SELECTS 2026
January 8 – 30, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 8, 2026 6–8 pm
FIRST STREET GALLERY is pleased to present SELECTS 2026, juried by artist and curator Jill Sarver Rossi. The exhibition brings together nine distinctive artists, each of whom tells their story through a unique visual language.
Through these bodies of deeply personal work, we can revel in the beauty of each artist’s experiences, which are unique, yet united through visual expression. Some works convey loneliness, war, and loss. Others search for peace and balance in imaginative and natural worlds. All are felt expressions from life, lived.
The exhibition opens with the reception on Thursday, January 8, from 6 to 8 PM, and runs through January 30, 2026. The participating artists offered insights into the development of their small bodies of work:
Anne Crowley shares, “My work focuses on the Ashokan Reservoir and the mountains that surround it. After many years of walking around the reservoir, I began to see the mountains floating above the water, suspended in air. The water below and the sky above gave the mountains a look as if floating in space. The light from behind the mountains gave them a halo that imbued them with profound meaning to me. I set about to channel the physicality and spiritual essence of their power and energy. I pushed my sense of color in new directions so that the light in my paintings is arrived by color relationships as opposed to a direct source of naturalistic light. I build my paintings up in layers of translucent color, using large brushes, concentrating on the flow and movement of the paint. Orange and blue, purple and yellow, greens and pinks; the colors are vibrant and express for me the true nature of this place.”
Gaela Erwin’s most recent works in oil on canvas illuminate the process of loss and grief. Portrayed in my paintings is my younger sister, Shelly Erwin, who died two years ago after a prolonged struggle with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Photos taken during trips to visit her in California became the basis for a series of paintings that reflected the emotional rollercoaster of those times and after her death.
Niloufar Fallahfar’s Geographies of Loss responds to the wounded pulse of Iran during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement and to the collective experience of a generation carrying violence, loss, resistance, and solidarity in its shared memory. This body of work began with an encounter with nature that, in a moment of national crisis, became a space for reflection—where each fragment of the landscape echoed the fractures and sorrows unfolding across the cities and provinces of the country.
Research into the events of that period revealed that certain provinces bore the highest number of casualties. This awareness formed an emotional and geographical map in which each three-dimensional fragment represents one of these provinces and acts as a deep wound within the spirit of Iran. In this installation, forms appear like scattered parts of a land that, despite its wounds, continues to carry resilience, hope, and human connection.
Geographies of Loss is not a personal narrative but a collective one—an emotional cartography of mourning, endurance, and historical memory.
Paul Michael Graves is an abstract artist based in New York City. His work is a meditation on pattern, color, and form. He paints each figure extemporaneously, building on a language of repeating geometric elements. The interconnected patterns suggest the rationality of modernism, the ambiguity of postmodernism, and the visual resonance of ancient scripts—though these echoes are unintentional. Entirely abstract, his work references nothing beyond itself.
The four selected works, Figures 184-187, are inspired by stained glass and gemstones. In these figures, Graves explores a disconnection between layers while simultaneously allowing his patterns to echo and mimic each other. The result is a faceted web of depth and color.
Megan Marden’s paintings emerge from different conditions of looking. Some stay with direct observation from beginning to end, others draw from constructed setups, source images, or imagination. The act of looking connects the paintings across varied subjects and guides the choices made in the studio.
Eileen Mooney shares, “I am an artist who is also a math teacher, and I operate in a world of equations made up of numbers and letters. For a long time, my “way in” to participating in artistic mark making was reduced to my board work during class. Now that I can centralize my art again, what is to come of this math-class-calligraphy? This particular body of work is a bridge between my worlds.”
Blake Morgan is a professor of painting and drawing at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. All work was created from observation in Oklahoma and Costa Rica. The most recent paintings were made in October of 2025 during a month at the Mauser House in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. The residency is in the mountains above Parrita on the Pacific coast. The paintings were made walking the rural landscape and returning multiple days to each work.
Yuri Tayshete’s artistic vision uncovers harmony in the universe by observing quiet affirmations in everyday objects. Through still life paintings, I highlight the interplay of light and shadow and the contrast of organic and inorganic elements. Utilizing alla prima techniques for vivid color and a large brush for dynamic forms, I create truncated, bird’s-eye-view compositions that are poetic, calm, and isolated. My work invites viewers to experience the fleeting yet powerful connections that exist between these ordinary objects.
Sevgi Wallack’s recent black-and-white series on Yupo paper, created with palette knives and instinctive gestures, explores abstraction as a language of memory. Figures emerge from darkness; landscapes dissolve into dreamlike atmospheres. Her surfaces carry the imprint of movement, as if recording the trace of passing time and the shifting contours of consciousness. These paintings are not representations of the visible world but manifestations of inner landscapes—places suspended between remembrance and dream. Through this process, her work becomes a visual record of movement, perception, and transformation.
Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 11am to 6pm
