Susan Gosin

Founder & Co-Chair

Susan Gosin co-founded Dieu Donné in New York in 1976, collaborating with artists and writers as designer and publisher of two and three-dimensional art and limited editions of artist’s books. Gosin has been awarded grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and The Tiffany Foundation and in 2006 received the Printmaker Emeritus Award from the Southern Graphics Council. As a teacher and educator, she has developed curricula and designed studio programs for The New School, Rutgers University, Amagansett Applied Arts, The Phumani Archival Mill, Johannesburg, South Africa, and The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt.

Joan Hall

Co-Chair

A nationally recognized artist, educator, and advocate, Joan Hall brings decades of experience bridging visual art, environmental awareness, and institutional leadership. Based in Jamestown, Rhode Island, she is known for her large-scale, mixed-media installations that address marine ecology and climate resilience through handmade paper, glass, and metal. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale (2019), the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Silkeborg Art Center in Denmark. Joan is represented by Childs Gallery in Boston. Joan is the Kenneth E. Hudson Emerita Professor of Art at Washington University in St. Louis, where she was the first female endowed professor in the Sam Fox School and served as director of Island Press from 1999 to 2010. She is also the founder of the West Bay View Foundation, which provides a six-month, full-time studio fellowship at Dieu Donné for visual artists with papermaking experience who seek to deepen their understanding of handmade paper through immersive practice in a professional studio environment.

Jody Saarmaa

Treasurer

Jody Saarmaa is an accomplished executive with more than 25 years of experience in high-growth technology companies, where she led product management and strategic initiatives. She combines extensive business and leadership expertise with a deep commitment to advancing arts and cultural institutions.  Saarmaa brings significant nonprofit governance experience through her service with leading arts organizations. She is a member of the Board of Advisors at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she chairs the Steering Committee for the Curators Circles. She previously chaired the Museum Council and served on the Patrons Steering Committee.  She currently serves as Chair of the Board of the Jamestown Arts Center, where she is also an active member of the Finance, Exhibitions and Lecture Program Committees. Ms. Saarmaa earned her undergraduate degree from Duke University and a Masters from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Jennifer Clifford Danner

Secretary

Jennifer Clifford Danner is a New York City and Massachusetts based artist. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design where she was the recipient of the Florence Leif Award in painting. Ms. Danner is a figurative painter, working primarily in portraiture and narrative painting in large-scale oils and watercolor. Her interpretation of both the human and organic forms are governed by her vision as an ardent colorist, and her passionate study of the oceans–the nature of our human interaction with the aquatic being a recurring source of inspiration. Recently Ms. Danner has increasingly turned to new media including works in ceramics, handmade paper, multimedia, and collaborations in performance. She has exhibited in New York at Leila Heller Gallery, White Columns, The National Arts Club, Jane Hartsook Gallery and Fawbush Gallery, as well as galleries in Providence, RI, Provincetown, MA and Washington, DC. Her artwork is part of the permanent collection of the 9/11 Memorial Museum as well as in private collections. In addition, she has been featured on the cover of Bomb Magazine as well as in The Provincetown Independent, Provincetown Magazine, The Washington Post, and The Washington Times.

Patrick Almonrode

Patrick Almonrode is a progressive attorney working to protect his clients’ rights. After a successful career as a visual artist and as a Studio Director at Dieu Donné, he attended Fordham University School of Law, where he earned his Juris Doctorate with cum laude honors. He later clerked for Barbara S. Jones, a judge of the Federal District Court of the Southern District of New York. Mr. Almonrode is a member of the New York Bar and the Federal District Courts of the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and the District of Colorado. He is also a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the New York County Lawyers Association. Pat focuses on wage and hour class and collective actions, and on whistleblower lawsuits on behalf of individuals reporting fraud on the government.

Sue Ann Evans

Sue Evans is the founder and director of Fair Street Projects, a fine art studio designed to serve a wide range of creative thinkers. Central to the studio’s mission is a collaborative approach, partnering with artists and educators in the image-making process. For twelve years, Evans served as president of the Rolin Foundation, a private nonprofit dedicated to supporting learning through art, education, and cultural heritage initiatives. In that role, she spearheaded collaborations with emerging nonprofits and established institutions to develop educational programs across the United States, as well as in Toronto, London, the Emirates, Cairo, Alexandria, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A steadfast advocate for the fine arts and education community, Evans has long worked to expand access to creative opportunities. She has developed partnerships that inspire innovative thinking in underserved communities in Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Camden, and Paterson, NJ. Her efforts have brought together students, educators, benefactors, and visionaries to build impactful educational and cultural programs.

Cynthia Nourse Thompson

Cynthia Nourse Thompson is currently a professor at Kennesaw State University and director of curatorial affairs at the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Previously, she served as director of the MFA programs in book arts & printmaking, and studio arts at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, for seven years. She has served as curator for the Joy Pratt Markham Gallery at the Walton Arts Center and as associate professor and curator of exhibitions at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Thompson also served 12 years as professor of book, print, and paper arts at Memphis College of Art, chair of the Fine Arts department, and curator and director of visiting artist lectures. Thompson received her BFA in Printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. In addition to teaching and curating, she previously worked at Dieu Donné, Harlan & Weaver, and the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, now the Brodsky Center at PAFA.

William Villalongo

William Villalongo is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He is a graduate of The Cooper Union School of Art (BFA) and Tyler School of Art at Temple University (MFA). He works across various media, concerned with representing the Black subject exploring themes of myth and liberation. His notable curatorial project Black Pulp! toured nationally between 2016-2018 exploring intersections of politics, history and art. Honors include Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptor's Grant and the Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Purchase Fund at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the 2022 Jules Guerin & Harold M. English Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Art. His work is in several collections including the Studio Museum In Harlem, The Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Art. The artist is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, New York and is Associate Professor at The Cooper Union School of Art.

B. Wurtz

Born 1948 in Pasadena, California, B. Wurtz is best known for his playful and compelling sculptures constructed from discarded materials like produce packaging, construction lumber, and plastic bags. He received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1980. The sculptor and painter currently lives and works in New York, New York.  B. Wurtz’s repurposing of everyday flotsam into joyous, humorous, and beautiful objects undermine grand artistic gesture while elevating the commonplace. The artist’s transformative amalgams of found materials have tended to coalesce around the subjects of “sleeping, eating, and keeping warm”—the foundational human needs named in his 1973 drawing Three Important Things. While his sculptures are often modest in scale, in 2018, the artist created his now iconic Kitchen Trees for the New York City Public Art Fund, transforming City Hall Park with towering columns of colorful colanders exploding with plastic fruit.