expressions gallery
510.644.4930
2035 Ashby Ave. Berkeley, California, 94703
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Expressions Gallery Arts and Educational Center

Expressions Gallery Arts and Educational Center is a 501 (C) (3) non profit corporation. We offer workshops, seminars and classes to artists, kids and adults. For more information go to our website at: www.expressionsartsandedcenter.com or contact our Educational Coordinator: Marge Essel at 510-548-2617 You can also call the gallery at 510-644-4930 and leave a message.

You can support the ed center by giving a tax deductible donation or by shopping for things you need on line at OpToShopDiscounts.com. All funds from this source go to support the educational center.

Artist Biographies -
Art: Recycled and Found
August 12-21, 2006

Click on Thumbnails to Enlarge Artwork

Lili Artel

 

Lili Artel was a late bloomer starting her artwork in her fifties. She didn’t obtain her art education until long after an A.B. in English from Hunter College in New York City and a M.A. from San Jose State University, San Jose, California in Librarianship.  Her art studies were received at California State University, Hayward, CA.  She received her Fine Arts credential in 1972.  Her primary focus in art school was in sculpture --ceramic, direct metal, cast metal (bronze), wood and stone carving. Lili uses primarily non-art materials, rope, all kinds of paper, nylon hose, hair, fur, leather, feather and found objects to create her work.  She uses craft/ textile techniques (embroidery stitching, knitting, knotting, wrapping and weaving often distorted and transformed to achieve textures. She calls in “needle drawing”.

Lili describes herself as a process artist who creates through curiosity and play.  “What if I tear rather than cut? What if I unbraid the rope or yarn? What if I glue two pieces of paper together and then pull them apart? Play enters into my work in that I do not start out with a blueprint.  My hands and the materials do a dance and chance plays a part in the process.”

 

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Art Brandenburg

 

Art Brandenburg has been creating art for over 60 years.  He received a B.A. degree in commercial art from San Jose State University and a secondary teaching credential as well as a Masters Degree in Art Education from Cal State, East Bay.  After teaching secondary art in Fremont schools, he retired and now devotes his time to his creative work and to supporting the art organizations in the Hayward area.  He has worked in oil, acrylic, watercolor and mixed media painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography, video and performance art.  His work has been shown at San Francisco Art Institute, the Sun Gallery, the Green Shutter Gallery, the John O'Lague Galleria, Adobe Art Gallery, Cal State, East Bay Gallery, the SFUU Gallery, Mendocino Art Gallery, DACA Gallery and is in many private collections.  In June of 2005, he had a retrospective show at the Sun Gallery.

 

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Colleen Calhoun

 

Colleen Calhoun creates jewelry and assemblage from scrap metal, rubber and other found materials. She was formally educated in fine arts and interior design.  She worked in the field of interior design in Minneapolis and San Francisco for 12 years.  She began experimenting with scrap metals and rubber and has been selling and exhibiting her work since 1997. She has been in a number of shows including the annual Berkeley Trash to Treasures Show.  Her goal is to make compositions that allow viewers to appreciate surface up close, both the raw and the refined, from the throw-away industry and the natural world. 

 

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Barbara de Groot

 

Barbara de Groot is a local Berkeley Artist and teacher of art who works in various types of media such as monotypes;  Chine Colle with other media; Wood Block prints; Linoleum Block prints; Mixed Media Collage, as shown here;  Drypoint ;Transfer Methods; painting and drawing.  She was an Art Major in Hunter College in New York, where she learned basic printmaking under noted printmaker, Gabor Peterdi and later attended Academie Goetz in Paris, France where she learned many of her specialized printmaking skills.  Her work is in many private collections and has appeared in many exhibits in various galleries here and abroad and is archived in the Women’s Museum in Washington, DC and in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C..  The work pictured here are both collages.  The one on the left is called:  All The News That’s Fit to Print and  recycles newspaper clippings as part of the image in this monotype and collage. The one on the right is called: The Offering and uses found objects as part of the collage.

