Exhibition page | Exhibition photos

 

The Next Big Thing 2022

Juror: David Pagel
August 6 – September 24, 2022

Juror’s Awards

Winter Rusiloski

Rainbow Phoenix

First Place

Lisa Roggenbuck

Influenced

Second Place

Carlos Heredia

Casa De Mi Abuela II

Third Place

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Kutay Alkin

Duality 01

Biography

Kutay Alkin is a Turkish Canadian contemporary photographer/painter who lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts and a Bachelors of Science degree in Metallurgical Engineering.

 

Statement

This painting entitled Duality 01 is part of the Duality series.

In this series, Kutay Alkin critiques the linear concept of duality through depicting how intentional manipulation of time and spiraled processes can transcend limitations of constructed boundaries.

As a painting, this work encompasses photographic qualities that contain multi-layered photographic experimentations and includes opposing perspectives of the discourse between representation and abstraction. As a philosophical framework, this work represents reconciliation of unity and continuity after series of fragmentations and divisions in one’s consciousness that create “dualisms” and objectification.

 

Sylvia Bandyke

Rise Up

Statement

I have a long-time love of photography dating back to my childhood when my dad gave me a little Brownie Hawkeye camera so I could be a photographer like him; took art and photography classes in college and later in adult education programs. However, I only recently have had the time to seriously pursue this passion with focus and devotion. My approach is to typically keep an eye open for interesting reflections, light patterns, views of a subject. I look for and find hidden beauty in everyday life that hopefully inspires others to appreciate the subtle yet pervasive beauty in their own life.

I like using the collage format to integrate associated images into a cohesive unit that is even more compelling because of the embedded story. Having been a playwright and technical writer, I am used to delivering content with a message. So now as a visual communicator, I continue to provide meaning via the structure of the collage format, wherein the four photos confirm, augment or even contradict each other if warranted. I enjoy offering the richness that the multiplicity of images provides along with the impact gained through thoughtful positioning of them. Ultimately my intent is to have my work act as a doorway to the viewer’s own mental and emotional framework regarding the collection of images, perhaps finding their own very personal meaning in them.

 

Brandin Barón

Four&20

 

Biography

Brandin Barón is a San Francisco-based visual artist. After receiving his M.F.A from the University of California, San Diego, he has worked professionally as a fine and digital artist, graphic designer, and costume designer for theatrical productions, and design scholar. From 2006-2018, he was a Professor of Design at The University of California, Santa Cruz.

Statement

Four&20 (2022), from DarWIN or LOSE (2021-22)

Overwhelmed by news reports of the state of our world, I retreated into David Attenborough animal documentaries that led into a rabbit hole of inferior versions of animal footage. My intention was to escape into the beguiling and savage members animal world, but I only found parallels to the cruelties I was escaping. Mother Nature has inspired me to create artworks that draw on the similarities between humans and animals, especially in our desires to attract mates, and to assert control over our environment.

My artworks are “staged” through the process of layering my photographic and hand-rendered imagery with stock photography and digital textures. I utilize experimental printmaking techniques, especially in the play between different surface qualities of ink/paint/pigment, in a final output of 2-3 prints per image. Final prints are then embellished with hand-applied media, including: ink, gouache, pastel, acrylic, collage/assemblage and/or enamel.

 

Paul Benavidez

The Absent Referent #3

 

Biography

EDUCATION

Originally from South Pasadena, California, multidisciplinary artist Paul Benavidez began his art studies at Pasadena City College (PCC) in the late 1960s, where he was taught and mentored by artist David Schnabel. The painter George De Groat, who taught at Otis Art Institute and the Art Center College of Design, was also a mentor. It was in this period that Benavidez came to know other notable artists including Joseph Mugnaini who was the main figure at Otis along with Charles White. It is important to note that Benavidez was and remains today influenced by the work and philosophy of Rico Lebrun.

In 1973, Benavidez moved to the Santa Barbara area to attend Santa Barbara Art Institute (SBARTI) where painter Priscilla Bender-Shore and the international sculptor, Alice de Creeft, were faculty. After a year at SBARTI Benavidez transferred to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) specifically to study with Howard Warshaw. On entering UCSB, Benavidez was accepted into the Howard Warshaw Drawing Program where he studied until Warshaw’s death in 1977. Benavidez was also accepted to the prestigious UCSB College of Creative Studies where he studied contemporary sculpture under John McCracken. Leaving UCSB in his senior year to raise his family, Benavidez returned in 1994 to finish his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art Studio in 1996. There he studied with contemporary artists Karen Carson and Harry Reese.

In 2009, Benavidez began his graduate studies in visual art at Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA), where he was mentored by Faith Wilding and other notable artists. At VCFA, Benavidez expanded his multidisciplinary studio art to include the genre, Public Practice. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in 2012.

AWARDS, ACHIEVEMENTS & ACTIVISM

Benavidez is the recipient of numerous awards, including First Place in California’s “Millard Sheets 2005 Contemporary Fine Art Competition, Category Figurative” held in Los Angeles. He won Third Place in the Los Angeles “Municipal Art Gallery 2008 Los Angeles Juried Competition.”

Before moving to Northern California in 2019, Benavidez was a key figure in establishing the City of Fillmore California Arts Commission and Public Art Policy. He was Art Commissioner for the city for a four-year tenure.

Benavidez donated artwork to raise awareness of Dr. Roger Nelson’s Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University. He also donates his time and artwork to Unequal Wealth Distribution (UWD) discussion group, and he is currently an artist and activist for the crucial climate change project, MEER: ReflEction (www.meerreflection.com) directed by Dr. Ye Tao.

Today, he continues his multidisciplinary studio practice in Sacramento and Emeryville, California.

 

Statement

I call this my Enchanted Loom series. The title, The Absent Referent #3, comes from feminist author Carol J. Adams. Hangers are typical household items but for this piece, they represent individual human beings in an aesthetically beautiful, self-replicating, infinite pattern of pure cooperation. Pure synergy. Practically speaking, I think life, as in all living cells, work cooperatively to thrive. Synergy is actually the only way to survive, and yet our species continues to destroy the very things we need for survival. Is the shadow humankind’s indifference? Conversely, the shadow is humanity observing its true potential.

