Curating the Future: Art, Collaboration, and Creative Momentum
- Vaughn Bentley
- Oct 20
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 25
Vaughn Bentley Creative Autumn, Newsletter
We’re taking off into a new season of art and imagination!
Hey Dreamers, Doers, and Art Lovers! Welcome to another wave of inspiration from Vaughn Bentley Creative! This isn’t just a newsletter, it’s your front-row seat to the movement of art, design, and community that’s changing how people experience creativity in New York and beyond.
We believe in building bridges between imagination and impact, and we’re inviting you to be part of it. Whether you’re a curator, collector, business, or community partner, there’s a space here for your ideas to grow and bloom. Keep reading, and let’s make something extraordinary together.
(Psst… stay tuned for a few ways you can join, support, or collaborate at the end!)
This fall, Vaughn Bentley Creative is pushing boundaries, from airport installations and museum collaborations to vibrant community art projects across Queens and beyond. We’re curating spaces that spark joy, conversation, and possibility. So buckle up and let’s journey together through the latest highlights, exhibitions, and creative ventures shaping our shared vision of the future.
🗂️ Contents
🏢 Studio Expansion & Residency Vision
Vaughn Bentley Creative (VBC) is transitioning from its 2 Lafayette Ave studio and seeking grants, sponsorships, resources, and investments to secure a new office, studio, and workshop space to serve as the home for the Vaughn Bentley Creative Artist Residency Program.
This new space will host:
Collaborative art production and exhibitions
Artist residencies and mentorship programs
Community engagement workshops
Corporate and public art commissions
Our vision is to cultivate a creative hub for artists, educators, and curators to connect, create, and grow together.
Contact us here with more information regarding new potential office/ art workshop space for Vaughn Bentley Creative
🎨 Recent Projects & Partnerships
✈️ Queens in Flight (2025 – In Production)
In partnership with JCAL (Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning) and JFK Millennium Partners, VBC is presenting the Queens in Flight exhibition at JFK Terminal 6, celebrating the cultural diversity of Queens through contemporary art.
🖌️ NYC Health + Hospitals – Arts in Medicine Partnership
VBC continues collaborations with NYC Health + Hospitals and Arts and Medicine, producing murals across NYC hospitals that promote healing, safety, and peace. Sites include Lincoln, Woodhull, Jacobi, Harlem, and Kings County Hospitals, supporting anti violence interruption programs such as the Kavi, Harlem Crossroads, and the Guns Down, Life Up initiatives.
🎉 Alianza Duffy Art Party – Art on the Ave, 2 Lafayette (October 9, 2025)
In partnership with Alianza Duffy, VBC hosted an Art Party at Art on the Ave, featuring Greek food, networking, and community building with art collectors and investors.
Featured Artists (alphabetical by last name): William Bentley, Barrington Brissett, Kate Fauvell, Ken Forbes, Gustavo Fernandez, JJ Gonzalez, Bones Jones, Naderson Saint-Pierre, Stefan Verzi, and Shenna Vaughn.
🏠 King Manor Museum Exhibition (Queens, Summer 2025)
VBC collaborated with community partners at King Manor Museum to design a room display celebrating the history of Jamaica, Queens and the influence of Jamaican culture, featuring dollar vans, Golden Krust food, and backyard barrel grill BBQ culture.
🌍 Community Work: Lewis Latimer House
The Lewis Latimer House in Flushing, Queens hosted its 177th birthday celebration for the inventor Lewis Latimer on September 13, 2025. Vaughn Bentley Creative joined community partners such as Beam Center, Yes Girls Create, and the Queens Botanical Garden to provide hands-on STEAM art workshops and creative experiments for families. VBC led Wishes In The Wind, a lesson in print making and painting using the A Traveling Dream theme, as children created dandelions using paint and recycled water bottles. See Art With Mr. Bentley video art channel to see full lesson!
️ JFK Terminal 4 Murals Installation
After long anticipation, the Vaughn Bentley Creative murals at JFK Terminal 4 restrooms have finally been installed — and they’re absolutely stunning!
Created by Shenna Vaughn and William Bentley, these murals blend airy, art deco-inspired geometric designs with architectural lines that highlight beloved New York City destinations like Barclays Center and Citi Field.
Adding a touch of whimsy, Bentley’s portraits feature 4 travelers gazing from airplane windows into the sunlit skies and colorful clouds, symbolizing imagination, travel, and the promise of new horizons.
If you’re traveling through JFK Terminal 4, or Terminal 8, be sure to take a look for our mural projects in the restrooms, barricade constructions as well as in Hudson News airport shops, and we’d love to see your photos!
📸Tag us on Instagram @vaughnbentleycreative and share your favorite mural moments.
🌟 Artist Spotlights
💫 Shenna Vaughn: Leadership, Art, and Impact
As a Queens Council Member and co-founder of Vaughn Bentley Creative, Shenna Vaughn continues to bridge civic leadership and creative vision.
