Born in Chicago, Illinois, curator Reggie Madison was greatly influenced by his parents’ love of jazz and the stories they told of seeing Sun-Ra at the legendary Club DeLisa on Chicago’s south side, and by the family’s frequent trips to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. In 1970, Madison was invited to participate in an art show that helped to establish him in the emerging arts scene in Chicago, and he went on to travel and study art independently in Paris, Venice and Copenhagen. Shortly after he moved to the Berkshire in Massachusetts then to Manhattan and now calls Hudson New York home.

David Hammons was born in Springfield, Illinois in 1943. He moved to Los Angeles in 1963 attending Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts) from 1966 – 1968 and the Otis Art Institute from 1968 – 1972. In 1974 Hammons settled in New York City. Influenced by Arte Povera, Hammons’s work speaks of cultural overtones; employing provocative materials such as elephant dung, chicken parts, strands of hair, and bottles of cheap wine. Centered in the black urban experience, Hammons often uses sarcasm as a means of confronting cultural stereotypes and racial issues. Hammons was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in July 1991. Hammons’s work is collected by major public and private institutions internationally, among them: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; Glenstone, Potomac; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; SMAK, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; Francois Pinault Foundation, Venice; and Tate Britain, London.

Bijan Mahmoodi is an Iranian born and raised sculptor and painter who lives and works in Berkshire County.  Mahmoodi recycles various materials in order to create his elaborate sculptures and paintings. Drawing upon his experience in metalwork and car restoration, Mahmoodi is a prolific artist with hundreds of his sculptures on display at Circle Museum and Sculpture Garden, which he owns and operates.  Art & Soul is the first time Mahmoodi’s paintings have ever been on public display.

Marlene Marshall is a mixed media artist, author and designer living in Hudson, NY.  Marshall is currently an art therapist and instructor for Community Access to the ARTS. She’s hosted numerous art workshops both near and far, including Springfield Museum, Berkshire Museum, Berkshire County Jail, Olana State Historic Site, Vasarely Gallery, and International School in Namibia, South Africa. Her current body of work has developed from watercolor to most recently including collage work with cut up discarded paintings of both her and her students. “I enjoy the transformation of the pile of discarded paintings of many different energies and styles into another life,” says Marshall. All of the work in this collection is recycled paintings and paper including the frames.

Born in Berkeley, CA, Kris Perry lives and works in Hudson, NY. Perry makes large-scale kinetic sculptures that cultivate an understanding of human experience by creating a visual language through form and gesture. Passionate about public art, he has been commissioned to construct pieces where people can gather to ask questions and share experiences. He currently has works on view at the Hudson Public Library and the grounds of SoMo Village, Rohnert Park, CA. In 2018, he collaborated with James Beard Award-winning chef Zak Pelaccio to create a series of sculptures that doubled as grills for the cooking festival Play with Fire. His much-heralded Machines (2012-13) combined industrial sound sculptures with live performance in collaboration with musicians Tommy Stinson, Elvis Perkins, Brian Dewan, and others. In 2015, he had his first solo show at R. Wells Gallery. A skilled metal fabricator, he has also worked with David Best on large-scale projects at Burning Man and public installations like Esperanza at a train station in Sacramento, CA. He is the recipient of several grants and residencies including the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation (2014), Free103Point9 Media Distribution Grant (2013), and Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant (2012). His works are held in a number of private collections. Perry attended California College of Art and studied under illustrator Charles Pyle.

Richard Sandler is a street photographer and documentary filmmaker. He has directed and shot eight non-fiction films, including “The Gods of Times Square,” “Brave New York” and “Radioactive City.”

Sandler’s still photographs are in the permanent collections of Brooklyn Museum, Center for Creative Photography – University of Arizona, Houston Museum of Fine Art, Museum of the City of New York, New York Historical Society, New York Public Library.

He was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship for photography, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship for Filmmaking, and a New York State Council on the Arts fellowship for Filmmaking.

Tschabalala Self was born in 1990 in Harlem, NY, US, and lives and works in New York, NY, US, and New Haven, CT, US. She graduated from Bard College in 2012 and received her M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art in 2015. Future and recent solo exhibitions include By My Self, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, US (2021); Cotton Mouth, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York, US (2020); Tschabalala Self: Out of Body, ICA Boston, Boston, US (2020); Thigh High, Pilar Corrias, London, UK (2019); Tschabalala Self, Art Omi, New York, US (2019); Hammer Projects: Tschabalala Self, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US (2019); Tschabalala Self, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, US (2019); Bodega Run, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, CN (2018); Bodega Run, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London, UK (2017); Tschabalala Self, Tramway, Glasgow, UK (2017); Tschabalala Self, Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London, UK (2017).

She has participated in numerous group exhibitions such as Beyond the Black Atlantic, Hannover Kunstverein, Hannover, DE (2020); Radical Figures, Whitechapel, London, UK (2020); Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to the Digital Age, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, IE (2019); Unparalleled Journey through Contemporary Art of Past 50 years, Rubell Museum, Miami, US (2019); Present Tense: Recent Gifts of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia, US (2019); Prospect, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, US (2019);MOOD: Studio Museum Artists in Residence, MoMA PS1, New York, US; Paint also known as Blood, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, PL (2019); Show Me as I Want to Be Seen, Jewish Museum, San Francisco, US (2019); Dirty Protest: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US (2019); Triple, University Art Museum, Albany State University, Albany, US (2018); The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Raleigh, US (2018); Mademoiselle, Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Occitanie/Pyrénées-Méditerranée, Sète, FR (2018); Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, New Museum, New York, US (2017). Self’s work belongs to many prominent museum collections including The Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon; Arario Museum, Seoul, South Korea; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA; Art Omi, Ghent, USA; Astrup Fearnley, Oslo, Norway; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, USA; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, USA, Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, USA; California African American Museum, Los Angeles, USA; CC Foundation, Shanghai, China; Emdash Foundation, London, UK; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; ICA Boston, Boston, USA; JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, New York, USA; Karpidas Family Collection, Dallas, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA; Lewben Art Collection Foundation, Vilnius, Lithuania; Luma Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland; Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, USA; Philadelphia Museum, Philadelphia, USA; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; Qatar Museums Authority, Doha, Qatar; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, USA; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, USA; Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China.

Kianja Strobert (b. 1980) received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Yale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Marinaro, NY; Jack Tilton, NY; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, California. Strobert has been included in numerous group exhibitions including shows at Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY; Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY; Lehmann Maupin, NY; and The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX. Strobert lives and works in Hudson, NY.