Bunker Opens Doors

My new series is much evolved from my previous works. In the past, although I had a feeling of the intangible and of freedom when I worked, my quest was to cull the vivid chaos of color and forms by repeatedly sanding and repainting many layers of paper and paint into a more peaceful, organized surface. It was an expression of the infinite complexities that I found surrounding me, and my desire to tame them.

Rather than being spurred (on) by a categorical statement, I was following an unformed artistic thought through to the end, feeling freedom and energy from spontaneity, the love of form, composition and color and the nostalgia that these energies stimulated. Color, form and composition, and the harmony their combination can elicit, vibrate as a grouping of musical notes might do and touch the nostalgic thinking that first brought such experience into my sights – my musical and artistic family. They were the major creative influence in my life and provided the personal trials of the complex and puzzling world I grew up in.

In my latest series I have taken this need to embrace and contain my memories

a step further. I have develop/nurtured/ my reactions to color and form to

another level. I try to capture what I feel is the essence of my creative experience.

I render my love of form, color and composition down to it’s minimum and

present them in a purer, simpler context – the grid. No less emotionally complex

but perhaps calmer, subtler if a little more intricate and peppered with

a touch of subterfuge…

Helen Berger was born in London, England to Russian émigré parents. It was a family of musicians/painters/singers and she grew up surrounded by these artists, making her sensibilities pretty much pre determined. She has been an artist all her life. After years of family influence and guidance, independent study in Paris, London and Los Angeles, assisting established artists and attending numerous workshops, she considers herself self-taught.

After using many different mediums over the years - wood, paper, clay, found objects, fabric and the camera. – Helen then settled into working with wood, paper and acrylic.

Her previous process was to layer paint, painted and cut paper onto a wood panel, continuing in multiple sanded layers and finishing with a distinct application of paint to emphasize the negative spaces. This work started out as a chaos of color, she challenged herself to recreate a mood of coherence, clarity and harmony on the panel.

Her latest series, although still on wood panel and using vellum, gesso and acrylic, blends the simplicity of repetitive shape with simple color and textural contrasts to create a play between tension and harmony.

I choose bright colors because that’s what we need in the world right now.

“By painting, I chose first to brighten my own life so I could then brighten the lives of others.”

To experience an ELBE painting is to live a moment of the artist’s exhuberant life.

The artist is Elena Berman. She signs her work ELBE.

Elena is energetic, exciting, complex–an introspective extrovert, you might say.

However, one word mostly defines Elena: passionate. Mostly happy, incredibly upbeat. Sometimes angry. Occasionally relaxed. (Afterall, the artist is human.)

But Elena is passionate–always passionate–in her life and in her art.

She is also genuine, perhaps the most powerful force in her art, as her paintings express exactly what she is feeling at any given moment.

When you glance at a painting signed ELBE you cannot look away. Drawn to the powerful strokes and colorful character, you feel the raw emotion of the artist.

Rooms come alive with the expressive colors and explosive strokes of an ELBE original or print.

I spent over three decades drawing and painting people in places of communal exchange. My works brought opportunities to exhibit locally nationally and even internationally. Like Alice Neal I looked for the soul of each person.

In 2020 the pandemic brought change from the beauty and pain of each person to the serenity and spirituality inherent in nature. The world had become too overwhelming.

I had always added animals and birds and creatures into my works of people. Now birds in nature are the focus. I am blessed to have friends and others who offer their photography of bird moments from birding, hikes and moments catching a shot of a feathered friend. I am blessed with references that offer me inspiration. I embellish the backgrounds, interpreting foliage, trees, and skies with the patterns and forms from nature and my imagination. Insects both flying and otherwise are present or hidden.

Process is a huge part of my practice. I love mixing colors and relate to the colorist Pierre Bonnard. I never worry about the result, as this is a projection of a future, which none of us knows. I do the work and the shows follow.

My biggest joy and inspiration for all my artwork has and will always be my son. Being a mother forever teaches us the preciousness of all life.

Jodi Bonassi is from Los Angeles. Her narrative paintings and drawings explore diversity, and the human condition.

Exhibiting since 1991, her works have garnered reviews, awards and articles, locally and nationally. On “Chungking Alley” Mat Gleason quotes: “My impressions of the piece are that it asserts its own art historical narrative instead of submitting to academic structures and choices. An amazing dreamscape narrative with painterly precision”. (2015, Genie Davis, “LA Art Scene Mural-On Canvas”)

Bonassi’s work has been reviewed/published in the Boston Globe, LA Times, Flavorpill, Hair's How Magazine (Russia),The Chronicle Review, Art and Living, Harpers Magazine, Studio Visit Magazine (2012, 2008, Ocean Press) and Los Angeles Art Association Volume 1 Catalogue (2009, Samuel Hoi, President of Otis College of Art and Design). She has exhibited locally and nationally and has been published internationally. She is the recipient of the Hans Burkhardt Memorial Scholarship and other awards of merit. Curators who have chosen her works for exhibition include Franklin Sirmans, Head Curator at LACMA, Ali Subotnik, Curator for the Hammer Museum and others. She also was selected to paint on a 9 foot fiber glass guitar to honor Lou Adler and the other founders of the Sunset Strip. The guitar sold in the top ten at Julien's Auction House. This was part of a re-vitalization program. Her work has been recognized by esteemed Los Angeles art critic, Peter Frank, Mat Gleason (renown art critic and gallery owner), Betty Brown, Highly respected Art Historian, Art Writer and Curator and others. Other noted curators are Jonathan Greene, Director of exhibitions for the Hunterdon Art Museum (2012), Ann Philbin from the Hammer Museum (2006), Cliff Benjamin from Western Projects (2008), Marc Pachter from the Smithsonian Institute, and other noteworthy curators. Jodi Bonassi’s work has been selected for her unique take on the public narrative and how community links people in interesting ways. Her depictions of the world are slightly skewed based on her own vision. Jodi Bonassi has an extensive exhibition record in regional institutions and galleries and is fiercely committed to her painting career. Affiliated galleries: The Loft At Liz's, Coagula Curatorial and other LA galleries. jbonassi@aol.com. 818 274-7393

www.jodibonassiart.com, resume is available upon request

My art is in a range of mediums from abstract painting to photography to digital media. I find it an advantage to work in multiple mediums because it allows me the opportunity to explore each and go beyond their individual boundaries to experiment and invent new ways of creating art and subject matter. It has always been my main focus as an artist to allow the viewer to define each piece of art for themselves as there is no definite exact meaning but rather a feeling of intensity and intrigue that each viewer must discover in the art. Using color, design and experimental technique I try to draw the audience into my subject matter to evoke both mystery and meaning. Each piece is a new discovery for the audience and for me as it is my ongoing desire to continue to evolve and reinvent myself as an artist.

Lucie Boswell was born in 1968 in San Francisco, California, and from an early age knew she wanted to express herself through art. Graduating in 1992 with a BA in Art Studio from UC Santa Barbara, she went on to study photography at the Santa Fe Photo Workshop, working with some of the world’s finest photographers including National Geographic, Magnum photographers and more. In 1996 she moved to Los Angeles where she became a member of the ASMP – the American Society of Media Photographers. Over the last two decades Lucie has built an impressive resume in various mediums, from photography to painting to mixed media. Her work has been shown in galleries and juried shows both nationally and internationally, and been published in numerous books and publications. Boswell is also an avid patron of the arts, supporting art museums, art programs and individual artists around the world.

Presently painting abstracts on canvas using acrylics. Other art work ranges from painting on silk using French dyes, mix media using found objects, drawing with pastels, photography when time allows and creating wall hangings by manipulating fabric in various ways (was a member of the Missouri Fiber Artists until September 2014). I simply love the creative process - whether starting with a blank canvas, a blank sheet of paper, a piece of fabric and ending with a wonderful work of art!

Have been creative as long as I can remember. Received a BA in Fine Art 1980 from UMass Boston. Additionally, I have taken silk painting classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), New York City in 1997. Have done many arts and crafts venues over the years. My art work has been exhibited in MA, NY,and MO. Since retirement, I have been free to create more art uninterrupted. I was one of the founders of a Women's art gallery in St. Louis, MO, 2010. I am now looking forward to experiencing the art community here in the California area.

My artwork is an extension of my heart and mind, an expression of the microscopic and unforeseen. It explores, questions and celebrates the intricacies of life and the myriad colors of the universe. I want to bring others with me on a marvelous journey to celebrate, indulge in, explore and get lost in the whimsical complexity of life.

Alex Butler's drawings explore life through a colorful prism of whimsical images, silly faces and intricate lines. She earned a BA in Sociology from Hunter College and a Film Certificate from the New York Film Academy. She is a self taught artist from New York, currently living in Los Angeles.

