(1966-1995)

When Cathy Anderson died in December 1995 she was only 29 years old.

As a person with autism, she had probably spent her life trying to reconcile the differences between her personal experience of the world and the generally agreed upon reality to which most people subscribe. By modifying her behavioral responses through her observational skills, Anderson came a long way toward functioning successfully in society. Observation also played an important part in her life as an artist, and through her work she was able to communicate in ways that she could not communicate verbally. She had found her voice.

Her approaches to art were fascinating to observe. She enjoyed experimenting with color and creating spatial illusions with an intuitive form of perspective drawing. If Anderson needed more surface area to complete a work in progress, she would add more paper. Or, if she wanted to change an image, Anderson might have glued a piece of paper over the original image. Sometimes she would attach tape or other materials to her work just for the delight she found in their tactile qualities.

She attended Gateway Arts from 1993-1995. Her work has been exhibited at the Clark Gallery and Brandeis University in Massachusetts. In New York her work has been shown at the Outsider Art Fair and Bridges and Bodell Gallery. She has also shown at the Very Special Arts Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 1996, her work was featured in an exhibition at the Fuller Museum of Art called From the Outside In.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1987, Betty Antoine is an emerging artist with a strong affinity for needlecraft and traditional craft art.

Antoine’s family has a strong tradition of knitting, crocheting, and sewing; as such, these traditional crafts have been passed down through her family, and play a large role in Antoine’s work. In addition to her work with fabrics, Antoine also enjoys painting and drawing: she views her work as a highly meditative process, allowing her time for reflection.

Antoine’s fine art and crochet crafts have been recognized in many exhibitions throughout Massachusetts including exhibitions at the Gateway Gallery and Drive- By Projects in Watertown.

Ashley Barbour was born in Boston, MA in 1994, and joined Gateway Arts in 2016.

Barbour loves to draw and paint, and is artistically informed by women from the world of entertainment and history.  She is fascinated by heroines in such musicals as The Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast, and Matilda.  Barbour is very involved in the arts community at Gateway, and is actively involved in promoting herself as an artist.

Ashley Barbour’s product line includes items reproduced from her designs, some of which have been stocked by the Peabody Essex Museum gift shop. Barbour’s work has been exhibited in the Gateway Gallery.

Sofia Bocanegra was born in Boston, MA and joined Gateway Arts in 2016.

Bocanegra loves to draw and sculpt, driven by capturing realism (or at times cartooning) in her depictions of people, places, and things. She has a passion for small animals and nature that shows through in her work. Bocanegra enjoys sharing her work with others, and is skilled in articulating the driving forces behind her artistic choices and direction.

Bocanegra’s work has been exhibited in the Gateway Gallery.

Darryl Brooks was born in Arlington, Virginia, and moved to Dartmouth, Massachusetts at the age of two.

Darryl Brooks has been drawing since he was a child. He won contests and competitions while in grade school and was even featured as an artist of the month at Dartmouth Town Hall. In Brooks’ early twenties, he took classes in media such as charcoal and paint. Brooks joined the Artist Training Program at Gateway Arts through the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission after leaving school. Darryl continues to attend Gateway today, and has expanded his portfolio from drawing to jewelry making and fabric work. Brooks’ chosen imagery is primarily focused around action figures, imagined characters, and animal drawings.

Brooks’ work has been exhibited at The Gateway Gallery.

Barbara Brown was born in 1945 and lives in Boston, MA. She has been attending Gateway Arts since 1999.

Brown is a talented artist who loves to draw and paint in a representational style. Brown is a self-directed artist with a strong visual understanding of color and control over her technique. She takes great pride in her work, often sitting back and happily chuckling to herself saying ‘Yup, I did that.’ Her electric smile is captivating and one can’t help but see the immense joy and fulfillment she attains by creating art.

Brown’s work has been shown in Massachusetts at The Gateway Gallery, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Skinner Inc. Boston and Barneys NY in Boston. Her work was also featured in New York at The National Down Syndrome Society Fundraiser.

Born in 1985, Alexis Cofield lives in the Boston area. She began working in the Gateway Studios in 2018.

