Arts Awards Highlight Cultural Work Rooted in Community

Mary Calvi (President’s Award)
Known as the First Lady of Yonkers, Calvi is also a celebrated historian and best-selling novelist. Her “Club Calvi” book club on CBS News New York and her meticulously researched novels, such as Dear George, Dear Mary, have brought a new dimension to American historical literature.

KinoSaito (Arts Organization)
Located in a repurposed Catholic school in Verplanck, KinoSaito is an interdisciplinary art center that supports experimental performing arts and abstract art. Its programming includes exhibitions, performances, artist residencies and education initiatives such as its KinoKids series.

Joseph Squillante (Artist Award)
For more than five decades, Squillante has photographed the Hudson River, returning to the same subject over time to document its beauty, fragility and change. His work combines visual storytelling with long-term observation, using landscape photography to explore environmental stewardship and cultural connection.

We Art One Artist Collective (Sophia Abeles Arts Education Award)
Based in Yonkers, We Art One has transformed public spaces into hubs for intergenerational healing, serving hundreds of youths and seniors through relationship-based arts programming.

Chioma Nwana (Larry Salley Photography Award)
A Pulitzer fellow based in White Plains, Nwana’s photography centers Black life in White Plains through portraits, archives and oral histories. Her work examines urban redevelopment and positions photography as a way to ensure that communities are documented with care, accuracy and authority.

Christina Picciano (Advancing Equity Award)
Ossining musician and community organizer Picciano is the founder of the Hudson Valley Queer Collective. Her work includes producing LGBTQ+-centered arts programming across Westchester and the Hudson Valley as well as creating the LGBTQ+ Listening Library, a traveling archive of recorded queer artists from the 1960s to today.

Joyce Sharrock Cole (Advancing Equity Award)
In her role as the Village Historian of Ossining, playwright and curator, Cole brings long-silenced Black histories into public view, work that draws on deep archival and genealogical research. She is also recognized for her play, They Call Me Dimmock, a court drama about self-emancipation.

The White Plains Puerto Rican Cultural Committee (Advancing Equity Organization Award)
Founded in 2020, the committee highlights and celebrates Puerto Rican and Hispanic culture in White Plains and throughout Westchester County with a focus on music, art, dance and literature.