David Avery

No. 4 (Winter)

from The Coming of the Cocklicranes series, 2015 etching

12" h x 10" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $480.28

As a practitioner of traditional black and white etching in San Francisco for over 30 years, I have been drawn to the works and techniques of the master etchers and engravers of the past 400 years, and often find in them inspiration or a point of departure for my own work. They are a bridge, if you will between past thought and contemporary issues that shed light in a unique way on such concerns. My pursuit of detail is not for the purpose of technical display for its own sake, but is rather an attempt to increase the expressive qualities an image is capable of conveying. Is it small in scale? Yes, just as a keyhole is, until you put your eye to it to see what is hidden behind the door. There you will find influences ranging from Durer and Rabelais to Max Klinger and the Bros. Quay.

Peter Baczek

The Turn Around, 2015

lithograph

16" h x 12" w

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $545.00

Urban landscapes capture what we all create in our environment. Throughout our lives we modify our living and working space to fit our needs.  We are constantly surrounded by an ever-changing landscape of mood and color that I hope to capture in various media.  These landscapes have always been a part of my vision.  I choose to depict cityscapes through a more refined interpretation of the composition before me.  The broad mass of walls, roads, or sky, establish areas of color and light that can create a certain mood, and act as compositional components in the overall work of art.

I sometimes venture away from the city to explore natural landscapes, often incorporating structures that give a certain presence to a scene. I hope to create a mood to my vision that captures that moment in time.

Frederika Beesmyer Roeder

Tom's Friend's Mom from the Riding series, 2016

mixed media: clear French gesso, India and acrylic

ink, glass bead-gel and glaze

31.5" h x 8" w x .5" d

Courtesy of the artist

Not for sale

As an artist I have been, and continue to be, deeply influenced by a West Coast lineage and California artists.  California art has claimed its place and importance internationally and in American art, thanks in part to exhibits such as Pacific Standard Time. My own work explores the Southern California experience, as it grew out of the environs and the culture that shaped it.

These pieces are the beginning of a new series called Riding. “Riding” is pop terminology for surfing, skateboarding and skiing – three indigenous words that at one time reflected California’s rebellious spirit, and the romance and mystique of these sports.

Today, that California culture has become part of a world-wide industry. Boards once made in local garages, are now made by world consortiums.  Many of the old haunts, beaches like San Onofre, Riveria and Old Man…once so remote and mysterious, are now locations for worldwide competitions and promotions.

Yet somehow, a new generation of “riders” has risen up and embraced all that once was.  With a single term, “riding”, they’ve given heritage to these sports…from the wilds of the surf and the thrill of the mountains to the gritty urban experience of the skate deck.

My long trajectory in the investigation of Indo-Afro-American groups has given her the opportunity to develop my unique style in the design of my artwork.

Leslie A. Brown

Luna's Secret from the Santa Rosa series, 2016

monoprint

43" h x 33" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,362.50

The archetype is something that has continually interested me —in that objects or imagery imply meaning beyond the physical sense, and particular icons have been repeated historically in different cultures and ages.  The author, Clarissa Pinkola Estes says that “the archetype fertilizes the mundane world.” I try to unite the mystical with the mundane and embrace the very feminine, intuitive process in the act of image-making.

My images deal primarily with women, everyday objects, and scenarios that combine the object, the everyday, the spiritual and the sacred. I have created a personal iconography with the following: woman as hero, virgin, temptress, goddess, mother, and crone. The   image of the modern woman merges, with the archetype, and channels the voice of the empowered and divine feminine.

Chenhung Chen

Reading Tao Te Ching from the Reading Tao Te Ching series, 2014

mixed media drawing

32" h x 22" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $2,452.50

In my work, I am completely involved with line —having first recognized its power in Chinese calligraphy and painting, and later in American Abstract Expressionism. Through the use of line, I am able to express feelings of delicacy, power, buoyancy, strength and constant motion. The linear qualities inherent in nature also inform my process and creative vision.

The series Reading Tao Te Ching conveys power. The Tao Te Ching forms the backbone of the culture I grew up in. It is the book that this series was inspired by and is a classic of Chinese philosophical literature. Through this series, I am making my efforts to express my understanding of man’s place in existence.

My work expresses the harmony and dissonance in one’s life, as well as the peace and chaos of individual experiences: the beautiful and the grotesque that force your senses to recognize them; and the subtle, yet powerful, impetus of existence. These binary conflicts hold an enchanting presence in the human mind. They create a driving force that I am compelled to visually quantify. As such, a host of underlying instinctual responses seeking universal fulfillment arise. One’s body is testament to refined survival in an absurd convocation of antagonistic forces.

Chenhung Chen

Undoing from the Reading Tao Te Ching series, 2014

mixed media drawing

34" h x 22" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $2,452.50

In my work, I am completely involved with line —having first recognized its power in Chinese calligraphy and painting, and later in American Abstract Expressionism. Through the use of line, I am able to express feelings of delicacy, power, buoyancy, strength and constant motion. The linear qualities inherent in nature also inform my process and creative vision.

The series Reading Tao Te Ching conveys power. The Tao Te Ching forms the backbone of the culture I grew up in. It is the book that this series was inspired by and is a classic of Chinese philosophical literature. Through this series, I am making my efforts to express my understanding of man’s place in existence.