 

Amy Bernays

Our Afternoon

Biography

Amy Bernays lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Born in London, she graduated with a BA(honors) in Fine Art from Central St Martins College in 2001. Her paintings are landscapes of personal interaction; poems to the love of line and color. Her work is anthropological and personal, pondering the great themes of life, love and leisure.

She paints the happy moments in life. Looking for those thoughts or moments that bring joy and define the trajectory of our lives. She paints her children, not just their visage, but their inner being, their play, their imagination landscape. In this series she is working with the children’s own artwork. She has the kids paint first onto the canvas, later adding to their images.

“I love to hear them talk when they don’t know I’m listening. They play by narrating to each other. Their world is suddenly filled with each other’s fantasies.”

 

Kate Carvellas

Top of the World

Biography

Kate Carvellas was born in Baton Rouge, LA.  She grew up on the East Coast spending her childhood in New Jersey and her teenage and young adult years in Northern Virginia. She moved to California in 1992 to pursue and acting career. While visual art was a passion her entire life (she was creating art consistently from her early teens to her early 20’s), and after more than one detour, she ultimately attended George Mason University, where she received a BFA in Theater.  She moved to Los Angeles in 1992 to work in the entertainment industry (Disney, etc.) It was not until 2004 that she allowed herself to return her focus toward the visual arts after a 18 year break.   At first, she focused on collage, creating thematic compositions from mass media imagery. By 2007, she had transformed her practice to focus on three-dimensional artworks using objects she has collected from thrift stores, yard sales, and flea markets. Her sculptures, however can also include wood, plaster gauze, cardboard and/or repurposed styrofoam.

Carvellas began exhibiting in 2008 at a local coffee shop and has expanded her practice since, with numerous solo exhibitions, even more group shows and a major installation in 2018. That same year, she won first place and the purchase prize at the Museum of Art and History, Lancaster. Her paintings and sculptures are in private collections throughout the US, from Florida and Virginia to California. Her work has been reviewed in the Pasadena Star News, Art and Cake and Diversion LA.

Awards/Honors

2018 – “My Soul is Not for Sale” – Accessioned into the Lancaster Museum of Art and History’s permanent collection.

2018 – “My Soul is Not for Sale” received Best of Exhibition 1st Place in the 33rd Annual Juried Art Exhibition at MOAH: Cedar (Lancaster Museum of Art and History)

Statement

My work revolves around memory, juxtaposition and reclamation (both literally and metaphorically). Using repurposed objects, ephemera, wood and packaging styrofoam, I create new meaning and a new dialogue between materials and objects that otherwise would not be connected in the everyday world. This process allows me to “talk about” my conflicts, confusions, and insights. Giving me the opportunity to “re-construct” and redeem my personal narrative.

Warren Casey

Organic No. 5 & 6

   

Biography

I have been an artist all my life. Working in many different creative worlds in many different mediums. My new fine art works are dark and moody, like those few hours after sunset where all colors are saturated and it is sometimes hard to focus. The paintings are mostly about process, about the medium, how it moves and evolves. Imagery takes a secondary place in this process.

I work in a many different mediums: pencil, spray paint, oils, watercolor, oil stains, along with doing sculpture. I have not only been a visual artist, but was a national touring musician (13 years) with his own band Wicked Tinkers. I have also been a show designer, production designer, prop master/designer/builder, graphic designer, photographer, Interior & exterior designer, yacht designer, and boat builder.

I am a graduate of Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California in 1980.

I live in Glendale, California

 

Michael Chesler

Various Los Angeles Additions #1

Works from home #1

Statement

My artwork illustrates the time contained within a structure. There are two times eras encompassed in each structure which exist simultaneously. The incongruity is concurrently obvious and invisible. I bring the viewer’s attention to the details that denote the disparity in time periods. Both images in the frame are photos of the same structure. In the black and white photo, whiteout, or correction fluid, is painted over the modern “improvements.” The past is manifest in what remains.

In the color photo, the artistry of the past is painted over to highlight the transformations of the present era.

I am interested in exploring disparate aspects of seemingly integrated entities. My interest is also on the unnoticed, the ignored or overlooked features of our everyday world, from shadows to foliage that pushes through concrete edifices to signs of human encroachment in “untouched” natural environments.

   

Ashoke Chhabra

Large pendant chaos lamp

 

Aaron Dadacay

Palindrome

 

Madeline Davis

Anemone

 

Nicholas Decker

Winged Emigre

Statement

Nicholas Decker is a sculptor and garden designer based in Los Angeles. Nicholas works in primarily in stone and is inspired by the environment of American West and Midwest, where he grew up. His work uses form and abstraction to draw out the beauty that is inherent to stone as an element of the natural world.

Since 2018, Nicholas has worked on a series exploring abstraction of the human form and the experience of alienation. Many aspects of the modern world – isolation, suburbanization, wage stagnation, and digitalization among them – have left us increasingly alienated from ourselves, each other, and the planet. In his alienation series, Nicholas portrays those feelings within empathetic, abstracted human forms. “Winged Émigré” is part of this series. It captures the feeling of alienation from one’s home/birthplace; the pull we feel to move on and ahead, but the endless tug of what we leave behind.

 

Shannon Evans

can’t stop you putting roots in my dreamland

 

Biography

Being an artist is all I’ve ever wanted to be. I’ve been creating for as long as I can remember. Art has always captivated me and played a vital role in my life. Painting is the only place in my life where I feel I can truly let go and be free. I work very intuitively; my paintings are mirrors of the human experience and are influenced by what is happening in my own life. Some of the themes I work with are loss, love, longing and wonder. I am heavily inspired by impressionism and abstract expressionism.

In 2018, I graduated Cum Laude with my BFA in Drawing & Painting from California State University, Long Beach. Since then, I have been shown in multiple gallery and museum shows across California and an exhibition in Italy. I am a member of the Los Angeles Art Association and have paintings in corporate and private collections. I’ve had long-term content creation contracts with massive social media companies. My work has been sold and collected nationally and internationally, including but not limited to: New York, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, and Israel.

