SaveArtSpace is proud to present #FreeHappy, a public art exhibition on billboard ad space in New York, NY, starting December 5, 2025, curated by Cynthia von Buhler.

The #FreeHappy selected artists are Diane Matyas, Anne Spalter, Kelli Bickman, Carolyn Tripp, and Lisa Goldberg.

Happy is not happy. Torn from her natural habitat and herd in Thailand as a baby, Happy has spent nearly 50 years in captivity at the Bronx Zoo. Like humans, elephants are deeply social animals—they don’t thrive in isolation. Alone, they suffer from loneliness, stress, and depression. We want to give Happy the life she deserves: freedom, companionship, and care in an elephant sanctuary where she can finally be with others of her kind.

Opening December 5, 2025 SaveArtSpace will launch a public art installations for the selected artwork on billboard ad spaces in New York, NY. The public art will be on view for at least four weeks.

This public art exhibition is made possible by Cynthia von Buhler.

Selected Artists

Location: E 177th St & Devoe Ave, Bronx, NY

Diane Matyas is a New York City artist who explores the intersections between science and story. Raised in Ithaca, NY, she received a BFA & MFA at Cornell University.

Matyas’ drawings, paintings, prints, shadow works and public art create allegories inspired by biology, history, and wild swimming. Her scenarios feature animals juxtaposed with built environments or scientific principles such as buoyancy and gravity. By weaving together these elements, Matyas creates unexpected relationships and narratives that surprise, spark curiosity, and encourage deeper understanding of our interconnected world.

Most recently Matyas’ 2025 DCLA Art Fund Grant and Makerspace NYC residency led to the installation of the interactive public sculpture The Luna Park Elephant at Maker Park. Her interest in shadow theatre led to a 2025 Howard Gilman performing arts residency cohort grant and the 2026 Object Movement Festival with the Center for West Park, where she will debut The Luna Park Elephant as a performance. Matyas’ site-specific public sculptures have been built in New York City, Philadelphia, and Mesa, Arizona.

Artist statement: My work explores intersections between science and allegory. Through drawings, paintings, prints, shadow theatre and public art I present allegorical ideas in biology, natural history, and historical lore. These often feature animals juxtaposed with built environments or inspired by scientific principles such as buoyancy and gravity. I weave together unexpected relationships and narratives to surprise, spark curiosity, and encourage deeper understanding of our interconnected world.

This print depicts “Alice”- the Asian elephant that escaped Luna Park on Coney Island in 1904, and swam across NY Bay to Staten Island in her effort to be free. My Luna Park elephant series continues with a shadow theatre premiere in April at the Object Movement Festival in NYC. 

Connect with Diane at @dmatyasart or facebook.com/dianematyasArtist/.

Location: Morgan Ave & Stagg St, Brooklyn, NY

Anne Spalter is a pioneering visual artist whose work fuses the speculative language of science fiction with archetypal imagery from the collective unconscious. Working across traditional and digital media, she creates immersive, symbolic landscapes that blur the line between the natural and the cosmic. Her richly detailed paintings, prints, and animations invite viewers into dreamlike worlds inhabited by mythic animals, celestial forms, and surreal deserts—spaces where inner and outer realities converge and transformation becomes possible.

A longtime leader in digital art, Spalter helped establish the field within the fine art canon. In the 1990s, she founded the first digital fine arts courses at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, legitimizing the computer as a creative tool and shaping today’s digital art pedagogy. Her book The Computer in the Visual Arts (Addison-Wesley) remains a foundational text used internationally in universities and museums.

Beyond her studio practice, Spalter is a collector, curator, and advocate for the preservation of digital art. She has lectured widely at institutions including Christie’s and the Smithsonian, bringing both historical context and speculative insight to discussions of technology in art.

Her work is held in major public collections such as the Centre Pompidou, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the RISD Museum, and London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, and has been auctioned by Sotheby’s and Phillips. Featured in The New York Times, ARTNews, Artnet, and The Boston Globe, Spalter’s art bridges formal rigor and visionary imagination.

Through her research-based, cross-disciplinary practice, she continues to expand the possibilities of digital and mixed-media art while inviting viewers to rediscover wonder, intuition, and the mythic dimensions of contemporary experience.

Connect with Anne at @annespalter.

Location: 44th St & Astoria Blvd S, Queens, NY

Kelli Bickman is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, designer, and educator known for her vibrant, eclectic work inspired by spirituality, nature, mythology, and personal experience. Her Ganesha imagery grew from travels in India, where she studied temple art and lived in a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery.

Committed to community outreach, Bickman has worked with thousands of students through her Mural Arts Program to create transformative public works across New York and beyond. Her artwork has been exhibited widely, collected internationally, and honored with numerous awards and grants.

Connect with Kelli at @kellibickman1111.

Location: Atlantic Ave & Classon Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Carolyn Tripp is an artist and designer based in Kitchener (Canada). Her artistic work includes print projects, board games, and short form animations inspired by nature, nostalgia, and the unknown.

Connect with Carolyn at @caro_tripp.

Location: Steinway St & 23rd Rd, Queens, NY

I am a mixed-media artist and illustrator based in NYC. Since awakening to the profound suffering of the animals we use for food, clothing, research, and entertainment, I’ve been using my artwork to raise awareness about the terrible plight of animals in our human-centric world. My intention always is to portray nonhuman animals as the individuals they are, with inner lives and their own reasons for being, independent of their usefulness to humans. I’m thrilled to be able to share my painting, I AM NOT YOUR ENTERTAINMENT, through SaveArtSpace as part of the #FreeHappy exhibition. Like other wild-born captive elephants, Happy was torn from her home and family as a baby. Since then, she has spent nearly 50 years in captivity at the Bronx Zoo, and in recent years has lived there in isolation. Elephants are by nature intelligent, self-aware, intensely emotional, and highly social. In the wild, they spend their lives in large herds, traveling thousands of miles each year. They form deep relationships, and they grieve when their family members die. It is without a doubt animal cruelty to take them from their homes and families, and to keep them captive for human amusement. My hope is that the #FreeHappy campaign will increase awareness of Happy’s plight, and bring new support to the ongoing efforts to free her to sanctuary.

Connect with Lisa at @lisamollie2.

Curator

Location: Atlantic Ave & Utica Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Cynthia von Buhler is an award-winning American artist, author, and animal activist whose diverse body of work includes illustrated books for children and adults, street art installations, immersive theater productions, and international gallery exhibitions. Her children’s books emphasize compassion for animals and environmental stewardship. In 2019, she traveled to Australia’s Kangaroo Island to aid wildlife impacted by catastrophic fires, documenting her efforts in an illustrated reportage journal published in The Washington Post. In 2024, she went to Africa to document the Akashinga—an all-female anti-poaching unit—and is currently preparing that reportage for publication. Her eco-fable graphic novel Forestina is being adapted into an animated feature film by a major Hollywood studio, and she is building a 15-foot puppet of the title character to tour globally in support of reforestation. In 2025, von Buhler received an arts advocacy award from the Mark Twain Museum for her creative work on behalf of animals. She also runs The Fur Gnarl, a small sanctuary for rescued pigs, chickens, and pigeons.

Cynthia is also building a puppet for this exhibition with Chris Green Kinetics.

Connect with Cynthia at @cynthiavonbuhler.

SaveArtSpace

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a message of social change that benefits the working class. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.