Arts In Residence

The Granger Hotel, a place where art and community come together.

The Granger Hotel is fashioned as an urban retreat, a sophisticated moment of reflection within the city’s rhythm where creativity and artistic exchange are part of everyday experience. One of San Diego’s most architecturally significant historic buildings, the Granger’s restoration emphasizes layered interiors and an intimate scale that organically support meaningful exchanges with art. We feel hospitality has an opportunity to connect on a deeper level. At Granger art does not hang as static decor; the goal is not merely display. We invite guests to pause, engage, inquire, and to be inspired in a completely new way with the art that surrounds them. Our Director of Arts & Culture, international art advisor and curator Jennifer Findley of JFiN Collective, meticulously curates thoughtful collaborations with artists whose works foster meaningful connections with the space. Unique art-in-residence partnerships with organizations including UC San Diego’s Stuart Collection offer a supportive home base for visiting artists during their creative exploration. The Granger becomes a laboratory for research, experimentation and site-responsive creation, ever-deepening the role of the hotel as a key player in the city’s creative ecosystem. Rotating exhibitions highlight the distinct voices of local, regional, cross-border, and emerging artists. At Granger, art does not merely adorn walls; it exists in dialogue with the site, the community and the unseen contours between relationships, human experience, land, lived realities and the complex narratives that define our region.

Meet the Director of Arts & Culture

Jennifer Findley is an art advisor, curator, and founder of the JFiN Collective. Findley specializes in the strategic development of legacy art collections that are grounded in narrative and honed aesthetics. Known for her sharp curatorial eye and deep market insight, Findley works internationally with private, institutional and commercial collectors to curate focused holdings in Contemporary and Ultra-Contemporary art. Through the JFiN Collective, Findley provides full-spectrum advisory services—from acquisition strategy and collection management to exhibition planning and curatorial consulting. She most recently co-curated 'american minimal', an acclaimed survey of East and West Coast Minimalism with a focus on underrepresented women artists, at the San Diego Museum of Art. Findley is an art advocate and serves on the Boards and Collection Committees of the Mingei International Museum and the San Diego Museum of Art. Named an Art Expert by the Observer, Findley is regularly invited to speak on curated collecting and serve as a judge for international art competitions, and has been recognized as a “curator to know” and a “power player” in the Southern California art scene.

ORGANICA

Flora to Fauna

Explore the works in the current exhibition: ORGANICA

ANNALISE NEIL

Annalise Neil has a BFA in Printmaking from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, with a minor in Art History (summa cum laude). She has completed several residencies and courses, including Playa Summer Lake in Oregon, with Mira Schor through the New York City Crit Club, and at Pilchuck Glass School in Washington. Her work has been exhibited nationally at galleries and museums including Field Projects, NYC, The Irvine Fine Arts Center, and The Oceanside Museum of Art. Neil’s work has been featured in publications such as ArtMaze Mag, Colossal, The On Being Project, Emergence Magazine, All She Makes, Resurgence and Ecologist Magazine, and New Visionary Magazine. Her work resides in public and private collections across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

APRIL STREET

April Street lives and works in Los Angeles. She studied bronze casting in central Italy and painting at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent exhibitions include Kinman Gallery, London, UK; Various Small Fires, LA; Carter & Citizen, LA; Rosamund Felsen Gallery, LA; Five Car Garage, Santa Monica; Santa Barbara Museum of Art and The Underground Museum, Los Angeles. She is a grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts. Her solo shows have been reviewed by ArtForum, Art in America, San Francisco Arts Quarterly, LA Weekly, Hyperallergic, and The Los Angeles Times. This is her first exhibition at the gallery.

