Pat Goslee works in acrylic paint on cotton canvas, canvas made from recycled plastic bottles, wood and reclaimed wood. She does not begin with fixed ideas or planned compositions.

She makes beauty-impregnated surfaces; visual barometers that operate as patches of visual code suggesting amelioration. Without words the work addresses atmospheric moods — anxiety, bittersweet grief, a spark of joy, a dangerous protest or a transformational smile. The process is a synthesis of time (past, present and future) acting between a noun and a verb as a silent form of communication.

50 for 50 is an artist opportunity that invites 50 community artists to showcase their work at Touchstone throughout 2026, the year of Touchstone’s 50th anniversary.

In her artistic practice, painter Cathy Wilkin released expectations and let go of hesitation and fears. This opened up and created her immersive visual narratives through color, metaphor and personal myth.

She is a lifelong artist, who earned her MFA and had a career teaching painting, drawing and design in a small college. As Professor Emeritus, Wilkin bring decades of experience to her art through juried exhibitions, competitions and professional exchanges.

50 for 50 is an artist opportunity that invites 50 community artists to showcase their work at Touchstone throughout 2026, the year of Touchstone’s 50th anniversary.

Saya Behnam’s work explores light, hope, and interconnectedness through repetition, texture, and handmade materials. Viewing texture as a form of sensory intelligence, their practice engages multiple senses through folded paper, layered surfaces, and pigments derived from botanicals and minerals. Using handmade kozo and mulberry papers, Saya creates contemplative works that emphasize time, memory, and gradual growth.

Saya is an Iranian-American artist with more than 20 years of experience in fine art. She lives in Virginia, and her studio is at Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, VA.

50 for 50 is an artist opportunity that invites 50 community artists to showcase their work at Touchstone throughout 2026, the year of Touchstone’s 50th anniversary.

Collagist Katy Jean May creates large, abstract, close-up portraits utilizing magazine paper and found objects. The color palettes, textures and tones work together to express the inner life and outer shell of the figure. The portrait can highlight the figure’s mental conflict or serenity, their sharp focus or distraction. Subtle imagery embedded in or swirling around the faces can further emphasize the figure’s memories, feelings, history or environment.

50 for 50 is an artist opportunity that invites 50 community artists to showcase their work at Touchstone throughout 2026, the year of Touchstone’s 50th anniversary.

Lori Katz makes artworks that are a visual and tactile exploration of her materials, and increasingly include the substitution of areas that were, or could have been clay, with wire, recycled kiln parts and the occasional found object. Connection, conceptually and in practice, looms large as she coaxes sometimes disparate elements to work together.

50 for 50 is an artist opportunity that invites 50 community artists to showcase their work at Touchstone throughout 2026, the year of Touchstone’s 50th anniversary.

Lori Katz is a studio artist working primarily in clay. She is known for the striking strength and simplicity of her work. Lori’s work has been included in definitive shows and art fairs in the US, Europe and Asia. Her work is in the permanent collection of the US Embassy in Bandar Seri Begawan, the Wustum/Racine Art Museum, the IBM Corporation, Amazon Web Services, New York Presbyterian Hospital and in numerous homes and public and private collections.

Lori’s work has been used as props in movies and on television; most recently in Maggie’s Plan, Zero Day, Succession and Inventing Anna. Lori maintains a studio at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, VA

David Gootnick is a mixed media artist working principally with wood. His designs draw from kumiko—a uniquely Japanese art form developed roughly 1400 years ago, with his works being contemporary interpretations of this technique at the interface of art and design.

Gootnick respects traditional Japanese patterns while creating works with both modern and ancient motifs. Kumiko uses narrow pieces of wood to create intricate geometric patterns. His compositions are made of hundreds, in many cases more than a thousand individual pieces of wood. He seeks to broaden the exposure to kumiko among artists, artisans, and the broader public. There are few examples of this form outside of Japan, and very few artists working in this tradition in North America.

50 for 50 is an artist opportunity that invites 50 community artists to showcase their work at Touchstone throughout 2026, the year of Touchstone’s 50th anniversary.

Artist Bio: Originally from Rochester, NY, David Gootnick has lived in Boston, New York, and currently resides in Washington, DC. David’s first artistic studies were at the College of Art and Design in Rochester, NY. David has a BA in Art History from Harvard University. In 2015 David began to study kumiko and finds it a fulfilling way to blend traditional Japanese artistry with contemporary design. He is attracted to kumiko’s intricate patterns, its emphasis on symmetry, and the interaction of geometry and art. His work demands focus; he finds it to be an exercise in precision and efficiency of movement.