My painting is equally about color, mark making, and improvisation. The work is not so much about process as about finding out what results from process.

Color has the irresistible drawing power of chocolate or opiates. It is so seductive that I can begin a composition with colors I don’t particularly like. Gradually I move into greater control of my elements. After laying down an allover ground I use an irregular grid to make hundreds, sometimes thousands of little marks on each canvas until the surface is completely covered. The grid derives from the black-and-white tile floor in the kitchen and dining room of my Italian grandparents’ sugar cane plantation in Louisiana. There is no narrative attached to this association, but it does drive my painting.

Once I lay out the grid I lose myself in the process. I apply layers and layers of gesso, acrylic, and oil over collaged elements. By weaving the pigments and textures together I integrate the surface. Layers thus appear indistinguishable from one another. The process can be compared to one or more musicians combining notes and instruments in an improvised performance.

Subtraction plays as big a role in my process as addition does. If I am not satisfied with the integration of colors and textures at a certain point, I will destroy the layers by tearing off parts of the surface, giving up the grid marks, sanding off or painting over certain areas. It doesn't matter how much I destroy or add; I am only satisfied until I feel the work resonating the way I want it to. --Andrée B. Carter

education

1995 M.F.A. Painting University of New Orleans

1992 B.A. Painting Loyola University, New Orleans

Cum Laude

Certificate of Achievement in Visual Art

1986 Art History Tulane University, Florence, Italy

awards /honors

2017 stARTup Fair LA, A Contemporary Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA

Juried exhibition, recipient for Gallery 825

2016 Women Painters West, Point of View, Thousand Oaks, CA

3rd Place winner, Juror, Jim Zver

Women Painters West exhibition, Lamperouge Gallery, Brewery Art Complex,

2nd Place winner, Juror, Ron Pekar

2012 BAU Institute , Otranto, Italy, Painting Fellowship

1997 Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Painting Fellowship

Arts Council of New Orleans, Percentage for Arts Program Recipient

Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA, Juror’s Award

1994 New Orleans National Painting Competition, curated by William Fagaly,

Assistant curator, New Orleans Museum of Art

solo exhibitions

2017 Ann Connelly Fine Art, Baton Rouge, LA

Matter and Texture, Beyond the Lines Gallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, CA

2015 Gallery IMA ,Seattle, WA

2012 Heriard Cimino Gallery, New Orleans, LA

2011 Pacini Lubel Gallery, Seattle, WA

2010 Heriard Cimino Gallery, New Orleans, LA

2009 Pacini Lubel Gallery, Seattle, WA

Urban Cells, Heriard Cimino Gallery, New Orleans, LA

2007 Intersections, Heriard-Cimino Gallery, New Orleans

Deconstructing Happiness, Patricia Cameron Gallery, Seattle

2006 Temptations, Gallery 110, Seattle

2004 Seduction, Sylvia Schmidt Gallery, New Orleans

2003 White Chocolate, AT31, Seattle

2002 B

I experience much joy expressing my ideas and passions through my art. I am always surprised at the result as I am working spontaneously, focusing on the process as opposed to working for a particular outcome. In my recent work, I am enjoying the playfulness I experience when making my whimsical animal watercolors and my mixed media/collages.

I have evolved through the years and expressed my creativity in different styles--drawing and painting the figure, making expressionist paintings of jazz musicians and singers, making mixed media pieces and whimsical watercolors. I have also acted in the theater, performed stand-up comedy and wrote and illustrated a book of poetry for children. This varied background in the arts has directed and informed my visual art which is my basic focus and love.

Marlaya Charleston has been drawing and painting since the age of twelve. She began her formal training at the age of sixteen at The Art Students League in New York City. Growing up there, she had the privilege, at a young age, to visit The Modern Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum where she was moved and inspired. She continued her studies in New York at Parsons School of Design, Cooper Union and eventually earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from The School of Visual Arts.

Her influences are African Art, the German Expressionists, Picasso and Matisse.

Marlaya continued her artistic exploration making compositions combining realistic images with abstract shape, texture and color. As of late, she is enjoying making whimsical watercolors mostly depicting animals and the human figure.

Her works have been exhibited throughout the Los Angeles area and are collected internationally.

Highly influenced by artists like Hopper, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Diebenkorn, I paints multicultural urban Los Angeles with all its contradictions and poetry.

I am trying to blend my classical European artistic background with contemporary conceptual approach. In the LA urban environment I am looking for and finding manifestations of eternal human values, such as love, faith, longing, and the strife for a better life. I try to see real people and their life through the facades of the buildings depicted with much love and connection.

Born in Moscow , Russia /f. USSR/

Moscow's Art School at Kropotkin St.

MA graphic design from Stroganovskaya School of Art and Design, Moscow.

Graphic Design Workshop Artist Union USSR

Group Show at Bienalle/ Chekhoslovakia, Praga

1989- Came to USA, Los Angeles

1990-2009 Decorative painted furniture and murals

2008-1st Solo show TALK TO ME LA1 Modern Art Gallery

2010-2nd Solo show TALK TO ME LA 2 at Modern Art gallery

2012 Group show at Santa Monica Art Studios

2013 Group show "Seen and Unseen"Downtown LA

Phantom Gallery

curator and artist

2013 Group show "Oneness"Phantom Gallery

2015 Group show at Civitella d'Agliano

2015 Group show at Nuremberg ,Germany

2016 Solo show at Lark Gallery Hawthorne

and curator for CALIFORNIA show

I am a professional scientist, but my genetic makeup always pushed me to the artistic world. I preferred company of artists to the company of peers, which even manifested in my choice of spouses. So, being immersed in the artistic world all my life, I finally realized I needed to let my personal artistic juices out. And allow visceral part of me to kick in and get out.

As a scientist, I thought it will be a good idea to find a balance between cognitive and visceral sides. Hence, I decided to use opto-electronic approach to create images never existed before. But building blocks for creating these novel images are everyday very familiar objects. The closest definition for the final images will be ‘digital still-video’. The reason for that is that either the object involved in the creation of image is moving, or the imaging device, or both.

When creating an image, I seek, by transformation, to reveal in objects of everyday life what they can be, or manifest, given they are brought in motion, which is not particularly pertinent to their nature. So, it’s the opposite of what I try to do as a scientist, where molecular motion at nanoscopic level is translated into steady-state observations with opto-electronic devices.

I hope the approach to creating my images results in new and unexpected visual creations enriching viewers with new emotions and thoughts.

My life is a cascade of transitions, transformations, and quite unobvious and unpredictable revelations regarding what I was, am, and/or potentially can be. There are several examples of that throughout my lifespan. The pertinent one is that I started my adult life as a Ph.D. in Biophysics and may retire as an ‘artist’. The start happened in Russia, and retirement will, hopefully, happen in the US.

the language of life.

The type of Art that I do is beyond the spoken words.

When it emerges spontaneously because of the process, I accept it with gratitude.

Jenik

No question but the painting of Jenik Cook - and hardly less the work she realizes in other media (most notably ceramics) -is abstract-expressionist. But it is not necessarily Abstract Expressionist. That is, however much it may evince the DNA of mid-century American "action painting," or even European counterparts such as tachism, l'art informel, or CoBrA, Cook's art only incidentally revives the method, much less the look, of these bumptious, scrappy art movements. Rather, to power her vision, she goes back to the roots of gestural modernism, finding dancing line, elastic contour, and fervid color in surrealism, in fauvism, in expressionism itself. The painting of Pollock and Kline, and of Fautrier and Jorn, gives Cook permission to work unfettered like this, and gives us the context to comprehend fully - even to empathize kinesthetically with - what she does. But she is not emulating, much less imitating, Afro or James Brooks in her graceful, muscular paintings on paper or rehashing Sam Francis or André Lanskoy with the rhythmic clots and scatterings of pigment that collect on her canvases (well, on a wide variety of more-or-less canvas-like support material). Look instead to Miro, Masson, Marc, or Münter, Pechstein or Picasso, Marcks or Matisse, for Cook's sources.

Indeed, look into Cook's own cultural heritage. The line that whips and loops throughout Cook's oeuvre, whether hurling forms across canvas expanses or tracing them on the sides of pots, whether describing slashing trails of pure pigment or the sinuous contours of human bodies, is no more a painted line than it is a written one. It is made less with the whole body - although one can sense a change of stance, a hip motion, in so many of these dancing whiplashes - than with the whole arm. These gestures issue from the wrist and the shoulder. They are in fact as much inscribed as painted. Their energy is not just telegraphic; it is calligraphic. If the vivacity of the image bespeaks Cook's Armenian blood, the rhapsodic curvaceousness of her line betrays her Iranian childhood. As comfortable speaking and writing Farsi as she is Armenian, Cook marries her disparate cultural sources -which of course now include the western European and American influences of her adult life - into an aesthetically cohesive mix with a surprisingly broad formal reach.

