Brand 44 Catalog: Exhibition of Works on Paper 2016

BRAND FORTY-FOUR

WORKS ON PAPER

Forty-Fourth Annual National Juried Exhibition September 24, 2016 through October 28, 2016

Welcome to our 44th Annual Works on Paper Exhibition! This year we have implemented a new look for both the galleries and the catalog. The Skylight Gallery, usually a large open space, is temporarily divided into rooms of differing size, shape, and color. With this configuration works on paper are presented in intimate spaces as well as ones offering a more expansive view. The catalog is now a boxed set of images of the exhibited artworks, each with the potential to frame for display. We hope you will be as delighted by these changes as we are. Brand 44 continues the tradition of engaging well-known local artists as jurors. Laddie John Dill is an internationally recognized artist and teacher who works in a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional media. He has selected 101 artworks from 832 submissions.

Special recognition goes to six artists in the form of a Juror’s Award, the Jane Friend Purchase Award, the Robert Brown Award and three Brand Associates Awards. We hope you enjoy the exhibition and will join us again in the coming years.

Arlene Vidor, President of the Brand Associates Debra Thompson, Chairperson of the Brand 44 Exhibition Cathy Billings, Supervisor of Brand Library & Art Center

During my time as a juror for the Brand Library, I had the honor of looking through the submissions of roughly 80 artists to choose what I thought of as the finest work. During the process I was delighted and surprised by the level of artistic ability evident in the pieces. Because the quality was so high the decision-making process was remarkably challenging. Over three very long sessions I curated my choices down to about 100 works. On the third and last round I spent a particularly long time with these images and often wished I had the real artwork in front of me – the physical relationship between the different media and paper was widespread and in most cases very elegantly thought out. It was a pleasure to jury this particular group of artists. Best of luck to all of the artists in their future endeavors.

- Laddie John Dill

Award Winners Juror’s Award Alex Babajanyan Portrait of Vladimir Atanian

Jane Friend Purcahse Award Ruth Gregory Transition

Robert Brown Award Susan Hannon You Get Me Closer To God #7

Brand Associates Award Jim Newberry Swept

Brand Associates Award Adele Mills Tormentor

Brand Associates Award Marie Danielsson-Yung Resurrection

Brand Associates is deeply grateful to our sponsors for their generosity and support of the arts in our community.

Leslie Coombs Brand Sponsor ($5,000 to $9,999)

Arlene Vidor Estate of Mary Owens Nathaniel Dryden Sponsors ($1,000 to $2,499)

Sally Currie Mary Jamora Debra Thompson and Lawrence Riff Glendale Adventist Medical Center Sponsors ($100 to $999)

Barbara Thorn-Otto Peter Rusch and Scott Halloran Russell Cinque, Jr. Marie Fish Laurel Patric Irena Raulinaitis Elaine Wilkerson Tammy and John O’Connor Kirk Cartozian - Cartozian Associates The Auto Club of Southern California (in memory of John Sherman) Morgan Stanley Simon Wright and Greg Grammer

The Brand Works on Paper exhibitions are made possible by the combined efforts of a large team of individuals and Brand 44 is no exception. Without the creative energy, ideas, skills, and legwork of both volunteers and staff, our beautiful and well-executed exhibition would not have come into being. It is a work of art in itself and Brand Associates is deeply grateful to all who have contributed.

Special Thanks Laddie John Dill—Juror Our Generous Sponsors All of the artists who submitted their work for consideration Brand Associates Board of Directors Arlene Vidor—President Jean Simone—Vice President Mary Jamora—Treasurer Debra Thompson—Secretary Stephen Jerome—Director Tammy O’Connor—Director Simon Wright—Director Arlette DerHovanessian— Glendale Arts & Culture Commission Liaison Brand Library & Art Center Cathy Billings—Senior Supervisor Shannon Currie Holmes—Exhibitions Supervisor Paul Gellman—Gallery Installer City of Glendale Library, Arts & Culture Cindy Cleary—Director

Brand Associates is a non-profit volunteer organization whose mission is to support and promote the Brand Library & Art Center as an arts, cultural, educational, and historic resource for the region. www.associatesofbrand.org Brand Library & Art Center is a cornerstone of the arts in Southern California. More than 60,000 visitors each year enjoy the Brand Library’s free programs, unique collections and research assistance from subject specialist librarians. A year-round schedule of gallery exhibitions, concerts, dance performances, film screenings and craft events for children and adults is appreciated across the region. With a collection of over 110,000 items, customers have access to 35,000 CDs, a world-class art and music DVD collection, scores, LPs, magazines, online resources, and a comprehensive collection of books dedicated to the visual arts and music. Brand Library’s rich 60 year history is the foundation for a bright future, as it continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of a growing audience interested in the arts. The Brand Library offers engaging tours on the history of Leslie C. Brand and the exotic 1904 mansion that he donated to the City on his deathbed. Today that mansion is the beloved Brand Library, a jewel in Glendale’s crown which shines more brightly than ever after an award-winning historic renovation. Brand Library & Art Center is a branch of the City of Glendale Library, Arts & Culture Department. www.brandlibrary.org

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Sharron Antholt

Absence as Surplus

Sunlight and acrylic medium on Nepali paper 52” x 43”

This work, Absence as Surplus, is part of a series of paper pieces in which I use a magnifying glass and sunlight to burn marks, or holes, in the paper. Meaning in the work is embedded in the material, the process and the time I spend making it. For example, the paper I am using refers to Nepal where it was made and where I lived for six years when I was in my twenties and using sunlight to burn holes in the paper connects the work to where I am now - where I make the work.

I am also interested in exploring how little the work requires. By reducing my input in the drawings whatever remains takes on a more important role. For example, I have used Nepali paper in my work in the past but I have never left it so bare – so exposed. In these drawings the paper itself becomes a significant part of the work.

–Sharron Antholt

Alex Babajanyan | Juror’s Award

Portrait of Vladimir Atanian Graphite on paper 8� x 5�

I have been an artist since I started drawing at the age of four. My family soon emigrated from Yerevan, Armenia and after arriving, my grandfather, Alexander, started enrolling me in local art schools. I attended Art Center College of Design where I majored in illustration.

After graduating in 2007, I pursued several careers in the arts eventually finding my passion in teaching. I currently teach at my own art academy in Glendale and am also the art teacher for R.D. White Elementary School.

The artwork exhibited is a portrait study of my art teacher, Vladimir Atanian. It was originally meant to be a quick study for a larger oil painting but became a more refined and complete portrait.

-Alex Babajanyan

Sharon Barnes

Not flat but undulating through time Mixed media 24” x 48” x 3”

Although I spent my early career as a figurative painter, the lure of working with hybrid art forms ultimately claimed my work. I have become passionate about working in abstraction through unconventional, process-driven mixed media art that incorporates rough, reclaimed or industrial materials.

The work entitled Not Flat but Undulating Through Time is from a series of works made of industrial roofing paper commonly known as tar paper. The process of cutting and tearing this heavy sheeting, then bending and shaping it and layering on color allows me to elevate it far beyond its rough origins. I think there is something really soulful about making something beautiful out of things that have been rough.

–Sharon L. Barnes

Michele Benzamin-Miki

Offering

Pencil on paper 34” x 28”

My art is inspired and incorporated into a lifetime of transformative work as leader, mentor and activist with over three decades of teaching and studying Zen meditation, hypnosis and the non-violent martial art of Aikido.

I want to make visible this inner-sourced world. The intention is to invite the viewer to access a ‘whole-body state of being present’ in the presence of the art. I take into great consideration the negative space around the image as is done with much of Japanese traditional painting.

Much of my work includes images of women. The Offering displays strength in vulnerability. Much of my art has been inspired by dreams. I have created decades of work from just a handful of poignant dreams.

In one I was a luminous spider hanging from a silk thread in vast space and in another I dreamt of my art way in the future. Only now are those images surfacing onto paper and canvas.

My art is an intersection between East and West, my Japanese and American heritage. I am co-founder of the Five Changes and Manzanita Village Retreat Center in Southern California where my art studio is located.

–Michele Benzamin-Miki

Barbara Blatt

And So It Begins Acrylic on paper 49” x 52”

I had completed a series of pen drawings in a close, fine style and needed to work large, gestural and on a non-precious surface. The painting And So It Begins… comes from this new series of acrylic on paper.

And So It Begins. . . cone— of new ideas inverted cone—becoming possibilities whirlpool—a cone of water drilling into the sea the sea—a place of endless resource and sky—surrounding everything

–Barbara Blatt

Sandy Bleifer

Top: complete work; Bottom: detail

Waves IV

Acrylic on paper 22” x 208”

All of my work for the past 40 years has been in, on, of and about PAPER. I use paper not only as the surface for imagery, but as a painting and sculpting material itself. When depicting the nature of waves over a protracted period of time (dawn to dusk in this case) in incremental segments (a sequence of “snap shots” on individual sheets of Rives BFK paper), I needed an artistic device to depict the subtle, imperceptible transformation of light and the natural reconfiguration of the shapes of the waves themselves. The paper construction technique I utilized to approximate this phenomena was to switch the imagery at the edges of the individual segments (creating an “ambivalence”), sequentially augmenting the interjected segments from adjacent pieces to a peak at mid-day, and then sequentially diminishing them to the end (at dusk). My ‘paper manipulation device’ was enabled by the special quality of ordinary tissue paper to actually look like waves when ‘draped’ across a painted surface. I also threw sand from the beach just outside my studio into the wet acrylic so that the waves have ‘skin in the game.’