David’s studio, which he designed and built himself, is an extension of his approach to the work; it is a place of contemplation and peace. David has exhibited at the Chautauqua Visual Arts Gallery, the Wharton Esherick Museum and the Trenton City museum, among others and has had solo exhibitions at the Parthenon in Nashville, TN, the Delaplaine Arts Center in Frederick, Maryland, the Arts Club of Washington DC among others.

Meet the Artist Closing Reception: Sunday, July 12 from 2-4 pm

This body of work reflects Lesley Clarke’s experience of traveling through four countries that left a lasting impression: Scotland, Iceland, Nepal and Croatia. Each place is represented through a sequence of three sizes of paintings that explore the way memory evolves over time. Working in encaustic, Clarke builds layers of pigmented wax that are fused with heat, creating depth, translucency and textured surfaces.

Meet the Artist Closing Reception: Sunday, July 12 from 2-4 pm

For more than three decades, architectural photographer Anice Hoachlander has explored the relationship between structure, light, and form through the built environment. In Nature as Architect, she turns that same disciplined eye toward the organic world. Hoachlander approaches Nature as her client, revealing the quiet geometry and design embedded within forests, botanicals, and ancient trees. These photographs blur the boundary between natural form and constructed space, inviting viewers to consider nature itself as the original architect.  

Grand Opening Reception: Thursday, May 28 from 5-8 pm

Community Celebration: Sunday, June 7 from 12-5 pm

Medium Material Method is a group exhibition celebrating the processes, materials, and techniques that shape the contemporary art practices of Touchstone artists. This exhibition, part of Touchstone’s 50th Anniversary celebration, turns attention to how artworks are made—highlighting the possibilities of specific artmaking materials and methods.

There are endless ways to make a painting, a collage, a sculpture, or an original hand-pulled print. Medium Material Method invites viewers to consider the physical components that support artistic production.

The exhibition encourages engagement with over 100 completed works of art and further enhances the experience with an interactive touch table that allows visitors to engage with the materials themselves, as well as frequent artist demonstrations that provide additional context and information. Explore how idea and execution become important in the completion of artworks you see at Touchstone!

See works by two dozen Touchstone artists!

Rick Gonzalez (b. 1988, San Jose, CA) is a video artist and mixed media artist who lives and works in Washington, D.C. With a minor in cinema from McDaniel College, Rick has always been drawn to artistic expression that tells a story. Through collaging and, most recently, an interactive video project, he has continued to experiment with different ways to create connections between unexpected images and visuals

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 2 from 4-7 pm

In The Mask I Wore, Makda Kibour presents a series of layered portraits that explore identity, memory, and self-inquiry. Working with acrylic, collage, African textiles, and stitched canvas, Kibour creates surfaces where faces emerge, fragment, and reassemble, suggesting identity as something fluid rather than fixed.

Several works incorporate physical processes of cutting, stitching, scraping, and layering. In some paintings, the canvas itself is cut apart and sewn back together, allowing the surface to carry the marks of rupture and repair. These material gestures mirror the emotional and psychological themes explored throughout the exhibition.

Moving between the personal and the collective, the paintings reflect how identity is shaped through ancestry, culture, and lived experience. Repeated figures and layered faces suggest the many selves that exist within a single life.

The Mask I Wore reflects a journey through memory, survival, and self-examination—acknowledging the masks once worn to navigate the world while arriving at a place of greater honesty and self-awareness.

Explore works by more than 30 Touchstone artists in this springtime show

Experience Pollination, an interactive sculpture by artist Chris Combs, as part of the interactive art experiences in the 50 for 50 exhibition program.

This flower-shaped artwork responds to faces and spoken words. Its camera recognizes faces and splays them into rotating flower-like shapes; a central microphone listens for speech and shows its transcripts on a multitude of small screens.

In this work, Combs is analogizing the data that we spread when interacting in life to pollen: millions of invisible particles flowing in all directions with uncontrollable effects.

Chris Combs is an artist based in Washington, D.C and Mount Rainier, Maryland whose sculptural artworks both incorporate and question technologies. Chris was the 2025 Artist in Residence at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, and is a five-time recipient of the DC CAH Arts and Humanities Fellowship. He is a graduate of the Corcoran College of Art + Design and was a photo editor for National Geographic. He joined Otis Street Arts Project in 2021.

