Hannah Duggan is an artist based in Athens, GA. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia.

Hannah explains the work by saying, “Print media is an ephemeral entity; it is fragile, easily discarded and becoming obsolete in the digital age. Current events are similarly quickly replaced and forgotten with the abundance of information and stimuli of mass communication. My process is a dedication to time. Sifting through newspaper articles, books, images from magazines and other miscellaneous forms of print media to create a collage which I then paint in a representational manner is time consuming and seemingly redundant. Why should I not just use the original photograph? I believe painting a photograph preserves and elevates the selected image. I see a painting as a memorial; a willing sacrifice of time.”

Nick Larsen was born in Reno, Nevada and earned a BFA from the University of Nevada, Reno and is pursuing an MFA from The Ohio State University.

Nick explains his work by saying, “Working with textiles led my work naturally to the queer space between sculpture and image, material form and printed surface. This no man’s land continues to be rich territory to mine; it feels related to living in the desert and to the hybrid image-objects I first became aware of while working in the archaeology field there. When resources are limited, an object that attends to multiple needs makes a kind of sense (for example, a lean-to shade structure that’s also a timeline or a poncho that’s also a map and a ghost of past mistakes). Some of this has to do with language, as in, When is that circle of canvas a badge, a patch, or both? This question and others driving the work at the moment are grounded in a handful of ongoing preoccupations: punk merch, the aesthetics of the American West, naming conventions, hanky code and other material signals, vestiges and artifacts, anti-milestones, parallel histories, mapping as a natural response to feeling lost, and the meaningful human activity that transforms a place into a site.”

Francesco Camillo Giorgino, known as Millo, is an artist and muralist based in Pescara, Italy.

He took part to several street art festival and NGO art event all around world. He has been painting in USA, Russia, China, Australia, Thailand, Argentina, Chile, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Uk, Netherland, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ucraine and of course Italy.
His works have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Chicago, Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Milan, Rome, Florence and more.
In 2014 he won the B.Art competition that enabled him to paint 13 multi-story murals in the city of Turin (IT).

Darren Reid is a contemporary realist painter based in Derbyshire.

What makes Reid’s work so appealing to art collectors is the finesse, fine detail and application of paint to his pictures, which furthermore possess a remarkable realism. Each painting takes Reid around 250 hours to complete. The fact that on closer inspection his ‘photographic’ rendition reveals layers of acrylic makes them all the more extraordinary.

His subject matter is refreshingly unconventional. Rather than focus on sunny pictorial scenes, Reid is drawn to stark urban or industrial landscapes under louring skies. Although his work has been classified as ‘photorealism’ in the past, the way in which Reid embellishes each of his paintings to produce a finished artwork is of a hyper-realistic nature.

Born in Wilkes-Barre, PA in 1978, Adam Vinson began his formal training studying commercial illustration at Luzerne County Community College. There he befriended a young instructor whose invitation to pursue a more comprehensive examination of drawing and painting transpired into a three year course of instruction under the tutelage of Anthony Waichulis. Upon finishing the curriculum, he enrolled in the storied Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His experiences within those halls broadened his appreciation of the artist’s capacity for innovation beneath the weight of a dense and capricious art history. Having achieved recognition as a still life and trompe l’oeil painter, Adam’s symbolic interplay of contemplation, humor and irony became a distinguishing hallmark of his early oeuvre. But his deference for what he regards as the “fickle nature of the muse, who may whisper in an ear one moment and stomp on a toe the next”, has encouraged him to explore the profundity of each picture in the absence of a genre’s directive.

Rogier van der Zwaag is an artist based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Each of Rogier’s works is a new step in his search for synergy between sound and image, reality and imagination. Like the scientists of old, he starts with nothing but a hypothesis – and a camera. As he experiments gather speed they take over his studio, his house and his life. Props pile up, hard drives are overloaded and showers become a distant memory. Yet all this is forgotten when he releases his creations, as time, shape and perspective are turned inside out to dance across our screens.

Aleksandar Todorovic is an artist and illustrator based in Belgrade, Serbia.

Aleksandar explains his work by saying, “For this exhibition i made various types of works in various painting technique all connected with clear narrative, but for the first time i made Icon-like works, which are made in the way of traditional Orthodox Icons, on wood board, with egg tempera and real gold plating. “Buy it All, Eat It All” acts both as the title of the exhibition and as an ironic catchphrase that depicts the ever growing consuming-obsessed era. It can be perceived as an inverse mantra, that shouts for awareness and criticism through its conceptual repetition.”

John Tindel is a multi-disciplined artist and designer. TINDEL was born in Opelika, Alabama, raised in Panama City Beach, Florida and schooled at the University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama. Tindel currently works in Atlanta, Georgia and is one half of TINDELMICHI: Two Fat Southern Boys That Paint.

Elsa Munoz is an artist based in Chicago, IL. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the American Academy of Art in Chicago.

Elsa explains her inspiration by saying, “Coming across poetry in schoolbooks gave me my first experiences with beauty and introduced me to the universal themes of our collective human experience. In a very literal sense, poetry untethered me from the limits of my surroundings. And this is when I realized that beauty mattered deeply— not only as a salve from ugliness, but as an introduction to a deeper conversation with ourselves, the world around us, and the vast uncertainty within and beyond those borders. “

Tori Hamel holds a BFA from the Accademia di Belle Arti of Lecce (Italy, 1983), a post-graduate Certificate in Computer Graphics from Sheridan College (Canada, 1991), the Golden Key National Honour Society Award from the University of Toronto (Specialist Programme in Psychology, 1997). She is the recipient of the Lubiam Prize (Milan, 1983) and many other awards.

Toni describes her work as “an illustrated commentary on human frailties“. Rooted in story-telling, her art practice draws from personal experiences and outward observations to create thematic bodies of work that reflect on and interpret the psychological unease characteristic of our age. Virtues and vices, the holy and the profane, the good and the bad all share equal weight in her work and supply an infinite source of material for her investigations. Such conceptual framework leads Hamel to work across disciplines: drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations are rendered in both traditional and non-traditional materials and are selected based on their ability to support the particular message she needs to convey. Pointing to historical and psychological references while tackling issues of universal interest, Hamel’s narratives question our behaviour to eventually alert us about the repercussions of our current thinking models.

Adrian Arleo is a ceramic sculptor living outside Missoula, Montana. She studied Art and Anthropology at Pitzer College (B.A. 1983) and received her M.F.A. in ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design in 1986. Arleo was an Artist in Residence at Oregon College of Art and Craft in 1986-87, and at Sitka Center For Art and Ecology in 1987-88.

Arleo’s work is exhibited nationally and internationally, and is in numerous public and private collections, including The World Ceramic Exposition Foundation, Icheon, Korea; The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, Georgia; Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT; Greenwich House Pottery, NY, NY; and Microsoft, Seattle, WA. Arleo received awards from the Virginia A. Groot Foundation in 1991 and 1992, and in 1995, she was awarded a Montana Arts Council Individual Fellowship. Some recent publications include: Montana Quarterly, article by Charles Finn, vol. 8, #4, 2012; Ceramics: Art and Perception | Technical, review by Matthew Kangas, issue #88, 2012; Ceramics Monthly Magazine, Working Sculptor Feature, Jan. 2010; and the book The Figure in Clay: Contemporary Sculpting Techniques by Master Artists, published by Lark Books, 2005.

Adrian explains the work by saying, “For over thirty years, my sculpture has combined human, animal and natural imagery to create a kind of emotional and poetic power. Often there’s a suggestion of a vital interconnection between the human and non-human realms; the imagery arises from associations, concerns and obsessions that are at once intimate and universal. The work frequently references mythology and archetypes in addressing our vulnerability amid changing personal, environmental and political realities. By focussing on older, more mysterious ways of seeing the world, edges of consciousness and deeper levels of awareness suggest themselves.”

Daniel Segrove is an artist living and working in San Francisco, CA. He earned a BFA from the Academy of Art University.

Daniel explains his work by saying, “My work focuses on my own perspective on life, identity and empathy. I paint and draw people who are close to me or if they have a story I can relate too. My style consists of meticulous studies of anatomy and form, as well as pieces that explore a more emotional and expressive theme.”

Louise Zhang is a Chinese-Australian artist based in Sydney, Australia. Spanning painting, sculpture and installation, her work negates the space between the attractive and repulsive. With an interest in horror cinema, particularly body horror, Zhang investigates the idea of the visceral as medium, method and symbol in negotiating horror as art form.

Scott Fischer graduated with honors from the Savannah College of Art and Design and since that time his brush has steadily been carving a path along the illustration landscape. Scott is the regular cover artist for Joss Whedon’s ‘Buffy-The Vampire Slayer’, ‘Angel’ as well as the ‘Angel & Faith’ comic books (Dark Horse Comics).

He is the silhouette artist behind the #1 NY Times best selling books, ‘Peter Pan in Scarlet’ . (Simon and Schuster) and Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer’s ‘Between the Lines’ (Simon and Schuster) and is a notable cover artist for, Simon and Schuster, Tor, Harper Collins, Scholastic, Penguin, Del Rey, Random House, Daw, etc.

Fully illustrated middle grade fiction credits include the New York Times best selling ‘Magesterium’ series by Cassandra Claire and Holly Black (Scholastic), ’The Secrets of Dripping Fang’ series by Dan Greenburg (Harcourt) and the ’Scary School series of books by Derek the Ghost (Harper Collins). And ‘Ghost Prison’ by Joseph Delaney (Sourcebooks Fire). His Children’s Book credits include ‘Jump!’ (Simon and Schuster) with over 3,000,000 books in print, ‘Twinkle’ (Simon and Schuster) and the ‘Lottie Paris’ series of books written by Angela Johnson (Simon and Schuster).