Perhaps the breadth of that reach, given the variety of sources, isn't actually so surprising. But it is always a bit startling to witness - that is, to be allowed to witness - an artist master such a conceptual and expressive range. Most artists have this range in them, but so many suppress it. For her part, however, Cook refuses to suppress her stylistic multivalency. Not only does she not limit her vision, but she uses that vision very consciously to drive her artmaking in as many ways as it needs to go. She may edit, but she does not self-censure. Her style, ultimately as coherent and personal as a signature, emerges from and among her plethora of approaches, approaches which themselves spring from her persistence, her prolific output, her knowledge of art, and her irrepressible verve. Jenik Cook's art springs forth -in several directions at once.

Peter Frank Los Angeles January 2010

I am a primarily a sculptor working in varied media. A painter, a curator, an educator, and builder of large architectural/environmental landscape works formed out of rock, metal, often megalithic in size. My work continues to evolve through the exploration of new media. The use of clay to captivate me, serving as an extension of my imago mundi.

2019 “All U Can Eat”, Bunny Gunner Gallery, Claremont, CA

2019 Vertical Wine Bistro, Pasadena, CA

2019 “Evolve Women Wisdom”, LarkGalleryOnline, Long and Great Hall, West Hollywood, C

2018 Bunker Open Doors" LarkGalleryOnLine,West Hollywwod,CA

2018 “Fahrenheit 2018 Biennial” AMOCA, Pomona, CA

2017 “Forces of Nature II”, LA County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, Arcadia, CA

2017 “:Hollyweird Tube Formed in Fire”, Ventura College, Ventura, CA

2017 “Evolving”, Bunny Gunner Gallery, Claremont, CA

2017 “All U Can Eat”, Bunny Gunner Gallery, Claremont, CA

2015 “The Nature of Sculpture” LA Arboretum, Arcadia, CA

2015 “Off the Wall”, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA

2014 “Sculpture in the Garden”, Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts, Alta Loma, CA

2013 “2013 Ceramic Biennial”,AMOCA, Pomona, CA.

2013 “International Womens Day”, LarkGalleryOnline, West Hollywood City Building, W. Hollywood,CA

2013 “Abstract Contemplations”, LarkGalleryOnline, Sulkin/Secant Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

2012 “Forces of Nature”, The Los Angeles County Arboretum, Arcadia, CA

2012 “Sculpture in the Garden”, Sam and Alffreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts, Alta Loma, CA

2012 “New Beginings” , The Loft Galleries and Studios, LarkGalleryOnLine, San Pedro, CA

2011 “Exposed”, AMOCA Permanent Collection, Pomona, CA

2011 “The Art of Clay”, AMOCA, Pomona, CA

2011 “Rossinian Night”, House of Balsamic, Irvine, CA

2011 “Off the Wall”, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA 0

2010 “The Gallery Repertoire”, Gallery Armstrong’s Pomona, CA

2010 ”Moon Light Discovery”, Long Beach Art Walk, LarkGalleryOnLine, Long Beach CA

2010 “Phantom Galleries, Long Beach, CA

2010 FreshArt”, Arena Gallery Santa Monica Studios, Santa Monica, CA

2010 “Reaching Within”, LarkGallery OnLine, Los Angeles, CA

2010 “Los Angeles Art Show”, Armory Center for the Arts, Los Angeles, CA

2009 “Muddy’s Wood Fire Special”, The Myers Gallery-Muddy’s Studio, Santa Ana, CA

2009 “Hidden Treasures”, LarkGalleryOnLine, Los Angeles, CA

2009 “Rhythms- Small Pleasures and Vessel Forms”, Bunny Gunner Gallery, Pomona CA

2009 “Clay and Ink” California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA

2009 “Off the Wall”, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA

2009 Phantom Galleries, Pasadena, CA

2008 “Art Without Boarders”, LarkGalleryOnLine, Los Angeles, CA

2008 “Diversity In Clay”, 2008 AMOCA/ACS-DC Show. Pomona, CA

2008 Presidents Show”, 2008 American Ceramics Society, Burbank, CA

2008 “Bunny Gunner’s 1st

2008 “Fred’s Friends”, Armstrong Gallery, Pomona, CA

2008 “Alchemy of Art”, LarkgalleryOnLine, Los Angeles, CA. (Honorable Mention)

2007 Los Angeles County Fair, Pomona, CA

2007 “Open Call LA 2007”, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2007 “Small Treasures”, Palos Verdes Art Center, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

2007 “Extreme Clay”, American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, CA

2007 Pyoung Taek International Art Festival, Korea

2007 “Off the Wall”, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA

2007 “L.A. International Art Festival 2007, ASTO Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA

2006-Present Armstrong’s Ceramic Art Gallery, Pomona, CA

2005 “Recording Memories of Three Generations Through the Arts”, Armory Center for the Arts,

2004 Dynamics of Scale”, Xiems Ceramics Center, Pasadena, CA

2003-2004 California Fine Art Market, Pasadena, CA

2003 “2003° Fahrenheit”, Glendale City College, Glendale, CA

2003 The DA Center for the Arts, Pomona CA

2002 Armory Center for the Arts, Faculty Exhibition, Pasadena, CA

Birthday”, Bunny Gunner Gallery, Pomona, CA

Pasadena, CA

2002 Bedlam Gallery, Los Feliz, CA

2000 Prufrock Gallery, Pasadena, CA

1999 “Patricia Ferber Recent Works”, Prufrock Gallery, Pasadena, CA

1997 L.A. River Festival, Los Angeles, CA

1997 “Patricia Ferber Recent Works”, The Art Bank, Los Angeles, CA

1996-1997 Art You Can Live With, L.A. Artcore, Los Angeles, CA

1996 “Vessels”, The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA

1996 Bella Lewitzky Dance Foundation Silent Auction, Sotheby’s, Beverly Hills, CA

1995 Exploring A Movement: Feminist Visions in Clay”, Wingnall Museum/Gallery, Chaffey College,

1995 “One Vision”, Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1995 Silent Auction, Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1994 “DADA Downtown Lives”, Los Angeles, CA

1994 “Cups”, Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1994 “The World of Cups”, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA

1994 “Grants for the Arts, 1993-1994 “Fellowship Recipients, Pasadena, CA

1993 “Clay Currents”, Southwestern College, Chula Vista, CA

1992 The Cultural Factory, Pasadena, CA

1992 Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1992 “Transformed From Clay 14 Southern California Artists”, The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA

1992 “An Odyssey In Clay and Drawing”, 801 N. Brand, Glendale, CA

1992 “Clay Works”, Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1991 Nemiroff-Deutsch Fine Arts, Santa Monica, CA

1991 Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1991 “Scripps 47th

1990 Downey Museum of Art, “Metals Now”, Downey, CA

1989 Downey Museum of Art, “Ceramics Now”, Downey, CA

1989 Vorpal Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1986-1988 FISID, Design Center of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA

Rancho Cucamonga, CA

Ceramic Annual”, Scripps College, Claremont, CA

My photographic collages are layers of my reflections and observations, being personal, political or historical.

Like our life experiences, these thoughts accumulate on top of each other, to create my feelings and emotions that get expressed in the artwork.

The layering process coincides with the synthesis of creating visual pieces that invites one to investigate and explore the given information.

Like in previous works of mine, made on glass, the technique and the transparencies in my photographic digital collages are an important part of the art, they emphasis the build-up process and the blending which creates the images.

Vered Galor has been involved with the fine art world as an artist, curator and educator for over thirty years. She received her BA and MA in Fine Art from California State University in Northridge in 1975 and 1978.

Mrs. Galor started her career as glass sculptor. In 1981 she established a business doing curatorial projects and consulting in Contemporary Fine Art.

She lectured, participated in discussions and wrote art programs to encourage the collaboration of Art and Architecture.

Since 1989 Mrs. Galor has been concentrating on photography. She has been creating here own work, teaching photography and showing with galleries in Los Angeles California, Fort Collins and Loveland, Colorado and Las Vegas Nevada.

Barry Gordon's art is characterized by the use of vibrant colors and whimsical forms that grow out of recognizable human, floral or animal shapes. The tone is often humorous and the message frequently one of social satire or political commentary. Speaking of his own work, Gordon says, "I try to achieve a kind of musical counterpoint between color, design, composition, optical abstraction and fantasy." His works contain representations and permutations of musicians and music making; biologic and organic forms; social institutions and social relationships.

