Founder
Sebastiano Varoli founded Art Bastion Gallery in Paris in 2012. In 2016, Art Bastion Gallery opened in Miami, Florida and since then has hosted exhibitions in various international locations, including London and São Paulo. The mission of the gallery is to introduce artists to a wider audience and to bring innovative and exciting talent to the art scene emphasizing the importance of social consciousness and sustainability.
Sebastiano received a BA in Art History and Business Management from New York University, and while in Miami, completed his MBA at University of Miami, with an emphasis on behavioral finance and entrepreneurship. He is currently based in São Paulo, Brazil.
Artistic Director, Co-Founder
Regan Rosburg is an interdisciplinary artist who weaves together science, psychology, history, and social engagement. With a passion for studying various ecosystems and biota, her work investigates not only the exquisite intelligence of ecology, but also the causes and ramifications of over-consumption. Her research on ecopsychology and art was published in the IGI International Journal of Civic Engagement and Social Change (2017).
Regan firmly believes that artists are a crucial ally when dealing with pressing global issues. She has partnered with Human Rights Watch (Chicago IL), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (with Weinberg Newton Gallery, Chicago IL), and the Center for Local Prosperity/Thinker’s Lodge Conference (Pugwash, Nova Scotia). Regan’s work has been featured in BBC News (Culture), the New Art Examiner, CPR News, and Yale University’s Order of Multitudes. Regan holds an MFA from LUCAD and is an Associate Professor at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design (Colorado).
Director of Operations, Co-Founder
Darya was born in the Ukraine and moved to Brooklyn in 2001. She works at the intersection of art and science - encapsulating the complexity of nature and global environmental consciousness. Living organisms are the major part of her ideas. Darya explores the many possibilities of collaboration with living matter through bio-processing by using modern technologies such as CNC machines. She creates interactive installations, visual displays and sculptures to help the viewer become more aware of the world around him/her – potentially pushing her viewers to rethink their place as a "Sapiens" part of Earth’s Superorganism. As a part of Darya’s art practice, she uses microscopes with the primary purpose of merging scales. By colliding the visible and invisible worlds at the point of human perception, she is one step closer to understanding the interconnections between the two. Recently, Darya has been exploring the idea of various systems of intelligence and possibility of communicative collaboration between human and nonhuman in the form of living sculpture. She is currently pursuing her MFA at University at Buffalo as part of art and science program in conjunction with Coalesce Biological Lab.
Scientific Adviser
CEO & Founder at New York Botanics, LLC, an ornamental plant genetic engineering start-up located in New York City. He is also an independent researcher for the education-oriented biotech non-profit, Binomica Labs. His research focuses on the nutritional requirements of life and the metabolic basis of speciation as well as the development of open source hardware, wetware, and thoughtware for use in the molecular biology setting both formal and amateur.
Materials Advisor
Tarah Rhoda runs the School of Visual Arts Bio Art Lab in NYC, a BSL-1 laboratory that provides artists with the tools of biology for creative applications. Through investigations of the body as a miniature world, her work yanks at the scale of self in nature’s reflection. She often harnesses biological in order to calibrate the body’s array of landscapes, weather patterns, and systems of self-maintenance that produce a spectrum of artifacts. Literally ‘mining’ herself as an archeological site, she adapts such extractions into poetic reflections and devices, often utilizing laboratory protocols to set the stage.
Artist in Residence, 2018
George Boorujy is an artist exploring our relationship to the environment, especially our interaction with and perception of wildlife. He has exhibited widely nationally and internationally and is represented by P.P.O.W. gallery in New York. He has had solo shows at P.P.O.W. gallery, the Baker Museum in Naples, Florida, and the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art. He is a member of the fine arts faculty at the School of Visual Arts. He has created work for the Wildlife Conservation Society, the New York Parks Department, the Audubon Mural Project, the Labrea Tar Pits, and for over a decade illustrated the Birdwatch column for the Guardian UK. A recipient of a NYFA grant in painting and a fellowship at the Smack Mellon residency, George Boorujy is a graduate of the University of Miami and the School of Visual Arts. You can find his work at www.georgeboorujy.com and @georgeboorujy on Instagram.
Artist in Residence, 2018
Lucas Pozzo-Miller, PhD is a neuroscientist working at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he does experimental work on the cellular bases of intellectual disability and social deficits in autism spectrum disorders. Lucas is a native of Argentina, where he studied Biology and completed a doctorate in Neurobiology. Inspired by the work of Jacques Cousteau and a couple of daredevil friends, Lucas learned to SCUBA dive among southern right whales and sea lions in Patagonia. He came to the US for post-doctoral training at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, and at Hoffmann-LaRoche in NJ, and worked at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. In his spare time out of the lab, Lucas trained as a PADI Dive Master and Assistant Instructor and took on an interest in underwater photography when housings became available for digital cameras. Lucas is wholeheartedly committed to the vision of the Cayo residency of merging biology with art to encourage a change in everyone’s perspective for the sake of our planet’s future, which is our own.
Artist in Residence, 2018
Arnaud is a NYC based actor focusing on voice over work. He has lent his voice to various projects from Nickelodeon, over 500 children’s audiobooks with Highlights For Kids, American and international TV and radio commercials, as well a winner of a Silver Lion in the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Arnaud is one of the divers and a cooking enthusiast at Cayo.
