The Radical Legacy of Benjamin Lay: A Gallery Exhibit

Todd Drake is an artist and experienced teacher living in the East Village area
of Manhattan in New York City. During the Covid Pandemic he stayed, along with his wife, to continue running a Quaker collaborative community called Penington
Friends House. During that time, when so many stores and businesses were closed, he walked the empty streets with his wife and began discovering the rich graffiti culture of the East Village, Chelsea, and Soho. He began posting his own Covid-related linocut prints as messages to his fellow New Yorkers to persist and as reminders that they were not alone. With permission from a store owner he covered the entire front of a tattoo parlor in Soho with his work. Another of his street works was included in the TV show, Betty. These activities, and other creative projects helped preserve Drake’s mental health through the pandemic. He continues to post graffiti that promotes social justice, empathy, and Peace. His street art name is Quaker Pirate. 

Living and working in the loving collaborative community of the Penington Friends House  also helped him get through that trying time.

After the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, he designed and started a new year-long residency that gives BIPOC artists or activists a year’s room and board free at the Penington to address ending systemic Racism. Now entering its fifth year, this residency is named after Bayard Rustin, the Black Quaker Activist that helped and advised Martin Luther King Jr.

Drake has also collaborated with other Quakers in creating “Quaker Canvassing Peace Walks” that allow Quakers to engage successfully with other people across political divides. Drake and Margeret Lew,  a co-organizer, have presented their process to Quakers across the United States through the Urgent Call to Quakers effort. This process is now being taught by Friends Council on National Legislation. 

Today, Drake continues to print and post his linocuts and silkscreens. His
most recent posters speak to how war begets war.  He has also recently installed
the first Peace Pole sculpture in a New York City Park. Drake is a juried member of  Equity Gallery in the East Village.

Originally from North Carolina where he earned an MFA in Painting. He was also a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of Chapel Hill. Drake has exhibited his work all over the United States and overseas, including in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Palestine. In 2024, Drake had a show at Wilmington College in Ohio and Pendle Hill Center near Philadelphia. In 2025, Drake is working  with Military Veterans on a solo show in Carlisle, PA promoting Peace. Another 2025 solo show is at Friends Academy in Oyster Bay.

Drake’s work has recently been acquired by Swarthmore College Archive, the national office of Friends Council on National Legislation, and the Quaker UN Office in NYC.

A Quaker and member of the Brooklyn Monthly Meeting, Drake has two grown children with his wife, Robin Drake.  As his life and art shows, he cares deeply about the Quaker testaments known as the SPICES; Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship.

You can follow his work on Instagram at @QuakerPirate or online at www.todd-drake.com.

TONY BUBA has been producing documentaries since 1972. Buba’s films have
been screened at Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, and other major international film
festivals. He has had exhibitions at more than 100 universities and museums,
including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, and The Carnegie Museum of Art, retrospectives at Museum Ludwig- Cologne, Anthology Film Archives, and Pacific Film Archives. Some of Tony’s awards include fellowships from the NEA, AFI, Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations. Buba’s 1996 film Struggles in Steel won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. His 1988 film Lightning Over Braddock was selected by Richard Brody of the New Yorker magazine as one of the 62 films that shaped the art of documentary film.
Buba’s first collaboration with Marcus Rediker was Ghosts of Amistad-In the
Footsteps of the Rebels which aired on PBS, and in 2015 was awarded the John E. O’Connor Film Award from the American Historical Association. Tony has worked on feature films, including George Romero’s Martin and Dawn of the Dead. It was working on these films that Buba met the other two members of the creative team for this project, John Rice and Tom Dubensky. Both John and Tom collaborated with Tony on Ghosts of Amistad and Struggles in Steel.

JOHN RICE began his filmmaking career in 1977 working on George Romero's zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. In the following decades, John worked as Director and Director of Photography on feature films, documentaries, and television commercials. In 1993, Rice partnered with Amy Lamb to form a commercial production company, Lumiere Films. Their work there has garnered Clio, Addy, Mobius, and Art Directors Club awards. Rice served six years on the Penn State University College of Communications Alumni Advisory Board, where he founded an alumni group for film and video professionals, led production and networking seminars for students, and received the Alumni Society Volunteer of the Year Award in 2003. Rice joined the Cinema Arts Faculty at Point Park University in 2006. He taught senior thesis, cinematography, and
documentary workshop courses. Rice served five years in the faculty union leadership before his retirement as a Master Teaching Artist in 2021. Rice’s career launch on Dawn of the Dead is where he met Tony Buba and Tom Dubensky. He has been fortunate to collaborate with both on numerous projects since, most notably as Director of Photography for, No Pets, Struggles in Steel, and Ghosts of Amistad-In the Footsteps of the Rebels.

