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.

Lili Artel

Lili Artel’s roots were planted in New York City but she states that she came into full growth in the Bay area of northern California 45 years ago when she declared herself a sculptor/fibre artist. Now 91 years old, she is still doing art, “ turning staw into gold through my imagination.” She is a process artist which means she starts with an idea with her hands on non-art related materials. Rope and nylon pantyhose are two of her favorites to which she adds natural items, seed pods, feathers, and bones and man-made rusty objects. She uses textile crafts techniques, like knitting, knotting, wrapping, which are usually distorted. For this show she submits two art works that were strongly influenced by the Dadist, Marcel Duchamp.

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.

Helen Breger

Helen Breger was born in Vienna, Austria, and studied art at the Weiner Gymnasium and Kunstgewerbe Schule when she and her family were forced to flee to Trinidad to escape the Nazis. She is known for her fine art prints and drawings and as a teacher for many years at the California College of Arts where she met her husband who was an officer in the US Army. Together they moved to New York City in 1945 where she continued her art education at the Arts Student League. In 1950, Breger and her family moved to California where she studied printmaking at San Francisco State University, and San Francisco Art Institute. She completed her MFA degree at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1970. Breger worked as an illustrator and designer for both I Magnin doing fashion illustration and for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her favorite assignments were for the book page which was edited by Hogan, where her drawings accompanied book reviews, interviews with authors and poets in the news, and other literary events, such as occurred at the SF State College Poetry Center. Fashion Ads were full page, attention-getting and very dramatic. There were no photographs used at that time. Her teaching career began at the California college of Arts and Crafts in 1959 where she taught drawing and was a tenured professor until 1987, She also taught at other arts schools in the bay area: University of California, Berkeley, in the Environmental Design Department; San Francisco Art Institute, where she taught drawing and design; printmaking at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco and Sonoma State University; and And part-time at the Santa Rosa Junior College. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibits, private collections and some museum collections.

Artist’s Statement: Philip Guston with his grim sense of humor and all too human absurdities, has always resonated with me. In one painting he depicts himself enshrouded in his blanket, obviously taking a break from all the bothersome demands of daily life. A similar impulse to wrap myself in a warm quilt and not have to deal with all the petty stuff of life is the subject of this painting. http://home.earthlink.net/~hbreger/About.html

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.

Artist’s Statement: “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 inspired by the work of Wassily Kandinsky.

Jeffrey Carter Kelling

Jeffrey Carter Kelling, a native Californian, resides in the East Bay with his family, a constant source of inspiration and support. He received his degree at The San Francisco Art Institute and Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Art. His passion for art has been a part of him for over 40 years. Color, light and shadows that is what his work is all about. Taking the ordinary and making something extraordinary. His paintings are like fireworks of color, his drawings reflect his love and mastery of pencil, pen and ink. In style, subject and creativity, Jeffrey reaches to treat us to his exciting and new vision of people, places and things. Jeffrey has shown his work extensively throughout California, in galleries, local shows and commissioned private sales.

Artist Statement: As an artist, I’m often asked what artists inspire me. My answer is always Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud and Henri Matisse.Johns has created a body of rich and complex work. His rigorous attention to the themes of popular imagery and abstractions has set the standards for American art. Constantly challenging the technical possibilities of printmaking, painting and sculpture, Johns laid the groundwork for a wide range of experimental artists. My mix of iconic images with bold backgrounds and using the flag is often an abstraction of another’s work, I feel it is my attempt at creating something new.

Attila Cziglenyi

Attila Cziglenyi works in oil, acrylic and watercolor. The subject matter of his paintings ranges from landscapes to aviation and still lifes. He was influenced by the brushstrokes and high key colors of the Impressionist painters like Monet, Renoir and Cezanne. For the past two years he enjoys traveling to locations and painting en plein air. He started his formal art education in Texas at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and later continued at Chabot College in Hayward. He studied printmaking at Laney College, Oakland and also participated in many painting workshops and classes given by well-known artists. Attila’s paintings have been displayed and won numerous awards in local, national and international juried shows. His watercolors representing industrial landscapes are part of a corporate collection.

Artist’s Statement: "with my paintings I try to capture the moods created by the changing lights, shadows and atmosphere in a landscape or express the exhilaration one feels at the sights and sounds of whirling propellers, the roaring of a rocket. I am always looking for unusual shapes, lines or colors to best convey this message"
The still lifes of the Impressionist artist Cezanne demonstrate mastery of design, color and composition. In my painting, that is similar to Cezanne's carefully arranged piece "Still Life with Apples", I tried to capture the design and intensity of colors depicting of the objects. With it, I strived to achieve the simplicity and delicate tonal harmony that characterize his paintings where volume dominates as product of color.