Statement

Abstraction allows me, as an artist, to interpret the world around me and place myself within the work. Using oil paint, I explore expressive, gestural mark making with references to the natural landscape. My paintings are influenced by daily walks I take; I use the imagery from my memories to imbue the work with layers of nostalgic feeling and whispers of nature. By breaking down and abstracting these references to the natural landscape, the brushwork comes to the forefront of the painting. The juxtaposition and accumulation of advancing and receding positive and negative expressive brushwork form an abstracted landscape: a sense of place, a moment in time. By building up these multiple layers, the work transforms into a mosaic record of my life: feelings, memories, emotions.

The paintings become, in its purest form, an extension of myself. I can look at a painting and remember all of the stages it went through. The evocative, bold and sometimes frantic character of these marks creates a captivating sense of movement that draws one into the piece. Color and paint are used expressively to create a multitude of hues that overlap and build to create spatial relationships. These colors are an intuitive combination of chromic neutrals and highly saturated hues. The ardent character of both the brushwork and color gives the viewer a glimpse into my emotional state at the time of the painting’s creation. It’s a release; it’s a true catharsis.

 

Danielle Foster

Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine (Polyptych)

 

Biography

Danielle Foster (b. 1995) is a visual artist and educator living and working in Los Angeles, California. She holds three AA degrees from Moorpark College in Psychology, Humanities, and Behavioral Sciences, and has earned a BA in Art from CSU Channel Islands as well was an MFA Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design.

Statement

Foster’s practice operates at the intersection between psychology and horror. It is an investigation of memory, a questioning of personhood, and an unveiling of how unsettling the mind has the potential to be. Through the exploration of anomalies within her own behavioral tendencies, Foster interrogates experiences recalled from adolescence that have contributed to her anxieties, fears, and have had a substantial impact on her sense of self. Raising the questions:

Why do certain moments stain? Was this engrained generationally? Was this something learned? Was this something taught? Can this be pinpointed to a specific moment? Was this memory real or imagined?

Foster’s representational paintings suggest a level of cognitive dissonance, utilizing techniques such as blurring, repetition, and symbology to illustrate how we may process and archive moments of impact. Taking into considering not only how certain memories are stored but also why certain moments stick, while others fade away – Foster’s work becomes a constant push and pull between internal vs external, a negotiation of two-dimensional vs three-dimensional space, and a questioning of imagination vs reality; blurring the line that distinguishes each.

 

Erik Friedman

Variance #33 – des Esseintes garden

Statement

Over the past two years and during the pandemic, I have been developing the Variances series, which began as an investigation that considers the structural foundation of form and shape within pictorial space.

It is composed of collages, drawings, and paintings, all in varying sizes and media.

The pieces, and their ongoing progression, are an attempt at creating a new type of renewal and visual vocabulary for myself. Starting with the deconstruction and obliteration of typographic letter forms related specifically to calligraphy and writing and progressing into a new euphoric state of pictorial aesthetics.

It’s beginning, and ongoing progression, is inspired by metaphorical ideas related to Gaston Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space” and Joris-Karl Huysmans “Against Nature”.

 

Carole Garland

Patience and Innocence

 

Biography

Carole Garland studied painting at the Art Institute in Chicago, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois and the University of the Americas, Mexico City. In California, she studied with semi-abstract painter Keith Finch and took plein-air workshops with oil painters Frank Serrano and Jeff Horn and contemporary watercolorist Don Blaisdell. Most recently she has been influenced by fine artist David Gallup.

Garland has ben on the board of Allied Artists of the Santa Monica Mountains & Seashore since its inception in the mid-nineties, served on the Associate Artists Committee of the California Art Club and for seven years was on the board of TAG Gallery, Los Angeles.

Garland is in numerous art collections and has shown in many Southern California venues: most notable and recent, several shows at TAG Gallery, Bergamot Station and Los Angeles over 10 years, realART Gallery, Agoura Hills, and the Santa Paula Art Museum.

Statement

I love to paint. And my pursuits have been the nude figure, and then expressing the soaring emotions produced by nature through en plein air landscape painting. Then an opposing tack, taking on gritty urban painting and now a return to the figure, in motion and in light.

About “INNOCENCE AND PATIENCE”

This painting was inspired by a visit to a South African middle school. The children’s names were unusual and when we asked our Zimbabwean guide whose name was Sanction, he explained that in order to be registered the children needed to have English names. So the parents would look through English language newspapers and pick out a word.

Ashu Gera

Untitled

Biography

Ashu Gera ( b.1995) is a visual artist currently based in Montreal, Canada. Gera has received a degree in Bachelors in Visual Arts specializing in painting and printmaking from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India and his M.F.A from California Institute of The Arts where he has worked very closely with eminent pedagogists such as Darcy Huebler, Jessica Bronsonn, Tom Lawson amongst others. Gera is currently pursuing his masters in Art Education from Concordia University.

With his current body of work he has been trying to constantly bring forth the cause and effect relationship that we humans share with society. He started by exploring the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and with his new body of work, he has been dealing with the notion of “Dope”, in context to millennial culture and its negative implications on the human brain and society at large. His work investigates pornography, fast food culture, social media and binge watching as modern form of psychological addictions.

Gera has had the opportunity to showcase his works in cities like, Vadodara and Ahmedabad in India and at Los Angeles and Texas in the USA.

 

Barry Goldstein

Flight

 

Biography

I was born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Lawrence, NY. My mother majored in art at Cooper Union and was a member of the NY Art Student League. Art was brought to me in a homeschool environment. I was placed in a carriage and stared at Picasso’s Guernica while my mother sketched at an easel. There were also weekly visits to the classics at the Brooklyn Museum and sometimes the Metropolitan Museum.

However my family pushed me to focus on another field. In their mind, being an artist would not be a satisfying career option. I graduated in engineering from Johns Hopkins and attended engineering graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. I worked for many years as an design engineer and self-trained computer expert in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and North Carolina. In my free time I experimented with art.