BECCA MANN

Becca Mann (b. 1980 Los Angeles, CA) received a BFA and BA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions include James Fuentes (Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY), Le Maximum (Venice, CA), Francois Ghebaly (Los Angeles, CA), Soccer Club Club (Chicago, IL), Safe Gallery (New York, NY), Loudhailer (Los Angeles, CA), Friends Indeed (San Francisco, CA), and Roberts and Tilton (Los Angeles, CA), among others. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

DAVE EASSA

Dave Eassa is a visual artist and cultural worker living and working in San Diego, CA. His paintings and sculpture allow the viewer space for personal reflection and encourage a broader look outward at the shared human experience. He has exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions at galleries including the Center Museum, Escondido, CA; Cody Gallery, Arlington, VA; The Shed Space in Baltimore, MD; SPACE Gallery, Portland, ME; Little Berlin, Philadelphia, PA; Signal, Brooklyn, NY; and LVL3, Chicago, IL, among others. His work has been published in New American Paintings and The Pinch Journal. He has been awarded grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Central Baltimore Partnership, and was a Rubys Artist Grantee from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation in 2021. His public sculpture is on view in Johnson City, Tennessee, as well as a large-scale commission for the Harwood Community Garden in Baltimore, MD. He has been an artist in residence at Art Produce in San Diego, CA; 7Hills in Amman, Jordan; Space Gallery in Portland, ME; and ACRE in Steuben, WI. He was an Open Society Institute Baltimore Community Fellow from 2015 through 2017 where he founded Free Space, a program which brings the arts to the Maryland Prison System, teaching art to men and women's correctional facilities. He has received grants from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, the Contemporary, the Gutierrez Memorial Fund, and the Maryland State Arts Council to support Free Space. From 2017–2023, he was the Director of Public Engagement at the Baltimore Museum of Art, working on a range of initiatives that challenge and question what it means to be a museum in present-day Baltimore. Through this, he established the BMA Lexington Market, a branch of the Baltimore Museum of Art in Lexington Market, the nation’s oldest continuously operating public market. In 2018, he was selected as one of 50 Young Cultural Innovators as a Salzburg Global Fellow from across the globe for the YCI Fellowship at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Salzburg, Austria.

CAITLIN CARNEY

Caitlin Carney (b. 1994) is a California-based artist living and working between Los Angeles and Morongo Valley, CA. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies from the University of San Diego in 2017 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Otis College of Art and Design in 2022. She has exhibited her work in group exhibitions at galleries including The LODGE, Los Angeles, CA; Ki Smith Gallery, New York City, NY; and Soft Times Gallery, San Francisco, CA; as well as a solo exhibition with Lowell Ryan Projects. At the center of Carney's practice is a sustained attention to light: its passage, its weight, its capacity to carry feeling. Working in acrylic on canvas, Carney makes paintings that hover between landscape and abstraction, anchored in direct observation and shaped by the emotional register of that encounter. Color is both record and translation: what appears on the canvas is not simply what the eye sees, but what the body holds in the moment of looking. Paint is applied directly onto the canvas, pooling and dispersing, earlier traces remaining visible beneath successive layers into depth. Each finished work is then stretched beneath a translucent polymer scrim and cradled in blond wood stretcher bars, the physical construction inseparable from the work itself. The scrim diffuses the painted image and produces a quietly meditative optical effect: the image grows more defined as the viewer steps back and dissolves as they move closer, subverting the expectation of proximity. Moving laterally, the image shifts, behaving something like a lenticular surface. Carney's paintings resist fixity. They are records of a particular time and place that remain elusive in grasp, evoking sentiment while refusing to be fixed.

