Triada Samaras: Press Release 2026 International FL3TCH3R Exhibit: Social & Politically Engaged Art

2026 International FL3TCH3R Exhibit Returns 

with Global Perspectives on Social and Politically Engaged Art

The 2026 International FL3TCH3R Exhibit: Social & Politically Engaged Art returns in 2026 to downtown Johnson City, Tennessee, where it will be on view August 8 through September 27, 2026 at Fischman Gallery. Marking the exhibition’s 13th year, the return launches a new chapter through a new partnership with Fischman Gallery and presents a compelling juried exhibition exploring the urgent social and political issues shaping contemporary life.

A public program featuring this year’s juror, Jessica “J.B.” Burke, will be held on Friday, September 4, with a juror’s talk beginning at 6:30 p.m., followed by an awards presentation at 7:30 p.m. and a public reception. Approximately $2,000 in awards will be presented.

Since its founding, the International FL3TCH3R Exhibit has provided a forum for artists whose work addresses pressing social and political concerns. Rather than prescribing a specific theme, the exhibition invites diverse artistic responses that reflect the complexity, urgency, and evolving conversations surrounding justice, equality, human rights, environmental issues, identity, and global conflict.

This year’s juror, Jessica “J.B.” Burke, is an artist and educator based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Burke, who prefers to go by J.B., is a contemporary realist and Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her drawings have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Mint Museum, the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, the KEPCO Plaza Gallery Museum, and most recently Aqua Art Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach. Her work has also appeared in publications including Manifest’s International Drawing Annual (INDA) 13, Hi-Fructose Magazine, Hyperlux Magazine, 3x3 Illustration International, and Creative Quarterly: The Journal of Art and Design.

The 2026 exhibition represents one of the broadest geographic cross-sections in the event’s history. From 105 artist submissions comprising 275 individual artworks, Burke selected 67 works by 64 artists whose creative practices address significant contemporary issues through a wide range of artistic approaches. The exhibition includes fiber, metals, painting, photography, digital media, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, video, graphic design, ceramics, and mixed media.

Selected artists represent 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, as well as Canada, Denmark, Germany, Georgia, Iran, Jordan, Poland, and the United Kingdom. This remarkable geographic breadth underscores the global relevance of social and politically engaged contemporary art, demonstrating how artists from diverse cultures and communities respond to issues that transcend national boundaries while offering distinct regional perspectives.

The FL3TCH3R Exhibit was established in 2013 by art professor emeritus M. Wayne Dyer, his wife, attorney Barbara H. Dyer, and their daughter, graphic designer Carrie A. Dyer, in memory of their son and brother, Fletcher Hancock Dyer. Fletcher, age 22, was a senior Bachelor of Fine Arts student concentrating in graphic design when he was lost in a motorcycle accident on November 5, 2009.

“Fletcher had a profound love for humanity and believed in the possibility of a better future,” said co-directors Barb, Wayne, and Carrie Dyer. “Each day we witness escalating violence, injustice, and human suffering that reinforce why this exhibition exists. This year we ask: What if? What if we could create peace and loving equality? What if human rights were protected for everyone? What if we found solutions that could alter our course as a species and confront climate change? FL3TCH3R artists engage these questions, challenge the status quo, and inspire meaningful dialogue. Through their work, they continue to remind us of our dearest Fletcher.”

Established in 2022, Fischman Gallery is dedicated to presenting local and regional artists while creating opportunities for meaningful public engagement through the visual arts. Hosting the International FL3TCH3R Exhibit reflects the gallery’s belief that art should do more than appeal aesthetically—it should provoke thoughtful discussion, encourage empathy, and broaden perspectives.

The exhibition’s return has been made possible through Fischman Gallery’s generous partnership and support from a grant provided by Bravissima! Women Sponsoring the Arts. Together with the exhibition’s co-directors, artists, patrons, and community partners, the new collaboration ensures the continuation of one of the region’s most distinctive exhibitions devoted to social and politically engaged contemporary art.

