Fantastical Realities: Sandra Caplan, Maya Ciarrocchi, and Ray Ciarrocchi
Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale, 5901 Palisade Avenue, will host the upcoming exhibition, Fantastical Realities: Sandra Caplan, Maya Ciarrocchi, and Ray Ciarrocchi, which will be on view from September 7, 2025 through January 11, 2026. A reception and talk with the artists will take place on Sunday, September 14, at 1:30 PM. As part of Open House New York, a special exhibition tour will take place on Sunday, October 19, at 1:30 PM. RSVP at (718) 581-1596 or art@riverspring.org. Admission to the Museum is always free.
This exhibition will be the first time two generations of the Ciarrocchi-Caplan family will exhibit together. Sandra Caplan focuses on still life, Ray Ciarrocchi on landscape, and Maya Ciarrocchi works across disciplines. The worlds they create and the realities they express are intimately connected to the times and places in which they work.
Sandra Caplan works almost exclusively in still life, using vivid colors and staged tableaux that she carefully assembles and paints directly from observation. What results, however, is fantastical. Flowers, fruits, fabric, mirrors, and personal objects are painted in bold, saturated colors and at large scale. Among the objects Caplan includes are “photos associated with people and places from the past,” including “reproductions of paintings that hold an emotional connection,” Caplan has explained. In Downtown View, September (1989), for example, she juxtaposes the subjective, internal world, symbolized by the still life, with the objective reality represented by the New York City skyline beyond the studio window.
Two tapestries, three needlepoints, and a sixteen-panel cyanotype installation by Ciarrocchi’s and Caplan’s daughter, Maya Ciarrocchi, will be on view. They are related to LoopCurrent, a research-based performance installation that envisions humanity’s impact on the planet and the irrevocably altered future. “LoopCurrent examines our relationship with the future by imagining the relics of that time. In a world rocked by a climate crisis, war, and political upheaval, what new, fantastical spaces can we build from the residue of destruction and loss?” Ciarrocchi stated.
A response to the present-day climate catastrophe, the works shown imagine remnants discovered by future archaeologists with collapsing cities, maps of water, migration pathways, and artifacts from industries such as mining and oil drilling. For example, City of Sighs—both the small needlepoint from 2023 and a large Jacquard tapestry of the same title from 2025—feature angular, geometric shapes that collapse into each other or intersect, referencing architectural forms and pathways. The works include imagery resembling topographical maps that reflect Ciarrocchi’s interest in migration, shifting realities, and displacement.
Ray Ciarrocchi has a strong formalist practice related to the physical aspects of landscape. His vibrant compositions begin with observation and become fantastical places all their own with the dramatic color and shadow that appear within his works. Describing his process, Ciarrocchi states, “the canvas . . . becomes more ‘real’ than the subject which initially inspired it.”
Ciarrocchi uses light as a way to explore the potential of color, transforming observed reality into something dreamlike. For example, the rhythmic stylization of natural forms and saturated pinks, greens, blues, and purples of Field by a River (1989) present a view of the Susquehanna River—the longest river on the East Coast and a subject that Ciarrocchi has returned to many times over the years—as a transcendent, surrealistic landscape, at once recognizable and strange.
The works on view reflect the distinctive social and artistic concerns of two generations of artists, yet each one engages with their own fantastical realities. While Maya Ciarrocchi uses abstraction in her textiles and cyanotypes to imagine a sprawling, ruinous future caused by the contemporary climate crisis, Sandra Caplan and Ray Ciarrocchi experiment with formalist elements to transform traditional still life and landscape painting from what they observe into what they envision.
Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM. Photo ID is required for all visitors to the Hebrew Home campus. Call (718) 581-1596 or email art@riverspring.org to schedule in-person or virtual group tours or for holiday hours. For further information, visit www.derfner.org.