Creative Catalysts 2026 Exhibition
October 3 – November 29, 2026
Groundwork
1213 Purchase Street
New Bedford, MA
Opening Reception
Saturday, October 3, 2026
4:00–6:00 PM
Explore the full exhibition details, including the theme, participating artists, and more.
A Glimpse of What’s Coming
Tessa Remy-Miller and Kimberly Remy take us behind the scenes as they develop their work for Creative Catalysts 2026.
Midori Evans and Katherin Joyette share a glimpse of their creative process and the ideas taking shape for their Creative Catalysts collaboration.
As the Work Takes Shape
Meet the Artists & Their Work in Progress
Ian Welihan & Sarah Kiepper
Ian Welihan
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zombie daycare
poikilohydric
secondary xylem (WOOD)
therefore green slugs are both animals and plants
monera
despite being non living viruses are capable of evolution
multiple unknown species
L.
(carolus linnaeus)
obtain building blocks
proton water
DISSOCIATE
nucleotides
preternatural
thanks for encouraging me what kinda situation is that going to bring about
videoframe
video still
screen capture
i dont know how to be normal
so i hyperbolize
i have a botch the function kink
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Item description
Sarah Kiepper
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Sarah Kiepper, an internationally published writer/poet who grew up in the Midwest, resides with her partner and dogs on the SouthCoast of MA. She retired from teaching college humanities courses, is now a remote chief compliance officer, and a doctorate student at Kent State University. She is a board member of the Friends of the Millicent Library and Writing With Community Inc., and enjoys participating in writing groups and researching genealogy. Her photography, poetry, and prose have been published in Akros Review, Asylum, Jenny Magazine, Penguin Review, Rituals, TPT Magazine, Tidings, and the YWCA of Youngstown, OH.
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Item description
Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Tessa Remy-Miller & Kimberly Remy
Tessa Remy-Miller
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Tessa Remy-Miller is a painter based in the South Coast of Massachusetts. She graduated from UMass Dartmouth in 2021 with a BFA in painting. She works with figurative subjects and colorful experimentation.
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Only recently have I gotten back into reading. It’s a common pastime for my Aunty Kim. Conversely, I’ve made art my whole life and she has just gotten back into textiles. This experience has allowed us to merge our interests and have something to show for it. The Secret Lives of Colors tells tales of colors’ interesting beginnings and rises to stardom, including violet. The Impressionists (including Claude Monet and his water lilies) painted with violet much to the befuddlement of the general population. Many concluded they must be “completely mad” or suffering from an “unknown disease [...] dubbed ‘violettomania’.”
Kimberly Remy
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Kimberly Remy is the proud aunt of Tessa Remy-Miller who has encouraged her to explore her artistic skills. She learned to sew in her childhood by watching her mom and is self taught in other forms of textile art.
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It wasn't until my later years that I became an avid reader. Ironically Tessa is now coming to appreciate reading as well as she has matured. Tessa introduced me to The Secret Lives of Colors and I found it fascinating. We are both very tactile individuals and are drawn to texture and color. Violet is a color we both love and Monet's proclamation "I have finally discovered the true color of the atmosphere. It is violet. Fresh air is Violet." is one I can appreciate.
Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Alex Houston & CJ Sousa
Alex Houston
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Alex Houston is a textile artist based in New Bedford, Massachusetts, stitching local history, stories, and heirlooms into quilts and wall hangings. Most recently, she was the artist in residence at the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park and completed a large quilt focused on urban renewal in New Bedford. By day, Alex works in education technology, bringing a background in data and research to the craft.
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CJ Sousa
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CJ is a found object artist with an affinity with the electromechanical and evoking the notion of Sonder. This is a feeling you feel when people watching and latching onto a particular person and wondering what must have transpired prior to your meeting such that your worlds aligned at this specific instance. CJ collects all manners of discarded “junk” and reforms them into statues, breathing life into a newly formed creature. Every bit matters and has in it an ember of life from all the persons who’ve interacted with it.
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Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Midori Evans & Katherin Joyette
Midori Evans
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Midori Evans, founder of Midori Creativity, understands how creatives think. She immerses herself in nature – as a cold-water swimmer! – and with her photography by using color, water, flowers, and light to explore moments of now. She has studied at Santa Fe Workshops, Maine Media Workshops, the International Center for Photography in NY, and Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Look for her work at cedarlightimages.com, in Midori Creativity designs and presentations, and in the two local South Coast anthologies, The Landscape About Us and Waterscapes.
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Katherin Joyette
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Katherin Joyette is a South Coast Massachusetts artist working in acrylic, mixed media, and works on paper. Her practice recovers erased ancetral lineages — Arawak-Kalinago, Irish-Montserratian Caribbean, Cape Verdean — through portraiture, sacred script painting, and figurative drawing. Founder of Livity Tree Art and creator of the Erased Daughters Collection, she is a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant recipient and EforAll alumna whose work transmits ancestral memory as living culture.
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Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Diane Pienta & Mary Monteiro
Diane Pienta
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Diane Pienta is a teacher, author, felter and forest therapy guide living in Fairhaven, MA. After a 25-year career in business, she discovered her passion for fiber arts, writing and teaching.
