The Alloy Project

Mark your calendars for this celebration of creativity, collaboration, and the impact of contemporary art.

The Alloy Project, Tephra ICA’s Annual Benefit is a fundraising initiative offering new collaborative artworks for purchase through an online auction and ticketed evening Cocktail Event. In honor of Tephra ICA’s 50th anniversary, we’re hosting a special edition of our artist commission program. Ten artists, who have significantly contributed to our legacy over the past decade, will be featured. Don't miss this chance to bid on and win a singular piece of Tephra ICA's history. The evening will also feature honored guests, artist dialoges, gourmet bites by our partners at Pisco y Nazca, cocktails, and DJ. Plus, enjoy a special site-specific installation. It's the perfect opportunity to mix and mingle with artists, collectors, art enthusiasts, and professional leaders from the Washington, DC metropolitan community and beyond. Join us for a night to remember!

Get Your Tickets Here

View and Register for the Auction Here

Ann Barbieri

Ann Barbieri was born in Washington, DC and, after detours to Paris, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, she now lives and works in Northern Virginia. Her studio is located in The Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, VA and she has exhibited widely in the DC area. Barbieri has presented solo exhibitions at the Northern Virginia Community College (2019) and the Arts Club of Washington (2016). In 2018, she was included in Latitudes: The Washington Women's Art Center 1975-1987 at the Katzen Arts Center at American University. Her education includes a BA and MAT in French, as well as classes in drawing, painting, and printmaking at UCLA and the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design.

Hillary Waters Fayle

Hillary Waters Fayle received a BFA from Buffalo State College and a MFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she is currently an Assistant Professor and Director of the fiber program. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY; Grace Farms Foundation in New Canaan, CT; the United States Embassy to Sri Lanka, Colombo; and the Kalmthout Arboretum & Botanical Gardens in Belgium. Her work is currently on view at the US Embassies in Algiers, Algeria, and Dhaka, Bangladesh. Recent professional projects and publications include an exhibition at The Chautauqua Institution in New York as well as collaborations with Domestika, L'Occitane en Provance, and the New York Botanical Garden. A public installation in collaboration with the AKG Museum can be seen year-round in Buffalo, NY.

Monroe Isenberg

Monroe Isenberg is an interdisciplinary artist known for his sculptures, installations, and time-based media works. Isenberg holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Arts from the University of Maryland and is currently based in Los Angeles. His work has garnered recognition and support from the Trawick Foundation, the William and Dorothy Yeck Family Foundation, the International Sculpture Center, and the Puffin Foundation among others. Isenberg's work is included in private collections and has been featured in international art magazines such as Stirworld, Feminist, and Aesthetica. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally, with support from esteemed institutions like the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Delaware Contemporary Museum, and the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster. Isenberg has participated in various invitational residency programs and he currently serves as an Assistant Professor and Department Head of Sculpture at Orange Coast College.

Christopher Kardambikis

Christopher Kardambikis explores space, process, and narrative through books, prints, and drawings. A bibliophile and zinester, Kardambikis founded Paper Cuts, a podcast and publishing platform that documents the contemporary world of zines and artist publications, as an excuse to talk to people about the books they make. He received his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and MFA from the University of California, San Diego. In 2020, he co-founded Cousins’ Books, a pop-up bookshop in New Castle, PA, with his mother, Dr. Patricia Kardambikis. Christopher is an Associate Professor at George Mason University.

Dalya Luttwak

Dalya Luttwak is a sculptor living and working in Chevy Chase, MD. Luttwak’s installations have been displayed at the Triennale Museum, Milano, Italy; the Kreeger Museum Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; the Arsenale in Venice, Italy (on the occasion of the 54th International Venice Biennale); James Madison University's Sawhill Gallery; the American University Museum Katzen Arts Center; at Galleria Ca’ d’Oro in New York City; and on the walls of Castello Lanza di Trabia, Sicily in front of Sorrento’s art museum. Her work has repeatedly been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, and many other US and European publications. Luttwak serves on the Advisory Board of the Washington Sculptors’ Group.