His drawings and paintings center around three broad categories: perceptions of self or others; social relations between self and society, between couples and within small groups; epics and concepts. Gordon's imagery provides a broad repertoire for the viewer's mind to draw on from his/her own experiential base to impressionistically develop his/her own conceptual/visceral "holistic perception" of a scene, a feeling an experience. What follows is an instantaneous recognition not necessarily analytically or consciously understood--ending in a reflexive interactive smile derived from the pleasure of the journey.

My first exhibit was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in an exhibit of children's art (1952). My debut professional exhibit was in 1965 at the Bogner Gallery on Gallery Row (La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills) and then various other shows nationally (New York; Washington, DC; Seattle; and throughout California) with a 30-year retrospective of 92 pieces in 2004 in a university gallery. I have had shows internationally, in what was formerly Yugoslavia (Belgrade), Russia (Moscow, and St Petersburg), Brazil (Rio De Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte) and had illustrations published in various newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, as well a an album cover for CBS Records and the 1984 Olympics' Georgio Moroder Theme song for Track.

My work is derivative of many influences including Picasso, Miro, Saul Steinberg, Dali, Matta, Tanguey, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Matisse and Klee, among others. If you put these influences in a pot and let them bubble and boil, then throw in California freedom and light and American multiculturalism, that is the direction from which my art is derived.

I have studied with Eula Long (1950 -57), Dorothy Royer, Adelaide Fogg (Los Angeles), David Smith, Tadeusz Lapinsky, Jay Orbeck, Zdzslaw Sikora (Univ of CA & Maryland), Barron Storey, Joe Bowler, Murray Tinkelman and David Passalqua (Syracuse Univ). Of course, I am solely responsible for my own imagery and its uniqueness.

I owned the Gordon Gallery 1985-96.

Sins and Sorrows is a new body of work featuring assemblages, sculpture and photography and explores the darkness of self-harm and depression. People who hurt themselves often believe they deserve punishment. While not exclusive to Christianity, the concept of suffering, and contrition, in order to atone for one?s sins is a fundamental precept. With a loose nod towards Christianity?s concept of sin, I decided to express my own take on the Deadly Sins. Some are performative and pertain to my personal experiences, while others relate explicitly to current events. While each sin is distinct, the grouping of sins is meant to be interpreted as one piece, expressing how the manufactured nature of sin is incorporated in the fabric of our lives. Some works are tongue in cheek, with a lighter look at sin, suicide and sex.

There are other pieces in this grouping of work that highlight personal reactions and acts of contrition for our sins. These are our sorrows. Self-abuse can take many forms, via drugs, bulimia or razor blades. Inspired by their innate connection, I pair sin and sorrow in order to express the latent tragedy that real and perceived sin imposes upon us individually and collectively.

Emily Elisa Halpern was born to a Swedish mother and an American father in Kentucky and moved to Canada when she was she was five. She studied Criminology and played professional basketball abroad before returning to the States where she received her BFA from Pratt Institute in New York City and her MFA from San Diego State University in California. She now lives and works as a full-time artist in Los Angeles at the Brewery Artist Colony. Her work has won her several scholarships and awards.

Harper paints gemstones on reclaimed materials. What begins as refuse is repurposed, transforming base materials into noble objects. Diverse media such as discarded tablecloth, wallpaper, curtain, graphic posters, upholstery fabric, painting, canvas, commercial art, building and metal scrap are surface medium. By reforming and re-employing, the work fits into the Ecocentric Art Movement to reduce, reuse and upcycle. Harper synthesizes historical and contemporary styles by mixing the classical tradition of still-life painting with modernism.

Gods of Fire have made their appearances in cultures throughout history. They have been chosen to represent gemstones that bring repurposed media back to life. Background recycled patterns disappears behind opaque oil paint rendering and reappears through transparent acrylic wash. Eternal flames re-emerge in the facets of jewels which reflect and transfix.

Harper studied art at American University in Paris, France with Paul Jenkins, USC Roski School of Fine Art (BFA) in and advanced studies at ArtCenter in Pasadena. After spending 12 years in New York, Harper returned to Los Angeles to teach and practice Ecocentric art. Harper’s grandfather, Archibald Picking, was a diamantaire (diamond cutter) before becoming a conductor for Pacific Electric Red Cars.

"My art allows me to see the beauty – the color and design – in ordinary everyday objects, in buildings, in clothing, in nature.

We are all surrounded by beauty. All we need to do is stop, look and take it all in."

Georganne Aldrich Heller, daughter of the famous fashion designer and art collector Larry Aldrich and a successful designer is an artist in her own right. She makes collages building on the vision that drove her long career as a theatrical producer in New York. Each collage and boxed construction represents a setting of evolving mysteries, opening the way to surreal dramas inviting viewers to enter the world of her dreams, yet unruled by any sort of literary content. Instead, Heller favors a lucid, iconic approach where the “thingness” of shapes and substances is allowed its own expression, her visual reasoning riding on the dynamic that powered western art through a half century of experiment, from cubism to De Stijl.

I studied for over 12 years in the studio of Ilana Bloch. I am a member of three art organizations: Women Painters West, and Los Angeles Art Association and JAI. I have participated in many group shows and received awards on several occasions.

A few years ago, my son created an art website for me. The proceeds of the art I sell on this website, goes to benefit a wonderful local organization: Step Up on Second, where there is help and housing for the mentally ill, It is a very gratifying and pleasurable way for me to use my hands, my time and my inspiration to help others.

I enjoy experimenting with acrylics and collage, exploring layering, pouring and making graphic and soft edges. I like to "mix it up" in one piece, combining the accidental with the planned out, the painterly with the graphic, the atmospheric with the straight edge.

I particularly enjoy adding collage medium. I camouflage the brightly collage pieces within the paintings, so that they can be discovered slowly. They add a vibrant edge and an element of surprise that contrasts with both the graphic or atmospheric background.

I am open to exploring new media, and new techniques each year, but I suspect that color and pattern will remain an important element in my work.

I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but have lived in the USA since 1961. I received my Bachelor's Degree from Pomona College and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Yale University. At Pomona College, I majored in French and Art History. My interest in art has been lifelong, although I started painting only in 1998. I was a high school French and Spanish teacher and have been retired since 2006, leaving me plenty of time to indulge my passion for painting. I travel to Italy a couple of times a year where i am always inspired, as many who travel there, by the light, the colors and the art.

I find my inspiration in the world around me and in my loved one. I do not usually follow the same style in all of my artworks and while some of my paintings just depict the beauty of the real world around me, the others are more about telling different imaginary stories and revealing unusual characters and situations. My diptychs and triptychs are more like visual stories where the presentations from different perspectives depict common and not so common situations and circumstances. Such an artistic trick allows me not just to tell a certain story, but it also turns a 2D image into something similar to 3D object thus greatly expanding viewers visual experience and further stimulating their imagination.

Olga was born in the Russian city of Zlatoust to the parents of German descent. She developed a passion for drawing and painting over her early childhood years. In Russia she graduated from the College of Industrial Design where she received her BA degree as a commercial designer . Later, the family moved to Germany where she became an art teacher for the art-therapy program designed for the kids with mental disabilities and other special needs.

Since moving to California in 2011 she began her career as a fine artist working in a variety of different styles and genres and have also participated in a number of local exhibitions. Her artworks have been sold to art collectors in US and around the world.

We live in a technologically oriented society. Less and less importance is given to our creative and spiritual development. Mechanistic, ritualistic forms of behavior have replaced feelings and emotions, diminishing the spontaneity and joy in human experience. Our society continues to impose these models of behavior through mass-media images, in a process I call cultural imprinting.

My artwork speaks to my life experience, examining how cultural imprinting affects me, and by implication how it affects all of us. I hope to serve as a catalyst, signalling creative interplay between myself and others, participating in life at a place where cultural imprints and assumptions cannot exist. Therefore, I am interested primarily in exploring how we can create, broaden and experience ourselves as human beings at a deeper level, and thereby affect wider social change.

Los Angeles-born and based, DIANE HOLLAND received her BA (with honors) from Immaculate Heart College and her MFA from Otis Art Institute. Exhibiting internationally as a multimedia artist and performer since the 1980s, her work has been acquired by numerous collectors, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. She has recently participated in a number of exhibitions around Southern California, including the LA Art Show, the Palm Springs Art Fair, and at the Los Angeles Photographic Exhibition (PhotoLA). She was part of three shows in West Hollywood celebrating women in the arts, “At the Core,” “Hear Me,” and “AWAKEN: The Female Voice.” She also showed in “Abstract Never Is” at MuzeuMM and was included in “Fresh 2017” at the SoLA Gallery, all in Los Angeles, and in “Music For Your Eyes” at the Orange County Center of Contemporary Art in Santa Ana. Diane Holland’s work can be seen at Galerie Denis Bloch in Beverly Hills.