Scott is well known in fantasy art and gaming art circles, contributing to Magic- The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, League of Legends and as a conceptual character designer for companies like Microsoft and Disney, on their TRON franchise. As an instructor, Scott is a core faculty member at the world famous Illustration Master Class and SmArt School.

Amy Feger is an artist based in Montevallo, AL. She earned a BFA in Painting from the University of Louisville and an MFA in Painting from the University of Alabama.

Amy explains her work by saying, “Landscape is a perennial subject of my work. My life and artwork are situated on the cusp of “The Information Age” and “The Anthropocene.” My praxis for developing a body of work starts with observations within the landscape. Often these places are locations near my home, my local landscape. I look for surprises in a place I consider familiar. I often find those surprises along the edges where natural and manmade systems are conjoined. I continue to explore these landscapes using Google Earth’s 3D renderings, which give a first person point-of-view on the ground and are compiled from topographic data layered with satellite images. I discovered anomalies or glitches in the data that generate otherworldly images representing actual places. Looking critically at how visual language mediates the perception of the landscape being represented meaning is implied through institutionalized representations of the landscape created by non-art institutions such as, the state transportation department road maps, or these Google Earth digital renderings. Examining the language of visual communication employed by these entities, I compare my personal experiences and observations in these same or comparable landscapes to the presentation of the place in public media. These discoveries in this virtual landscape become the source material that I use to compose images. From these “virtual” experiences I created a series of paintings capturing the essence of a virtual space representing a physical place. In an effort to realize some meaning for my existence on this planet at this point in geologic and human history, and in response to the lack of public awareness of or concern for the threatened local and global environmental infractions, I am compelled to create work that raises awareness of the environmental impact that humans have on the landscape.”

Joe Dreher aka JOEKINGATL, is an Artist, Architect, Photographer and Poet based in Atlanta, GA. He is a graduate of Savannah College of Art & Design with a Master of Architecture Degree and the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement in Architecture Award, AIA Design Award and the Commitment to Sustainability Award.

Joe explains his work by saying, “I consider myself a social artist. My work is mainly described as installation art. I use a number of tools and mediums to create my work including photography, murals, street art, wheatpaste, painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry to name a few. People are my primary interest and it is my appreciation for people that informs so much of my creative work. My work is always multi-dimensional because I see a world where people are not flat. They are not obstacles, or heroes, or rogues, or saints. They are people – dimensional and deep. There are no strangers in your world when you meet people fully prepared to accept who they are. My work does not seek to capture or take from them but to give and to elevate them. I pride myself on making art that is low in cost but high in concept, fast in execution but lasting in relevance, inclusive and many times interactive. I welcome and enjoy collaboration and I have a way turning personal projects inside out, finding a way to make the work be less about the author and more integral to a community. I have collaborated with artists of all types including dancers both as a performer and exhibitor. I am inspired by others artists and people in my community and I believe in giving back for the opportunities i have been given. I do so by creating new opportunities not just for myself but to give others a chance to create. No matter how my work may evolve, or into what media I may explore, you will always find that I center myself through my great affection for people.”

Joey Slaughter earned his BFA from Memphis College of Art. He received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Upon graduating Cranbrook, Slaughter was awarded the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. He has received the Louisiana Division of the Arts Career Enhancement Grant, He has been published in New American Paintings magazine three times. This year he was nominated the Louisiana Prize from South Arts and received the Sam and Adele Golden residency. He is currently living in Ruston, LA, and is Associate Professor of Art at Louisiana Tech University.

Joey explains the work by saying, “My paintings and constructions investigate the “look” of digital information as it is transmitted around us, providing an overabundance of stimuli and therefore, distractions. I create abstract works that references conversations, usually a direct communication between two people. I wonder how a simple conversation is absorbed between people, how they’re connected, and what the conversational wavelengths would look like. The main idea is to create abstractions from conversations if you could see sound waves from analogue and digital devices passing through and around people. I imagine it to be very chaotic, yet beautiful. I imagine a sentence or phrase as a specific color harmony, and I use color as wavelengths/spectrums our eyes can see. Sometimes they are subtle transitions of color and others are intentionally dissonant. To illustrate the physical presence of all this information, these symbols are then expanded into the 2D and 3D realms through hands on and digital applications. These cut drawings are then combined with painting and other hand-made pieces, resulting in a blend of tight and loose, machine and man. They are not at odds with one another, but rather work together to make a unified whole. The combination of these traditional and non-traditional processes is important, and allows for a play between spontaneity and precision, such as occur in conversations.”

Caitlin McCormack received a BFA in Illustration in 2010 from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia PA. She lives with two cats in South Philly and crochets to forget the world, in the chaos of her slovenly, nest-like studio.

Caitlin explains her work by saying, “The material out of which my work is composed acts as an alchemical conduit between the garment and the clothesline; it acknowledges the latter as a symbol of the ancestry and familiar bonds which have greatly informed my work. I wish to give the impression that a garment has disintegrated and reformed itself in the image of a tenacious animal’s remains, representative of both the persistence of memory and the significance of cloth and thread in the realm of human experience.”

O’Neil Scott is an artist based in Philadelphia, PA.

O’Neil explains his work by saying, “I am a self-taught, Philadelphia-based artist. Influenced early on by both my grandfather and uncle, each of whom pursued creative careers, I took to drawing as a child and spent much of my youth filling the pages of empty notebooks with images of individuals, both fictional and real. In college, I had hoped to study art. But I’d been awarded a football scholarship from Syracuse University and therefore had to prioritize my activities, which meant dropping my studio courses since they conflicted with the school’s training schedule. While I ended up majoring in Information Technology and then later earned my MBA at the University of Delaware, I never lost my passion for art. Rather, it remains a vehicle that I continue to utilize as a means to give voice to my innermost concerns. Inspired by the Old Masters as well as contemporary realists, I always have been captivated by portraiture and its capacity to impart the complexities that comprise the human condition. It wasn’t until I stopped working with acrylic and started experimenting with oil two years ago that I started spending so much more time at the easel. Not only have I found the material’s pliability so much easier to navigate, but it’s ease of use has pushed me to delve that much deeper into my subject matter and risk voicing my trepidation about the many issues that I hold close to my heart, such as social justice, climate change, police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. At their core, I want my paintings to invoke mindfulness, to inspire contemplation, and to convey understanding.”

Seth Clark grew up in Seekonk, Massachusetts and studied close to home in Providence at the Rhode Island School of Design. He earned his BFA in Graphic Design, focusing primarily on print design and alternative typography. During this time, he discovered collage. This method of hands-on, spatial development took a major role in his digital work as well as his physical works on wood and paper. His drawings and paintings have shown nationally including exhibitions in the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Chautauqua Institution, Recent honors include Best in Show at the Three Rivers Arts Festival and publication in New American Paintings. Clark is a 2012 Flight School Fellow and was named Pittsburgh’s 2015 Emerging Artist of the Year by the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. He is the recipient of three Design Excellence Awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Pittsburgh.

Seth explains the work by saying, “My work focuses on deteriorating architecture. These structures, designed to be huge forces of permanence, are continually being challenged, destroyed and forgotten. I see an inherent honesty in the face of my subject. Among all of the clutter—the shards of wood and layers of rubble—there remains a gentle resolve. As I work, I study these structures incessantly. The buildings, often on the brink of ruin, have something very energized and present trying to escape from their fragmented reality. These images are created through an ambitious layering process. I collage with found paper to reflect the fragmented and complex tactility of decay. Once a dimensional foundation is achieved, various mixed media are used to bring definition and depth to these raw materials. The processes of collage and drawing alternate between themselves lending to a seamless blend of the two mediums.”

Philadelphia-based visual artist, Dennis McNett, is a storyteller at heart, whose inventive and imaginative personal mythology about the world directly translates into the lively works he creates. Drawing from varied sources, including traditional folklore as well as popular culture stories, he continues to innovate while still honoring age-old traditions.

McNett has over twenty years of experience specializing in woodcarving and wood block/relief printmaking. Using a V-notch chisel he creates rich surfaces and deep contours which have a living quality about them. While wood engraving itself has its roots in 2D applications, McNett transcends those limitations by using carved markings as the basis for relief prints which become collage materials. They are then used to bring to life grandiose, three-dimensional installations at museums, art centers, galleries, city streets and other diverse environments. Despite the scale, McNett always starts with patterns and lines and slowly builds upon them adding depth and complexity to his narratives.

Having shown internationally at spaces like The Victoria and Albert Museum in London and notable domestic spaces like the Jonathan LeVine Gallery and Joshua Liner Gallery in New York City, McNett has also contributed as a visiting artist/lecturer at Universities throughout the country in addition to receiving numerous residencies.

Xiao Wang is a Chinese painter who lives and works in the US. He studied at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland where he received the BFA degree in Painting and Printmaking. He continued his study at San Francisco Art Institute and earned his MFA degree in Painting. Wang currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA.

Wang has shown internationally in Europe and California. In 2014 He received Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award from San Francisco Foundation. During recent years he was awarded 1st place for Anne Bremer Memorial Prize, and the silver award for Art Forward Contests, he was nominated for SECA award from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2016. His work has been featured in publications such as ArtAscent, Fresh Paint Magazine, and New American Paintings.

