Brooklyn based artist, designer and architect

Emma Brennan is a multi-disciplinary designer at frog. She investigates and prototypes with unique mediums to explore how they can produce new forms of communication and systems. Her work has ranged from designing technical data visualization tools to running workshops that support patients with postpartum depression. She's contributed to hybrid experiences, strategy, and product design for companies such as eBay, Data & Society, JPMorgan Chase, and AT&T. Previously, she built a design practice within the U.S. Census Bureau’s Innovation Lab. As a UX designer & Civic Digital Fellow, she helped develop programs, digital products and community engagement to ensure government services meet the needs of the public.

photographer • seabeing • wanderlust  • possimistic moonchild  • sunkissed girl made in Ege living NY and beyond

Chris Ballantyne’s work focuses on vernacular architecture and observation of the American landscape.  Banal features of suburban and industrial zones are sources for paintings that highlight the quirky and absurd.  Ballantyne states that, “Growing up in a military family and moving to different parts of the country, there was a certain familiarity to the kinds of houses and neighborhoods. They were a series of suburban developments built in separate regions of the country, always on the outskirts of larger cities, at the exit ramps of interstate highways, and all very similar in age and design.  My own notions of space developed out of this cultural landscape which was striving for an indidvidual sense of personal space,  consciously economic, and somewhere between urban and rural.” Dysfunctional structures are flawless in their strangeness, made beautiful through symmetry, simplified lines and flat, subdued colors. Ballantyne eliminates detail to emphasize the subtleties of the way we experience space and our attempts at containment. He extends these concepts further by expanding the imagery of his paintings beyond the picture plane and onto the surrounding walls. “Most of my works involve combinations of various places, drawn from memory. As well, my own interests in skateboarding and surfing altered how I saw  the use of these structures ranging from empty pools, sidewalk curbs, to ocean jetties in a way that tied in to my sense of this larger push and pull between culture and nature.” With shrewd restraint, Ballantyne accentuates the antisocial effects of our built environment with a hint of humor and plenty of ambiguity. A curious emptiness permeates the work of Chris Ballantyne. Graphically rendered buildings, pools, parking lots, and fences take on new meanings and amplified significance, isolated on flat fields of color.

Justin James King is an artist/photographer living in New York City whose work has been shown internationally. He is currently working on a project that expands on his interest in landscape and memory, taking inspiration from the remnants of a devastating hurricane that changed the course of a river in rural Vermont. When he's not working in his studio or traveling to shoot locations he can often be found at one of these fine places.