His show Supercycle (IA&A at Hillyer, 2023) invoked cycles of hype, such as “AI” and cryptocurrencies. The Next Big Thing (MoCA Arlington Innovation Studio, 2024) recreated Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa with E-waste that reacted to visitors’ faces and movements. Outsized Effects (Gradient Projects, Thomas, WV, 2023–4) included the room-sized Allegheny Data Company, examining data mining through the visual lens of coal mining. Industry Standards (McLean Project for the Arts, 2023) featured 18 works of reclaimed industrial components, reflecting on surveillance and environmental destruction. His artwork Periscopes is permanently installed in Buzzard Point, D.C., and Madness Method, a collaboration with David Greenfieldboyce, was part of Georgetown GLOW.

Artist Talk: Saturday, April 25 at 3 pm

Luckett’s solo exhibition reflects on movement as a fundamental force in human life—moments when individuals are compelled to search, leave, or transform. Some journeys are visible and life-altering, while others unfold quietly until they emerge into awareness. Through an intuitive practice of layering paper, paint, and assembled forms, the artist allows images to evolve and reveal their own meanings.

Motifs such as bridges, gardens, oceans, and rivers of time appear alongside symbolic elements that suggest passages between inner and outer worlds. A series of niche-like house portraits becomes shelters, evoking places of refuge, resilience, and belonging. Created amid contemporary debates around immigration, the work also reflects broader histories of migration and the enduring search for home.

Artist Talk: Saturday, April 25 at 2 pm

Overlapping planes of color animate the works in McMurray’s Shape & Surface. This work is a continuation of and an expansion of his earlier joined panel work. These works are cut and shaped to form interlocking forms of mostly primary colors inspired by the ideas of the De Stijl movement.

McMurray sees the primal forms of the De Stijl artists as immutable, rational, and expressive. He uses squeegees to apply color in smooth layers and other tools to shape the paint into integral textural forms. The simplicity and primary colors allow an order that provides a dynamic that moves between reason and intuition.

50 for 50 is an artist opportunity that invites 50 community artists to showcase their work at Touchstone throughout 2026, the year of Touchstone’s 50th anniversary. The Visual Artist Spotlight portion of this program features week-long single artist exhibitions.

The Round 1 Featured Artists are:

• Jaya Sullivan: February 20 - 28

• Nasim Kaheh: March 1 - 7

• Rebecca Karabin: March 8 - 14

• Jacques Liautaud: March 15 - 21

• Leonard Jewler: March 22 - 28

• LK Gupta: March 29 - April 4

• Salvador Rubio Rivera: April 7 - 11

• S. Manya Stoumen-Tolino: April 12 - 18

• Xenia Gray: April 19 - 25

Round 2 applications will be accepted from March 10-29, 2026. Interested artists should visit touchstonegallery.com/artcalls for more information.

Jenny Singleton’s solo exhibition, Vocabulary, is a reference to her personal language of mark-making. Working in abstraction, she has developed a distinctive visual vocabulary that carries from one painting to the next, despite the clear differences between individual works. Singleton explores this vocabulary through tessellation, meandering calligraphic lines, starry skies, swirling backgrounds, semi-dry brushing, and multicolored tangles of paint set against white ground.

I Am Every Woman, a solo exhibition by artist Susanne Tabet, honors the multifaceted power of the female experience. Through expressive, figurative painting, Tabet explores strength, vulnerability, resilience, and grace, revealing how each woman carries her own story while reflecting the universal spirit of womanhood.

Drawing from her global experiences across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Tabet’s work merges cultural memory, bold gestures, and intimate emotion. Each painting is both personal and archetypal, celebrating women as individuals and as a collective force.

A group exhibition featuring work from 30 Touchstone artists exploring both past influences and visions of the future.