Xiao Wang explains the work by saying, “My current body of work focuses on realism painting. I use mellow colors and thin glazes to render realistic figures, objects, and spaces that evoke a sense of the sinister. In these works, I examine horror and cult film to create imageries of violence, danger, and tension. These paintings feature characters at uncertain moments, situated in disrupted narratives with montages of unrelated still images. By appropriating the format of film stills and Roland Barthes’ Hermeneutic Code, I source from photographs of sites and models, which I manipulate digitally to build “sets” to paint from. They often reference color palettes, compositions, lightings, and characters of films by David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock. I also look to Mathew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle to study the structuring of eternal logic within fragmented and isolated narratives. My work distorts and removes narrative imageries from their contexts in order to reveal the uncanniness of moments and to create suspense. They draw logical and philosophical associations to each other and fabricate a fictional yet autobiographical theme around storytelling, fear, the uncanny and fate”.

James Connolly is a British visual artist based in Brooklyn. Using acrylics, he paints on vintage album covers he finds in junk stores all over the world. James chose the medium of old record covers because he enjoys playing with the context of nostalgic imagery. “There’s something interesting about taking images of the past and the feelings they evoke and twisting them into something unfamiliar’. His work has been featured in many leading art and design sites including Ignant, Beautiful Decay, This Isn’t Happiness, and UrbanOutfitters.com.

Darla Jackson is a sculptor living in Philadelphia. She received a BFA in Sculpture from Moore College of Art in 2003, and after receiving a John S. and James L. Knight Arts Challenge Grant in both 2011 and 2013, founded the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, a membership based community sculpture studio.

Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions locally, including galleries and museums such as the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Seraphin Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Woodmere Art Museum, and a Wind Challenge exhibition at the Fleisher Art Memorial, and across the country at galleries such as Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City, California, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, and Parlor Gallery in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She has shown internationally in Belgium and Germany and has lectured about her work at venues including The Barnes Foundation.

Darla explains her work by saying, “My sculpture is an exploration of human emotions. In order to express these ideas, I use feelings that are turned into recognizable visual objects, or symbols, and combine them with other elements to create a duality. Through the anthropomorphism of animals, use of strong body language and symbolism, I can convey these emotions and ideas in a way that is more approachable for viewers. The end result is familiarity with an oddness that makes it compelling.”

William Glaser is a photographer currently based in New York City working for the New York Times and a recent graduate of The Savannah College of Art and Design photography program. William is the recipient of the 2017 New York Time’s Thomas Morgan Visual Journalism Internship in Photography and travels extensively across the United States.

William’s work celebrates regional-specific lifestyles, objects, and landscapes in a documentary style that leads to intimate and open-ended imagery. His images have been shown in galleries in New York, Massachusetts, Georgia, and Tennessee.

Eve De Haan is a London based artist. Having left university with a degree in Theology, Eve has spent time creating; she has written, illustrated and self-published a children’s book, taken on interior design projects, and produced a collection of artwork using neon lights.

Her love of the written word has given her a leaning towards words in her art, she delves into the world of expression and of nuance. Eve finds neon as a medium to be perfect to accentuate how there are gradients and shades of meaning within a statement. She believes light truly does add shade to the meaning of a statement.

Her latest body of work has been reflective of the imposing nature of technology on youth culture within society today.

Danny Samuels graduated with a BFA in Illustration from Ringling College of Art and Design. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1991. After working on the movie Boxtrolls at Laika Entertainment he moved to Los Angeles, CA where he worked as a model maker, fabricator, and sculptor for stop motion animation shows like Robot Chicken and other T.V. specials. He has recently been doing work for Mattel and Disney. His sculptures have been placed on display in multiple galleries in Florida and California including Gallery Nucleus, IAM8Bit, The Hive, the Best of Ringling Illustration show, 2010 Illest of Illustration Show, and the Society of Illustrators Student Show in New York City. He has been an assistant teacher for the Ringling Pre-College Perspective Program, helping with multiple classes including: 3d Design and Figure Sculpture in Clay.

Courtney Mattison is an internationally recognized artist and ocean advocate working to inspire policy makers and the public to conserve our changing seas. She hand-sculpts intricately detailed ceramic sculptural works inspired by the fragile beauty of ocean ecosystems—primarily coral reefs—and the human-caused threats they face. Courtney’s delicate and often large-scale ceramic sculptural works have been exhibited at prominent science and art venues including the Washington D.C. headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Tang Museum, the Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in an effort to promote awareness for the protection of our blue planet.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Courtney received an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree in marine ecology and ceramic sculpture from Skidmore College in 2008 and a Master of Arts degree in environmental studies from Brown University with coursework at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011. Her work has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, Science Magazine, Colossal and other prominent international science/art/culture publications. In 2015 Origin Magazine named her one of 100 top “Ocean Heroes” and the International SeaKeepers Society named her Artist of the Year.

Courtney explains her work by saying, “I love coral reefs for being exotic, diverse and often venomous. Perhaps it’s because I’m small and I respect small creatures that build big beautiful things, but I feel like I relate to corals—arguably one of the least relatable animals—on a very deep level. Sadly, reefs are so threatened by our greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and overfishing that scientists agree that they may cease to function by the end of this century. As an ocean “artivist” (artist-activist) with a background in marine ecology, I believe art impacts our emotions and can move us to value the blue planet we live on in ways that scientific data often cannot. We protect what we care about and we care about what we know and understand. Art can bring the beauty and peril of reefs above the surface and into view and can inspire us to protect the ocean.”

Dorielle Caimi was born in Alexandria, VA, USA in 1985, and was raised in New Mexico. She has lived in Seattle, Oakland, South Korea, and Washington D.C. She currently lives and works in Albuquerque.

She completed a BFA (Summa Cum Laude) in Painting from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA in 2010 and a Master Class in Painting at the Art Students League of Denver, CO. with Jenny Morgan in 2013. Caimi’s work has been shown/featured internationally, and in publications such as PoetsArtists (cover x 2), American Art Collector, Hi-Fructose, Combustus, Juxtapoz, and Printer’s Devil Review (cover).

Dorielle explains her work by saying, “The main thrust of my paintings explores the relationship between the grace and angst that innately occupy our lives. Fusing contemporary painting techniques with classical figurative painting, I am exploring how the dualities of “positive” and “negative” influences and emotions can create ease through acknowledgement. Historically, my work has exclusively illustrated women. However, my newer work incorporates men, or the “masculine” into the exploration of how we impact, perceive, and dance with each that we may understand ourselves in a more empathetic and interdependent context. In my future work, I plan to transcend gender altogether.”

Adrian Gouet is an artist based in Santiago, Chile. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from P. Universidad Católica de Chile and a Masters in Visual Arts from the University of Chile.

Adrian explains his work by saying, “From Muybridge’s chronophotographic experiments to the latest slow motion technology devices, my practice is about representing potentially emotive situations through an aseptic and depersonalized pictorial treatment. The emphasis lies in the strictly formal description of all kinds of sublime explosions, incredible energetic discharges, eruptions, sublimations, vertigos, falls, suspensions, precipitations, disintegrations, deformations, fusions and confusions of all states of matter. That suspension, that astonishment, the physical containment of that bordering moment of change and transformation, is what I seek in painting.”

Jedediah Morfit received his MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he won the Award of Excellence, and the Dean’s Award for Graduate Teaching. Morfit’s white, bas-relief technique is modeled after ancient ceramic friezes, but his parts are made of urethane plastic and full of contemporary symbolism. Morfit demonstrates his casting technique, and describes the medieval and post-apocalyptic imagery of his work. Morfit is also a professor of sculpture at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

As an illustrator and designer, Prof. Morfit’s editorial work has appeared in magazines as diverse as Forbes and Mother Jones, and his commercial client list includes Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Infinity Broadcasting.

Kerry Shaw is an artist and illustrator who splits time between Hermosa Beach, CA and Toronto, ON, Canada. Her commercial clients include Nike, Apple, Sony, Ford Motors, Las Vegas Tourism, Cialis, Johnson & Johnson and many others.

Kerry explains the “Water Brother” series by saying, “Water Brother is a series dedicated to my brother Stuart, who died in 2001. These images are part of an ongoing series of landscapes and waterscapes captured on and near lakes, rivers and oceans. Combined images from Paraguay, Aruba, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Cuba, USA and all over Canada. I’ve learned to rearrange my longing for my departed brother, by celebrating his existence through epic imagery. I now see him in all forms of waters’ change. He is part of the cycle, a body gone back to the molecular beginnings we all come from. He is a shape shifter and these are my visual meditations. The images presented here are made up of multiple layers and combinations of captures, sculpted together to create a larger story. Each detailed nuance and gesture of cloud and waters’ surface is a character. They are carefully painted into a choreographed, waterscape dance. When all images are hung in a strategic row, they align into their own wave pattern.”.

Using only his iPhone, his desk lamp, and his expansive collection of miniatures, Derrick Lin re-creates the everyday ups and downs of office life.

Derrick’s new book, “Work, Figuratively Speaking: The Big Setbacks and Little Victories of Office Life” will be released in October 2017.

Derrick explains his work by saying, “I have always been fascinated by all things miniature and by small details, so it occurred to me that the miniature figures, with the contrast of their size and their lively poses, could be a great medium to express our many emotions. In the advertising industry, every day moves fast, and sometimes it can be stressful. Our work days are never short of those little moments any agency person will immediately understand. But I realized that those moments were actually universal and that anyone who works in an office could easily relate to them. I try to find the amusing light out of our daily frustrations, be it stress, escape or imagination. I actually start with the captions. I look for a humorous and straightforward way to visualize each idea, and then I think about how to plant the punch line alongside the picture without being too obvious.”

Jessica Brilli has been drawing and painting since her childhood. Working in a style that encompasses American realism and 20th century graphic design aesthetics, Brilli’s paintings reveal the beauty in everyday scenes and objects.