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. Elizabeth is moved and inspired by the cubist movement and the work of Fernand Leger. She also admires Modigliani’s elongation of the human body.

Willard W. Davis

Willard W. Davis, M. Div. lives in Oakland, and grew up in Torrance, CA. His first art projects were miniature mud cities and tempera paintings, which he now prefer as a medium. At UC Santa Barbara he took an art appreciation class which opened him to the amazing spectra of world-wide artistic expression. Here he was inspired to try various drawing and painting media. Some of his work is in private collections, and he has exhibited in several galleries (one in Mendocino) and even on piers in Santa Cruz & Laguna Beach.

Artist Statement: “I love to paint in abstract- light-emergence patterns. In fact my painting “Running with Joy” is as much about the interfusive waves of light which emerge from runner’s body as it is about the glory and freedom of the runner. Vincent VanGogh, Claude Monet, Kandinsky and Marc Chagall with their daubing, bright colors and fanciful figures, have been formative modern artists for me.

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 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 ) The floral art work in this show was strongly influenced by the work of Jasper Johns icons of the American Flag.

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. Influenced by her textile design, she finds freedom to incorporate patterns and design into her paintings as did Henri Matisse.

Adam Heffler

Adam Heffler is an east coast expat 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

Artist Statement: I only recently realized the impact Dr. Seuss has had on my art. Having read his books so often as a child, his whimsical imagery must have rooted itself deep inside, only to have it come out when I draw. I noticed the connection when I saw the book, The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss. It was then that I realized that there was a connection that had been there all along.

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.

Torchy Hunter

Torchy Hunter is the daughter of a military family that got transferred a lot, Torchy Hunter lived all over the US. She came to San Jose in 1965, after living in Florence, Italy for the previous two years where she loved being surrounded by the overwhelming art of that city. But it wasn't until she was 60 that she took her first art class, fulfillling an often hidden dream. She had previously expressed her creativity in acting and writing. She began to paint realistically, in very bright color, but started to think about the old walls in Europe, covered with the remains of generations of posters glued up and then pulled off. Then the use of bleeding tissue paper began to interest her in its ability to seep color into other color, and wash out, and transform itself. "I love color - bright, intense color. Color has magical properties - the way light changes it, the way it speaks directly to the brain, bypassing the rational mind." she says. "Layers are built up and I let the colors slip and move and share themselves. They merge into one another and create new colors and shapes. The discoveries are surprising, moving, and beautiful."

Artist Statement: “I love big expanses of color, and especially love the transparency that working with bleeding tissue paper gives me: color seeps and melts into color, sometimes dripping, but always dynamically responding to its surroundings. The surface is often textured from the use of gel medium or sand, or from the layers beneath each layer, adding to the richness.” Mark Rothko’s work had large expanses of abstract forms and used the intense colors she loves and also used layering to get the effect he wanted as does Torchy Hunter.

Isi Ikhide

Isi Ikhide moved to Berkeley, California, in August 2009. He grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and moved to the U.S. in the late ’70s to study business at Southeastern University in Washington, DC. He credits his love of art first to his family: His mother collected paintings, carvings, textiles, and pottery, and his home was and remains filled with African artifacts. Largely self-taught, Ikhide surrounded himself with artist friends, taking classes, visiting art museums and libraries, and always working on his sketches and watercolors. He is happiest standing before a canvas, with jazz playing in the background. But it was meeting his wife, Sylvia—herself a fine photographer—that forced Ikhide to see himself as a serious artist. Beyond her encouragement, she created a fully supplied studio for him and challenged him to make “real” art. Strongly influenced by Picasso’s African art—the color and distortion—and by Matisse, he works primarily in charcoal, oil, and watercolor. Influenced by his wife Sylvia, he has also taken up photography. In addition, Ikhide perfected a charcoal-on-paper technique to produce delicately textured works resembling reliefs or etchings. Ikhide has previously exhibited in the Washington, DC, area, with solo shows at the Federation of American Scientists (Bethesda, MD: 2007/ 2009); Sprint Headquarters (Reston, VA: 2009); and BB&T Bank (Herndon, VA: 2008). His group shows include the Greater Reston Arts Center (Reston, VA: 2006); Atlantis Gallery (Reston, VA: 2008/2009); and Art Space (Herndon, VA: 2009). His work is part of the permanent collection at the Herndon Free Clinic.