Cofield loves making art, and has already begun developing a colorful, unique style across mediums. Her happy positive demeanor finds expression in Cofield’s favorite subject matter, abstracted rainbows and heart motifs. Some of Cofield’s works can be pleasantly simple, while others are layered and complex. She creates drawings in colored pencil, as well as multilayered mixed medium paintings. Color is a very important aspect of her work.

Cofield’s work has been exhibited in the Gateway Gallery, and at The Beehive in Boston.

Farah Faustin was born in 1994 in Boston, MA. She began working at Gateway Arts in 2016.

Faustin has been an artist much of her life–she started seriously exploring her interest in drawing when she was 16 years old. Faustin makes drawings and paintings using her favorite subject matter of landscapes, patterns and still life. Currently she primarily works in acrylics. Faustin’s work has a joyous element to it, and she creates it in the hopes that the viewers will experience that joy when viewing her work. Her interests outside of Gateway include Manga, super heroes, and exercising.

Faustin’s work has been exhibited at the Gateway Gallery.

Born in 1991, Charles “Chuck” Johnson lives in Boston. He began working in the Gateway Studios in 2019.

Johnson has a keen drawing ability and expresses himself in layered surfaces reminiscent of spray painting, Japanese animation and video game style–some of Johnson’s influences. Johnson is further inspired by rock ‘n roll and heavy metal from the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing, digital animation, and jewelry making are some of his chosen mediums, but he exhibits adeptness in all of the media he pursues.

Johnson’s work is available in The Gateway Store. 

Kayla Johnson currently resides in Dorchester, Massachusetts; she has attended Gateway Arts since 2004.

Johnson works across an array of media, including; ceramics, jewelry, fabric arts, drawing and painting. Her figurative work often includes highly stylized self-portraits, and portraits of friends conveyed in her own perceptive style.

Johnson’s work has been featured in exhibitions throughout Massachusetts at Barneys NY, the Mall at Chestnut Hill, and The Gateway Gallery.

Daniel “Dani” Kasinsky was born in Peru, and was raised in Cambridge, MA.  He joined the studios at Gateway Arts in 2016.

Kasinsky primarily creates 2-D works, using a variety of materials. Kasinsky enjoys creating works using imagery from his memory, in particular objects he likes and places he has visited. He occasionally works from reference images as well; however, his work rarely mirrors that from which he is drawing. Instead, Kasinsky will add colors that were not originally present, transforming these images in his own distinct style. His final compositions reflect his varied interests.

Kasinsky’s work has been exhibited at the Gateway Gallery.

Carmen Martinez was born in 1978, and lives in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

She has attended Gateway Arts since 2000.  Martinez is prolific in a variety of mediums, including ceramics, jewelry, fabric arts, weaving, drawing and painting.  Her unique style is characterized by layering text and appropriated imagery of her favorite animals, comic book and video game characters, baseball players, and athletic teams. Her subject matter comes from her experiences of playing the drums, playing Nintendo games, and watching movies and WWE wrestling.

Martinez has participated in exhibitions in Massachusetts at the Gateway Gallery, the Barneys NY Windows at Copley Place Mall, The Children’s Museum, the Arnheim Gallery at MassArt, the Elizabeth A Beland Gallery at The Essex Art Center in Lawrence, and in New York at Copacabana in New York, NY.

Abdel Michel lives in Milton, Massachusetts. He has attended Gateway Arts since 2008 and is a highly gifted, self-taught artist.

Michel is interested in forms of transportation, especially public transit, and enjoys making very intricate drawings of the MBTA subway system. He prefers to work on a small scale, often overloading paper with marks made, erased, and redrawn. He then combines these elements to create a congested view of Boston landmarks. When working larger, he makes self-directed choices in regards to omitting data, leaving room for one’s eye to rest in the rendering of the work. Michel applies his detailed practice to jewelry making as well. He enjoys using a palette of vivid hues, combining beads of different colors and textures to create intricately strung designs.

Michel’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Everything in London, UK, Barneys NYC,  Fuller Craft Museum, Concord Center for the Visual Arts, and the Gateway Gallery.