Inspired by Kodachrome slides and generations-old photographs gathered from yard sales and basements across America, Brilli brings a contemporary eye to subjects often overlooked or forgotten. She sees her paintings as a way of giving renewed life to images that haven’t been seen in decades. Having had no direct experience with the images, the process of painting them takes on a different dimension for Brilli; like borrowing memories and elaborating, editing, or directing stories that intersect the knowledge and assumptions of two people who are strangers to each other.

Brilli earned her BFA in painting at the University of Rhode Island, and received a certificate in graphic design from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA. Brilli’s work has been recognized in numerous publications and respected internet based venues domestically and abroad. Her paintings have been featured in solo and group shows throughout New England, and most recently in South Korea where her work was featured on the cover of Heren Magazine in celebration of the publication’s 10th anniversary exhibition.

Daniel Rich was born in Ulm, Germany and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He earned a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA.

Daniel explains the work by saying, “I translate photographs into paintings that call attention to implicit political and social narratives transcribed in the built environment. The architectural image is represented in my work to introduce a dialogue about changing political power structures, failed utopias, the impacts of ideological struggles, war and natural upheavals. I am interested in the highly symbolic role architecture plays in politics and its power to function as an icon of our lived experience, a portrait of an existential phenomenology whose features manifest where society is at one particular moment in history. My paintings point to the shifting of the significance and meaning in both images of places and the places themselves. My interest in the potential divergence and duality of images and the media’s role in covering and presenting issues to the public is closely tied to a pictorial architecture, and its ability to act as an icon for political, religious and social systems and beliefs. I collect and appropriate photographs I find on the Internet and in newspapers, in response to radio and television broadcasts, and through research and reading. The mediated image is painted in order to invest the picture with the capability to function as a signifier and to evoke meaning and discourse.”

Jen Lewin is an internationally renowned light and interactive sculptor based out of New York City. Over the last 15 years, Lewin has honed her highly technical medium to fabricate large-scale interactive sculptures that combine light, sound, and motion to encourage community interaction. From responsive sound and light forms that incorporate dance, to woven video curtains that reflect movement, to giant robotic moths that flutter in response to human touch, Lewin’s use of technology as a medium challenges popular conceptions of new media works and their limitations. Focusing on pieces made for public use, she thinks beyond a traditional art exhibition to create an experience that brings vibrancy to neighborhoods, parks, and public spaces. At once organic and electronic, Jen Lewin’s playful sculptures leave viewers enchanted and surprised while encouraging delight through their engagement with the work. In this sense, visitors to Jen Lewin’s works become artists themselves.

Jen explains her work by saying, “My intention is always to create beautiful objects that bring the community together. I take inspiration from nature to create organic forms that reflect local geography. I often use light and sound in my work, I find that these elements naturally engage people. This engagement is a driving force in all of my work. There is a current that travels through people when they are together, experiencing. Using this current, I endeavor to transport the audience to a memory of feeling connected, safe and loved. Through the art and technology, learning and play – these interactions are as valued to me as the art itself. I install interactive pieces in spaces where people are naturally gathering and creating a smart, social space for the community to strengthen relationships. Placing something interactive in a well-traveled and familiar area takes people by surprise and encourages a moment of play, leading to a profound contextual, connected community response in the space. I find that with a slight nudge, people start to engage not only with the art but with each other as well. I have a desire to engage the community not just through my installations, but also with the powerful technology that drives them. I’ve developed a system that uses custom, stand-alone hardware and software to create complex, robust, interactive works with longevity; this technical process is just as important as the creative. My use of technology as a medium often challenges popular conceptions.”

Terry Arena is an artist living and working in Ventura, CA. Her newest project involves an installation of delicate, intricate drawings of bees.

Terry explains the work by saying, “My most recent series, Symbiotic Crisis, explores the vulnerability of the honeybee and, in turn, our food sources. The growth of one-third of the crops we eat are supported by pollination from honeybees. This is to include direct consumables such as fruits, vegetables, and nuts and indirectly in the crops that are grown to facilitate the production of meat and dairy products. The role of the honeybee is so integral to crop propagation, bees are transported by trucks to farmlands in need of pollination. Recently, the mysterious vanishing of the bees has been covered in public media. Though studies have been conducted, causes of these bee declines are not yet definitive. Considering our relationship with the environment and the impact bees have on our food sources, the detailed renderings are drawn on food tins and repurposed materials and are presented inside a box truck. The reductive, yet analytical nature of the graphite drawings are reminiscent of nature studies and botanical drawings of old masters. Though the appearance and quantity of drawings is somewhat mechanized, each one is unique and handmade from collected source materials. The elemental approach in the work reflects simpler methodologies and examines a more direct and intimate relationship with our environment.”

Tom Ward is a a graphic designer and illustrator based in London, UK. In his series “Alt Disney” imagines what classic Disney characters would be like in modern times.

Jo Hay is a contemporary British American portrait painter whose work focuses on acknowledging human courage characterized by those who dare to stand up and express who they are or what they believe.

Originally from Newcastle Upon-Tyne, England, Hay lives and works in Provincetown MA. She received her BA from Middlesex University, London, UK and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art, NY, NY.

Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Provincetown Arts Magazine, The Boston Globe, Time Out NY, Provincetown Banner, Provincetown Magazine, Bedford Magazine and Art Galleries and Artists of the South.

Hay was the first recipient of the Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation Grant 2010 sponsored in part by the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and the recipient of the New York Academy of Art Portrait Scholarship 2011. Her portrait from her Benders series entitled Dodger was a semi-finalist in the BP Portrait Award 2015 at the National Gallery in London.

Jo explains her work by saying, “The overarching theme of my recent portraits is the acknowledgment of human courage through self-expression. Wishing to examine our psychological and biological perception of ‘male’ and ‘female’, the Benders series portrays individuals who do not choose to be labeled either male or female but instead describe themselves as gender fluid—they experience and express an innate sense of both sexes. Since childhood, when I first witnessed the flamboyantly styled androgynous members of UK glam rock bands of the 1970’s and later the drag queens and transsexuals on the streets in 1990’s NYC, I have been captivated and delighted by the visual and emotional confusion that gender duality produces.”

Carson Davis Brown is a Midwest-raised artist currently living in Los Angeles, CA. Working primarily in photography and film, Brown uses the monotony of corporate and retail landscapes as a backdrop for play-oriented, unsanctioned physical interruptions in highly systematized spaces. Brown also serves as the documentarian for Cabin-Time, a roaming artist residency to remote places. Brown travels often, spending most of his time in Southern CA and West MI.

“Mass” is a site specific installation project about creating visual disruptions in places of mass (to date: big-box stores, super-centers, etcetera). At an intersection between Street Art and Land Art, installations are made without permission, using found materials within the retail landscape. The works are made, photographed, then left to be experienced by passersby and ultimately dissembled by location staff. Photo documentation of Mass works are initially exhibited in a consumer landscape. Printed, framed (in unsold frames) and exhibited in-stores; all without permission.

Brown’s work has been featured on/by The Guardian, iGnant, National Public Radio, Slate, Juxtapoz, Fast Company, LA Times, Visual Supply Co. (VSCO), Issue Magazine, Month of Photography LA, booooooom, Humble Arts Foundation, The Fox Is Black, Mn Artists and Gestalten.

Jon MacNair was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up in the suburbs of southeast Michigan near Detroit. He graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005, where he earned a BFA in Illustration. His commercial work has appeared in editorial publications and mainly been used for apparel and package design.

Clients include: Monument Snowboards, 21st Amendment Brewery, Grove, Corpse Corps Boards, Willamette Week, On3P Skis, The Stranger, Gigantic Brewing, Tooth & Nail Records, Closed Casket Activities, Baltimore Magazine, Annalemma, Urbanite Magazine, Baltimore City Paper, Slice Literary Magazine, Pittsburgh City Paper, The Riverfront Times, The Washington Square Review and Computer Arts Projects.

In addition to freelance illustration, he frequently exhibits his personal work in galleries around the U.S. and abroad. Cities include New York, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle, Tokyo, Glasgow, Paris and Hamburg. Notable exhibitions include the annual group show at La Luz de Jesus Gallery and The BLAB! Show at Copro Gallery in 2010. Publications like Beautiful Decay, Elle Girl, Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose have also featured his work.

Born and raised in Connecticut, childhood trips to NYC in the mid-’80s exposed Greg Mike to the creative potential of reinventing public spaces through art and design. Always obsessed with the boundless energy and crisp line work of iconic American mid-century cartoons, by his early teens Greg began using the walls of his native state to fuse these two passions together. Mixing the take-no-prisoners bombast of classic NYC street art with the eagle-eyed precision of mass market illustration and animation has been his goal from the beginning. Further inspired by his deep involvement with skate culture and his intersections with the fashion world, he has become known for pieces that incorporate vivid explosions of incandescent color filtered through a Surrealist Pop Art perspective. Populated by gleefully twisted characters, his world is unsettling, mischievous and uniquely captivating.

Currently based in Atlanta, GA, Greg Mike is the founder and creative director of ABV AGENCY / GALLERY, a multi-platform studio specializing in branding, apparel design and visual production. A hub for Atlanta innovators, ABV also functions as a gallery exhibiting artists from around the world, highlighting emerging talents alongside globally recognized names. In 2015, Greg Mike founded OuterSpace Project, an event series that merges public art, live music, design, action sports and culture in Atlanta, GA.

Roberto Cigna is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer based in Catania, Italy.

Richard W. James is from rural Tennessee and received his B.F.A. from The University of Tennessee at Martin in 2001. For 8 years he ran his own pottery studio until 2010-2012 when he attended Indiana University as a special student to pursue his interest in sculpture. Richard received his M.F.A. in ceramics from The University of Kansas in May 2016 and was a 2015 summer artist-in-resident at Zhenrutang in Jingdezhen, China. Richard served as a 2016-2017 resident at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and will be a long-term Archie Bray Foundation resident beginning August 2017.

