Artist Bios :: print version

Miriam Abramowitsch

Miriam Abramowitsch was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, the daughter of a concert pianist. Following in her father's footsteps, she devoted her life to music and has experienced a long and fulfilling career as a singer and teacher of voice. She has also had a lifelong love for color, style and texture (as a child she wanted to be a clothing designer). Three years ago, having never before attempted any visual art medium, she became interested in felting and took a number of classes at Deep Color in Kensington. Since then she never looked back and has been creating and selling her colorful felted scarves throughout the Bay Area and beyond. The artist states: Felt is created by the alchemy of wool fiber with warm water and pure olive oil soap to produce a versatile material that ranges from spider-fine and soft to thick and strong, depending on its intended purpose. I design my scarves in a number of different ways. I mostly use a blend of wool and tencel fiber, which produces a soft, crinkled, shimmery effect. Right now I especially enjoy creating playful latticework scarves in a riot of different color combinations, and felting a variety of shapes and colors onto lengths of silk chiffon or hand dyed habotai silk.

Sandi Adams

Sandi Adams lives in Berkeley, CA. Interest in the visual arts has been a constant in her life. At nine, she was introduced to watercolor at her Saturday Milwaukee Art Institute class. Watercolor has remained her primary medium, but she has also worked in ceramics, textile arts, photography, and now, acrylic and mixed media collage. Her art training includes coursework at Pomona College, Scripps College, UCSF Extension, CCAC in Oakland, and served as an Art Docent at the Oakland Museum. In addition, Sandi has taken workshops with local artists including Judy Greenberg, Jane Hofsteter, Kathleen Brennan, and Ann Baldwin. She is affiliated with the California Watercolor Association, Marin Society of Artists, Valley Art Center, and Frank Bette Center for the Arts. Sandi participates regularly in juried shows at these organizations and has had three solo exhibitions in the East Bay. Last year she received five awards! Sandi uses her photography as inspiration for much of her representational work, but has been increasingly drawn to abstract layering and collage. She says, “Involvement in my artwork renews and enriches me. The doing of it, the process, is critical to my well-being. An end product is almost secondary to the process! I am working toward achieving glowing, translucent color to convey an emotional impact and enjoyment for my viewer.”

Salma Arastu

Salma Arastu currently lives in Emeryville and owns a studio at Sawtooth building on 8th strret in Berkeley, after moving from Pennsylvania in 2006. She grew up in Rajasthan, India and was passionate about art since childhood. She has been painting for last thirty some years, since graduating in Fine Arts from MS University, Baroda, India in 1975. Her work with continuous and lyrical line is influenced by her native culture and her residence after marriage in Iran and Kuwait before coming to the US in 1987. Born into the Hindu tradition in her native India, she later embraced Islam through her marriage. Her personal triumphs have been defined and shaped by the simple principle of faith in The Divine, as the compelling force which has guided her life and work. As for her present work she states: "Folk art, miniature art and Arabic Calligraphy are three strong influences on my art, adopted along my journeys. All textures and all colors are assimilating on my surfaces. I am creating a body of work of through continuous, lyrical line, to express joy in the universal spirit that unites humanity". She has won many awards and has had more than thirty solo shows including New York, Philadelphia, and Internationally in Germany, Kuwait, Iran and India. Her website: www.salmaarastu.com,

Georgia Bassen

Georgia Bassen, who "never met a process she didn't love" grew up in New York, Seattle and northern California, but always in "bohemia"-- her father was a novelist and family friends were painters, actors, writers and the odd professor.. From as early as she can remember she was painting and drawing and taking art classes. In high scool she worked intensively with Windsor Utley and at 17 went off to Smith College to major in art. There a scheduling glitch led her into a philosophy class, eventually into the Ph.D. program at Berkeley, and to teaching human rights, logic and critical thinking at Cal State Hayward. While teaching part time, she went through the CSUH studio art program and from there to an MFA at San Francisco State (1991). She worked in ceramics, (Leslie Ceramics prize, 1986) painting (Mel Ramos, Ray Saunders), bronze casting, sculpture (Stephen de Staebler), set design, and digital art. For the past 5 years she has been happily making jewelry, working with Hadar Jacobson in Metal Clay.Favorite artists: Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Hadar Jacobson. Icons: trees, fish and tall buildings.

Jude Berman

Jude Berman lives in Berkeley CA and is a self-employed writer and editor. She received a BA in Art from Smith College, where she studied with printmaker and sculptor Leonard Baskin, as well as a Doctorate in Education from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Currently, Jude enjoys working with watercolor, following an intuitive process. She says, “When I paint, I prefer to be in a state of open-eyed meditation. This way I don’t have to ‘do’ anything; the images just ‘happen.’ There is no external object to be reproduced. There is no internal object either. Everything comes from within in that moment. In this show, Jude also is exhibiting digital montages. These evolved from images she created in a darkroom many years ago and recently revived through the use of new technologies. Jude describes the themes that recur in her work: “The world in which we live is not only concrete but subtle in nature. As subtle beings, our substance is energy, which exists in continual motion. As spiritual beings, we inhabit a world not fixed in time and space. In my artwork, I seek to reveal the subtleties and continual movement that characterize the human spirit.”

Carol Jones Brown

Carol Jones Brown has been painting and doing art for over 40 years. She has a BS
degree in journalism and a teaching certificate for adult school in fine art, crafts and
communications. She has taught art classes at the Adobe Art Center in Castro Valley,
then 30 plus years with the Hayward Adult School. She works primarily in acrylics and mixed media. She has shown in a number of galleries, and her paintings are in many collections around the world. She is a member of several active Bay Area art organizations that display her work. Carol says, “After painting for many years, I don’t try for a particular image, such as a seascape or a floral. Now I strive to create something that is rich in color, fun and exciting—a surprise for me and those who view my art. Recently, I have been attacking my empty canvases with globs of brilliantly hued acrylic paint, dancing my brushes around the canvas for a challenging start.” Her works are magical, stirring and exciting and Expressions Gallery is proud to present her work as part of this show.

