The nominees are listed below. The Board recommends a vote for all nominees.
- Richard was on the ASK board from around 1998 through 2020, and served as Chair of the Building Committee. He supervised, facilitated, and carried out much of the renovation of the ASK building from 2005 through 2020.
- Richard was instrumental in the 2000-2001 Rhine-Hudson Bridge Exchange, as well as the follow-on exchange of work in Berlin. This exchange and the attendant publicity was key in persuading the Kingston City Council to deed the building at 97 Broadway to ASK, and also supported Assemblyman Cahill’s successful petition to the New York State Assembly for a $100,000 member item to purchase the building, and to install the downstairs HVAC system in place of the antiquated steam heating system.
- Richard supported his wife, Vindora Wixom, in organizing the original First Saturday receptions, the annual Galas and other fundraising events, and in promoting ASK around the community. He also managed the ASK / Rondout Savings Community Calendar, a consistent fundraiser for ASK.
- Richard was a key individual in navigating and overcoming ASK’s management difficulties in the 2023 timeframe.
- Richard’s statement: As a board member, I will continue to take an interest in furthering the future improvements of 97 Broadway, as well as in building a strong Board and active committee system. My goal as a board member is to enable and encourage the members to take an active part in their organization. I seek to work for the sustainability of ASK to ensure a long and productive future. I look forward to meeting many of the old as well as new members at the 2026 Membership Meeting.
- Chris has been a member of ASK since 2010 and was elected to the Board in 2023. He understands not-for-profit structures and their importance in creating a collaborative culture among members of a Board. He was creative director for the ASK Calendar 2015 through 2020.
- Chris was a key individual in navigating and overcoming ASK’s management difficulties in the 2023 timeframe.
- He is a photographer who learned the art of both taking photos and developing film from his stepfather at the age of twelve. He will be part of a group show at ASK in September.
- Chris was also a singer and performed on NYC stages for ten years. He managed his own business named ‘Fine Art Contracting’ with clients from Disney, Nike and Trump to David Bowie – one of his projects can be seen today in the New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street in NYC.
- As if all this isn’t enough Chris is also a political activist who has organized major demonstrations and been interviewed by the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, and various other news organizations. People for the American Way gave him an award for his activism. Today he is on the County and Town of Esopus Democratic Committees. Chris regularly attends shows and events at the ASK gallery, and he is deeply concerned with providing a nurturing space for artists to share their work with each other and the wider community.
- Statement: ASK is itself a work of art and I have been honored to be involved as a Board Member in that production for the past three years. I will continue to help ASK realize its full potential as a Center for the Arts.
- Barbara has extensive life and career experience as a Clinical Licensed Social Worker and as an artist. She has exhibited her work, primarily sculpture, at ASK and other galleries. She is a long time member and volunteer at ASK, at one time serving as Chair of a combined Membership/Hospitality committee. She was elected to the Board in 2023.
- A long-time and well-known Kingston resident, she is active in the community, and in representing ASK to the community, including tabling at public events and attending Chamber of Commerce events.
- Stephen R. Olivier II (b. 1970, New Bedford, Massachusetts) is an American multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, and sculpture. Raised in a working studio environment, Olivier was apprenticed to his father from an early age, gaining hands-on experience in traditional techniques while contributing to the continual rebuilding of the studio as his father’s health declined. This formative period instilled both technical fluency and a complex sense of artistic inheritance that continues to inform his work.
- Olivier briefly attended Massachusetts College of Art (1989-1991) before leaving to pursue a self-directed path. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he navigated a range of creative industries, including housewares design in Boston and menswear in Provincetown, while also working in New York’s contemporary art scene as a gallery assistant and art handler at White Box. During this time, he began exhibiting independently, developing an audience through direct street sales in SoHo.
- A residency at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami in 2005 led to gallery representation in Atlanta and a series of solo exhibitions in New York and beyond. His career paused in 2011 as he shifted focus to family life, while maintaining a parallel career as a freelance food stylist for major national advertising campaigns.
- In recent years, Olivier has re-engaged his studio practice with renewed focus, exhibiting in group shows across the United States and internationally, including a 2025 residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland. He lives and works in Woodstock, New York, where he continues to develop a body of work shaped by personal history, material experimentation, and evolving notions of artistic identity.
- Joseph Pine is an artist, object-maker, and educator living in the Hudson Valley. He received his MFA in Metals + Jewelry from the University of Wisconsin Madison and his BFA in Metal from State University of New York at New Paltz. His work investigates the interplay of process, surface, texture, and patina, utilizing traditional metalsmithing techniques, sculpture, and drawing. His creations draw inspiration from both natural and organic forms, as well as the signs of abuse, disuse, and disrepair found in the man-made world. This duality allows his work to straddle the boundary between the formal and the formless.
- Joseph teaches drawing, sculpture, and framing/display courses to youth and adults through local arts organizations including Midtown Kingston Arts District/DRAW and the Arts Society of Kingston.
- Joseph’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions at Black Creek Mercantile Co. (Kingston), D.R.A.W. Kingston, Arts Society of Kingston, Fine Line Creative Center (Illinois), Crooked Tree Arts Center (Michigan), CLUSTER (London), Touchstone Center For Craft (Pennsylvania) among others.