Our Group of Directors
Ortega y Gasset is a non-profit organization run by a group of directors based in New York and other regions throughout the US. All directors are working artists and in addition to writing, curating, installing and doing administrative work to run OyG, their directorship enables them to connect with the community that OyG fosters to support their practices as painters, photographers, sculptors and writers. Learn more about each director below and feel free to connect with us by emailing oygprojects@gmail.com.
Directors: Clare Britt | Eric Hibit | Leeza Meksin | Nickola Pottinger | Adam Liam Rose | Zahar Vaks | Lauren Whearty
Clare Britt (Chicago, IL)
Clare Britt (She/her) joined OyG Projects in 2013 as a founding co-director. She curated the first solo exhibition of photographic work with Chicago artist Kelly Kaczynski Yes; Or As If. She co curated the group exhibition Code Switch with co-director Lauren Whearty, curated the group show Shadow of the Gradient, and co curated the exhibition entitled Apparitions with artist Alicia Smith and co-director Eleanna Anagnos. Clare has been instrumental in creating virtual content for the gallery including starting the YouTube Channel and creating content for the virtual space. She spearheaded Rendezvous, an interactive virtual experience that serves as a platform for creative exchange between artists with co-director Tiffany Smith. Clare interviews artists in the Flat File Program in a casual studio visit on Friday’s on OyG’s Instagram Live channel. Clare is a freelance photographer and lives in Chicago, IL and works all over the country creating art and NFTs and telling stories of the people she encounters along the way. Visit her website at www.clarebritt.com and follow her on instagram at @clarebrittcreative
Eric Hibit (Queens, NY)
Eric Hibit is a painter based in New York. He has exhibited at Morgan Lehman Gallery; Deanna Evans Projects; Tiger Strikes Asteroid; Underdonk Gallery; The University of Vermont; and Weatherspoon Museum of Art. His work has been reviewed in the Washington Post, The Village Voice, Hyperallergic, New York Times and New York Post. Artist residencies include Terra Foundation in Giverny, France. He has taught studio art at The Cooper Union and Drexel University. He has curated 4 group exhibition at Ortega y Gasset Projects since 2014: Color Against Color (with artists who work with saturated color), Lunacy (about the moon as muse), When Geometry Smiles, (about geometry that is soft or idiosyncratic) and Ode to Green (an exploration of the color green). Hibit curated a benefit auction with Paddle8 in 2019, and a solo exhibition of painter Mary Laube in 2021. Hibit attended the Corcoran College of Art + Design and Yale University School of Art. Artist website: www.erichibit.com Instagram: @erichibit
Leeza Meksin (Ithaca, NY)
Leeza Meksin is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working in painting, installation and public art. Meksin has created site-specific installations for CLEA (R)SKY, deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Uptown Triennial at The Lenfest Center for the Arts, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art & The Kitchen. In 2021 Meksin was awarded the NYFA Artist Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Work and in 2015 was awarded a grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. Her work has been featured in Bomb Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times & The Village Voice. In 2013 Meksin co-founded Ortega y Gasset Projects; she’s curated: “Dyeing, Merging, Multitasking,” 2013; “Tightened, As If by Pliers,” 2014; “Victoria Lomasko: Unwanted Women,” 2017; “SPINE,” 2018, and others. She has also spearheaded The Skirt, an OyG space dedicated to site-specific installation. Meksin attended Yale School of Art (MFA) & SAIC (BFA). In 2021 she joined the faculty at Cornell University. website: www.meksin.com Instagram: @leezameksin
Nickola Pottinger (Brooklyn, NY)
Nickola Pottinger is an artist and curator who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Recent exhibitions include the New Museum Triennial in New York, Galerie Julien Cadet in Paris, and the Galveston Artist Residency in Texas. Previous solo exhibitions include Parker Gallery in Los Angeles, with an upcoming solo exhibition at Deanna Evans Projects, New York, NY and Brandeis University in Massachusetts. At Ortega y Gasset Projects, Pottinger curated a two person exhibition Messenger in 2020 with artists Theresa Blosi and George’s Boorujy that explores new earth ethics and the dynamics of climate change. Soon after she launched OyG’s YouTube Channel to counter the exhibition’s closure due to the lockdown from the pandemic. Pottinger also created the Flat File Friday Campaigns, a weekly newsletter highlighting an artist from OyG’s Flat File program. Artist website: www.nickolapottinger.com Instagram: @nickolapottinger
Adam Liam Rose (Brooklyn, NY)