Jamilah Monroe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1997. She began attending Gateway Arts in 2019.

Monroe is an emerging artist with a rich imagination and a distinct style. In her paintings and illustrations, Monroe creates a whimsical world of anthropomorphic animal characters. She develops details about the characters; their names, occupations, style; and more. Monroe is inspired by nature, music, and her favorite books.

Monroe’s work has been exhibited at The Gateway Gallery.

Juvenia Nicodemos was born in 1987 in Minas Gerias, Brazil, and moved to the United States when she was fourteen years old. She has been attending Gateway Arts since 2013.

Nicodemos has always been drawn to art, and as a young girl she would often draw portraits out of magazines and pictures of her friends and family in her spare time. An effervescent and passionate young woman, Nicodemos works in pottery, weaving, fabric, paper and jewelry. Much of Nicodemos’ work revolves around sports, pop culture, and religion–all of which she uses as inspiration in her works.

Nicodemos has exhibited her work at The Gateway Gallery and in The Gateway Store.

Michael Oliveira has been working at Gateway Arts since 2000.

While he works in a variety of materials, Oliveira’s stylized drawings constructed with paint markers and sharpies are his most sought after works. The cohesion between Oliveira’s two dimensional work centers around portraits of others. Oliveira’s ability to capture key features and isolate them in his drawings is quite remarkable. The intention with which he makes every mark is seen in his work, no matter the material or subject matter. Oliveira’s dedication to his work is apparent and part of what makes it so visually appealing.

Oliveira’s work has been shown throughout Massachusetts at the Berenberg Gallery, Boston’s State Hall, The Gateway Gallery, Barney’s NY, and the Mall at Chestnut Hill.

Born in 1997, Rotimi Osinubi joined Gateway Arts in July 2019.

Osinubi is constantly hard at work and enjoys being busy and in the mix of things. He is sociable, friendly, and lives to be around his fellow peers. He has a deep interest in art, specifically in drawing and is open to learning and exploring additional art mediums. Rotimi’s work at Gateway explores patterning and animals in bold and graphic colors. He frequently works in graphite and colored pencil on paper, methodically mapping out the picture plane in geometric sections.

Osinubi’s work is available in The Gateway Store.

Gilberto Palacios (1954-2015) was born in Cuba, and grew up in Havana.

His single mother worked hard to raise Palacios and his eight siblings.  As a young boy, the music and festivals of Havana captured Palacios. He would draw the festivals on anything he could find. Palacios said, “In Cuba, they sold no art supplies, so I just drew on paper bags with a pencil.” The limited acceptance and oppressive dictatorship forced Palacios to say goodbye to his family and leave Cuba for the United States in 1980. Palacios would spend the next twenty years of his life struggling to fit into a new culture that was foreign and daunting, faced with language barriers, lack of jobs, discrimination, depression, and homesickness.  The peer pressure to substance abuse by fellow Cuban-Americans left Palacios feeling alienated.  He decided to take a bus to Boston to start anew.  Upon arrival, he was referred to Saint Francis House, sleeping at the Long Island Annex shelter. Palacios also used the Art room at Saint Francis to explore with paper and paint his childhood passion for the festivals and music of Cuba.  Loving memories of his mother also play a dominant role in his work.  His passion for painting flowed into his hopes of becoming a hair dresser, but after studying at LIBS school, he decided that visual art was where his interests lay.

Palacios’ work has been shown at The Gateway Gallery and at Martha Richardson Fine Art in Boston, MA.

Sidney Perry was born in Alabama in 1943. He began attending Gateway Arts in 1983.

Perry is a quiet individual, but enjoys making jokes. He is talented and produces an array of art and craft items, always in beautiful colors. He creates well-crafted rag rugs in Gateway’s weaving studio, as well as hand-built vessels using very thin coils in the pottery studio. Perry’s paintings truly exemplify his love of color; his work is non-objective and often made up of undulating bands of color.

