Elisabeth (Beth) Radow is a graduate of Cornell University and Cardozo School of Law. Beth is the managing attorney of Radow Law PLLC focusing on real property law combined with sustainable practices involving energy and environmental conservation.
Beth is a past president (2010-2014) and current co-president of the League of Women Voters of Larchmont/Mamaroneck. Since 2010 Beth has chaired the Committee on Energy, Agriculture and the Environment of the League of Women Voters of NYS. Beth currently hosts This is What Democracy Looks Like on LMC Media, a program devoted to exploring the role of people and community in democracy and engaging people and community to participate in the democratic way of life.
Beth is currently a team advisor to Globe From Home, whose prioritized goal is to address the climate emergency by providing online education, including green skills training, that democratizes global experiential learning through virtual world travel by connecting people in the global north with impacted people in the global south. Beth is also a former Professor of Sustainability Action (2015-2022) at Manhattanville University to K-college educators; and a founding member of the Town of Mamaroneck Sustainability Collaborative (2012-2022) where, among other things, she co-developed the Love Your Food campaign to enlist community residents to reduce wasted food, share excess food and compost the rest.
Beth’s current North Star, adapted from a phrase by Abraham Lincoln: The best way to predict America’s future is to create it. VOTE!
Elisabeth Radow
Organizer-in Chief
Cécile Roberfroid is a French/American abstract painter whose nomadic childhood across Niger, Congo and Yemen shaped her artistic vision, reflected in the energy and authentic character of her work. With degrees in Fine Arts and Art Therapy, Cecile creates intuitive abstract paintings that explore complex human emotions.
In her studio practice, Cécile works with oils on canvas. Cecile’s technique is intuitive; she lets the colors and movement of the paint guide her. Cecile builds a dialogue with each piece as she layers paint to create depth and history, using everything from tiles to sponges and scrapers to create marks that cover and uncover the past. Cecile typically works on several pieces simultaneously, allowing each painting to evolve organically while maintaining thematic connections throughout her collections.
Art has been Cécile’s lifelong sanctuary—from navigating foreign schools as a child to her work as an Art Therapist. Through her intuitive approach, Cécile transforms abstract emotions into visual narratives that encourage viewers to embark on personal reflective explorations, creating a connection between internal feelings and their external manifestation.
cecileroberfroid.com | @cecile.roberfroid.art | Mamaroneck Artists Guild
From Cecile: Even now-especially now-CREATE.
Cécile Roberfroid
Artist
Artist
Monique Robidoux received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Apparel Design and an MFA in Web Design New Media from the Academy of Art University. In tandem with Monique’s design career, she continued to paint - portraits of people, animals, and homes in watercolor.
In recent years Monique has studied under Meredith Rosier at the Woodstock School of Art, expanding her repertoire to include abstract drawing and paintings in oil, acrylics, and in mixed media and collage. Monique’s abstract paintings can be viewed in galleries in lower NY state, in shows and fairs, and her work hangs in many homes in the northern and eastern United States. In addition, Monique paints landscapes, and commissioned artwork in both abstract and realist styles.
moniquerobidoux.com | @mrobidoux
From Monique: “The arts challenge our imaginations, nourish our spirits, and help to sustain our democracy.”- President Bill Clinton
Monique Robidoux
Poet
Melissa Joplin Higley is the author of the poetry chapbooks First Father (Bottlecap Press) and We Shake & Seek (Origami Poems Project). Grand Prize winner of the 90th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, Best of the Net nominee, and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Melissa’s poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, B_O_D_Y, Broadsided, Crab Orchard Review, the Hudson River Museum, The Penn Review, Whale Road Review, Writer’s Digest, and elsewhere. Melissa holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, edits book reviews and curates Bookshelf for MER Literary, and serves as the poet laureate of the Village of Mamaroneck, NY. Visit Melissa online: melissajoplinhigley.com.
From Melissa: “Poetry can claim and reimagine the deepest meanings of ‘exploration’ and ‘freedom’ as part of the American experience.” — from Lines of Sight, and Beyond: A Lecture at the Library of Congress by Arthur Sze, U.S. Poet Laureate.
Melissa Joplin Higley
Our Team
THE ART OF DEMOCRACY is a collaboration among caring people committed to one of America’s greatest aspirations: giving voice to, and fortifying, the creative spirit that makes possible life’s fullest potential.
Poet
Anne Graue is the author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet (Woodley Press, 2020) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). Her work can be found in Sundress Publications Best Dressed Blog, Verse Daily, Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Rogue Agent, Gargoyle, Unbroken Journal, River Heron Review, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. Anne is a poetry editor for The Westchester Review.
@amgraue.bsky.social | facebook.com/anne.graue. | @amgrauepoet
From Anne:
After the pipping of the egg,
after the branching—an eagle is on its own.
Must make the choice on its own
no matter what it’s been taught.
Some forget that pound for pound,
eagle feathers are stronger than an airplane wing.
And even one letter, one vote
can make the difference for every bright thing.
-from “One Vote” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Anne Graue
As an artist and communications professional, Lauren Emerson currently leads marketing and digital experience at The Rye Arts Center, collaborates with other nonprofit entities, and works directly with artists and individuals who are trying to say something true about the world. Lauren teaches visual arts and music, believing that creative literacy is one of the most undervalued forms of intelligence and language. Lauren’s freelance practice spans graphic design, website building, and art direction. Her work is rooted in a deep fluency with visual language and how it moves people.
Lauren’s own artistic practice moves through music, dance, ceramics, metal, mosaic, glass, and digital technology—in a relentless pursuit of generating experiences and environments where light, color, and space communicate beyond the language and the mundane. Where the static, briefly, clears.
Lauren states “Plants are better communicators and receivers than we are. They respond to light and surroundings chemically, without interference. No history, no static, no gap between signal and feeling. I think most of my work centers on that returning fascination, drawing from my experience with the failures of language. Expressed through different materials and forms, for me, one question always remains: What are we actually communicating, beneath everything
we say?”
laurenemerson.studio | @laurenemerson.studio
From Lauren: As Toni Morrison suggested in most of her work, I like to say “Art is where freedom insists on being heard—democracy in its most human voice.”
Lauren Emerson
*Beth gratefully acknowledges Lori Pepe who created the America Flag glass art sculpture which serves as a part of THE ART OF DEMOCRACY logo.
Graphic/Web Designer & Artist