Richard explains his work by saying, “My work explores the discrepancy between how we, as humans, see ourselves versus how we want others to see us. I am curious about how the aggregate nature of personality and memory construction affects the sense of self, and by extension, interaction with the world around us. Because “an unexamined life is not worth living,” I feel the need to question the basic detritus that has coalesced into what I refer to as “myself.” I do that in my studio practice by incorporating materials and processes that I associate with the informative years of my youth, growing up within a poor, rural upbringing”.

A Bachelor of Visual Arts and of Philosophy, Éric Nado has been perfecting sculpture-assembly since 1998. The work of this Quebecois artist is represented by galleries in Montreal and in California and has been commissioned by many private and public companies for various needs and purposes over the years. In 2015, his work was selected by Montreal’s COA Gallery to be showcased at Scope New York and Art Basel Miami.

Nado’s contemporary industrial sculptures tell a story, one of our collective past. Made of recycled, metal, factory-salvaged and nostalgia-filled parts, the artwork pays homage to our roots’ industrial past.

As per his recent reconstructive art series, Nado takes strong objects, imprints of our collective memory, such as Sewing Machines and Typewriters, disassembles them and recreates engaging and evocative sculpture art pieces, in occurrence, the Seamstress Series and the Typewriter Gun Series.

New York-based visual artist, Levan Songulashvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. He earned his M.F.A. with honors from The New York Academy of Art in Painting and his B.F.A. from The Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in Drawing and Printmaking. Songulashvili’s work is held in public and private collections worldwide. He is the first Georgian artist whose works were selected for the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Museum, NY. Songulashvili has received a number of national and international awards, including The New York State Assembly Award for Achievements and Contribution to the Arts.

Levan explains his work by saying, “I care about the mysteries of Life, its origins, its endless cycles and regenerations and I question the current civilization in which we find ourselves and wonder: what will be the future of Humankind? What is problematic for scientists is fascinating for me.”

Libby Black is a painter and sculptural installation artist living in Berkeley. She has exhibited nationally and her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, Zink magazine, Flash Art, and The New York Times. She received a BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art in 1999 and an MFA at The California College of the Arts in 2001.

Libby explains the work by saying, “My current work is based on imagery culled from disparate sources like fashion magazines, snapshots, newspapers, pop culture websites, television, movies and still lifes that I have staged. I am interested in having the work chart a path through personal history and a broader cultural context to explore themes of impermanence and identity. Our lives are marked by monumental events and spectacular disasters. I have distinct mental images that represent such experiences for me – things like the birth of my son or the Challenger exploding. Our lives are also filled with mundane moments, small pleasures, and frivolous distractions.”

Born in Korea, Jae Ko received her BFA from Wako University in 1988 and her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore in 1998. She received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2002. The artist now works and lives between Maryland and Arlington, Virginia. Her work is in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. and numerous private collections throughout the United States. Ko’s site-specific installation Force of Nature, Shiro was recently on view at Grounds for Sculpture in Township, New Jersey.

Sao Paulo based street artist Alex Senna beautifies cities worldwide with his warm and endearing black and white murals. This Brazilian artist, illustrator and advertising art director, whose life is all about drawing, art and graffiti, is a huge contemporary name on the Brazilian urban art scene. Alex Senna is widely known for his expressive murals of lanky characters that usually revolve around love, romance and friendship that bring the overwhelming softness to their grey urban surroundings. Senna’s atmospheric and seemingly child-like murals, often feature universal romantic symbols like musical notes, birds and hearts, and appear like vivid comic book frames that tell the wonderful stories of the relationships we have.

Hildur Erna is an Icelandic Fine Art photographer based in London. She is continuously trying to communicate and exaggerate the subtlety of body language and the emotional response we have to this. The different mediums used in her work creates her own language filled with layers of explorations.

Pantomerica is made up of Maggie Owens and Cecilia Coyne. Both travelled the continental U.S. for six months for a project to examine color in place.

Cecilia and Maggie describe the project by saying, “While traveling through every corner of the country we looked at the role color plays in each unique region and how the people of these places interact with color. Along our route we conducted interviews with locals, transplants, and artists to get a greater sense of what life was like in each location. Our blog is both a written and a visual collection that tells a story about women traveling through 21st century America and the colors found along the way.”.

Los Angeles native Dennis Bredow examines and celebrates the tireless optimism of mid-twentieth century America in his retro-modern artwork. Using acrylic, serigraphy, and found object assemblage, he creates smart, streamlined pieces which bear the hallmarks of 1950’s craftsmanship and graphic design — offering a present-day revival of the exuberant ideals of a bygone era.

Bredow abandons traditional canvas supports in favor of solid birch panels, which allow for heavy distressing of the paint as well as the application of vintage advertisements, hardware, and other found materials. The finely crafted panels instill the paintings with a sturdy sense of permanence, while the application of multiple layers of distressed paint imparts to each piece a unique narrative of process and history.

Dennis explains his work by saying, “I’ve become sentimental about a time I never knew – longing to relive the charm and unrelenting optimism of mid-century America. My work is a modern view of a time gone by. A celebration and preservation of the images and icons of the 1950’s that I have grown to love. In my work I hope to capture that same pride of craftsmanship and idealism that prevailed in post-war America, while at the same time exposing some of the delightfully provocative values of the day.”

Using photography as a means of expression to raise awareness, Gaby Herbstein’s work demonstrates her concern for the wellbeing of the universe, the preservation of the beauty of the planet, and the worries that have arisen from her personal experiences and reflections.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, her career extends for twenty three years in which she has produced and taken part in different solo and collective exhibitions in countries around the world, including Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, the US, Russia, China and Japan. Her work has appeared in important national and international publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue Latinoamérica , Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Novum World of Graphic Design, International Designers Network (IDN), and Rheinsprung Journal, among others.

Troy Brooks is a contemporary surrealist painter from Toronto. His work presents an elaborate pageantry of female characters in allegorical settings and has been exhibited in galleries on three continents.

Edward Jonkler is a photojournalist based in London, UK. Travelling the refugee route, from desperate desert camps in Syria to the squatter camps and asylum centres of Europe, Jonkler gives powerful and profound commentary on the failures of integration. Offering a unique perspective, free from media bias, Jonkler aims for his work to provide a first-hand encounter with the reality of the migrant crisis and the issues that lie under the surface.

Amy Laskin’s interest in art started at a young age. Her parents sought to foster her talent and enrolled her in adult classes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art at age seven. Every week as she pored through the museum’s vast collections the world of art captured her imagination. Higher artistic aspirations developed and grew as the years went on. Laskin received her BFA from the Pennsylvania State University in 1977. In 1979 she received her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The years she spent in Chicago had a profound influence on her development. She was excited by the art scene that had exploded the decade before with the “Chicago Imagists” and after her studies; her work took a new turn. She sought to make beautiful, exotic and unusual images which were carefully executed with precision and detail.

In 1986, Laskin arrived in Jamaica with a three-year contract as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She knew immediately that the lush and varied tropical vegetation and voluminous mountainsides would be a never ending source of inspiration and would further impact her development as an artist. For that reason, she decided to make Jamaica her permanent home.

From the start, she moved to a small mountain village, immersing and surrounding herself in the peaceful and serene mountainous environment from which she would draw her ideas. Her work derives as much from the feelings she gets from her place in the hills as from the forms she sees. Painting has been a priority, and she has been able to give it her complete and undivided attention for the past 26 years which has given her the ability to perfect her skills and focus her intentions. Her work has both an imaginary and a realistic quality that awakens us to the ethereal and sublime.

Amy explains the work by saying, “My paintings often focus on an anonymous nonrepresentational figure comprised of natural elements and unusual combinations. I am interested in decorative language and the assemblage of forms which are placed in situations existing in a natural worldly environment. Ostensibly, these combinations are of a surrealistic and mythical nature presented in a cogent way to suggest something phantasmagorical.”

Charles Birnbaum is a New York City based artist who graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute and the Tyler School of Art.

Charles explains his work by saying, “I sculpt to explore identity. Each piece reflects the tension between my desire for freedom and my need for control, my yearning for intimacy and my fear of engulfment. The intersection of containment and freedom is a critical challenge for me because I construct each piece freehand in porcelain without the use of a wheel or mold. The shapes grow alongside one another and then shift and slide apart. Viscous mergings separate into distinct autonomous forms, and seemingly closed spheres open into enigmatic spaces, luring viewers to peer into their hollow abysses. Seductive tentacles snake in, around, and through the forms. Densely layered patterns and textures undulate across the bone-white forms, and repeating patterns in different directions accentuate the tension between the convexities and concavities and create visual and tactile dissonance. Each piece is both assertive and yielding, aggressive and pliant. And like me, my sculptures are simultaneously familiar and foreign and, like me, they simultaneously conceal and reveal.”

Jeff Danley is a Nashville, TN based artist. After a stint studying art at the University of Georgia, he pursued a career in music. After 16 years of not painting he picked up a brush and started creating art again.

Danley explains his work by saying, “I’ve always been very interested in body language. I’m interested in how emotion can be expressed through the body of a painted figure: the position, the gesture, the space around it and how it reacts to and occupies that space.”

Pierre Kiandjan is an artist based in Paris, France.

As Pierre is selecting color mixes, he aims to create illusion of motion, space, and temperature. The challenge consists in gathering simple shapes within complicated blendings. His pieces reveal a clear use of color shades and broken lines. His main influences include futuristic pieces of architecture invented by Mœbius, radiances of light diffracted by Barbara Kasten’s mirrors, living compositions sculpted by Jean Arp, and rhythmic gracefulness drawn by Victor Vasarely. This way, he tries to shake things up a little in the realm of Optical Art.

