CUP’s core staff supports the organization from day to day, but CUP projects are designed and implemented by teams of artists, designers, educators, activists, and researchers.
Elma Relihan is a Graphic Designer with a passion for storytelling. Born and raised in Ireland before moving to the UK to further her education, she completed an MA in Graphic Design at the London College of Communication. Since then she moved to NYC to broaden her scope and take on new and exciting opportunities with a move into film. She hopes to use her experience thus far to create awareness around social issues with stories that ignite people’s imagination and curiosity. She has won several design awards and loves to collaborate with youths to help them recognize their potential to create change. Her passion lies in harnessing the power of art in its many mediums to start a dialogue. Her inspiration includes varied artists and filmmakers, Ai Weiwei, Banksy, Picasso, Ken Loach, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pedro Almodóvar and Carsten Höller.
closeNora is an artist and educator working primarily with animation, drawing, and sound. Nora uses traditional hand-drawn animation techniques, often exploring the physical comedy of cartoons to create sculptural spaces. In addition to her work with CUP, Nora has completed teaching residencies throughout New York with the Queens Museum, Dia: Beacon, the Museum of the Moving Image, and Magic Box Productions, among others. Nora is excited by media education because of its particular potential to draw a direct line between active, creative learning and active, creative citizenship.
closePatrick Rowe is an artist, educator, and social practitioner based in New York City. Trained as a printmaker, and committed to pedagogically based practices, Patrick brings printmaking into public space. Through community based art projects, he works to co-create spaces for collaboration, active participation, and the exchange of cultural knowledge. Patrick received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and spent two years living in Cairo, Egypt before moving to New York City in 2010. He finished his Masters of Fine Art and Masters in Art and Design Education at Pratt Institute 2014. www.mobileprintpower.com
closePaul Lloyd Sargent is an artist and writer dividing his time between Brooklyn, Buffalo, and Wellesley Island, NY. His work focuses on the legacies of our supply and disposal chains, most recently documenting the impact of the international shipping industry on ecologies, economies, and communities connected by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a student in the University at Buffalo’s new PhD program in the Department of Media Study.
closeTal Schori is a registered architect practicing in New York City. He currently works at Deborah Berke Partners where he focuses on institutional and residential projects, such as a university dormitory in Pennsylvania, and a single family residence in Indianapolis. He edited Perspecta 42: The Real (MIT Press, 2010), and is a regular contributor to design juries. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture (M.Arch, 2009) and Brown University (BA, 2003).
closeMolly Sherman is an artist and designer living in Portland, Oregon. Her practice is made up of socially engaged art projects and graphic design work. As a designer, she has worked at Project Projects and with a wide range of clients including the Hammer Museum and Portland Art Museum. She is currently an MFA candidate in Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice Program and holds a BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
closeBecky Slogeris is a social designer and educator based in Baltimore, MD. A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, her work is focused on re-thinking public education and empowering students to create change in their communities. She worked with CUP and students at CUNY College Now to create “Get Money!” Becky’s website is http://designing-education.com/
closeJuliette Spertus is an architect and curator. Her work focuses on the relationship between architecture, infrastructure and public space. She uses cultural programming to publicly draw parallels between overlooked experiences of the recent past and current strategies for the built environment. She organized the exhibit Fast Trash: Roosevelt Island’s Pneumatic Tubes and the Future of Cities, and collaborated with CUP on the educational programming. She is continuing her research on pneumatic collection and is planning a new exhibition.
closeCHAT TRAVIESO is an artist and architectural designer based out of Brooklyn, NY. He was the teaching artist for The Big Squeeze, an Urban Investigation that explores the issue of housing size in New York City. Chat’s work takes the form of playful and interactive design/build urban interventions that encourage people to question their assumptions of the built environment. Check out his website www.chattravieso.com to see what he’s up to these days.
closeJames Whitman (b. 1976) makes drawings, artist’s books, and sometimes other things. He has worked with such amazing collaborators as The Lions, Barry Doupe, Owen Plummer and Perro Verlag. Most recently he has made a set of linocuts for Lubok Verlag (Leipzig, Germany), made the artist’s book Behead, Roll, Tell with Courtney Burke, and worked as a teaching artist with the Center For Urban Pedagogy (NYC). He holds an MFA in studio arts from Concordia University, Montreal where he studied under Eleanor Bond, and currently lives in Queens, NY.
closeEmily Young is a Chinese-American artist and designer living in Brooklyn, NY. Since graduating from New York University in 2014, she has been exploring how experimental art and architecture can bring about a more conscious relationship between humans and the built environment. Her favorite subjects as of late include informal cities, Chinatowns, youth culture, and fermentation practices. Most recently, she was the teaching artist for Our Voice, Our Choice: Why Vote in Local Elections?.
closeKate Zidar is an Environmental Planner with a professional focus on solid waste, open space, urban agriculture and stormwater management. As Executive Director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, she works to strike a balance between waterfront access, environmental health and economic development for the city’s most polluted waterway and one of it’s strongest centers for manufacturing and industrial jobs. Kate serves as Chairperson of the Steering Committee for the Stormwater Infrastructure Matters (S.W.I.M.) Coalition, an organization dedicated to ensuring swimmable, fishable waters around New York City through Green Infrastructure. Kate is CUP’s biggest fan.
closeDillon de Give is an artist and educator who acts in a spirit of humane experimentalism. His projects set a stage for subtle alterations to everyday social performances and expose novel and equitable methods for distributing an experience of art. Dillon holds a BS in Radio/Television/Film from Northwestern University and an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University. He is a co-founder of the Walk Exchange, a cooperative walking group. He organizes the annual Coyote Walk Itinerancy, a retreat that traces a path between New York City and the wild. Dillon worked with CUP to produce the videos “Common Cents,” “Now Boarding,” and “Who Rules?”
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