"Meet the Artist" with Misael Hernandez and Dean Majd

On Thursday, September 25, we welcome Misael Hernandez and Dean Majd (current Woodstock AIRs) to “Meet the Artist” night at CPW. Hernandez will present the conceptual and ongoing development of his image-embedded Adobe tablets and Adobe brick compositions. The material and imagery are reflective of his Northwest Mexican American upbringing in Oregon. He is eager to present his project experience, which began during his MFA studies at the University at Buffalo and is now unraveling into various projects. Majd will present an overview of his personal work, touching on several projects, including “Hard Feelings”, the decade-long series about masculinity and trauma in New York, and “Separation”, his work made about the expulsion of his family in Palestine, which have become the two defining series of his practice. Majd will also discuss the special projects he takes on when being commissioned, which have become an extension of his personal work, as well as previewing newer work he’s been making. This event will be live-streamed on CPW’s YouTube page at 6pm.

Join us every Thursday evening at CPW, when we host illuminating talks with local and visiting artists. “Meet the Artist” allows the public to get to know new work, to hear about artistic processes, and to meet friends and other local artists. The evening takes place at CPW’s gallery at 25 Dederick Street in Kingston, NY. It is free and open to the public. Coffee, tea, and snacks are served. “Meet the Artist” is made possible by a generous grant from the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation.

Misael Hernandez is a photographer from Springfield, Oregon. His work utilizes documentary, sculpture and archive approaches to decipher the culture, religion, and identity of his Mexican heritage and Northwestern American upbringing. These two cultures and the landscapes of the West have had tremendous impacts on his character and artistic practice. He now combines adobe brick material, sculpture, and historically sourced images to construct photographic works that refer to his sense of identity and its relation to a deep photographic time and cross-cultural shared experiences.

Hernandez received his MFA and was a graduate instructor in photography at the University at Buffalo (2023-2025). He attained his BA from the University of Oregon and assisted Portland photographer and educator Jason Langer (2021-2023). His work has been exhibited in Oregon and New York, including the Center for Exploratory & Perceptual Arts (CEPA), University at Buffalo Art Galleries, and C.R.E.A.T.E Community Studios. Selected awards include the Film Photo Award 2025 Student Project Award, the 2025 SUNY Thayer Fellowship and the 2025 Generator Grant, administered by The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (BICA), funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation. Hernandez was recently selected to participate in the Center for Photography at Woodstock (fall 2025) and the Anderson Ranch (spring 2026) artist-in-residence programs.

Dean Majd (b. 1990) is a self-taught, lens-based artist born and based in Queens, New York. Born to Palestinian immigrants, he studied international relations with a focus on the Middle East at CUNY The City College of New York. Majd began forming his intimate and cinematic visual language after being given his first camera at seven years old by his mother. His diaristic work engages with violence as an imposed center-point of one’s life, focusing on repressed, negative emotions within contemporary masculinity in relation to addiction and self-destruction. His work also explores the complexities of the Arab-American dichotomy and the Palestinian diaspora against apartheid, and how they overlap.

Majd has been profiled by Aperture, MATTE Magazine, AnOther Magazine, and GQ Middle East. His editorial work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, The New Yorker, Dazed, and New York Magazine among others. He recently has been exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York in the exhibition New York Now: Home, and lectured at the International Center of Photography. He is one of the recipients of the 2025 En Foco Fellowship Award. He is passionate about cinema, immensely devoted to his friends (his chosen family), and a proud New Yorker. He believes that love, above all else, is the driving force behind everything he does.

Banner images (left to right): Misael Hernandez (1 &2), Dean Majd (3&4).

Also check out other Arts events in Kingston, Exhibitions in Kingston, Fine Arts events in Kingston.