A Multi-Scalar Habitat

peep space

(all writing by artists at Peep Space and curator Austin Thomas)

A Multi-Scalar Habitat
On view: February 28th-April 4th

Opening Reception: Saturday February 28th, 6-8pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays & Sundays, 12-4 PM
Peep Space | 92 Central Ave, Tarrytown, NY | www.peepspaceny.com

Peep Space is pleased to present

A Multi-Scalar Habitat

A Group Exhibition Curated / Orchestrated by Austin Thomas

A Multi-Scalar Habitat gathers twelve artists whose practices build worlds tactile, imagined, and hand-made. Together, their works assemble an unexpected community of objects: drawings that open portals, ceramics that behave like organic architecture, textiles that function as intricately woven tapestries, and paintings that stretch gesture into luminous landscape. Installed in close relation, these works form a layered environment that shifts in scale.

The exhibition is rooted in the ethos of Pocket Utopia, my long-evolving, artist-run curatorial project that began as a Brooklyn salon for experimentation, conversation, and communal making. Peep Space shares this lineage of artist-driven activation. Here, the gallery becomes a shared habitat, one that grows through proximity, play, and the pleasure of looking closely.

Alyssa Fanning contributes delicate colored-pencil and pastel portals of small, precise worlds. Kristin Cronic counters with a large “mother” tree painting that offers atmospheric space, anchoring the exhibition. Dahlia Elsayed’s glazed micro-architectures, part Egyptian, part futuristic, serve as imagined dwellings. Jeff Feld adds improvised sculptural objects assembled from found materials, structures that echo resilience, contingency, and the handmade city.

Danielle Dimston’s biomorphic forms sit somewhere between blueprint and dream, painted lines, mazes, plans, and dwellings unfolding in real time. Traci Johnson’s hooked-rug textile works bring color, tactility, and healing into the space; their surfaces operate as soft terrains. Scott Teplin’s exuberant handmade fake fireworks offer a burst of idiosyncrasy and mischievous energy. Sharon Louden’s paintings stretch gesture into light-filled, rhythmic fields, while Julie Torres’s thick, painted abstractions assert material presence and community-driven energy.

seven seven ceramics contributes hive-like vessels whose asymmetries echo natural growth and collective shelter. Ellen Letcher collages torn fragments of popular imagery into dynamic, layered surfaces that hover between ruin and renewal. And Clintel Steed’s painted faces on playing cards bring intimate immediacy to the characters dealt into the exhibition's world, each portrait a compact narrative.

Across materials and scales, these works behave like habitats: sites of possibility, refuge, improvisation, and care. The exhibition doubles as a happening, with programming that extends its ethos beyond the walls. On April 4th, the gallery hosts Draw All Day, an intergenerational gathering led by expert drawers Alyssa Fanning and Clintel Steed, honoring PeepSpace’s commitment to artist-centered community practice.

A Multi-Scalar Habitat proposes that worlds can be built through small acts: a mark, a cut edge, a looped thread, a glazed surface, a found object, a face on a card. Together, these works create a shared environment in which art, scale, and community fold into each other, and where visitors are invited to inhabit the space with curiosity, generosity, and attention.

Works by: Kristin Cronic, Danielle Dimston, Dahlia Elsayed, Alyssa Fanning, Jeff Feld, Traci Johnson, Ellen Letcher, Sharon Louden, seven seven ceramics, Clintel Steed, Scott Teplin, and Julie Torres

Artist Bios:

Kristin Cronic

Born and raised in Jacksonville, FL, Kristin Cronic began painting at night while serving as an officer in the United States Navy. Her longing for space, freedom, and rootedness—felt acutely during months at sea—led her to plants as subjects and metaphors of resilience.

Cronic earned her MFA from Jacksonville University (2022), where she now teaches drawing. She is represented by Stellers Gallery (FL) and Lorenzo Swinton Gallery (TN). Recent solo exhibitions include the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, the United States Pentagon, and the U.S. Naval Academy Museum. She has exhibited at Pocket Utopia (NYC) and in Number Inc.’s 2024 Art of the South at Stove Works (Chattanooga). She is a 2024–25 Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville Individual Artist Grant recipient and illustrated the 2025 Veterans Day Google Doodle.

Danielle Dimston

Danielle Dimston has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Stephen and Palmina Pace Foundation, the Peter S. Reed Foundation, and Artists Space. Her commissions include projects for the Millay Colony, Smack Mellon, and Tiffany & Co.

A graduate of the New York Studio School (drawing/painting) with an MFA from Boston University, Dimston has served as Visiting Faculty at the University of the Arts (Philadelphia) and the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown). She has exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad; her work is held in numerous collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art. Dimston is represented by Municipal Bonds, San Francisco.

