Manhattan Ocean Art Event at Sojourner June 2025

Sojourner Gallery in Manhattan, New York, gears up for a vibrant celebration of World Ocean Day on June 8th, 2025. This unique event brought together inspiring voices and visionary artists in an immersive fusion of art, fashion, music, and environmental awareness.

Taking center stage is the dazzlingly inventive Lord Proverbs, whose streetwear-inspired hip-hop designs once again redefine the boundaries between performance, fashion, and contemporary art.

His presence electrifies the space—part installation, part performance, and entirely unforgettable.

Instagram lights up in hiphop free-thinking blending with familiar trend or fashion symbols, mixed with new garmet ideas. Lord Proverb’s streetwear designs are as original contemporary paintings.

Even under the most skilled photographer – as this event has – no social media post compares to witnessing the living Lord Proverbs artwork designs of color and multiple joy.

The World Ocean Day art event designs for the oceans at the Manhattan Sojourner Gallery show excited all artist’s and visitors. Ocean awareness can be mixed with artistic freedom and recycled designs – turned into 100% contemporary art.

Adding depth and soul to the evening, with poem and performing Bernadette Bohan weaves together art and spirit in a stirring tribute to the ocean. Her lyrical reflections and red-haired laughter echo through the gallery, reminding those present of the power of words to connect us with marine existence, while we the same time care for all around.

Martha is beautiful and amazing in Lord Proverbs designs for the oceans.

Celebration for the global waters was a quick inspiration for all in the room, but Lord Proverbs’s designs made the evening.

Meanwhile, visual artist and ocean advocate Sini Kunnas makes her presence felt in a striking way. Though physically at the Arctic Circle in another time zone to New York, she joins the event via a live-streamed greeting and speech projected onto the gallery wall—an ethereal connection between the frozen North and the creative pulse of New York.

In the background, her art work “The Conceived Whale” for the sea creatures she feels to be sentient.

Her ocean-themed artworks of whales including mandala’s, meditative and still fun vibes, served as a visual key for the evening’s message of environmental consciousness through laughter, art and togetherness.

Sini Kunnas, known in Finland and beyond as a champion of emerging artists, recognized Lord Proverbs’ talent early on—during an earlier exhibition at what was then Time Arts Gallery. She foresaw his potential to rise, and now their artistic paths meet again, under the newly named Sojourner Gallery.

At the heart of this collaboration is the gallery’s own sparkly and caring force of nature, April Zhang-Autio—gallerist, connector, and curator of human arts chemistry introducing the team members to eachother already in 2022. Her ability to unite diverse creative spirits has helped form a team whose synergy lights up every time they enter these Manhattan art events.

There’s something about Manhattan in general, still. Spontaneity, wild openness to the moment within diversity and artistic talents of many medium packed from Wall Street up to Harlem. Here, chances arise and dissolve in an instant, and for those with the courage to say ‘yes’ at the right time and to the right offer, magic happens.

For Sini, the warmth and welcome she has felt from Manhattan’s artists—and from April in particular—stands out even among the many international art scenes she’s encountered.

April Zhang-Autio at the first Sini’s Manhattan art exhibition by the art works at the then Time Arts Gallery.

“If there’s one place truly open to diversity and spontaneous creative collaboration, it’s Manhattan,” Sini says.

This energetic and life-affirming arts collective is already planning the next chapter: a new World Ocean Day art event in New York, set for June 2026. So stay tuned—this is more than art. It’s a living, breathing celebration of freedom, creativity, and joy.

“Sometimes, contemporary artists question whether their work—and even the way they promote it—feels ‘artsy’ enough in the eyes of today’s global art opinion makers. But that fear is unnecessary,” artist Sini Kunnas says. “We can’t truly be free as artists unless we listen to what our soul needs. For me, that need is the joy of life—and a fierce will to protect all life.”

Loving thank you’s to the wonderful April Zhang-Autio, who is the sunshine of Sojourner Gallery art events and to Jussi Mertanen for joining this Manhattan team.