The Alloy Project

The evening Cocktail Event will bring together artists, collectors, arts enthusiasts, and professional leaders from the Washington, DC metropolitan community and beyond. Featuring works for purchase from The Alloy Project, honored guests, artist dialogues, live music, and a special performance by Sandrine Schaefer & Jeremy R. Brooks, this event promises to be our most vibrant night of the year.

Throughout the day, visitors will be able to visit the exhibition on view at the Tephra ICA gallery, drop-in for a handmade papermaking workshop led by the Navigation Press from George Mason University, and enjoy a public concert in the park hosted by Reston Town Center Association.

Caitlin Teal Price

Caitlin Teal Price is a mixed media artist using photography and drawing to explore the tangible and intangible currents found within daily life. She was born in Chicago, IL and grew up in Washington, DC. She earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from Yale School of Art. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the American University Katzen Art Museum and promised to the Phillips Collection and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Notably, her work has been exhibited at Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden; The Sarasota Art Museum in Sarasota, FL; and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Scratch Drawings at Candela Gallery in Richmond, Virginia (2021) and Green is the Secret Color to Make Gold at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (2018). Her work has been published in periodicals such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and most recently Art Maze Mag.

Mars Ibarreche

Born on the beaches of Florida, raised in New York City, and adopted by the City of Angels, Mars has lived a life of constant creativity, even when their work goes beyond the confines of the gallery or what is strictly defined as art. For much of the past twenty years, first while living in New York and working with the clothing company A.P.C, and more recently as a designer themselves (formerly under Amber Ibarreche), they have developed a unique aesthetic, one that combines tenderness, sensuality, and humor, with a street/punk intensity and darkness—not just in painting and collage,but via poetry, murals, and clothing.

Sandy Williams IV

Sandy Williams IV is an artist and educator whose work generates moments of communal catharsis. Their conceptual practice uses time itself as a material and aims to unfold the hidden legacies of public spaces. Through ephemeral, malleable, and collaborative public memorials, Williams’ work unsettles popular colonial logics of permanence, uniformity, and displacement. This work creates participatory paths for communal engagement informed by targeted research and site-specificity: holding space for disenfranchised public memories and visualizing frameworks of emancipation and shared agency. While aesthetically Williams’ work flirts with minimalism, the practice is deeply interdisciplinary, and carefully layers contextual research, communal activity, collaboration, civic action, and performance. Their projects expand beyond the limits of the gallery toward public space: places of education and worship, fashion, virtual portals, and even upward to the sky. Williams’ work is guided by generations of freedom fighters who have dared to unsettle global colonial practices and the visible and invisible structures that sustain them.

Williams is a recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts COVID Fellowship and the New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship and have had solo exhibtions at 1708 Gallery (Richmond), the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (Ontario), Reynolds Gallery (Richmond), and Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville). Selected group exhibitions and performances include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, The Arlington Museum of Contemporary Art, The Harnett Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU, Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC), Martos Gallery (NYC), M+B Gallery (LA), de boer Gallery (LA), Springsteen (Baltimore), and NADA House (NYC). 

Williams received a BA from University of Virginia and a MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Richmond.

Mariana Parisca

Mariana Parisca (she/they) is an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator from the USA and Venezuela. Through sculptural, lens-based, and performative works, they investigate cultural notions of the relationship between matter and consciousness and its implications on contemporary global economics, consumer culture, and geopolitical identities. Parisca earned an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Parisca’s work has shown at dOCUMENTA 15, Kassel, Germany; CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY; Mas Allá, Bogota, Colombia; Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA; Rudimento in Quito, Ecuador; NARS Foundation in New York City, NY; the New Wight Biennial in Los Angeles, CA; the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond, VA; the Virginia MOCA in Virginia Beach, VA; and New Works Gallery in Chicago, IL among others. Mariana has received various awards including an Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Tribble Grant, the Eliot Scholarship, and the Paul F. Miller Scholarship. They have been artist in residence at Atlantic Center for the Arts, Nave Proyecto, Vermont Studio Center, Visual Arts Center in Richmond, and Studio Two Three.

Emon Surakitkoson

Emon Surakitkoson (b. 1985) is a Thai-born artist who emigrated to the United States when she was 19 years old, and resides in the Washington, DC and Baltimore area. Her drawings and paintings explore themes of minimalism and abstraction, creating a sharply defined artistic voice that allows for communication and expression beyond English and her native Thai. Embracing a fascination with research, techniques, tools, and compositional ideas, Surakitkoson also counters assumptions and prejudices based on attributes like gender, size, and race: Working large, using tools, and utilizing her body as a motive force are all integral elements of her process and signature approach. Her studio focus is on fine art and commercial work, with clients that include Kimpton Hotel, Marriott International Headquarters, Hyatt Regency Hotel, and American Express. Outside of her art practice, Emon has worked with local organizations to mentor school students in art, and has produced events and markets that support local artists and makers around DC, including through partnerships with the Hilton brothers’ H2 Collective and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Katie Pumphrey

Katie Pumphrey is an American contemporary artist. Her paintings, sculptures, and installations use abstraction and imagery to explore the tensions and the connectedness between human instincts and play. Her works have been exhibited in galleries across the United States, including solo exhibitions in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Key West. In 2009, she graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in Painting. She has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Studios of Key West, Gallery Four, and the Creative Alliance.

Pumphrey is also an ultra-marathon open water swimmer. Notable swims include the English Channel (2015, 2022), around the island of Manhattan (2017), and the Catalina Channel (2018)— those three swims make up the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming. Pumphrey was the 194th person (73rd woman) in the world to achieve that honor. Her work is deeply connected to this aspect of her life, and her experiences in the water greatly influence and drive her work. Pumphrey lives and works in Baltimore, MD.

Sandrine Schaefer

Sandrine Schaefer (b. 1981) is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily works in place-based performance art and interactive installation. Positioning the live encounter as primary and using a site-sensitive approach, Sandrine’s art practice is social and collaborative. Their artwork challenges conventional viewing tendencies by using long duration and strategies that reward curious viewers with multi-sensory elements. Sandrine's most current work explores everyday encounters between humans and more-than-human animals in shared spaces to reimagines ways for humans to be in relationship with their surrounding more-than-human worlds.

Sandrine’s work has been exhibited internationally in galleries, museums, performance art festivals, and non-art designated spaces. They have received awards through the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Tanne Foundation, the ICA Foster Prize, the Boston Foundation, and the Edes Finalist Award. Sandrine holds a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition to their studio art practice, Sandrine is an independent curator, writer and teacher. Sandrine is an Assistant Professor of Visual Art in 3D and Expanded Practices at Coastal Carolina University and serves on the Artist Advisory Council at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. 

Jeremy R. Brooks

Jeremy R. Brooks (b. 1979) received a BFA in art and design from Grand Valley State University in 2001, and a MFA in ceramic art from Alfred University in 2007. He has balanced his career between working as an artist and teaching at the university level. Brooks has exhibited work in over 100 exhibitions and is an Associate Professor of Ceramics and 3D at Coastal Carolina University. Some of his honors include a fellowship in craft by the South Carolina Arts Commission (FY24), an emerging artist award by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (2011), and being selected as a guest of honor at the XXI International Biennial of Vallauris, France (2010). Jeremy currently resides in Conway, South Carolina where he surrounds himself with copious amounts of ceramic figurines and ceramic decals. He identifies as an amiable ceramophile afflicted with occasional bouts of decalcomania.