Dahlia Elsayed

Dahlia Elsayed is a multidisciplinary artist whose paintings, installations, and woven works merge narrative and landscape to explore personal and cultural geography. Her work has been shown at the Cairo Biennale, the New Jersey State Museum, Morgan Lehman Gallery, Penn Station, and the Ford Foundation Gallery. Her awards include grants and fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, the NJ State Council on the Arts, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is a MacDowell Fellow and board member, and a Professor of Humanities/Art at CUNY–LaGuardia.

Alyssa Fanning

Born in Teaneck, NJ, Alyssa Fanning holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Montclair State University. She has exhibited at the AC Institute, The Glass House, the Newark Museum, Platform x David Zwirner, and Teckningsmuseet (Sweden). Recent solo exhibitions include A Thousand Moons and Suns at Platform Project Space (Brooklyn) and Drawings at Carlton Hobbs (NYC). Her two-person 2024 show with Kristin Cronic opened at Pocket Utopia. Her work has appeared in BOMB, Hyperallergic, Battery Journal, and Two Coats of Paint.

Fanning teaches at Montclair State University and Stevens Institute of Technology, where she received the 2022 Distinguished Teaching Faculty Award. She also curates exhibitions and recently launched the Show & Tell Art Talk series.

Jeff Feld

With a background in social work, Jeff Feld creates sculptures from found and constructed materials that embody improvisation, resilience, and the instability of contemporary life. His work emerges from direct material negotiation—repairing, testing, and embracing provisionality.

Feld is the founder of 325 Project Space, an exhibition and event venue exploring material culture and dialogue. His work has been exhibited at The Drawing Center, White Columns, Artists Space, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Queens Museum.

Traci Johnson

Born in NYC in 1998, Traci Johnson is an emerging textile artist whose tufted and hooked tapestries explore spirituality, sexuality, and identity. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology (BFA), Johnson transforms the language of sanctuary—shaped by their religious upbringing—into spaces of queer liberation and embodied healing. Their practice emphasizes construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction as pathways to selfhood. Johnson’s symbolic, narrative-rich works invite viewers into their own processes of clarity, discovery, and rebirth.

Ellen Letcher

Ellen Letcher (American, b. 1972) is a collage-based artist known for high-energy compositions built from ripped magazines, newspapers, and photographs, fused with paint as adhesive and gesture.

A key figure in the Bushwick art scene, she co-founded Famous Accountants (2009) and held her first NYC solo show at Pocket Utopia (2012). Letcher now co-directs LABspace in Hillsdale, NY, with artist Julie Torres, supporting a vibrant Hudson Valley arts community.

Sharon Louden

Sharon Louden is an artist, educator, and advocate for artists. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Her work has been exhibited at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Drawing Center, Carnegie Mellon University, the Weisman Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Kemper Museum.

Louden’s work is in major collections, including the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is the editor of the influential Living and Sustaining a Creative Life book series. 

seven seven ceramics

seven seven ceramics is a Hudson Valley–based ceramic artist whose practice grows from early childhood education and a love of handwork. Inspired by natural asymmetry and organic textures, she creates vessels that invite slowness, attention, and daily ritual. Her tactile, intentionally irregular wares foreground the quiet beauty of everyday objects.

Clintel Steed

Clintel Steed (b. 1977, Salt Lake City, UT) is a painter living in Peekskill, NY. He holds a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, an MFA from Indiana University, and completed Advanced Studies at the New York Studio School. His dynamic practice spans portraiture, figuration, and improvisational on-site drawing.

Scott Teplin

Born in Milwaukee and based in NYC since 1995, Scott Teplin works across watercolor, drawing, and conceptual series rooted in play, rule-breaking, and reimagined structures. He holds a BS from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Washington.

Teplin has exhibited internationally since 1998. His work is in over two dozen museum and university collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (NY + SF), The New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Walker Art Center, and the Smithsonian Institution. His ongoing Isometric and Fireworksseries explores potential, danger, control, and wonder.

Julie Torres

Julie Torres is a Hudson, NY–based artist and curator known for bold color, layered surfaces, and hybrid painterly forms that bridge sculpture and painting. A veteran of the Brooklyn artist-run scene, she co-directs LABspace in Hillsdale, NY, with Ellen Letcher. Her work and projects have been featured in HuffPost, The Wall Street Journal, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, Two Coats of Paint, Chronogram, Gawker, and Gothamist. Torres’s practice is grounded in community-building and experimental collaborations that deepen networks among artists.

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