In the 21st century most medical surgery will be performed by robotic arms connected to computers and controlled by surgeons. I decided that art in this century will also migrate in that direction and decided to focus on that path employing my knowledge of art and computer technology. Similar to my experience with computers, where I am considered a software system expert, I have completely trained myself and developed a personalized art.

 

Statement

My art focuses on creating the finest work possible using modern technology. I try to bridge
realism and abstract concepts. My goal is for people to smile and relax when they see the finished work.

I “paint” using a mouse on a computer. Rather than digital painting, my work is done in vector graphics, which means every object in the painting is mathematically defined and can be expanded without losing any resolution. I print on a special ink jet printer that has been modified to accept many different types of media using ink that will last for decades.

Special printing software is used to reduce the printer’s feed which further increases the print resolution. In addition, many of my pieces require multiple passes which requires almost perfect alignment for each pass. Because of the work involved to create a print, I normally only create monoprints. On average I complete one piece of art each month.

My art does not try to replicate other art forms, but pushes forward the idea of what wonderful new things can be done with computer technology.

 

Steven Hampton

Swim Party

 

Biography

Steven Hampton is an artist and art historian working with ideas, of kitsch, taste, and their impact on political aesthetics. Steven has exhibited throughout the U.S. and curated exhibitions in Los Angeles relating to themes of kitsch, monuments, and mourning. For several years he was a board member of the Foundation for Art Resources (FAR), helping to organize Pacific Non-Standard Time: FAR 1977-Present, among other projects. Steven received his BFA from Art Center in Illustration, his MFA in Painting from Claremont Graduate University where he received the Karl and Beverly Benjamin Fellowship, an MA in Art History from University of California, Riverside writing his thesis on “Bad Painting and Kitsch,” and is currently completing his PhD in Art History at the University of California, Riverside.

 

Statement

Steven Hampton – “Hard Bodies”

Through a focus on world leaders and using official, candid, and campaign images, my recent paintings analyze the projection of masculinity in political imaging. In painting these “hard bodies,” my interest is in embracing effects largely considered kitsch for its appeal to archetypes and a collective reception. As the theatre of American image politics is a global one my paintings pair the “antagonist” to American leaders to picture global aesthetics as wholly relational and dependent. With a focus on scenes of leisure, or, more specifically, “bathers,” a genre that historically depicted an eroticized female nude and addressed modern notions of privacy or cleanliness, my work strives to de-schematize these highly coded scenes. Stylistically, my paintings continue a tradition of realism rooted in materialism or anti-idealism. In doing so, I avoid re-tooling depictions of heroic laborers or eroticized nudes by emphasizing the generic, and hence, common. By focusing on photographs of world leaders in domestic or familiar settings, exhibiting their tastes, physique, or connection to cultural archetypes, my recent figurative works investigate the role representation, and kitsch, plays in contemporary politics.

 

Carlos Heredia

Casa De Mi Abuela II

 

Biography

Carlos Akamba Heredia is an artist from Oxnard, California. He received his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute (Kansas City, MO) in 2022. Influenced by dreams, nature, human connection and death, he describes his practice as an ongoing search for a visual language to communicate what is within. Carlos has been exploring materials such as clay, oil pastel, oil paint, watercolor and ink. He perceives his work as a living organism, a piece of himself that has been reborn. Carlos has shown work at various locations such as: California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Arts (Davis, CA), Santa Paula Art Museum (Santa Paula, CA) and Guilin China International Woodfired Conference (Guilin, China).

Statement

My creations are moments of collision. In my works we witness the crashing of body and material. When I observe these moments I see familiar aspects of myself and others I Interact with. Yet, Within these expressions I undergo a shattering and melting of the idea of self. I am forced to rethink and reflect on what it means to be “me.”

I see myself connected and directly linked to my culture, family and ultimately humanity. My confrontation with clay is a confrontation of “Me,” my body and the accumulated ideas and perceptions given to me from the outside. The tearing and distortion of the clay are direct threads inspired by other realities: space, body and mind. I pull imagery from these spaces where linear and logic dissolve. By experiencing, inspecting and expressing these dream states I go head-to-head with the unknown subconscious selves.

My practice utilizes cutting, morphing, and contorting parts of my sculpture to bring a new representation. My sculptures and drawings develop out of my allure for the figure and spaces. I implement the colors, textures and symbols I face in my dreams into my creations to evoke emotion. My work is of a human, a human reaching for liberation of the countless shackles put onto the body. In these mirrors we find the culmination of my loves, desires, and fears. In these clashes we are left with reflections, mirrors into the human mind.

 

Sheri Hoeger

Left Hanging

 

Biography

Sheri Hoeger is an artist living in the woods of the Sierra Nevada foothills. She is inspired by nature and human relationships with one another and our environments.

Armed with a high school education, a supportive husband and a childlike sense of wonder, Sheri launched her decorative arts business in 1988. Sheri went on to become a force in the decorative art world, creating works for hundreds of interiors, appearing on tv, opening a teaching studio, created a highly successful line of stencils, and was featured in numerous books and magazines. Her public art can be seen in locations throughout the Western Slope.

Since transitioning to fine art, Sheri has been featured at several galleries across the west as well as inclusion in national juried online shows. Sheri’s work still conveys that childlike sense of wonder, along with a deeper appreciation for nature and human connection that comes with a lifetime of learning and living creatively.

Kyung Min Kim

Reincarnation: Begin Again

Biography

Touching and molding clay has been a healing outlet for me since the beginning of my journey as a potter after having served many years as a product manager at an advanced biosciences company.

The beauty of clay artwork is in its creation from zero to figure, soft to hardened, plain to rich through the various forms and stories that each piece of art carries in revealing my personal journey to create. As a potter and a ceramic artist, I’m passionate about building pieces with functionality: cups, bowls, plates, vases, saucers, tea pot, etc. I believe that the moment I intend to create functionality in a piece commences the beginning of its life cycle. Upon its completion, the work is called into use in our everyday lives. I often get inspired with new design ideas while utilizing these valuable everyday pieces in my life. When I’m not sitting at the pottery wheel, I enjoy sewing the Korean traditional beauty of silk patchwork, Jogakbo and love to collaborate these two mediums, ceramics and silk/fabrics.

