Romano Gallery Artist Exhibitions

Award-winning photographer, multimedia journalist and documentary filmmaker Thomas Fanklin's exhibit focuses on issues related to human migration. The Monclair State University professor and Pulitzer Prize finalist is a multimedia and visual storyteller who explores global issues with local and regional impact, including immigration, refuges, and policies related to undocumented residents and asylum seekers. 

Painter and photographer (and husband and wife) Ralph Gabriner and Dena Schutzer explore their individual responses to street and domestic life with what they call the "geometries of life" using shapes, colors and forms.

Ceramicist Joni Oye-Benintende uses fired and unfired clay, raku and sawdust firing processes, and found objects to create sculpture and pottery forms that invite the viewer to regard the works as prompts to uncover memories, recognize images, and to create their own stories and meditations.

New York City-based landscape painter (and mother of Blair architrecture teacher Eli King) Lois Dodd will showcase her work alongside that of more than a dozen of her artist friends, including Paul Carrellas, David Dewey, Jeffrey Epstein, Daniel Finaldi, Joseph Fiore, Leslie Hertzog, Julie Jankowski, Arthur Kvarnstrom, Lunn Kotula, Barbara Kulicke, Elizabeth O'Reilly, St. Clair Sullivan and former Blair fine arts teacher Rita Baragona. Ms. Dodd transforms the ordinary into poetic moments filled with light and color, exhibiting her work in New York City, across the U.S.A. and internationally.

Over the last 40 years, Mel Leipzig has painted people from all walks of life, ranging from high-school principals to well-known artists. The artist, who was honored with an award from the New Jersey Foundation last year, paints his subjects in person rather than from photographs as a means of preserving the intensity of feeling as he creates his art.

Artist and cartoonist Shawn Cheng makes pictures of monsters. Drawing inspiration from mythical traditions from around the world, he creates characters to act out the conflict between the natural and unnatural and manmade. The monsters in his maximal, visually dense images are awe-inspiring, even beautiful, evoking a sense of wonder, as well as impending doom.