Recently, she hosted an inspiring Meet & Greet event showcasing her artistic profile and new works featured on Governors Island, where visitors experienced her dynamic pieces up close. Shenna also contributed to Aviation Day at JFK Airport this past October 11, engaging the public through art, storytelling, and cultural collaboration.
Her public art installation at Maggie’s Garden, unveiled on October 18 at 149th Street & Broadway, Manhattan, brought the community together for a celebration filled with face painting, live music, food, pumpkin carving, and family-friendly activities. The centerpiece of the garden was Shenna’s sculptural, multi-paneled work “The Art of Woman”, a colorful, futuristic depiction of feminine power, endurance, and renewal. Illuminated by natural sunlight, the piece symbolizes new beginnings and the foundation women build through creativity and resilience.
Shenna’s ongoing painting series connects deeply with The Art of Woman theme, exploring womanhood, transformation, and the balance between vulnerability and strength. Her work speaks to empowerment, identity, and perseverance, echoing her ongoing commitment to uplift women artists of color and ensure their stories are represented in public and institutional spaces.
Her curatorial impact extends further through her co-creation with William Bentley of A Traveling Dream: Reverie, the follow-up exhibition to their original A Traveling Dream installation at JFK Terminal 8. Installed on the temporary construction barricades in the airport’s food court, Reverie brought together a vibrant collective of Queens-based women artists, Damali Abrams, Kate Fauvell, and Lisa Wade each celebrated for their expressive use of collage as a medium for storytelling. Through their layered, mixed-media works, the artists provided both a micro and macro view of creativity, echoing the emotional range of reflection, memory, and aspiration. Designed within the framework of Bentley’s Dandelion Kids concept, the exhibition also incorporated scrapbook and journal-inspired elements, encouraging travelers to pause amid their journey — to reflect, imagine, and reconnect with the beauty of introspection.
The exhibition also featured artist Jedidiah Dore, a Queens-based muralist and part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design. Dore’s reportage-style drawings and mural prints added a dynamic visual rhythm to the space, culminating in a live mural painting that captured the vibrant, kinetic energy of New York City. His signature zippy lines, expressive architectural renderings, and portrayals of human movement beautifully reinforced Vaughn Bentley Creative’s mission of uniting community, creativity, and motion through art.
Together, Vaughn, Bentley, and their collaborators continue to model how inclusive, community-driven art practice can transform public spaces and celebrate the diverse creative voices of Queens and beyond.
🎨 William Bentley – “A Traveling Dream” Series
The “A Traveling Dream” series by William Bentley continues to unfold as a poetic journey through transformation, innocence, and growth. The newly installed Inflorescence Murals at JFK Terminal 8 restrooms mark an exciting new chapter in this vision. What began as sketches for the original A Traveling Dream/ and A Traveling Dream: Reverie barricade exhibitions featuring the beloved “Dandelion Kids” blowing seeds of imagination through the terminal, has now blossomed into a breathtaking installation where dandelion seeds bloom into radiant flowers, Symbolizing humility, resilience, and the beauty of nurturing one’s dream into full bloom.
This evolution from the initial barricade project to the Terminal 8 murals represents more than growth; it’s a living message of hope, innocence, and purpose. The dandelion’s journey mirrors the creative spirit itself: fragile yet fearless, carried by the wind toward new horizons where imagination can take root.
Bentley’s latest addition, “Luminance” (24”x28”, oil on canvas), extends this visual poetry to a vibrant depiction of light emerging from within. Collectors can now acquire works from this evolving, heartfelt series.
🎥 Experience more about the project and its evolution:
✨ The dream is still traveling to marvelous heights as the Dandelion Kids continue to manifest William Bentley’s message, that every seed, with the resilient momentum of creativity, holds the power to bloom into something extraordinary.
You can further support Bentley's work with a subscription to Art With Mr. Bentley, a subscription based Art education and culture channel. Become a member today for with a subscription of only $5 per month and contribute to a developing and prospering network.
🧩 Services We Offer
At Vaughn Bentley Creative, we believe in the power of collaboration, storytelling, and art that inspires both people and places. Whether you’re a business, organization, or collector, we help translate your vision into meaningful creative impact.
We specialize in:
Mural design and public art production
Fine art and portrait commissions
Exhibition curation and art consulting
Artist representation and referrals
Promotion and Advertising Design
Corporate and local business art project management
Community art projects and educational workshops
✨ Interested in working with us? Complete this short inquiry:
What type of project are you interested in? (e.g., mural, exhibition, brand collaboration, commission)
What’s your timeline or target date for completion?
Do you have a specific location or theme in mind?
What is your estimated budget range?
How can we best reach you? (Email/Phone)
📧 Send responses or inquiries to vaughnbentleycreative@gmail.com
💖 Support Our Work
Please support ArtWithMrBentley.com for just $5/month to gain access to exclusive behind-the-scenes process videos, artist interviews, and educational content. Art With Mr. Bentley will soon feature artist spotlight interviews with artists in our collective as well as behind the scenes of our Vaughn Bentley Creative collaborations, and process videos.
💬 Connect With Us
Vaughn Bentley Creative : Curating connections through art, community, and imagination.
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