Dori-Lisa Imsdahl

Dori-Lisa Imsdahl currently lives in Larkspur, California, and grew up in Roslyn Heights on the North Shore of Long Island, outside of NYC. She was raised in a family where the two predominant trades were interior design and men’s fashion, and was introduced to the cultural realms of historical and fine art, as well as the performing arts from a very early age, resulting from having close geographical proximity to some of the world’s greatest art museums, as well as the many theatres on “Broadway”, located on the island of Manhattan. Dori was married for ten years to an award winning collage artist from Grass Valley, California, who highly influenced her interest in the medium, and who she believes may have impacted her own self-taught development as both a collage artist and painter, through an inexplicably magical process of osmosis. From a very early age, Dori was attracted to “Impressionism”, and later as a young adult became instantly enamored by the work of “Gustav Klimt’, most especially because of his use of “metallic paint”, which Dori perceives as enhancing the “dreamy romantic” quality of his work. She feels that when she creates a collage, she is guided by an outside unseen energy that highly influences the development of the work’s ultimate ‘story”. Dori aspires for her art to also be interpreted as dreamlike, as well as fantastical; she believes that the power of her subconscious, needing to manifest itself in a tangible form, is what ultimately results with each completed piece!

Nancy Jackson

Nancy Jackson has lived in Vallejo, CA, since 1986. Most of her life has been lived in California, except for eight years spent in a town of 350 people on the “Big Sky” Prairie of Montana. She is a master tapestry weaver/artist and has a tapestry in the permanent collection of Vesterheim Museum, Decorah, IA. She has other work in public and private collections throughout the US. Nancy has worked under her studio name, Timshel Studio, for over 30 years, creating tapestries professionally for 24 years, as well as other artworks. As a weaver in the late 1980’s, she trained in a classical European apprenticeship with fourth-generation French Tapestry Master Jean-Pierre Larochette and his wife Yael Lurie Larochette. Nancy also specializes in egg tempera and she draws in a wide variety of media. She is particularly inspired by the late 20th Century vision of art into which she was born, as well as the works of many nameless medieval artists. Richard Diebenkorn, Pablo Picasso, Terry Winters, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Henry Matisse are only a few artists with whom she feels affinity. Artist states, “The “Battle of the Horses and Bull” tapestry began as an expression of a woman’s life on a milking farm. The image began to take on religious overtones. The Horse and the hidden Bull both have a red eye connecting them in the battle.”

Statement Regarding: Inspiration Artist Influence: While her tapestry is related to the Norwegian folk art tradition, Nancy Jackson is inspired by 20th and 21st Century art, the era in which she lives. Dr. Marion Nelson, Director of Vesterheim Museum in Decorah, Iowa, cites Nancy’s Battle of the Horse & Bull in his book, Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition, referring to the relationship of the tapestry to the work of Picasso. Dr. Nelson invited Nancy to be part of the international traveling show, which demonstrated how migration to the U.S. and other countries altered Norwegian folk art. Nancy’s entry in the Expressions Gallery exhibit she states was strongly influenced by a Picasso painting titled, “The Crucifixion.” Initially one wonders, “Where is the influence?” But closer study and discussion with the artist clearly reveal how Picasso’s work influenced and changed her work. Both Picasso’s painting and Nancy’s tapestry are narrative, similar to folk art. Both artworks address religious ideas: Good/Evil, Heaven/Earth, Life/Death. The tapestry uses bright colors, flat shapes and divisions of space similar to the painting. The tapestry also reveals elements that might be read as a cross, figures at last supper, and a bull and horse with matching red eyes in a fight for Good/Evil. “When inspired by work of other artists, I tend to borrow shapes, color combinations, compositional elements, rather than concepts. My own concepts are already established from years of making art.” Again she states, “A blade of grass can inspire. It doesn’t have to be an entire art movement or concept. That blade of grass may not be recognized by the art viewer, but it nonetheless may have been critical to the creation.” Her goal is not to create Picasso identified works, but rather to enrich her own ideas via Picasso’s work, which she has certainly accomplished in this beautiful tapestry.

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.