The 2026 International FL3TCH3R Exhibit is free and open to the public at Fischman Gallery from August 8 through September 27, 2026. Visitors are especially encouraged to attend the First Friday events on September 4, featuring the juror’s public lecture, awards presentation, and reception.

About the exhibit, visit website: http://www.FL3TCH3Rexhibit.com

"Like” us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheFl3tch3rExhibit

Email: fl3tch3r.exhibit@gmail.com

 

For more information about Fischman Gallery: https://fischmangallery.org

 

Bravissima! Women Sponsoring the Arts: https://bravissima-arts.org

 

For more information about Fletcher Dyer, visit http://fletcherdyer.com/about.html.

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FL3TCH3R Exhibit Co-Directors:

Barbara H. Dyer

Carrie A. Dyer

M. Wayne Dyer

1821 E. Oakland Ave., Johnson City, TN 37601

Web: http://www.fl3tch3rexhibit.com/index.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheFl3tch3rExhibit

For more background on how censorship in 2023 affected this exhibition read: Censored Fl3tch3r Exhibition Renewed: Free Speech Win in TN — Hellmouth Magazine

Triada Samaras: New Exhibition: Eastern Pine A and the Air We Breathe

I am pleased to share that my painting Eastern Pine A has been accepted into an exhibition at ​

Fischman Gallery in Johnson, Tennessee.  The show, the 2026 FL3TCH3R Exhibit, focuses on socially and politically engaged art, and I am honored to have this work included.

Eastern Pine A is part of my ongoing Breath Drawings series — small panels made in silence, breath by breath, directly in the presence of two specific trees: an Eastern white pine in Maine and a spruce in New York City. The practice is rooted in the Hellenic concept of Pneuma — breath as the vital force connecting the physical and the divine.

Above:  Eastern Pine A  Triada Samaras 2026, Acrylic on wood panel, 14" x 11"

In recent years, wildfire smoke has repeatedly made the air in both New York and Maine too thick to breathe outdoors. A practice built on breath and direct contact with living trees becomes suddenly and literally impossible. The right side of this particular drawing fades gradually — the marks dissolving as visibility dissolves. That wasn't planned. It simply happened that way.

What climate change takes from the body is not abstract. It takes the breath itself.

More details about the exhibition to follow.

Triada

Triada Samaras: Between Euclid and Zeno: The Art of Greek-American Women at the Greek Consulate: Review by Gianna Katsageorgi

Above: Snapshot from the exhibition at the Consulate General of Greece in New York

Greece: National Herald Link (in Greek)

Between Euclid and Zeno: The Art of Greek-American Women at the Greek Consulate

By Gianna Katsageorgis, March 14, 2026

*Between Euclid and Zeno: The Art of Greek-American Women at the Greek Consulate

Something strangely beautiful happened at the General Consulate of Greece in New York recently. Not an ordinary wine event that ends quickly and words that are forgotten faster. But something more lively. An exhibition that tried to do something almost impossible: to fit ancient Greek philosophy into the chaos of contemporary art. And indeed, through the eyes of nineteen Greek-American women artists.

The title of the exhibition 'From Euclid's Finite to Zeno's Infinite' is one of those that makes you raise an eyebrow. It sounds almost overly grandiose, as if it condenses two and a half thousand years of philosophy within it. But when you walk through the hall, you begin to understand that this title functions more as a challenge than as a statement. The opening of the exhibition set a tone that balanced between formal and unexpectedly lively. The Consul General of Greece in New York, Iphigenia Kanara, spoke about the importance of the presence of women of the Greek diaspora in the contemporary cultural scene of the city. It was not a typical diplomatic greeting. It was more of a reminder that even spaces associated with the state can, at least for a while, be transformed into living laboratories of ideas.

As she noted, the consulate thus becomes a 'platform for dialogue,' where classical Greek thought meets contemporary artistic avant-garde through the perspective of women. Subsequently, the artist Antonia Papatzanaki spoke about the vision of the curator Thaleia Vrachopoulou, who shaped the curatorial concept and the philosophical structure of the exhibition, emphasizing it not as a theoretical framework, but as an open process. As a journey between form and its deconstruction, between order and the freedom of movement.