 

Faina Kumpan

Arrival 3

 

Hot Summer Day

 

Statement

I came to America as a political refugee from Ukraine.

I graduated from Theatrical Art College in Odessa, Ukraine.

Back in Soviet Union, where I spent my youth, was very little entertainment. The best thing to get away from a very boring and uninteresting life was reading.

My favorite subject was Science fiction. I created a fantasy where my world was so much better and brighter than my real world.

I kept imagining that a friendly alien from another civilization would come and rescue me to another planet.

When I came to America, I got a feeling that I landed in another Galaxy.

I received a Resident Alien green card and became an Alien. Since then I always tried to imagine how aliens will look like. I like to imagine them bright and colorful, not black and scary as they were shown in some movies.

My love for science fiction is reflected in my work. My inspirations are Kandinsky and Miro.

I am creating two dimensional and three dimensional art.

Tom Lasley

Make Lemonade

 

Tina Linville

Of

Spikey Hi

Statement

Tina Linville’s work combines the tendencies of collecting and arranging with textile construction processes to transform everyday objects and materials. What is ordinary becomes mysterious and out of undervalued parts comes an indelible whole.

Biography

Tina Linville received her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Washington and her MFA in Fibers from California State University, Long Beach. Her sculptures, installations, and collaborative projects have shown with Jason Vass Gallery, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation and Craft in America, 18th Street Art Center and Mains d’Oeuvres in Paris, France. Linville lives and works in Waco, Texas and teaches in the art and art history department at Baylor University.

   

Charles Magallanes

Dancing Warrior

 

Melissa McClellan

I Wish You Well

 

Mary McGill

Flock

 

Bonnie Mills

Cinderella

Biography

As a “Military Brat” I changed residences many times while growing up. Change became an important part of who I was and still am. After marrying a Navy Pilot I continued to change addresses. An influential change was in Naples, Italy, the birthplace of our third daughter and where I studied art with Frank Agresti, an influential “Colorist.” It was then I discovered a passion for color, paint, and forms of art-making. After transferring back to the U.S., I continued pursuing an education in art. At Cerro Coso Community College I privileged to study Art History with Dr. Donald Rosenberg, and sculpture with Paul Meyer, a Master Potter and Sculptor. Their influences helped shape the artist I have grown to be. Finally landing in Camarillo, California I received a B.A. from UCSB in Studio Art. This major was a perfect fit as it allowed me to experiment and discover many different art making mediums. A year later I realized the teacher in me so, I pursued and received a Single Subject Teaching Credential from Azusa Pacific University. I captured a dream job teaching, painting, Visual Arts, Advanced Placement Studio Art, and Advanced Placement Art History for many years at Adolfo Camarillo High School in Southern California. In 2017, I retired from teaching to pursue my art making. I exhibit art in several venues throughout Southern California.

Where some people might see trash I see an opportunity. Combining paint with other mediums and materials to achieve unusual effects with provocative results is more than a focus to me. I’m driven to find the edge when art making, I believe in taking risks and exercising brave creativity.

Artists are historians of such and therefore compelled to tell the PAST AND PRESENT through Art Making.

Statement

“Artists are historians and often, compelled to tell the past and the present through their art making.” My name is Bonnie Mills and I feel a responsibility to viewers of my art to tell the truth as I see it, no matter how provocative. Having my artwork be unlike any other artists is always my goal. I enjoy breaking molds and doing the unexpected.

I taught art at Adolfo Camarillo High School for many years during which time I had the privilege of instructing Advanced Placement Studio Art students and Advanced Placement Art History students. I retired from teaching in 2017 and I was able to return to my own art. As a Studio Art Major from University of California Santa Barbara I explored many different art making mediums, and my art reflects this exploration. I see an opportunity where some people see trash. A new excitement and urgency stirs up the planning, and then execution of a fresh idea. This process drives me to reach for “an edge.” I respond to pushing my own concept of boundaries through my art. Taking risks with art making is not accidental.

Creating a body of work that relates to one another such as with the work Cinderella and the 3 other related works invites questions and stirs interest in the viewers. Perhaps, why did I use glass globes and mirrors in frames for the viewer to not only gaze at their own reflection but also see a distorted image on the curved glass surfaces?

 

David Orr

Bathing Beauty

Strings of Thought

What Happened to Hope?

Statement

During the last twenty years I have been able to exhibit my landscape photography and paintings at over twenty galleries and museums in the Midwest and South. Some may say that work was from a part-time artist, since I earned most of my living during my early and mid career from other endeavors: architectural design, computer drafting applications in facilities management, and web development/user experience. However, during the last three years I have been able to focus exclusively on my art projects. I have seen my creative focus progress from sequential painting in triptych format to sequential drawings and digital media in comics and graphic narratives. I now begin by writing a script, which builds on emotional as well as factual truths — revealing my lifelong exposure to Southern tall tales, as well as my belief in the scientific method. My scripts often aim to capture innocent yet astute concepts of identity — as seen in themes of both the early civil rights movement of the 1960s and culture wars now. After a few script edits, I sketch. I develop characters and scenes through layered techniques in photo editing software. I find that sketching typically reveals more and more of the story to be told. While developing a layout, I unite visuals through dynamic patterns in balanced compositions based on scale and proportion. I believe that a two-page spread for a graphic narrative is missing a powerful opportunity if component text, images, and frames do not form one super image — the type of imagery that The Next Big Thing 22 has invited me to exhibit. Moreover, with all humility, I can share that a leading U.S. scholar of comics and graphic narratives sees my current artistic approach as “part of the graphic narrative avant-garde.” I see my work as grounded in fun and in a desire to show how differences bring people together.

   

Robin Ossentjuk

Foothills

Biography

Robin Ossentjuk is an emerging contemporary fiber artist based in Southern California. She uses different techniques such as punch needle, traditional embroidery, and machine tufting to create a mix of abstract and figurative textural pieces that hold emotional and personal significance. Inspired by self reflection, dream images, and the tactile nature of her medium, Robin produces intimate, vulnerable works that put self truths on display.