My work expresses the harmony and dissonance in one’s life, as well as the peace and chaos of individual experiences: the beautiful and the grotesque that force your senses to recognize them; and the subtle, yet powerful, impetus of existence. These binary conflicts hold an enchanting presence in the human mind. They create a driving force that I am compelled to visually quantify. As such, a host of underlying instinctual responses seeking universal fulfillment arise. One’s body is testament to refined survival in an absurd convocation of antagonistic forces.

Roland S. Escalona

Close Quarters IV from the Close Quarters series 2015

mixed media: ink on Bristol paper, cut and layered; artwork framed with embedded lighting with programmable lighting effects

13" h x 30" w x 3.5" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery (above)

Courtesy of the artist  (right)

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,262.36

Close Quarters IV is my fourth installment for a series that illustrates my artistic expressions of the dense urban landscape, particularly of shanty housing, of third world countries. The series has evolved from pen-and-ink on a cocktail napkin, to colored pencils —Close Quarters III, which was selected last year’s Ink and Clay— and to the fourth installment which is shown here.

Roland S. Escalona

Close Quarters IV from the Close Quarters series 2015

mixed media: ink on Bristol paper, cut and layered; artwork framed with embedded lighting with programmable lighting effects

13" h x 30" w x 3.5" d

Courtesy of Kellogg Gallery (above)

Courtesy of the artist  (right)

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,262.36

Close Quarters IV is my fourth installment for a series that illustrates my artistic expressions of the dense urban landscape, particularly of shanty housing, of third world countries. The series has evolved from pen-and-ink on a cocktail napkin, to colored pencils —Close Quarters III, which was selected last year’s Ink and Clay— and to the fourth installment which is shown here.

Barbara Foster

Telltale Signs from the Endless Poplars series, 2016 two-block woodcut, walnut ink,

hand-printed on Okawara Paper

29" h x 52" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,635.00

Over the past fifteen years my work has addressed the fragility of the landscape, whether it is the Nevada proving grounds, deep-sea terrain, corporate agriculture, Taiwan urban gardens, or the planting and harvesting of trees as a way of looking at the resurrection of the previously blighted or the implications of the unpredictable. The work has become more directly related to the history, environment, and event at specific sites by linking process and content in black and white relief prints, hybrid digital/relief prints, and carbon prints on Taiwanese and Japanese papers. Ink, paper, and photography, along with specific wood and active physical image development combine to elicit a response that is not immediately obvious, finding kinship among materials and subject.

My projects intend to reshape the visual dialogue on these topics by moving the conversation and physical practice to reflect the landscapes that have claimed new identities through process yet are still imbued with the patina of intention, history, and event.

Barbara Foster

Telltale Windfall from the Calligraphy of Chance series, 2016 woodcut on archival digital carbon print on Kozo thin paper

30" h x 22.5" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,226.25

Over the past fifteen years my work has addressed the fragility of the landscape, whether it is the Nevada proving grounds, deep-sea terrain, corporate agriculture, Taiwan urban gardens, or the planting and harvesting of trees as a way of looking at the resurrection of the previously blighted or the implications of the unpredictable. The work has become more directly related to the history, environment, and event at specific sites by linking process and content in black and white relief prints, hybrid digital/relief prints, and carbon prints on Taiwanese and Japanese papers. Ink, paper, and photography, along with specific wood and active physical image development combine to elicit a response that is not immediately obvious, finding kinship among materials and subject.

Leonard Greco

Resurrection of the Father, 2014

relief on paper

15" h x 12" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $306.56

My love of mythic narrative, particularly narratives that focus upon universal themes of creation, sacrifice, redemption and enlightenment —gnosis— inspires my work.  Although indebted to the western canon and frequently finding inspiration within the richness of its traditions, I have fallen under the spell of the Popol Vuh, the creation myth of the Maya people. Utilizing this ancient body of work, I am able to explore universal themes without the influence of recognizable western archetypes. Through exploration I may examine a culture, that, though foreign from my western perspective, provides endless fascination and possibility.

This fascination with Meso-American art and culture however is not translated in a Mock-Latino idiom. Given my western heritage, I would consider that not only disrespectful but inauthentic.  Instead of drawing upon the obvious source, I instead draw upon my own experiences and passions.  This includes a love of world mythology, Roman Catholic saints, the Italian Renaissance, classical painters such as Nicholas Poussin, low brow erotica, Symbolism, Surrealism, miscellaneous mystical traditions such as Gnosticism, and my own, often disturbing, fertile dreamscape.

By fusing such diverse elements, it is my intention to create an authentic vocabulary in which to express universal and yet deeply personal concerns: be they life and death, mortality, morality, and most importantly, inner knowledge —gnosis.

K. Ryan Henisey

Pulse from the #ArtToEndViolence series, 2016 ink on paper

42" h x 42" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $4,768.75

Social media is a pervasive aspect of contemporary life. From the status update, to the selfie, our ability to easily record, transmit, and edit our social surroundings has skewed perception.  My artwork, whether reacting to engendered hate, exploring the structures of man, or playfully reimagining traditions, is a curated, hand-crafted experience reacting to our shared, socially-constructed reality.

The work presented addresses contemporary issues faced by Queer Americans. Pulse is a reaction to the recent massacre of a queer nightclub in Orlando, using visceral images in a surreal context to explore homophobia in the United States.

