Willow Island Sculpture Garden

Zachary Buzzell (b. 1987, Bloomingdale, NY) is currently completing his B.F.A at SUNY Plattsburgh. His work has been displayed at the Frederic Remington Art Museum, Winkle Gallery, and SUNY wide exhibitions. Zachary discovered the healing powers of art in 2020, after being medically retired from the Air Force. With extensive experience working in construction, he found sculpture to be a natural fit. 

Artist’s Statement

My work fits the style of retrofuturism by engaging the aesthetics of a past time while looking toward the future. These contradicting themes help to convey ideas of resilience and human relationships. Building materials such as wood, concrete, and steel are used to convey adaptability and strength, as each sculpture has been bruised, battered, burnt, survived the elements, and persevered. 

To see more of Zachary Buzzell’s artwork, visit: 

Instagram - @_Buzz_The_Builder_

Daniel Roberts (b. 1984, Corvallis, OR) is a sculptor who lives and works in Queens NY. He has shown recently with Slag Gallery, Second Ave Arts, and The Brooklyn Rail’s expansive show “Singing in Unison.” He has exhibited his outdoor sculpture publicly with New York’s West Village Alliance as part of NYC DOT Art programing, and in Detroit, Michigan as part of the Movement Festival in Hart Plaza. He received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2011, and his BFA from Oregon State University in 2008. 

Artist’s Statement

I work primarily as a sculptor, exploring themes of loss, change, memory, and daily life. I start from found objects, places and people I know—taking molds and inspiration from encounters in my daily life to develop shapes that carry contemplative and immediate narratives. Prioritizing in-studio material reactions and intuitive decisions, my goal is to create sculptures that feel unplanned yet urgent—akin to portraits of life, evoking intimacy, memory, change, touch, and the passage of time. 

To see more of Daniel Robert’s artwork, visit:

Instagram - @danvondan

Julia Rooney (b. 1989, New York, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist, rooted in painting but often bridging disciplines that include writing, installation, and collaborative practices. She has been an artist-in-residence at The Joan Mitchell Center, Yale University Art Gallery and MASS MoCA, amidst others. In 2023, she was awarded a grant through The Rema Hort Mann Foundation for her ongoing project, Greenscreen, Bluescreen, and has since exhibited various iterations of this work widely throughout the United States. She holds an MFA in Painting/Printmaking from the Yale School of Art.

Artist’s Statement

Sensitive to the increasing power that digital, virtual, and augmented realities command, I make paintings and site-specific installations grounded in real space, analog material, and the human body. While my imagery is abstract, I reference specific technological structures that have come to condition how and what we see, including framing devices, webs, windows, pixilation and QR codes. My freestanding paintings slip between being 2D and 3D structures, further resisting their capture by digital means and implicating viewers' bodies as they move around and between the works. As I embed my work in real space, the changing conditions of light, airflow, sound, and human movement activate them further. It is in this dynamic interplay between my own embodied making process, the site’s conditions, and the viewers’ physical encounter with them, that my work breathes.

To see more of Julia Rooney’s artwork, visit: 

www.juliarooneystudio.com

Instagram - @somehightide

Kate Rusek (b. 1985, Newark, OH) assembles highly tactile sculptures, textile, and installation with an emphasis on craft and materiality. Her multidisciplinary, ecologically minded practice transmutes waste and discarded materials into abundant, biophilic structures. Rusek earned a BFA in both costume design and sculpture from the University of Miami. She also holds a MA in Design for Sustainability from Savannah College of Art and Design. She shows her work on both the east and west coast and has been awarded residencies at Socrates Sculpture Park and The Archie Bray Foundation among others.

Additionally, Kate Rusek is a 2020 Daytime Emmy winner for her work on Sesame Street. She has built a career as a builder of fine and specialty costumes and puppets as a member of IASTE Local 764. She has contributed her expertise to the broader film, television, and theater industry for the last 15 years. This work informs a portion of the artist's approach to devotional craftsmanship and materiality in her practice. Rusek currently splits her time between New York City and the Washington Coast.

Artist’s Statement

I continue to explore a lens of regeneration and abundance through sculptural abstraction in Imagined Fungal Emergence, a large reclaimed aluminum textile nestled among the trees on Willow Island. Architectural in scale, archways and openings encourage visitors to explore the form with intimacy, developing a bodily relationship with the sculpture, the box elders trees to which it is attached and the surrounding vegetation on Willow Island. I engage with discarded synthetic and highly processed materials through a lens of “naturalness” to excavate layers of cultural narrative and a consideration of deep time. Made entirely of waste from our built environment, this work is an action to reshape man-made ruin and ecological peril into a practice of future-making. The artwork asks one to relinquish preconceived notions of the valuable and imagine a regenerative future where every nutrient has infinite life.

To see more of Kate Rusek’s artwork, visit:

katerusek.com

Instagram - @thekaterusek