With a BA in mixed media visual arts from Scripps College, Robin has shown her work in various group shows across the Western United States, including the 2020 fiber arts show “Live Wire” at Form & Concept Gallery in Santa Fe, NM and the 2021 exhibition “The Next Big Thing” in Camarillo, CA. She was recently America’s Finest Underground Gallery’s February 2022 Featured Artist and had her work published in the Fiber Art Now Spring 2022 Issue. She is a proud recipient of the Lucia Suffel Crafts Award, given annually to an outstanding student working in fabrics and/or ceramics, as well as the Fine Arts Foundation Grant. Her work can be found in private collections in several locations within the United States.

 

Yanyan Ouyang

Childhood

 

Holly Perez

Do You Remember? (clip)

 

Biography

My journey started in 2010 at Mount San Antonio College where I earned my Associates in Fine Arts in 2014. I transferred to California State University Fullerton in 2015 and graduated in 2019 with my Bachelors in Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting. I enrolled in 2020 to Claremont Graduate University and graduated Spring 2022 with my Masters of Fine Arts.

I am an installation artist and a painter. I paint with fabrics, textures, readymade objects, oils, acrylics, spray paints, airbrush, glitter and whatever I can get my hands on. I’ve also experimented in video art and sculpture. In any medium, the subject matter has always been based on real-life events, traumas, and conversations I’ve experienced. Whether that be the traumas I’ve experienced as a brown woman, the toxicity within my Chicano culture, alcoholism, abuse, consumption, mental health, arguments, societal, cultural, and generational issues, I have no hesitation being confrontational and bringing these traumas to light in an ambiguous approach. Ambiguity within semiotics has always been a part of my work. Language, objects, textures, and colors are stand-ins for a situation, person, or people I am representing in my work. It’s like a representational portrait, without being an actual portrait. My work is a safe space that I created not just for myself, but for those who view my pieces and can relate.

I created this safe space to vibe and vent, to teach and learn, to create solidarity, new connections, and initiate conversations. My work is not just about myself and my culture, I cross boundaries and class brackets in the fact that everyone, no matter the culture and color of their skin, can relate in some way.

Kathryn Pitt

“But what is it?”

 

Marita Redondo

Pier View

 

Biography

Marita Redondo was born in Los Angeles and raised in Ventura County. She studied Graphic Communications at San Diego State University and received her BFA from the University of California, San Marcos with an emphasis in Painting in 1991. She has a Master’s in Education and a California Teaching Credential in Art. Much of her adulthood was spent in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. She painted commissioned portraits and landscapes, murals in homes and businesses and sets for theater. For the past 12 years Marita has taught high school art. She currently lives, teaches, and paints in Ventura County and has exhibited at respected galleries in San Diego, Ventura, Napa, and Benicia.

Portraits and figurative work are primary interests of the artist, in which she depicts family members, friends, and acquaintances. Her landscapes and still-lifes portray cherished subjects and moments in life. Her oil paintings on wood and canvas are often characterized by bold, colorful brush strokes.

 

Statement

In 1964 the artist Alice Neel wrote “I paint my time, using the people as evidence”. That resonates with me and like many figurative painters, I have an ongoing interest in humanity. Places I’ve been and people, especially family, friends, and those I encounter everyday are some of my favorite subjects. I bring them to life using bold choices in color, gesture, and paint application. The desire to recreate them in oils provides a lifelong challenge. Painting is not about the resolved artwork but solving one problem, then taking on the next. At the end of a painting session, there is a feeling of accomplishment from making the mark, experiencing the process and finding nuanced meaning in my work and life.

 

Arjuna Rigby

The Netherlands

 

Statement

My current projects are inspired by the reflection of light, especially as seen on bodies of water or trees. I shape the details of the reflection so it becomes the focus of the work. This is where I love to be painting right now, playing with this, in a sort of explosion amidst the form of a landscape.

Biography

As a native of California I started out as a printmaker, trained in New York. I also took a degree in law and practiced as a lawyer in California. I am greatly influenced by the artists Gerhard Richter and Vincent Van Gogh.

Lisa Roggenbuck

Influenced

 

Biography

Lisa Roggenbuck is an Idaho based painter, filmmaker, performance artist, and educator. She was born in Boise, Idaho, where she grew up and received her MFA in 2020 from Boise State University.

Roggenbuck began her career as a tattoo artist in 2001, which ignited her interest in how bodies are influenced by social ideas and how one asserts their identity within those constructs. After 5 years in the body modification industry, she retired and worked as a stripper for the next 13 years—an experience that would later inform her current work as an artist.

Roggenbuck’s art deals with the disconnection women can experience to their bodies by complying with standards of beauty and acceptability that are imposed upon them in western culture. In the past 4 years, her work has won 7 awards, including the Distinguished Thesis & Project Award for the Creative, Visual, & Performing Arts, and the Presidential Scholar in the Performing & Visual Arts. She currently teaches painting & drawing as an adjunct professor of visual art at Boise State University.

 

Statement

My work is about the disconnection women can experience to their bodies by complying with standards of beauty and acceptability that are imposed upon them in western culture. These standards are determined by the dominant culture and problematize bodies that don’t satisfy these standards. This failure to satisfy these standards are then remedied with modifications to the body. These modifications come in the form of consumer products that require time as well as money to execute.

In my work I reference the historical nude, female sexuality, and body objectification. Color is used as a strategy to address gender and the privilege given to a caucasian appearance. I use pattern as a way of addressing the labor required in presenting one’s appearance, and the removal of individuality in western beauty standards.

 

Viktoria Romanova

Fruits & Boards

Biography

Viktoria Romanova was born in Kharkov, Ukraine and grew up in Khabarovsk, Russia. She received a B.F.A. from Art and Graphic Department of Pedagogical University of Khabarovsk in 1995. Her teaching career began in 1992 where she founded and operated a private art school “Rainbow” for children and young adults. In 2002, Viktoria moved to the United States.

She studied “Color composition” and “Color and Light” at The Art Center of Design in Pasadena (2009-2016). While there, she completed a large project for Mee Industries Inc. that consisted paintings portraying urban landscapes and abstract compositions.