Kathy Cronin

Kathy Cronin is a resident of Oakland. She is a self-taught Photographer who uses the camera to capture small and fleeing moments of everyday beauty in ordinary things. Her work pays homage to the power of the forces of nature that are constantly reclaiming and remaking the man-made. She calls her work the "Preponderance of the Small" after the 62nd Hexagram of the I-Ching.

Elizabeth Dante

Elizabeth Dante was raised in the rural south and now is living and working in Richmond, Ca. Dante has worked and traveled in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, Germany and Italy. She has attained an affinity for the third world, and acquired the skills of the old world. This ever present influence has provided Dante with a stylistic inspiration for works ranging from classical naturalism to primitive stylistic narration. Much of her work explores the dynamics between round organic forms and hard ridges angles, and the spaces in-between. By exaggerating this interplay, her work creates a sense of tension which is both lively and sensual. Dante states, "My world combines ancient and modern rituals, extracting stylize motifs and archetypes, ancient and I pay homage to the many facets of the human sprit, characterized by warmth, humor and sometimes political commentary. Her works have been showcased in "Art on The Rock At Alcatraz" and "Day of the Dead" exhibition at the Museum of Mexican Art. In 1990, The City of Oakland purchased her sculpture "Woman’s Liberation", as a gift to Nelson Mandela. She also received the Art of Peace Award the same year.

Rinna B. Flohr

Rinna B. Flohr lives in Oakland, California. She grew up on the East Coast in New Jersey and New York. She graduated from Syracuse University with a B. A. in theatre arts and a Masters of Social Work. She also completed a Certificate in Psychodrama at the Moreno Institute of Psychodrama in New York. She received her license as a clinical social worker and for 37 years she worked as a licensed psychotherapist in private practice and as Deputy Director of Mental Health for Alameda County, Director of the Center for Special Problems, San Francisco Community Mental Health and Assistant Director for San Francisco County Behavioral Health Services. In 1991 her house burned down in the Oakland fire, which led her to study Interior Architecture and Design in order to rebuild her home. She completed the program at UC Berkeley in 2001. With an interior design degree she started Design Ideas (www.designideas.us) and she began doing remodels and designing new interiors that later led her to staging and floral design. She studied floral design with Ron Morgan. Her floral designs were part of the Bouquets to Art Show at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco in the past and she was a member of the San Francisco Museum flower committee. She also makes jewelry from recycled materials left over from interior design projects and later from other found objects such as found rubber from inner tubes of tires or cement from building sites. She was President of San Francisco Women Artists in San Francisco, one of the oldest women’s art galleries. Currently she is founder and Director of Expressions Gallery in Berkeley, Ca. (www.expressionsgallery.org )

Sue Mary Fox

Sue Mary Fox splits her year between her winter workroom in Berkeley, CA, and her summer workroom in the village of Robbinston, Maine. Born and raised in a rural hamlet on the wild Maine coast, Fox spent her early summers organizing bits and pieces of nature’s “art parts” into patterns on 2- and 3- dimensional surfaces. Much of her outdoor time was spent along beaches assembling installations of flotsam & jetsam that would become rearranged by time, tide, and weather. Participating in the long term process of building & observing the progress of disintegrating beach installations has been a life long interest. Although she trained in ceramics at university, Fox spent 32 years in the field of design & construction using the sewing machine– at various times employed making Art to Wear clothing; costumes for theater, dance, opera, & circus; and more recently in creating site specific installations for commercial interiors. A full time studio artist since 2001, Fox maintains a fully equipped sewing studio on each coast where she primarily produces boldly colorful quilts with an abstract contemporary edge. Her large format quilts have been exhibited across the United States and in Europe. Scarf making offers the joyful opportunity to play with color and texture.

Chandra Garsson

Chandra Garsson lives in Oakland, California. She grew up in Los Angeles, California. She has two degrees in fine art, including a Master of Fine Arts from San Jose State University, with her B.F.A. from U. C. Santa Cruz. The mixed media sculptures presented in this exhibition are made from wire, bone, doll parts, mannequins, beeswax, fishnet, metal, wood, paper, paint, jewels, cheesecloth, nails, an antique toy bank, hands praying from a religious reliquary, gold leaf, a Barbie doll torso, an ancient red toy windmill, and various other materials. The “Three Wise Men” are actually a depiction of three little sisters: Devine Justice, Devine Maternity, and Devine Contemplation. They play divinely with notions of role reversal with the most powerful of our world, men, but with a sly twist, for they are wise. "Worship” keeps spirituality in the troublesome box of all that we hold dear in most of our human cultures, namely money, alluding to the old saw, “all that glitters is not gold.” Finally, Barbie on a cross reminds us, along with the three little wise men, that we the woman, we the man, we the baby, we the people. No one is better than anyone, and we all must be the best that we can be, our own most Devine selves. In the last show in the old space of Pro Arts Gallery (the first solo exhibition of the gallery at the time), over two hundred of Chandra Garsson’s works were shown in the exhibit, Insomnia (Awakening), a mid-career retrospective of the artist’s work.

Rohilah Guy

Rohilah Guy was born in Canada and moved to the Bay Area in 1964. Rohilah works in pastel, watercolor, acrylic and sumi-e. She has recently begun Learn, Inc. photography. Rohilah has always been interested in art, studying it as a child and in university. Encouraged by many people along the way, the artist continues to explore all facets of art. She has been a weaver and a textile and clothing designer.

Susan Hall

Susan Hall was born in Florida but has resided in the East Bay since age 5 and currently lives in Albany. She earned a BA and MSW at UC Berkeley. After 21 years as a juvenile probation officer, she retired in 1994 to pursue her life-long interest in art. Her journey into painting began with watercolors in sunny Puerto Vallarta Mexico where she hangs out for a month every winter. More recently she has turned to oil and acrylic painting and has taken art classes at Laney College. She is a frequent world traveler. What inspires her most is color, design and value contrasts. She is attracted by abstract organic patterns found in nature such as the graceful shapes of plant forms or bodies of water. And she is drawn to rich color combinations. She is also part of a local plein-air group that paints from nature. Her work has been shown in many restaurants, several galleries in the Bay Area and in a gallery in Puerto Vallarta.

