Currently On View at CSMA
Anima
April 2026 – Upper Gallery
Ithaca Gallery Night debuts April 3rd from 5:00-8:00 pm.
This exhibition explores tending as a creative and communal practice. Through painting, collage, and textiles, Rochele Royster works with fragments—archival images, discarded artwork, and found materials—layering and transforming them through repetition, color, and pattern. Portraits honor figures who carry memory and history, while meditative linework reanimates overlooked surfaces. Botanical forms evoke growth, care, and ecological connection. The Community Quilt Freedom Jacket anchors the exhibition as a collective work stitched through shared stories and participation. Together, these pieces ask what it means to return to what has been forgotten and cultivate resilience, beauty, and belonging through acts of attention and care.
About the Artist
Rochele Royster, PhD, ATR-BC, LCAT is an artist, art therapist, and Associate Professor in the Creative Arts Therapy Department at Syracuse University. Her work explores care, memory, and collective healing through painting, textiles, and participatory art. Drawing from Black feminist care traditions, community archives, and everyday practices of tending, Royster often works with found or collaborative materials—transforming fragments, stories, and discarded objects into layered visual narratives. Her practice bridges research, community engagement, and art
making, frequently involving collective processes such as quilting, workshops, and public exhibitions. Royster is also the founder of the Me/We Creative Arts Lab & Studio, a community space dedicated to art, wellness, and social connection.
Previously on view in the Gallery
Annual Open Exhibition: Pandemic Edition
Featuring submitted works by the Ithaca Community On view October 1 - January 28 This exhibition of works by more than fifty emerging and established artists celebrates the vibrancy, resiliency, and diversity of visual arts in our community. All entered works were...
El Vacio de la Memoria/ The Vacuum of Memory
Featuring works by Pedro Molina and Marilyn Boror Bor, curated by Paulina Velázquez Solís On view October 1 - November 20 The tragic erasure of cultural roots and political views is part of the power dynamics, violence, and metamorphosis that the Mesoamerican region...
Patti Capaldi
Through the month of August, experience Patti Capaldi’s Drift, a powerful window installation exploring the pandemic lexicon.
Terrance Vann
On view April 2, 2021 – May 1, 2021, Reflections by Terrance Vann. Going under the moniker “Terranceism” or “ismboy”, Vann’s work captures a vivid Afro Surrealist Expressionism in a signature style that makes for a one-of-a-kind viewing experience.