The following is an excerpt from Pulse:

They called me faggot and queer and gay boy. Once, someone threw an open container of milk at me as I walked through the full cafeteria. I was soaked, my jacket ruined. The Principal told me that I had brought it on myself.

'What do you want me to do?' The good, Mormon, community member scowled at me from across his desk. More than half my life has passed since then, but I still remember.

There are no safe spaces.

Stephen Horn

Start Anywhere #1 from the

Start Anywhere series, 2014

stoneware clay, glazes, lithographic transfer and applied textures

24" h x 24" w

Courtesy of the Kellogg Gallery

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $2,043.75

Anyone who works in clay is confronted with a multitude of possibilities. Complexity and surprise are built into the medium, the process, the technology. Take one purposeful step down an artistic path, and you’re immediately face-to-face with a crossroads that wasn’t on your mental GPS. Should you keep going straight—or, what the hell, wouldn’t it be more fun to turn left or right and see what you run into? Exploring the unexpected side roads has always appealed to me. It’s like going on a walkabout. As a teacher I always say to students: “Try it and see what happens.” This is my own artistic mantra.

My aesthetic wanderings have been guided by the works of the ancient Minoans, Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans; by Japanese ceramic traditions—Jomon, Haniwa, Iga, Bizen, and Oribe; by artists like Gauguin, Miró, Picasso, Motherwell, Pollock, and George Ohr; and by the ideas of Minimalism and other art movements. My modes of working in clay encompass drawing, painting, and printing as well as handbuilding, moldmaking, and throwing —if only, sometimes, to smash a pot on the wheel or to engineer its collapse.

What I hope unites my work, is a sense of the excitement I experienced in going off-road —and there’s still so much to explore out there.

Mariko Ishii

Spring Breeze, 2016

linocut reduction

24" h x 24" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $2,725.00

I am always attracted to the life of ordinary people, and what is ordinary is in my environment.

My work is inspired by a scene having a peaceful atmosphere, relaxing me and coming across the simple truth even if it is not peaceful or comfortable. Many of my images are derived from my daily life, traveling and literature.

My goal is to show what I see and enjoy while exploring the realities of life —moments of bittersweet reflection— and also to drawing attention to feeling a kind of warm, cheerful and encouraging contemplation of human emotions in the daily life around us.

Mariko Ishii

Before Blooming, 2016

linocut reduction

24" h x 24" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $2,725.00

As a practitioner of traditional black and white etching in San Francisco for over 30 years, I have been drawn to the works and techniques of the master etchers and engravers of the past 400 years, and often find in them inspiration or a point of departure for my own work. They are a bridge, if you will between past thought and contemporary issues that shed light in a unique way on such concerns. My pursuit of detail is not for the purpose of technical display for its own sake, but is rather an attempt to increase the expressive qualities an image is capable of conveying. Is it small in scale? Yes, just as a keyhole is, until you put your eye to it to see what is hidden behind the door. There you will find influences ranging from Durer and Rabelais to Max Klinger and the Bros. Quay.15

Karen Karlsson

True North, 2015

silkscreen, encaustic and India ink on birch panel

8" h x 8" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $333.81

My work in this series explores the themes of suppression and oppression in Southern California. The main, underlying, silkscreen image in each piece is taken from a photograph of a neighbor’s front yard covered with flattened cardboard boxes to suppress weeds and grass in advance of installing a more drought-tolerant landscape.  Life suppressed in favor of “better” life.  Other incorporated images in works in this series speak the oppression of various peoples and neighborhoods by authority figures and policies again designed to suppress expressions of life in favor of something deemed more acceptable.

The works in this series from late 2015 are mixed media pieces composed of silkscreen, encaustic and India ink on cradled birch wood panels.

Karen Karlsson

Dead Reckoning, 2015

silkscreen, encaustic and India ink on panel

12" h x 9" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $401.94

My work in this series explores the themes of suppression and oppression in Southern California. The main, underlying, silkscreen image in each piece is taken from a photograph of a neighbor’s front yard covered with flattened cardboard boxes to suppress weeds and grass in advance of installing a more drought-tolerant landscape.  Life suppressed in favor of “better” life.  Other incorporated images in works in this series speak the oppression of various peoples and neighborhoods by authority figures and policies again designed to suppress expressions of life in favor of something deemed more acceptable.

The works in this series from late 2015 are mixed media pieces composed of silkscreen, encaustic and India ink on cradled birch wood panels.

Colleen M. Kelly

Wardrobe Malfunction from the

Naked Under Her Clothes series, 2014

monoprint with chine-collé

24" h x 20" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $613.13

This body of work, Naked Under Her Clothes, is the felicitous outcome of my need to comply with a nudity ban at a civic art gallery. A long time advocate for public art and a community art activist, I found a subversive way to incorporate and defy the ban. I "dressed" my figures with clothing from the envelopes of vintage dress patterns, via a printmaking technique, chine collé. With this process, the image of the nude figure incised in the printing plate, is printed on top of the dress cut-out. The resulting printed image emerges as if the dress were transparent. While very delighted with the clever ‘work-around’ that solved the problem, I found more thematic implications as I continued with the series. Feminism, women's crafts, the tyranny of fashion, and puritanical notions of beauty, all inform my work.