Denise Hart

Denise Hart began to paint full-time in 2004, first in acrylics and more recently in oils. Denise particularly enjoys exploring color as a means to express her understanding and love of the remote places she loves to frequent. In 2006, Denise received an Honorable Mention for her painting “North of Saddlebag” in the Yosemite Renaissance XXI juried exhibition. She has also shown work in juried shows in various venues in Northern California (Olive Hyde Art Gallery in Fremont, Coastal Arts League Museum in Halfmoon Bay, the Alameda Arts Center, and the Sacramento Fine Arts Center), in Southern California (Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery at Bakersfield College) and in other states, including the Laredo Center for the Arts in Texas and the Wichita Center for the Arts in Kansas. This will be Denise's seventh time exhibiting in Expressions Gallery. The piece in this exhibition, “Cathedral”, is an homage to time, as represented by the long-lived yet ephemeral redwood forests of Northern California.

Adam Heffler

Adam Heffler is an east coast expatriate currently rooted in Oakland. He’s been a doodler since way back when; he started looking at his art as a "serious venture" shortly after leaving the academic womb. He is a self-taught artist that specializes in a very precise, detail-oriented pen and ink style that he has cultivated over the past few years. He feels that his art is somewhere between linguistic and totemic, and absolutely loves it when people tell him what they see in his art. Sometimes they see things that he saw too, sometimes, it's something completely unexpected. You can see the rest of his artwork at www.fredadamart.com

Bruce Heppler

Bruce Heppler was born in Berkeley 1955 (Kaiser). He graduated Berkeley High in 1973 and worked at Lawrence Berkeley Lab from 1975 to 1983 as a mechanical technician. He moved to Covelo, Mendocino Country and opened a welding and repair shop. Bruce has been working with metal all his life. He did an art sculpture for a benefit for a local music teacher whose mobile home burned (made a phoenix from trailer frame), got positive comments and started making other things. He takes inspiration from many sources, notably Louis Armstrong, the Three Stooges, and the Marx Brothers. When he’s not working on farm equipment, he’s making art.

Melanie Hofmann

Melanie Hofmann graduated with a BFA in Textiles from the California College of the Arts in 1996. Her home and studio are located in Berkeley. She first explored the joy of creating art in pre-school and she has not stopped since. As a teenager Melanie fell in love with fiber art, specifically with weaving and dyeing fabrics. Melanie has received awards from the Taegu International Textile Design competition and from Manhattan Arts International. Limited edition prints of her digital art are in the corporate collection of Lifescan, Inc. in Milpitas. Melanie works with both textile and digital media. For this show, she is featuring her art of tile and Italian Charm bracelets. Her work has been inspired by a number of artists including, Jean Miro, Rene Magritte and Magdalena Abakanowicz. She was also influenced by the artwork of her maternal grandmother, Zura Young, an abstract painter. Melanie seeks to convey through her work the interactive process with her media and a visual representation of her inner world. In addition to Italian Charm bracelets, she can make custom bracelets or tiles with photos and artwork that you provide.

Stan Huncilman

Stan Huncilman was born in Indiana but he is a product of the San Francisco Bay Area art world. He attended San Francisco State University where he was introduced to Funk Art and Happenings in the ‘70s. He received his M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1984. S.F.A.I. is the home of the Bay Area’s leading art instructors. He has been a sculptor for more than 25 years. Stan works in a variety of materials. As a matter of practice he uses the material that is most expedient to creating the sculpture he wants rather than “pushing a particular material.” His sculptures often begin from a simple sketch. He prefers to work in a direct manner rather than making molds of models before the final sculpture. The artist states: “I combine a child-like playfulness with primitivism. This creates a wonderland of intriguing forms and convoluted messages. When I enter my studio there is a mental sign post reading “Linear Thinking Stops Here.” Through my sculpture I create a world of nutritiously puzzling paradigms whose roots may be in religion, folk art, nineteenth century industrialisms or Greek mythology. In this world, a whimsical sense of humor walks arm in arm with an obstinate determination to create. The sculptures in this exhibition are part of his “All My Psyches” series, a whimsical yet intriguing observation of the complexities of consciousness. His solo exhibits include Holy Names College in Oakland, California and the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

Diane Jacobson

Diane Jacobson lives in Oakland, CA. She is a transplant from the Little League capital of the world, Williamsport, Pennsylvania. As a veteran teacher in the Oakland schools, she used many art projects and visual cues to instruct her English learners. Although she dabbled in art classes an undergraduate, her interest in glass art was not kindled until the 1990's. Through classes at Studio One and the Crucible, she has expanded her areas of expertise to include kiln casting and working deep, as well as fusing and slumping glass. Her pieces are represented in Pro Arts Open Studio as well as several galleries in the Bay Area. Artist states, "What I like best about fused glass is its element of surprise. Glass is a chameleon. Observe the pieces as the light changes. Glass is a fickle and somewhat undependable medium, as reactions to color and temperature cause a visual dance of light and texture. Enjoy the dance."

Ann Jasperson

Ann Jasperson lives and works in Stamford, CT but grew up north of Chicago the youngest of a large family. Always drawing, the fire that is art was started when a family friend gave her a Paint by Numbers set-then it was off to the races. Nurtured by her sister Joan and many wonderful teachers she attended the Cleveland Institute of Art and graduated in 1981 with a BFA in Drawing/illustration. Moving to New York soon after graduation, she “fell” into the toy business, then became a toy inventor which is her “day job”. But always in the background was a love of stones. Designing and creating jewelry has become a word of mouth business that has grown over the last five years. One of a kind pieces inspired by the natural beauty of stones and pearls done just Once makes for wearable art. Other interests include her internet cartoon Cranky Bears, her garden, dogs and husband G.C. Stone.