TOM DUBENSKY is a 1976 graduate from the NYU film program. Tom started his
career working as an Assistant Cameraperson on several George Romero films
including Martin and Dawn of the Dead. On Romero’s, The Dark Half Tom was
second unit director. Since then, Dubensky has edited numerous documentaries
and fiction films of various genres, styles and subjects. Tom’s work has been
screened at film festivals worldwide and broadcast on cable channels and
broadcast television. His work for Tony Buba includes Struggles In Steel, Ghosts Of Amistad and We Are Alive! The Fight to Save Braddock Hospital, which Tom also co-directed. For John Rice he edited the narrative films Dumpster and Mr.
Pleasant. His work for filmmaker Kenneth Love includes Saving Fallingwater,
Newspaper Of Record: The Pittsburgh Courier, Newspaper of Record received a Cine Golden Eagle and Charles Moore: I Fight With My Camera, all of which aired on PBS stations. Dubensky just completed editing the feature film Basic Psych which stars two-time Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris.

Sophia Rene is a painter, educator, and advocate whose work challenges conventional narratives in the art world. With over a decade of experience in oil, watercolor, and acrylic painting, she blends technical mastery with a deeply personal exploration of identity, accessibility, and representation.

On the path to earning her Ph.D. in Research and Visual Art Studies, Sophia is dedicated to uncovering the overlooked histories of little people. Her research traces how little people were once celebrated in ancient Egyptian society to the present day, examining how and why they have become one of the last communities to be widely mocked, denied accessibility, and lack comprehensive legal protections and advocacy. She explores the deep-seated ignorance and
discomfort surrounding little people, asking the critical question – why?

Her artistic practice is twofold. “Little Rebels” is a playful yet intentional body of work that allows viewers to stare – encouraging curiosity while reshaping the way people understand little people’s experiences. Through humor and approachability, it challenges preconceptions in an accessible way. In contrast, her large-scale works – life-size portraits over six feet tall – are a direct and unapologetic statement of presence. These pieces allow her community to take over physical and conceptual space, forcing the average-height world to confront and attempt to
comprehend the lived realities and intersectionality within the little people community.

Beyond the canvas, Sophia is dedicated to mentorship and education. She teaches with a philosophy rooted in trust, play, and muscle memory, empowering students of all ages to embrace art as both skill and liberation. She also volunteers with Student U in Durham, NC, where she helps first-generation Latinx and students of color access higher education and creative careers. Through Student U, she ensures that students and their families are protected and that parents are set up for success, including organizing workshops that certify them for jobs such as coding.

Through her practice, Sophia Rene is not just making art – she is advocating for a future where all bodies, all stories, and all histories belong I the spaces where art is made, taught, and celebrated.

Sound designer John Leonard started work as a sound designer before the term was even coined in the UK. He was Head of Sound at the Royal Shakespeare Company and an Associate Artist, and has worked for most of the major theatre companies in the UK, including the eNational Theatre, the English National Opera, Hampstead Theatre, Almeida Theatre, Donmar Warehouse and extensively in London’s West End, Broadway and on national and international tours. Recent theatre includes As You Like It (Soho Place Theatre), The Sex Party (Menier Chocolate Factory), The Snail House, Night Mother, Wolf Cub, Cell Mates, The Meeting, Stevie (Hampstead Theatre), The Dresser (Theatre Royal Bath and UK tour), The Stepmother, 8 Hotels (Minerva Theatre, Chichester), Prism Cocktail Sticks (National Theatre and West End), My Name Is Lucy Barton (Bridge Theatre and Friedman Theatre, New York City) Uncle Vanya (Theatre Royal Bath), Charlotte & Theodore, In Praise Of Love (Ustinov Theatre, Bath), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bristol Old Vic, West End, New York and Los Angeles), Hand To God (Vaudeville Theatre), McQueen (St. James Theatre, West End and Harvey Theatre, Brooklyn). Exhibitions include those for the Tussauds Group in London, Warwick Castle, Amsterdam and New York. He is the author of a renowned textbook on theatre sound, winner of Drama Desk and Sound Designer of The Year Awards and is a Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, an Honorary Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Performing ARts and a Companion of the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. johnleonard.co.uk

Monica Max West (she/her) is an award-winning singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, wildlife photographer, artist, Buddhist, vegan, Climate & Social Justice Activist, and friend of Moonbow. www.monicamaxwest.com