A Way of Learning From Everything, showcases the art produced by the ARTWorks Fellows, Cody Ann Herrmann and Patrice Robinson, during their residency at JCAL. Referencing Learning from Las Vegas, a 1972 book co-authored by legendary architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, the exhibition signals the artists’ open attitude and position in their studio practices.

Herrmann is devoted to social-practice art that explores real estate development projects, urban ecology and related issues of gentrification. She has organized guided tours through downtown Flushing and Willets Point to the Flushing waterfront, and performed guerilla actions, such as installing street signs to raise public awareness of local environmental issues. Robinson paints portraits in oil on wood panels, exploring the complexities that people with them internally as individuals and externally as a social beings. As a Black woman artist, she shares her experience of living in today’s America, implicitly pointing out critical conditions that need structural change and improvement.