Mark Jezierny

Mark Jezierny grew up in Moraga and currently resides in Concord, California. He has always been interested in art since about the age of 7 and started taking art classes at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School at the age of 12 with Walter Mast. Mr. Mast was a major influence in Mark's life by being his first art instructor. Upon his retirement from Joaquin Moraga he and Mark did alot of plein air painting throughout the Bay Area during the 1990's. Mark continued to take art classes all through high school and then got a B.A. in Liberal Arts Degree with an Art Major from Saint Mary's College in Moraga. He then got his M.F.A. Degree from the San Francisco Art Institute. He currently works in oils and acrylics both in the studio and en plein air capturing the light, color, detail and texture of the subject matter. His work has been in various solo and group shows at several venues and galleries including Allison McCrady Fine Art in Orinda, Lesa Johnson Gallery in Lafayette and the Epperson Gallery in Crockett.

Jenny Sueyoun Kim

Jenny Sueyoun Kim lives in San Mateo, CA. A daughter of Korean immigrants, she was born in Los Angeles, and has been living in the San Francisco Bay area since 1995. She comes from a long line of artists, mostly painters, and she herself has been drawing and painting since before she started school. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in Linguistics, her passion for art intensified, and her interest in three-dimensional media flowered from her “love of decorating the human body—from tattoo art to jewelry." In 2004, she began taking Metal Arts classes at the City College of San Francisco, and metal immediately became her favorite medium. She states: “What I found so appealing about metal is its coldness and hardness, and with it, being able to create a sense of elegance, movement, and life--which really spoke to me like no other medium has.” Her jewelry pieces reflect her love of organic forms: floral and figural. Her work is entirely hand-sculpted from wax, each piece individually, in her home studio in San Mateo. She then casts the sculpted models into sterling silver at Scintillant Studio in the SF Mission district. All steps of the sculpting, casting, and finishing process are done by Jenny herself. In 2007, she began working as a silversmith and jewelry designer on a full-time basis. Her website is www.jennykim.org.

Audrey Kral

Audrey Kral has lived in Berkeley, CA for over twenty years. She grew up in rural southwestern Pennsylvania where the abundant natural landscapes inspired her love of the Earth’s beauty. As a child she would draw for hours, but did not come back to art until after completing a Master of Science degree. Living among artists and scientists in Berkeley inspired her to begin creating again. As a self-taught artist, her greatest inspiration comes from nature, meditation practice, and deeply reflecting on the work of many painters while at museums in New York, San Francisco, France, Italy, Turkey, Tunisia, and many other places. Audrey began as a watercolor artist until seven years ago when she began using oil paint, which is the medium exhibited in this show. Her technique shows watercolor influences, yet takes full advantage of the rich, creamy characteristics of oil paint. Her work was featured in a solo show at the W Hotel, SF this past June and one of her pieces, Passion, was exhibited at the Chicago Merchandise Mart, Art Futura exhibit in June 2009 as well.

Jonathan Kwak

Jonathan Kwak is a graduate San Diego State University and studied at L’academia Belle Arti in Firenze in Italy from 1998-1999. Recently Mr. Kwak’s work has been published in Milvia Street Journal in Berkeley. Mr. Kwak has worked with famous international artists like Andy Goldsworthy, Conchita Amata, James Hubbell and Susan Felix. Currently he teaches art at Boys and Girls Club San Francisco-Visitacion Valley Branch. Mr. Kwak has been working on “ X ” image for 11 years and continuing on this theme. He has been shown his work in Italy, San Diego, and around the Bay Area.

Lucy Lewis

Lucy Lewis, grew up in Los Angeles, Ca. She began her career as a dancer at the age of 10. Her mother was a painter and she also loved to draw and paint all her life. She moved to San Francisco in the early 1960’s and pursued a career in art and dance. She performed with Anna Halprin’s Dancers Workshop Company. She has lived and worked in the Bay Area ever since. She created her own company bringing together artists, musicians and dancers, in what were some of the first multimedia productions in the Bay Area. She incorporated masks, visual arts, and inspiration from nature, animals and dreams into her work. She produced full-length compositions, Dreamscapes (1985), at the Matrix Gallery and Between two Worlds (1998) and many shorter pieces, The Planets (2005), Waters of Life (2006), The Voices of Earth (2007). She is now sees dance as a healing art, and art as direct communication with the imaginal realm. For the last 10 years she has been painting and drawing. She is especially inspired by the human figure as a study of the beauty and depth inherent in the human form and the expression of human emotion through the visual medium. She has exhibited her work at, ECLECTIX Gallery, 2006, ADDISON STREET WINDOWS U.N. Show, 2007, EXPRESSIONS GALLERY, 2008. Giorgi Gallery, Claremont and College, 2008You can contact her at, dancinglights@earthlink.net

Holly Lindberg

Holly Lindberg is originally from Upstate New York and moved to the Bay Area about 5 years ago. Holly moved to CA to study Photography and graduated from California State University, East Bay with a BA in Photography. Holly is currently a Professional Photographer and shows her current work on www.PicProfessional.com. Holly also enjoys traveling, hiking with her Aussie mix, watching Sci-Fi movies/tv/books, eating sushi, and cooking gourmet meals for her husband and friends. When past, present, and future comes to mind; I think of the buildings human beings have created and why they have been created. Architecture represents all the prosperity, intellectual knowledge, and commitment humans have strived for. With creation, comes a need for responsibility. What does the human kind do with buildings that are old? Do they covet them and restore them to their former glory? Do they tear them down and build a new? This is a major controversy. Holly@PicProfessional.com

Charles Lucke

Charles Lucke lives in Hercules, CA. He began borrowing his father’s cameras while growing up in Stratford, CT, and has been a freelance photographer since the 1970s. He added a darkroom to each of five consecutive residences, and though he shoots mostly digital today, he continues to mine an inventory of thousands of slides and negatives for images to exhibit. His first solo exhibit, “Four Ways to Abstraction,” was on view at the XZIBTit Gallery in Hercules for two months in 2007, and in July 2008, the Hercules City Council awarded him First Place in the first annual Hercules Photography Contest. Charlie’s inspirations include Hugo Steccati and Ruth Bernhard, who, though their work is very different, were both creatively involved in photography to the end of their long and interesting lives. Regarding his interest in abstract photography, the artist states: “There’s a desire in me to create something that no one else has created (or at least, not precisely the way I have created it.) It’s a way to free the form and change it from a visual reality to an unreality. It’s a way to free the process from the precise reproduction of tone, colors, and forms and let the right brain reign.”

