Read an excerpt from Galerie’s coverage of our fantastic 30th Anniversary exhibition event with artist Nancy Lorenz:
The Alpha Workshops and Nancy Lorenz Light Up Powerhouse Arts
In celebration of the decorative arts nonprofit’s 30th anniversary and recent relocation to the Brooklyn art hub, they’re showcasing four of Lorenz’s monumental banners previously only displayed in a Roman basilica—and debuting a series of collectible prints.
On February 13 2025, a coterie of bold-faced names within New York City’s art and design spheres descended on Powerhouse Arts in Gowanus, Brooklyn, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Alpha Workshops. The star-studded evening raised a glass to the organization’s ongoing commitment to providing decorative arts education and employment to adults with visible and invisible disabilities. The nonprofit was founded by Kenneth Wampler in 1995—the height of the AIDS crisis—to benefit the HIV-positive community.
To kick off the evening, Alpha’s executive director Ed Farrell gave welcoming remarks that honored the organization’s social and creative impact across three decades and traced its model back to early-20th-century London, where the famed Omega Workshops emerged as a group of iconoclast painters. In particular, he praised Wampler and the board of trustees who “believed in Ken’s vision of a place where people trying to live with AIDS and HIV would come together to work with their hands in the practice of decorative painting,” he said. “[Alpha’s] inclusivity has always increased to meet the needs of the community at the moment. The diversity and breadth of lived experience of those drawn to Alpha throughout 30 years have contributed to our longevity.”
He also acknowledged the increased resources The Alpha Workshops now enjoys following its relocation to the Powerhouse Arts building this past spring. The cavernous former power station underwent a decade-long revamp into a community-focused contemporary arts hub, which was officially inaugurated in 2023 under president Eric Shiner. The Alpha Workshops can now collaborate with fabricators across the facility’s expansive ceramics, printmaking, and public art departments, affording new creative possibilities for their artists and designers. “Alpha is concentrating on wallpaper, textile, and fine art commissions,” Farrell said, as well as “getting the Alpha Workshops Studio School back to capacity, bringing alumni back into our space for additional training, and collaborating with Powerhouse fabricators.”
In another grand celebration of Alpha’s 30th anniversary, Powerhouse Arts presented artist Nancy Lorenz’s monumental Cieli E Terra Nuova (2023)—a quartet of painted and gilded jute banners depicting earthly and celestial themes—in the former power station’s soaring Grand Hall on the graffiti-clad top floor. Previously only displayed at Rome’s Basilica Santa Maria in Montesanto in Piazza del Popolo, otherwise known as Chiesa degli Artisti (Church of the Artists), the occasion marked the majestic commission’s Stateside debut.
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Read the entire story in Galerie here.