–Sandy Bleifer

Liza Hennessey Botkin

Twin Landscapes Gelatin silver print 24” x 30”

I was born and raised in New York City, but my photographic career began in Los Angeles in the 70’s while I was working for photographers Michael Childers and Lou Stoumen from whom I learned how to print.

I consider myself a street photographer, shooting from the hip and taking my camera with me wherever I go. I wander the streets of Los Angeles spending much of my time in malls where for many years I’ve been documenting the preoccupation many people have with shopping.

Though I’ve never studied the art of photography in an academic setting, my work is deeply influenced and defined by that of Henri Cartier-Bresson. I too, search for what he so aptly called ‘the decisive moment.’

–Liza Hennessey Botkin

Nancy D. Brown

BDD #2

Archival injet print 8” x 8”

The BDD series is the result of a happy accident. I was printing draft versions of the photographic ‘tiles’ for a grid that captures the churning luminosity of the morning sky as the sun breaks through the low overcast typical of summers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I noticed that these ‘fast draft’ versions were composed of tiny dots reminiscent of Ben-Day Dots*. I had been looking for ways to release the energy inherent in the grid and this seemed to fit the bill.

I photographed and re-photographed the drafts in my studio and then began a gentle manipulation – mostly cropping and enhancing the contrast – to further reveal the essential nature of the energy that I had managed to capture in the grid. Sometimes I added an element to the visual field – a line, a wedge, a block – whose solidity served to counter the effervescence of the dots.

The result? A series of images that quietly animate and energize the space they occupy and that have a presence that belies their modest size.

–Nancy D. Brown *Originated by illustrator and printer Benjamin Henry Day, Jr. at the end of the 19th century, the Ben-Day Dot printing process uses colored dots of equal size and distribution to create tonal imagery.

John A. Calabrese

Hyperion - Walking in Rhythm Graphite pencil on paper 16” x 20”

Delicate nuance of value and texture become tools in conveying powerful dramatic statements about earthly beings who are not afraid to feel, think, dream, and take that one step beyond. The inhabitants of the cosmic atmosphere appear at odds with their surroundings. This is the result when mere earthly beauty confronts the awe, mystery and sublime majesty of heavenly beauty. When fragile earthly beauty confronts sublime heavenly beauty, the earthly is reverently and silently humbled.

–John A. Calabrese

Michael Chesler

(on reverse)

Julio’s Store

Photograph and Wite-Out correction fluid 26.5” x 27”

The Addition

Photograph and Wite-Out correction fluid 25” x 23.4” (second selected work)

My work deals with the viewer’s preconceived notion of an urban place and attempts to illustrate the contradiction of a given perception. I search for beauty in the midst of urbanity, creating an image defying its recent past.

Using White-Out, the viewer reconsiders the corrected areas which are usually ignored. Two images are on the page. The black and white image depicts what remains of the original structure with so-called improvements whited out. The color image highlights ‘improvements(?)’ to the structure.

–Michael Chesler

Sapira Cheuk

Muscle and Hair 1 Ink, acrylic on paper 60” x 42”

My work revolves around issues of the body and women’s sexuality.

The work incorporates traditional Sumi Ink painting techniques and geometric elements to depict female sexual experiences, particularly the complexity of the subject and corporeality, while building an alternative narrative of bodily desires.

I received my BA at University of California, Riverside and MFA from California State University, San Bernardino. My work has been exhibited in over 50 exhibitions, including those at the Orange County Contemporary Art Center, Riverside Art Museum, Rochester Contemporary Art Museum, Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Robert & Frances Fullerton Museum of Art. –Sapira Cheuk

Hyunsook Cho

Drawing a line #14

Acrylic on handmade paper 29.5” x 57”

Influenced by Surrealism, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, my works are simple two dimensional, sometimes abstract, forms and at other times more representational forms in which I express my thoughts and experiences. I pursue my artistic practice by documenting the places I have visited and the people I have met, creating a road map with which to orient myself as an artist seeking direction.

As a Korean-American artist, my work is rooted in both cultures. My work comes to grips with mortality and includes themes of death and rebirth through artistic expression. Drawing a line-14 is inspired by Japanese Zen gardens. I try to capture both the repetition and impermanence of our era, our cultures and our individual lives.

Life begins without an awareness of where it came from or why it exists, but life wants to live. On a personal level, I’d like to keep making my life as a project and keep pursuing my ultimate questions-- What is our origin?, Where does our destiny lie?--and everything in-between.

–Hyunsook Cho

Wonju Choi

Root

Graphite on paper 18” x 24”

I endeavor to make visual connections as a means to discover meaningful relationships within and outside myself. These connections function as bridges that organically mend both conscious and unconscious disconnects. Apparent connections become visible in some cases, but I often get lost in the midst of infinite possibilities with no clear direction. Paradoxically, I cherish these lost cases because they motivate a deeper searching and offer more complex and dynamic findings.

My work is generated through an iterative process of layering strokes upon each other. Watching a form emerge from a sea of strokes is like listening to an ever-changing dialogue that in its own time falls into harmony. This dialogue generates a reciprocity between ideas and shapes; the fluidity of the process grants me the freedom to shift, transform, and develop my thoughts and the work’s outcome organically. Through this meditative act of mark-making, harmonious connections emerge in my mind’s eye and they link out into connection with others beyond time, space, and beliefs. This inner search and outreach has come to be represented as doors in the work. I’ve come to consider doors as magical thresholds through which new ideas, resources and individuals can meet and evolve in clarity.

–Wonju Choi

Gianfranco Cioffi

(on reverse)

Serie9_2

Watercolor on paper 16” x 12”

Serie9_1

Watercolor on paper 16” x 12” (second selected work)

This body of work shows the human being’s secret side and his relationship with himself by analyzing it from different prospectives and using a series of self-portraits and portraits. The colors and the lines are fully focused on a seductive emotional gesture as opposed to an introspective exploration full of energy and intuition. The scheme of the painting invites the observer to move into an unknown space that activates deep and forgotten reminiscences.

“Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” - Mark Twain

–Gianfranco Cioffi

Bonese Collins Turner

Cocoon #2

Watercolor and collage 21” x 15”

The Cocoon Series is a recent exploration of visual images that hearken back to memories of childhood visits to my father’s laboratories.

Wonderful things could be seen there: transparent fish in the aquariums, strange forms under the microscopic lenses and mysteries for the imagination. As with most of my work, objects seen or changes observed in daily experiences may be the starting point for a series of studies. My hope is always that viewers will find their own special symbols and meanings. The works are also a tribute to my father and others like him – those that seek knowledge, question, explore and strive.

–Bonese Collins Turner

Joy Curtis Urlik

(on reverse)

Paper Series #4 Photography 12” x 16”

Paper Series #1 Photography 16” x 12”

(second selected work)

My work is inspired by looking at the mundane and seeing something different and new. I am a multimedia artist working mainly in photography and digital media. The Paper Series is about photographing paper and light. I begin by creating a physical sculpture out of paper. Then I proceed to photograph it in black and white. By physically creating environments constructed from plain paper and then photographing the paper, I create work that is suggestive of organic energies found within nature. I am attracted to the emptiness and void of the blank paper and the absence of a mark. Shedding light on the absence, and photographing it, creates a whole new energy.

–Joy Curtis Urlik

Marie Danielsson-Yung | Brand Associates Award

Resurrection

Collage, mixed media, paint on Rives BFK 30” x 22”

My paintings often allude to maps as we all struggle to find direction on life’s journeys. Geography is of particular interest to me as an immigrant. Navigating in a foreign territory is a challenging and often confusing experience, one that I have attempted to represent visually.

I often use a mixture of materials. Traditional artist’s paint and pencils are next to supplies found at hardware stores.

The painting in this exhibition is called Resurrection and deals with the return of joy after a dark time in my life.

–Marie Danielsson-Yung

Harach Davoodian

Sites well-measured - Scene III Ink, marker and pencil on paper 18� x 24�

This work is part of a series that traces the presence of the foreign within the familiar.

I imagined being lost in a forest or a valley or, better yet, a depiction of these, where I was confronted with markings that made no sense but from which I tried to make sense of the scene. Extraterrestrials would cast a strange eye over our surroundings. Then, I imagine, they would want to survey things. The habit of measuring is deeply nested in everything aesthetic. Extraterrestrials would be careful to avoid falling into that trap.

Landscape, as a genre, may have lived a long life. Then it passed. It may have lived again before it was forgotten. Then it became invisible; right in front of our prejudiced, jaundiced and jaded eyes.

