PIECES OF WORK
By Artists Carol Schepps & Trudy Borenstein-Sugiura
On View: November 14 – December 12, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 14, 3-5pm
Exhibition Statement:
We have spent more than thirty years finishing each other’s sentences, and eventually, we started doing the same with our art. Our creative practices began in the demanding worlds of precision craft—one of us meticulously shaping wire, metal, and stone in jewelry design, and the other engineering form, movement, and texture through textiles and fashion. That foundational obsession with strict craftsmanship, micro-details, and structural integrity still rules everything we make.
However, somewhere along the line, the boundaries of traditional craft began to fray. We morphed into visual arts, trading functional parameters for purely expressive freedom. Today, our artwork, although dissimilar, brings the obsessive, tactile discipline of Trudy’s jeweler’s bench and Carol’s fashion studio onto the canvas and into three dimensions. We take our construction seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Our deep friendship ensures that a thread of humor, playfulness, and joy runs through every complex layer, proving that meticulous discipline and a good laugh can live in the exact same frame.
About the Artists:
Trudy Borenstein-Sugiura
Bio
Trudy Borenstein-Sugiura is an award winning designer of fine jewelry and tabletop objects whose work is included in the Permanent Collection of the Smithsonian Institution at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.
Trudy has returned to the creation of fine art through paper collage. Using documents and personal papers for storytelling, she constructs with a goldsmith’s meticulous obsession for detail. Since 2016, her collages have been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. She was awarded a Mid-Atlantic States and NJ Council for the Arts Individual Artist Award and a selected Artist in Residency at Foundation House in Greenwich, CT.
Artist Statement
I explore the intricate layers of time, memory, cultural identity, ecology, and politics through collage, using documents, texts, maps and an array of personal papers. The materials function as both image and archive, carrying their own histories into new configurations. While forming the image, these materials invite viewers to look beneath the surface, where words, dates, and events recede into shadow and reassemble into fuller and deeper narratives.
My practice is rooted in time and memory. It began as a way to honor my late father, a mathematician, by forming his portrait from his personal papers—assembling a life through its traces. Even as underlying narratives were revealed, his image was truly formed from the sum of all of his parts and his life story was literally written all over his face. Creating many iterations, I further examined how inherited and found materials could reveal personal and collective histories which shape identity.
I select materials for their thematic and emotional resonance, then cut, arrange, and layer them in a meditative act of construction. My skillset as a goldsmith informs my technique. Entirely analog, my work relies on precision cutting and pasting, using hand drawn ‘maps’ to lay out the meticulous placement of various papers to tell the story.
My subjects range from contemporary and ancestral portraits, local, extinct, and living birds (often situated within conflict zones), historical chronicles and classic literature—or simply whatever feels most in need of close introspection.
As connections emerge through both intention and chance, each collage becomes its own historical document. In an era where paper is disappearing, these works act as time travelers—exploring the past and repurposing them for future reflection.
Artist Website
Artist Instagram
Carol Schepps
Bio
Carol Sara Schepps is a mixed media artist based in Princeton Junction, New Jersey. A graduate of Pratt Institute with degrees in Communication Design and Fashion Design, her diverse creative career spans fashion, commercial product design, textile arts, and fine art.
Carol’s professional journey began in children’s wear design and manufacturing, and evolved into custom clothing design for women. She later transitioned into creating modern Art Quilts, which were represented and sold in high-craft galleries across the United States. Expanding into commercial home products, Carol also designed successful collections of rugs, pillows, and throws for Crate and Barrel.
In addition to her studio practice, Carol is a dedicated community arts advocate and a co-founder of the West Windsor Arts Council. During the pandemic, her practice shifted into bag-making and creating graphic artwork utilizing paint, ink, collage and sewn paper—a transition that laid the groundwork for her current focus of abstract mixed-media art.
Artist Statement
Working in mixed media, I layer watercolor and inks often along with collage elements including altered Smithsonian magazine pages, handprinted paper, and pattern paper.
Through this process of layering, abstract shapes emerge that instinctively resemble a gallery of characters with a variety of personalities.
I intentionally leave every piece untitled. The artwork as viewed, is a shape-shifting entity that evolves based on the viewer’s unique personal experience and emotion.