I make art

to communicate

what I cannot communicate with words;

what I need to say

about what's going on in the world around us;

what I cannot fix;

what I wish I could make different

with my paint and clay

or metal and wood;

I work very hard at it -

always with my hands,

smearing, scraping, sanding -

until the experience becomes intimately personal;

communication is at the heart of every creation,

wedded to a humanistic concern;

I yearn with passion to make sense of it all;

fulfillment comes

only after I am personally satisfied

with having known, experienced and conveyed -

or at least tried to convey,

an ongoing, meaningful conversation;

a conversation that has found its way in the work itself;

a conversation that may potentially transpire

a continuance of the same with each viewer -

long after the paint has dried.

Julienne Johnson is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, and assemblage. She has been engaged professionally in a variety of other creative disciplines, most notably songwriting, with both Grammy and Dove Award nominations to her credit. Her latest music was released in Oslo, Norway, April 2019 for award winning producer, Knut Asphol. Her poetry has been published in the United States, and the UK. Despite her success in these areas, Johnson's most profound connection is with the visual arts – her strongest, most direct form of communication.

She trained classically as a fine arts major at Taylor University, Indiana and continued painting representationally for the next ten years doing commissions, while exhibiting minimally. Much later, after re-settling in Los Angeles, Johnson returned to studying art briefly at Otis College of Art & Design in 2005, transferring to Art Center College of Design in 2006 where she custom coordinated a Master’s-level type program and was mentored by the late Franklyn Liegel.

Since 2010, Johnson has been honored with 5 solo exhibitions across the United States, including a solo museum show at the Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art; her sculpture and paintings have been included in numerous museum shows around the world, including: Armenia, Japan, China, Qatar, Italy and Thailand. Her work can be found in 7 Museum Permanent Collections internationally and can be viewed on permanent exhibition at the Arab American National Museum in Michigan, and several museums in Italy and Thailand. Residencies include: China, Italy, Japan, Thailand and Mexico.

Her work can be found in private and corporate collections across the globe. She resides in Southern California.

I was born 1952 in Yerevan Armenia. Since early 1970 started to collect paintings of Armenian well known artists such as M.Saryan, Minas, V. Vardanyan and more. In late 1990s was interested in russian art until present time. For now in personal collection counted more than 7000 artworks of different artists.

Nature’s infinite pallet of color and diversity awaken our hearts and mind.

*** The Law of the Universe:

No matter how dark the night gets, the sun will rise. It always does.

*** Innocent and beautiful colors of sun are ready to dance with you at winter solstice, awaken your heart and mind.

*** Sun’s rays are inviting you to the new year journey! Be ready to fly!

** Galina Kovshilovsky’s paintings derive from her Russian origins. One feels the breath and wildness of a massive country and yet the simple handy work of it dedicated population. Galina’s paintings capture the sprawling epic about the erosion of tradition with visually striking exploration of color in its infinite variety and vitality. Her painting, be they large or small, capture the imagination with visually stunning Swirls and movement of the eye, emotion and the imagination. We are left breathless with the fascinating lovingly layered colors where the rules of organized thought clash and intersect with rituals and beliefs. We are moved. We are coaxed. We are seeing and drawn into a study of inclusiveness always before us.

Her color is gorgeous and she paints energy.

Dr. Marion Somers.

My art is imagination of created things which do not exist in everyday life. The purpose of my life - is creation of the fantasies. I was always attracted to science fiction books and movies. I put my images of my fantasy’s creatures in paintings and sculptures.

Faina Kumpan was moved from Odessa, Ukraine as a political refugee. She graduated from the Theatrical Art College in Odessa. In her not very exciting childhood, she was dreaming of other worlds. She was obsessed with science fiction.

Her emigration to New York opens the new opportunities. She worked as a designer and changed a lot of different professions. After moving to LA she returned to her love for art and Science Fiction. She attended numerous classes at UCLA Extension and many private workshops. She exhibited in many important galleries in LA and NY. She creates a fantasy world that is a once surreal and abstract, whimsical and vibrant. Whether creating painting or sculptures, her subjects are mystical creatures from another world, like fantastic figures stepping out of the pages of the futuristic fairy tale. She was participating in many group exhibitions.

She was awarded as a creative artist by City of LA for working together to celebrate Los Angeles as Creative Capital of the world. Her works are in many private collections.

The land has always been a reference and source of inspiration for my art. My first paintings were watercolor landscapes. But wanting to work more conceptually, I began to ask questions regarding issues that combined formalism, globalization and those concerning the environment. These queries led to using both abstraction and representation in an attempt to bring an awareness of the earth’s profound beauty and fragility. However, deciding to do something more proactive about the environment led to a four-year gardening project; one that fed artist/gardeners and built community within a community.

The projects that followed began my investigation of perception using photography, but always viewing it from the eye of a painter. Photographing the garden, I created close up images of the heirloom tomatoes and their insides.

Then began my experimentation with process and perception. The first series realized a life-long dream of combining painting and photography in the same image, using photographs of walls and natural objects from my travels. The second series experimented with emulsion, releasing the translucent image of a photo from its paper background. Current bodies of work use the emulsion technique, in addition to archival pigment prints on Slickrock creating a synthetic three-dimensionality.

Kunik was originally a plein-air watercolorist, but wanting to work more conceptually, she returned to school, earning a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Informed by environmental and global issues, Kunik’s abstract paintings began referencing these same issues, prompting a four-year community gardening project, which also explored photography and perception. Thus began her investigation of process: combining photography and painting and a unique emulsion process for photographs.

Kunik has been in more than 100 exhibitions in galleries and museums in California, New York and internationally, including Italy, Germany, Japan, Thailand and Peru. She recently received three Gold Awards and five Awards for Excellence for her work at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum. She has shown at Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, and Photo LA. Kunik was born in Chicago, Illinois, earning a BA degree from the University of Illinois and an MS from DePaul University. She moved to California in 1978, where she currently resides.

Ilan Laks has a BFA in painting from The San Francisco Art Institute. Over the past 30 years, He has shown his work both domestically and internationally, and he is the owner/director of an arts production facility called AudioCinema in Portland, Oregon, as well as the owner of Robertson Art Space in Los Angeles. He lives in the City of Angels with his wife, two kids, dog, and cat, and works in his studio in Culver City.

I paint what touches me most. Something in my life or in the world around me that moves me deeply. It may be joy or it may be sadness and worry.

Just painting what I feel brings me closer in touch with who I am and what I feel, it helps me process what I might not otherwise understand or be able to digest or let go of.

My artwork always had to do with feelings, my feeling about the world, people, and my relationship with them. I always have put it on paper since I can remember.

Like the feelings between mother and child, that are our most complete bond, or portraits of an emotional mood, that seem to come just out of me when I feel a certain way and sit down with a brush and canvas, to capture the emotion.

Regine Legler Bio

Regine Legler was born in Berlin, Germany during the last days of World War II.

Her first exposure to art was a dark, brown door her mother allowed the family to draw on with chalk, which Regine did frequently. Everything was a canvas, including her schoolbooks, which lead Regine to her first commission; being asked by her fellow classmates to help them with their homework assignment to draw Napoleon.

Regine’s formal education in fine art started at age 17 when she enrolled at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt/Main Germany. There she began a two-year study of figure drawing, portraiture, landscape and still life under Walter Hergenhahn, a student of the renowned Max Beckmann. Later, she underwent three years of intensive study in oil painting, acrylic and watercolor at the Freie Academie in Mannheim, Germany.

In her early years, Regine drew and painted scenes of dreams and emotional situations in a style called Fantastic Realism. Then, in 1994, her interest shifted to wildlife and American Indian scenes. Today, Regine’s style has evolved from Fantastic Realism to a more realistic and personalized technique to create a very bold look and tone to convey strong emotions.

Regine holds juried membership at Women Painters West, Southern California Women Caucus of the Arts, Venice Art Forum, and has taught college-level classes at Santa Monica College and the Fashion institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.

I began using my artwork for its obvious function - to share my world of emotions, thoughts and ideas with people. Communicating is a crucial for me. The more I paint, the more the letters and words in a form of my paintings on the canvas are began to take on a new function, a new art language. My new technic have been created from different type of materials and was one made up of different sketches including paint, ropes, foil, glass and many other materials.