Viktoria exhibits her artwork in many galleries, museums and venues around Southern California that includes Ontario Museum of History and Art, The Latino Art Museum, The Neutra Museum and Gallery, Santa Paula Art Museum, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Oceanside Museum of Art, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, San Diego Museum of Art and The Senate’s 10th Biennial California Art Collection at the capitol building in Sacramento. In 2018 Viktoria participated in the International Exhibit BIENNALE AUSTRIA “ Blue, bleu, blau, blu” in Wien, Austria, in 2020 she showed her paintings at the Art Resilience Exhibition Salon #6 at the Musee de Sant-Frajou, France and in 2021 Salon 7th Art Resilience Art Fair at the Musee de Sant-Frajou, France.

Gallery 825 (LAAA) is currently representing her as an artist.

Statement

My work is mainly about color and geometry. Color is magic. I tent to work with bold colors for expressing energy reasons and my palette is reflecting our life. The sense of a painted line and cutouts quality of my shapes came out from the early work in paper collages. Geometry was always the way to simplify shapes and to be as direct as possible. Currently I do the same type of work except without paper and scissors, only using oil and brushes directly on canvas. I use a thin paint application with hard edges and I eliminate texture completely in order for the color to be the main focus. Geometry gives a structure to build any composition and often a beautiful architecture or an interior space could be an inspiration for a new work and I do think about building something when I am painting. My process is meticulous and it takes time to produce a piece. Painting to me is constant problem solving activity and endless choices making. I guess my best expectation from my work is a sense of a surprise, if I can surprise myself and hopefully the viewer I will be satisfied. I am still just trying to make something and I did not reach the complete point of a satisfaction yet, so I believe that all the best works are still ahead of me and it gives me a strong motivation to keep on working. The experimentation has the most excitement on a daily bases, each new painting is taking me somewhere else and new series of work will be a next level where I hope to be more clear, fresh and vital.

KS Rooney

Mexican Bush Sage and Poppies

 

Biography

Rooney was born in Virginia (February 1956). As a Navy dependent she attended many different schools as her family moved often, attending high schools in Italy, Hawaii, and graduating from the International School of Bangkok, Thailand. While in Thailand she studied the art of Chinese brush painting.

After The Vietnam War ended she returned to the U.S. studying a year at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va.

She left the United States at nineteen backpacking alone overland from Ireland to Nepal, learning that she had lived a life of privilege. With much appreciation she continued learning about other nationalities, their cultures, arts, and lands. Over time, choosing to travel with collected rocks, and always with journal, camera and paints in hand,. Her adoration for our planet would be a constant inspiration throughout her life.

Rooney returned home to work, then left to live on Kibbutz Malkia located near the Lebanese border and Kiryat Shimone. She pruned apple trees and picked grapefruits, among other work duties. There was quite a lot of bombing while there.

She has since trekked several times in the Himalayas of Nepal, one of her favorite places on earth and is captivated by the Sherpa and Nepalese people; their cultures, art, music, the magical mountains, landscape, and the incredible plant endemism of Nepal. In a group of five, (two people being guides) she experienced Chiwan Jungle, a wilderness of rich ecosystem. There, enchanted by the sounds, mist, insects, animals and towering trees they encountered a one horned rhino mother and calf bathing. Startled the mother began charging! All of these experiences inspire her painting.

Ms. Rooney, continues to travel, recently arriving to California in late May 2022. Her two dogs accompanied her across the U.S. to experience California. She is an avid jogger, and while jogging is spellbound by California’s landscapes and beauty. This is what she tries to capture today in her painting.

Ms. Rooney graduated with distinction from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelors Degree of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking with minors in Art History, Sculpture and Film.

 

Winter Rusiloski

Rainbow Phoenix

Biography

Winter Rusiloski was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and grew up painting the rural landscapes of Pennsylvania and the northeastern coast. She earned a BFA in Painting and Related Arts-Dance at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, studying abroad in Cortona, Italy with the University of Georgia. She earned an MFA in Painting with a fellowship award at Texas Christian University studying abroad at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. Rusiloski joined the Baylor University Department of Art and Art History as professor of painting in the fall of 2016.

Rusiloski’s abstracted landscapes have been included in 11 solo exhibitions and more than 30 national and international juried exhibitions since 2016. Exhibition highlights include: The Texas Biennial 2009, Hunting Art Prize Finalist, Paint Part 2-Out of Abstraction, at the Arlington Museum of Art, The Texas Oklahoma Art Prize at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art, The 30th and 32nd September Competition at the Alexandria Museum of Art, Gateway to Imagination at the Farmington Museum and Contemporary Landscape at the CICA Museum in South Korea, Studio Visit Magazine, Dallas Art Fair, and Art Santa Fe. Artspace 111 in Fort Worth, Texas represents her work.

Statement

Abstraction, landscape’s vastness and horizon are anchors for my work. I interpret landscape through an exploration of spatial relationships. Journey and movement have been of paramount influence in my experiencing varied landscapes. Abstraction allows me to create loose narratives from memories and suggestive figurative elements within a Romantic landscape. Abstract forms, lines and marks suggest reoccurring ideas of obstacles, barriers and opportunities. I have explored this dynamic in the fusion of landscape painting with abstraction for the past 18 years. In 2006 I began using collaged photographs in my work to introduce a varied vocabulary and space. The photographs act as another layer of mark making and are suggestive of an ambiguous narrative creating a secondary space within painting. This pairing releases representational areas within the work from their descriptive function, creating a dynamic spatial relationship with the whole.

For the past several years, my travels have included Niagara Falls and the East Coast, the South Texas border and Big Bend for their sublime qualities. I continue to explore Big Bend visiting multiple times and making work on my remote property in Terlingua Ranch with an untouched landscape. The desolate landscape and extremes needed for a sustained existence in the beautifully dangerous region of Texas are diametrically opposed to the bodies of water that birthed my interest in landscape painting. Most recently, I traversed the country from Texas to Montana to compare the desolate Big Bend landscape and the life-filled green spaces in Glacier National Park. The remote location of the park, the lakes and dramatic mountains greatly contrast the Big Bend. I will continue to study the landscapes of the United States and compare them to the Big Bend Region where I plan to build an off-grid studio. These experiences and memories inform my current work.

