‍Alisa Sikelianos-Carter (she/her) is a Black, Queer mixed-media artist from upstate New York, born in Boynton Beach, Florida. Her practice is grounded in ancestral reverence, intuitive research, and visual theology. Guided by animism, mythopoetics, shadow work, and spiritual inheritance, she explores the psychic landscapes of the self alongside metaphysical terrains of connection and the unseen. Her work engages grief, loss, vulnerability, and transformation as emotional and energetic currents that inform how perception shifts and how time is felt in the body.

Influenced in part by Black Witch Thought as articulated by Marcelitte Failla, Sikelianos-Carter embraces intuitive knowledge, personal cosmology, and the figure of the Black witch as a radical guide who redefines how we know what we know. Ancestors and Spirit are present in her practice, functioning as both narrative subjects and guiding forces that shape attention, orientation, and care. Working across drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, and installation, she builds layered visual worlds through a slow, devotional process rooted in material experimentation. Patterns, elemental matter, and the interplay between shadow and luminosity play active roles in how her images communicate, accumulating visible traces of process and emotional residue across past and present.

Sikelianos-Carter is a 2026 Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Artist-in-Residence and has attended residencies at NXTHVN, Vermont Studio Center, The Wassaic Project, Yaddo, the Golden Foundation, Millay Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Fountainhead, and Art Omi, and is a recipient of the Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant. Select exhibitions include the Ford Foundation, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the Tang Teaching Museum, and James Cohan Gallery. She received her MFA from Rutgers University in 2025 and her BA in Studio Art from SUNY Albany in 2015. 

‍

Amy Smith-Stewart has organized nearly one hundred exhibitions across museums, collections, galleries, and temporary spaces. Her writing has appeared in books and catalogues published by institutions and publishers including the Bates College Museum of Art, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Charta, Colby College Museum of Art, DelMonico Books, Gregory R. Miller & Co., KW Institute for Contemporary Art, MoMA PS1, Revolver Publishing, Rizzoli, Taschen, and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. As both curator and writer, Smith-Stewart is a dedicated advocate for emerging and overlooked artists, as well as for erased and forgotten histories.

She currently serves as the Diana Bowes Chief Curator at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, where she has organized more than fifty-five exhibitions and projects since 2013. She launched Aldrich Projects, a series that presents a single work or focused body of work by a singular artist, and co-created The Aldrich Box, a program that commissions artists to produce original works designed to travel beyond the museum’s walls. Her visionary approach has brought artists to The Aldrich at pivotal moments in their careers, including solo museum debuts by Uman, Jennie Jieun Lee, Nickola Pottinger, Hangama Amiri, Genesis Belanger, Layo Bright, Milano Chow, Lucia Hierro, Michelle Lopez, Hayal Pozanti, Jessi Reaves, Eva LeWitt, Sara Cwynar, Chiffon Thomas, B. Wurtz, and others. She has also organized major survey exhibitions with artists such as Martha Diamond, Harmony Hammond, Loie Hollowell, Raven Halfmoon, Karla Knight, Suzanne McClelland, Ruth Root, Frank Stella, and Jackie Winsor.

Smith-Stewart’s Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art was named one of the best exhibitions of 2019 by The New York Times. The show traveled to the Sarasota Art Museum and was accompanied by the artist’s first monograph. Her exhibition Martha Diamond: Deep Time (co-organized with the Colby College Museum of Art) was described by New York Times art critic Will Heinrich as “a jaw-dropping show.” It was also accompanied by the artist’s first monograph.

In addition to solo and survey exhibitions, she has curated expansive group shows at The Aldrich, including A Garden of Promise and Dissent, Objects Like Us, and 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone. In June 2026, she inaugurated The Aldrich Decennial, a new ten-year series spotlighting new art made in Connecticut. The debut edition is titled I Am What Is Around Me and features forty intergenerational CT-based artists.

Recent exhibitions have traveled to institutions including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, ICA VCU, The Contemporary Austin, the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and others. Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers, co-organized with the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, is currently on a national tour, opening May 1^st at Ballroom Marfa.

Upcoming exhibitions in 2027 include the solo museum debuts of Kelly Sinnapah Mary (co-organized with Americas Society), and Brandon Morris, as well as first survey exhibitions with Mimi Smith and Bonnie Lucas.

Smith-Stewart is the founder of the nomadic curatorial project Smith-Stewart, which operated as a gallery on the Lower East Side of New York City from 2007 to 2009. She began her career as a curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1), where she organized nineteen exhibitions and projects, including first solo museum presentations with Aleksandra Mir, Adrian Paci, Mika Rottenberg, and Taryn Simon, as well as major group exhibitions such as Day Labor and Greater New York 2005 . From 2006 to 2007, she served as Curatorial Advisor for the Mary Boone Gallery, where she organized group exhibitions introducing a new generation of artists. She has also curated exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum and served as Guest Curator for the Peter Norton Collection from 2006 to 2008. In addition to her curatorial work, Smith-Stewart has held teaching positions at the School of Visual Arts (MFA Fine Arts program) and Sotheby’s Institute of Art (MA Contemporary Art program).

‍Platinum Sponsor
$10,000

• Premium recognition at the event, including logo placement on the main photo backdrop
• Social media feature: story or reel highlighting your company’s partnership with Wassaic
• Private curator- or artist-led walkthrough with enhanced hospitality for your group
• Acknowledgment during event remarks
• Includes all Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Sponsor-level benefits

‍

Gold Sponsor
$5,000

• 20 tickets (with flexibility to increase by request)
• Recognition as a lead event supporter, prominently featured at check-in and in a collective sponsor thank-you post across Wassaic’s social media (40.2k Instagram followers) 
• Private group tour with refreshments at the Wassaic Project campus
• Includes all Silver, Bronze, and Sponsor-level benefits
  ‍

Silver Sponsor
$2,500

• 15 tickets
• Recognition at event check-in with name and logo
• Inclusion in a post-event newsletter to attendees and Wassaic’s e-list (~10k contacts)
• Includes all Bronze and Sponsor-level benefits
  ‍

Bronze Sponsor
$1,000

• 10 tickets
• Invitations to exclusive sneak-peek cocktail tours of exhibitions
• Discounts on Wassaic Project merchandise
• Includes all Sponsor-level benefits
  ‍

Sponsor
$500

• 6 tickets
• Listing on the event page
• Heartfelt thanks for your critical support!