Cursive Study is an homage to a quickly disappearing art form. Cursive is no longer being taught in many schools. It will soon be a lost art. Children of this generation will no longer have a signature of their own. Patience, fine motors skills, eye-hand coordination, rhythmic patterns, and the sheer beauty of it needs time and practice to hone. Unless one knows how to write in cursive, one cannot read cursive. Much personal and public history would be lost as they become  just pieces of paper, with indecipherable scribbles on them —messages unreadable.

Colleen M. Kelly

Cursive Study, 2014

photopolymer intaglio

16" h x 24" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $613.13

This body of work, Naked Under Her Clothes, is the felicitous outcome of my need to comply with a nudity ban at a civic art gallery. A long time advocate for public art and a community art activist, I found a subversive way to incorporate and defy the ban. I "dressed" my figures with clothing from the envelopes of vintage dress patterns, via a printmaking technique, chine collé. With this process, the image of the nude figure incised in the printing plate, is printed on top of the dress cut-out. The resulting printed image emerges as if the dress were transparent. While very delighted with the clever ‘work-around’ that solved the problem, I found more thematic implications as I continued with the series. Feminism, women's crafts, the tyranny of fashion, and puritanical notions of beauty, all inform my work.

Cursive Study is an homage to a quickly disappearing art form. Cursive is no longer being taught in many schools. It will soon be a lost art. Children of this generation will no longer have a signature of their own. Patience, fine motors skills, eye-hand coordination, rhythmic patterns, and the sheer beauty of it needs time and practice to hone. Unless one knows how to write in cursive, one cannot read cursive. Much personal and public history would be lost as they become  just pieces of paper, with indecipherable scribbles on them —messages unreadable.

Colleen M. Kelly

Party Hats from the

Naked Under Her Clothes series, 2014

monoprint with chine-collé

24" h x 20" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $613.13

This body of work, Naked Under Her Clothes, is the felicitous outcome of my need to comply with a nudity ban at a civic art gallery. A long time advocate for public art and a community art activist, I found a subversive way to incorporate and defy the ban. I "dressed" my figures with clothing from the envelopes of vintage dress patterns, via a printmaking technique, chine collé. With this process, the image of the nude figure incised in the printing plate, is printed on top of the dress cut-out. The resulting printed image emerges as if the dress were transparent. While very delighted with the clever ‘work-around’ that solved the problem, I found more thematic implications as I continued with the series. Feminism, women's crafts, the tyranny of fashion, and puritanical notions of beauty, all inform my work.

Cursive Study is an homage to a quickly disappearing art form. Cursive is no longer being taught in many schools. It will soon be a lost art. Children of this generation will no longer have a signature of their own. Patience, fine motors skills, eye-hand coordination, rhythmic patterns, and the sheer beauty of it needs time and practice to hone. Unless one knows how to write in cursive, one cannot read cursive. Much personal and public history would be lost as they become  just pieces of paper, with indecipherable scribbles on them —messages unreadable.

Leslie Krane

Nuance & Schizophrenia, 2016

acrylic, dismantled used teabags, graphite

hair and silver gelatin print

6" h x 6" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $681.25

The mixed media images on panel use a variety of processes, including collage, drawing, and photography, that infuse each element with a sense of palpable human presence. The photographs employ multiple exposures and emphasize negative space to establish an unlikely atmosphere.

Abstracted architectural compositions make up much of the imagery, and the obscure scrutiny of these spaces implicates the viewer’s, and especially the artist’s, presence. Bedding, electrical outlets, and window shades provide this content by conveying a sense of familiar intimacy, even though the viewer may be seeing these particular objects for the first time. These spaces contain the residue of human activity, and the compositional isolation and formal containment within the frame imbue ordinary settings with a mysterious significance, making them objects for contemplation rather than “windows” into reality.

Kerry Kugelman

Celestial 16, 2016

acrylic and ink on panel

12" h x 12" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $340.63

The unique qualities of ink and acrylic media have opened a new range of expressive possibilities for me. As an integral part of my process, ink continues to reveal its ability to suggest and convey worlds of intimate organic textures and majestic stellar expanses. In these enigmatic images I continue to discover new aspects of light and form.

_____________________________________

Kerry Kugelman is a Los Angeles-based artist, and has an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. His paintings have been exhibited throughout Southern California, and are in numerous private collections. His writing has appeared in several local art publications, and he has also taught at universities and colleges throughout the Los Angeles area and the Inland Empire.

Kerry Kugelman

Plume II, 2015

acrylic, ink and charcoal on canvas over panel

12" h x 12" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $340.63

The unique qualities of ink and acrylic media have opened a new range of expressive possibilities for me. As an integral part of my process, ink continues to reveal its ability to suggest and convey worlds of intimate organic textures and majestic stellar expanses. In these enigmatic images I continue to discover new aspects of light and form.

_____________________________________

Kerry Kugelman is a Los Angeles-based artist, and has an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. His paintings have been exhibited throughout Southern California, and are in numerous private collections. His writing has appeared in several local art publications, and he has also taught at universities and colleges throughout the Los Angeles area and the Inland Empire.