Above: Consul General Ms. Iphigenia Kanara with some of the visual artists.

And right there the title of the exhibition begins to gain depth. The curation by art historian, Thalia Vrachopoulos, a curator who knows how to set up exhibitions within an intellectual framework, does not try to make the female artists 'illustrate' philosophy. Art that tries to explain theories usually dies of boredom. Instead, the exhibition lets the idea of the finite and the infinite function like an atmosphere. Like electricity in the air.

And suddenly everything makes sense. Geometry appears in most works not as a mathematical exercise but as instinct: shapes that seem to hold the world in place, lines that try to impose order on the chaos of the surface. It is as if you see the shadow of Euclid hovering over canvases and sculptures. And then, just when you think order has prevailed, something breaks. The form begins to dissolve. The lines open up. The gaze gets lost in repetitions, rhythms, endless transformations. There appears the other philosopher of the title, Zeno of Elea, the man who told us that motion is a paradox and that infinity can fit into a single step. The exhibition there acquires rhythm. It is no longer just a simple group presentation. It is a pendulum swinging back and forth: order and chaos, form and dissolution, geometry and energy. But the most interesting thing is not the philosophy. It is the artists themselves. Nineteen women, from 29 to 83 years old. Three generations with immigrant stories and experiences. Some carry the memory of Greece strongly, others are purely children of New York: nervous, experimental, almost urban in their gesture. Nefeli Massia, Antzi Drakopoulou, Eirini Linardaki, Despoina Myriokefalitaki-Zografou, Dimitra Skandali, Antonia Papatzanaki, Eozene Agopian, Eleni Angelopoulou, Lora Donson, Morfi Gika, Zoi Keramea, Artemis Kotioni, Despo Magoni, Ioanna Pantazopoulou, Marita Pappa, Anna Samara, Triada Samaras, Lydia Venieri, and Fotini Vourgaropoulou, make up an impressive spectrum of artistic approaches. This mixture creates something you cannot direct. The moment you stand in front of the works, you realize that the 'Greek-American' identity is not a style. It is a continuous shifting between two cultures that never stop conversing. The exhibition also functions as a small commentary on the position of women in the history of art. Neither in an instructive way nor with grand slogans, but as a presence that is enough.

Above: Work by Antonia Papatzanaki "Cellular"

For decades, the history of art seemed like a room full of men talking very loudly. Now more and more exhibitions resemble what happened here: a room where women create their own polyphony. And this polyphony is exciting.

Some works are quiet, almost meditative. Others are explosive, full of gesture and energy. Some seem to speak about memory, others about pure form. But they all share something in common: a sense of searching. As if trying to answer a simple yet enormous question: How does one live between the finite and the infinite? Perhaps this is ultimately the true success of the exhibition. It does not provide answers. It creates space for thought. And that is something that rarely happens in diplomatic buildings where the world's problems are solved with words. At the consulate, however, for a moment, words receded. Their place was taken by images. And these images whispered something old but always new: that art, like Zeno's infinite, never ends.

Gianna Katsageorgi, March 14, 2026

* The exhibition is open to the public until March 31 at the Greek Consulate in New York City on 69 East 79th Street, in New York. Open Monday - Friday 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM.

Above:  Work by Nefeli Massia 'The Chamber of Infinite Deferral' 1997

Above:  A work by Angie Drakopoulo 'Interspace"

Above:  Work by Despina Myriokefalitaki-Zografou 'Strolleroptera'

Triada Samaras / Press: Greek‑American Women Artists Present “From the Finite to the Infinite” in New York

 

Above:  Photo of some of the artists featured in the exhibition

Greek‑American Women Artists Present “From the Finite to the Infinite” in New York

By

 Greek News

 -

 March 6, 2026

NEW YORK–

Amid an impressive turnout from the Omogenia and New York’s art community, the group exhibition “Euclid’s Finite to Zeno’s Infinite: Hellenic‑American Women Artists” was inaugurated on Wednesday, March 4.

The Consulate’s event hall was filled with guests gathered to honor nineteen leading Greek-American female creators. Curated by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos, the exhibition is held in celebration of International Women’s Day, serving as a tribute to the creative power of women within the Greek Diaspora.