It was as if the artist was experiencing dilemma how to express emotions, and this dilemma was my breakthrough. I had discovered a new way to communicate and deliver my emotions and thoughts. There is an endless source of information that can be created through unlimited use of materials. I became, and I am still, intrigued by this process which keeps me going my art way and gives me a lot of ideas to create and design.

I love design art too. I believe that any art and design work is artist’s way of expression that brings beauty into our beautiful world.

I would like to end my statement by Salvador Dali’s quote “Art Never Dies”.

Kristina Malykhina

Irvine, California - United States of America.

Education:

Kursk State Art University, Russia.

Bachelor's in Arts and Grafics (Fine Art Paintin, Exhibits & Interior Design).

Exhibitions:

2017 - "Explosion of Emotions" Art Exhibition, Irvine, California.

2015 - "Green Mirror" Art & Craft Photo Exhibition.

Crocus Expo, Moscow, Russia.

2014 - "Start in Art" Gallery # 35.

Moscow, Russia.

2013 - "Youth Moscow Art"

Moscow, Russia.

I use art as a means to express my reactions to my environment. In this way what you see is akin to the emanations from a sound box where the acoustics of sounds, life circumstance and landscape have combined at one moment in time. The subject matter is not the subject. The process is often as important as the result. I have recently included with my abstract, tactile paintings, more objective work, but the impetus is the same. Just as each person responds differently to music, I expect each viewer will respond differently to what they see.

Born Elizabethtown, Kentucky

BA, MA California State University, Northridge

My art has never followed a particular theme or plan… I just create and record things of beauty. As long as I can remember, I have been inspired by most everything I see, with things found in nature being my favorite.

My love of all things creative began in my early childhood, and were nurtured by both of my parents who were creative in their own rite. Instead of buying me coloring books, they would buy a pad of paper, crayons, paint, and pens then leave me to create my own fantasies.

My love of photography started in 1976 and ever since, I am rarely ever seen without my camera hanging from my neck. I worked as a journalistic photographer for a few years but soon traded the people and events in for nature. I guess I have always taken pictures in my mind, but through nature and landscape photography I can express my feelings using my camera to record the beauty I see.

Although I was Biology major in college, I kept gravitating back to my art. My next creative adventure was becoming a Graphic Designer (self taught) in the late 70’s, where I utilized all my talents to communicate whether it be a magazine, a logo, or working on movie posters and billboards.

Whether I am practicing my craft with old school techniques, or utilizing mind bending digital media… I tell stories through my art, be it photography, paintings, prints or anything else I can come up with, that represent all that I have seen and experienced, and all that I can imagine.

I make it up as I go!

Mac Platform, Graphic Design and Photography

2000 – Present Gail Oliver Design

I have immense experience in corporate design, entertainment, small business and the wellness industry. This provides me with an interesting edge and sensibility to understand the importance of a great presence in many markets. It is my passion to help clients by building strong relationships and offering creative solutions.

Visual Artist

• Photographer concentrating on Architectural & Real Estate, Product and Landscape.

• Graphic designer who started out with a drawing table and a T-Square, when Graphic Design required excellent hand skills and transitioned to digital utilizing Creative Suite

• Creative problem solving.

Partial Client List:

Bulldog Realty Remax Realty James Patton & Associates Jazzed Realty Cultural Interiors West Product Photography Mis En Bouteille Wines Product Photography Nestlé USA Turning Point Magazine North American Produce Money Smart Magazine Simply Wholesome Natural Foods

Gail Oliver Photography

• Real Estate & Architectural • Product • Lifestyle Photography • Fine Art

Golden State Minority Foundation Fortune Magazine Restoration Yoga Hospital Association of Southern California Care 1st Health

Southeast Symphony CKG Investments Broadway Federal Bank Westfield Malls, USA, California Steak and Fries Los Angeles County Parks Foundation

MDSAQ Sportswear and Equipment

Duties include but not limited to: Documenting Homes and Commercial properties for Sale in LA County.

I am a retired entertainment advertising Art Director/Graphic Designer who picked up paint brushes to apply my digital creative experience to canvas about three years ago upon retiring.

My art name is Lark - the bird that lingers between the earth and the sky. We artists do it at the moment of inspiration and meditation. That's how I create my art. I meditate and start with the spontaneous movements of my instruments; usually it is not a brush. A brush makes me think. My instruments are usually just pieces of cardboard. I also paint on any surface – canvas, board, plexiglass, glass, wood, etc – and I love to experiment and see what happens. My best creations take place in a state of no mind.

Although I begin the way abstract expressionists do and use some sumi-e techniques, eventually most of my creation starts shaping as abstract or impressionistic landscapes as ocean, sky, trees, flowers and mountain views start appearing from the formless. Nature is my source of inspiration, but instead of landscape details I channel nature's moods, the feeling of being one with nature, and swimming in its atmospheric light.

Light is what drives me to continue working. My mission is always to bring more light to people around me with my art, poetry and meditations. I know that viewers feel joy, peace and harmony when they look at my work, enter and settle inside it because it heals their emotional wounds and it makes me happy. Being an artist is an opportunity to express the fountain of my creative energy and at the same time serve people's needs in beauty that will heal the world.

When people perceive the light, the high and playful energy that my paintings emanate, they start feeling they are back in the fairy-tale world of their childhood, when their soul was open to transformations and miracles, and they feel like Alice in her enchanting wonderland.

From the beginning of her art career, Lark’s art caught the attention of art lovers and gained recognition from art jurors including LA Weekly critic Peter Frank, Santa Monica Museum Art Director Lisa Melandri and MOCA curator Alma Ruiz.

Fusing classical and contemporary art traditions, Lark's award-winning artworks carry her signature gestural brushstrokes and vibrant color palettes. They have been featured in the many prestigious exhibitions, art catalogs and sold globally in France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, Armenia, Canada, Sweden and many other countries. In 2021 - 2025 Lark's art was exhibited in the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and the Shiba City Museum of Art In Japan where Lark got two Gold Awards in the group shows.

Art is my way of life

Mark Pol, born 17th October 1943 in The Hague has found an early passion for painting. His interest in drawing and painting started in primary school. And later on he went to the Photo Academy followed by the Free Academy of Art led by George Lampe, both in The Hague.

The work of Mark Pol, also shown on his website (http://www.markpol.nl), is in essence inspired by daily human life, without losing its vulnerability and the animal unpredictability. Despite the timeframe the painting or drawing might seem to be in, humanity is key in his work.

In the early stage of a painting, Mark Pol draws his thoughts and dreams with a pencil and then continues his vision with a basis of oil - or acryl paint on canvas. The expression of Mark Pol are often too much for the two dimensional canvas and the result is a three dimensional world, shown in different materials.

Website Mark Pol: http://www.markpol.nl

Mobile: 0031 6 45410400

My work is a visual dialogue between the discarded and the resilient. I find beauty in "fragments"—crushed metal, torn envelopes, weathered stamps, and forgotten notes—transforming these remnants of urban life into harmonious compositions.

In the series submitted for "Bridging Through Colors," I use mixed-media assemblage as a metaphor for healing. Just as a crumpled piece of paper or a discarded object can be integrated into a new, balanced whole, our fragmented experiences and diverse backgrounds can find unity through the universal language of art.Each piece serves as a "bridge": between the industrial and the organic, the personal and the collective, the chaotic and the serene. My process involves layering textures and colors to create a space for quiet reflection. By giving a second life to materials that have been cast aside, I invite the viewer to see the possibility of rebirth and transformation in the world around us.

Tatiana Savchenko is a Los Angeles-based mixed-media artist whose practice explores the intersection of urban materiality, personal memory, and emotional resilience. Her work is characterized by a "visual dialogue" between found objects—such as industrial remnants, vintage correspondence, and discarded fragments—and expressive layers of acrylic and watercolor.In 2026, Savchenko’s presence in the Southern California art scene was highlighted by several key exhibitions. She was featured in the "March/Forward" showcase at Shoebox Projects within the Brewery Arts Complex and participated in the StARTup Art Fair at Venice Beach. Her collaborative artist book, LA: Two Voices, One City, created in partnership with Gregory Desgouttes, exemplifies her commitment to exploring unity and connection through shared creative narratives.By transforming everyday debris into layered, atmospheric compositions, Savchenko invites viewers to find tranquility and "healing" within the chaotic textures of modern life. Her work serves as a bridge between the mundane and the spiritual, aligning perfectly with the global call for empathy and connection through the universal language of art.

