Photography: Andrea Ceraso
Yellow Studio is an all-women’s collective for art, creativity, and community - located in one of the 18th Century cottages that make up Yellow Monkey Village, on the north side of Route 35 opposite the mouth of the Cross River Reservoir.
Yellow Studio is the brainchild of Tina Villaveces. Tina grew up in Manhattan attending Marymount, an all girls school - right across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She majored in Art History and minored in Architecture and French at Trinity College, and later earned a graduate degree in Museum Studies with a focus on Contemporary Art from New York University. She had a successful career in the NYC art world, working at prominent galleries, including Sean Kelly, James Cohan, and Pace, and major museums, including the Guggenheim, MoMA, the Museum of Arts and Design, and the Whitney, and later worked at the large design consulting firm Pentagram. “I knew early on that I wanted to be a registrar… I liked the nitty gritty, behind the scenes element of making things work. I got to be part of the installations, art handling, logistics… but I also got to be close to the artists - and I’ve always been enthralled by artists.”
“It was just natural to me to have a space dedicated to women,” Tina explains… “I went to an all girls school growing up. I’ve always been surrounded by women, and have always wanted to create spaces where women feel uplifted and supported!”
“When covid hit, my husband and I were still in the City with our one year old baby boy, and we bought what we intended to be a weekend home in Pound Ridge. It needed a lot of work, but we were just so grateful at the time to be here. We closed in July 2020, and it only took until the Fall for us to decide it was going to be our full-time home,” Tina smiles.
“I joined the Pound Ridge Working Moms group,” Tina recounts. “I put out a message that I was looking to get a job or volunteer in the arts, as I was eager to be part of something and get to know the art scene up here. I got connected with the Registrar at the Katonah Museum, and it turned out that a few departments needed some help! I double masked - very pregnant with my second child - and volunteered to do anything and everything that they needed. It was my favorite day of the week! It really helped me to explore the art world up here. Then, after I had our second baby, I worked in Development at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield for a few months. It’s an amazing place, but Development is not what I’d done or what I like best…and the idea for Yellow Studio was already brewing… inspired by a supportive friend that suggested that, instead of looking around for the next institution where I could make a contribution, I could just start my own thing!”
“The foundation of Yellow Studio is that it is, at its most public-facing level, a gallery. Throughout the course of the year I curate eight to ten shows, some solo exhibitions, some group shows and two Member shows. I try to display a combination of local artists and emerging artists from nearby places. And the common theme is that all of the artists we show are women artists who inspire.”
“The ‘Upstairs’ has evolved into a creative collective, with memberships centered around clubs and special programming, and eight spots for artists and other creatives who need somewhere outside their home to hone their craft, paint, draw, develop images, or do the back-end of their business. And that setup fosters a sense of community and collaboration, where the women can lean on each other to bounce ideas off of. Two of the eight spots are reserved for our one-to-three-month residency program. It’s of course only available to women, and is application based. We accept applications on a rolling basis from women across a spectrum of creative endeavours, though our applicant pool has leaned heavily toward visual artists and writers. The residency is meant to be a temporary opportunity for female creatives to have an affordable space of their own in a creative environment and become more enmeshed in the community - a kind of creative incubator,” Tina details.
“I’m always experimenting, tinkering, and finding out what works,” Tina says. “I get so much joy from creating a space like this! The gallery gives me the chance to showcase women at all stages of their careers as artists. I’ve showcased work by women who up until that point were hesitant to call themselves artists… and this gallery has also given people a place to come into their own and embrace parts of themselves that they thought were gone. Beyond that, I try to focus on having variation in terms of mediums, genres, and how established the artist is in their career. Paramount to what I show is that I want the art that you’re seeing here to be different from what you find everywhere else. I’m constantly looking for art that’s interesting and different - and that evokes an emotional response. And I’m always considering the value of the artwork to collectors - I try to keep the art accessible. I strive to curate artwork at a wide range of prices in each show so there’s everything from an impulse buy to an investment-quality piece.”
Yellow Studio’s workshops and programming are intended to bring out the creative spirit, and, maybe even more, to create a sense of belonging in the community of like-minded women, across sectors and interests.
“I try to keep a balance in terms of offerings for members and those who are not members, yet! A membership at Yellow Studio ranges from just $50 to $85 per month for access. Our member-led clubs include a book club, writing club, art club, film club, a nature and sustainability club, a networking club and our newest: mindfulness club… I want to put people in this creative mindset, and bring women together. And no, you do not have to be an artist to be a member at Yellow Studio!”
Gallery shows at Yellow Studio are ‘live’ for four-to-six weeks at the gallery, so there’s always something new to see… and Tina says that exhibitions are already curated for the upcoming year.
Though the gallery only shows women’s art, and most programming at Yellow Studio is for women, by women… men are welcome to the opening of each gallery show, and to come visit the gallery any time!
At the time of publication, the exhibition Lost and Found, featuring works by Carol Bouyoucos and Tina Scepanovic, was on view through March 14.
As featured in the March/April 2025 issue of Bedford & New Canaan Magazine