Participating Artists: Anice Hoachlander, Anne Stine, Brittany Mona’, Carolyn Marshall Wright, Charlene Nield, Dana Brotman, Deb Furey, Debra Perkins, Elaine Florimonte, Elena Tchernomazova, Hernan Murno, Janathel Shaw, Jenny Singleton, Jill Brantley, Jonathan Fuentes, Linda Bankerd, Marcia Coppel, Marthe McGrath, McCain McMurray, Michael Lang, Neville Barbour with Delna Dastur, Rosa Vera, Rosemary Luckett, Sue Canuteson, Sufie Berger, Susan Dykeman, Tory Cowles, and Yoshiko Ratliff

Meet the Artists Open House: Monday, February 16 from 2-4 pm

Kicking off the 2026 celebration of Touchstone@50, Mary D. Ott’s RetroSpective includes paintings, drawings, and hand-pulled prints that span her career as a visual artist. Among the paintings are abstractions that comprise squiggly lines on a color field, rather than two-dimensional images. Prints include intaglios, lithographs, monotypes, photogravures, screenprints, and wax relief prints created during her 35 years as an artist, 25 of which have been with Touchstone.

Meet the Artists Open House: Monday, February 16 from 2-4 pm

Veronica Barker-Barzel’s paintings and artworks utilizing collage and original printmaking methods explore playful worlds of adventure. The imagery is inspired by the cultures of places she’s lived, traveled, and her immersion into classic European literature, fairy tales, and folklore. The viewer is invited to dive into a surreal realm where myth and adventure intertwine.

Serendipity: A Dance between Painting and Sculpture brings together an energetic blend of sculpture, painting, and hybrid sculptural works created from paintings. Cowles works fluidly across two- and three-dimensional forms, allowing ideas to move freely between mediums. This process often sparks moments of unexpected discovery, as developments in one form inspire new directions in another.

Incorporating objects of personal significance, Cowles layers history, meaning, and material presence into her compositions—adding dimensions that engage, challenge, and sometimes disrupt the visual harmony. The result is a dynamic body of work that embraces curiosity, experimentation, and the delight of the unforeseen.

Cowles states, “The challenge for me with abstract painting is to lose myself so completely in the process that my unconscious takes over, and some visual symphony of colors, shapes, and textures happens that surprises me. You can analyze why something works or doesn’t, but when a painting really sings, something magical happens that is hard to describe in words. The mysterious power or language of abstract expressionism is only really comparable to the language of music.”

Meet the Artists: Saturday, January 3 from 2-4 pm

The paintings in Resilencia explore the experiences of Latin American women. Many Latin American women, particularly those from impoverished backgrounds, face significant challenges in accessing education and personal freedoms. Persistent barriers to formal employment often lead women to participate in the informal economy and small businesses as a means of supporting themselves and their families.

Despite these limitations, many women are actively involved in working together to improve their communities. In societies with more traditional structures, issues such as feminicide and domestic violence remain prevalent. Yet, even in the face of these hardships, women demonstrate remarkable strength and resilience. They build supportive networks and bonds among themselves, fostering a sense of solidarity and empowerment.

Through her paintings, Vera aims to celebrate the resilience and enduring spirit of Latin American women—highlighting their capacity to overcome adversity and finding strength in unity.

Open House: Saturday, November 29 from 6-8 pm

This group exhibition by Touchstone artists presents collective inquiry into the conditions of this time. Through the pairing of artistic works and the accompanying written words, the participating artists consider the state of the world with a focus on community, unity, and awareness.

The included works address both contemporary and historical themes and events that shape the cultural and social landscape. Viewers are encourages to contemplate the role of art as both witness and catalyst.

That Far Away Blue by artist Elaine Florimonte features a series of mixed media paintings exploring the idea of a distant, unreachable blue—something that feels both comforting and liberating. Despite Florimonte’s original intention to work more abstractly in this body of work, each piece incorporates a horizon, beckoning the viewer into the gate that opens toward a far away place where one part closes and another begins.

Freedom, Process, Continuity: Threads Across Series is Hernan Murno’s first solo show at Touchstone celebrates the artist’s freedom to paint whatever came to mind, without worrying about style or theme. What ties the work together is process—how each piece was made, the materials used, and the effects he explored. Some of the smaller series connect back to earlier bodies of work, creating new variations on past themes. Viewers are encouraged to delve into the process and follow the threads that run across series.

An open exhibition with artworks from more than 30 Touchstone artists.

The portraits in Chris Tucker Haggerty’s Women of Ellis Island honor the lives of women who journeyed to America in search of new beginnings. Based on photographs taken at Ellis Island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, each painting is a tribute to the resilience, hope, and cultural richness these women carried with them.

Surrounding each figure are fragments of their heritage–maps, handwriting, and cultural symbols from their homelands. At a time when the meaning and experience of migration continues to shape lives, these portraits invite reflection on the enduring human desire for dignity, belonging, and opportunity.