Emergence
View past Emergence exhibitions:
2022 2023
February 3 – February 23, 2024
Celebrating the work of Studio Channel Islands to showcase and support emerging artists in our community.
Indie Songwriter Circle
2024 Gerd Koch Award for Excellence Recipient
Jake Ryno
Teapots I
2024 Gerd Koch Award for Excellence Runner-ups
I think the question “what is art” is such a broad thing to ask. For everyone, art is completely different. If you brought artist into a room and asked them all to agree what art meant, at the end of it, there would be a fight where you couldn’t tell what was blood and what was acrylic paint. So, I ask myself then, what is art to me? I mean, that’s a simple task to answer, right? I thought it was, at least. Looking at the question made me reevaluate my art. Well, I for one love to illustrate. The fact I can put a pencil to a piece of paper and create something that no other person can is so unique. My art style is so vastly different than anyone else’s. My art uses obnoxious colors- bright pinks, saturated oranges, neon blue- as I myself was always considered just that; obnoxious.
When I was little, I was the type of kid not to shut up. While I am still that way to this day, I realized how to tone it down. I remember always feeling embarrassed when I would talk too much, or people would inform me that my high energy was too annoying for them. But instead of listening to them, I instead put that into my illustrations. I try to make my pieces feel crowded, sometimes even overstimulated with items that don’t matter. The focal point will always be clean and crisp, but the background will not. Be it a landscape or pattern, I use the over-detail and chaos to push a narrative that there can be balance between things that are too much and things that are too little.
Sometimes, I catch myself sitting like a shrimp as I work on Procreate in order to produce the perfect art piece. I’m always ragged for my posture, but how can I help it when bending like a candy cane gives me the right motivation to draw the perfect piece? I do what I can to make things look great. Perfection though is not what I strive for. My definition of perfect is not a piece that looks clean and crisp with zero errors, but one that I stare at and love. If I find errors later, I find them charming rather than upsetting. It just shows and proves a human made it.
In combining portraiture and design, I see my work as an extension of my passion for branding. Through my study of packaging design and work as a ring designer, I have found that the core of branding is using an analysis of aesthetics and creative problem solving to create clear communication. Using these principles of branding in my illustrative work allows me to find creative ways to communicate with an audience while learning along the way!
Jade Bluhm
2024 Gerd Koch Award for Excellence Runner-up
Before it was a potential profession and before it was something that I could study in school, art was simply my way of experiencing and interacting with the world. From my earliest memories I was trying to create and invent, exploring and playing with the possibilities of my imagination. Today creating art is my focus in college as well as my dream career path. As a multidisciplinary artist, I draw from multiple different strengths as a result of my many fascinations. In particular my work centers around my personal experience of reality and how it can be warped and perceived in different ways. I am a daydreamer and my work reflects that, encapsulating what it feels like to drift into another world.
My paintings and sculptures are best described as surreal and naturalistic, while dissecting tropes of classical beauty inspired by the greats of John William Waterhouse and Jules Bastien-Lepage. I combine elements of fantasy and history, using subjects that feel ethereal and unreal while still holding some familiarity in the general consciousness. I admire the storytelling and immersive nature of literature and gain inspiration from historical mythology and anthropology.
Being an artist is an ever evolving life passion for me, I am constantly changing and producing unique works through time. Creating is a state of being for me, without it life would have no color or vibrance. Being able to conjure entirely new things and experience other people’s work is an extraordinarily valuable component of humanity. I learn and grow my mentality and spirit through art. I try to express my innermost thoughts and make myself vulnerable through my work, it helps me navigate my feelings and feel connected to others. I hope that anyone who experiences my art can take part in some sort of escapism, and indulge in fantasy. That people who view my work join in on my intimate perceptions and thoughts, leaving the encounter with an at least slightly altered state of mind. With my lifelong love for the arts I seek to always learn, grow, explore, and improve.
Mattia Braccini
My intrigue with clay motivates me to sculpt with it. I appreciate its origin, coming from the earth, and its conclusion, turning back into stone. There are many possibilities of creation with clay because of its plastic, tactile nature. There is also so much variation with different types of clay and glazes to accompany them.