Perry’s work has been shown in Massachusetts at The Gateway Gallery, the Fuller Craft Museum, the Mall at Chestnut Hill, the DeCordova Museum, the Lincoln Gallery, the Zeitgeist Gallery, the Starr Center at Brandeis University, and the Concord Center for the Visual Arts. Additionally his work has been exhibited at the Waldorf Astoria in NY; the Bottisham Village College in Cambridge, England; James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia; the Very Special Arts Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland; the Goldhaber-Fend Fine Arts Center Gallery in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He also received MENCAP awards in fine arts from the Ebensburg Center in Pennsylvania in 1994 and 1996.

Carl H. Phillips lives with his family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He began working at Gateway Arts in the summer of 2002.

Phillips is an extremely affable young man. He uses layers of paint to create vibrant saturated canvases that give a new life to images he’s exposed to through contemporary marketing advertisements. Part of the appeal of his work is the attention and time he allots to images and objects so apparent and integrated in our everyday lives.

Phillips has shown his work in The Gateway Gallery, Drive-By Projects in Watertown, and the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton.

Habib Plasencia was born in 1976 and lives in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. He has attended Gateway Arts since 2008.

Plasencia is inspired by the movies and TV shows he has recently seen, and he loves to draw in his sketchbook.  Plasencia’s work is very reactive to his surrounding; over the years he has developed a unique drawing style that combines elements of nature and existing anime characters. Recently, Plasencia has expanded his use of materials and has become more confident in his own drawing skills, moving away from anime as his main source. These new drawings are quite striking and have a resemblance to indigenous or aboriginal portraits.

Plasencia’s work has been shown in several locations throughout Massachusetts including The Gateway Gallery; Drive- by Projects in Watertown; and Barney’s NY in Boston.

Emmanuel Preston has been attending Gateway Arts since 2006.

Though he applies his images to ceramics, clothing, wooden plaques and other items, what Preston enjoys most is drawing and painting images of angels on paper or canvas. Preston’s work often depicts heavenly scenes combined with other imagery; particularly dream-inspired. Sometimes muscular men will appear, and he will occasionally add in imagery from cinema or another unexpected source. Preston is dedicated to perfecting his craft and visually realizing his internal thoughts, desires, and philosophies. He is comfortable working at many scales, from the intimate to the imposing.

Preston’s work has been exhibited at Drive- by Projects in Watertown, and at The Gateway Gallery.

Giovanni Ricci began working at Gateway Arts in 2017.

Ricci’s work is influenced by pop culture themes such as cartooning, animated sitcoms, classic rock, and action figure design. Ricci creates his own versions of these pop culture themes. Since beginning his work at Gateway, Ricci has expanded on his pop culture interests into areas such as jewelry making, fabric design, three-dimensional ceramic figurines, and comics.

Ricci’s work has been shown at The Gateway Store as well as in The Gateway Gallery.

Darryl Richards is an artist born and raised in Boston, MA.

Much of Richards’ artwork is influenced by his experiences in the city. He has been an artist since he was 5 years old, when he started drawing characters from his imagination. He continues to produce work using imagery from his mind, but is now also focused on drawing people and other animals using both technical/traditional portraiture and cartooning techniques. Richards sees his art as a journey that will take the viewer into another dimension. He hopes that his work will spark the viewer’s imagination, draw them into the world he has created, and take their perception of art to the next level. Richards has taken art classes through a variety of programs including Artists for Humanity. He specifically focuses on 2-D fine art.

Richards’ work has been exhibited at The Gateway Gallery, and in 2017 his work was exhibited in a debut solo exhibition.

Born in Miami, Florida in 1990, this gifted young artist worked in the studios at Gateway Arts from 2013-2019.

Sanchez produces skillful designs that are rich with content. Polite and soft-spoken, Sanchez imparts a caring quality to all his work. In a relatively short span of time, Sanchez has established a reputation for creating fine quality folk art in fiber, paint, wood, and practically all media that he explores. Sanchez derives inspiration for his art from numerous sources such as music, movies and other pop culture media, yet remains grounded in his Dominican and Latino background and family life.

Sanchez’s art work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanawaza, Japan, the Open Door Gallery in Boston, MA, Drive – by Projects in Watertown, MA and The Gateway Gallery.