Fascinated by the vivid power of color and the sensual texture of natural fiber, Diane finds endless inspiration in Nature. Transforming wisps of wool and silk into cloth with soapy water and elbow grease still seems nothing short of magical to her - the fibers tell Diane what to create, and she does her best to listen and follow.
She creates felted clothing, books, bowls and wall hangings. Her award-winning book, Be the Magic, was published in 2023.
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Mary Monteiro
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Mary studied painting at University Massachusetts Dartmouth. She left to study with classical painter Eugene Tonoff. After two years, she joined an advertising agency focusing on product and fashion illustration. In 1976 she launched her career as a freelance illustrator working primarily in book publishing and giftware design. Several of her giftware lines have sold as collectibles nationally and internationally.
In retirement Mary now is focused on creating oil paintings that promote peace and encourage the viewer to live in the present. “My work centers on values and ideas that are crucial to building a positive interior landscape.”
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Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Maija McManus & Tammy Rose
Maija McManus
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Maija McManus is a writer and development professional, originally from Boston and now rooted in the South Coast of Massachusetts. She often draws on nature and lived experience for her writing, weaving reflections that balance intimacy, clarity, and a deep sense of place.
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Tammy Rose
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Tammy Rose is a playwright, historian and playwright-historian. She is very connected to her family and heritage in the Azores (Faial, Pico and Santa Maria). Currently getting her PhD in Experience Design at Bentley University, she is exploring across all media from 2D handmade images, 3D sculptures of found objects and painted mousetraps to a VR version of a historical walking tour. She is grateful to still live in a time where individual humans can still make art, communicate truths and encourage empathy. She does NOT welcome our robot overlords.
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Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Krista Allen & Fox Ilya
Maija McManus
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Krista Allen is an author & artist from Westport, MA. Her work has appeared in various small press publications & several anthologies. When not writing, she designs wooden jigsaw puzzles & swims in the ocean.
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Fox Ilya
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Fox Ilya (he/they) is a multidisciplinary creative from New Bedford, MA. He studied Music Composition and Voice Pedagogy at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. Primarily an actor and singer/songwriter Fox also expresses himself in extensions of painting, photography, embroidery, journaling, teaching and clowning. Art is their instinctual response to moments of introspection and sharing the heartaches of the world. Fox connects deeply with his inner-child, finding comfort in color and listens to the soft voice inside, quietly asking questions. His art invites you and your inner-child to join him, to speak up and be heard.
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Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Heidi O’Donnell Eastman & Mark Collins
Heidi Eastman
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Heidi O’Donnell Eastman is an artist, designer, writer, and historian.
As a painter, she draws on emotion and nature to tell stories through her art. As co-founder of Belle Maison Westport and O’Donnell Eastman Design, she also expresses her creativity through writing. She completed the Jack Grapes Method Writing program, an organic approach that helps uncover an authentic voice.
She is currently a design instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design and an international programs consultant.
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Mark Collins
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Mark Collins is an author and freelance writer, who writes about experiences of the natural world here in the beautiful natural environment of South Coast MA. His writing style is best described as translating our experience of divinity as expressed in the natural world while reflecting on recurring themes and images. Mark believes we can all find common ground in the transcendent beauty nature presents, which serves to connect us with both to nature and each other. Mark is a published author of The Heartspace Portal book. His website is www.quantumlove.net.
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Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Thierry Andrianambinina & Michelle Lapointe
T. Andrianambinina
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Thierry is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and researcher from the island of Madagascar. He has a Masters Degree in Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), with a concentration in bio-inspired and community-based designs.
Working across two- and three-dimensional forms, their work brings together artistic experimentation and research rooted in science , technology, architecture, and cultural history.
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Michelle Lapointe
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Dartmouth resident Michelle T. Lapointe is a multi-disciplinary artist working in stained glass, mixed media, and acrylic painting. She works from her studio, The Glass Connector, at Hatch Street Studios in New Bedford, where she has spent over 20 years creating sculptural and hanging glass pieces and other mixed-media work. Her work has appeared in regional exhibitions, is available in the New Bedford Whaling Museum gift shop and has been featured in The Standard-Times. Lapointe continues to expand her contemporary approach to glass and mixed-media form.
Working across two- and three-dimensional forms, their work brings together artistic experimentation and research rooted in science , technology, architecture, and cultural history.
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Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon
Deborah Coderre & Nicole Gallo
Deb Coderre
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Deb Coderre resides in Freetown, MA with her husband Manny. She composes best while in her garden shed where nature provides inspiration for her writing and art work. Deb taught English at Bristol County Agricultural High School for many years and loves dabbling in the written word. She credits the Writing and Communications program at UMass Dartmouth, the Buzzards Bay Writing Project, and various writing groups including Write With Community for helping her to find her voice.
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Nicole Gallo
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Nicole is a fiction writer who has spent many years in the unlikely profession of math teacher. She lives in a coastal New England town with her husband and three daughters. She has been writing since she was in third grade, and devouring books of all genres since she can remember. She started writing seriously when she became a homeschooling mom. Now she has completed two novels, she's started on a third, and she has ideas for many more that she can't wait to start writing. She divides her time between writing novels, teaching, enjoying nature walks, and swimming.
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Art & Creative Work — Coming Soon