When I use clay I aim to capture it in a precious state. I use my hands to mold clay into fossils or any living thing from earth then morph it into a degraded fossilized form. While most forms are recognizable from Earth, some forms have evolved to become completely other worldly. SInce these fossils are raised as relief they have an animated aura to them.
Clay is a medium that clicks very well with this theme due to its origin to the Earth. I convey a connection between life and death as a commonly shared narrative for all life on Earth. I am also very motivated by ancient art and clays strong relationship to the past.
I use clay to marry the past to the present. Work that feels ancient and powerful. Each vessel is meant to carry its own life force. The carvings are done almost mindlessly. I think there’s beauty in the absence of clay – potential purpose and meaning in the empty pathways. The process of ceramics itself invites the maker to reflect on life within its phases: from earth and water to air and fire. Only these lives I’m creating in clay have the ability to exist for thousands and thousands of years after I’m no longer here. That is the power I aim to instill in each piece.
Colin Clasen
I am an artist with experience in a vast array of different medias but my primary passions are painting and digital design. All of my works are inspired by street style or early 90’s skate graphics, however, I also enjoy challenging myself with realism. To incorporate creativity, I will sometimes make my work more twisted. My favorite type of art to create is surfboard graphics which allows me to merge my two favorite skills, surfing and art. Not only does shaping the board combine art and functionality but the graphics make it personalized. This method lets me display my work in a much more accessible platform rather than in a gallery and follows me on my adventures.
Stephanie Crowder
ARTIST STATEMENT
My art explores the experience of a broad disparate of cultures but focuses primarily on the Black Experience. It is sometimes controversial, however, it is indeed an opportunity for hard conversations to take place. My work triggers multiple emotions simultaneously and exploits reality. My creations are primarily sculpture based and driven from first hand experiences as well as stories told by my parents, grandparents and great grandparents, all originally from the Deep South. I place a direct lens on history (sometimes horrific and uncomfortable), culture, traditions, rituals, struggle, sacrifice, hope, success, and reemergence. My art is given as an answer to those who ask why Black America still struggles. It also represents inherent societal and economical disparities, cause, effect, aspiration, hope, and transcendence. My first piece created was Enslaved Woman inspired by my grandmother and her passed down stories of the brutality endured by young Black girls and women during slavery.“ If my sculptures don’t tell you a story then you aren’t really listening.“
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Stephanie Crowder is a native of New Jersey transplanted in Southern California. She has aged wisdom with a youthful creative attitude. She has a background in nursing, and currently the owner of ManArii Innovations Interior Design where art meets design; putting forth projects that transform ordinary into EXTRAordinary. Stephanie is Bold, Outspoken and unafraid to push boundaries past the unknown. She possesses a multitude of skills that work in concert to offer innovative design concepts, forward functioning space solutions, and artistic visions. Stephanie enjoys travel to foreign nations. The experience of food, traditions and culture influence her point of view and adds a degree of diversity. Recently she has traveled to Turkey, Santorini. Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Singapore, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cuba to name a few. These travels, cultural enrichments and experiences has definitely added flavor and influence to her creativity. Ideally, she does not have one particular design aesthetic but rather an amalgamation of styles created by her world travels. Her true practice centers around Interior Architectural Design which marries artistic visualization to function. Recently, Stephanie has discovered a passion for creating conceptual artwork that tells culturally rich stories. With respect to her Interior Design side she uses her introduction to various cultures to cohesively fuse aesthetically pleasing spaces with functionality. While her artistic side uses the same experiences to enhance visual storytelling through scultures. Stephanie has a wide range of gifts and natural creative abilities. She loves to read, write poetry, garden, and cook in her spare time. Stephanie also has an adventurous side and considers herself a Dare Diva partaking in roller skating, hiking, parasailing, ziplining, and even skydiving to name a few. Stephanie’s fearlessness amplifies her ability to draw outside the lines, take chances, and create without inhibition. Stephanie formulates conceptual art that leads to striking conversations and cultural discussions.