Juan Nieto is an artist based in Bogota, Columbia.

Juan explains his work by saying, “My work is directed towards the existential experience, my immediate concern is to discover from the painting, drawing and digital media, the context that surrounds us.”

Nina is a paper artist based in Sydney, Australia. After finishing higher education, Nina completed her Bachelor of Design in Architecture and is currently completing a Juris Doctor at Sydney University.

Inspired by the natural processes of decay on leaves, Nina has created a personal style and technique which is entirely her own. Her body of work mimics intricate patterns found in nature’s lattice whilst exploring the notion of replication. By solely using paper and leaves, she challenges the dividing line between manufactured, man made forms and nature.

She uses a fine blade to create fluid, free form motifs by making decisive structural cuts, interplaying between solid and void. Each cut is carefully thought out and delicately executed, as the process cannot be reversed or ‘uncut’. With the constant advancement of technology with processes such as laser cutting, there is great empowerment in hand cut, organic blade work, which has the impossibility of replication. As a result, each work by Nina is unique and individual.

Nina explains her work by saying, “My body of work stems from a desire to magnify the unseen and materialise an imaginative extension of a scientific process. I believe that there is an intriguing separation from the built environment and natures microscopic structural elements and a fascinating link in how these structures grow and how entities relate.”

Liquids are not static in nature: they move, mix, blend, mingle, bubble, billow, flow… When the right fluids are mixed the right way, they create temporary micro worlds that did not exist beforehand; before your eyes, tiny complex worlds emerge. You can only control so much; quantities, order, flow, colors… Once you’ve blended the liquids together, what’s beautiful one second might turn nightmarish the next one.

Sebastien explains his work by saying, “I started experimenting with mixing liquids on my skin for a music video I had in mind. In the middle of the video shoot, I took a picture to show a friend what it looked like. I instantly fell in love with the picture; shortly after, I became obsessed with experimenting with different liquids, observing how they reacted and interacted together. That’s how The Big in the Small was born. Now, my focus has primarily shifted to this project, which allows me to create pictures, videos and visual art out of liquids”.

Flowers have long been used in both Western and Eastern art as a symbol of joy and beauty. Jingshen You blends a traditional Chinese style with European Impressionism to capture the ethereal beauty of nature. With muddled, relaxed shapes that mirror the effect of ink or watercolor paints, his sunflowers and water lilies are rendered in a quick, loose style. The work is soft, cool, and atmospheric. Water lilies are stacked on top of each other, floating and dripping across the canvas. Their delicate disarray is lighthearted and whimsical. The sunflowers flank a small trail heading off into the horizon, inviting the viewer into the scene. Jingshen’s inspiration comes from his Chinese culture, and his father who was also an artist. His work exudes a strong sense of pride and appreciation for his heritage. However, the flowers represent a universal simplicity. Jingshen chooses flowers as his subject matter because they make him happy, and this simple joy is projected in the paintings.

A true artist is not only a storyteller but a skilled technician; Chris Corridore keeps those values as part of his detailed process. Chris expanded his style and aesthetic through photo editing in the fashion industry, refining his intricate understanding of light, colour, and composition allowing him to precisely manipulate images in such a way that has now become his art form. His digital art explores themes that are dark and otherworldly.

Jeff Chester is an artist based in Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

Jeff explains his latest series, “The Curious Object” by saying, “My aim with the paintings in the exhibition is to pose questions concerning identity and contemporary portraiture. The compositions feature variations of a lone figure within a square format that one might typically see in a contemporary social media selfie. I have tried to walk a line between illustration and photorealist painting. Through this mixing of styles I am alluding to the role of storytelling in the creation of our identities and lived realities. I also refer to Italian Renaissance portraiture by using the time-honored motif of a woman in a landscape. This is to create a contrast between the function of these earlier paintings and the goals of contemporary portraiture. In the not too distant future, thanks to automation, artificial intelligence and technological integration with our bodies, we will find that our identities will be challenged in profound ways. The figures appearing in the work are based off of images of my wife. The repetition of the same face allows her to disappear into anonymity and become a stand in for the idea of a nonspecific person. At the same time it allows me a chance to state my own view that love and human connection is of paramount importance. Who we are is entangled fundamentally with our relationships to others.”

Long-Bin Chen is known for his skillful transformation of out-of-date books, newspapers, magazines, and computer paper into art that—when viewed from a distance—appears to be made of wood or marble. Chen’s work is not only a commentary on human consumption and waste, it also mourns the pre-digital era of bound books. His art approaches the book object as an aesthetic object and attempts to combine ideas and concepts from the East with those from the West. Long-Bin Chen was born in Taiwan. He received a BFA from Tung-Hai University in Taiwan and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has exhibited widely in the United States, Germany, Taiwan, China,India, and Hong Kong.

Markus Akesson is a neofigurative painter on the international stage. His work has been shown in galleries and institutions in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, London, Vilnius and Stockholm. Living and working in Pukeberg in Nybro, Sweden, his home and studio are nestled in the woods where he is free to explore motives which relate man to nature and nature to the world unseen. His work is popular in public and private collections both in Sweden and abroad. Åkesson has received several achievement awards including the Golden Feather from the publication, Barometern, in 2014 as well as a two-year working grant from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. His works have been purchased by organisations such as The Public Art Agency in Sweden and Fondation Francès in France. He is currently represented by Galerie Da-End in Paris, Gallery Grundemark/Nilsson in Stockholm and Berlin, and VIDA Museum outside of Borgholm on Öland.

Michael Brewington is a photographer based in Birmingham, AL.

Michael explains his work by saying, “I started taking photos a year ago in an effort to sort of cope with the increasing depersonalization of the world around me due to the internet. Mainly shooting with friends, my work started to take on themes of youth and consumption. I hope it causes people to take a second to relax and appreciate life.”.

Steve Hickok is an artist based in Atlanta, GA. From the earliest days, his artistic vision was molded by the harsh beauty and rough topography of the American Southwest. It was perhaps inevitable that the matrix of his style would be the undulating sand of the desert with its broad mesas and hogbacks, its red skies and bizarre, twisted, red-rock hoodoo columns. The artist is a direct descendant of the legendary cowboy, Wild Bill Hickok. At an early age Steve was captivated by the gunslinger’s exploits and shared his fascination with Native American culture and its iconic forms. The tepee, the arrowhead, and the zig-zag border décor on Indian artifacts—all these, along with the biomorphs of the desert, have come to form the geometry of his art.

Steve explains his work by saying, “Some of my creations are consciously selected themes. At other times they are a mystery, only revealed as the paintings are complete. In all, they represent the journey of life with its sharp turns and labyrinthine passages. I love strong lines, convincing textures, powerful shapes and contrast. I’m passionate about allowing nature to direct my work, which is why I paint and render on wood with its endless personalities. My travels have allowed me to experience the beauty and diversity of motifs and cultures around the world. The multiple square paintings (“Coalesce”) are snapshots of the places and people who have enriched my spirit. And “Passages” is a meditation on ups and downs, climbing and descending through this world in the endless search for home. Though he was formed by the Southwest, Steve’s travels have taken him around the world. His work, therefore, reveals a broad cultural mix, blending Asian, European and North American elements.”

Nick Ervinck is a sculptor and installation artist based in Lichtervelde, Belgium.

Nick explains the work by saying, “I have always been fascinated by how art has developed due to new materials and techniques. Somewhat disappointed at contemporary sculpture and it’s lack of renewal, I turned towards architecture, applied sciences and New Media, in order to elaborate a new language, and to compose forms and designs that were unthinkable in all those years before. My aim is to let architecture and sculpture meet, and to explore the realm of the impossible by constantly pushing the limits of what we call ‘realistic’. The studio takes a vanguard position in the field of digital technology (such as 3D technology and computational design methods). 3D printing has the incredible advantage to produce almost any type of intricate geometry or ornament. Moreover, my images balance on the edge of functionality, spatial interventions, digital aesthetics and object-oriented eclecticism. Using copy paste techniques in a 3D software environment, I derive images, shapes and textures from different sources: basilicas, corals, dinosaurs, cottages, Rorschach inkblots, Chinese rocks and trees, manga, twelfth-century floral wallpaper, fauna and flora, anatomical parts,… Simultaneously, my work holds numerous references to the tradition of sculpture, (such as the work of Hans Arp, Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth) and to architecture (think of Greg Lynn, who introduced the blob as an architectural constructive principle). Consequently, I am particularly interested in how the computer can be used in the realization of new, organic and experimental (negative) spaces and sculptures within sculptures and how the tension between blobs and boxes is articulated during the digital designing process.”

Charlotte Schulz was born in Massillon, Ohio, and studied art as an undergraduate at Kent State University. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 1992 before graduating from the University of South Florida with a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Charlotte Schulz is a recipient of individual artist fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2010-2011, the Pollack-Krasner Foundation in 2005-2006, the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2009 and 2002, the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in 2003, the State of Florida in 1996, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1992. Notable group exhibitions include Vocabularies of Metaphor: More Stories, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Dark Poets, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD; ARCHI+TEXTURE, Brooklyn Fire Proof, Brooklyn, NY; underCURRENT/overview, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; and Featuring Florida, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL. Her solo exhibitions include The Uneven Intensities of Duration, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY and Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, An Insufficiency in Our Screens, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT and Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA. Schulz’s work is included in the permanent collections of Mill College Art Museum, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and the University of South Florida.

Schulz currently resides in Peekskill, NY and maintains a studio there. She teaches at Parsons The New School for Design and is a museum guide at Dia:Beacon.

