About the curators:
Karen Gormandy is the Founder & Director for Fountain House Studio.
She is a former board member for NAMI New York City, NAMI New York state and NAMI Harlem and is also a literary agent at Harold Ober Associates who proudly represent the estate of Langston Hughes.
She attended the High School of Art & Design, has a bachelor's degree in film from Montana State University and received her master's degree in creative writing at Manhattanville College, all of these disciplines now serve to enrich the experience of offering guidance, support and education to the artists of Fountain House.
Issa Ibrahim is a visual artist, author, musician and filmmaker born and raised in Queens, New York. He has exhibited in numerous galleries and non-profit spaces in the greater New York area as well as group shows at Hofstra University and the Queens Museum of Art in addition to the Netherlands and South Korea. His art has also been featured on German Public Television, in the 1999 HBO documentary The Living Museum by Academy Award winning director, Jessica Yu, and the 2015 documentary That Which Is Possible.
Ibrahim’s memoir The Hospital Always Wins published by Chicago Review Press in 2016 has the notable distinction of being the first work published by an African American written from behind the walls of a mental institution. Ibrahim was the subject of an hour-long NPR audio story that won the 2014 Edward R. Murrow Award for Best News Documentary and the 2014 Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Director’s Choice Award. He is also the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the New York State/Queens Council on the Arts. Ibrahim is also a member artist represented by Fountain House Gallery in New York City; the premier gallery dedicated to promoting the artwork of artists with mental health challenges.