Adam Liam Rose (b. 1990) is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, video and drawing. Born in Jerusalem and raised mostly in the United States, his works investigate the aesthetic systems of power embedded within architecture. Rose was a fellow at the Bronx Museum of the Arts' AIM Program, The Drawing Center’s Viewing Program, and the Art & Law Program. He was awarded artist residencies at Triangle Arts Association, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Ox-Bow School of Art, A-Z West: Institute of Investigative Living, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Chicago Artists Coalition's HATCH Residency. He received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago ('12) and an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts (‘17). Rose joined OyG as a co-director in 2019. He curated the exhibition “The Displaced Image” featuring the works of Anthony Peyton Young, Felipe Baeza, Ilana Harris-Babou, Joeun Kim Aatchim, Peter LaBier, Phoebe Osborne and Tommy Coleman (2021), and a solo presentation by Robert Hickerson Titled “The mother of Sighs” (2021). Artist website: www.adamliamrose.com Instagram: @adamliamrose
Zahar Vaks (Brooklyn, NY)
Zahar Vaks (born Tashkent, Uzbekistan) has had exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Columbus, Las Vegas, Houston, Vienna, on the island of Svalbard in Norway, and, most recently, in Beijing, China. Zahar participated in the Robert Rauschenberg Residency; the Galveston Artist Residency; and most recently in the Artists in Residence (AIR) program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2021. In 2015 Vaks curated his first show at OyG - “Thinking & Touching Time,” a conversation between fifteen artists, including Dona Nelson, Austin Lee, and Yevgeniya Baras. In the last 5 years Vaks collaborated on OyG projects such as a retrospective for Rick Briggs, a solo show for emerging artist Rose Nestler with artist and curator Catherine Haggerty. In 2018 Vaks staged a solo exhibition of artist Jesse Bransford’s work which was accompanied by a book published by Fulgur Press. Artist website: www.zaharvaks.com Instagram: @zaharvaks
Lauren Whearty (Philadelphia, PA)
Lauren Whearty is a painter, educator, and curator based in Philadelphia and has been a Co-Director at OyG Projects since 2017. She has recently exhibited at Gross McCleaf Gallery, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Deanna Evans Projects, Artport Kingston, Dorrance H. Hamilton Gallery, and was recently commissioned to create a painting for Philadelphia Museum of Art and Mural Arts in response to “Matisse in the 1930s”. Lauren has attended Yale’s Summer School of Art, Vermont Studio Center, Soaring Gardens, and Golden Foundation residencies. She has recently received grants from Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Joseph Roberts Foundation, and a Grant for Creative Research and Innovation from University of the Arts. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University, and BFA from Tyler School of Art. Lauren currently teaches at The University of the Arts and Tyler School of Art & Architecture in Philadelphia.
At OyG Projects Lauren has curated exhibitions which include Frame Work, Ghost Stories,Surface Tension, and co-curated Code Switch, Walking and Falling at the Same Time, The Dress / What Touches the Floor, and worked with artists to develop Skirt installations, like Winnie Sidhartha’s Boundless & Ezra Jude’s Black Mayonnaise & Bio-Mutants.
Instagram:@lwhearty
Gallery Assistants
Xingze Li is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in New York City. He has exhibited and curated in China, America, and Denmark. Recent group exhibitions took place at Pratt Manhattan Library and cfcp gallery in New York City, Little Berlin in Philadelphia, and Carlsberg Byens Galleri & Kunstsalon in Copenhagen. He has curated shows including Small Root (2018), and F-1: Out Inside (2019) in Brooklyn, NY. Solo and two-person exhibitions in New York City opens at Dekalb Gallery, Tutu Gallery, and Hunter East Harlem Gallery. Notable awards include the 77ART Residency, Pratt Graduate Student Engagement Fund, and Pratt in Venice Scholarship. Li earned his bachelor's degree in 2015 from Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts and received his MFA in Painting and Drawing at Pratt Institute in 2019.
Amelia Galgon is an artist from Glenside, PA now living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She received her B.A in Art from Lehigh University in 2017 along with a B.S. in Computer Science from the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. In 2016, she won third place in Riverside Festival of the Arts’ Plein Air content in Easton, PA. Her work is highly figurative and typically depicts herself and people she’s close to -- friends, relatives, and fellow artists. During her education, she developed a style of using gesture and an unrestrained palette to illustrate the presence of her subjects and showcased her later portraits of her classmates at her Senior Thesis Solo Exhibition in 2017. She has since exhibited her work in artist showcases in Philadelphia and New York City and continues to explore themes of identity and relationships.
Past and Silent OyG Co-Directors and Members include:
Past Silent members: Kathryn Lofton, Marcel Campbell, Diane Karp
Past Co-Directors: Eleanna Anagnos, Lauren F. Adams (founder), Joshua Bienko (founder), Catherine Haggarty , Carrie Hott (founder), Fritz Horstman, Will Hutnick, Jessica Langley (founder), Sarah Rushford, Sheilah Wilson (founder), Tiffany Smith, Christine Wong Yap and Karla Wozniak (founder).
Interested in becoming a silent member?