Director
Grace Chen, from Taipei, Taiwan, is an accomplished artist and experienced gallerist.
She studied Sculpture at the New York Academy of Art after completing a BFA in Ceramics as well as a BA in Art History from Purdue University.
From 2012 to 2016, she worked in the Fine Art appraisal industry, academia, and corporate before moving to New York in 2016 for a directorship at a French gallery on the Lower East Side.
Grace worked for galleries in Chelsea and SoHo before being invited to serve as the Executive Director of the Carole Feuerman Sculpture Foundation.
Director Emerita
After 22 years, Vernita Nemec is stepping away as director of Viridian Artists but will continue as Director Emerita. Nemec has been the director of Viridian Artists since 2001 when the gallery was located on 57th Street in the New York Gallery Building.
An artist as well, she has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, Artists Space, Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, The Field, NEA & others. Nemec has presented her visual and performance art in the U.S. and internationally in Mexico, Hungary, Germany, Japan, Ireland and France. Throughout all, she continues to write poetry, sometimes incorporating it into her visual & performance media.
An independent curator since 1994, she has been curating extensive groups exhibitions of art from recycled materials and trash, entitled “Art from Detritus” for which she received a Kaufmann Foundation Grant and a Puffin Foundation Grant.
In the 90’s, Nemec served as Director of Artists Talk On Art, interviewing art world luminaries, and as an independent curator at Henry Street Settlement Art Center.
Vernita’s complete biography can be seen on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernita_Nemec
She often uses the name N’Cognita to honor under-known artists.
Assistant Director
Jenny Belin is a Brooklyn-based painter who has worked as a professional artist and illustrator since 1993. Her works vary in subject: women, flowers, and pin-ups create a thematic intersection of feminism, power, and beauty.
Jenny began her career as a fashion illustrator with drawings published in magazines and newspapers, including the New Yorker, Glamour, Mirabella, and the NY Daily News.
A side gig as a pet portrait artist opened the door to great press and reviews, including articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Domino Magazine, and Apartment Therapy. More recently, her work has been featured in Avenue, Uppercase, Design Art Daily, and the Smithsonian Magazine newsletter.
She is currently writing and illustrating “Sonnets For Sweet Potatoes”: A Cat’s Guide to NYC, a wry-humored book about the felines who reside in New York. Each character study provides a glimpse into a New York Cat’s headspace, longings, psychology, and philosophical musings. A Cats of LA sequel is on her to-do list.
Jenny is also writing “Letters to Dead Feminists,” a collection of epistolary prose in which she asks her greatest muses to counsel her and share perspectives on art, cats, feminism, fashion, and identity.
Jenny has exhibited paintings in NYC, LA, the UK, and Japan