Jennifer Wallace Mack

Jennifer Wallace Mack has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. She works in various media: painting, photography, mixed media, and jewelry. Her work is consistent in the quality and detail in each medium she applies. She has exhibited at a number of solo and group shows, many of which were juried. Shown at Expressions Gallery is her magnificent jewelry. Jennifer has served on various Boards of Directors for long standing Artists Organizations such as the San Francisco Women Artists, and The San Francisco Gem and Mineral organization.

James Barnes MacKinnon

James Barnes MacKinnon currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he has lived for the last 36 years, after leaving the Chicago area, where he was born. He plans to move to the Bay Area in the next six months. Mostly self-taught he began drawing horses at summer camp when he was nine. By thirteen he had discovered painting, and Van Gough and Monet at the Chicago Art Institute. Later it was Dali and Max Ernst. Most recently he has found himself in the works and practices of Robert Rauschenberg and Mathew Ritchie. He has taken classes at the University of Missouri, Santa Fe Community College, and most recently was enrolled at the College of Fine Arts in the University of New Mexico. James is currently working on an extended series of paintings, he calls “Bumps”, that are all 3’ x 3’ canvases painted with acrylics and sometimes augmented with transfers and recycled materials. James says of his latest series, “these pieces all address where we, as Americans stand today, with a future that seems to promise an end to our path of limitless travel and exploration, as we have known it, yet we are infused with a history that has given us increasingly faster and freer ability until now.‘Bumps’ is also about how we, as Americans have dealt with the interruptions, (or speed bumps,) in our path in the past, and asks where we go from here.”

Tom Mahon

Tom Mahon lives in the Bay Area. After 30+ years writing about technology in Silicon Valley, he became interested in another use of silicon: creating art glass. After all, crystal vases and microprocessors both start out as sand.People have been making decorative and functional glass objects for thousands of years, either by cold working (etched, carved and stained glass), or by blowing hot glass with a pipe. But there is also warm glass work (fusing pieces together and then slumping them in a mold) that pre-dates glass blowing but was set aside and largely forgotten in antiquity when furnaces got hot enough to melt glass to blow it. With the development of new technologies for working warm glass over the last 20 years, such as the introduction of iridized and dichroic glass surfaces and computer controlled kilns, it’s now possible to create glass pieces that are as alive when lit from the front as traditional stained glass is when lit from behind. So he applies these new technologies to the ancient craft of glassmaking to produce works that speak to the eye, the mind and the heart - seeking to infuse soul into silicon. You can visit http://web.me.com/tmahon3/GlassRoots Gallery/Welcome.html where Tom has a Gallery of his glasswork alongside some essays he's written in recent years. He also has a YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr0mr7RQelk showing his work in motion set to music by J.S. Bach.

John Mallon

John Mallon grew up in the East Bay Area being born in Oakland, his present residence. Arts and crafts have been an interest since early childhood. While in the Navy, pencil portraits were a hobby. From there sculpture and painting became an interest as time went by, resulting in private painting instruction from a bay area teacher. A long list of “How To” art books have helped along the way with sculpture and pencil drawing, as well as a teacher in woodcarving. Awards came from Art shows presented by the Oakland and Alameda Art Associations the past 20 years. Mallon is still a Member of both and has been President of both Associations. Mallon states: “Monet, Dali and CA painter George Otis are an inspiration to me. Color and graphite pencil is my favorite and best mediums. In this show he presents artwork that uses beads, or dots of acrylic paint to build up texture. I also have fun decorating hats and t-shirts using fabric paints and making fun clocks.”

Elena E. Maroth

Elena E. Maroth lives in Kensington, CA. She was born in Havana, Cuba and emigrated to the U.S. in 1960. She attended San Francisco State University, then worked in Marin County as an adult education teacher; since 1985 she has been Art Director of the non-profit classical record label Music & Arts in Kensington, where she lives with her husband. -- Born close to the sea in Cuba, Elena Maroth has been surrounded throughout her life by nature, music, and visual beauty. The rhythms of the ocean and the culturally vibrant life of Havana inspired Elena early on to dance and paint. She studied ballet with dancer and choreographer Alberto Alonso at Pro Arte Musical, continuing at the legendary Alicia Alonso Ballet School in Havana; she also studied art at the Escuela San Alejandro, but is largely self-taught. After moving to the U.S., Elena’s art has continued to be inspired by her early environment as well as by her ballet training: she has brought to her visual art work the joy and rhythm of color and movement. She works mainly with acrylics; most of her canvases are 3x3 or 4x4 feet in size. -- She has exhibited at SF Zen Center (2), Fourth Street Gallery (Berkeley), Green Gulch Farm (Muir Beach), La Pena Cultural Center (Berkeley), Berkeley City Club, San Francisco Women Artists Gallery and Expressions Gallery. Her published work includes a Univ.of New Mexico New Music Festival brochure cover painting and several CD cover pictures for Music & Arts.

Micaela M Marsden

Micaela M Marsden is the child of a writer and of a philosopher, who grew up surrounded by modern art: abstract expressionism, figurative-fantasy work by artist & author Henry Miller, the tortured art of Bezalel Schatz, photography by the Weston sons, and more. These were hosted by my father in his Pat Wall Gallery, the first modern-art venue on the Monterey peninsula. Art was something real, in my world, something you could touch. Drawing was a refuge—bridging the disconnect between everyday life and the imaginative world of endless possibilities. There are so many ways to see. We interject values, stories, shades of meanings, expectations, deprecations, inhibitions, enhancements, to all that comes before us. You can go with the flow, and “see” what’s in your mind, and maybe that is what is “really” there, or maybe it’s more than that! Light, forms, feelings, shape are exciting – I try to elucidate my response to human exuberance as well as nature’s vibrant abundance and find it so much fun to try to put it into a form perceivable by others.