But for Zarathustra, or his kin from outer space, it never ceased to amaze. Now, lo and behold, the landscape had never died- neither had portraits, still lifes or nudes. But they had every right to; the unaesthetic look saw right through them.

What was I to do? Give in to the vanishing of the worlds around me, resist the death of the old, or move past it all as extraterrestrials would; with a deep, mature disregard for our histories? Yet, it was highly doubtful that we earthlings could simply land beyond such norms; Convention, on the one hand, and Dada on the other. This is very much still work in progress. –Harach Davoodian

Lanny DeVuono

SmallDrawing_OuterSpace_4 Graphite, gesso, gouache on paper 10” x 10”

“Human settlement of Mars is the next giant leap for humankind. Exploring the solar system as a united humanity will bring us all closer together. Mars is the stepping-stone of the human race on its voyage into the universe.” - Mission Statement from Mars One, one of several privately funded groups that are planning commercial trips to outer space.

This drawing is from a series on space exploration consisting of drawings as small as 10 inches to as large as 72 inches square. The desire to discover ways of living and working in outer space (akin to explorations in earlier centuries) is fraught with contemporary concerns, cravings and projections. That is the real subject of this series.

In this work, I imagine outer space in a way similar to how Theodorus DeBry imagined the Americas less incorrect than riddled with 16th century European desire-- or how Franz Kafka later imagined the United States in his novel Amerika. Having never actually travelled here himself, Kafka created a New York that was remarkably like 19th century Eastern Europe.

Similarly, I imagine planets in our solar system using pictures and ideas from our present day earth. This drawing was created while on residence in the Sahara Desert in February 2016 and was made with graphite, gouache and gesso on paper.

–Lanny DeVuono

Michelle Lynn Dyrness

(on reverse)

Pantomime (#1)

Giclée on exhibition fiber 13.5” x 18”

The Immortalist (#2)

Giclée on exhibition fiber 18” x 24” (second selected work)

I explore form, line and color, vis-a-vis the figure and the creation of surreal and awkward landscapes. Seeking to create suggestive and illusory images, I use fragments of what I notice and capture in the natural world immediately around me – detritus, debris, flora – and allow intuition and accident to inform the process. The inserted pieces of body and nature float on an imperfect, visceral and unpredictable surface that hovers sometimes just beyond focus mirroring my preoccupation with uncertainty, endurance, fragility and the more elemental parts of our presence on this earth. Traditional, hand-made processes are used in combination with digital processes, painting, assemblage, photography and digital montage.

–Michelle Lynn Dyrness

Zena Fairweather

(on reverse)

End Game

Graphite, ink and color pencil 13” x 9.5”

Girl with Cello

Graphite, oil and color pencil 18” x 14” (second selected work)

My portraits crystallize ordinary moments into an image and create an emotional bond of past, present, and future, between subject, artist, and viewer that has always been a fascination for me.

Capturing the essence of the sitter and faithfully translating a subject’s character for posterity is a challenging but exciting task. Though the aesthetic of my work may be described as realism, much like a quilted narrative I have woven in detail after detail, revising some parts and leaving others, to arrive at this version of reality. In this process, I seek to maintain a point of focus. In later pieces, subjects’ eyes are cast down rather than making eye contact, putting the focus on hands as the main conduit to express emotion rather than the face. The hyper-realism in the sometimes extensive detail rendered is a personal need I have to honor the subject matter with a labor of love, to create something special beyond reality, to forget time and to put a bit of my own heart into it.

–Zena Fairweather

Raymond Gaston

Suit

Paper and ink, thread wood 54” x 48” x 6”

I am interested in schema, that script we all carry around in our heads telling us what to do and how to react to repeated cultural happenings. What I seek to do in my practice then, is to challenge that schema in a way that creates an entirely foreign experience.

I am endlessly intrigued by the idea that we do things without fully meaning to do them and that our actions are not thought out in such a manner that we live fully conscious of each moment. Instead, we react and then later reflect. The idea that our reactions to things are a shared experience based on our culture is at the core of my work. We respond to things not just according to our experience at the moment of encounter and because of this I want to challenge myself to find these reactions and create a response in myself that is contrary to how I would automatically react.

In Suit, the schema can be understood in material and literary form.

The piece is covered in selected text from the novel The Way Your Father Dies. The text relates the receiving of a suit and the object is a meditation on literature as well as on the idea of what can be given and the place of material objects in our lives. This object is a suit but it in no way obeys the principles of a ‘suit’ as we understand them.

–Raymond Gaston

John Gauld

Bessemer’s Delight

Charcoal, airbrush, paper 38” x 48”

There are two aspects inherent in drawing. First is the abstract, where marks rendered on a surface begin to add up and interact to form a unique visual world. This is where I play with large, gestural strokes.

Second is the visual world created by the images and volumes that materialize to inhabit this space. Here I can work with the emotional intimacy of the emerging image. Ultimately my goal in each drawing is to establish an interactive dynamic that balances both aspects.

In making my drawings, I use a variety of materials and processes whose properties allow me to add and subtract so that the image remains thoroughly pliable and fugitive. In this way I am able to rapidly shift from complexity and detail to simplification and harmony and let the process lead me to a balanced piece.

Bessemer’s Delight was inspired by a photograph of an abandoned steel mill. The structures were mechanically complex and strong, yet insubstantial in their decay and all was enshrouded in a sensual, anthropomorphic web of pipes that once formed the arteries of a functional entity.

–John Gauld

Ruth Gregory | Jane Friend Purchase Award

(on reverse)

Transition

Graphite on paper 33.5” x 22.5”

Dreams Beguiling Graphite on paper 36.5” x 21.5”

(second selected work)

I have always been fascinated by ambiguity and by the boundaries between the real and the unreal, the hidden and the revealed. I imagine other-worldly figures that exist in an ambiguous space between memory and forgetting, between life and death. I am intrigued by the interplay of an image, whether a figure or natural object, with veils of transparent fabric which simultaneously obscure and reveal forms and suggest varying levels of consciousness and awareness. Working with graphite on paper in black and white and color, allows me to engage in a focused exploration of indefinite space and light and shadow.

–Ruth Gregory

Dirk Hagner

Top: complete work; Bottom: detail

Boots

Printmaking installation 24.5” x 172” x 6”

This work consists of three reduction woodcuts, overprinted by screen prints. The text panels are Lee Hazelwood’s “Boots” lyrics.

The unjustified war of the Bush and Blair administrations against Iraq in 2003 continues to haunt everybody alive today. Approximately 1.2 million people were killed during the Iraq war with millions more maimed both physically and mentally. The killing in Iraq continues unabated. While the Masters of War enjoy their lavish retirements, tens of thousands of American vets returned home physically or mentally disabled, never to fit into society again. Their minds and bodies were spoiled by what they had seen, what they had done, and what was done to them. No numbers on disabled Iraqis exists but we know it must be multitudes.

In the past, artists would glorify war for their patrons. That changed with Callot, Goya, and Dix. Since then, printmakers in particular have spoken out against the depravity of war. I consider myself part of that tradition.

–Dirk Hagner

Susan Hannon | Robert Brown Award

You Get Me Closer To God Holy Bible, published 1865, wire 24” x 76” x 6”

I am a Canadian-born sculptor working in clay, inks, oils, and paper.

My most recent body of work is entitled You Get Me Closer to God which is a quote from the Nine Inch Nails song “Closer.” The series is composed of sculptures made from the pages of antique and vintage Bibles in various languages and scripts that I have salvaged.

They make explicit the resurrection theme inherent in all found-media sculpture: making something new out of something that was falling apart and about to be discarded. The destruction of a “holy” book is usually considered blasphemy but I wanted to render the destruction here as an act of transformation and beauty.

This particular piece was made from a discarded bible from 1865. Primary and secondary feathers are made from the Gospels, the next layer is composed of the index and Apocrypha (which means “hidden”), and the smallest feathers are again made from the Gospels.

This Bible was printed in the last year of the Civil War and the year of Lincoln’s assassination. How many hands has this book passed through? Whose fingers have run over its lines by gaslight, firelight, or candlelight? Who cried over this book, prayed over it, preached with it, entrusted it with family stories and secrets? To what births, marriages, and deaths was it a witness over the past 150 years? This is a book that is itself a piece of American history and that has been marinated in generations of rich personal and family history.

–Susan Hannon

Shelley Heffler

Back Street

Mixed media on paper 18” x 14”

Every day the flux of physical as well as cyber mobility has had an impact on human experience. I think about society in a networked, complex and spatially expanded way that includes concepts of boundaries and connectivity. Even though everything seems to be a part of world systemic processes and global networks, the notion of place and location remains temporal and mutable.

