Doran Connecticut Artist-in-Residence Program
Five Connecticut-based artists awarded financial support, other resources, and a group exhibition
The Yale University Art Gallery and Artspace New Haven are pleased to announce five awardees of the 2021 Happy and Bob Doran Connecticut Artist-in-Residence Program. These early to mid-career artists from Connecticut’s vibrant creative community will participate in a yearlong residency culminating in a group exhibition at Artspace in late spring 2022. The program offers support and community to the artists, each of whom will receive a financial award and other benefits.
A panel of Connecticut-based arts professionals reviewed nearly 100 applications to the residency before selecting the following awardees:
Leonard Galmon
Leonard Galmon was born in 1996 in New Orleans and lives and works in New Haven. He received his B.A. in Art, with a concentration in Painting, from Yale University in 2019. His work combines portraiture and urban landscape to explore subversive forces such as the boundaries drawn around people and ideas in American society.
Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez
Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez is an Indigenous Oaxacan artist born on Quinnipiac land. As a lens-based artist, she uses photography as a tool in printmaking and other media to dissect and find language for religious exploitation, spiritual salvation, and redemption.
Allison Minto
Allison Minto is a Connecticut-based artist and educator. She holds an M.F.A. in Photography from the Yale School of Art and a B.A. in Journalism from Buffalo State College, New York. In her work, she uses field research and photography to take on themes around African American archives, family, history, memory, preservation, and maintenance.
Julia Rooney
Julia Rooney is a visual artist and arts educator. Though rooted in painting, her practice often bridges other disciplines, including writing and collaborative, community-based projects. She holds an M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art and a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Recent solo exhibitions include @SomeHighTide (Arts+Leisure, New York), Sections (Real Eyes Gallery, Adams, Massachusetts), paper paper (Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles), and Doubles (Chashama, Brooklyn).
Joseph Smolinski
Joseph Smolinski is an artist living and working in New Haven. He received his B.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin and his M.F.A. from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and he is currently a Senior Lecturer of Art at the University of New Haven. He is a recipient of the Connecticut Commission of the Arts 2012 Artist Fellowship and a 2012 Artist Resource Trust Grant from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. In 2014 he was the Menakka and Essel Bailey Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of the Environment at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
Happy and Bob Doran Artist-in-Residence Program
Generously funded by Robert Doran, B.A. 1955, and his wife, Happy, the Happy and Bob Doran Artist-in-Residence Program has supported artists at the Yale University Art Gallery for almost two decades. Past recipients of this residency include Janine Antoni (2003), Abelardo Morell (2008), Paula Wilson (2009), Carol Bove (2010), Kerry James Marshall (2011), Chris “Daze” Ellis (2014), James Prosek (2018), and Will Wilson (2020), among other distinguished artists.