The exhibition was inaugurated by the Consul General of Greece in New York, Ifigeneia Kanara, who praised the dynamic presence and contribution of women within the Greek-American community. “It is our honor to transform the Consulate into a vibrant platform for dialogue, where classical Greek thought meets contemporary artistic innovation through the perspective of women,” she remarked.

Consul General Kanara extended sincere thanks to the curator Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulou, and to the exhibition’s initiator, Antonia Papatzanaki, for their vision and contribution and congratulated the participating artists for their outstanding work.

Following the opening, the exhibition’s visionary, Antonia Papatzanaki, conveyed the message of curator Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos—who was unable to attend due to health reasons—praising the intellectual clarity and philosophical structure of the exhibition. Papatzanaki emphasized that the art of these women is not merely theoretical but a living process that redefines the boundaries of existence and creation. “This exhibition is not just about philosophy,” she noted. “It is about the woman artist navigating between defined form and absolute abstraction; it is about the continuity of generations and the infinite possibilities of the female artistic language today.”

The Philosophical Identity of the Exhibition

The exhibition’s title reflects a profound dialectic: on the one hand, Euclidean geometry represents measure, clarity, and the defined form characteristic of classical Greek thought. On the other hand, the concept of Infinite, as explored by Zeno of Elea, introduces philosophical rupture, flow, and the “Dionysian” power of becoming.

The nineteen artists, ranging in age from 29 to 83, inhabit and redefine this conceptual space, bridging the naturalistic with the abstract and the finite with the absolute. Visitors had the opportunity to explore works spanning a wide spectrum, from naturalism to geometric abstraction.

Participating artists include: Eozen Agopian, Elaine Angelopoulos, Laura Donson, Angie Drakopoulos, Morfy Gikas, Zoe Keramea, Artemis Kotioni, Eirini Linardaki, Despo Magoni, Nefeli Massia, Despina Myriokefalitaki-Zografos, Antonia Papatzanaki, Ioanna Pantazopoulou, Marita Pappa, Anna Samara, Triada Samaras, Dimitra Skandali, Lydia Venieri, Fotini Vurgaropoulou.

The exhibition will remain on view through March 31, at the Consulate General of Greece in New York [69 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075] Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

Link: https://tinyurl.com/25dtnzh2

Triada Samaras: Euclid’s Finite to Zeno’s Infinite at the Greek Consulate in NYC

Above: Euclidian Web, Triada Samaras, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 20 inches

Above right: Greek Consul General Kanara (right) and Antonia Papatzanaki at the Opening Reception

Reflecting on a successful opening at the Consulate General of Greece in New York City:

It was an honor to celebrate the reception for "Euclid’s Finite to Zeno’s Infinite: Hellenic American Women Artists" last Wednesday, March 4. This exhibition, honoring International Women’s Month, features the work of 19 Hellenic-American women artists exploring diverse narratives of heritage and identity.

My deepest gratitude to the curator and organizer for their vision in bringing this collection to life. It was a pleasure to engage with so many colleagues and guests in such a meaningful setting.

The exhibition remains on view through March 31, 2026. For those interested in viewing the digital catalogue and exhibition brochure, please visit my News page:

https://www.triadasamaras.com/news.html

#LinkedInArts #HellenicHeritage #InternationalWomensMonth #ContemporaryArt #ProfessionalPractice

Above: Euclidian Web, Triada Samaras, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 20 inches

Euclidian Web serves as a visual meditation on the tension between order and the unknown. Inspired by the exhibition’s focus on Hellenic philosophical roots, the painting utilizes linear intersections to map the finite boundaries of logic against the infinite nature of existence. The branch-like forms, created through a mindful, neurographic process, reference the organic growth patterns found in nature—mirroring both neural pathways and the sprawling networks of the physical world. In this work, the web is not a trap, but a connection; a map of the internal constraints we face and the vast, limitless space that exists once we move through them.