Carolina Danu
Consumed with the idea of preserving my diminishing connection to my Eastern European heritage and cultural roots, my work seeks to bridge that connection between the way of life, memories, and traditions of my birthplace with what often feels like a distinctly different life I’ve grown accustomed to in California. I imbue my work with cultural themes along with experiences that come with being an immigrant lacking in community and the feelings of displacement and lack of belonging that is fostered in diaspora. My work also often grieves the familiarity of my childhood home and lost traditions and heritage. I strive for people to resonate with my art; Taking solace in the whimsical and playful creations, or refuge in the familiar immigrant issues of assimilation and feelings of loss of identity that comes with leaving home and starting anew. It’s a coping mechanism for my inability to keep a steady connection to my home and grappling with the idea of belonging “neither here nor there”. The physical distance and inevitable passage of time drives me to create art inspired by home to keep that part of me alive. And unlike my family, I haven’t yet become disenchanted with my birthplace and its struggles. I find myself needing to recreate the feelings of wonder that I always associate with it and its rich heritage so others could take comfort in that and allow viewers into my own personal memories and experiences that inform my work.
Taking an interdisciplinary approach and working in a variety of mediums, my work primarily focuses on oil painting and sculptural ceramics. I create highly detailed and vivid surrealist and narrative pieces rooted in familiarity and nostalgia inspired by a mix of personal experiences, the whimsical influences of Eastern European folktales and traditions combined with overflowing aspects of the natural environment, both that of my childhood and that intrinsic to Southern California. Filled with bright and bold colors, meticulous details, and visual influences of floral patterns and motifs from the rich textile traditions of Moldova, I weave every part of myself into my work to create stories and capture moments in time.
My process is significant to my art practice: rooted in research, I delve deeper into my heritage and personal reflections that help inform my art. When it comes to ceramics, that process also relies on the grounding effect of working with clay and building these forms with my hands. My ceramic work includes sculptures inspired by the natural environment of California. Creating forms that reflect the lived experiences of encountering nature and environments so new and foreign to me, they felt near alien in nature and expressing those feelings within fantastical sculptural forms that both do and don’t resemble real life. Ultimately, I want my art to be an experience for my audience, to be drawn into visual stories and new experiences and promote a curiosity for foreign traditions and the immigrant experience that not all are familiar with.
Jesus Delgadillo Galindo
From painting to illustration graphite or charcoal drawings on paper or digital painting. I have to think of myself as someone who has a broad set of art skills, which is in a way my art tool kit of art skills. Whenever I feel confused about my project, I like to go back into my basics. I call it go back to the basics in a way to my original base of fundamentals, this helps me in the problem solving process when it comes to design. The basics, the original structure of things and the essentials, is good to go back to and revise once in a while for reference inspiration or redirection or layout planning of a particular project, depending of what one wants to achieve. That is why my pieces tend to have one thing in common they all tend to relate somehow to my style, borrowing elements from each other. In other words, when I do a graphic design piece or similar work of that nature it can look like a painting. In regards to composition my paintings can have a very graphic design style but in a way they both tend to relate. In my art and through the art I create, my ultimate goal is really to make people feel some type of emotion, to transfer my emotions in a way and that they are able to read from the paintings or graphic design pieces. For me conveying the message is very important and crucial if can do that through my work then I can consider that I did I good job, and feel the accomplishment that the project has functioned as a whole. At the end of the day, for artists, this feeling of accomplishment is what keeps us going and keeps the spark of inspiration alive.
Emily Harms
Emily Harms is a figure and portrait artist who works in multiple mediums, including graphite, oil, gouache, and digital applications. The Oregonian native has gravitated towards art since she was in middle school. Whether it was an art project, or a science fair, the most exciting part for Emily was design. Focusing on design principles like contrast, she attempts to create dramatic portraits without obvious expressions.
