Lifelong Studio Exhibition: Exploring Portraiture in Clay
November 20, 2025 – January 11, 2026
Opening Party>>
Thursday, November 20
3:00 – 5:00 PM
For All Ages
Free! Drop In
Exhibiting Artists:
Margaret Smith “Lady M”, Molly Goodrich, Queen Bilquis, MutShat Mahone-Lonesome, Rosamond Tyson, Susan Hinko, Khuumba Ama, Frances Santoro, Nicole Levin, Priscilla Ocasio, Norma Ponce, Madeline Richard, Barbara Flaxman, Ana Garcia, Gladys Ramirez, Robert Brush, Carlos Olivencia, ShaOm Brunner, Elena Villao, Michelle Sajous, Annette Regner, Maritza Tejeda, & Mary Montera
Bronx Museum Educator:
Jinette Jimenez
About the Exhibition
This exhibition features artwork created through Lifelong Studio, The Bronx Museum’s series of free, sequential, hands-on artmaking workshops for adults ages 55 and over.
The Lifelong Studio class, Exploring Portraiture in Clay, was offered twice: sessions met twice a week for four weeks. The class took inspiration from artist Reverend Joyce McDonald’s intuitive approach to sculpture—on view at the Museum in the exhibition Ministry, from September 5, 2025 – January 11, 2026.
The 23 participants of the Lifelong Studio: Exploring Portraiture in Clay classes discovered the possibilities of creating with air-dry clay and expanded their ideas of what portraiture can be.
Each sculpture begins with clay—a transformative, healing, and generative medium that lends itself to telling personal stories and reflecting emotions that lie deep within. With each push and pull of the clay in their hands, these artists have embedded care, emotion, and meaning into the artwork presented here. The use of fabric, beads, appliques, found objects, and the artists’ own personal items further bring these experiences to life and highlight what is important to each of them.
Artists experimented with different forms of portraiture, offering a glimpse at the people, experiences, and places that they wish to honor and share. The resulting figures, objects, and imagined landscapes depict the artists’ reflections on self-identity, astrology, ancestry, loss, healing, pride, triumph and perseverance, childhood memories, family, friendship, and notions of home.
