Music and Poetry

In 2004, I was finally able to realize my goal of creating a Composite Art. Due to advances in computer technology, I could create composite images from my mind’s eye by altering pictures found on the Internet, on TV, and in movies. My most recent series of work is based on my interpretation of "Structuralism." I am interested in exploring the underpinnings of reality. World views are based on Linguistic Structuralism. Architecture is also a "structure" that influences culture and society. In my new work I deconstruct architectural forms and reassemble the basic elements into structures. I'm creating imaginary cities using digital imagery and creating wall reliefs.

Born: Detroit, MI

Schools: Wayne State University; University of California

at Long Beach; Arizona State University.

B.A. in Art and Sociology.

Graduate Certificate in Counseling.

I have been working and exhibiting as a fine artist for twenty years. I am also a poet and performance artist.

For fifteen years, I worked as the Director for a mental health program. I emphasized the benefits of art and writing to help clients control symptoms. I developed and facilitated several art and writing workshops for mental health consumers.

Since 2003, I have devoted my full attention to art. I work in collage, assemblage, painting and digital imagery. My work has been featured in several Palm Springs galleries including Evocative Arts, M-Modern, The Vault, and Gallery Mystere. I was represented by the Karen Long Gallery in Long Beach, CA. My newest art combines both assemblage and digital prints. Recently I've also experimented with more traditional abstract painting.

Nature inspires me, from walking in the Italian forests surrounding Florence, to primordial volcanic landscapes in Japan to hikes in the hills of the Santa Monica mountain range. I’m interested in the natural world that we view and the relationship to the metaphysical space of the inner world.

In my art the idea of journey and process merge – daily drawings that map a mindscape and idea process in automatic drawing that reflects walks in nature and things seen visually in the inner and outer world combining.

My art also encompasses ideas about structure(s), habitat and space shaped harmoniously in a continuous process inspired by musical composition.

Painting is the laboratory where I explore ideas in a formal structure that holds play and whimsy. I’m exploring biomorphic shapes and word compositions which reflect an environment I live in presently that reminds me of my childhood.

Lisa Bahouth studied art at Rhode Island School of Design and received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture. The award-winning artist and concert pianist exhibited her work in New York City before moving to Los Angeles.

Her art encompasses ideas about architecture, structure(s), habitat and space shaped harmoniously in a continuous process inspired by musical composition.

As she puts it in her own words: "Painting is my primary laboratory where I explore concrete and vague ideas simultaneously, in a formal structure that hopefully holds some play and whimsy. Although my work has the appearance of abstraction, it is not non-objective; conveying references to rooms, interiors and conceptual spaces. Paintings, drawings and installations often refer to each other as I build upon groups of work. "

In her more recent works, she has been exploring the creation of biomorphic shapes and word compositions merging into an all-encompassing metaphysical style.

Bahouth’s work is currently on exhibit internationally in Japan, Russia, Armenia, and the US.

My works generally are the result of a continuous refinement of established techniques and experimentation painted on canvas or paper with mixed media materials. Mostly subjects are based on abstracted impressions and memories of different architectural sites I have visited throughout the world. Ancient, and far away places and their unique moods created by light and changing color evoke intense responses and compel me to create my work. In order to capture every mood to my personal satisfaction,

the surfaces have to be superimposed and juxtaposed, creating major and minor accents with some kind of harmony.

I feel that the completion of my paintings is a journey unto itself, of color and feelings. At times I insert snapshots and add

J. Natasha Kostan lives and works in Los Angeles and has been painting in multimedia for the past 30 years. She has studied Fashion and Interior Design in England and Fine Arts and Art History in the United States, and received her BFA from Immaculate Heart College. Her work includes oils, acrylics, mixed media and collage on canvas and on paper.

She studied printmaking extensively under Maurizio Barattucci, a well-known and highly respected artist and instructor. The printmaking process has been an inspiration for developing intriguing primary surfaces and the metamorphosis of Natasha's works on paper. Natasha states: "Ancient, and far away places and their unique moods created by light and changing color evoke intense responses and compel me to create my work. In order to capture every mood to my personal satisfaction, the surfaces have to be superimposed and juxtaposed, creating major and minor accents with some kind of harmony."

Her eclectic style is a manifestation of her multi-hued vision of the world. Her work expresses her experience of living in and traveling through several cultures. "Her palette reflects warmth, balance and strength," said the late Barbara Hagar, California artist, teacher and mentor with whom Natasha studied for many years. Numerous corporations as well as private collectors throughout the United States and England own her paintings. She has exhibited solo and in groups in the United States and Armenia.

"Dance with me" series is the latest artistic endeavor of Shahla Bebe to capture dancing motion in the form of Digital Art.

Diversity of dancer’s body movements, colorful flowing costumes, light and shadows have been combined to created unique mystery art.

The images have been taken in the most expressive moments of dancer’s performance in front of a live audience. A collaboration of Shahla Bebe and various Southern California dance companies and their ensemble casts.

Shahla Bebe is an award-winning photographer, was trained in graphic art, photography and post-production.

By 1996, photography had become Shahla’s profession and passion. Her life experiences led her to fine art photography as the best medium for artistic expression. Shahla has maintained a keen involvement all throughout in different groups and organizations dealing with political and social concerns. She believes that the Digital Art creates unique and powerful means to speak about issues that torment or exhilarate her.

Shahla Bebe’s Digital art as well as photography has been on display in various group exhibitions in the States, Canada, and Europe.

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 have been painting now for 8 years after retirement from research and teaching in the fields of Structural Optimization and Design Theory at California State University, Northridge. All the while enjoying abstract art as one of the purest forms of creativity.

My approach to painting is just to follow an inner spark which moves me forward - a joyous and satisfying experience, difficult to put into words.

I really enjoy experimenting with the blending of multimedia on canvas to create novel and thought provoking effects. Visual impact is what I strive to achieve.

I have also experimented with the computer manipulation of my painting images.

All my work can be seen at www.spuntart.com

MSME USC 1966; Professor CSUN 1965 - 2007

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.