Approaching art history with a flair for abstract expressivity and a designer's confidence in choreographing fundamentals of color and shape, Schwartz wields a palette knife along with brushes to animate prismatic color stories in thickly applied oil paint. Her Crystal Auras series are opalescent mixed media paintings created with countless layers of acrylic saturated with mica, interference pigment, and natural minerals that glisten like geodes, and bounce light across their auric topographies. Her largest project, Ricordi d'Italia, merges her explorations of the mellifluous properties of color, light, and surface with direct inspiration drawn from travels to Italy. While these paintings still possess the ethereal presence of Crystal Auras, they demonstrate a more formally definitive, architectural sensibility, being derived from photographic source sketches highlighting geometric details culled from vistas and ruins. At the same time, operations of memory, deconstruction, and fantasy combine to render them in an abstract language, producing moody palimpsests and evocative scenic impressions. With Burst, Schwartz's newest collection, we see small, intimate sections of works from Ricordi d'Italia enlarged into wholly new paintings -- gestural compositions whose exotic rhythms are deeply influenced by her studies of Asian Sumi-e ink painting, which reveal their inner lives as she teases their essences forward from within their faceted depths.

Anne Brawer Schwartz is a dedicated abstractionist whose painterly imagination remains grounded in the world of places and things. While pursuing a degree in Graphic Design from the University of Oregon and further studies at the Gemological Institute of America, Schwartz always maintained a painting practice, which she kept up during her 25-year career as a renowned couture jewelry designer. The legacy of her expertise as a designer is apparent in her abstract paintings and their considerations of detail, drawing, design principles, color, texture, and refracted light. Having some years ago rededicated herself to her painting studio, today her canvases have been shown in numerous group shows and are represented in collections around the world. She frequently works with art consultants and interior designers, placing her works in businesses, hotels, private homes, and design firms. Being based in LA, her paintings have naturally also been featured in numerous television shows and motion pictures.

Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement.

Revision in progress

MISTERIOUSLY ADDICTIVE UNBELIVEABLY INEVITABLE TO QUITE AFTER STARTING.

Terzo(Karen Terzyan) was born in 1962 in Soviet republic Georgia. In 1986 he graduated from Georgia polytechnic institute, for 2 years he worked as on engineer . After Soviet claps he tried his interest and artistic talent in deferent areas. 1997 he opens his art studio to create jewelry.. This is the time when he truly found his passion being creative with experimenting deferent metals. At this point of his life after 5-6 years of mastering deferent techniques he was able to reproduce natur by using his engineering skills . Bronze is the most used material by Terzo, he is unique with his interpretation of human, nature... he was always in the center of art lovers and collectors. In 2008 Terzo had his personal art exhibition in Yerevan Narekatsi art center. After numerous group art exhibitions in Armenia. In 2009 in Holland, same year in Warsaw, in 2017 gallery Amsterdam Whitney, same year group exhibition in New York. Terzo's artwork is a combination of poetry and music in a shape of bronze.

With an artist’s eye, I have always had an appreciation for beautiful things. I have a keen awareness that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so identifying beauty that is acceptable to everyone is an unobtainable feat. Accepting that as a fact allowed me to focus on creating art that is beautiful and pleasing to me. If others like it too, then that is wonderful.

Some of my artistic influences are greats like Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Wassily Kandinsky, and Larry Poons in the art world, and Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott, and Ernst Haas in the world of photography. These artists are where I draw my inspiration, however, I take pains to try to never emulate the greats. It is important to me that I create in the moment; through the relationship that I have built with the God of my understanding, who I believe works through me.

My paintings are, mostly, in the abstract style while my photography is, mostly, the beauty of nature, yet sometimes there is still an abstract bent to it.

I never really start out with a preconceived idea of what I want my end product to be or look like. I paint very organically. I select a canvas, select an initial paint color and select a paint brush, then I let the God of my understanding guide me from there. I become just the vessel which is being used to construct, hopefully, a thing of beauty/interest. I try to keep my conscious, self-willed mind from over-ruling that part of my mind that is God-directed. This is difficult but the outcome, in my opinion, is a more natural, beautiful work of art.

Gregory Thompson

http://www.gathompsonmedia.com

(310) 428-9255

gathom13@hotmail.com

I have had an interest in art and photography since a very early age. For reasons unknown to me, I would always find myself doodling. Whenever there was a pencil/pen and paper around, I would doodle. Sometimes the shapes and forms were recognizable, while other times it would look like anything that I had ever seen before. While in college I took a couple of art classes (basic drawing and ceramics). However, upon graduation I entered into the corporate world. 25+ years later I found myself burning out on corporate jobs and decided to spend the rest of my life pursuing my creative side. I purchased canvas and brushes and acrylic paints and had at it. I also purchased a digital SLR camera and became a shutterbug. Friends that I showed my work to thought it was good and encouraged me to show my work. I have since shared my art and photographs in 3 shows:

1-Alkebulan Cultural Center, Pasadena, CA

2-Lark Gallery, "Photographic Language", Hawthorne, CA

3-Alkebulan Cultural Center, Pasadena, CA

I have chosen to, mostly, work in Acrylic paints but do use other mediums from time to time.

I hope to open the eyes of those who have never really looked to art as a outlet of pleasure; both in the creating and the viewing of the art.

I paint about the beauty of change, inspired by my own personal life experiences, and expressed through images of the short-lived butterfly and the progression of its existence. The colors in my paintings symbolize feelings and emotions that cannot be expressed in words while the traces of pure white untouched canvas represent hopes, dreams and desires that are now unknown but will become clearer in the future. The process of painting nourishes my soul by revealing cocooned memories of life. My art is complete once I feel I have recalled certain stories, capturing and preserving them forever in my images. In similar ways, we all recall our feelings, emotions and experiences, reliving and enjoying them again. Holding onto certain aspects of our pasts and sometimes letting go, we dream of tomorrow.

I was born to Armenian parents in 1979, in Beirut Lebanon. At the age of seven I discovered my passion for art and began creative adventures. Surrounded by different cultures, I adopted painting as a universally understood language of expressing my inner thoughts and emotions. While living through the regional and civil wars of Lebanon between the years of 1982 - 2006, I found refuge and beauty in my art as contrasted with the chaos of my circumstances. In 1993, at the age of 14, I won a first prize in painting from the Armenian Cultural Center, which encouraged me to attend academic art courses and to later develop my talents at Emmagoss Art Center. After graduating high school in 1998 with a diploma in Philosophy, I pursued my passion by specializing in Fine Arts at ALBA (Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts), where I received my Master's Degree in 2003. From 1995 to 2007, I participated in collective art exhibitions in Lebanon. In 2008 I moved to the States with my family, where I currently work and exhibit my art.

In 1997 I began the body of work called “Visual Coding of the Archetypes on the Basis of the Bible and the Biblical Mythology”.

I use symbolic primitivism to present biblical images in a unique and unprecedented manner, similar to the ancient Chinese tradition of telling stories in the form of pictures rather than words.

My exposure to Carl Jung's theory of archetypes, brought forth a series of drawings that reconsidered the raw imagery of icon painting in the context of unconscious reflexive narrative, the kind Jung proposed, that lies at the very back of our brains and motivates us invisibly. I am drawn to cultural archetypes, symbols and motifs that recur in all forms of mythic and fabulistic discourse and in some way bind all of the arts - literature, theater, fine art, dance and music. I have sought to make overt the presence of these archetypes in my own art, not propagandizing for or illustrating Jung’s theories but simply manifesting them in the process of telling tales and setting scenes.

Eugene Vishnevsky (GenVish) was born in 1960 in the city of Kiev, Ukraine. In 1990 he immigrated to Israel, and then to Canada. Eugene has lived in Los Angeles, California since 1993. According to the artist, his style, black and white symbolic primitivism, appeared in 1985. While growing as an artist, GenVish was greatly impressed and influenced by art of Heieronymous Bosch, Pavel Phylonov, Marc Chagall.

My paintings come out as attempts to "translate" from ideograms and fantastic hieroglyphs that I see in the patterns of nature, most often in the tree bark.

It is like listening to a song in an unknown language. Everyone will have their own guess of what the words might say, but the main theme of the song will be recognized.I am so thrilled by the moments of gazing into the patterns of nature when intuition gives a glimpse from the world of archetypes. I think that trees are books and libraries that can be read, perhaps as well as any thing around if we attune to it…

My paintings are sort of "snapshots" from the process of reading the Book of Nature by the mind;these "snapshots" are somewhere in between the imagery and the language.The mind projects meanings onto the shapes and lines, but they are being reflected back, startling and puzzling… there is always a sensation of a mirror dialog, of having been "read" yourself by the Book of Nature...

born in Baku, Azerbajan, lived in Moscow since 16 years old, moved to L.A. in 1992;

M.F.A. in Film &Tv( Animation major) from UCLA;

involved in painting, writing and illustrating, cartooning, mixed media, paper theatre, small size dioramas

These images are reflective of my growing body of work around a theme I’ve been exploring for some time now ... my own relationship with male beauty, eroticism and romanticizing a Queer sensibility. I’ve been re-visioning some of the images I’ve collected over the years, establishing them in a new context, from a different perspective. Many of the men in these images have been collected from ‘hard porn’ sites and I’ve re-positioned them, re-imagined them in a different context, merging them with my own photographs as the basis for this re-visioning. So each work is a layering and recombination of two very different images.

