NEVILLE BEAN
ABOUT THE GALLERY
West Strand Art Gallery is in its second season. We are a contemporary commercial art gallery located on the waterfront in Kingston’s Rondout neighborhood.
The gallery exhibits the work of midcareer, emerging, and established artists of diverse backgrounds primarily from the Hudson Valley and Tristate region including New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
West Strand Art Gallery was founded in April 2021 by artists and co-directors, Isabel Alvarez Nazario and Julio Nazario. Motivated by the increasing diversity of artists and supporters of the arts in Kingston they moved six years ago to a studio in the Rondout. Soon after moving to Kingston they retired from academia, and in April 2021 they opened the gallery.
The first exhibition of the West Strand Gallery featured their private collection of prints and photographs primarily by artists of color including among others Juan Sanchez, Emma Amos, Rafael Montanez Ortiz, Debra Priestly, Mari Mater O’Neill, Robert Birmelin, and Yolanda Lopez.
Isabel and Julio are both committed to serving the arts community in Ulster County. Currently, Julio is on the Arts Commission of Kingston and on the Latino Arts Alliance of Kingston. Isabel is on the Advisory Board of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz. She is also on the Board of El Museo del Barrio in New York City and on the Advisory Board of the Brodsky Print Center in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
FOUNDING CO-DIRECTORS
(Photo by Lauren Thomas)
Isabel Alvarez and Julio Nazario
Artists and Founding co-directors of the gallery, Isabel Alvarez and Julio Nazario recently retired as academic leaders and faculty from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Their professional experience includes teaching in university settings, academic administration, funding development, managing gallerist, and museum education.
Throughout the years, Isabel and Julio, a married couple, shared a vision for collecting art and dreamed of owning an art gallery. They decided the place for the gallery should be Kingston, where there is a growing community of artists, and galleries. Since the mid 80s they have been visiting Kingston and surrounding communities. Over the years they grew closer to friends living in the area and felt anchored in the Kingston community. They have been living in Kingston for four years, where they have their art studios.
JULIO NAZARIO
Julio Nazario is a photographer and printmaker born and raised in el Barrio in New York City. Nazario taught Caribbean Cinema in the Latino and Caribbean Studies department at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He retired from Rutgers in 2019, after 20 years, as faculty and Assistant Dean in the Honors Program, School of Arts and Sciences. In addition, he taught photography for ten years, at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Prior to Rutgers, he was an adjunct Associate Professor at La Guardia Community College, in the City University of New York, where he founded the Commercial Photography Program. Nazario has exhibited extensively, including at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, El Museo del Barrio, Enfoco Photography Gallery, and the Queens Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.
Nazario earned his M.F.A from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Queens College (CUNY). He served in the Vietnam War and was awarded the Purple Heart. Soon after returning to New York City in the early 70s, he first studied commercial photography at the Germain School of Photography. See more about Nazario in https://www.julionazario.com.
ISABEL ALVAREZ
Isabel Alvarez, (known as Isabel Nazario in academia) was the founding director in 1992 of the Center for Latino Arts and Culture at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. In 2004, Rutgers University appointed Isabel as Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives in the Arts and Humanities. In the last 6 years, until her retirement in April, 2021, Isabel was responsible for overseeing the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, a distinguished feminist center (co-founded by Professors, Judy Brodsky and Ferris Olin, 2006-2014,) then named the Institute for Women and Art.
Prior to Rutgers University, Isabel Alvarez was an Associate in the Museum Program at the New York State Council in the Arts; she was founder and manager of the Community Art Gallery in the Queens Museum; prior to this position, she was curator of education in the Queens Museum; and was curator of education in El Museo del Barrio, in New York City.
Isabel Alvarez holds an MFA and a B.A., both, from Queens College, CUNY, having graduated magna cum laude with a focus in the visual arts, art history, and Latin American Literature. She has taught Caribbean art history and studio courses at Rutgers University and CUNY. She is a board member of El Museo del Barrio in NYC, is on the advisory board at the Brodsky Center for Prints and Paper, in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art; and is on the arts advisory board at The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in SUNY, New Paltz.
(Photo by Glenda Daniel
MEET THE TEAM
Sikena Khadija
Gallery Assistant
GLENDA DANIEL
Gallery Photographer
VANESSA COLEMAN