Happy New Year 2026!
- Confluence Community
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
It's International Creativity Month!!!
Thank you for joining us in 2025, we can't wait to spend 2026 cultivating community more deeply together. Your presence here matters, and we are endlessly grateful for the support and participation. Read on for a look at the upcoming month, and what's to come in the new year!
Help us warmly welcome our first Artist of the Month for 2026!
We are pleased to welcome Giannelli Vargas, a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist and founder of Eleveno2 Artwear, as our January Artist of the Month.
Gia’s work spans painting, wearable art, and storytelling. Shaped by her upbringing in Bushwick and her Puerto Rican heritage, her practice reflects how creativity is formed into living testaments of resilience, identity, and community pride. Using color, texture, and layered imagery, her work explores the everyday beauty and struggle of her surroundings, and is translated into wearable canvases that carry meaning as much as function.
Visit the Artist of the Month page to learn more about Gia and explore the virtual exhibition of her work. Featured article about this artist coming soon!
Quarterly Themes & Monthly Topics: Guiding Conversations & Connection in 2026
This year, we are introducing shared themes across our programming as a way to slow down and create intentional conversations about how we engage with art and community. Throughout January to March, we will be discussing CULTURE as an overall theme.
In January, the topic we are focusing on, is the relationship between CREATIVITY and culture.
We invite you to consider:
How does creativity shape culture?
How does culture shape creativity?
How does what we create influence the world around us?
How does the world around us influence what we make, how we speak, and what we value?
Creativity doesn’t exist in isolation, it’s shaped by our environments, our histories, our identities, and the communities we move through. What we create reflects where we come from, while also contributing to what comes next. By holding space for these conversations, we are inviting artists and audiences to consider creativity as an active force, one that responds to and shapes culture over time.
Stay tuned for more information, where we will dive into the why's and what's to come!
You are invited to join the conversation in our Community Group here on our website, a FREE space to connect with other artists, share work, and engage with these questions together.
We are also hosting a new virtual event series called Community Conversations on January 21st, from 10–11am EST, grab your favorite morning beverage, come reflect on this month’s theme and connect with others in the community.
We will also be accepting submissions for our Quarterly Magazine, Where We Are, launching in March. More information and applications coming soon!
Submissions are OPEN for the 2026 Art Exhibitions!
The Open | Open Call Art Exhibition
Submission Deadline: January 10th
Opens January 31st
The Reel Exhibition
Submission Deadline: January 15th
Opens March 2nd
This year we will continue to experiment and test different strategies and approaches, one of those strategies being: posting our instagram posts here. We found that many artists submitting did not have instagram or facebook, so we often missed the opportunity for continued engagement and follow up. We also tend to have long thoughtful post captions, and instagram limits the amount of characters, meaning we have to keep our musings minimal, and that feels like a limitation of creativity and expression for us.
We are also trying to find ways NOT to rely on social media, META specifically, for connection, and try to bring people to our website for deeper conversations and community building opportunities instead. We hope to eventually transform this website and our virtual gallery into a space that feels like home, where community comes to find connection and explore creative pathways that support the planet and people.
Thank you again for joining us and being part of this creative journey with us!
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