Cartography and abstraction are two languages used in my work. I am interested in engaging the viewer on a journey that preexists language and generates ideas and messages that relate to the viewer personally and metaphorically. The works explore global concerns and shifting boundaries of society and politics. Imagery is derived from a variety of resources such as transit systems, ancient ruins, floor plans, city grids, topography and geography; time and space coexist in a compressed world. I strive to reinvent or mutate natural and artificial spatial relationships that exist on the earth’s surface and, to that end, open a dialog for cultural and global issues.

–Shelley Heffler

Lyn Horton

(on reverse)

Back to Square One black silver gold Pigmented pen and marker on rag paper 18” x 18”

Back to Square One black Pigmented pen on rag paper 18” x 18” (second selected work)

When I attended California Institute of the Arts, beginning in 1970 and ending with an MFA in 1974, I was completely open to my artistic development. My greatest interest became lines and how best to endow them with a character of their own. After my first solo show, where lines equaled an abstracted life size portrait of my body mounted on the wall, the line language I had created changed drastically and oriented itself to paper. In the new millennium, released from the binds of the past within my work, fluid lines returned to my drawing surface.

Only recently have I decided to return to the wall as a place for expressing myself as I had at CalArts and to using paper as a platform.

In hundreds of drawings, using both mixed media and traditional drawing materials, I deal with the idea and scale of my body in various forms, but also examine spirituality, death, divorce and, finally, who I am as a person. I have learned that my spirit pervades the making of my work. The process of creating is more important than the art object itself. It is in the process that new ideas are born and the art grows and becomes more what it is meant to be.

–Lyn Horton

Brenda Hurst

Veiled Landscape

Watercolor and gouache on paper 20.5” x 28”

My pieces are inspired by a sense of reverence for the beauty of life, with its ever-changing pantheon of shapes, patterns, surface qualities and colors that go along with the cycles of life.

Veiled Landscape speaks to this and to the hidden mystery and history of a place in nature. When I walk in the woods, I often wonder who (human or creature) has been there before me, seeing the beauty as I’m seeing it now and what essence of themselves they’ve possibly left behind.

–Brenda Hurst

Jeff Iorillo

Relic 1

Acid-free bookbinding cardboard, clay, marble, ink, beeswax and ashes 46” x 40” x 3”

By manipulating and layering archival materials, I create works that present themselves as artifacts with a history. Shapes, textures and patinas reference the effects of time, destruction and decay; the pieces invoke dichotomies like ancient vs contemporary, nature vs civilization, found object vs hand-made, and artifact of creation vs destruction.

My process begins with the materials of recording and storytelling: archival cardboard (used in hard-cover books) and paper are water-soaked, distressed, dried, glued, ripped and layered with raw wet clays, crushed marble and inks, building up successive strata of materials and textures until the created piece feels like a substantial presence. Compositions are coated in beeswax, a precious and naturally-derived material, then baked in the heat of the sun and with a small blowtorch to melt the wax resins into the dried clay and paper to stabilize the piece and leave a patina that suggests the passage of time. While all materials are acid-free and archival, the way they are used here is outside their recommended applications so the results may be fragile and continue to evolve with time and movement.

Each piece is free-form, announcing itself to me as an object of substance when it reaches a certain size and thickness with a silhouette that claims its space with authority and a level of surface detail that seems to speak quietly of a deep history.

–Jeff Iorillo

Marielle Jakobsons

Into Being Photograph 16” x 20”

There is a connection between the surface of our skin and the water within cells in our bodies and it is vibration. Sound is movement of the air and the smallest particles of matter which effects light and each of the cells in our bodies. Into Being invites the viewer to pull back the curtain of existence to reveal the primal layer connecting us all.

This image was created with my “Macro-cymatic” visual music instrument in which fluid motion is spawned by musical vibration. It was developed with the support of the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts Residency, Soundwave Biennial, and Djerassi Resident Artist Program.

–Marielle Jakobsons

Jude

Exhibit 8: California Water Crisis Paper, coffee, ink 48” x 60”

This artwork uses pages from Siskiyou County Farm Bureau v. Department of Fish and Wildlife, one of the many court cases involving California water rights stemming from the long standing California drought. It portrays a landscape created by the multi-year drought in the State of California. The image depicts a boat that is stranded on a parched lakebed, a powerful metaphor for a population that is illequipped to navigate the consequences of climate change. Without coordinated, proactive measures, we will be left high and dry, fighting over dwindling aquifers and relying on bureaucrats and courts of law for an accounting long past due.

A contemporary artist by night and a highly respected forensic accountant by day, I use materials that are commonplace in professional offices to create works of art that are a statement of who I am as a multi-disciplinary artist and litigation professional.

–Jude

Barbara Kaleta

Don’t Step On the Soap Oil on paper 52” x 75.5”

“Works on Paper” is a wonderful way to get back to the unfettered place where we first made art as kindergarteners scribbling on newsprint. Painting with oil on paper frees me up. The economy of paper allows me to draw with abandon, discovering images I can keep or enlarge upon. Like graffiti, it is fast and bold and comes right to the point. ‘Mistakes’ can be magnified or swiped over. The best way to capture the immediacy of life is often a sketch, not a photo. The strokes are alive, not static pixels.

A few years ago, I made the fortuitous discovery of a roll of giant 1960’s computer paper and experimented using it for my landscape and interior paintings. This durable paper takes oils, turpentine, corrections and layers of paint just like canvas yet leaves little pencil markings to show the birth of the painting. My recent paper murals are about present day concerns – the drought, over consumption, and social pressures. Big problems are abstracted on big paper. Don’t Slip on the Soap reminds us of the privileged luxuries of Downton Abbey, but warns us of this century’s over fascination with luxury, elegant tubs, marble floors and two basin bath rooms. How much do we need?

–Barbara Kaleta

Aron Kearney

Let Your Lights Shine Photography 24” x 18”

I’m a photographer based in Southern California. When I’m not shooting portraits, I’m out finding new places and subjects to photograph and turn into fine art pieces. I am motivated by creativity and strive to make every surrounding, situation and/or subject a unique work of art. While some create art on a canvas, others use pencil and paper, or model with clay, I see art in the world around us and use my camera to capture special moments. I experience a peacefulness when capturing the earth’s beauty through my lens. I believe I have an amazing opportunity to explore and share places that instill a sense of tranquility and bring glory to the Lord God Almighty, who created them all.

–Aron Kearney

Colleen M. Kelly

(on reverse)

Green Skirt Dancing

Monoprint with chine-collé 15” x 11”

Little Feet

Monoprint with chine-collé 15” x 11” (second selected work)

This body of work, Naked Under Her Clothes, is the felicitous outcome of my need to comply with a nudity ban at a civic art gallery. A long time advocate for public art and a community art activist, I found a subversive way to incorporate and defy the ban. I ‘dressed’ my figures with clothing from the illustrations on the envelopes of vintage dress patterns via a printmaking technique called Chine Colle’. With this process, the image of the nude figure incised in the printing plate is printed on top of the dress cut-out. The resulting printed image appears as if the dress were transparent and that we can see right through it. While delighted with the clever work-around that solved the problem, I found more thematic implications as I continued with the series. Feminism, women’s crafts, the tyranny of fashion and puritanical notions of beauty all inform my work.

–Colleen M. Kelly

Katie Kline

Folding Table (from Jewel City) Archival pigment print 20” x 25”

Glendale is the city within Los Angeles County where John Wayne once lived and the book Mildred Pierce was set. Californians have consistently transformed the natural landscape to fit the needs of human convenience. In LA, illusions and facades propelled by Hollywood are visible everywhere. I am influenced by lasting impressions from frequent childhood visits to Disneyland. I seek and photograph ambiguous markers, manicured landscapes, and man made representations of nature. After living in New York for thirteen years, I’ve returned to Los Angeles along with the rest of the recent surge of westward migrants. There is a disquieting comfort in the temperate environment, sprawling spaces, and magical light. Rising real estate prices and the threat of running out of water mark the beginning of the end. Fool’s gold lines the sidewalks of the Jewel City.

Katie Kline was born 1983 in Arcadia, CA. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2014 and BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2005. In 2015 she was a Los Angeles Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant Nominee.

–Katie Kline

Sandra Krause

(on reverse)

pillar

Discarded books and wire 80” x 22” x 22”

woven curve

Discarded books and wire 35” x 23” x 8” (second selected work)

My work started as an exploration of shapes, patterns and textures created by methodically folding the pages of discarded books. It is a very meditative process that can be done anywhere, allowing productivity and calm in places and timeframes that are often transitional and fleeting. My obsession resulted in a library of designs that soon fit together into larger sculptures and suspended installations.

Curiosity and a love of information led me to a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Sciences which transformed my relationship with books. I found that, despite a cultural taboo against their destruction, many books are actually designed to be disposable; the knowledge they record grows obsolete and they are de-accessioned and potentially discarded. Librarians seek alternatives by offering these books to other libraries, schools and organizations or turn to recycling. My practice involves transforming these discarded paperbacks, microfiche and other archival materials into hanging sculptures. This suits my desire to reduce consumption and to reuse as much as possible. It helps me consider the accumulation and disposability of time and information.