A John Kammer

A John Kammer, of Alameda, was born in Atlantic City, spent his early years in Philadelphia, PA, where he won a full scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He was awarded the coveted Cresson Traveling Scholarship, to study master paintings in France, Holland and Italy. His love of old world architecture inspired his street scenes of Philadelphia. Long before the phrase, "plein air" came into vogue, John routinely set up his easel "on site". In the community art movement of the '60's, John and fellow artists founded the Painted Bride Gallery in Philadelphia. In 1974, he and his wife, Blanche, opened the Kammer Gallery in their home, to promote local artists. John blends realism and impressionism in his work in varied media: oil, watercolor, pastel and pencil. He aims to capture the glowing transparency of the California coastal light. John's expertise in drawing, composition and perspective is a result of his rigorous training. Some of his many awards include the 1989 Berkeley Art Award and 1st Place in the 1993 Miniature Show from the East Bay Watercolor Ass'n, and the 2006 Award of Excellence from the Alameda Art Ass'n. His work is represented in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, La Salle University, Philadelphia, Temple University, Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Caesar's World, Las Vegas and many private collections. Membership in professional organizations include: the Alameda Art Ass'n, the California Watercolor Ass'n and the Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. John’s work is inspired by de Kooning and like de Kooning it is both figurative and abstract fusing images that combine biomorphic and geometric shapes.

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.

Artist Statement: Flowers fascinate me and they are, to me, a portal to bliss. The sensuality, beauty, and colors of flowers compel me to draw and paint them as a way to embody their qualities in myself and to share what I experience with others. Georgia O'Keeffe was a painter who revolutionized the art world in the 20th century by bringing her viewers into contact with the world of the inner flower. She represented flowers in abstract and close up ways in which no one previously dared. Her work was thought both admirable and scandalous, at first. Now, many people are familiar with her work through Museums, books, prints and posters. The painting of mine are interpretations of the inner sanctum of flowers and how their world affects me. As Georgia O'Keeffe once put it, "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time." and "I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty." and "when you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else." I hope to give that world to many, as well!

Sandra Lo

Sandra Lo was born in china. She grew up in China and Hong Kong and immigrated to the US in 1989. She started learning drawing at a very young age. Her father, William S. Hung a famous oil painter, has been her teacher. Sandra took some workshops, figure drawing and painting classes but other than that, she is mostly self-taught. She is following in her father’s footsteps, and has become a accomplished painter who works primarily in oil and pastels. Sandra has a fill time job in paint on lunch hours, another field but still finds time to paint on lunch hours, evenings and weekends. She is a member of San Francisco Women Arts and her paintings are exhibited at SFWA Gallery in San Francisco, every month. Sandra’s portraits are extremely well executed and she offers commissioned portraiture through Expressions Gallery.

Artist Statement: “Edgar Degas is one of my favorite impressionism artists. He's stage pastel paintings greatly inspired me. So I started painting dance scene using pastel a couple of years ago. But I was thinking I need to paint my own style, not follow his style.” I learned from him the composition and the use of light and color. I also love to paint dancers and the stage scene because I feel that life is just like a stage. There are some great moments that I want to record.

Roberta Loach

Roberta Loach is a fourth generation Californian living in Kensington. She has an M.A. in Painting from San Jose State Univ. She also has two teaching credentials, one in art and one in political science and history. She taught art history, design, drawing and etching at West Valley College, Saratoga, and design, art appreciation and etching at DeAnza College in Cupertino. She showed her work with the Michael Himovitz Gallery, Sacramento from 1990 until it's closure in 2000. She had four solo shows there. She also showed with the Smith Andersen Gallery in Palo Alto where she had one solo show, and also showed with d.p. Fong Gallery in San Jose where she had one solo and was featured in several other shows. She edited and wrote for Visual Dialog magazine from 1975 to 80. She will have a very large solo show at the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, in 2012. She is a member of the California Society of Printmakers and a well recognized etcher. Her works in "The Modernists" show at Expressions Gallery all show the influence of the various artists in the works. All of the artists whose works have inspired her were wonderful designers as well as colorists, especially Frida Kahlo and Max Beckmann. All of the artists in the art reference works were totally original and refused to be a part of any movement or school All were content oriented artists, but in different directions. All of the artist referenced in her work in the show did work of great power and feeling and always marched to their own drummers.

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.” He seems to be experimenting with cubism now in the style of Picasso. Quite something different for photography.

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. Many say she uses the paint application process of Jackson Pollack but unlike Jackson Pollack her intention is to have images emerge as in her painting of the BIG LILY, Her intent is not just process.

