First Quarter Artists
First Quarter Artists
Spring 2025
Emily Martinez
Emily Martinez’s (b. 1999 Queens, NY) work investigates fantasy and myth in fashion, religion, and gender. She combines these elements to empower the figure and create a form of escapism through fictional landscapes and narratives that foster a theatrical and heightened sense of reality. She is focused on elevating brown bodies in the tradition of painting through scale and color. Often drawing from Renaissance paintings or Mexican murals that depict Christian beliefs and extravagance, Emily subverts the motifs of these periods by using those themes to develop new worlds around spectacle, sexuality, womanhood, and magic. She received her BFA from the University of Central Florida in 2022 with a minor in Latin American Studies. Emily lives and works in Tampa, FL, and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of South Florida.
Justin Luper
Justin Luper is a multidisciplinary artist living in Orlando, Fl. After receiving a BA in creative writing from UCF in 2008 he shifted his practice from writing and recording music to a visual art practice focused on drawing, painting, and sculpture. His artwork has been featured in numerous exhibitions including SNAP! Le Salon 2022, Corridor Project 2021, and Art in Odd Places 2017.
In his role as the Arts and Marketing Supervisor for the City of Casselberry, Luper is curator, coordinator, programs manager, preparator, and marketing lead overseeing the City’s four gallery spaces and outdoor sculpture walk with over 40 sculptures on public display. He has facilitated over 60 exhibitions in the past three years featuring hundreds of artists.
As a community leader one of his goals is to bring people together by establishing dynamic and exciting arts and cultural events which he believes are necessary for cultivating community pride and a sense of belonging.
“It is through these shared experiences that we find ourselves.”
@luperluper
Chris Robb
Chris Robb is known for his contemporary, mixed-media paintings that examine ideas of media, culture, identity, memory, and family. His large-scale paintings explore subtle boundaries between control and chaos. Orderly grids and patterns occupy the same spaces as gestural scribbles, energized mark making, bold patterns, and elusive representational forms set against striking color combinations. Robb incorporates a wide range of materials in each piece, including oils, acrylics, monoprints, image transfers, stencils, and collage.
Born in Berea, Ohio to an art teacher mother and Scottish immigrant father, Chris Robb has lived in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and now works and resides in Winter Park, Florida.
Chris graduated from the University of Central Florida in the spring of 1980 and immediately moved to the vibrant 80’s art scene of the Lower East Side of New York. The first shows he participated in were group shows at the iconic Club 57 along with his good friend Parker Dulany that also included work from Keith Haring, who curated the shows, Jean Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and many others.
While in New York, Chris also secured a grant from the Committee for the Visual Arts and had his first gallery show at PS 122.
Since then he has participated in group exhibitions and one man shows throughout his career and his paintings and works on paper are held in private and public collections throughout the US and France.
Chris is also a well known Creative Director and Art Director and he has films in the permanent archive at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and won Gold Lions at Cannes.
Leah Sandler
Leah Sandler is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator based in Central Florida. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Rollins College in 2014 and a Master of Fine Arts from University of the Arts Philadelphia in 2017, and currently teaches digital art at Stetson University. She is the author of A Field Guide to Embodied Archiving, published by Burrow Press in 2021, and Notes from the Archivist, published by Bodiless Editions in 2024.
Hai Van (Boy Kong)
Boy Kong is a self-taught painter, illustrator, muralist, and collage artist. Inspired by a mixture of Ukiyo-e, Surrealism, Graffiti art, and animal folklore, Kong’s visual style juxtaposes these elements with a mastery of color and rhythmic application. In short time his body of work has become immediately identifiable without succumbing to a signature aesthetic. Kong divides his time between Orlando and NYC.
Matt Duke
Matt Duke is an Orlando-based interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the unexpected complexities of quotidian life. Through a nuanced interplay of imagery and form, he distills the mundane into thought-provoking visual narratives, challenging viewers to reconsider the overlooked and the familiar. His practice seeks to reveal the subtle tensions hidden within everyday existence.
Stefan M.
My name is Stefan, and I am an artist and mother, located on the East Coast of Florida. As a kid I loved dance, and actually thought that was my calling, however I have been making art ever since I learned how to hold a pencil. Now I work with as many mediums as I can get my hands on, including textiles, as I am also a fashion addict. I also love culinary art, and spend most of my time in the kitchen, usually multitasking. My art is nothing more than an extension of me. The meanings of each piece varies, and some just create themselves it seems, but every piece is in a way a self portrait, as it is merely a visual representation of my self discipline, my dreams and imagination, my interests, and also my view of life, both literally and figuratively.
Gisela Romero
Gisela Romero is an American Venezuelan Visual Artist born in Caracas, living and working in Orlando, Florida. Her focus is on drawing in multiple formats and surfaces. Romero has a master’s degree in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, New York, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors from the California College of Arts, Oakland, CA. With over 30 years of experience, Romero has been communicating and teaching visual ideas through mixed media with a basis in Drawing as a medium for creating art. Since 1992 she has been combining images and words to give the drawings a narrative dimension. She has been making art in public spaces with drawings and prints to parallel this narrative. Through mixed media drawing installations, Gisela Romero investigates the connection of memories and emotions, inviting the viewer to think and feel about their own life. Gisela Romero’s work not only showcases her technical skills but also her ability to connect art with human experiences, making her a significant figure in the contemporary art scene in Central Florida, especially in the realm of drawing and installation art.