–Sandra Krause

Carole P. Kunstadt

Sacred Poem LXVIII

Thread, gampi tissue, paper: paged Parish Psalmody 1849 9” x 9” x 3”

My works reference the material of books by deconstructing paper and text and using it in metaphorical ways. My devotion to books is inspired by the ability of the written word to take the reader to other places through stories, poems, and prayers. Through the exploration and manipulation of the materials the process reveals how language can become visual through re-interpretation.

Pages taken from a parish psalmody* are manipulated and recombined resulting in a presentation that evokes the grace in these poems of praise and gratitude. The disintegrating pages suggest the temporal quality of our lives and the vulnerability of memory and history. Visually there is a consistent and measured cadence to a page of psalms which is echoed in the often repetitive restructuring of the paper; the shredded edges form new textural references and the layering of translucent tissue over the paper softens the effect of age and context, evoking the ephemeral while adding a veil of alternative possibilities.

The intended use as well as the nature of a psalm as spiritual repository both imply a tradition of careful devotion and pious reverence.

The physical text evocatively and powerfully serves as a gateway to an experience of the sacred and the realization of the latent power of the written word. This process of interaction is played out visually in the piece, mimicking the internal experience.

–Carole P. Kunstadt * Parish Psalmody, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship, 1849.

Elaine Langerman

Reflections #2 Siverpoint 15” x 20”

In Reflections #2, I explore the effect of silverpoint on a black gesso ground applied to fine, archival white paper. I am fascinated and enthralled with the sensual experience and the tactile sensation of the actual drag of the silver point across the black surface with its slight quality of bite. Shells and artifacts of the sea reminding me of my many joyous visits to the seashore form the substrate and subtext of the drawing. The composition of Reflections #2, like Reflections #1, is based on the format used in many Persian carpets of a rectangle within a rectangle, each filled with a variety of flowers and animals.

Also inspiring are the Lindisfarne Gospel pages as well as Islamic and Medieval illuminated manuscripts. I choose a point within the center space and observe myself as I begin to add element after element in a sort of waking, drawing meditation.

–Elaine Langerman

Leslie Lanxinger

(on reverse)

Two Eggs

Charcoal on paper 52” x 76”

Dana #1

Charcoal on paper 31” x 30”

(second selected work)

The themes in my work are layered with mythology, religion, science, fairy tales, anthropology, fashion, and pop culture. Using tiny details and aggressive marks, I convey feelings and ideas, and an empathetic emotional reaction. I draw freehand in deep, black charcoal using my memories and experiences as inspiration.

My formative years were spent growing up on a naval air force base in Osaka, Japan. I received my BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia and earned my MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. My work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Tokyo, London, and Miami, in museum shows at the Wexner Center in Ohio, the Harn Museum in Florida, and the Institute for Contemporary Arts in Boston and has appeared in both print and electronic media. I now live and work in Los Angeles, California.

–Leslie Lanxinger

Warner LeMĂŠnager

Hobby Horse Photo rendering 10” x 15”

Montmartre is more than an art colony or tourist attraction. It is a living community with many small shops and theatres strewn throughout.

Here, not in the center of everything, is a small shop that makes children’s hobby horses.

Like most creative photographers, I want to improve all my photos; I have an art background and attended Art Center in watercolor study.

Almost anyone can point a camera, but many can’t see the picture.

I see a subject and want it to be mine so I render it without actually knowing what will result. I discard more than I keep and mostly never repeat an image. I’m the one with the camera, not the cell phone as is seen at events today.

–Warner LeMénager

Pamela Lewis

Release (with Vilppu)

Charcoal, paper, cardboard, blue tape 40” x 60”

For the last three years I have been creating a series of drawings and mixed media works that combine imagery from inherited photographs with classical drawing techniques. My series, When There is No More, investigates memoir or the desire to build a true story by using information that is necessarily limited, techniques that are flawed, and memories that are unreliable.

One of the most basic tasks of representational drawing is to create a convincing illusion. In order to create the appearance of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface, artists employ line, tone, willful exaggeration, premeditated distortion, and painstaking observation.

I find this process poetically similar to my experience of recalling and revising the stories of my childhood based on questionable sources, narrative fragments, and the pictorial shards available to me.

Can I remake this imperfectible legacy into art? Can I create a lie that tells a more important truth than simple biography?

–Pamela Lewis

Cynthia Lujan

Annihilator

Acrylic paint and wax pencil on Lenox paper 50” x 38”

As an American artist in the 21st century and a recent BFA graduate of CSULB, my work is an eager attempt at archiving social identities in my generation. The body of work entitled Traces is a record of people within L.A.’s contemporary society. Following the trajectory of American portraiture, yet contrary to traditional uses of the paint medium, the crass handling of materials on paper allows a view of a form that references a particular identity while simultaneously tracing a general social archetype. These portraits do not depend on rendering techniques to communicate the essence of a person. Instead of relying on facial expression, individuals are often defaced in order to emphasize other aspects of the composition.

Constantly being around people is a by-product of living in this metropolis. Due to this, people are hyper aware of their physical appearance and of the way they project themselves. The work captures the nuances of these identities through portraiture. The specific wardrobe, hairstyle, and gesture of the person all are combined with a psychological interpretation of each individual.

My current artwork explores themes of identity, rituals and metaphysics. I aspire to attend graduate school in the Fine Arts and hope to merge my interest in languages with my passion for art by pursuing opportunities that engage my skills as an archivist, multilinguist and, most importantly, artist.

–Cynthia Lujan

Sylvia Marcin

Aegean Line

Watercolor pencil 11” x 8.25”

After many years of making abstract images with a demand on linear drawing and washes or veils of ink or gouache, I have been moving toward a figurative/abstract combination that has a touch of Surrealism. DeKooning said he tried to throw everything into a painting. I am also starting to think about what to throw in: space that is bent, space as a pregnant void, composition that lends attention to the edges of a work, color as an outlet and release, color as texture that adds to the narrative, and line as the barest helpmeet in an image.

I have also been thinking of Plato’s allegory of the cave. Basically he is asking, “What is reality”? and “How do we assist each other to accept reality? I am throwing in iconic figures, figures that are either human or human embodied, or an animal presence drawn or merely expressed through shape. Maybe the most ‘real’ figures are abstracted and inhabit this morphed space. These images are enjoyable to discover.

–Sylvia Marcin

Randi Matushevitz

Old Haunts

Charcoal, pastel, paint on paper 55” x 36”

Emotions, conscious and subconscious, are a strong motivating force for every individual and for every society. Metaphorically speaking, emotions are spatial and comprised of value and density, darkness and light, ambiguity and clarity. I began to explore emotional darkness in contrast to emotional lightness, the tension of anxiety and fear, and the quietude of contentedness and assurance. I became interested in the grey area that exists where consciousness and experience either unite or conflict with perception and observation.

The act of drawing allows me to explore the light, dark and grey of the emotional realm physically, emotionally and rationally. The image emerges from layering charcoal, pastel and spray paint. It is a repetitive process comprised of delicate materials. The narrative echoes life in the 21st century by comparing and contrasting different emotional states of mind and experience (real and imagined) and considering love, play, work, and family in daily life. My influences are varied: science fiction, folk tales and myths, history, romantic literature, movies, television, and current popular culture. I look to two amazing storytellers, William Kentridge and Goya, baroque drama for composition and chiaroscuro, and semiotics to explore symbolism. My narratives compare and contrast the perception of inspirational emotions with those that are self and socially defeating.

My art making began as a compulsion, a fight for control over my own thoughts, feelings and space. Now I wonder how the individual’s attitude toward the full scope of human emotions has an impact on the human community.

–Randi Matushevitz

Susan Melly

The Singer

Papier-Mâché, tissue patterns, acrylic, wood, found object 21” x 7” x 7”

My work examines dynamic relationships between female identity, fashion, machines, sexu-ality and power. Intrigued by the discovery of vintage tools, sewing notions and industrial machines used by my seamstress mother during the Great Depression, I explore aspects of the sewing industry as metaphors for a changing society and feminist critique. Surreal and Abstract Expressionist influences are evident as each piece evolves with adjustments in col-or, perspective and architectural structure.

Los Angeles, famous for sensory overload caused by consumerism, materialism and image, inspires my work. I employ iconography and materials culled from my late mother’s archive of retro dress patterns annotated with oddly evocative, eccentrically worded directives on approaching the female form. Vintage repurposed tissue paper dress patterns, found ob-jects, and images of machines from the industrial era are symbolic elements suggesting ideas about survival, self-reflection and forces that govern perception and experience. The fragili-ty of tissue paper evokes male notions of delicacy while the precision and rigidity of printed lines cut, restrict and bind the female form suggesting ritual tattooing, medical incision or cuts of meat. This presents an interesting dichotomy between female vulnerability and strength.

The Singer is a sculpture made from found objects and paper maché with sound accompani-ment in the form of a sound loop featuring a female operatic voice. The head is a vintage child’s Singer sewing machine. The voice will be played at various random intervals to add another dimension and definition to the title of this artwork.