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 dots of acrylic paint to build up texture and create a landscape. This method is similar to pointillism a technique used by George Seurat but unlike Seurat, he does not stick to combining the primary colors to create the image, rather his work is also similar to Australian Aboriginal work that uses large dots of paint to create the image. I also have fun decorating hats and t-shirts using fabric paints and making fun clocks.”

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. There is a clear influence of Chagall in her work as evidenced by the work in this show.

Artist Statement: “I so much admire the ability of Chagall to retain an innocence and joy in his work, while expressing everything from love of family and home, to pathos, and even terror in the frightening situations which his people found themselves in. His vibrant colors and homespun subjects relate so much of the human condition to us - such a storyteller in a visual medium!”

Janet McGill

Janet McGill was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and is currently living in Pleasant Hill. She has always worked in a variety of mediums; painting, sculpture, digital collage and interior decorating. There has never been a doubt in her mind, even as a toddler, that art would play a major role in her life. Her parents were both multi-media artists and she grew up immersed in the art scene of the sixties. She attended the University of Washington earning a BA degree in fine arts. Being a minimalist in every aspect of her life has influenced her art work, especially her sculpture, which has been a constant element of her artistic expression from the very beginning. She prefers to work in a ‘hands on’ manner rather than planning a specific result before creating it. These sculptures were created especially for this exhibition and began from a single piece of wire in an exploration of creating the greatest presence with the least mass. Primary and secondary colors provide sufficient depth to perceive each element separately and as a part of the whole. Her love of travel, exploration, and the cosmos, together with the passion for art, has been the foundation of her works. She says, "I view the world with my eyes wide open." Janet lives each day with the philosophy that we are all a minute part of the largest picture of all - Infinity.

Artist Statement: I chose the medium of painted formed steel wire on a simple platform base in an attempt to explore creating the greatest presence with the least mass. I was inspired by Alexander Calder, as his mastery of these elements and his use of color has always fascinated me. In general his use of primary and secondary colors provide sufficient depth to perceive each element separately and as a part of the whole. Being that I am a minimalist at heart I further reduced the mass of each piece by limiting myself to a line to define a space.

Sonia Melnikova-Raich

Sonia Melnikova-Raich was born and trained as an architect and artist in Moscow, Russia, and has been living in San Francisco since 1987. Later in life she discovered photography but her training as an architect and painter remains present in her work. She likes to explore the abstract in the material world and strives to emphasize geometry and texture of the plane and deemphasize three-dimensionality of the form to bring the viewer’s attention to the physical surface of the photograph, its pictorial aspects and composition. Included in this exhibit are three of Sonia’s works representing her presentational and abstract works which show strong influence of the famous Viennese artist Gustav Klimt. While it is not unusual to find the influence of a famous painter on another painter’s work, it is quite remarkable to find such resemblance in the work of a photographer. Sonia’s photograph “The Birch Tree” has an uncanny resemblance to Klimt’s “Birkenwald,” and her “Deep In the Wood” invokes a parallel with his “Der Birnbaum” or “Bauerngarten mit Kruzifix,” down to the tree trunks sharply cut off by the top of the canvas, leaving your imagination to wonder about the rest of the landscape. And her photo-based artwork “Homage to Klimt” was influenced by such Klimt works as “Die Jungfrau” and “Wasserschlangen II,” in which Klimt was trying to create contrast between three-dimensional human forms and two-dimensional decorative flat patterns. To explain this effect of Klimt’s art on some of her own, the artist quotes a famous American photographer Dewitt Joneswho once stated that "perception controls our reality.”

Doris Villadsen Mendell

Doris Villadsen Mendell, Albany artist, is a local born at Alta Bates Hospital, Berkeley and growing up in Piedmont. Her father filled her home with original paintings and, notably, sculpture done by Carl Bonnesen, his friend in Denmark. Inspired by her surroundings, she, at 6, made a booklet of poetry and illustrated it. More to the point,the artist has said, " I have been inspired by Constructionism and Precisionism (particularly Charles Sheeler), looking for abstract in the real: lines, shapes, reflections, shadows: anything that retains reality but emphasizes the visual effects" She has a BA and MA from UC, Berkeley and studied and taught art at Mills College on a fellowship. She later taught art at Berkeley Adult School and the present Berkeley City College. She has shown her paintings in egg tempera and acrylics, stitchery, ceramics, and sculpture. Presently she is showing at the Marvin Gardens Kensington Office Gallery, Arlington, through April. Photography is her most recent medium. With the latest technology of digital cameras, she says, "Anyone can be a photographer. It now behooves the artist to be more than a technician." She strives to be that eye.