JOSH HERMAN

Mindfulness, organic simplicity, and modernity are concepts that spark my creativity. I didn’t set out to be an artist. As a kid, I was very active in sports. I grew up in New York City and went to business school in Boston, but it was in 1987, when I transferred to Pitzer College in Claremont, that I discovered ceramics. I completed the remainder of my coursework at Scripps College under professor Paul Soldner, the revolutionary inventor of American-style Raku. My ceramics studies in the U.S. led me to Midcentury Modernism, while my studies in Japan deepened my affinity for Eastern principles—an influence that continues to shape my work today. I am deeply guided by Hakomi, an experiential, mindfulness-based therapy rooted in Taoism. Hakomi emphasizes paying attention to what you’re experiencing in any given moment, and this allows me to stay focused on the clay as the form reveals itself. I am fascinated by the inner and outer landscapes of the creative process. When I start a piece, I don’t know where it’s going; I don’t have a preconceived shape or idea in mind. I simply allow my senses to engage and feel my way to the final result. The clay has a language—a way of communicating its limitations and strengths—and I tap into that dialectic to bring the form to life. My vessels, forms, and sculptures, whether from my *Josh Herman Fine Art* or *Josh Herman Studio* collections, are sensual and expressive, yet bold and vibrant as well. It’s the subtle interplay between these qualities, along with my unique volcanic glaze, that defines the hallmarks of my work. My latest endeavor is **Tao of Clay**, a community studio and school in San Diego’s Barrio Logan. I’ve long believed that working with clay offers a powerful path for personal expression, development, and discovery. Tao of Clay brings that vision to life by integrating ceramic practice with principles of Hakomi therapy, creating a space where technical exploration and inner awareness grow side by side. I live in La Jolla, CA with my wife, Rachel, and our two children, where we grow lots of fruit and exotic plants.

KESLEY OVERSTREET

Walter Redondo, a native San Diegan born in 1958, was ranked the number one junior tennis player in the United States and has been recognized in the Hall of Champions and Hall of Fame for his worldwide tennis accomplishments. After traveling throughout the world with great success as a tennis professional, Walter felt the need to focus more time on his artistic endeavors. Painting has always been a burning passion of Walter's, coupled with his outstanding tennis career. As a self-taught artist, Walter began drawing as a small child and burst upon the local art scene in the fall of 1998. Influenced by Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, and Joan Mitchell, Walter started experimenting with the abstract techniques which have become his unique trademark today. With a background in professional tennis, San Diego-based artist Walter Redondo’s fluid strokes on the court translate beautifully onto the canvas. Thickly applied paint in the vein of the midcentury colorists transforms the surface of the canvas into a sweeping fantasia of chroma and texture, all while retaining a remarkable compositional cohesion.

LESLYE VILLASEÑOR

Leslye Villaseñor is a Mexican-American artist based in San Diego. Her art practice focuses primarily on oil paintings that investigate the essence of human consciousness, memory, perception, and the rawness of human emotion. She seeks to capture moments in time through personal narratives and direct observation. Her works, often haunting and melancholic, aim to create a connection with the audience by allowing them to insert themselves in familiar yet surreal or dream-like scenarios.

NATHALIE GUERIN

Nathalie Guerin is a French-American multidisciplinary artist and creative director whose work explores memory, emotion, and human connection through tactile textile sculpture. After more than 30 years building brands and visual identities for global companies, she shifted her creative focus toward fine art, bringing with her a deep understanding of composition, storytelling, texture, and emotional resonance. Known for her immersive monochromatic works, Nathalie creates layered textile pieces that invite viewers to experience art not only visually, but physically through touch, movement, and sound. Her signature series, including Dark Matter, White Whispers, and Tender Flame, explore themes of resilience, longing, softness, loss, and quiet strength. Through sculptural folds, organic forms, and subtle tonal shifts, her work encourages viewers to slow down, reflect, and reconnect with emotion in an increasingly digital world. A strong advocate for accessibility in art, Nathalie intentionally challenges the traditional “do not touch” gallery experience by creating tactile works designed to be felt and experienced by all audiences, including the blind and visually impaired community. Many of her installations incorporate NFC-enabled audio experiences, allowing viewers to engage with soundscapes and layered sensory storytelling as part of the artwork itself. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including during the 2025 Venice Biennale period at the Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello as part of MORPHOS – Temporary Identities, and she has collaborated with galleries and creative spaces across the United States and Europe. Drawing inspiration from travel, organic forms, fashion, architecture, and the emotional weight carried within materials, Nathalie’s work exists at the intersection of fine art, design, and sensory experience—creating spaces where viewers are invited not simply to observe, but to feel.