–Susan Melly

Adele Mills | Brand Associates Award

(on reverse)

Tormentor

Mixed media, paper, fabric, shadow box 20” x 16” x 2”

Rear Traveler

Mixed media, paper, fabric, shadow box 20” x 16” x 2” (second selected work)

Over the last decade I have combined photography, digital rendering and painting to produce abstract and figurative work with a structure in which one image is viewed through the transparency of the second image. A gap between the layers creates a displacement of colors, shapes, and composition and produces doublings, fadings, and seeming movement as the perspective of the viewer shifts. Two-dimensional images come alive through the precise placement of moiré patterns, creating a unique vibrational exchange.

This latest body of work is inspired by the space of the theatrical stage. Drawing upon stage design and riffing off of elements like the curtains used to mask off portions of the stage, sometimes the space comes alive with rhythmic suggestions of performers about to enter the stage, but sometimes is absent of activity and is a quiet series of screens and shadows between acts. Both present an anticipatory tension in a sense of passing time and a feeling of wonder.

I live and work in Los Angeles, earned my MFA from CalArts in 2003 and was a research scholar at UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women from 2005 to 2007.

–Adele Mills

Melissa Mohammadi

Red Fern

Watercolor and pastel on paper 22� x 30�

I draw the repeated, progressive, and tiny acts of labor in the structure of pine cones, shells, and ferns that remind me of the tiny, endless, repeated pulse of mothering. I draw from pulses, surges, and cyclical amplifications: orgasms, migraines, birthing, cicadas, and seizures. I think we are tuned like ocean waves to be swelling, cresting, and returning to gentle quiet and then, so deliciously, beginning again. –Melissa Mohammadi

Rea Nagel

Rush of Nature Mixed media 14� x 11�

Art has always been a part of my life, but the time to create art required a commitment that a young family and career could not accommodate. After I retired from teaching in a public school and my children became independent. I centered my life around creating art.

Sketching what I see and how sights affect me is how I express myself in my paintings.

A sketchbook and pen are with me most of the time. I paint from these sketches. Realism is for photography and so my paintings are the emotions I feel when viewing the scene. I express these emotions with the materials that I use and colors that are brushed, poured or dropped on the paper. I love bright colors and they excite me.

When I started painting, I only used oils and then only watercolors.

Now I do not limit myself and end up using many mixed water-based media. There are so many choices of media that I try them all to express myself and get my ideas on paper. The media that are available and are used in my paintings are both tube and liquid watercolors, acrylic in tube, fluid and bottled creamy types, and inks; these and many more are available along with collage papers found and bought.

When I get an idea I want to express, out come the watercolor or mixed media papers and using my sketches, I begin painting. Most of my ideas combine the landscapes I have viewed and the emotions they bring out. –Rea Nagel

Jim Newberry | Brand Associates Award

(on reverse)

Swept

Photography 16” x 16”

Break, Hollywood Boulevard Photography 16” x 16”

(second selected work)

My interest in photography began as a young child when my father, James Newberry, founder of the photography department at Columbia College (Chicago), taught me how to shoot pictures with a 35mm camera and make prints in the darkroom. Later I studied photography and filmmaking at Columbia College, graduating with a B.F.A. in 1986.

I began shooting assignments for the alternative weekly paper, the Reader, which at the time was well-known for featuring high quality black and white photographs and for giving photographers a considerable amount of creative freedom. I also started to create images for record labels and music magazines and from there developed a broader range of photography clients.

I’ve also been shooting street photography since I was in college. Initially exclusively in black and white, in the aughts I began shooting color. I try to put myself in a situation where I have the best chance of capturing a compelling moment and then wait, hoping for a serendipitous alignment of colors, shapes, figures, light, and landscape elements. I wander neighborhoods with my eyes peeled, looking for something that resonates with me: expressive light, lively urban life, or an unusual scene where visual poetry has the potential to reveal itself.

–Jim Newberry

Bob Nugent

(on reverse)

Field Study #4

Watercolor, gouache, ink on paper 20.5” x 16.5”

Field Study #5

Watercolor, gouache, ink on paper 20.5” x 16.5” (second selected work)

My work refers to Brazilian travels, specifically along the Amazon River Basin. Naturalistic forms resembling beehives, vertebrae, cocoons, anthills, plant forms and insects are spread across the surface of the work. My palette is often subdued beneath a layer of darkness, suggesting mystery. The work transcribes a memory of objects and impressions of what was seen and felt.

Brazil and the Amazon River Basin have been the subject and inspiration for my work for more than twenty-five years. Visiting the region now two to three times a year, I find that the landscape has many moods. The Amazon River is an apt metaphor for the act of churning up remembered objects and sights gathered while traveling along its rough course. In its flow, the river boils an object to the surface only to swallow it up again to resurface later. These impressions are a memory of the river bound on both sides by a high, dark jungle both foreboding and beautiful. If it takes you in, it takes you in whole.

–Bob Nugent

Jennifer Park

Blurry outlook Photography 8” x 10”

I am drawn to the universal geometry of both the manmade and natural world. Shapes and lines attract my eye, particularly scenes with striking simplicity. This minimalism evokes a meditative state, an appreciation for the line, texture, and transition. The imagination runs with these shapes to conjure reminders of other objects – a building becomes a diving board, power lines become a music staff, dock remnants stick out of the water like cigarette butts. For me, photography is the art of observation. I aim to capture the everyday object in isolation, to ponder and notice its simple form of beauty.

–Jennifer Park

Eric William Pierson

5x3 notebook seires number 4 Paper and wire on wood 9” x 7”

As an artist, I have always been leaned towards mixed media, multi-media and conceptual expression. With a philosophy of life that was ingrained into my head by my father to “try everything”, I have had my hands in many different forms of expression: writing, music, sculpture, furniture building, dance, illustration, painting, collage, video, performance and acting. This list will only grow longer as life goes on. I express myself in a raw, unfinished, and often Dadaist way with inane humor and words playing a big part in my creation, as does the story behind the process, which I will gladly and willingly tell you. My influences for the most part are momentary and spontaneous. Often, overheard conversations will morph into an imaginary scenario and build from there. Day to day life, real experiences and self-imposed challenges are also major fuel and fodder for my creative id.

Born and raised in New Orleans Louisiana, I relocated to Los Angeles shortly after Katrina, as it is a city I have often visited for extended periods. I live in the North Eastern corner of Los Angeles. I studied at Atlanta College of Art and received a Multi-dimensional Liberal Arts BA from Evergreen State College. I have taught at Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Heights.

–Eric William Pierson

Rebeca Puga

Dark tree

Gouache and ink on paper 22” x 30”

My paintings and drawings are based on my investigations of how we see and experience the space that surrounds us and how that parallels our consciousness and perception of time. I think my paintings open up the opportunity to see through and at the same time enable the possibility to create multiple associations and connections.

Drawing has always played a significant role in the development of my art; it has brought together thoughts, contradictions and observations to the fabric of the work in the form of visible and readable traces.

Drawing and writing have allowed the work to capture elements and configurations which are in constant flux. They also situate the work in the crossing between cultures and between expressing and exercising silence.

The development of my work, mostly my paintings, varies from piece to piece. Some start as a particular visual proposition and develop as a result of their own processes. Some pieces start on the floor and others don’t. My paintings are slowly reworked over a long period of time so they end up not only containing multiple layers of paint but also layers of experience in time.

–Rebeca Puga

Jeremy J. Quinn

About One Hundred Thousand Years Colored pencil on paper 22.5” x 30”

Magnetosphere Charcoal on paper 38” x 51”

(second selected work)

Living and working in Los Angeles, my work interrogates the meaning and representation of landscape. As both an architect and an artist, I look at spaces in terms of hidden structure or geometries, as well as how they are used and manipulated by people. I am interested in the roles landscape can play beyond pastoral backdrop or site, and the many ways in which it can be delineated.

The magnetosphere surrounds Earth and protects it from cosmic and solar radiation. Without it, no life could exist on the planet. This invisible umbrella is generated by the spinning of the molten core of the planet and is not a fixed entity but one that fluctuates and even reverses polarity. Magnetosphere is a portrait of the planet as a whole, seen only as a magnetic field.

About One Hundred Thousand Years is inspired by Devils Postpile, an andesitic basalt rock formation created some time during the last 100,000 years. It has been exposed, carved, worn and partially destroyed over that period of time by natural forces and the drawing detail represents the work of these forces over millennia.

–Jeremy J. Quinn

Patrick Ramsey

Supplication Giclée print 29” x 23”

The camera records without interpretation a two – dimensional reality, but the goal is to elevate that recording of a person, place, object, or moment in time into a narrative. I breathe nuance and luminosity into the image until I have created a piece which moves me. The most successful works suggest a story, an opinion, a challenging point of view, or a mood.

Within that context, much of my work centers on catching people in the act of being who they are, doing what they are doing, and unaware of observation, but revealing something of themselves or their experience. I am drawn to images that illustrate the disparity in human conditions today.

