The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. is an twelve year old cultural arts and preservation organization. The West Harlem Art Fund offers exhibition opportunities for artists wishing to share their art with residents uptown and around the city. The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. utilizes art and culture in open, public spaces to add aesthetic interest to our part of the city; inspire thought provoking solutions to problems; promote historical and cultural heritage; and support community involvement in local development. Our heritage symbol is the double crocodile from West Africa. Funtunmmireku-Denkyemmireku, which means unity in diversity.

WHAF Team Members

Richard R. Gonzalez, RA LEED® AP

Richard R. Gonzalez joined the Urban Design Lab in 2008. As an architect, urban designer and Native New Yorker, Richard brings an array of experience on issues effecting the urban environment. Previously, he has worked in the architectural profession designing a diverse mix of projects within New York, the U.S. and abroad. Such project types include master planning, corporate offices, and institutional, residential and industrial buildings. With an extensive background on community based projects within Harlem and Washington Height, he has worked with private organizations and not for profits entities addressing the social and political needs of the community.

Richard R. Gonzalez is a registered architect in the State of New York, and a LEED® Accredited Professional with the United States Green Building Council.

B.S. 1998, B.Arch. 1999, City College of New York; MSAUD, Columbia University, 2008

 
Tara Simone Powell

Born to a family of floral enthusiasts, it is no surprise that Tara Simone Powell grew to adore flowers and all things beautiful.  As a child, the family’s flower business (Barbara’s Flowers) was her playground; spending weekends and summers in the business with her parents.  By the age of seven, Tara Simone was following her father in New York’s famous flowers market and developing a budding curiosity for the world of flowers.

Majoring in Biological Sciences/Pre Med at Carnegie Mellon University, Tara Simone realized early on her academic career that medicine was not her calling.  Time would later reveal that her minor in Entrepreneurship was in fact her calling card.  Using the family’s flower business as her prototype, Tara Simone won Carnegie Mellon University’s Enterprise Award with Distinction on her thesis Retail Expansion and Product Line Development. 

Tara Simone’s creative retail model is on view in Harlem, New York where she launched Barbara’s Flowers.  This floral and lifestyle boutique is the first phase of the retail model that she created years ago. The store offers clients a glimpse into the range of possibilities for extraordinary blossoms with a plethora of design choices. 

Mike Vargas

Mike Vargas is the founder and CEO of Nuyorktricity, a multi-media “familia” comprised of motion pictures, music production and photography. As a New York native and Film BFA graduate from SUNY Purchase, Mike brings a formidable artistic passion to his independent filmmaking, writing, and photography.  His cinematography credits include Estilo Hip-Hop, a theatrically released feature length documentary that chronicles the rise of hip-hop activism throughout Latin America (estilohiphop.com). It premiered at the HBO Latino Film Festival and will air nationally on PBS in 2009. In addition, Mike has shot and edited innumerable live events, music videos and promotional packages. His recent clients include Will Smith / Overbrook Entertainment, Nike, Pepsi, Absolut, Philips, Diesel and G-Unit / Interscope Records. Mike recently self-published his first book of street life photographs, which were exhibited at The Brecht Forum gallery in downtown New York. He has also begun production on his next comedic film project entitled, "Disguise The Limit".  Currently, Mike joined forces with Moni Pineda to create Friends We Love (friendswelove.com) - a video series exploring the creative process of artists and creators.

Arthur Kevin Berry

Arthur Kevin Berry is an independent consultant with expertise in general and financial public/media relations; marketing; community, legal, and governmental affairs.  He has had 26 years of experience encompassing grant proposal writing; special events planning; business plan development; authoring financial fact books, annual reports, stock analyst surveys; general interest writing for media; special projects development, coordination, and administration; authoring press releases and alerts; media kits, speech-writing, briefing books, marketing presentations, oral presentations; and the development and use of computer-supported tools for project-specific activities.

Shandel Pitts

Shandel Pitts is a print designer with over 10 years experience in the industry. After working for Niles Communications Group for a number of years, she was empowered to go back out on her own with her company, Black Cat Design. There she creates fresh designs: logos, brochures, marketing materials, posters, banners, etc. for various non-profits and for profits organizations through-out New York City.

Guest Artists & Curators

Sai Morikawa

Sai Morikawa studied at The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts with Henry Finkelsten and Mary Beth Mackenzie. She earned a Certificate for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts at the National Academy. Her background in anatomical studies compliments her dynamic color brush strokes which is influenced by Abstract Expressionists. She paints mostly from direct observation and then develops motifs that forms a particular rhythm to her work. While at academy, she served as assistant to Hannah Frassinelli and Martha Bloom.

Since 2002, Ms. Morikawa has exhibited solo shows at Jain Marunochi Gallery, which is her representative gallery. She has also done group shows at HPGRP Gallery and organized the group show “Art for Peace” which traveled to Japan and was shown at the Bato-cho Hiroshige Museum, Nasu-Kogen Museum and Gallery Junho-do.