Sonia Melnikova-Raich

Sonia Melnikova-Raich was born and trained as an artist and architect in Moscow, Russia, and has been living in San Francisco since 1987. Later in life she discovered photography, however her training as an architect and painter remains present in her works which have a strong resemblance to drawn or painted media. Sonia is a winner of several juried art and photography competitions and exhibits her work locally and nationally. Currently she has a solo exhibit at 555 California (Bank of America Building) in San Francisco (“From Abstract Reality to Real Abstraction: Art Photography by Sonia Melnikova”), and two of her works from “Left Behind” series have been recently acquired by the city of Lafayette for a permanent display at the newly opened Lafayette Public Library. Her work from the same series has also been included into the 2009 issue of “Diffusion,” a magazine devoted to unconventional photography. “I like to explore the abstract in the material world and am intrigued by spatial ambiguities caused by reflective surfaces, resulting in painterly and slightly surreal images. As to my objects, I look for grace, poetry and mystique in the most common of things around,” says the artist. All works are signed individually produced archival quality prints on Somerset Fine Art Velvet Paper. The artist avoids mass-producing her work by printing on-demand a limited number of pieces while maintaining full control of the quality of each individual print.

Gail Morrison

Gail Morrison grew up in Massachusetts, but has lived most of her life in the San Francisco East Bay. She has always wished she had become an artist, and has recently decided to make it happen. She is captivated by printmaking. As she studied the work of other artists it became apparent that it was monotypes that made her heart sing, so she started there. As she began to explore further and the universe of printmaking began to unfold, so many other things called to her: The luscious paper; The smell of the ink; The embossment made by the plate, and the melding of ink and paper into one; The stately procession of steps to a traditional etching; and the thrill of turning the wheel of the press, turning back the blankets, and gently lifting the paper to discover what has appeared. Currently, she is principally working in monoprints and etching (using traditional processes but with nontoxic chemicals), and - leaping ahead several centuries in printmaking technology - the world of archival digital prints. Her work has been seen in several shows in the last couple of years. More information is available at www.gailmorrison.com.

Mona Ram

Mona Ram has lived in the Bay area for 40 years and is mostly known for her professional work in the Performing Arts. Visual arts have moved to the forefront after taking some classes here in the East Bay. She loves making use of natural and most available resources and succeeded in making a 4’ Paper Mache little girl in one of our last shows at Expressions. Mona is attending Berkeley City College to resume classes in Painting and History of Women in Art and feels quite at “home” in those spaces. This collage was made at a dream workshop in Sausalito. Witness two small areas within the collage of the interior of what seemed to be an Opera House as she dreamt that she received an award or reward by walking down from a balcony to the stage. Only a few weeks ago Mona sang with the Glide Ensemble (she does every Sunday for the last 8 years).THIS time she sang at the San Francisco Opera House! Hence, the title “Dreams Can Come True!”

Neshat Rezai

Neshat Rezai was born in Shiraz, Iran and moved to the U.S. at the age of 14 where she completed undergraduate and Dental School. She currently resides and practices in Berkeley. Neshat is a glass artist specializing in kiln form glass fusing. She uses glass as her medium with occasionally incorporating metal and gold leaf. She finds glasswork very similar to dentistry where one needs to have artistic ability and precision. Her work is largely inspired by Persian patterns and nature. “My work is a celebration of colors–LIFE. Glass is truly a medium that is limitless. Since childhood art has always been part of my life. When I found glass, I found my passion. Glass is so fragile, yet so powerful.” You can see more of Neshat’s work at http://www.neshatglass.com

Deborah Robins

Deborah Robins is a real live folksinger who lives in Berkeley, CA. She makes fun and wearable jewelry out of repurposed and found objects like paper clips, safety pins, and sea glass, with the addition of colorful vintage buttons gathered from flea markets around the worlds. Originally from Chicago, she was exposed to fine art through innumerable trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, where the colors and shapes from several Grant Wood landscapes, captured her imagination. For two years in a row, Deborah has been selected to participate in the unique Maker Faire as “Folkiedokies: Repurposing with a Purpose”. Deborah Robins is the Executive Producer of a PBS/WETA television series about the history of American folk music, “THE MUSIC OF AMERICA: History Through Musical Traditions”. www.themusicofamerica.org Deborah is the sister of Laura Olear.

Selma Rockett

Selma Rockett lives in Berkeley, California and was born and raised in Lewiston, Maine. As a very young child, Selma learned to use “make believe, fantasy, whimsy and pretend” to enhance her days and this is what influences her art. Many wonderful people she has met in life inspire her work. Hats have always had a role in her life. Selma is primarily self-taught however she did study briefly with Bertha Underwood in Oakland, Ca. Her mediums include fabric, straw, yarn, wool and “lovely trinkets, feathers, buttons and all things shiny.” The hats are hand molded, using an art medium to set the design. The hats are not ‘named’ as most are one of a kind—therefore ABSOLUTE WHIMSEY.

Stanford Rose

Stanford Rose spent his childhood in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Utah. He now lives in Oakland, California. His style has evolved from simple landscape photography toward emphasis on perspective and formal properties at the expense of subject matter. He states, “I want to free the viewer from the habits of perception that attend the recognition of subject. It’s especially delightful when you see the esthetic values first, which then may evoke different images and emotions, then perhaps say irrelevantly, “Oh, it’s a---.”’ This small photo evokes the feeling of the past in the present.

Rosie Rosenthal

Rosie Rosenthal lives in Berkeley and grew up in the Bay Area. Her grandfather was a rock hound, her grandmother crocheted and painted china and watercolors; her mother was an artist – she painted and made jewelry. As a child she took classes at Studio One. As a young adult, she did jewelry and batik before pursuing a BFA in Fine Arts at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1975. She states, “Alexander Calden’s Jewelry and Faberge inspire me.” She has received a number of awards for her printmaking, and is in Arthur Murray’s collection. Her current modality is unique jewelry with handmade beads, semi-precious stones, and pearls, that is whimsical and elegant which she is showing at Expressions Gallery.

