Bethlehem Central High School is hosting an Alumni Art Exhibition featuring the works of eight talented BC graduates. The art show is open now through Friday, November 13.
The art show can be viewed in the Main Lobby by students and staff during the school day, from 7:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. It is open to the general public during school events.
All are invited to a Closing Reception (open to the public) at the high school on Friday, Nov. 13, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The show features the following artists:
- Teresa Ricci
- Kathryn Kirby
- Katthew Arthur
- Shannon Delaney
- Cathleen Owens
- Sue Sheridan
- Claudia Skuza
- Gabriella Mirabelli
2026 ALUMNI ART EXHIBITION
Teresa Ricci
BCHS Class of 2019
MFA, Purchase College, 2027; BFA, SUNY New Paltz, 2023
ARTIST STATEMENT
My paintings act as a ritualistic, transmissible experience between past and present self, Mother Earth, and all her inhabitants. The picture plane is used as an arrival point for deconstructing hierarchies between humans and the world. Paintings push through the foggy unconscious and objects overlap; dreams and memories pool. Mirroring life, humor bleeds through the absurd.
My oil paintings highlight humor while addressing uncomfortable moments and chaos in daily rituals.
I developed a later appreciation of Mother Nature. She winds and firmly roots herself into paintings. Earth tones encompass and surround landscapes, animals, and figures. Humans converge and intertwine with environmental elements in my work: plants, animals, and humans. As we take their space, they reclaim ours, resulting in mythical beasts. How I create paintings mirrors environmental processes that are perpetually looped. They are tilled through a rigorous surface preparation and pruned to the essential moments through a constant destruction and restoration of the final image. At the end of it all, the painted images remain like genetics, connected to my parents’ history which is ingrained within me.
I have memories of my father showing me kaleidoscopic music videos that he obsessed over in his youth. My imagination exploded from these references, influencing a psychedelic worldview further enticing a merging of the elements of my surroundings. At that same age, my gardener mother encouraging me to laugh when things were difficult, to aid and sustain the worms lingering after a heavy rainstorm, encouraging a positive view instead of a critique of life.
Kathryn Kirby
BCHS Class of 2020
Painting BFA, June 2025; Curation MFA (expected June 2028)
ARTIST STATEMENT
Katie Kirby (b. 2002, graduated from BCHS in 2020) has a BFA degree in Painting from the Savannah College of Art & Design. After graduation Katie’s work has been featured in both national and international exhibitions. She has worked for the Albany Center Gallery in Albany, NY, lived in Greece for an artist residency program, and started graduate school for Art Curation at Parsons School of Design in New York City in the year following graduation. Growing up in Upstate, New York and then going to college in both Richmond, Virginia and Savannah, Georgia, Kirby has been able to see firsthand the changes in culture — both socially and politically — in the United States as she traveled down the East Coast. Living abroad during her schooling and after expanded her perspective even further. Lacking a definitive place that feels like “home” in her adult life, she has often struggled with feeling accepted or understood by the people around her. As a result, Kirby’s art captures the memories that she fears will be lost in the chaos, while simultaneously aiming to make her viewers feel seen, represented and less alone as they navigate their own lives. She often employs recycled, found and personal objects or fabrics in her work in order to further the importance of memory and history in her process. She uses the idea of universal experiences or memories to connect with her audience and invoke feelings of recognition, nostalgia and validation.
Katthew Arthur
BCHS Class of 2024
Illustration, Rochester Institute of Technology (Anticipated 2028)
ARTIST STATEMENT
Katthew Arthur is a fine artist and illustrator who works across multiple media including acrylic, oil paint, colored pencil, clay and digital illustration.
While going under the name Katthew Kennaz his fine art focuses on displaying the beauty and power of the trans experience. Utilizing symbolism, mark-making and color to translate these concepts into recognizable symbols. He also incorporates western cultural symbols to communicate complex ideas of trans identity to a wider audience, pushing for a point of connection to cause empathetic and intellectual understanding.
He creates his illustrative work under the name Katthew Arthur, going over multiple disciplines as he aims to expand the range of his portfolio while studying in art school, looking into fields such as portraiture, visual development, spot illustrations and colorist positions.
Shannon Delaney
BCHS Class of 2018
SUNY Cortland — Dual Major: Communication Studies / Graphic Design & Digital Media
ARTIST STATEMENT
Since childhood, I have adored art in all forms, specifically working with color. I started my career in graphic design and advertising, specializing in illustrative vector graphics. After finding my home in tattooing, I enjoy combining my fascination with tattoo history and fine art. Combining influences from different cultures, such as motifs from Japanese culture and American tattooing, are some of my favorite processes. Being able to give my clients artwork that ages with them through life is a gift.
Cathleen Owens
BCHS Class of 2010
B.F.A., Photography and the Digital Image, Fashion Institute of Technology (2014); M.A., ArtScience, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague (2017); Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles (2025)
ARTIST STATEMENT
I think of my practice as a fly flailing against a closed window: persistent, slightly ridiculous, and convinced there’s a way through. Working across installation, performance, text, and radio, I use writing as both material and method. I’m drawn to the language institutions use to manage us (HR scripts, onboarding materials, productivity advice, and the endless vocabulary of self-improvement) and what happens when that language is pushed until it begins to unravel, revealing itself as impersonal, coercive, or empty beneath its caring tone.
SHUT UP AND LOVE YOURSELF borrows the form of a Valentine’s heart and the tone of a motivational slogan. Its message oscillates between encouragement and coercion, asking where self-care ends and self-discipline begins. I’m interested in authoritative fonts, persuasive interfaces, and the ways language can sound like an invitation while issuing instructions.
Alongside my practice, I run facetime den haag, a monthly artist initiative, and co-organize Bermuda Open Studios in The Hague, the Netherlands.
Sue Sheridan
BCHS Class of 1976
ARTIST STATEMENT
The path to creation has taken a lifetime of observation, gear shifting and path correction. This work illustrates the mostly delightful journey it has been.
Claudia Skuza
BCHS Class of 2022
BFA Illustration, Ringling College of Art and Design
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work focuses on visual storytelling, exploring narratives drawn from personal experience and the lives of others. I focus on translating complex emotions into imagery that invites multiple interpretations.
Gabriella Mirabelli
BCHS Class of 1985
College & Grad School
ARTIST STATEMENT
My works simplify natural forms into abstract compositions. Shadow lends character to light, and together they form a shape. Whether the subject is a current shifting from black to white, a tree reflected and distorted on water, or a path cut between stone, I look for the essential shapes of shadow and light that define each moment. These relationships — though always changing — reveal an elemental truth. They orient us; they tell us where we are and what we are seeing. In sharing these patterns of light and shadow, I invite viewers to inhabit an impermanent moment that once held my attention, to recognize something familiar and quietly enduring within its transience.