Brenda Sepulveda was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Boston when she was 8 years old. She has been an artist at Gateway since 1996.

Sepulveda excels in all mediums, and often helps other artists get acquainted to their studios. She is bilingual in Spanish and English, loves to study words, and often incorporates the English language in her work. Her work has a graphic quality; her compositions become visually flattened with her intentional use of outline and color.

Sepulveda has shown at The Gateway Gallery, the Chestnut Hill Mall in Newton, and the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton.

Jordana Simpson grew up in Jamaica before relocating to Boston. She has been working in the Gateway Studios since November of 2015.

Simpson’s artistic interests lie in jewelry making, drawing, embroidery, and painting. She has recently begun exploring both hard and soft sculpture. Simpson’s choice of color and texture is most remarkable in her jewelry design, a medium that highlights her artistic vision. Bright colors and bold lines mark her pictorial work in both fiber and traditional painting and drawing media.

Simpson has exhibited at the Gateway Gallery.

Josie Sosa was born in 1973, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has attended Gateway Arts since 1996.

Sosa is a unique artist who fills surfaces with drawings of distorted human forms often wearing what she identifies as ‘large hats.’ Sosa’s compositions develop texture as she forcefully applies pen to paper, layering her marks which together build recognizable forms of people and text.

Sosa has participated in exhibitions in The Gateway Gallery, and Copacabana and Pier 60 at Chelsea Piers in New York, NY, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanawaza, Japan. Sosa was the recipient of the 2015 Yohei Nishimura Award from BiG-i Art Project in Osaka, Japan.

Parker Stallworth was born in 1991 and lives in Malden, MA. He began working in the Gateway studios in 2020.

Stallworth has a twin sister who, along with himself, sometimes figures into his playful, cartoon-style pen-and-ink-drawings. Stallworth has a strong interest in all still drawing media, including digital and watercolor, and his work also manifests in careful, astute graphite drawings of the animal kingdom. Stallworth’s sensitivity and attention to detail are notable in his approach.

Stallworth’s work is available in The Gateway Store.

Christina Taylor was born in 1983 in Boston. Taylor had a prolific career as a Gateway artist from 2006 to 2013.

She has a wonderful eye for color, perspective, and shape. Christina has a very meticulous and precise work method, which distinguishes her work in all media. She creates  jewelry, weaving, drawing, pottery, and stunning embroideries. Christina was always seen smiling and diligently working while at Gateway Arts.

Taylor has exhibited her work in the Phoenix Gallery, Berenberg Gallery, Gateway Gallery, the Mall at Chestnut Hill, and Barney’s New York retail stores. 

Justin Tuffo was born and raised in Braintree, Massachusetts. He joined the studios at Gateway Arts in 2016.

Tuffo creates meaningful work that is both personal and relatable to the world around him. He has a love for old classic films, thrash metal bands, Japanese anime shows, and comic books, all of which make appearances in his artwork. Tuffo’s work has a distinct style, presenting as raw and honest. He tends to create both 2- and 3-dimensional works, but he is most dedicated to and passionate about his fiber works (in particular, sewing and embroidery).

Tuffo’s work has been exhibited in The Gateway Gallery.

Bohill Wong (1934-2004) was born in Hong Kong. He came to the United States in 1934 and began attending Gateway Arts in 1979.

Wong drew almost constantly and interpreted his impressions of life through his art. The work he created is unique and entertaining.

Wong had many fans in the Boston area and completed numerous commissioned works. His work has been shown widely in the U.S. and abroad at the Berenberg Gallery in Boston; the Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton, MA; Very Special Arts Gallery in Washington, D.C.; and at Cavin-Morris Gallery, the Outsider Art Fair, the Cork Gallery at Lincoln Center and Margaret Bodell Gallery in New York City. Wong’s work has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, on WBUR radio by Lynda Morgenroth and in ArtsMedia, a Boston publication. A biography on Bohill Wong, produced by Marty Ostrow on WGBH’s Greater Boston Arts, won a New England Emmy in 1997.