This image was taken on my second trip to Venice, Italy. It was 10 years after the first visit and I found the difference in the city striking. What had been a vital and multi-dimensional city was now divided into a ‘Disneyland’ for tourists and run down or abandoned areas housing residents too poor to move to the mainland. Turning the corner on a small street I found this woman who symbolized the change I was seeing all around me.

–Patrick Ramsey

Irena Raulinaitis

House of Loneliness

Cardboard cut/collograph 17” x 11.75”

A 1968 book from Soviet times on paintings and graphic arts featuring the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, had some interesting images in a technique variously denoted as ‘cardboard cut’ or ‘peculiar technique’.

That piqued my interest. I started using matboards as my medium; I experimented by incising lines, stripping away layers of paper, lacquering over the images and printing the works as intaglio images.

The technique requires simplification of design, but it has the benefit of subtle textures within the stripped-away portions of the image.

The despair and isolation from the world in House of Loneliness profits greatly from this technique. The orchid collated as the sun, introduces an element of hope.

– Irena Raulinaitis

Melissa Reischman

(on reverse)

Counter Clockwise Vortex Charcoal on paper 30” x 20”

Ace of Cups

Charcoal on paper 30” x 20”

(second selected work)

Potential

Charcoal on paper 30” x 20” (third selected work)

Moving between earth and atmosphere, mass and space, my work blurs the line between abstraction and landscape. I create psychological landscapes and work with the dichotomy of light and darkness in order to examine the dynamics of belonging and alienation, joy and grief, and attachment and separation. These allegorical images are informed by personal mythologies, memories and the natural world.

–Melissa Reischman

Danelle Rivas

This Egg Wants Salt

Watercolor, acrylic on paper 40” x 24”

A daughter is a gypsy spirit, insatiable and restless. In Puerto Rico, we have a saying about feeding youthful curiosity, “Ese huevo quiere sal.”-- that egg wants salt. Did Esmeralda want salt? I stared at my 6 year old and wondered if I could quell her appetite. I do to this day.

–Danelle Rivas

Alain Rogier

tenesse williams saw this in florida Acrylic, oil stick, charcoal stick on paper 18” x 24”

My work reflects a confluence of historical, psychological, sociological, and philosophical factors and their reverberations. Specifically, but for Auschwitz, I would not be here. Other factors include the experience of being ‘the other’ upon emigrating to the U.S. from France, years of handling extremely acrimonious disputes, the search for and appreciation of beauty and serenity, and moments of lightness provided by music, literature, nature and family. The dialogue throughout my work is a confrontation with the human condition, creating moments of serenity and sometimes humor amidst life’s harsh realities. I abhor and refuse passivity. I have exhibited in galleries and museums in the U.S. and Japan.

–Alain Rogier

Bonnie Denver Ruttan

(on reverse)

1922

Mixed media collage 6.5” x 6.5”

AU

Mixed media collage 6.5” x 6.5” (second selected work)

I have often used collage elements in my art but recently have concentrated on collage as the sole medium. I find it exciting to develop a piece entirely from shapes, color and texture. My current series is created from deconstructed old books. I particularly like the sense of age and fragility they convey while taking on a new life at the same time.

–Bonnie Denver Ruttan

John Selleck

The Studio

Collage, mixed media 9” x 9”

My focus is to present an otherwise ordinary scene with a sense of drama or mood. To achieve this, I place objects or figures in an off-beat location. In this piece the chair, table and easel sit on the very bottom edge of the surface. I also create a basically flat composition with a suggestion of dimensional space.

–John Selleck

Katherine Shanks

(on reverse)

Recursion

ABS plastic on woodblock print 4.25” x 3.5” x 5.75”

Invert-abrate

ABS plastic and hot glue on woodblock print 6” x 4.5” x 4.5” (second selected work)

Woodblock printing is one of humanity’s oldest reproducible art forms, whereas 3D printing is still a nascent technology. While the field is fast developing, we are only beginning to fully explore the possibilities.

For me, this melding of the old with the new was an opportunity to return to my roots in drawing and painting. Over the past seven years my work has shifted to sculptural, environmental, and, often, fiber based pieces. Yet somehow, the creation of these structures has always remained inherently painterly. I find myself examining them from all possible angles in order to create spaces which offer the viewer the visceral experience of moving through sequential, shifting compositions; my varied materials are like paints and their interweaving creates brushstrokes through space. With the advent of 3d printing pens, it was possible to bring drawing back into that practice: literally drawing through air, harnessing this new technology while maintaining the tactile aspect of the explorations.

–Katherine Shanks

Stephanie Sherwood

(on reverse)

Big Spread

Enamel on paper 50” x 36”

Leg Memory

Enamel on paper 71” x 94”

(second selected work)

I draw meat and body parts from life. My sketchbook drawings directly inform my paintings. When I am drawing I can submerge myself in careful, methodical observation but when I work large scale I can indulge in dripping paint and expressive color. My paintings are visceral and obscene; I love painting in not only bloody reds but rotten greys and greens.

I live and work in Los Angeles, California.

–Stephanie Sherwood

Mahara T. Sinclaire

Portrait of Kem

Black and white charcoal 25” x 19”

Kem Turner is an artist’s model with whom I often work. I am interested in portraiture that articulates the interior psyche of a woman, particularly the ‘female gaze’ as she looks out into the world and assesses social dynamics as they play out.

–Mahara T. Sinclaire

Caryl St. Ama

(on reverse)

Currents

Encaustic collagraphs on paper 12” x 12”

Flotsam

Encaustic collagraphs on paper 12” x 12” (second selected work)

Born and raised in Texas on the Gulf Coast between Houston and Galveston, I received my BFA from Texas State University in San Marcos and my MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Now a full-time, tenured professor at Glendale Community College in Studio Arts where I have taught for the past 26 years, my work initially focused on installations in the environment outside of the confines of the studio.

My interest developed from installation to painting when I discovered encaustic, an ancient medium using pigmented bee’s wax fused with heat. The luminosity and flexibility of the wax proved to be the inspiration I needed to continue my work focusing on the effects of both man-made and natural disasters on our gulfs, oceans and waterways.

As well as regularly attending and conducting encaustic workshops around the United States, including at the IEA Encaustic Retreat to be held this fall in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I continue to explore many new aspects of the encaustic medium as it relates to my favorite subject matter, the delicate balance that is the cycle of life.

–Caryl St. Ama

Steven Stanger

Light From Above Photography 21” x 21”

Other than a few adult continuing education courses in photography, I am essentially a self-taught photographer. My interest in the medium began when I was stationed at the U.S. Army Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California at a time when master photographers Brett Weston and Ansel Adams were living and working in the area.

I have spent time in the darkroom processing prints for my own consumption but have now fully embraced the digitalization of photography. Several preeminent photographers succinctly sum up my approach to photography: “The enemy of photography is the convention…the salvation of photography comes from the experiment.” - Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1947 Posthumously, Vision in Motion.

Moholy-Nagy saw abstract photography and bizarre perspectives as a means of reevaluating the way we see things. He advocated the systematic application of ‘faulty’ techniques, such as exaggerated perspective, harsh contrasts, optical deformation, cast shadows that overly darken the subject, and false tonal values as true photographic expressions.

Alfred Stieglitz enthusiastically accepted the idea that art, in order to represent more than material presence, must be abstract. Abstract art, he wrote, was “…a new medium of expression – the true medium.”

And finally, in 1916 Alvin Langdon Coburn said, “Why, I ask you earnestly, need we go on making commonplace little exposures that may be sorted into groups of landscapes, portraits and figure studies?

Think of the joy of doing something which it would be impossible to tell which was top and which was the bottom!”

–Steven Stanger

Stephanie Sydney

Palms Pier Lights

Archival pigment photograph 20� x 13�

Trained as a painter, I use my photographs and technology to compose my images. My work deals with creating a dialogue between extremes and hopes to address the fragility of life on this planet. I am fascinated by the cycles of life--birth, aging, and death--that apply to all, the relationships we have with our environment, and the transient nature of all phenomenon. I use diverse images as metaphors for this cycle of life. I am involved with finding a dialogue between opposites or a common ground between extremes such as chaos and order, old and new, strength and fragility, nature and man-made, beauty and ugly, large and small, useful and discarded, meaningful and meaningless, solid and fluid, or transient and permanent. I am also drawn to reflections and light patterns, capturing the fluid moments in time that flicker by without notice and finding the abstractions and patterns that underlie the physical world, giving us clues to a larger reality and helping us find the order in chaos. –Stephanie Sydney

Kathleen Thompson

Nile

Acrylic on paper 80” x 120”

The images in the painting reference time, architecture, fairytales, and Egyptian creation mythology. The Queen’s magic mirror from Snow White is turned on its side, sprouting forth new life and old truths in the process.

Since the beginning of speech and communication, humans have encoded psychological truths and teachings within stories, however told. Modern deconstruction of myth and fairytales presents us with all the psychic potential and pitfalls of living our lives as humans within time, while the stories themselves live in a timeless realm.

