2018 Visionaries Luncheon

Zoë Buckman (b. 1985 Hackney, East London) is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, and photography, exploring themes of Feminism, mortality, and equality. Buckman’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions including Heavy Rag, at Albertz Benda, New York, Let Her Rave at Gavlak Gallery Los Angeles, Imprison Her Soft Hand at Project for Empty Space, Newark; Every Curve at PAPILLION ART, Los Angeles; and Present Life at Garis & Hahn Gallery, New York. Buckman has shown in group exhibitions internationally including the Camden Arts Centre, London, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Children’s Museum of the Arts, Paul Kasmin Gallery NY, Goodman Gallery South Africa, Jack Shainman Gallery NY, Monique Meloche Chicago, NYU Florence Italy, Grunwald Art Gallery, Indiana University, and the Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, GA and The National Museum of African-American History & Culture, Washington, DC, The Tarble Arts Center, Illinois, The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, and The Centre Regional D’Art Contemporain, Sete France. Buckman was a featured artist at Pulse Projects New York 2014 and Miami 2016, and was included in the curated Soundscape Park at Art Basel Miami Beach 2016. The artist completed an artist residency at Mana Contemporary. Public works include a mural, We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident, in collaboration with Natalie Frank at the Ford Foundation Gallery of New York Live Arts in Chelsea. In February 2018 Buckman unveiled her first Public Sculpture presented by Art Production Fund on Sunset Blv, Los Angeles, a large scale outdoor version of her neon sculpture Champ, which will rotate on the strip for a year. Buckman studied at the International Center of Photography (ICP), was awarded an Art Matters Grant in 2017, and lives and works in Brooklyn.    

Jayma Cardoso, a native of Brazil, came to New York 23 years ago to study at Rutgers University under their "English as a Second Language" program with little money and no friends. Jayma talked her way into her first nightclub job at Boom in Bridgehampton by saying she was an expert bartender and had a place to stay in the Hamptons for the summer –  neither was true. She worked her way up the nightclub chain to become a successful and innovative creator, owner, and operator of clubs and restaurants in New York. She is one of the few women at the top of her profession. In her career, Jayma has built and operated three famous New York venues with different partners. Her first was Cain on 27th Street, followed by Gold Bar in Nolita, and Lavo uptown. Eight years ago, Jayma and partners bought a dilapidated motel in the then sleepy hamlet of Montauk. She turned The Surf Lodge into the most talked about hotel, restaurant, art, and concert venue in the Hamptons and spearheaded the transformation of Montauk into a must-stop in the international fashion, music, and art circuit.

Marcela Sapone is the co-founder and CEO of Hello Alfred. Through Alfred, she has redefined urban living and become a staunch advocate for pro-human, pro-labor policies. She is among the first founders in the sharing economy to write on the importance of meaningful work and a meaningful income for employees. As a thought leader, she worked with the Brookings Institute and the Secretary of Labor. She also worked at the White House under the Obama Administration to make this a reality. Named one of Goldman Sachs’ “most intriguing entrepreneurs” and a winner of TechCrunch Disrupt SF, Marcela's work has not gone unrecognized. She was also nominated for the Financial Times’ ArcelorMittal Boldness in Business Award, as well as Fast Company’s Most Creative People list. She was the face of Consumer Tech for Forbes 30 Under 30. Marcela holds an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. Prior to founding Hello Alfred, she began her career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. She then moved to working in private equity. Marcela co-created WHITESPACE, a seed-stage venture fund.

Andrea Grover is a curator, writer, and nonprofit arts leader with 25+ years of experience with socially engaged and interdisciplinary artistic practices. She is the Executive Director of Guild Hall, a historic civic arts institution in East Hampton, NY, founded during the Great Depression with a mission to build a better society through the arts. From 2022–25, she led a transformative renovation of the Guild Hall campus, modernizing its 1930s-era infrastructure to support contemporary performance, exhibition, and education. She simultaneously created an interdisciplinary program team that provides thought partners for new works like the recently developed First Literature Project (Shinnecock language revitalization in VR) by Wunetu Wequai Tarrant and Christian Scheider.

Grover began her career in community-centered art by founding Aurora Picture Show, Houston, in 1998, a nonprofit moving image art center originally located in her home, a converted church in the Sunset Heights. Her curatorial focus has long included artist-led experiments in public space, alternative infrastructures, and cross-disciplinary inquiry. While Curator of Special Projects at the Parrish Art Museum, she launched initiatives such as Parrish Road Show, Platform and PechaKucha Night Hamptons, and received a Tremaine Foundation grant and ADAA Curatorial Award for Radical Seafaring, a landmark exhibition of artists creating works on the water. At Carnegie Mellon University, she curated 29 Chains to the Moon and Intimate Science, exhibitions about artists’ solutions for global problems.

Through her writing and curating, she frequently engages themes of art, science, and social change. She has served on panels for the Pew, Rauschenberg, and Pulitzer Foundations, and taught at the University of Houston and Texas Southern University. She is a past fellow of the Warhol Foundation, Center for Curatorial Leadership, and Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Syracuse University.

http://www.andreagrover.com/