Exhibitions

RADICAL ACTION: Tracing Dorothy Day | Kristi Pfister

Sponsored by Prof. William Myers, Prof. James Robinson & Deignan Institute for Earth and Spirit

March 3 - April 13, 2025

Gallery Event

Artist Talk and Reception with the artist

Tuesday, March 4 from noon - 1:30 p.m.

Location | Br. Kenneth Chapman Gallery located in the JoAnn Mazzella Murphy '98H Arts Center

RADICAL ACTION: Tracing Dorothy Day by Kristi Pfister is an art installation of suspended fabric columns, marble and glass mosaics, and mixed media work that explores the duality of Dorothy Day’s radical actions and her spiritual self. The concrete strength of mosaics contrasts with light-filled translucent columns on which Pfister has traced repeated patterned fragments of her drawings. A large scale painted scroll presents Day as a modern-day caryatid leading a procession of activism.

Dorothy Day is a global icon for social justice and a local icon of New York City. She was a radical journalist, pacifist, and founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.

The artist's work centers around an idea, which she then moves through different art mediums. She draws and paints on a variety of surfaces, including marble, tile, film, fabric, paper, and canvas. A specific idea often leads her to invent new ways of using materials, which she finds very exciting. Pfister's experience as a public artist and muralist has influenced her to work on a large scale. However, she also enjoys the immediacy of working on a much smaller scale, creating multiples of paintings or drawings with slight variations.  

Pfister explores different kinds of light, particularly translucency. Translucency possesses an in-between quality that suspends light within the layers of a piece. She is currently engaged with concepts surrounding columns, caryatids, ruins, and excavations in their various stages of unearthing, using them as a way to frame history and culture. These visual ideas are expressed through techniques like transparency, opacity, tracing, and fragmenting, tapping into a collective sense of time, place, and memory.  

About Kristi Pfister

Kristi Pfister is a painter, public artist, and a lifelong New Yorker. Pfister developed an appreciation for the subway's extensive mosaics and tile work as she commuted to high school in Brooklyn each day.  This inspired her to create public projects and studio based artwork with marble, tesserae, glass, film, fabric, and ceramics.  Pfister’s work focuses on concepts around transparency, translucency, and layering expressed through imagery and her innovative use of materials. Recent series include architecture and its evolution from the sacred to the secular, archaeological ruins and fragments, and Delftware inspired paintings on tile that reflect the seepage between sky, sea, and land.

Pfister’s work has been shown in museums, galleries, universities, and public spaces throughout New York City and the region. Her most recent solo exhibitions have focused on the radical activism of social justice icon, Dorothy Day.  Recent group shows include Women Under Siege, Don’t Shut Up, and Art that Bears Witness.

Pfister received a BA in Visual Art from Barnard College, Columbia University and a Master’s degree from Pratt Institute. Her community based public artwork includes murals and mosaics funded through the Percent for Art Program, MTA’s Arts for Transit Program, and NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. Pfister is a strong advocate for Arts Education with an extensive career teaching art at all levels, from early childhood through college. She has worked as a teaching artist with arts organizations and cultural institutions throughout New York City.

Past Exhibitions