Anne Schwartz

387 Crossing the Arno River

 

385 Piazza di Spagna

 

Biography

Anne Brawer Schwartz is a dedicated abstractionist whose painterly imagination remains grounded in the world of places and things. While pursuing a degree in Graphic Design from the University of Oregon and further studies at the Gemological Institute of America, Schwartz always maintained a painting practice, which she kept up during her 30-year career as a renowned couture jewelry designer. The legacy of her expertise as a designer is apparent in her abstract paintings and their considerations of detail, drawing, design principles, color, texture, and refracted light. Having some years ago rededicated herself to her painting studio, today her canvases have been shown in numerous group shows and are represented in collections around the world. She frequently works with art consultants and interior designers, placing her works in businesses, hotels, private homes, and design firms. Being based in LA, her paintings have naturally also been featured in numerous television shows and motion pictures.

 

Statement

Approaching art history with a flair for abstract expressivity and a designer’s confidence in choreographing fundamentals of color and shape, Schwartz wields a palette knife along with brushes to animate prismatic color stories in thickly applied oil paint. Her Crystal Auras series are opalescent mixed media paintings created with countless layers of acrylic saturated with mica, interference pigment, and natural minerals that glisten like geodes, and bounce light across their auric topographies. Her largest project, Ricordi d’Italia, merges her explorations of the mellifluous properties of color, light, and surface with direct inspiration drawn from travels to Italy. While these paintings still possess the ethereal presence of Crystal Auras, they demonstrate a more formally definitive, architectural sensibility, being derived from photographic source sketches highlighting geometric details culled from vistas and ruins. At the same time, operations of memory, deconstruction, and fantasy combine to render them in an abstract language, producing moody palimpsests and evocative scenic impressions. In the Burst collection, we see small, intimate sections of works from Ricordi d’Italia enlarged into wholly new paintings — gestural compositions whose exotic rhythms are deeply influenced by her studies of Asian Sumi-e ink painting, which reveal their inner lives as she teases their essences forward from within their faceted depths. With Shapes, Schwartz’s newest series, paintings contain simpler sculptured shapes derived from memories of her jewelry designing career. Here, vibrant colors define sleek forms and gem-like angles that clarify and contrast with each other and with the flowing, organic forms introduced in Burst. Yet, befitting of their inspirational source, the elegant lines and crystalline planes complement each other in the way that the elements of fine jewelry meld to fashion an exquisite whole.

 

Steve Seagren

Del Rey 7

 

Biography

Though technically I am a native Californian (I was born in Fresno), I grew up in Chicago Illinois. I studied painting and print making at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1983 I left art school to pursue a career in the performing arts as an actor and standup comedian (you can check me out on IMDB). In 2018 I returned to painting.

 

Statement

My work is about light and color. I’m into southern California sunlight, the brightness of it, the feel of it, what it does to color. I’m looking for a vibe in my work, a sense a calm, a stillness. I want the viewer to feel something of the world just beyond the painting, like the heat of the sun overhead, a sense of something just around a corner or the other side of a fence, a world just out of view but felt thru light, shadows and reflection. I want the viewer to want to jump in and walk around in there.

 

Dobee Snowber

AT A GLANCE

Biography

Dobee Snowber is a working Artist, making time between time and whenever possible, to create. She has lived and painted in the Bay area for over 20 years. Prior to that she lived in Santa fe and various and sundry places east of the Rockies including Maine, Wash DC and New Jersey.

Dobee holds a BA in Intellectual History/Feminist Studies from Kirkland/Hamilton College and a BFA in Printmaking and Painting from the Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine. She has shown extensively in various venues including galleries, museums, group collaborations and solo exhibits and is part of several private collections in the US and abroad. She is currently represented by SHOH Gallery, Berkeley, CA and Mary Praytor Gallery, Greenville, SC.

Statement

During the Pandemic I started working on a series of portraits. Though I have done figurative work I had always shied away from focusing on faces so this was new for me. AT A GLANCE is the first of this series and marked a notable shift in my work. These faces gaze unapologetically at the viewer and simply say I am here. The portraits are about entropy and the history they hold. Despite what life has given them they are still standing. They are reflective of the isolation and abandonment of life as we knew it as a result of the pandemic.

 

Lindsay Thomson

Bare Aspen Trees in the Mountains 2

 

Milky Way Over the Pier

 

Stephanie Vlahov

Crystal conversation

 

Regina Vorgang

WTF

Statement

WTF is part of my Socially Speaking series. Social media abbreviations have become part of our everyday language. I’m weaving them into rugs turning them into art and everyday enjoyment.

Like all artists, social media has become a big part of my promotion and sales efforts and the abbreviations have become part of everyday life and vocabulary. Some more than others at times. Designing the letters and how they fit together also brings in my graphic design background so I can play with font style, shapes, and color. The finished weaving isn’t often obvious at first, appearing as an abstract design until the letters emerge. I like the way the design plays with the viewer’s eye.

 

Jan Wurm

Survivor

Biography

Having lived in California and Europe, Jan Wurm has honed an eye for social patterns and conventions. She currently divides her time between Berkeley and L.A. and her hand between drawing and painting. Wurm has taught for University of California Berkeley Extension and lectured extensively. The past Director of Exhibitions and Curator of Art at the Richmond Art Center, Wurm has authored exhibition catalogues and curated major exhibitions focused on a humanist tradition. Jan Wurm’s paintings, drawings, and artist’s books examine daily life to reveal aspects of contemporary culture which inform our relationships. Infused with warmth, humor, and an energetic line, these paintings on canvas and mixed media works on paper invite the viewer to join the moment. Her work, exhibited internationally, is in collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, New York Public Library Print Collection, Archiv Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen, Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna, and Tiroler Landesmuseen, Innsbruck.

Statement

Surviving a mass school shooting leaves all survivors traumatized…

Clad alike as indicator of the repetition, the compounding, the indiscriminating act of gun violence.

Adhering to the raw canvas is a garment fragment, the prom or wedding dress that will never be worn.