Christine M. Rossi

Christine M. Rossi lives in Berkeley California but originally comes from a rural area in up-state New York. Christine began exploring art at an early age winning several art competitions while in high school. She was influenced by Japanese art and theater while on an exchange program to Japan. Christine later studied costume design at SUNY Binghamton, illustration, oil painting and color theory through the University of California Extension Programs. After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 80's she began working as an architectural model builder and illustrator for a San Francisco Architectural firm. She branched out into creating illustrations, two and three dimensional, as well as models throughout the 80's and early 90's. Other career pursuits took her away from her art practice; however, she returned to creating pieces that reflect her philosophical reactivity to her personal world and the world at large. The works are secular in nature but draw heavily on religious and mythological imagery. "Creating has become tuned to preserving the every day life of those that preceded me capturing a day in human history, or telling a story through the imagery of the land and human interaction. My work is indicative of my exploration of my experience through spiritual and mythological cycles and interaction with the natural world” The smaller painting in this show is an en plein air study for a larger, gouache work and the larger painting was distilled from en plein air sketches and photographs taken around the Alameda Estuary. Christine exhibits in galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area and has artwork on the Ovation TV website, www.ovationtv.com under cmaerossi, as well as her own website and blog www.christinerossiart.com and http://www.mesart.com. You may contact Christine at cmaerossi@gmail.com.

Linda Sims

Linda Sims lives in Bel Marin Keys. She is 5th generation Californian, born and raised in Alameda. From 5 to 15, she studied with her great uncle, George Demont Otis, American impressionist. Both George Otis and Chester Arnold, her teacher of 8 years, are represented in major museums, and are inspirational in her life. Linda has had 18 solo shows, was an art therapist, had an interior
design business for 15 years, and renovated real estate. Linda is grateful for her travels, for the San Francisco Bay Area, and for always having had passion in her work. Her inner landscapes are seldom what she has seen. Feelings, thought, color and response rapidly compose on the canvas. She takes joy in freedom, color and boldness, and hopes it's contagious.

Arlene Risi Streich

Arlene Risi Streich, grew up and lives in Oakland, Ca. and cannot remember a time that she has not been interested in art. She received her B.A. ED and A.B. F. A. (Painting) from California College of Arts and Crafts (Now CCA) and has lived and spent much time in Mexico doing painting and photography. She has taught in the Oakland Public Schools, Diablo Valley College (Painting, drawing and fashion illustration) and CCAC (Children’s classes). She is presently exhibiting her glass jewelry, a medium started four years ago, and her painting. Her Jewelry work is influenced by her background in painting incorporating a bold use of color and line. Her painting and jewelry work has been shown in numerous exhibits around the country and in private collections. Artist states: “Our role as artists is to continue to amaze, provoke, stimulate, delight and agitate the senses. The fact that we continue to do so is a testimonial to not being complacent, while trying to process the internal/external creative dialogue.”

Ann Van Brunt

Ann Van Brunt was born and raised in Central New Jersey and for the last 9 years has lived in the East Bay area. Ann’s love of landscape and the great outdoors was cultivated at an early age with summers in Nantucket, month’s long cross-country trips and weekends in New York City. Her mother surrounded her children with art, music and science throughout their lives until her passing in 1990. At age four Ann began her studies of classical piano and voice at the French School of Music. Ann also sang with the New Jersey Schola Cantorum for years. This training led Ann to be invited to Lincoln Center to sing with Dave Brubeck, also at the Lincoln Center Critics Circle and the New Jersey Ballet. Ann’s formal art instruction began when she moved to California in 2001. Ann started drawing classes at Laney College in 2002 transferring to the College of Marin in 2005 to pursue formal painting instruction with Chester Arnold. Since she began painting her art has been juried into two shows at the College of Marin and most recently in the Marin County Fair. Ann began selling her work in 2008, and has paintings hanging in clients homes from Nantucket, MA to Berkeley, CA. The artist states “my paintings reflect what I see, real or imagined. Being able to bend reality just slightly is a freedom everyone should experience”.

Ron Weil

Ron Weil grew up in Detroit and now lives in Albany, CA. He says, “I love to play and improvise and it is in the artistic realm that permission to do so is most freely granted.” As a boy he remembers being transfixed during museum visits--experiencing an intense desire to enter the canvas and explore the depicted world. In graduate school at Berkeley he escaped for an entire year into photography and the wonderful world of the ASUC art studio. His first experience in drawing and graphic work came in the early 1970s when he helped form a group of graphic artists who designed flyers, books, and produced silk screened and lithographed posters for community organizations. His posters have been reproduced in anthologies and one was selected by Mother Jones magazine in their “retrospective of the best American political posters“. A hiatus from making art lasted until three years ago when he took up drawing with pastel and charcoal. While most of his work is abstract, he also does portraits and is currently working on a series using walls as a motif. He has shown in local restaurants and galleries and has several works in private collections.

Cindy Williamson

Cindy Williamson lives in the East Bay Delta town of Brentwood. She is a California native born in Southern California and raised in Northern California. Cindy grew up in a family of artists her brother is a painter and her husband was an illustrator and publisher, eventually she took her turn starting in clay and moving back and forth to bronze and clay. Cindy takes her inspiration from the late 50’s and early 60’s Bay Area Figurative Movement especially Joan Brown’s early work. Her Blue Nurse bust is rich with color. Cindy’s Sculpture’s have won numerous awards she has work in collections throughout the United States. To see more of her work visit her web site: www.cindywilliamsonart.com.

Leslie Winokur

Leslie Winokur’s interest in art began as a young child with family visits to museums in New York City. While her father preferred the exhibits of ancient armor, she was drawn to the paintings. After moving to Berkeley in the 1970s Winokur began her art career as a ceramic artist working in porcelain, showing in venues such as the Hartford Art School, Hartford, CT, and the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, as well as in many prominent galleries nationally. Since then she has explored, exhibited and sold work in a wide variety of mediums including watercolor, acrylics, pastel, collage and oil. In 2006 Alameda County purchased two of her paintings for its permanent collection, and in 2007 she was awarded second place for an abstract collage in a show juried by Marion Parmeter (former director of the SOMA Artists’ Gallery) at the Art Museum of Los Gatos. Recently, she exhibited in the juried show “Home” at the Falkirk Cultural Center in San Rafael. For the past two years she has been working exclusively in oil. The pieces in this show reflect her visual interest in everyday objects, and as always, her fascination with color, line and shape.