Sheena Liam is a model and artist based in Los Angeles, CA. In her downtown from her thriving modeling career she embroiders these amazing 3D portraits of women.

Sheena explains the work by saying, “Most of my work are based off photographs of me. I usually work off a photo of myself to create a sketch which once finalized into neat outlines gets transferred unto canvas then I begin stitching.”

Pat Riot is a 21st Century, non “media-specific” artist and he has been showing his work in Los Angeles since 1996. His influences include TV, MAD Magazine, deceased American artists Henry Darger and Ray Johnson, living American artist Tim Hawkinson, the French artist Space Invader, BANKSY, and the timeless futurist, Buckminster Fuller.

Antonio Pauciulo is an artist who lives and works in Leipzig, Germany.

Antonio explains the work by saying, “Imagine a river made up of millions of flowing droplets. Those that follow push the former and all are flanked: there is one direction, one choice. The only possibility to free a drop from the unavoidable is to throw something into the water, so that, even if only for a moment, one of them can escape. For me that’s painting – and the painting’s task.”

Michelle Kingdom is a fine artist based in Los Angeles, California. Specializing in embroidery, Michelle creates figurative narratives with needle and thread.

Michelle explains her work by saying, “My work explores psychological landscapes, illuminating thoughts left unspoken. I create tiny worlds in thread to capture elusive yet persistent inner voices. Literary snippets, memories, personal mythologies, and art historical references inform the imagery; fused together, these influences explore relationships, domesticity and self-perception. Symbolism and allegory lay bare dynamics of aspiration and limitation, expectation and loss, belonging and alienation, truth and illusion. Decidedly small in scale, the scenes are densely embroidered into compressed compositions. While the work acknowledges the luster and lineage inherent in needlework, I use thread as a sketching tool in order to simultaneously honor and undermine this tradition. Beauty parallels melancholy, as conventional stitches acquiesce to the fragile and expressive.”

Charles Krafft is a self-taught painter based in Seattle, Washington USA. His work in the Delft ceramics tradition was inspired by his friendship with American motorcycle and hot rod hero Von Dutch. In the early 1990s, Krafft began a series of natural and socio-political disasters painted on found china plates called Disasterware™, with the logo designed by Von Dutch. In 1995, Krafft traveled to war-ravaged Bosnia Herzegovina with the Slovenian industrial rock band Laibach. Moved by the plight of the besieged residents of Sarajevo, he returned to Central Europe and created an arsenal of Delft weaponry. The Porcelain War Museum Project premiered at the Republic of Slovenia Ministry of Defense headquarters in Ljubljana in 2000, and has subsequently been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world.

During an Arts/ Industry Residency at the Kohler Co. Pottery in 1999 Krafft began creating human bone china memorials and reliquaries based on a formula invented by the British porcelain manufacturer Josiah Spode.

Krafft substituted ball milled human crematory ash for Spode’s percentage of calcinated cow bone in his clay body, resulting in a product he calls SPONE™.
He launched this idea at the “Ring of Spone” performance-exhibition in 2003 at the Arthur A. Wright Chapel columbarium in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Seattle. SPONE tm was subsequently featured in two special editions of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Consulting with friends and relatives of the deceased, he continues to create unique personalized memento mori on commission.

Krafft’s primary technique involves slip cast porcelain and earthenware forms fired at high temperatures. These sculptural objects are then meticulously hand painted and glazed or decorated with ceramic transfer decals before a final firing. This process, based on Dutch delft and Italian majolica traditions, results in artworks that are at once alluring and grotesque – infused with fine craftsmanship and darkly humorous social commentary.

A native of France, born of Italian parents, Liz grew up in Los Angeles. Inspired by the world and her travels, she loves to portray the beauty she captures in the raw, desolate and industrial aspects of big cities and their outskirts.

Her unique mixed media technique begins with the manipulation of her original photography collaged onto acrylic painted wood panels, blended within layers of colorful acrylic washes in
a final step. Liz utilizes various architectural details found in her photos to create complex graphics, structures, imaginary landscapes and alternate realities.

Shea explains the work by saying, “I am interested in moments of clarity: those specific instances when I don’t know if I am dreaming or wide awake. When communication is easy and I can see pathways into the future. I find truth in the ritual of mixing pigment with oil and like a scientist, tend to get very involved with the alchemy of making. The paintings that develop are not happy accidents but rather calculated tests on the boundaries of control.”

As a child, Antonio Segura Donat (Dulk) helped his father to feed the birds they reared at their home. He loved watching the fledglings and seeing them grow, as well as the fish, dogs, and horses that lived on the property. When he wasn’t out and about, he copied illustrations of exotic animals that he found in his parents’ collection of old encyclopedias. And he took his sketchbook with him everywhere from then on. At the age of eighteen, a close friend persuaded him to tackle the walls of the city and suggested he take the pseudonym of Dulk. He then started a diploma in economics, but dropped out in the first year to study illustration then graphic design at the University of Valencia. Today, Dulk is an all- purpose artist. Between urban art, drawing, painting, sculpture or advertisement, each medium is a challenge that he takes up with pleasure and determination. He participated in a lot of group shows around the world in cities as Vancouver, Miami, New York, Brussels, Paris or Chicago. Always looking at things from the same innocent viewpoint that he is so fond of – That of a child- the artist create a tragi-comic animal themed works in organic colors. His world is a surrealistic landscape full of imaginary details, rising up in factions against humans. Maybe they are wanting to warn us of Earth’s bleak future following an environmental catastrophe.

Elena Dorfman has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and attended the University of Vienna, Austria. A finalist for the BMW Prize, Paris Photo, Elena Dorfman’s photographs and video installations have been exhibited in both the US and worldwide at venues including the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, the Triennale di Milano, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 21c Museum, Louisville, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art while acclaimed in various publications including Art News, and Aperture, among others, and is included in numerous collections including the Denver Art Museum.

In her series “Sublime: L.A. River,” Dorfman utilizes her signature, painstakingly-complex process of compiling her photographs into multilayered works to chronicle a kind of visual passage of the Los Angeles River. Home to the early settlers, the banks of the river and the exponentially expanding L. A. metropolis were at odds. In 1938, the city elected to encase the river in concrete in an effort to tame the devastating floods of the early 20th C – and ever since then, the river has largely been ignored. Walking and photographing the fifty-two mile-long riverbank and then sifting through twenty-two thousand of these photographs as well as historic wet-plate images, Dorfman references an ongoing landscape tradition, including the Hudson River School, a mid-19th C American art movement whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. As both the Hudson River School and the Los Angeles River were established in 1825, Dorfman’s painterly photographs offer allegorical references to the cyclical ebb and flow between the civilized and the callous, the cycle through social and cultural development, and the descent into ruin and back again. This newest compelling series by the artist stands as a timely consideration – in particular, for a part of the West which continues to struggle with a protracted drought – but also as a highly-illuminated expression of the universal truth which offers that the precious commodity of water continues to be at the mercy of both the whims of man and Nature itself.

Originally from Alexandria, VA, Dorothy Netherland is an artist based in Charleston, SC. She received a BA in Studio Art from the College of Charleston in 2000. Netherland’s work was represented in the 2004 South Carolina Triennial at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, and in Studio Visits, in 2007 at the Greenville County Museum of Art, as well in two Contemporary Charleston Piccolo Spoleto Festival exhibitions, in 2004 and 2009. Her paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the Southeast, as well as in NH and internationally.

Dorothy explains the work by saying, “I am obsessed with the commingling of the real and the fake, and I’m interested in the mixed messages of girl power, and the way female strength and empowerment can resemble branding. In a personal way, my work contemplates the current culture, and my daughter’s growing involvement in it.”

Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico Alexandra Becker-Black has been creating art all of her life. Formally trained in Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, Alexandra’s relationship with watercolors started with an odd step when she was forced to choose a new medium after developing an allergic reaction to Oil Paints. Within weeks of first painting watercolors Alexandra found her medium and her new voice. Years later, the majority of her technique is still self-taught through her natural exploration of the paint and its applications.

Long before a paintbrush ever touched her hand, drawing was Alexandra’s original medium. She continues to draw today, exploring new techniques and concepts by pushing the boundaries between realism and dreamscapes.

Kelly Rene Jelinek is an artist based in Kiel, WI.

Kelly explains her work by saying, “As a someone who grew up in rural Wisconsin, I became thoroughly accustomed to seeing taxidermy deer and game mounts – I thought of them as standard items of household decor. Even when I was a small child they never scared or disgusted me – if anything, they fascinated me. That fascination stayed with me into adulthood, and has inspired the artwork that I make today. When I was a teenager, I fell in love with old upholstery and would often come home from flea markets and thrift stores with old chairs for me to experiment on. Later on, when I was in college, the two interests happened to mesh and that’s how the first of my upholstered animals were born.”

Sophia Narrett was born in 1987 in Concord, MA. She received her MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and her BA in Visual Arts from Brown University. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2014 and Vermont Studio Center in 2011. Her work is included in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and has been featured in New American Paintings.

Alessandro Gallo was born in 1974 in Genoa, Italy and is now based in Helena, Montana. After studying Law at the University of Genoa, Gallo took a foundation course at Saint Martin’s College of Art in London followed by a BA at Chelsea School of Art, graduating in 2002. While studying painting, he began experimenting with digital photography, manipulating images to create scenes of animals in familiar city settings. By 2005, he decided to give his creatures a physical presence by sculpting them from clay. Gallo’s works have been featured in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. In 2012, he was awarded a first place grant from the Virginia A. Groot Foundation. In 2014 he had a solo show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York.