Anthony Lazorko & Edgar Ivan Rincon

Crossroads, 2013

color wood blocks print

13" h x 22" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $885.63

What it means to be an American has been a core question in my life and work. I livedmy first 10 years of life in Philadelphia, not far from Independence Hall, in an EasternEuropean melting pot neighborhood. I began my art education in Philadelphia at thePennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which greatly influenced my thinking about thecontent of my work. The school in many subtle ways encourages students to considerbecoming painters of America.

A teacher and my mentor at the academy, Morris Blackburn, encouraged me to makeprints. He obtained a scholarship for me to maintain the graphic studio through the weekand set up the studio for his once a week class on printmaking. He taught the principlesof printmaking, including the techniques of etching, engraving, lithography andwoodcuts.

While I attended the Academy I worked as a staff commercial artist at night ata local newspaper, where I drew countless TV sets, refrigerators, cars, furniture, jewelry,etc. These were the days before clip art was so widespread. The combination of thisprintmaking and newspaper design influenced my work to become more graphic.

The focus of my work has always been to depict something about the Americanexperience, no matter how ordinary, and to say it in an aesthetic manner. Theenjoyment of color, composition and consideration of tactile surfaces all need to marrywith the content. That being said, I sometimes will create a piece for its pictorial qualitiesin, and of, itself, sometimes for the technical challenge a visual idea may pose. Elementsof the way things sound and smell are also meaningful to me. Visual images shouldbring about the "at onceness" experience that we all know and understand in an instance.

Our country is quite new compared to many other cultures in the world, and as a youngcountry I think we are still trying to find an American visual language. Or at least that'swhere I find myself in my work. American artists such as Edward Hopper, GeorgeBellows, Gustave Baumann, Reginald Marsh, the Ashcan school painters, just to name a

few, all seem to talk to me. They have shown me some ways. I hope my exploration leads me to find a unique way, my own voice, that connects with a message. Thisconnection is important to me, because I believe that it's pointless not to communicatewith a viewing audience. Connection can, and should, happen in many ways. It is wherethe artist and viewer find common ground —when the art connects.

Dakota Noot

Kristy, 2016

ballpoint pen drawing

18" h x 15" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $340.63

My work weaves together experiences, specifically using my family as subjects. I’m fascinated by activities such as daydreaming and doodling because anyone can engage with them regardless if they consider themselves an artist or not. Even the ballpoint pen, which I have used to create my work, is an everyday tool more commonly used for writing than art. All of these activities can be brought together to create Surrealist portraits reflecting their subjects.

There is something innately personal about the pen and how people use it. Not only does handwriting vary between people, but also the way they hold and use the pen. They can take notes, write journals, and doodle with the pen. My portraits become reflections of their subjects: their bodies become decorated with doodles and undecipherable scribbles and patterns. Their personality and interests dissolve into symbols growing or manifesting out of them. The pen’s ink reveals a person.

Dakota Noot

Paul, 2016

ballpoint pen drawing

18" h x 15" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $340.63

My work weaves together experiences, specifically using my family as subjects. I’m fascinated by activities such as daydreaming and doodling because anyone can engage with them regardless if they consider themselves an artist or not. Even the ballpoint pen, which I have used to create my work, is an everyday tool more commonly used for writing than art. All of these activities can be brought together to create Surrealist portraits reflecting their subjects.

There is something innately personal about the pen and how people use it. Not only does handwriting vary between people, but also the way they hold and use the pen. They can take notes, write journals, and doodle with the pen. My portraits become reflections of their subjects: their bodies become decorated with doodles and undecipherable scribbles and patterns. Their personality and interests dissolve into symbols growing or manifesting out of them. The pen’s ink reveals a person.

Varsha Patel

Humboldt County, 2016

linocut reduction

18" h x 24" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,362.50

Varsha grew up in Mumbai India. She was inclined towards drawing and arts early in her childhood but had to manage with limited art supplies. After high school she attended an arts college in Mumbai and graduated with a BA degree in Fine Arts. There, she learned oil and watercolor painting, charcoal and pencil drawing, batik design and life drawing. After graduating she migrated to USA and worked in finance for several years. In her spare time she continued to paint and work on various arts and crafts. Upon retiring from the financial industry, she began studying the art of print making at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo California where she focused on linocuts, woodcuts and intaglio, and developed a passion for printmaking. She concentrated on relatively large specialty reduction linocuts and successfully entered her creations in several leading art galleries and shows. Many of her creations were front covers and inside pages of the Saddleback College publications Wall Magazine and Flex booklets.

Patricia Post

Breaking Through, 2015

collagraph, woodcut

48" h x 36" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $2,043.75

I have always held a deep emotional relationship with the human story.

I have an endless fascination for the human figure: the beauty and grace of its form and the power of its gesture to evoke response. I draw upon literature, poetry, personal experience, current events, myth, and narrative from which to consider the human condition in its strengths and frailties.

I am interested in the provocation of gesture as it relates to the paradox and contradictions of what it means to be human and the challenge of finding visual forms to hold emotion and the narrative of experience.

I am interested in creating image where beauty and bravery meet, and to tell the truth of what is haunting me...like a black hole that absorbs energy and then releases it as something new and alive.

I often work from an unconscious, intuitive place, surprising myself over what comes out of that. Ultimately, I am fascinated by the distinguishing qualities of human nature: our relationships, our passions, our fears, how we choose to exist, believe, or interact. Everything refers back to that, no matter the object that I am discovering.

