Opening of Liz Nielsen and akeylah wellington’s NEA-commissioned artworks
Cost
Where
37 Furnace Bank Road
Wassaic, NY 12592
When
Saturday, October 3, 2026
3–6 PM
Who
Join the Wassaic Project in celebrating the opening of public artworks by Liz Nielsen and akeylah wellington. The day will consist of an artist talk moderated by independent curator Katie Hood Morgan, followed by a reception on the Gridley Chapel lawn.
The day will also include readings and conversation with Amy Stephenson and Casey Childers, Hudson Valley-based writers and former hosts of the podcast Old Wives, moderated by writer Jill Winsby-Fein. And the day wraps up with the first installment of Tim Love Lee’s Resonant Reflections, a music performance incorporating repurposed instruments and vintage records from 6–8 PM inside the Gridley Chapel.
Liz Nielsen’s installation in the Gridley Chapel takes the form of stained glass windows in Nielsen’s signature photogram style merging analog experimentation with celestial. Built from timeless shapes including circles, triangles, and squares, the figures suggest benevolent visitors, guardians, or beings composed entirely of light. As sunlight moves through the transparent works, the chapel becomes a living environment of shifting color, contemplation, and transformation. This work was made possible with funds from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.
akeylah wellington will be unveiling the much-anticipated 9 x 10’ beaded tapestries nineties resolving power and aughts resolving power, inspired by celestial composites of supernovae, gas rings, Herbig-Har objects, globular star clusters, binary star systems, and circumstellar debris disks from the Hubble Space Telescope observed between the years 1990 and 2009. Made of plastic pony beads, a common ornament for braided styles, these larger-than-life tapestries depict new, cool, and aspirational futures—skies that will never be in times that never were. This work was made possible with funds from the National Endowment of the Arts.
Schedule
12 PM: Art Nest is open. The first floor of the gallery is open for viewing.
1:30–2:30 PM: Readings and conversation with Amy Stephenson and Casey Childers moderated by Jill Winsby-Fein inside the Gridley Chapel.
3–4 PM: Conversation with Liz Nielsen and akeylah wellington omoderated by Katie Hood Morgan in the Gridley Chapel.
4–6 PM: Receptions for Liz and akeylah on the Gridley Chapel lawn.
6–8 PM: Part 1 of Resonant Reflections by Tim Love Lee inside the Gridley Chapel.
· · ·
About the Artists
Liz Nielsen (b. 1975) is a Hudson Valley, New York–based artist, photographer, and educator known for redefining camera-less photography. Working with photograms, one of photography’s earliest processes, she creates luminous, one-of-a-kind images in the analog color darkroom through a method she calls “light painting,” layering colored light onto photosensitive materials to produce works that balance precision and spontaneity.
Nielsen's vibrant compositions range from intimate to monumental in scale, exploring themes of duality, perception, and transformation while bridging art and science. Nielsen has presented solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery (New York), Black Box Projects (London), SOCO Gallery (Charlotte), and Hexton Gallery (Aspen). In 2026, she will debut new work at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art alongside public installations at Grand Central Terminal and Wassaic Project.
Her work has been featured in Artforum, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts, she holds degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago and currently serves as the Koopman Chair at Hartford Art School.
akeylah wellington (b. 1998, Florida) is a Guyanese-American sculptor and tapestry weaver. Her work reviews 2000s visual culture, historical ironies, and plastic crafts. Her practice is humorous. Occasionally, humor refers to the noun, connoting comedy, but more commonly, wellington explores humor as a verb, meaning to endure. Her attention to the aughts’ technological and political developments is an attempt to make sense of her experience of loss, girlhood, generational inheritances, and time.
Based in Columbus, OH, she is a former artist-in-residence of Visible Records and Wassaic Project, a 2025 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, and a museum educator. She is in possession of a deep fondness for the Midwest and a great affection for the Southern United States. Her work has been shown at Blah Blah Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), The Anderson (Richmond, VA), and Pond Gallery (Fayetteville, AR). She is an alumna of Louisiana Tech University and The Ohio State University, and she has been represented by Brandt Gallery in Columbus, OH since 2024.
Katie Hood Morgan is a non-profit arts leader with 15 years of curatorial experience in a variety of mission-driven institutions. She is deeply committed to arts advocacy and equity and guided by the core belief that supporting creative practice leads to possibilities for a transformed future.
She most recently served as Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries where she oversaw exhibitions and publications for Hunter College's three exhibition spaces. Notable recent projects include "Last Art School," a major group exhibition with artist-curator Lindsey White, and "A Living Collection," a long-term permanent collection exhibition with the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. Katie worked at the San Francisco Art Institute in various curatorial roles over the period of a decade, including that of Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs. Prior positions also include: Program Director of FOR-SITE Foundation, Assistant Curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and Curator of the artist-run Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, all in San Francisco, CA. She has organized exhibitions and public programs with artists and collectives including Ai Weiwei, Patti Smith, Jill Magid, Alicia McCarthy, and Postcommodity, among many others.
Katie has contributed to curatorial projects and programming at institutions and organizations including the Oakland Museum of California; the de Young Museum; California College of the Arts; SFMOMA; and MASS MoCA. She has participated in presentations, juries, and studio critiques with Creative Capital, NARS Foundation, Hunter College, the School of Visual Arts, New York, and ACRE Residency, Wisconsin. Katie earned her BFA in History of Art and Visual Culture at University of California-Santa Cruz, and her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts. She is a founding board member of the SFAI Legacy Foundation + Archive.