As a child, I would watch Disney’s Sleeping Beauty over and over and was endlessly fascinated by the behind the scenes content explaining how the background art was created. Using my crappy watercolor kit, I tried my best to replicate those backgrounds. This was the foundation for my love of creating. As I continued my life I began to struggle with severe mental health issues which is when art wasn’t just a love but gave me an outlet and became a form of therapy for me.
I am a mixed media artist who works specifically with traditional studio art mediums like painting, sculpture and ceramics. I enjoy making work about mental health, along with critiquing political and social issues. My main inspiration comes from different types of horror, specifically Gothic and Lovecraftian, with the biggest inspiration towards my style being a game called Bloodborne. I also enjoy making work about my spirituality and my break away from Catholicism into Paganism.
Karly Kennedy
Mini Cloud Seeding
My work is born from a constant admiration of nature. The feelings provoked by experiences in nature, by observing her resilience, vulnerability and abundance are unmatched. Depth, repetition, color and texture are the elements I am drawn to when making. In order to achieve the density of each piece, I rely heavily on time and patience. Both coloring clay as well as making the individual repeated components, forces me to slow down and be present with my actions which aligns me with the slow and methodical rhythms and cycles of nature.
I acknowledge the complex relationship in making work that honors earth while simultaneously using materials that are extractive. I am always seeking ways of being in support of a regenerative art practice and minimizing my studio (and life) footprint whenever possible.
Madison Lewis
2024 Gerd Koch Award for Excellence Runner-up
My name is Madison Lewis and I am an African American artist born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Throughout my art career I’ve noticed the fine arts have a long history of Western cultural dominance. In particular, Western art has historically been dominated by a white male perspective. This has led to a systemic exclusion of people of color and minorities.This led me to pursue creating art and objects that represent myself and people like me; whether in a literal or conceptual sense. My artwork portrays themes of intimacy, self-observation, and sexuality. I primarily work in oil paint while occasionally exploring other mediums such as graphite, and oil pastel. Most of my work draws from personal experiences. My work invites viewers to engage with and confront their own perceptions while finding comfort in the complex display of human form, emotion, and desires. My creative process is largely influenced by my interests in aesthetics and sensuality. These elements, as well as personal and community histories, assist in visualizing emotional realities that often come with various facets of everyday Black life. The images are a reflection of my individuality and cultural characteristics I see in myself and my surrounding black community. With careful attention to technique, textures and color I intend to create a sense of visual empathy between viewers and the painted figures. I believe the importance of my work is to provide new lenses through which black womanhood can be represented, understood, and related to.
My work focuses on fragmented and altered angles drawing inspiration from the art and architecture styles of Deconstructivism and Brutalism. Balancing functionality and aggressive aesthetics to form the body of my work. Clays malleability and rigidity reflect the movement in the designs and the stability of the structures while allowing for personal interactions with the objects.
Tara O’Gorman
Tara O’Gorman is a multi-disciplinary artist from Ventura County, currently residing in her hometown of Newbury Park. O’Gorman received her BFA in Drawing and Painting from CSU Long Beach in 2020, and specializes in acrylic painting, with an interest in representational narrative figure painting. Inspired by the quirks and habits of her friends and family, her older work depicted detailed and large-scale scenes that were full of humor, absurdity, and vibrant color. These attributes are the key ingredients that remain in her work today, but on a smaller scale. During COVID, it became difficult for her to undertake painting like she did in school. After a paralyzing year’s long identity crisis, wherein she questioned whether there was any value in making her own art, O’Gorman began to embrace and experiment other modes of making, and started sculpting with polymer and air dry clay, and creating digital paintings.
The most recently completed piece is the painting Just the Girlies, 2023. Here, the viewer is struck by an off putting sight: A filthy bathroom that oddly has two toilets with no partition or privacy, graffiti and trash litter the room. Then in the mirror, two women taking a selfie, unphased by the filth just beyond their camera lens. This was an exciting exploration for the artist, inspired by the unsightly things we so often ignore or detest and making it unavoidable.