I have great empathy for human vulnerability.

Masha Schweitzer

Steam and Smoke, 2016

monotype

11.5" h x 18" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $817.50

“Let the work speak for itself” has always been part of my artist’s statement. I usually find my inspiration in the visual experience – in the excitement of color and the extremes of light and dark.  However, this image was directly influenced by the ubiquitous, disturbing world news.  The devaluation of human life, the sacrifices that are made to survive, leading to the displacement of masses of people, have become some of my subjects.  Could they be expressed in the monotype medium in anything but black and white?  Color seems to me too seductive.  These themes are very close to my own history, so not surprisingly, they are now part of my art as well.

Roxanne Sexauer

Black Pool/The Bardo, 2015

linoleum cut and stencils diptych

18" h x 20" w ea.

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,362.50

Much of my work is based on a practice of observational drawing. For notions of complexity, uniqueness, resonance, malevolence and the grotesque, an object will call out to me to render it through my own filters. I am always searching for extraordinary natural forms that extend the metaphorical correlations to structures within the human body.

Other prints are recombinant in nature, made up of sundry observed forms sketched initially from my travels. Travel is incredibly important to my production. I find that venturing away from comfort is adaptive to fresh artistic insights.

Almost all the works have relief printmaking as the dominant voice, with backup “singing” done in lithography, screenprint, monotype, stencil or etching. There is a fetishism of the organic in my prints, and I attempt to find the rhythms of my own language in my marks.

Among my influences are early prints made to depict various branches of the animal and plant kingdoms. This would include the work of Conrad Gessner and Ernst Haeckel, as well as other early graphics of microscopic animals. Other influences include my more-or-less Germanic ancestors - Albrecht Dürer, Martin Schongauer, Pieter Brughel the Elder, Max Beckman, Edvard Munch, Erich Heckel, and Egon Schiele.

Roxanne Sexauer

Susurrus, 2014

woodcut

41" h x 33" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,362.50

Much of my work is based on a practice of observational drawing. For notions of complexity, uniqueness, resonance, malevolence and the grotesque, an object will call out to me to render it through my own filters. I am always searching for extraordinary natural forms that extend the metaphorical correlations to structures within the human body.

Other prints are recombinant in nature, made up of sundry observed forms sketched initially from my travels. Travel is incredibly important to my production. I find that venturing away from comfort is adaptive to fresh artistic insights.

Almost all the works have relief printmaking as the dominant voice, with backup “singing” done in lithography, screenprint, monotype, stencil or etching. There is a fetishism of the organic in my prints, and I attempt to find the rhythms of my own language in my marks.

Among my influences are early prints made to depict various branches of the animal and plant kingdoms. This would include the work of Conrad Gessner and Ernst Haeckel, as well as other early graphics of microscopic animals. Other influences include my more-or-less Germanic ancestors - Albrecht Dürer, Martin Schongauer, Pieter Brughel the Elder, Max Beckman, Edvard Munch, Erich Heckel, and Egon Schiele.

Howard Steenwyk

Heroes Andy Warhol/Jean-Michel Basquiat

from the Seeing Red series, 2016

silkscreen print on canvas mounted to board

23" h x 17" w x 1.25" d

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $340.63

Seeing Red is a series of work that uniquely combines two divergent images to create a new image with content each individual image does not possess on its own.

Seeing Red is about the elusive and illusive quality of reality and how our personal conceptions contribute to what we comprehend as truth.

Subject matter portraits are combined to allow the viewer to create a personal meaning of the image that lies not in the image itself, but rather, in their perception of it.  When viewed through the red or blue filter, the image is deconstructed and the source images are revealed.  The composed image is then viewed with a new knowledge that can’t be unlearned presenting a conflict between perception and reality.

Howard Steenwyk

Give Peace a Chance Mahatma Gandhi/John Lennon

from the Seeing Red series, 2016

silkscreen print on canvas mounted to board

23" h x 17" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $340.63

Seeing Red is a series of work that uniquely combines two divergent images to create a new image with content each individual image does not possess on its own.

Seeing Red is about the elusive and illusive quality of reality and how our personal conceptions contribute to what we comprehend as truth.

Subject matter portraits are combined to allow the viewer to create a personal meaning of the image that lies not in the image itself, but rather, in their perception of it.  When viewed through the red or blue filter, the image is deconstructed and the source images are revealed.  The composed image is then viewed with a new knowledge that can’t be unlearned presenting a conflict between perception and reality.

Judith Jaye Tanzman

Mudpots #2, 2015

pronto-plate lithography

10" h x 15.5" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $2,043.75

As I walk down the desolate road, the sounds of the earth gurgling and burping fill the stifling air.  Standing on the edge of the pit, I peer down into the brew mesmerized by the bubbling mud, erupting and oozing out of the volcano.  Immersed in the energy and ambiguity of the landscape, shapes are disassociated from their original meaning and an illusion is created. The surreal environment is deconstructed into unrecognizable form and where the earth meets the sky, meaning is shifted and redefined.