Danny Ferrell was born in Flint, Michigan, and spent his formative years in rural Pennsylvania. Deeply conservative, most placed religion above all other virtues, and anyone deviating from religious law was treated as a herald of immorality. Ferrell’s love for other men violated the cultural norms, forcing him to conceal his identity from those in the public sphere. Consequently, his work represents fantasies and fears about the Other in the form of the queer male experience. By creating code homoerotic images of ubiquitous scenes that could appeal to mainstream audiences, the work is both universal and human. In his new paintings he looks at flesh, fabric, and frisson as Ingres might have had he spent more time on the beach studying tattoos. Unbuttoned, with rolled-up sleeves, his figures know it is better to glow than sweat. Ferrell admires Cadmus and Tooker and follows their lead to bring together the epic and banal in his work. Ferrell received his BFA in painting from Penn State University and a M.F.A from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited in New York City, Pittsburgh and the New England area.

Fabian Williams aka Occasional Superstar is an artist born and raised in Fayetteville, NC, now living in Atlanta, GA. Fabian received a BFA from East Carolina University in Illustration. After working for 13 years in the advertising industry with a long list of clients from Nike, Warner Bros to HBO, he decided to move to a purely expressive practice outside of the commercial space where he had the freedom to express more political and socially relevant contemporary themes.

In 2009, He created the World Wide Art Federation, a performance art battle series. The WWAF mixes the swag of Ric Flair with the skill of Bob Ross. Artist must dress up in character and talk trash then paint against each other in a competitive art competition. The winner like in wrestling receives a belt.

Peter & Madeline Powell are artists who have wed exacting technical photorealism to the sensual memories of one childhood’s most pleasurable activities: Eating Candy! Not only getting it, but holding it, looking at it, and unwrapping it – the smell, touch shape & taste of it all come strikingly through the dramatically over-sized images of Hershey Kisses, Bazooka Bubble Gum, M&M’s & lollipops – to name a few… The Powell’s have covered other subjects, most notably Toys, Crayons, Cars & Food.

The Powells explain their work by saying, “Life’s treats and play things from the past & present are what we capture in our paintings. We enjoy taking the little things out of everyday life and giving them the prominence and importance they had when we were children. Our paintings invoke the childhood spirit that everyday life has buried deep within us.”.

Emily Smith Satis was born and raised in New Jersey and received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. After maintaining a somewhat nomadic and reclusive lifestyle, she relocated to Philadelphia in 2008. She is currently the Executive Director of Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens.

Emily explains the work by saying, “In the spring of 2015, I was assaulted by a stranger on my walk home from the gym. I was left unconscious on the street with a severe concussion, broken jaw and sinus, and shattered tooth. The assailant was never brought to justice. ‘When A Man Decides to Hurt You’ is not only an attempt for me to process the event, but it is also an examination of the profound physical and emotional impact of violence in America, particularly against women. I juxtaposed watercolors with explosive fabric patterns; a pairing that is meant to both agitate the eye and champion more “feminine” media. They are framed in traditional Americana patterns, a reminder that mine is an unexceptional American story. We live in a society where physical, sexual, and emotional violence against women is commonplace, and violence stemming from poverty, racial injustice, and lack of support for those struggling with their mental health is part of our everyday landscape. These paintings document one story in a sea of stories. I hope it leads us to a confrontational conversation: what is happening here in America? What role are we all playing in the systemic nature of violence? And what are we actively doing to stop it?”

Carolyn Beehler is a collage artist based in Nashville, TN.

Carolyn explains the work by saying, “Through art I explore the places I love anew, alleviating post-travel blues by exploring positive new perspectives. Enlightened by the lives of people across the world, my artworks testify that travel is more than escapism, that we should absorb new places and artifacts until they are fully integrated into our being. I appreciate the way art and travel promotes improved, longstanding relationships with people and cultures. Collage became the most fascinating medium to express these convictions, given the array of textures, words and numbers that create layers of story and symbolism. My impressionistic style hints at the works of Vincent van Gogh and Salvador Dali, two artists who pioneered expressions of movement as well as a dreamlike fusion of unrelated images.”

Jason Chen is originally from Guangzhou, China. He received his BFA from the University of Arts in 2008. Jason is a Philadelphia based Photographer specializing in Fashion, Editorial, and Alternative Process Photography. He is the Co-Founder of Paradigm Gallery + Studio and Juggling Wolf. Jason’s work has been displayed in galleries and venues including: Paradigm Gallery + Studio, Crane Arts, The Light Room Gallery, Trust Gallery, Kimmel Center, and Commerce Square.

Hyland Mather, aka X-O, is an assemblage artist who creates works out of found objects or as he likes to call them lost objects 1. The artist collects discarded objects from both urban and natural environments, cities, dumps, forests, and fields. The artist then reassembles these found things to make them regain their purpose. He describes his creative process as Zen-like as its composed of finding, collecting and assembling abandoned and discarded objects.

X-O describes the work by saying, “I make stuff from junk. I pick up messes and try to make them into something I think looks good. I use the junk from the city, I use the stuff from the field, I use the bits in the forest, and the things in the trash. I hunt, I collect, I gather, but only what I need for the work, for the play. Color, shape, composition. Some lost stuff gets found again.”

Amber Smith is a full time traveler and full time photographer moving around the US in an RV. She gets a chance to visit places people love and attempts to portray those places with the wonder they might have felt while there.

Amber explains her work by saying, “I mostly shoot medium format and love playing with old cameras and grainy films, but digital is also in my collection.”

Born in Lima, Peru in 1980, Ana Teresa Barboza lives and works in her native city. She studied painting in the Faculty of Art at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PCUP). Using embroidery, yarn, and wool, she creates landscapes and other imagery that exists in the space between tapestry and sculpture. Emulating the flow of waves or grass, each piece breaks out of its embroidery hoop and tumbles down the wall upon which it is being displayed.

Pref started his career nearly 20 years ago as a graffiti artist before studying graphic design at art college and going on to work as an Art Director at his own Design company in east London.

Pref has always strived to look for new ideas and ways of executing graffiti and graphic design, pushing people’s perceptions by challenging the way we construct and view traditional letter forms. He is always developing his work, searching for more original ways to utilize typography.

Today his artwork is a heavy mix of his graffiti and graphic design, striving to create a unique visual language that is a graphic solution to the layered multiple word graffiti pieces he paints on walls.

Darlene Turla is a photographer based in the Philippines.

Darlene describes herself as a 32-year old Filipina trapped in the body of a frustrated visual artist. She goes on to say, “I can’t paint or draw or sculpt, and so, I shoot. My brand of digital photography, I would like to believe, tends to gravitate towards the whimsical, surreal, emotive, and visual narrative. The whole process of shooting and creating is in equal parts, therapeutic and liberating for me, especially in almost two-decade battle with Bipolar Disorder. Apart from my attempts in creative writing, it is through my photography that I mostly express my continuous struggle and healing.”

Christina A. West is a sculptor living in Atlanta, GA where she is an Associate Professor of Ceramics at Georgia State University. She earned her MFA from Alfred University in 2006 and since has extensively exhibited her work across the country in venues such as Plug Projects (Kansas City, MO), the The Bellevue Arts Museum (Bellevue, WA), The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center (Buffalo, NY), the Zuckerman Museum of Art (Kennesaw, GA) and the Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami). Additionally, Christina’s work has been supported by a grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, the George Sugarman Foundation, and the Southeastern College Art Conference.

Christina explains her work by saying, “All of my work begins with an interest in interiority—the thoughts, feelings, psychology within our bodies—often highlighting the inherent mystery, or inaccessibility, of interiority. My installations consist of multiple sculptural figures placed together in a gallery space, with the color of the figures, the altered coloration of the space, and, sometimes, the direction of the figures’ gazes suggesting relationships among the figures. The hints of narrative among the figures are open-ended and ambiguous, with emphasis placed on the uncanny experience of encountering these smaller or larger-than-life bodies that are at once familiar and strangely other. I begin with questions about the relationship of the exterior to the interior, the limits of what we can know about other people given that we never have direct access to their interiority, and how our physical encounters with representations of bodies can affect perceptions of our selves. The resulting figures pull us into their fictional realities with a high degree of naturalism and notions of the private made public, while simultaneously pushing us away (or creating a psychological distance) with their unrealistic scales and unnatural colors that assert their object-ness.”

Michi Meko’s multidisciplinary work mobilizes historic, contemporary, and speculative narratives that are personal and cultural, physical and psychological. Drawing influence from rural southern culture and contemporary urban subcultures, Meko reveals and builds upon the layered symbolism of ordinary and rejected objects, imbuing them with spiritual powers.

Central to the work is the consideration of buoyancy and navigation as metaphors for movement through social spaces, geographies, and temporalities. The map is a guide for understanding the past and the present, a metaphor for perseverance and survival.

Charlotte Edey is an artist & designer specializing in hand-drawn illustration across card, ceramics, concrete and copper. Lightly surreal, the themes of femininity, fluidity and sensuality are explored within exaggerated and impossible spaces. Drawing on modernist architecture and arid landscapes, the sterile structures are punctuated with touches of organic idyll and passive figures.

Following her Foundation year at Chelsea School of Art in 2011, she has worked with names ranging from Vogue, BBC, Orange & Monica Vinader to London Design Festival, The Other Art Fair & Designers block. Her work has been exhibited across the UK at venues including The Oxo Tower, Somerset House & The Arnolfini alongside galleries across the USA, Russia and Europe.

Dima Rebus was born and educated in Russia but now lives and works in New York. Often described as unsettling, his paintings depict humans and their eerie situations, accompanied by often irreverent titles that evoke the contemporary times we live in. His practice also includes making illustrations for magazines and publishing houses