Jake Ryno
2024 Gerd Koch Award for Excellence Recipient
As an artist I like to communicate through my work. Art is a language in and of itself, and each piece should communicate to the viewer in the unique dialect in which everyone individually digests thoughts and emotions. My intention is not to deliver one specific message, but to provide an ambiguous foundational motif on which the viewer may build their own interpretation with their own pieces of life unique to them. I attempt to strike the viewer with an emotion or unique thought of their own creation. I hope to never strip someones personal meaning to fill its space with my own intentions. My artistic intentions are fluid, ambiguous and personal by design and I hope that any viewer of my work is able to create their own narrative for my art and my artistic intention.
Kimberly Smith
Art is my life. I live, breathe and teach it all day, every day. I was born with an ability to see and understand that I have honored and honed for as long as I have memories. I have documented my life’s passions, loves, failures, and mundane minutia as a way to mature and become a person of value to others. My thoughts as an artist today have become focused on world issues, most prevalently, war, and its continued tragedy throughout recorded history. My current project which will continue for the rest of my life is a series of sculptures that will represent the millions of victims of war, with a hope that viewers may be stopped in their tracks at the sheer magnitude of the loss to humanity, and how pointless war is. I am using mainly recycled materials as an example to others that one does not need to be rich to make a difference or an impact. I do at times explore methods and subjects that are artistically challenging, or just fun or funny, which are relevant ways to reach an audience that may shy away from art. With that, I get an opportunity to share how important art is to life and culture, and how it is the core of humanity.
Ilien Tolteca
Growing up the eldest daughter, being first generation, and identifying as Mexican American, led me to be in a very chaotic and confusing environment from a young age. I was extremely sheltered as a child and felt extremely disconnected from not only the world, but the people around me as well. Many first generation individuals face this disconnection between two different worlds, communities, and languages. In Chicano culture we call this notion, Ni de Aquí, ni de allá: not from here, not from there. From learning two different languages at the same time to learning about my identities and communities, I found myself doodling away anywhere I could to dwell into a world of my own.
Telling a story and creating a world for the viewer to explore and immerse themselves in is crucial to my work as an aspiring children’s book illustrator. I tend to play along, dabbling into the interests of my imagination and speaking on issues affecting my latinx/local community. My color palettes tend to reflect the vibrancy of my colorful community, full of life and movement. I’ve worked with local partners in advocating for local issues by creating work that is accessible and reflective of our community’s voice, giving over 500 coloring books for free to our local community, free posters/swag for a school drive to over 100 families and a logo used for a self care event for our students.
I use my voice via my art as a freelance illustrator to speak about the issues and opinions of my community. My art is a means of colorful expression and storytelling that not only grabs the viewers attention but also gets them thinking about the bigger picture and overarching message throughout my work. Chicano art is symbolic for not being as heavily structured as western art and for giving a voice to the community and celebrating our many identities. My art is my means of recording not only my history, but the history of my community.
My art allowed me to have a voice and given me a space where I could be myself authentically, and it has given me the opportunity to discover who I am as an individual. Today I aim to use my capabilities to not only continue speaking my truth and honoring my identity but also to help uplift others voices and stories as well.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Born in Ventura County, California, Elisa Torres developed a passion for painting after studying film in high school. She earned her Associate’s Degree in Studio Arts from Oxnard College, under the guidance of her professors, and is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s in Studio Art at California State University Channel Islands, with a graduation date set for Fall 2023. Known for her murals, Torres constantly explores new and traditional artistic techniques. She currently teaches art fundamentals to youth at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, believing in the transformative power of public art in community spaces. Her ambition is to independently teach and revolutionize community facilities by blending storytelling with visual art.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I’m Elisa Torres, a Chicana mural artist and BA graduate in Studio Art from CSUCI. My art, often large murals in public spaces, reflects the realities and struggles of diverse migrant and indigenous communities in the US, especially in Ventura County and Southern California. I blend digital tools like Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop with traditional media to create pieces that foster community benevolence and connectivity. My goal post-graduation is to engage with various communities, creating culturally significant public art and developing a personal portfolio for global exhibition.