Chris Tyllia

Oyster Range, 2016

ballpoint pen on paper

15" h x 22" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $681.25

These works are a blending of diagrams with portraits.  Diagrams are technical and data driven.  They offer information, and display an overhead or side view, but give little sense of the feeling of a thing.  Traditional portraits change the point of view, giving the viewer a glimpse of seeing a person in space, evoking a more personal and more emotional response.  These portraits are void of anything but the lines of the underlying geometry and edges of an object —not a person.  It’s a very technical, almost cynical, view of a ‘thing’.  It is a blending of a diagram with portrait.  These portraits and diagrams are not of real tangible things.  They reference and evoke similarities with known objects. But they only exist in an ever-expanding gray area between the real and simulated —thus, part diagram, part portrait, a series of peri-objects.

Chris Tyllia

Coronal Discharge, 2016

ballpoint pen on paper

14.5" h x 11" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $545.00

These works are a blending of diagrams with portraits.  Diagrams are technical and data driven.  They offer information, and display an overhead or side view, but give little sense of the feeling of a thing.  Traditional portraits change the point of view, giving the viewer a glimpse of seeing a person in space, evoking a more personal and more emotional response.  These portraits are void of anything but the lines of the underlying geometry and edges of an object —not a person.  It’s a very technical, almost cynical, view of a ‘thing’.  It is a blending of a diagram with portrait.  These portraits and diagrams are not of real tangible things.  They reference and evoke similarities with known objects. But they only exist in an ever-expanding gray area between the real and simulated —thus, part diagram, part portrait, a series of peri-objects.

Noriho Uriu

Net Walk from the Signal & Noise series, 2015

color reduction relief print

22" h x 18" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,090.00

She would like to be connected with things happening in the world through her artwork. Her art is an imprint of her life’s daily observations, feelings, and thoughts.

She creates her abstract work by using color reduction relief —woodcut and linocut— and monotype printmaking methods.  Her content is inspired by sound, music, diagrams, nature and news in the digital world.

Julia Vansell

Shades, 2014

monotype

20.5" h x 18" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $817.50

The development of a visual idea is the challenge for every artist. What do I want to say?  Strong images that reflect emotional feeling, reference to a thought or time, a glimmer of hope. These are my inspirations. With each print an idea begins. As it develops the tenor or mood evolves to suggest and reveal something. Facial representation, mood reflection, language, layers, color tension, serenity. Sometimes it is the moment, or the moment in between. Hard to know. Transition, truth, contradiction, blending and integrating. I strive for all of this.

I find today’s world in a similar context. Coincidence? My art is very intuitive but always seeking strength of emotion and identity. Technique and personal editing, how best to capture. Find the right balance, composition, color, materials and emotion. This is what lands me back into my studio every day.

Creativity is a form of freedom that all artists feel and, are challenged by. It is both liberating and exhilarating, but comes with self-induced personal boundaries. “Where is my balance? What do I want to say”?

Sylvia Walters

Dearest Daughter (Lost Lessons), 2014

reductive woodcut with stencils

16.75" h x 12.75" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,090.00

Over two decades, I’ve often used my prints to examine the subjects of memory, place, and family exploring a range of very personal narratives including rites of passage, loss, ritual, aging and healing. Most of these pieces have been developed using images pulled from nature, from material culture —including family albums, and from art history. Dearest Daughter (Lost Lessons) falls into this body of work. The piece was inspired first by my father —by his memorable letters and his love of literature and poetry, as well as stories from the Old Testament— which he often read to us as children. Another source of inspiration for some of my prints, including this one, lies in the work of the great Japanese Ukiyo-e artists. Between the two, Hokusai’s awesome and perilous Great Wave, a reflection on loss, is linked in this piece to Tennyson’s poem, Break, Break, Break (“on thy cold gray stones, O Sea!”), a favorite of my dad’s.

My principal medium is color woodcut. Each impression is hand-printed from a single block using a combination of acetate stencils and reductive cutting. Each edition often takes over a year to execute. Although this results in something of a poor commercial practice, I enjoy the process and feel the results express my ideas well.

Brenda Welsh

Beggar Woman from the India Ink Drawings series, 2016

India ink on acrylic painted canvas

18" h x 13" w

Courtesy of the artist

Not for sale

These paintings are from my India ink series in which I create the basic pen drawing with black ink.  I later apply various degrees of ink washes and ink colors to add depth, shadows and different values.  The subject matter is intentionally distorted to invite varying interpretations by, and dialogue with, the viewer.  My choice of subject is influenced by my extensive worldwide travels and my deep interest in world cultures and the hopes and challenges of people with very different journeys. These paintings are on acrylic-painted canvas boards.

Helen Werner Cox

Warehoused, 2016

quill pen, ink, colored pencil

18" h x 24" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $919.69

Using the antique carousel as a visual metaphor of society, I exploited its diverse images through different vantage points and media.

Antique carousels —having been originally constructed for adults, not children— are anything but benign, allowing me to express anxieties we experience regarding things beyond our control.  The horses emerge out of darkness, mouths open in silent screams, moving ever forward but going nowhere.  This paradox symbolizes the circles we spin, both individually and collectively.  The horse, which dominates the antique carousel, has been instrumental in human development:  in farming, transportation, and war.  What is significant is that we are in an age when horses are obsolete in these regards, as we find ourselves on the brink of extinction.