Selina Wong

Selina Wong is a California based artist. She has a Bachelor degree in Fine Art and Master degree in Counseling Psychology. Her artworks have been exhibited in different States, and she has won multiple awards for her artworks. She uses many different mediums to search for a fluent expression of her vision. Her artworks are interwoven with realistic and abstract subjects in a simple elegant yet multifaceted array. Her current mixed media paintings utter the impact of suburban expansion and nature. They are a still interpretation of every day surrounding, pieces of memories, and approaching future uncertainty.

Emmryss Wren

Emmryss Wren currently lives in Berkeley and was raised in London, England. She has received no formal training in art, but has always considered herself creative, making art out of things that were available, at the time. Her current art uses hubcaps and sticky backed vinyl sheets of color, old jewelry etc: The artist states that she always starts at the rim and works inward, with no actual conception of the finished outcome. She says the pleasure, for her, is in the end surprise.

Russ Zellers

Russ Zellers lives in the Vallejo, California. His work is emblazoned with color. He states: “To me, color represents the feeling or emotion in two dimensional statements. After spending my entire adult career working in human service organizations (primarily youth & family services as well as HIV/AIDS), I am happy to be producing colorful works of art for the enjoyment of others. My subjects vary in theme and subject matter: abstract, holidays, children’s art, traditional, and reinterpretations of works by other artists. Original art work was produced with a variety of mediums. Individual pieces were done in oils, acrylics, watercolor, and pastels. Art cards, based on my work, were professionally printed in Vallejo”.

Steve Arntson

Steve Arntson was born in Massachusetts in 1945 and moved with his family to the Seattle area in 1951. Arntson studied music at the University of Washington 1961-63. Arntson then traveled to California via Colorado, later joining the Army Reserves, boot camp was in Fort Polk, Louisiana. It was in the 1970’s that he discovered poetry readings. In the late 70’s he discovered poetry readings. Previously, Arntson had been involved with a Shakespeare reading group, gone through poetry books, especially those by English romantics. When Artnson began writing his own poetry, music was an important part of the process. Impressed with poet, Ralph LaCharity, who would memorize his work. It struck Artnson that taking that extra step seemed to energized the text. Artnson began rehearsing vigorously, and performing most of his work by heart. Arntson says, “The poetry can be like prayers that way, almost.” He credits Julia Vinograd, Bruce Isaacson, Eli Coppola, David Lerner, Joie Cook, Eric Walker, and all those that gathered at the Old Spaghetti Factory and Café Babar to share their poetry, with helping him. Steve Arntson has since recited at many venues far and wide, but has a special fondness for Waverley Writers of Palo Alto. Eventually Artnson settled on geography as a theme and has devoted much time to writing about the Oregon Coast and other landscapes, exploring how a place conjures and perhaps induces philosophy as well. The Burning Man Arts Festival captured Arntson’s attention and he has been many times to that lakebed in Nevada. Steve Arntson has said writing is like documenting Fellini in the desert – there are endless subjects for poetry there, if you can take the dust and wind and heat and being in the middle of the mega-tribe of party animals - there is great art and great performances in the world, all week, all the time.

Mary-Marcia Casoly

Mary-Marcia Casoly spent her childhood in Noe Valley, San Francisco and now lives in Palo Alto. She graduated with a BA in English/Creative writing at San Francisco State, having studied with Kathleen Fraser, Frances Mayes and Mark Linenthal. Currently, Casoly works on the Waverley Writers Board, a South Bay poetry forum. She is editor of Waverley’s magazine, Fresh Hot Bread. In the introduction to her first book Run to Tenderness (Pantograph & Goldfish Press, 2002), Jack Foley writes, “Casoly’s poems are rooted in a sensibility which can perhaps be imitated but which can hardly be ‘taught.’ Her imagination seems to be stimulated by individual words—words which appear as nonesuches, monads—and the poem finds its shape by discovering ways in which these nonesuches can connect with one another.” Al Young wrote, “What might not count to most, she counts.” Casoly finds herself to be a poetic nomad, happiest with strange vowels and consonants, traveling deep in the forest of dialogues. Influences include Kathleen Fraser, Gertrude Stein, Laura Riding, Robert Duncan, and Jack Kerouac, to name only a few. Her work has been included in various literary magazines, most recently Sand Hill Review. She has also been featured in several online magazines such as Big Bridge, www.bigbridge.org, Tower Journal, www.towerjournal.com, and Ninth Street Labs, www.9thstlabs.blogspot.com. Run to Tenderness is available at Small Press Distribution, Berkeley. She is delighted to be co-featuring with her friend, poet Steve Arntson.

Julia Vinograd

Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet, a bohemian lady known the world over for her Telegraph Avenue promenades, blowing bubbles and spreading peace. Julia received a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She has published over 44 books of poetry, and has won the American Book Award of The.Before.Columbus.Foundation. She is the Berkeley’s all-but-official Poet Laureate: the mayor gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award. But she is much more than just a street poet: this very wise woman uses the urban scene, from tourists to homeless people, as a window on humanity (and sometimes inhumanity). JuliaVinograd.com.

Donna Lane

Donna Lane is a native San Franciscan, now living in the East Bay, who has been involved in the Bay Area poetry scene since the early 1970's. Her book, "Where I Live" by RawArt Press has had its second printing. Her poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Onthebus, Pegasus, The Haight Ashbury Journal, and several anthologies. Her personal essays have appeared in The S.F. Bay Guardian, The S.F. Chronicle and the S.F. Examiner since 1991. She will read from a number of these works. She is in the process of publishing a second book.

Artist Biographies - Past, Present & Future December 12, 2009 - February 5, 2010

Artists