Judi Morales Gibson

Judi Morales Gibson was originally from the Bay Area. Judi has lived in Southern California, Amsterdam, and Mexico and now resides in Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula. With no formal art education, Judi learns new mediums through workshops and reckless experimentation. Judi currently paints in Encaustic (hot beeswax medium), Mixed Media and Acrylic, but also designs found-object jewelry, costumes and alternative-wear for her annual pilgrimage to Burning Man. Inspired by Mark Rothko, Judi paints pure abstracts, abstract landscapes and seascapes, with color themes and abstract textures inspired by the sandy beaches, lush ocean and forest scenes of the Monterey Bay and the West coast of Mexico. Her works show her love of heavy texture and the concept of wabi-sabi, which often look distressed and well worn. Judi is enjoying incorporating unusual things into her recent encaustic works, like henna paste and organic material like yard clippings. Judi's work has been exhibited in galleries and venues in San Francisco, Carmel, Pacific Grove, Benicia and Vallejo.

Malcolm Nicoll

Malcolm Nicoll was born at the foot of the Rockies in Colorado on September 26, 1959 earning a BFA in Art History from UNC and a BA in Art Education from CSU. He lived in and traveled extensively in Europe and is now based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been exhibiting his large-scale paintings and fused mosaic glassworks in Europe and the Bay Area for over fifteen years. He is currently creating highly colorful and expressive glass bowls, plates and jewelry and looks forward to showing his new works in the coming year.

Artist states: “George Bernard Shaw once said, "without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable." To deal with this crudeness we can either engage creation or destruction; to walk the artist’s path is to engage creation. Through painting and working with glass, I am supported by dreams and visions that steer me toward existence beyond the ordinary. Whether I’m creating in 2 or 3 dimensions, I have a heartfelt, spiritual connection that takes the work beyond beauty, dreams and aesthetic visions, beyond color and line on a surface into deep unity. From this place, humanity’s inherent potential becomes visible, reminding viewers of their own divinity and the promises of their creativity. Regarding the influence on his style of art, he says that he is greatly influenced by Neo-Expressionism.

Paula L. Powers

Paula L. Powers, MA. was born in San Francisco, grew up in Fresno and now lives in Oakland, California. As a child she loved to create with materials provided by her parents. She studied at Mills College for two years, then University of Colorado, then she graduated with a BA in Art with Honors from University of California, BerkeIey. She received a MA in Museum Studies from S.F. State University, and a MA from J.F.K.University in Arts & Consciousness, while taking painting at San Francisco Art Institute. She has had several one artist shows. The 1st was in Oakland city for Center for Visual Art. Her art has been exhibited in many galleries, and is in international collections. Her favorite artist is Canadian Emily Carr who sought the spiritual in nature. She states: “I love to paint in oils which allows me to paint special light effects. In fact my joy in painting is to show the many different aspects of light and its subtle effects which is metaphoric to me of spirit. I currently teach art workshops which I call Creative Spirit Painting.” The work in this show is part of her spirit art work and shows an influence from the work that Emily Carr did especially, Emily’s tree series.

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.

David Rose

David Rose lives in San Francisco. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Drawing from San Jose State University in 1992. As a student, his work started off in a figurative style but became increasingly abstract, culminating in an 8’ by 12’ abstract painting as a final project. This evolution in style can be linked to an early exposure to the San Francisco Bay Area Figurative Movement artists, the most influential being Richard Diebenkorn. A life crisis kept David from moving directly into a graduate program and he spent the subsequent years working in the cabinet and construction industries while painting in his spare time. This period produced a series of large abstracts that began in a more geometric style with paintings such as “Blue Green Rhythm” and ended with the highly organic and spiritual “Tumors and Butterflies”. The difficulty in maintaining an art career while working in other fields made itself very evident and in the Spring of 2007 he and his wife Jenny sold the cafe they had owned and operated for 4 years so that he could concentrate on art. www.davidroseartwork.com

Artist Statement: The emerging body of work has led itself from stripe studies to a more retrospective abstraction, which merges geometry and free flowing marks. His concern and direction has always moved towards the lines and forms of Diebenkorn and Klee but beneath that, there is always the search for an elusive deep seated spiritual root.