Jackie Milad

Jackie Milad is a Baltimore City, U.S.- based artist whose mixed-media abstract paintings and collages address the history and complexities of dispersed cultural heritage and multi-ethnic identity. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Select exhibitions include The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD; The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Charlotte, NC; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; Arthur Ross Gallery University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; and Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC. Milad has received many notable awards and recognitions including as a 2024 Creative Capital Grantee, a Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalist, a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Ruby Grantee, a multi-year recipient of the Individual Artist Grant from Maryland State Arts Council, and the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Travel Prize to conduct in-depth research on the Egyptian antiquities held at the British Museum and Petrie Museums in London. Her work is included in several public collections, including The Baltimore Museum of Art, Academy Art Museum, Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Library, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Pizzuti Collection, and Meta Open Art Program. Milad received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and her MFA from Towson University. She is currently represented by SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, NC and Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, PA.

Katie O'Keefe

Katie O'Keefe is a Baltimore-based figurative fiber artist. From the age of 14 O’Keefe has been dealing with Chronic Lyme and her experience with this illness has had a great impact on her creative work, leading her to adapt and discover the joys and sensuality of working with thread. She received her BFA in Fiber Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and studied textiles abroad in Turkey. She interned at Dieu Donné Papermill in New York, where she learned the intricate processes of handmade paper and she has studied small scale metal smithing techniques at the Baltimore Jewelry Center. In 2024, she was a Baker Artist Award Finalist. Katie has notably exhibited her work at Current Space, School 33 Art Center, Towson University, and The Baltimore Jewelry Center. 

Anne C. Smith

Anne C. Smith is a visual artist in Washington, DC, working primarily in drawing and screenprinting. She uses abstraction and observations of her environment to consider how places are held in the imagination and offer a roadmap for being. In 2023, she took part in the inaugural cohort of the CARD Fellowship, a collaboration between DC Public Libraries, The Nicholson Project, and The Phillips Collection.

Smith learned silkscreen printmaking from her mentor, the Master Printmaker Lou Stovall, for whom she was a studio assistant beginning in 2010. She interviewed Stovall for the catalog to his 2022 exhibition at the Kreeger Museum, curated by Danielle O’Steen. Smith is a 2015 graduate of George Mason University, holding an MFA in Printmaking while also studying drawing and sculpture there. She has taught drawing at GMU, the National Gallery of Art, and Northern Virginia Community College, and screenprinting at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, where she was a Silkscreen Associate from 2022-2023. Her practice has been informed by woodworking techniques learned at the Penland School of Crafts and listening to poetry. Smith has participated in residencies with Artist Mother Studio at the Washington Project for the Arts, Kala Art Institute, and the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Her work is in the collections of the US State Department, Capital One, INOVA Hospital, and University of Maryland Global Campus. She is represented by Adah Rose Gallery in Kensington, MD. 

Stephanie J. Williams

Stephanie J. Williams is a tinkerer and doodler. Her work navigates hierarchies of taste, unpacking how constructed histories affect contemporary social coding. She received her MFA in Sculpture from RISD. She has shown at the Studio Museum Harlem, Washington Project for the Arts, Lawrence University, the Delaware Contemporary, and the Walters Museum, with residencies at the Nicholson Project, Sculpture Space, Williams College, the Corporation of Yaddo, VCCA, and ACRE. She has been reviewed by The New York Times, the Village Voice, Huffington Post and The Washington Post. Recent projects have screened at the Slamdance (2024), Ann Arbor Film Festival (2024), New Orleans Film Festival (Best Animated Short, 2022), Thomas Edison Film Festival/Black Maria (2023, 2024) and the Atlanta Film Festival (2023, 2024) with support from the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Media Studies at Johns Hopkins University and multiple DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Fellowships. She is based in DC/Baltimore and currently teaches stop motion animation for Maryland Institute College of Art.

Sue Wrbican

Sue Wrbican lives in Alexandria, VA, and has held a studio in the Monroe Street Arts Walk in Washington, DC since 2013. She has held residencies at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida; Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California; and The Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She is part of the international art collective Atlantika and local collective Cultivate. As a founding member of the Floating Lab Collective, her work was exhibited at ZKM in Germany and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, NYC, NY. Sue Wrbican is a Professor in the School of Art and Design at George Mason University, and her education includes an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and BA in English Writing with a concentration in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh.