York College Arts Gallery

Opened in 1989, the Gallery presents several professional exhibitions each year, ranging from solo and thematic group exhibitions to student shows at the close of each semester.

York College Arts Gallery is proud to present Steeping Memory: A Collective Offering, a multi-sensory experience and special exhibition project by esteemed artist Shervone Neckles. 

The exhibition features large hand-sewn tapestries created by Neckles and is accompanied by programming, as well as a specially published catalogue and guide. It will be on view from October 20 to December 1, 2025, with an opening reception at the gallery on Friday, October 24, from 5-8PM.

Steeping Memory marks the culmination of Neckles’ long-term social investigation into community care and wellness that began in Jamaica, Queens, in the spring of 2016. Through her Creative Wellness Gathering Station (CWGS), she draws inspiration from her Caribbean heritage as the daughter of Grenadian parents who raised her in the tradition of sharing herbs and spices from their ancestral homeland as a gesture of well-being. The CWGS amplifies this tradition with an interactive mobile tea cart stocked with curated herbs. It has traveled to neighborhoods across Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, Westchester County, and even Portland, Maine.

At her cart, Neckles hosted tea-making to facilitate conversation with passersby and offered the opportunity to create custom mixes from herbal selections. Through this group-building process, she sought answers to the question at the heart of her practice: “Can a simple, creative act of community care offer meaningful, culturally grounded solutions while drawing on ancestral knowledge as a source for collective healing, growth, and strength?” In their own gesture of thanks, visitors left a portion of the blends they created at the cart, along with handwritten notes including their names and the places they call home. Neckles sewed tapestries from the individual organza pouches filled with these guest-made tea blends. In the accompanying catalogue and guide published for the exhibition, Queens-based novelist Bushra Rehman calls the tapestries “cosmograms of healing.” As a founding member of the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance (SEQAA), a collective of local visual artists, writers, and curators invested in producing, presenting, and advocating for enriching arts and cultural experiences in Southeast Queens since 2017, Neckles’s local community is primary to her practice.

Among its many activations, the CWGS has been presented in and around the Jamaica neighborhood, including at: Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL); Jamaica Colosseum Mall; Charles R. Drew Early Learning Center; Detective Keith L. Williams Park; Here in Jamaica - Artist, Nicolás Dumit Estévez & No Longer Empty; Jamaica Performing Arts Center; Jamaica Service Program for Older Adults; Rufus King Manor Park; and Trees of Life Organic Garden. Neckles dedicates Steeping Memory to the countless Queens residents who have stopped at her cart over the years.

The exhibition's accompanying programming will feature three Wellness Activities over the duration of the show’s schedule. Wellness practitioner Renee K. Smith, interdisciplinary ecoartist and educator Elizabeth Velazquez, and mixed-media artist and papermaker Rejin Leys will facilitate events and activities that represent Neckles’s approach to care.

Shervone Neckles is a Grenadian-American, Brooklyn-raised interdisciplinary artist based in Queens, New York. She creates immersive experiences through textiles, prints, installations, sculptures, and public art. Through reinterpreting Afro-Caribbean diasporic histories, mythologies, and personal narratives, she strives to evoke ancestral wisdom from objects and weave researched stories into artworks that function as both archives and rituals. Major installations include: The Land Between Open Water, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Westchester Square subway station, Bronx (2024); The Lunar Portal, University of Pittsburgh Mercy Pavilion Plaza (2023); BEACON, The Lewis Latimer House Museum, Queens (2021); and the Grenada Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2019). In 2022, her work was the subject of Bless This House, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, FL. Neckles is also a recipient of a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.

This exhibition is made possible by public funds from the Queens Arts Fund, a regrant program supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Additional support is provided by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and by the Statewide Community Regrant Program, which is overseen by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature and managed by Flushing Town Hall.