REINHART SELVICK

Reinhart Revilla Selvik (b. 1987, Long Beach, CA) is a Los Angeles-based sculptor, painter, and installation artist whose practice navigates the intersections of memory and architecture. He explores the ways that lived histories are inscribed into individual perception, drawing material and form from sites of erasure and erosion. Selvik’s projects connect these shifting internal and external temporalities to the broader histories that inform how individuals construct identities within shared environments and looming systems of power. Reinhart attended the Haystack Open Studio Residency in Maine in 2025. He has recently exhibited at After Hours/DMST Atelier, Baryo HiFi, Megan Mulrooney Gallery, Phase Gallery, Floating Gallery, San Diego Art Institute, Eastside International, Actual Size, Mesa College, CAC Gallery, and Long Beach City College. His works are in the permanent collections of the City of San Diego, Clinicomp Intl., and the Haudenschild Foundation. He has painted murals and graffiti art in Canada, Mexico, the United States, and Europe over the last twenty-five years. In 2023, Reinhart was the lead artist and curator of Periphery, a large-scale, site-specific collaboration of murals on the UC San Diego Visual Arts facilities, and he was commissioned by Haudenschild Garage for the immersive installation Without Action: Fractured Faces in La Jolla, California. He was awarded the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Art Award and holds a dual BA in Communication and Visual Arts from UC San Diego, as well as an MFA from UC Irvine.

RENI SOARES

Reni Soares is a San Diego-based painter originally from Cape Verde Islands, a small vibrant country off the west coast of Africa. Working primarily with acrylics, she creates both abstract and figurative paintings that are rich in color, emotion, and narrative. Her abstract works are inspired by nature, often featuring fluid, dreamscape compositions that reflect a deep sense of tranquility and harmony. Her figurative work focuses on women and draws from personal experiences and identity, offering an intimate look into themes of resilience and reflection. At the heart of her practice is a desire to find balance between movement and stillness, form and freedom, inner and outer worlds.

SUMMER MANN

While I have periodically attended various environments “being taught,” my painting has largely been enriched by a series of mentors beginning with a high school teacher. They positioned me to make realizations and provided access to equipment. Significantly, I was imbued with an eagerness to learn, stimulated to be curious, comfortable to take on a challenge, and relaxed in knowing there are infinite frontiers. I have an ongoing urge for creative expression. It wasn’t until later in life when I shared some work that I was to find that the viewer completes the piece. That there was a narrative aspect to the work. Many were eager to tell me not only their response but additionally what I intended (rarely accurate but fun). Another dimension.

SYLVIA FERNÁNDEZ

Sylvia Fernández was born in Lima, Peru, where she studied Fine Arts at Escuela Superior de Arte Corriente Alterna, graduating in 2002 with a gold medal. She lived and showed her work locally and abroad in Lima, participating in several collective and individual exhibitions. Since 2022, she has been based in San Diego, California, where she currently lives and works. Her latest shows include Staging the Future at the Center of the Arts Museum, Escondido, SD (2025); Sembrando un Jardín at Oolong Gallery, Encinitas, SD (2024); Dream Syndication at La Loma Projects, LA, CA (2024); ShapeShifting at Two Rooms, San Diego, CA (2023); New Islands at Tyger Tyger Gallery, Asheville, NC (2023); No Sune at Pivo Satelite, Sao Paulo, Brasil (2022), curated by Bisagra; Suspendidos at Campo Garzon, Uruguay (2021); Volvamos (solo show curated by Nicolás Gómez Echeverri) at Galería del Paseo, Lima, Peru (2021); Negar el desierto at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Lima, Peru (2020); Vamos Desapareciendo (solo project) at Salón ACME, Mexico City (2020); and Conversaciones con Carmen (solo show curated by Jorge Villacorta) at ICPNA Miraflores, Lima, Peru (2019). She has participated in different art contests and art fairs, and her work belongs to various local and international art collections.

WALTER REDONDO

All artwork images photographed by Stacy Keck