationale des Mini-Textiles (France), Quilt National, and Fiber Art International. It has also been published in numerous art publications such as Exploring Art Quilts, Vol 2,where it appeared on the cover accompanied by a feature article.

  Gaskins holds a BFA in Graphic Design and an MBA with a concentration in Marketing and Management. She is also a Juried Artist Member in Studio Art Quilt Associates where she previously served on the board of directors.

  View additional work by Jayne Bentley Gaskins here.

• Hagar Shur Fletcher-Exhibition

  Beyond the Storm

  March 3 – 28, 2026

  

  Hagar Fletcher is a multi-disciplinary artist based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, whose work explores the intersection of resilience and reclamation. Through a delicate fusion of embroidery, collage, and recycled materials, she transforms “happy-sad” fragments of life into tactile expressions of hope

  View additional work by Hagar Shur Fletcher here

• Minako Ito-Exhibition

  Welcome to Minako’s World

  February 3 – 28, 2026

  Ceres Gallery is pleased to present Welcome to Minako’s World an exhibition of colorful lithographs by Minako Ito, a skilled artist with a delightfully compelling view of life. Her charming lithographs are invitations to share her abundant pleasure in the daily scenes and commonplace objects that make up her real and imaginary life. 

  Welcome to Minako’s World  includes twenty-one lithographs and one monotype. In Ito’s private rooms and urban places the figure is rarely seen, yet the human touch is evident everywhere. She captures the lively essence of town, landscape and daily scenes with keen observation. Through her prints, Minako Ito brings us to her precise point of view. By sharing these lively and cheerful images of New York City and her current neighborhood of Tokyo, she transforms the viewer from a wary passerby into a welcomed friend. Ito’s gracious spirit is exactly what is needed at this time. Minako Ito has studied art in Tokyo and New York City, and is currently living and working in Tokyo. Her work is represented in many private collections and is also included in the collection of the New York Public Library. She has appeared in many group shows in New York City, Seoul, Tokyo and Yokohama. 

  To see additional work by Minako Ito click here

  

• Liz DeMayo-Exhibition

  Polaroid Revisions

  February 3 – 28, 2026

  

  Ceres Gallery is pleased to present Polaroid Revisions, an exhibition of enlarged Polaroid photographs by Liz DeMayo. These photos started as small images taken with a Polaroid camera, or transferred onto Polaroid film from a phone camera. DeMayo physically manipulates her photos, changing the look of the surfaces, aiming to add movement and a little mystery to the images, and sometimes to allow a face or figure to emerge from the trees or plants pictured.

  Polaroid Revisions includes three groupings of photographs enlarged onto paper, and two sets of canvases with the images enlarged to 30 inches. The subjects of the work are trees, plants, and aquatic scenes taken in DeMayo’s city neighborhood, near friends’ houses, and at various gardens in New York state.   

  Liz DeMayo studied photography in New York City and has exhibited at several venues in her northern Manhattan neighborhood, as well as elsewhere in the city.  

  To see additional work by Liz DeMayo click here

  ---