Above: Zeno's Horizon, Triada Samaras, 2025, Acrylic, oil crayon on canvas, 20 x 16 inches

Triada Samaras: Catalog Essay for Transcending Bodies by Patricia Miranda

Catalog Essay for Transcending Bodies

Photo Credit:  Paul Takeuchi

​Triada Samaras, Fragmented Exultations
Patricia Miranda

Triada Samaras- the artist and the work - is full of righteous fury. In Samaras’ world, epic narratives emerge from the intimacy of personal illness and bodily fragility. The exhibition, Transcending Bodies, includes paintings from several recent series. The Long Covid Series presents a lamentation on the isolation and resilience of negotiating chronic illness, especially one so fraught with political context. Her palette of blacks, smoky umbers, and dirty whites is applied in ferocious strokes of somber earthiness. An occasional dense cadmium red or yellow punches the space; this is a dusk world drained of fecund greenery. Hearts, hands, and torsos appear disembodied from swirls of shadow. They become iconic, body parts as talismanic ex-votos. They circle a vortex in the pictorial space as though falling backwards into oblivion, threatening to reach into our world to pull us with them. Their plea to not fall spills the inky black world onto the sides of the canvas, breaking the fourth wall of their interiority.

The Unbound Series continues the iconography of visceral brushwork and tumultuous emotions. Yet forms are no longer fragmented in inchoate darkness – hints of landscape appear, leaning closer into illusion. Figures have an earnest naivete; a body traced onto the canvas is swaddled in a surround of paint, symbolic houses swirl through a flooded subconscious storm dream. Clouds of loosely scripted poetry encircle the images like sirens recounting the story. Objects materialize, windswept, mythic, wrestling between the void and the luminous. 

In the Body and Nature Series, darkness has given way to a dawn of bright blues, pinks and yellows. The brushwork remains agitated, full of the struggle and longing present in all of the artist’s work. These sunrise landscapes are smaller, quieter, almost jubilant. A horizon appears across the series, gravity calming the vortex, as a hand reaches hopefully into the distant light.

The exhibition embodies a cycle of seasons, a woman’s private story of illness and healing.  There’s a persistent spirituality to Samaras’ work, a sense of the pain, awe, and transcendence of suffering, and the ability of paint to illuminate the visceral. Subsuming larger religious and societal themes into the particularity of a woman with an “unacceptable” chronic illness, her sense of atmosphere references Goya in his dark moody politic. The urgency of her touch and elasticity of her forms, as well as her tactile religiosity, bring to mind El Greco, the icon writer turned fleshy painter, perhaps an unconscious nod to her Greek heritage. Samaras exults in the expressive and tempestuous emotionality of paint.

Patricia Miranda July 2025

Triada Samaras: Euclid’s Finite to Zeno’s Infinite: Hellenic- American Women Artists, Greek Consulate, NYC

 I am very pleased to announce I will have two of my paintings in this exhibition:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, N.Y. — The Consulate General of Greece in New York, in celebration of International Women’s Month, proudly presents the group exhibition Euclid’s Finite to Zeno’s Infinite: Hellenic- American Women Artists, curated by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos.

The exhibition will be on view from March 4–31, 2026, and will open with an RSVP reception on Wednesday, March 4, from 6:00–8:00 p.m.

RSVP here: https://events.humanitix.com/euclid-s-finite-to-zeno-s-infinite-hellenic-american-women-artists 

or use the QR code in the image below:

The artworks featured in this exhibition are stylistically varied, ranging from naturalistic to abstracted and geometric approaches, a diversity that gave rise to the title Euclid’s Finite to Zeno’s Infinite. 

Euclid’s Elements articulate a conception of space grounded in finitude, measure, and formal containment, structured through points without magnitude, bounded lines, and circumscribed planes governed by axioms of proportionality and logical closure. This geometric order privileges clarity, presence, and tactile intelligibility over abstraction or infinity, resonating with the common characterization of the Classical Greek worldview as oriented toward the bounded body and the self-contained form. 

In contrast to this Apollonian logic of closed form and corporeal measure, Zeno of Elea’s reflections on the infinite introduce a decisive disturbance into the Greek confidence in finitude and stable identity. Zeno’s infinite functions as a philosophical rupture rather than an expansion of space, aligning with what Nietzsche later identifies as a Dionysian force of dissolution and becoming that destabilizes the principle of individuation.