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. 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 and at http://www.mesart.com.You may contact Christine at cmaerossi@gmail.com

Artist Statement: Christine has always had Rauschenberg’s work in the back of her mind while creating her three dimensional and collage work. Rauschenberg’s idea of using any object as “paint” has freed up her imagination in the use of imagery and materials. “I was inspired to create works that borrow from the idea of Robert Rauschenberg's "Combine". My approach tells a story by combining images and materials within the framework of a painting. My "collaboration" with a piece is the way the images are placed in a pattern that then frames the story in the mind of the viewer. Rauschenberg would place images together with no message or story in mind, allowing the combines to create an idea in the mind of the viewer. I exercise control by starting with an allegorical story or image in my mind from the initial conception of the piece.” Rauschenberg would also extend the image beyond the frame and that too is a liberating concept.

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.”

Margaret Tcheng Ware

Margaret Tcheng Ware, a figurative painter, is a transplant to the Bay Area. Born and raised in Hong Kong, her first career was in dance. After retiring from the field, she turned to the visual arts and discovered right away that she had a passion for drawing. Margaret received her training at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. While she enjoys working in different media, including pen and ink and watercolor, she paints primarily in oil. Margaret has exhibited nationally and won recognition for her work, including Awards of Excellence from Oil Painters of America. She appears in several publications, most recently in Best of America Oil Painters which was released by Kennedy Publishing in November last year. Also in 2009, The Artist’s Magazine selected her out of a pool of 1500 to be featured in a special article, “Splendid Over 60! 10 Artists Prove that Age is just a Number”. Margaret says she hopes to continue evolving as an artist: “Discovery is essential to my sense of well-being”. No longer in the dance studio, she stays physically fit with Pilates classes, and while her daughters keep her mentally on her toes, her Norwich terrier is particularly appreciated for not talking back!

Artist’s Statement for this show
A few years ago, I saw an exhibit of Modigliani’s work at the Phillips Gallery in Washington, D.C. A realist painter myself, I was drawn to his semi-abstract treatment of the pictorial space and to his nudes especially. Gazing unabashedly at the viewer, his curvaceous subjects strike one with luscious and sensual force. Yet their mask-like faces give them an anonymity that I find very liberating...They expose all yet reveal nothing. Returning to my own studio, I decided to try emulating certain elements of Modigliani’s style while not forgoing my own entirely. My “Reclining Nude from the Front” is a flip or play on Modigliani’s “Reclining Nude from the Back”. Although my painting owes its inspiration to Modigliani’s color palette and compositional choices, I made my model mysterious by cropping her face – something I believe Modigliani did not do to his models. I hope you find my reclining nude as intriguing as I did.

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.” 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. He has shown in local restaurants and galleries and has several works in private collections.

Artist Statement: This picture, ‘Practice in the Range of Jasper Johns‘, was inspired by Jasper Johns’ willingness to take a familiar subject-a target-and play with it, showing that he could transform something flat and familiar to something vibrant and filled with his personality. I borrowed his idea of using a target to admit that I was “practicing” the same type of game but with very different tools. Soft pastels cry out for textural play and so it is the surface texture that I focused on when creating my concept of a target.

Sarah Whitecotton

Sarah Whitecotton's interest in Art began in her formative years. She went to private schools and immersed herself in fine arts and theater.Her formal training began at the University of Miami, where she was nurtured under the wing of Eugene Masson a influential teacher who encouraged her to pursue a career in painting. In her sophomore year she spent the summer in Oaxaca, and Mexico City where she became familiar with the Mexican muralists and most significantly Rufino Tamayo. She continued her training at the University of OKlahoma, where she completed her B.F.A and later moved to California in the late 70's and took additional classes at San Francisco Art Institute and C aliforniaCollage of Arts and Crafts. In the 90's she became very much influenced by the school of Fauvism. Her sense of space determined more by the movement of color rather than an accurate three dimensional rendering of nature. . Sarah has received various awards and recognitions at the University Of Oklahoma, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Art Exchange (national juried exhibition), Art in the Redwoods(Gualala), Arts Benicia, U.C.S.F.(extension). More listed at www.sarahwhitecotton.com and at Magpie7Arts.com.

Artist’s Statement: I have been influenced by Matisse, and Derain as seen in my "Fauve Landscape" Another strong influence came from Paul Cezanne who was more of a formalist. He had a vision of order and structure contrasted with the Fauves turbulent emotionalism. In my painting "After Cezanne," represented here, I took the subject matter and extended it on a horizontal canvas to portray a sense of movement and brighter colors that exaggerates the tree and house, trying for a fauvists approach rather than the more traditional one as seen in Cezanne’s rendering

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, Winokur was drawn to the paintings. After moving to Berkeley in the 1970s she 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. Currently, she is working in oils.