My interest in the wholeness of an image was explored by analyzing compositional elements in the works of Goya and Paula Rego and considering how these components contribute to the power and emotional expression of their images.  I applied elements of these compositional frameworks and value relationships to my own work.

Inspiration for the images comes from antique carousels in Southern California and the Running Horse Studio Collection in Irwindale.  In my most recent work, randomness begins to replace the circular motion of the carousel.

Nancy Young

Untitled Raven, 2016

lithograph

20.5" h x 20.5" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $987.81

Untitled Raven is a part of a body of work developed in my last year as an undergraduate printmaker at CSU Long Beach.  Seeking crow and raven imagery, lead to observations of ‘the discarded’ and ‘kept’ throughout the Southern California landscape.

Having a specific plan affords the artist a heightened attention to detail and a unique perspective. Traveling the areas surrounding the university, “as the crow flies”, led me to a heightened awareness of my own personal perspective: an awareness that perspective can vary greatly for each of our ‘untitled souls’, at the same place, or at different times.

My practice draws on personal experience to explore the nonlinear nature of grief, and its effect on memory and loss.

The Beginning of the End began with a 35mm photograph I took of my late husband in 1988. The image was scanned and digitally reworked and combined with screen print to reflect the shifting layers of memory and reality.

Combining various printmaking processes allows me to bring layers from the past, forward, and present on the same plane as current observations. Experience has shown that the past is often clearer and often a more preferred place, than the present.

Nancy Young

Beginning and End :: The Beginning of the End

from the Letting Go… series, 2015

"tradigital" print, digital and silkscreen

27.75" h x 22.75" w

Courtesy of the artist

Not for sale

Untitled Raven is a part of a body of work developed in my last year as an undergraduate printmaker at CSU Long Beach.  Seeking crow and raven imagery, lead to observations of ‘the discarded’ and ‘kept’ throughout the Southern California landscape.

Having a specific plan affords the artist a heightened attention to detail and a unique perspective. Traveling the areas surrounding the university, “as the crow flies”, led me to a heightened awareness of my own personal perspective: an awareness that perspective can vary greatly for each of our ‘untitled souls’, at the same place, or at different times.

My practice draws on personal experience to explore the nonlinear nature of grief, and its effect on memory and loss.

The Beginning of the End began with a 35mm photograph I took of my late husband in 1988. The image was scanned and digitally reworked and combined with screen print to reflect the shifting layers of memory and reality.

Combining various printmaking processes allows me to bring layers from the past, forward, and present on the same plane as current observations. Experience has shown that the past is often clearer and often a more preferred place, than the present.

Zenka

Coco and the River Dragon (with Augmented Reality) 2016

linoprint with augmented reality overlay using a smart phone technology app.

19.25" h x 16" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $613.13

This lino print comes alive when you point a cell phone or tablet at it.  A 3D dragon hovers above her hand and can be seen breathing fire and moving its massive majestic wings.  Because the augmented reality dragon is rendered in 3D, participants can move around the virtually suspended dragon watching the front, the side or the back depending on their position and movement.  To view the augmented reality dragon simply install the “Zenka AR Prints App” (free on Android PlayStore or Apple App Store) and then point your camera at the print.   Alternatively you can visit this video www.zenka.org/coco to experience a short preview of the artwork.

Jim Zver

After Madrid #1 (Red) from the After Madrid Series, 2014

acrylic paint, India ink and charcoal on paper

10.875" h x 10.75" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,362.50

The After Madrid Series of collages was begun after several extended visits to Spain, primarily in Madrid, in 2012 and 2013.  The way into this series for me —the “hook”— was through the colors I observed in Spain, particularly the colors of the Spanish landscape and the Spanish flag.  The red in the flag was also the red used in the protest posters, ubiquitous throughout Spain, of the Indignados, protesting against the far right government. In the country, red is a leitmotif —a recurrent theme throughout a work of art associated with a particular idea or situation— and I wanted to emphasize and reference that in these collages.

Jim Zver

After Madrid #2 (Red) from the After Madrid Series, 2014

acrylic paint, India ink and charcoal on paper

11.5" h x 7.5" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,362.50

The After Madrid Series of collages was begun after several extended visits to Spain, primarily in Madrid, in 2012 and 2013.  The way into this series for me —the “hook”— was through the colors I observed in Spain, particularly the colors of the Spanish landscape and the Spanish flag.  The red in the flag was also the red used in the protest posters, ubiquitous throughout Spain, of the Indignados, protesting against the far right government. In the country, red is a leitmotif —a recurrent theme throughout a work of art associated with a particular idea or situation— and I wanted to emphasize and reference that in these collages.

Jim Zver

After Madrid #3 (Red) from

the After Madrid Series, 2014

acrylic paint, India ink and charcoal on paper

11.25" h x 7.75" w

Courtesy of the artist

Gallery retail (incl. sales tax): $1,362.50

The After Madrid Series of collages was begun after several extended visits to Spain, primarily in Madrid, in 2012 and 2013.  The way into this series for me —the “hook”— was through the colors I observed in Spain, particularly the colors of the Spanish landscape and the Spanish flag.  The red in the flag was also the red used in the protest posters, ubiquitous throughout Spain, of the Indignados, protesting against the far right government. In the country, red is a leitmotif —a recurrent theme throughout a work of art associated with a particular idea or situation— and I wanted to emphasize and reference that in these collages.