Euclid’s Finite to Zeno’s Infinite: Hellenic-American Women Artists proposes figuration and abstraction not as stylistic opposites, but as philosophically charged modalities through which the classical dialectic between measure and excess, stability and flux, is materially enacted.

Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos

Participating artists:

Eozen Agopian; Elaine Angelopoulos; Laura Donson; Angie Drakopoulos; Morfy Gikas; Zoe Keramea; Artemis Kotioni; Eirini Linardaki; Despo Magoni; Nefeli Massia; Despina Myriokefalitaki-Zografos; Antonia Papatzanaki; Ioanna Pantazopoulou; Marita Pappa; Anna Samara; Triada Samaras; Dimitra Skandali; Lydia Venieri; Fotini Vurgaropoulou.

For more information:

Please contact the curator, Thalia Vrachopoulos, at 646-344-9009 or tvrachopoulos@gmail.com, or the initiator of the exhibition, Antonia Papatzanaki, at 917-213-5949 or apapatza@yahoo.com.

Viewing Hours:

Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

Consulate General of Greece in New York

69 East 79th Street

New York, NY 10075

Triada Samaras and Exhibition at the Greek Consulate of NYC

Save the Date! I am pleased to announce that my paintings will be featured in a group exhibition called: "Euclid’s Finite to Zeno’s Infinite: Hellenic-American Women Artists" to be held at the Greek Consulate of New York. 

Details: Curator: Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos, art historian, independent curator, and Professor of Visual Arts at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

Venue: Greek Consulate of New York, 69 E 79th St, New York, NY 10075
Dates: March 4 – April 3
Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Above:  Zeno’s Horizon Triada Samaras 2025 

Acrylic on Panel (24" x 18") (detail)

Triada Samaras Poem: Light Land Looming

 Light Land Looming

​
Land in limitless light
Looms level with heaven,
Rewards us with reason--
Sprawling and safe.

A mountain emerges,
Spoiling serenity.,
Pointed lines draw our spellbound
Eyes uphill

To a cold place where
The wind blows without logic,
Up and down the peak
In excessive screams.

We do not resist,
But are lifted willingly
Toward the summit--
And our nightmares
​
Hypnotized, we grasp the
Needing automatically,
Perceiving the peril
As our own.

c. 2009 Triada Samaras (revised 2025)

For more poems please see my website

Triada Samaras Poem: Whispering Branches

Whispering Branches

When heavy words began to fall
Lightly down, from leaf to leaf 

They landed and dropped

When superfluous ones left
Their monotones faded and
Inflections stilled—
Leaving luxurious silence
Birdsong and the gentle wind

Took us back to a time
When our feet were soft
Walked a carpet of pine needles
Drank their fresh scent—

To a place where sound
Meant the waving branches up high,
Spirit’s gentle whisper
Blowing lush green breezes between them

That is when I felt your breath on my cheek 

The breeze blew through the spaces where we danced

While the sky twirled castanets

In an endless musical prose

That was when you found poetry
Half asleep in a pastoral dream next to me

That fell to your face
In a whisper of love
Like your breath on mine

As I wrote it all down

c. Triada Samaras 2002  (editied 2026)

For more poems please see my website

The Conundrum

The Conundrum

The artist groped through the paint 
Trying to see

With her fingertips 
The things she could not say

The more she could see 
The less she could say so

She spoke in whispers 
Even to her secret self

Asking, where does the paint 
Want to go?

The paint drifted about the canvas 
Like waves on a lazy boat

Lapping here 
Landing there

Landing nowhere 
In particular

The artist played
The game she learned long ago pretending

Her brush was deaf 
Her fingers mute

And the game of smiling 
When it was not called for

She stopped the brush 
To catch her breath often

Asking, where does the paint 
Want to be?

The more she could say 
The less she could see so

She spoke in whispers 
Blaming paint

Even to 
Her secret self.

c. 2007 Triada Samaras (revised 2025)

For more poems see my website