I imagine the animate springing from the inanimate, with culture turning back on itself and perhaps being taken over like the vines consuming the palace where Sleeping Beauty slept her long sleep.

–Kathleen Thompson

Arella Tomlinson

Sacred Heart

Mixed media collage on paper 10” x 10”

This piece is part of series called Residual Tenderness, about the experience of undergoing treatment for breast cancer as a new mother.

It was the culminating image in a therapeutic art process, documenting the emotional and physical discomfort and the search for meaning in the experience. The symbolism of the flaming heart alludes to the suffering of Christ and with the shape of a breast, also relates to the challenges of surgery, chemotherapy, and, finally, radiation. It features a central collaged image of a thoughtful young girl in a corresponding soft and romantic palette. It is about how seeing yourself survive a difficult experience can refine you and better equip you to treasure yourself, God, others, and life.

–Arella Tomlinson

Hedy Torres

Lidia The Elder

Charcoal, graphite, black pastels on paper 17” x 14”

As an immigrant, I often get asked about my nationality because of my accent and physical appearance. Perhaps this should not be relevant anymore in a city with such a highly diversified population as Los Angeles. However, the American perception of Mexican (or undocumented) people is often wrong. Therefore, my latest art pieces have been focused on those who have been alienated at work and in society. My last art pieces are breaking through the prejudices, labels, tags, and names to acknowledge these human beings, their existence, and their hard work. It is a fact that through their hard toil they have made this a great nation. Through our hard work, citizens and immigrants have made this country of ours the place where people from around the world can come and freely pursue the American dream.

Lidia the Elder represents a generation of my family and culture. She is my father’s aunt who is still alive. She devoted her youth to taking care of her parents, so only married in her late 60s and never had children.

Now she lives alone, but her nephews and nieces take care of her.

–Hedy Torres

Mike Usher

One Million Monkeys Mousing #5 On The Beach At Night Archival pigment print on textured paper 17” x 22”

The image is the fifth in a fourteen print series titled One Million Monkeys Mousing. The series toys with the idea of randomness in art, but as the images were created in a digital environment nothing in them is truly random; the laws of mathematics govern everything that happens in the digital realm. However, the serendipitous and the unexpected were hardily welcomed before I subjected them to my own whims.

Each print in the series was derived from one or more original photographs of paint spilled on the floor of an artist’s studio, a source that in itself caries a high degree of the random. For each image, variations were created using a wave generator and placed on separate layers.

Zigzag and columnar masks were created to select and reposition portions of the wave generated variations which were then combined using various blending modes. Color corrections were applied to the parts and the whole to achieve a harmonious balance.

My purpose in creating this series was to make something energetic and beautiful that would be fun to look at, a little relief for the eye of the beholder in a world where so much of what we see is cause for despair. Although my work begins with a digital photograph and is created in the digital environment I do not consider my work to be photography or digital art. My goal is to create an image on paper and so I consider myself to be a printmaker.

–Mike Usher

Mark Vallen

The Artist’s Hand Pencil on paper 10” x 8”

While The Artist’s Hand is a pencil rendering of my left hand, this ‘self-portrait’ of sorts was inspired by the tradition of artists who created artworks depicting hands. Specifically, my representation is in homage to the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, whose studies of the human hand infatuated me when I was a very young artist.

The Artist’s Hand has additional significance. It expresses my devotion to the idea that an artist’s singular vision, distinguishing skills, and personal techniques, or ‘craft’ if you will, make for what is a truly original and authentic work of art. An ‘artist’s hand’ is the magic of a capricious brushstroke, a droll and fluid ink line, or a whimsical pencil stoke; these things are the cure for the blank artlessness of appropriation and simulacrum offered by postmodernism.

The ‘artist’s hand’ is much more than simply leaving one’s fingerprints in paint, it is the manifestation of a humanist vision. Oh… and by the way, I draw with my left hand.

–Mark Vallen

John VanDewerker

(on reverse)

Spinning Off

Giclée print of Epson HPW paper 24” x 20”

Spring Maesltrom

Giclée print on Epson HPW paper 24” x 20” (second selected work)

My objective is to create artistically engaging images that reflect my originating concept and appear to evolve from an enigmatic stimulus not easily placed among the family of tangible objects. As I fabricate each piece in time and space, it slowly converges into a collapse of complex spectral lines and surfaces to form the desired artistic image.

I then cultivate this image to extract embedded colors, contrasts and gradient fields that best present my evolved concepts.

–John VanDewerker

Peter Walker

Ridiculous Confidence Graphite on paper 42� x 35�

Modernity is often about momentary associations that will eventually, and usually, quickly dissolve. It is transitory. It is brief. It is randomly mixed and constantly reshuffled. This can lead to dislocation and generalizations but it can also lead to unexpected newness. I look for people and situations on my periphery to make the unfamiliar familiar, to make the transitory permanent, and to make the random encounter documented. It is the interaction and association that is of paramount concern, not the context or environment. For this, I document the actors while eliminating the stage upon which they are set. Through this, the work becomes about disassociation versus association, individuality versus homogeneity, dislocation versus belonging and the transitory versus the permanent. I may never see this person or collection of people again but I want him, her or them to be remembered. –Peter Walker

Dana L. Walker

still life with shrimp Photography 12” x 12”

My work deals with elements of time, fragments of memories, gesture, color, and texture and with remnants of past, present, future. Using the photographic medium, I create intimate portraits of objects and places, composed, constructed, or abstracted to create new compositional spaces.

The daughter of an artist/art educator, I have been creating photographic images since I was eight or nine years old. My formal training in photography was at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

I worked for several years creating images for commercial use but eventually migrated back to my love of fine art photography.

During the day, I work as the Managing Director of Public Programs at Art Center College of Design. I live in La Crescenta with my husband, Emile.

–Dana L. Walker

Graeme Whifler

The Entrance Photography 20” x 24”

The Entrance Wired direct, into the earhole, that’s the way inside, The Entrance.

Out from the ether come Morse code or digital voices.

Or from near, whispers, shouts, cries and laughter, drumbeats, grunts, they all enter here as they always have, to be devoured by the ravenous brain.

The story, the song, the sounds headed inward, it never really changes.

Primitive, follicled beast, made from scraps of ancient DNA, the entrance leads to the brightest light in the known universe.

This man was alone in a crowd as he waited to cross South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles on a Saturday morning in February. What message was burrowing deep into his head?

- Unknown

–Graeme Whifler

Karen Winters

As the Parade Passed By Watercolor on paper 12” x 15”

With my background in documentary film making and photography, I’m always on the lookout for interesting faces when I’m out in public.

This gentleman was someone I observed in Los Angeles’ Chinatown on Chinese New Year’s Day. He was standing to the back of the crowd, apparently alone, watching the colorful raucous parade coming down the street. The look on his face seemed wistful and made me wonder what he was thinking. I knew when I saw him that he’d be an ideal subject for a portrait. Perhaps the slight redness and moistness in his eyes was due to the smoke from all the firecrackers … but maybe it was prompted by his thoughts and memories. I leave that to the viewer to decide.

Although much of my work is executed in oil, I chose to paint this one in watercolor because I felt that its liquid, transparent properties could better capture the subtle emotions on his face.

–Karen Winters

Suze Woolf

Tauromachia

Varnished watercolor on torn paper 52” x 14”

I have spent much of my life watching Washington State’s glaciers recede. As a longtime mountaineer, on approaches I have found more and more burned-over areas; as a landscape painter, I began painting them. For me, large close-up studies of individual charred trees have become a metaphor for climate change: our predilection for cooking the planet. Yet for all my fear and grief, I also see an unusual beauty in these devastated specimens. Every burned tree is the same, carbonized and eaten away; yet each one is different, too. The physics of the fire and the biological structure of the tree create unique shapes and textures. Char is iridescent for as much as a decade after the burn, reflecting the light and colors of its environment. Wildfire fighters call these standing corpses ‘totems.’

My art work is primarily about nature and I do much of it in the field.

I have won regional and national awards and received competitive residencies at Zion, North Cascades and Glacier National Parks, the Grand Canyon Trust, Willowtail Springs, the Banff and the Vermont Studio Centers. Several of my pieces are touring museums in the United States with the exhibits Environmental Impact and America’s Parks through the Beauty of Art. Two burned tree portraits currently hang at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington DC. –Suze Woolf

Jim Zver

After Madrid 14

Paper, acrylic paint, charcoal 18” x 20”

The After Madrid series of fourteen collages was begun after several extended visits to Spain, primarily Madrid, in 2012 and 2013. The way into this series, for me the ‘hook’, was through the colors I observed in Spain, particularly the colors of the Spanish landscape and the Spanish flag. The red in the flag was also the red used in the protest posters, ubiquitous throughout Spain, of the ‘Indignados’ or street protesters and the Spanish Occupy Movement who were protesting against the far right government. Red is a leitmotif in Spain and I wanted it to be a key color, emphasizing and referencing it in these collages.

–Jim Zver