Ms. Morikawa has worked at the Celum Gallery and the Nippon Club Gallery. Since 2007 she has been writing and editing art articles for a bilingual art magazine “COOL” published in NY. 

Dianne Smith

Since the mid 1990’s, Dianne Smith's work has evolved from a unique mix of afro-cubism and surrealism to a fully expressed emotion of abstract expressionism to now powerful three-dimensional structures. Her intriguing and compelling minimalist abstracts are haunting and beautiful. Her sculptures are an extension of that beauty, equally compelling and exquisite. Dianne's work represents her inner connection to self -- which reflects the artistic and spiritual journey that has enabled her to find her voice as an artist.

Often compared to the likes of Richard Mayhew, Norman Lewis and Lynda Benglis, her work has the ability to incite our emotions with lush palettes, expressive brushstrokes, texture and form. She creates provocative and meaningful imagery that challenges the viewer to see and consider pure color, movement and organic shapes. While her work remains rooted in her African origins, its purpose is more universal. She puts it this way: "human civilizations and cultures all have Africa as their mother and are therefore more similar than we realize. I want my work to justly portray that connection, the essence of human existence, and thereby possibly affecting the whole of mankind for the better". Smith, once represented by UFA Gallery in Chelsea has shown throughout the Tri-State area, as well as, California, Miami, North Carolina, Philadelphia and Arkansas.

Dianne is one of the artists featured in the 2007 Boondoggle Film Documentary Colored Frames, which takes a look back at fifty years in African American Art. She was co-producer of an online radio show the New Palette, dedicated to visual artists of color, and since 2005 has been a teaching artist with Lincoln Center Institute. She has exhibited with noted artists including Norman Lewis, Frank Bowling, Samella Lewis, Chakaia Booker, and Howardena Pindell. Dianne also commissioned by the historical Abyssinian Baptist Church to create the artwork commemorating their 2008 Bicentennial, presented esteemed Poet and Author, Dr. Maya Angelou and Broadway Dance Choreographer George Faison each with one of her most celebrated pieces in 1995: Spirit of My Ancestors "I" and "II." Dianne Smith is a Bronx native of Belizean descent. She attended LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, the Otis Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her works are also in the private collections of Danny Simmons, UFA Gallery, Vivica A. Fox, Rev. and Mrs. Calvin O. Butts, III, Cicely Tyson and Terry McMillian.

Nora Mae Carmichael

Receiving immediate attention as a self-taught artist from the start of her career in 1994, Nora Mae’s passion for creating is fueled by the stories of rich characters that emerge from her imagination. Growing up biracial during the turbulent sixties, Nora Mae’s life journey from the San Francisco area to her current home in Harlem provides a wealth of experience to draw upon. Her paintings often engender strong emotional responses from their viewers and have been compared to a variety of twentieth-century masters. She is unaffected by these comparisons however, as her creative spirit remains determined to be free to express on its own terms and to explore new and uncharted territory. Nora Mae’s work has recently been featured alongside prominent artists such as Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Allan Rohan Crite, Faith Ringgold and Jacob Lawrence at major exhibits across the country.

Kohei Matsushita

Kohei Matsushita is a contemporary artist based in Japan. For many years, he has conducted research into waste reduction, re-use and recycling, which is how he came to appreciate the power of “Japanese SUMI (charcoal)” and the effect of carbonization as an environmental technology. This appreciation did not stop with just the technology. From his experience, he has found charcoal to be the perfect medium with which to express the beauty of “wabi sabi” (an aesthetic based on the acceptance of transience), one of the original pillars of Japanese culture. Added to this, his sensitivity for aesthetics and his interplay of black and white is surely an important factor that drew him to the life of an artist.

He is one considered one of the most remarkable artists in Japan and is successful in expressing circulation and regeneration in an artistic manner, under the banner of the environment. It is for this reason that Kohei Matsushita is called an ecological artist.

Kenjiro Kitade

Born in Japan, Kitade was a keen creator even as a child and remembers fondly his earliest artistic endeavors with cartoons and Lego. As fate would have it, his elementary school had a ceramics studio, and he was instantly drawn to the feel and immediacy of the clay. He moved to the United States with his parents in 1990, and didn't get his hands into clay again until he went to formally study art at New York University.

Remaining in New York after earning a Master of Fine Arts in 2004, he quickly built a national and international reputation. Just a year out of school, Kitade took the bronze prize at South Korea's World Ceramic Exposition 2005, and earlier this month he was invited to show at the highly selective SOFA show (Sculpture Objects and Functional Art Exposition) in Chicago.

Manuel Mansylla

Born in Guatemala City, his “grassroots” architecture studio [reActivar] prompted him with the opportunity to work with an overplus of artisans, in a non-hierarchical collaborative way. Over the years it has managed to carry out an unprecedented number of award-winning projects by challenging and reversing the rules of conventional architecture.

Inspired by the amazing power of creativity, he has now set out to create a global network of collaborating artisans that will not only, instigate cross-cultural-pollination but will also prompt new forms of sustainable design.