Artist’s Statement: “Milton Avery is an interesting painter because his abstractions arealways grounded in natural forms. While I was working on a series of landscapes that began as more or less traditional plein air renditions, I acquired a book about Avery, who I have always admired. Looking at his work influenced me directly; the landscapes I was doing became distinctly more abstract.”

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. One could say she is a Pop Artist who takes the hub cap (an article from popular culture) from its natural context, solates it, merges it with other materials and presents it in a new context for contemplation as an art piece –an icon of contemporary life.

Russ Zellers

Russ Zellers grew up in the Great Lakes area (Ohio and Michigan) and currently lives in Vallejo. His father was a commercial artist and he has been interested in painting since childhood. After spending his entire adult career working in human service organizations (primarily youth & family services as well as HIV/AIDS), he states, “I am happy to be producing colorful and fun works of art for my own satisfaction and the enjoyment of others.” He has been an art student at Solano Community College since retiring from Public Health management. His favorite vacations have been spent visiting art museums around the world, including New York, Chicago, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Barcelona He is greatly influenced and inspired by the Impressionist, Post-impressionist, Fauve, Expressionist, and other modern artists. The greatly admired include Monet, Van Gogh, Kandinsky and other “Blaue Reiter” artists, Matisse, Bonnard, Schiele, Mondrian, and others. Kandinsky had a strong influence on Zellers’ use of brilliant colors that are free from the subject matter as well as in the abstraction of forms. Kandinsky’s influence is strongly felt in “Cartoon Village.” Vincent Van Gogh’s influence is clearly felt in “Time and the Starry Firmament” by Zellers. Van Gogh was influential in the expression of underlying energy or life through powerful use of color, by pulsating line, and spiraling forms. Likewise, Henri Matisse is a strong influence in “Flowers for Algernon,” reflecting Matisse’s expressive style, preference for abstract still life painting, and the bold use of color. Original work by Zellers is produced from a variety of mediums, including oils, acrylics, watercolor, and pastels but several of the pieces in this show are high quality digital prints on canvas and/or paper. The artist states, “To me, color represents the feeling or emotion in two dimensional statements. Most of my work involves the interpretation of form in an abstracted and colorful manner.

Cathyann Fisher

Cathyann Fisher currently lives in the Bay Area. She grew up in a small Massachusetts town where she spent most of her childhood steeped in the words of her beloved books and refreshed by nature's surroundings. Influenced by many of the New England transcendental authors, Cathyann began writing poetry in August of 1987. To her credit, Cathyann has published three books of poetry: Being Myself on Fire, The Soul Made Visible, and The Main Content. Her years of writing have won her international acclaim where she has been labeled as a writer for the everyday reader. Cathyann Fisher's work has a way of making the ordinary speak as if it were a stop along a traveler's journey. Her words move one ever inside the image, until the language itself becomes a mirror of ideas and possibilities folding over and into one another. She is at once academic and undisciplined. She is rebellious and constrained by the polite dance of her own way of seeing. Cathyann is most poignant when she draws on the personal feelings from her life, and sets the drama of her own humanity upon a stage of poetic scenery

Tim Donnelly

Tim Donnelly is the author of three poetry chapbooks, I skip the long ones too, A Season In Bed, and Velcro Heart. He is currently teaching himself to write and draw left-handed.

Myron Michael

Myron Michael is Proprietor of Rondeau Records and is a recording artist and writing instructor. He received an MFA in writing from California College of the Arts and is a Cave Canem fellow. His poems appear online and in The Blink, Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds (City Lights, 2009), Tea Party, Reverie, Pluck, and Nanomajority, respectively. He is the founder of Move Or Die and lives in the Bay Area where he curates HELIOTROPE a monthly reading series.

Thomas Stolmar

Thomas Stolmar Detroit immigrated performance-poet was born May 16, 1961 and is known to his father as a Ford Taurus. He is a graduate of the Poets-In-Bars
Association and did further studies at New College of California. Presently residing in San Francisco, he is the poetry editor for the New York based coffee culture magazine “CUPS”. Mr, Stolmar was recently included on the spoken word compilation CD “Wild Words”. His poetry has appeared in local journals such as “ Prosodia “ and “Antenym” and many others.

Artist Biographies - The Modernists February 13 - April 2, 2010

Artists