About Team Jip
SOPHIA PARK
Curator, Co-director
She, her
Sophia Park is a writer, independent curator, and general art person currently working out of Brooklyn, NY. She studied neuroscience at Oberlin College, and then jumped from the sciences to the arts. She’s worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and currently works at Fractured Atlas. She helps run Jip Gallery, an apartment gallery turned curatorial collective, with her fellow curators and friends.
She is preoccupied by concepts of home, place, and migration. Recently, she is questioning what artists can do to help build a new shared economy that is sustainable and ethical. And in relation, what does a shared space look like for the new histories being written every day? What are the things we carry in these common areas?
She also loves to dance salsa, learn languages, and run longer than normal distances.
MICHELLE RALPH-FORTÓN
Curator, Co-director
She, her
Michelle Ralph-Fortón is a textile artist and current MA candidate at The Fashion Institute of Technology, studying fashion and textile studies. She received her BFA with a focus on Fiber & Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She met her co-director, Sophia Park, while working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Together, they created Jip Gallery and had their first show in the summer of 2018.
Interests include maintaining sustainable practices on a daily basis, visiting museums, and losing track of time while weaving, embroidering, or drawing.
GREER HOBBS
Spring Curatorial Intern
They, them
My name is Greer Hobbs (they/them), and I am studying Studio Art and Law & Society at Oberlin College. I am a photographer and I am energized by exploring themes of environmental and social justice through photographic storytelling. So grateful to be a part of the Jip team for this moment in time!