The Caumsett Foundation’s Artist in Residence Program (Caumsett AIR) was instituted in 2023 with the aim of connecting artists of diverse backgrounds and disciplines to our park and community. Participants are required to hold open studio hours and offer a public program while at Caumsett, which plays an important role in the Foundation’s annual programming. The Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve’s historic, environmental and ecological significance create a rich experience for our artists.
MAY AND JUNE
Luanda Lozano
Luanda Lozano is an illustrator and printmaker who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from Parson’s The New School of Design in New York. She was part of the teaching staff at the Bronx River Art Center for nearly a decade, where she taught drawing and printmaking. She has also taught at several institutions, including the Center for Contemporary Prints in Norwalk, Connecticut; Pelham Art Center in New York; Escuela de Bellas Artes in Ponce, Puerto Rico; Hudson River Museum in New York; El Museo del Barrio in New York; the Museum for African Art in New York; and Artist Proof Studio in South Africa.
Lozano has received numerous awards, including the 2024 SGCI Mid-Career Award, the Murray Roth Memorial Award at SAGA’s 89th Annual Members Exhibition, and the 2025 and 2026 Long Island Grants for the Arts Artist Fellowship. Her work is included in prestigious collections such as the Kanagawa Museum Print Collection in Japan; Museo Nacional del Grabado in Argentina; Varna Museum in Bulgaria; Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey; the Library of Congress in the United States; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, among others.
Luanda serves as a board member of the Manhattan Graphics Center, Inc., where she previously held the position of Co-Vice President from 2015 to June 2019. In 2025, she joined the Council of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), contributing to the organization’s mission and programming.
JUNE
Heather Heckel
Dr. Heather Heckel, EdD is an artist and art educator living in Manhattan and teaching in Port Washington. Her award-winning artwork has been shown internationally, is in several national permanent collections, and is featured regularly in the Park Slope Reader. She is a lifelong learner who loves to travel, and has been awarded over 30 artist residencies through the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. She is in her 13th year of teaching public school art, and has taught at the middle school, high school, and college levels. She earned her BFA in Illustration from the Ringling College of Art and Design, her MAT in Art Education from the School of Visual Arts, her MFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and most recently her EdD in Educational Leadership from the University of the Cumberlands. Her doctoral research investigated the relationships between art education, leadership, and creativity. She lives with her two dozen houseplants in Harlem, and loves going to the movies and trying new vegan restaurants.
JULY
Auguste Elder
Auguste Elder is a painter, wood-firing sculptor, naturalist, and educator based in New York City. For over two decades, he has served as a teacher at The Calhoun School, where he co-directs a junior-year inquiry-based program and is the appointed curriculum-lead for the visual arts. While his paintings walk along the edge of the Les Nabis tradition, they are deeply informed by the coastal regions and salt marshes of the North Atlantic. His palette—subdued, humid, and softened by atmospheric perspective—evokes a "dispossession of place" reminiscent of the writings of H.D. Thoreau and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In these works, the landscape is not merely a subject, but a meditation on the dialogue between observer and the natural world.
Writer Rafe Pasquini notes that Elder’s works: "...don’t just represent objects or ideas; they carry the texture of impermanence. They ask viewers to reckon with time, to look closely at the crumbling edges and shifting boundaries." This exploration of memory and the passage of time extends into his three-dimensional practice, represented by Manhattan’s Cavin-Morris Gallery. The gallery characterizes his praxis as one that blurs the boundaries between sculpture and functional pottery, using organic forms to challenge traditional notions of utility and invite cultural dialogue.
A former National Park Ranger in the Badlands, Elder’s practice is rooted as much in the stewardship of resources as it is in the literary tradition of exploring landscapes—past and present—by foot, kayak, and car with his wife Lisa Chan, also a writer and artist.
AUGUST
Anthony Torrano
Anthony Torrano (b. San Francisco, 1992) is an artist based in New York City. He is a recent graduate of the Hunter College MFA program (2025) and received his BA at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a focus in painting and printmaking. Anthony was a recipient of the 2015 Susan Benton Irwin Scholarship at UCSC, a 2021 Artists Corps Grant recipient from the New York Foundation of the Arts, and a 2022 Frederieke Sanders Taylor Studio Fund Grant. He has exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in New York at SWIM Gallery, ProArts, Incline Gallery, Adobe Books, Room284, Shelter Gallery and White Columns.
SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER
Jessica Penagos
Jessica Penagos is an artist based in Long Island, New York. Her work seeks to reclaim and recontextualize traditional forms of women's work, elevating them from the realm of the domestic to the realm of fine art. She creates pieces that transcend mere decoration, inviting viewers to contemplate the historical and symbolic significance of the subject in shaping notions of femininity, labor, and identity. These works foreground labor that is often overlooked, inviting reflection on how care and handwork quietly shape both daily life and built environments.
Penagos received her B.F.A. in Textiles from the Fashion Institute of Technology and currently works as a textile designer. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Long Island, the Heckscher Museum, the Edward Hopper House Museum, and Heirloom Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
