Catwalk Institute proudly welcomes Ethan Mermelstein, a Queens-based writer/director whose dark comedies explore the awkwardness of social interaction and blur the boundaries between narrative and documentary film.
Ethan Mermelstein
Ethan Mermelstein
Ethan Mermelstein is a writer/director based in Queens, New York. His grounded, dark comedies explore the discomfort that surfaces when familiar social rules break down, often blurring the boundaries between narrative and documentary. His short films have starred Tony- and Golden Globe-nominated actors, as well as his grandmother, dentist, and a taxi driver he befriended while working as a hotel doorman. His films have screened at festivals worldwide, including Palm Springs ShortFest, New Hampshire Film Festival, NoBudge, Omeleto, Indie Memphis, Seattle International Film Festival, and Mammoth Lakes. His screenwriting has received recognition from the Panavision New Filmmakers Grant and the Sloan Science Foundation. A Catwalk resident in summer 2023, he returns to develop his feature screenplay, SATISFY MY NEEDS.
Catwalk Institute proudly welcomes Zhi Wei Hiu, an NYC-based interdisciplinary artist exploring the materiality of images and the relationship between ornamentation, the body, and self-expression.
Zhi Wei Hiu
Zhi Wei Hiu
Zhi Wei Hiu is an interdisciplinary artist based in NYC who attended Catwalk in 2024 as a collaborator. Trained in analogue photography, they approach making and printing images as a sensuous process that connects the body with the materiality of the image. Working with silver, wax, and glass, they explore alternative image-making methods and the resonances created by combining disparate materials, forms, and gestures. Their practice also examines ornamentation's historical and cultural significance in relation to self-expression. Creating objects for personal adornment and spatial decoration, they consider ornamented objects essential extensions of the body and layered vessels for conveying meaning.
Catwalk Institute proudly welcomes Josie Bettman, a choreographer and performing artist whose work explores transformation and self-authorship through physical presence, blending the imaginary with the actual.
Josie Bettmanu
Josie Bettman
Josie Bettman is a choreographer and performing artist dedicated to the ongoing act of transformation. Her work explores self-authorship through physical presence, blending the imaginary with the actual. She has presented work in New York at PAGEANT, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Cathy Weis Projects, Bossa Nova Civic Club, Dripping Festival, and Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair. Internationally, her work has been presented at POUSH and Galerie Les filles du calvaire in Paris.
IG: @scum_network
Affiliation: Collaborator
Fall Session #1
Oct 21 – Nov 1
Catwalk Institute proudly welcomes Maite Iribarren Vázquez, an interdisciplinary artist whose sculptural practice examines the intersections of the body, labor, architecture, and cultural identity.
Maite Iribarren Vázquez
Maite Iribarren Vázquez
Maite Iribarren Vázquez creates sculptures, installations, and interventions that question standardized forms and explore the body, labor, and cultural specificity. Drawing on her background in structural engineering and upbringing between Cuban Miami and the Basque Country, her work responds to the visual homogenization of these once-distinct landscapes. Through satirical sculptural systems, she investigates how humanity slips into industrial, infrastructural, and architectural forms. Her practice combines metals and polymers from mass-produced consumer goods and construction materials with traditional metalworking, artisanal goldsmithing, and digital fabrication techniques.
Catwalk Institute proudly welcomes Julia Solomonoff, an Argentine-American filmmaker and NYU Tisch professor whose award-winning work spans feature films, documentaries, and television.
Julia Solomonoff
Julia Solomonoff
Julia Solomonoff is an Argentine-American filmmaker, a Columbia University graduate, and a tenured professor at NYU Tisch Graduate Film. She has written and directed award-winning feature films, including Hermanas, The Last Summer of la Boyita, and Nobody’s Watching, as well as documentary series and television projects. She recently produced The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer, which won top prizes at Locarno and San Sebastián and was selected for Telluride. Her next feature, Off Peak, is set in the Hudson River Valley and explores housing insecurity, racial tensions, and gentrification. After completing a screenplay draft at Catwalk in July 2026, she returns to continue her research and deepen connections with the Catskill community.
Affiliation: NYU
Fall Session #1
Oct 21 – Nov 1
Catwalk Institute proudly welcomes Keika Okamoto, a Japanese visual artist whose work explores the relationship between nature, spirituality, and the transcendent through drawing, painting, printmaking, and installation.
Keika Okamoto
Keika Okamoto
Keika Okamoto is a Japanese visual artist based in New York and Japan. Working across drawing, painting, printmaking, and installation, her practice explores nature, with a particular interest in the transcendent and the role of spirituality in contemporary life. During previous stays at Catwalk, she focused primarily on drawing. She will continue developing her drawing series through observation of the Catskills and Hudson Valley while exploring the possibility of extending her practice into installation, allowing forms and images emerging from observation and imagination to take shape within the natural environment.