The work is rather emotionally driven. Each of these men or couples has touched me on both an emotional and aesthetic level – caught my eye (and my “heart” so to speak) from a perspective other than raw sexuality, and I strive to communicate that vision in each piece. My thought is to perhaps humanize, respect and admire them from another angle than the context in which they were originally captured. Each of these men exists, after all, outside of the context of pornographic performance. My engagement with these images encompasses many hours of re-thinking and re-imagining who these men might be and my own sense of relationship with them.

Ultimately, I consider it an act of romance --

John Waiblinger:

waibling@yahoo.com

johnwaiblinger.see.me

John began his artistic endeavors towards the end of his 5th decade after excitedly discovering that digital tools finally provided him the means to translate the visions populating his imagination into physical form. Possibly he is an accidental artist, but now that he has found his medium, he continues to explore how to best represent and share his inner vision.

As a self identified 'Queer Artist' his work is primarily focused on his own relationship with male beauty, and romanticizing a Queer sensibility.

In 2014:

May 2014, Featured Artist, Sachet Mixte Arts Journal Fifth Edition (http://www.amazon.com/Sachet-Mixte-Edition-Five-Volume/dp/1499533373)

June 2014, Group Exhibition at Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA

July 2014, Featured Artist, Noisy Rain Gay Art Magazine (http://www.noisyrain.com)

November 2014, Group Exhibition at CMI Gallery, Anaheim, CA

December 2014, Group Exhibition at Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA

December 2014, No Going Back Group Show, White Cloth Gallery, Leeds, UK

December 2014, Featured Artist in 1 Model, 100 Artists

In 2015:

January 2015, 215 Movement - Art Takes the Stage, Group Exhibition, Los Angeles, CA

February 2015, Dirty Show 16, International Erotic Art Exhibition, Detroit, MI

March 2015, Electron Salon, Group Show at Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA

April 2015, LACDA 11th Anniversary Represented Artist Exhibit, Los Angeles, CA

May 2015, publication of the book HomoEros, Meditations on Gay Love & Learning (art book

featuring 71 images with text)

(http://www.amazon.com/HomoEros-Meditations-Longing-Sachet-Mixte/dp/1511812087)

May 2015, Exhibited at the Grand Opening, Brad Brafford LGBT Center on 4th, Santa Ana, CA

June 2015, Solar Spectrum, Group Show at M.D. Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

July 2015, Featured Artist, We Are Obscurred #1 (http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/956502)

December 2015, Snap to Grid, Group Exhibition at Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA

December 2015, Featured Artist, Sachet Mixte Themes: Male Nudes (Volume 7)

(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1522898727)

In 2016:

February 2016, Dirty Show 17, International Erotic Art Exhibition, Detroit, MI

As an artist I am fascinated with creating a heightened reality.Whether painting recognizable imagery or abstraction, I am always in search for what can't be seen with the 5 senses. I'm looking for the intangible. The space between dreams and the waking state. I am always searching for the poetic,the ethereal and rhythms that create mystery in my work. The paintings take there cues from nature and reflect my inner connections,responses and observations of being part of the human experience. There meanings are not literal, but are meant to evoke a response in the viewer.The paintings are left as an open ended story that the viewer is invited to make his/her own conclusion.

Hal yaskulka was born in Brooklyn Ny.

Studied at School of Visual arts,Taught at Art Center College of Design ,Pasadena

My current work, informed by sacred geometry, explores synchronicities, interconnections, aggregation, and relationships. This body of work is primarily painted with gouache, graphite and colored pencil. Previous works have been painted in oil paint and mixed media, including collage and re-purposed objects such as switch plates and screws. Installations have also included lights, projection and sound.

Laurie Yehia is a visual artist based in Los Angeles. Her award-winning artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in private and public collections. She studied painting, drawing, photography an printmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Stanford University, Wesleyan University (Connecticut), the School of Visual Arts (New York) and the Tom Wudl Studio (Los Angeles Arts District.) Her artwork is also informed by her legal practice and philosophies underlying her work with Quantum Leadership Solutions. A founding co-chair of StudioEleven Artists in 2014, she continues to exhibit with the group and co-curated its exhibits in its formative years. Since 2018, she has served as an adjudicator for the annual Santa Monica-Malibu USD’s Districtwide Visual Arts Competition. Yehia served as a Santa Monica Arts Commissioner 2016-2025, as Vice Chair 2023-25, Chair of its Public Art Committee 2019-23, member of its Media Arts Committee 2020-2025 and member of its Bergamot Ad Hoc Committee 2016-2024.

My work comprises a collage of imagery drawn from nature. My cosmology proposes a nonlinear documentation of sublime moments in everyday existence. In my work one may witness a hummingbird frozen in a moment, an angelic figure looking into the viewer, water defying gravity, and a glimpse into a portal to another dimension. Or one might see the remnants and pieces of other visual elements entirely different. I encourage viewers to locate a completely new image, a hidden figure or face, and thereby expose a new reality within my photographs.

I am inspired by Maya Deren’s analysis of her works and her refusal to interpret her work for the viewer. In her various essays, she writes about her predilection not to talk about what her work means to her personally. I too, apply such an approach; I leave artistic analysis up to the viewer. I believe in letting the photograph cultivate an air of mystery. As if remembering a dream, I intend for my work to serve as documentation of a collage of images that collectively create meaning and metaphorical representations of one’s subconscious.

I love blurring the mediums of cinematic stills, painting and photography. I am inspired by the films and experimental photography of Jack Smith. In his film Flaming Creatures (1963) he utilizes visual abstraction and in-camera techniques to warp perspectives. Concerning inspiration from his photography, I specifically resonate with his use of saturation and experimental color schemes from his works.

Torie Zalben is a multimedia photographer. She invites varied perspectives and subjective understandings as a means of interpreting her work. Inspiration from her study of film and meditation synthesize her cosmology as an artist. Born in Los Angeles, CA she attended Loyola Marymount University and received her BA in film & television in 2011, and her MA in video art and media from New York University in 2015. Zalben sits on the board of the NYU Gallatin Dean’s Council, an events committee member of Project Angel Food, an honorary young board member of LA’s new art museum the ICA LA, and an advisory board member of the David Lynch Foundation in Los Angeles. She has currently exhibited at The Pacific Design Center, Unicef’s next Gen Art Party and her work will be featured in this year’s Angel Art located at NEUE House in Hollywood. She has lectured at CalArts and is responsible for helping establishing the CalArts Immersion Group that invites students to create 360° content for the Vortex Immersion Media Dome at LA Center Studios in Downtown LA. She was recently nominated for a 2018 Emerging Artist Grant award from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation.

MA, Video Art & Media, New York University, New York, NY - 2015

BA, Film & TV, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA - 2011

The main accent of my art is not a real world, but a perceived world at the level of emotion, a view BEYOND reality. Mixing drawing techniques and styles of abstraction and realism, with the use of different materials like structural paste, acrylic, wax, gouache, pastel, brush painting, palette knife,drawing and even using my fingers, I am currently focused on celebrating the beauty and symbolism of flowers and trees in particular. In this way, I strive to create in each of our imaginations an inspiring, individual world that everyone sees in different ways.

"A true artist will reveal a vision beyond this world. If you just want to see reality, get yourself a camera!"

I was born in Russia in the historic heart of the Moscow art scene, on Arbat Street. Being very artistic in many ways and living on Arbat street, surrounded by artists and musicians and growing up with their children, I was deeply influenced by this very unique environment. My father was a nationally-renowned writer and translator, and my mother was a graphic artist, a famous illustrator of children's books and magazines. She was also a well-known batik artist, and this fact played a significant role in my life.

Since childhood My passion for music and art was driving me to get both aducation. I graduated a music and art college, Pedagogical University Art institute – Art Graphic faculty and Musician Gnesin`s Academy

I’m a left-handed artist and musician, which has always given me a unique perspective and approach to my art. I often feel I am capturing music on canvas.

Presently I work in the style of surrealism, with a mixture of abstraction and realism. This is a reflection of how I see the world, and it providesan opportunity to represent life in a way that cannot be captured in photographs