Opening of Liz Nielsen and akeylah wellington’s NEA-commissioned artworks
Cost
Where
37 Furnace Bank Road
Wassaic, NY 12592
When
Saturday, October 3, 2026
3–6 PM
Who
Join the Wassaic Project in celebrating the opening of public artworks by Liz Nielsen and akeylah wellington. The day will consist of an artist talk moderated by independent curator Katie Hood Morgan, followed by a reception on the Gridley Chapel lawn.
The day will also include readings and conversation with Amy Stephenson and Casey Childers, Hudson Valley-based writers and former hosts of the podcast Old Wives, moderated by writer Jill Winsby-Fein. And the day wraps up with the first installment of Tim Love Lee’s Resonant Reflections, a music performance incorporating repurposed instruments and vintage records from 6–8 PM inside the Gridley Chapel.
Liz Nielsen’s installation in the Gridley Chapel takes the form of stained glass windows in Nielsen’s signature photogram style merging analog experimentation with celestial. Built from timeless shapes including circles, triangles, and squares, the figures suggest benevolent visitors, guardians, or beings composed entirely of light. As sunlight moves through the transparent works, the chapel becomes a living environment of shifting color, contemplation, and transformation. This work was made possible with funds from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.
akeylah wellington will be unveiling the much-anticipated 9 x 10’ beaded tapestries nineties resolving power and aughts resolving power, inspired by celestial composites of supernovae, gas rings, Herbig-Har objects, globular star clusters, binary star systems, and circumstellar debris disks from the Hubble Space Telescope observed between the years 1990 and 2009. Made of plastic pony beads, a common ornament for braided styles, these larger-than-life tapestries depict new, cool, and aspirational futures—skies that will never be in times that never were. This work was made possible with funds from the National Endowment of the Arts.
Schedule
12 PM: Art Nest is open. The first floor of the gallery is open for viewing.
1:30–2:30 PM: Readings and conversation with Amy Stephenson and Casey Childers moderated by Jill Winsby-Fein inside the Gridley Chapel.
3–4 PM: Conversation with Liz Nielsen and akeylah wellington omoderated by Katie Hood Morgan in the Gridley Chapel.
4–6 PM: Receptions for Liz and akeylah on the Gridley Chapel lawn.
6–8 PM: Part 1 of Resonant Reflections by Tim Love Lee inside the Gridley Chapel.
About the Artists
Liz Nielsen (b. 1975) is a Hudson Valley, New York–based artist, photographer, and educator known for redefining camera-less photography. Working with photograms, one of photography’s earliest processes, she creates luminous, one-of-a-kind images in the analog color darkroom through a method she calls “light painting,” layering colored light onto photosensitive materials to produce works that balance precision and spontaneity.
Nielsen's vibrant compositions range from intimate to monumental in scale, exploring themes of duality, perception, and transformation while bridging art and science. Nielsen has presented solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery (New York), Black Box Projects (London), SOCO Gallery (Charlotte), and Hexton Gallery (Aspen). In 2026, she will debut new work at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art alongside public installations at Grand Central Terminal and Wassaic Project.
Her work has been featured in Artforum, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts, she holds degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago and currently serves as the Koopman Chair at Hartford Art School.
akeylah wellington (b. 1998, Florida) is a Guyanese-American sculptor and tapestry weaver. Her work reviews 2000s visual culture, historical ironies, and plastic crafts. Her practice is humorous. Occasionally, humor refers to the noun, connoting comedy, but more commonly, wellington explores humor as a verb, meaning to endure. Her attention to the aughts’ technological and political developments is an attempt to make sense of her experience of loss, girlhood, generational inheritances, and time.
Based in Columbus, OH, she is a former artist-in-residence of Visible Records and Wassaic Project, a 2025 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, and a museum educator. She is in possession of a deep fondness for the Midwest and a great affection for the Southern United States. Her work has been shown at Blah Blah Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), The Anderson (Richmond, VA), and Pond Gallery (Fayetteville, AR). She is an alumna of Louisiana Tech University and The Ohio State University, and she has been represented by Brandt Gallery in Columbus, OH since 2024.
Katie Hood Morgan is a non-profit arts leader with 15 years of curatorial experience in a variety of mission-driven institutions. She is deeply committed to arts advocacy and equity and guided by the core belief that supporting creative practice leads to possibilities for a transformed future.
She most recently served as Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries where she oversaw exhibitions and publications for Hunter College's three exhibition spaces. Notable recent projects include "Last Art School," a major group exhibition with artist-curator Lindsey White, and "A Living Collection," a long-term permanent collection exhibition with the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. Katie worked at the San Francisco Art Institute in various curatorial roles over the period of a decade, including that of Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs. Prior positions also include: Program Director of FOR-SITE Foundation, Assistant Curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and Curator of the artist-run Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, all in San Francisco, CA. She has organized exhibitions and public programs with artists and collectives including Ai Weiwei, Patti Smith, Jill Magid, Alicia McCarthy, and Postcommodity, among many others.
Katie has contributed to curatorial projects and programming at institutions and organizations including the Oakland Museum of California; the de Young Museum; California College of the Arts; SFMOMA; and MASS MoCA. She has participated in presentations, juries, and studio critiques with Creative Capital, NARS Foundation, Hunter College, the School of Visual Arts, New York, and ACRE Residency, Wisconsin. Katie earned her BFA in History of Art and Visual Culture at University of California-Santa Cruz, and her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts. She is a founding board member of the SFAI Legacy Foundation + Archive.
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