 

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Ella Driscoll

 

Ella Driscoll is a native San Franciscan. She attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a B.S. degree in Public Health. For many years she worked as a medical technologist in bay area hospitals and clinics.  Regarding her formal art training, she studied art at Berkeley Evening High School, City College of San  Francisco, and with Richard Yip , watercolor artist, and with Rupert  Garcia, Chicano artist.  She also studied photography with master photographer, Allen Stross and at San Francisco City College and San Francisco State University and continued her formal art education when she was awarded a scholarship to the Academy of Art in San Francisco, California.  Ella has had a number of solo and group shows and has received a number of  prestigious awards for her work. Her work has been shown in juried shows in New  Mexico; Idaho; Washington; Krakow, Poland and locally at the San  Francisco Women Artists Gallery.   Her awards include, Purchase Prize, San Francisco Art Festival, Best of Show, San Mateo Art Festival, New  Brunswick  Bureau of Tourism, State of Alaska, Photography, Pacifica,  California, Photography.  She has several Merit Awards from the San Francisco Women Artists. In this show, Ella uses found objects in her assemblage pieces that comment on today’s changing world and states: “I try to portray in my work the area between life and reality and the unreal or fantasy, while still maintaining a sense humor.  I find this leads me to collage, assemblage., sculpture, "shoe art"  and boxes.

 

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Mark Fischer

 

Mark Fischer is a Cetacean Acoustic Artist -- an artist who works with the sounds of whales, dolphins and birds he records while out on the ocean.  He then uses a mathematical formulas and a computer to convert these sounds into images each unique from each other.  He was born in Pennsylvania , stationed in Amberg, Germany in the US Army and earned a B. S. in electronics and computer engineering from George Mason University .  For 10 years he worked in software development, defense and telecommunications and since 2002 has been doing independent research in cetacean acoustics using wavelets, exploring both the science and the art of the way they use sound.

 

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Rinna B. Flohr

Rinna B. Flohr is an interior architect and designer who makes jewelry from left over building materials she encounters while doing interior architecture and design or from discarded underwater cameras which she gets from a relative who’s business is to fix these cameras.  She takes the discarded parts and makes intricate and interesting “sculpture for the ear”.  Rinna believes that in a world where we have become so mobile and where we no longer have offices but cubicles that walls have disappeared and that our bodies have once again become the pedestals for art as in times long ago when we wandered as nomads and wore our trophies and precious adornments.  She is also a floral designer and has had her floral designs exhibited in the Legion of Honor Museum and as part of the San Francisco De Young ‘Museum’s Bouquets to Art show.  For this show her jewelry and her floral art is featured.  Her floral art for this show uses flowers she dries and recycles in arrangements she makes to compliment and express the artwork next to which it is placed as in the Bouquet to Arts .  This is one of the only galleries that features floral arts. Her work is on display as part of Art: Recycled and Found, August 12 - 31.  Rinna is also the founder and Director of Expressions Gallery. More of her earrings and floral art can be seen on her website: http://www.designideas.us.  

 

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Sofia Harrison

 

Sofia Harrison is self-taught, she started creating artwork in 1999 and since then has participated in numerous gallery and juried exhibitions in the bay area, with selected shows in New York. She lives and works in Napa and has been commissioned by clients across the country.

Sofia uses glass and words with an entirely fresh perspective to create a mixed-media piece that is visually pleasing, intelligent and soulful. "I gather words in much the same manner as a painter mixes paints," she explains.  Magazine advertisements are her favorite source for words and phrases: "When taken out of context, they become either particularly funny or especially poignant." Her work embodies the collective thought patterns of our society: fractured but connected, expressing individuality, desire, spirit and reason.

She affixes the words to the hand cut glass pieces and then attaches them to mannequins, boxes, sash windows, baby dolls and furniture. The framework chosen is often dictated by what she can, to put it plainly, garbage-pick. "I was driving in Berkeley and spotted an old stool half buried in tall grass in a vacant lot. I almost caused an accident by making a b-line to nab it." Now encrusted with verbiage, the work is entitled Tossed in Berkeley. "I love the process of reincarnation."

 

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Clint Imboden

 

Clint Imboden works in both photography and three-dimensional forms of art. He has had a number of solo and group shows throughout the United States and a traveling show in Scotland.  His art career began with photography, using the camera as a tool to connect what he saw in his mind to what he wanted to produce as art. Later he became more open to,  and comfortable with incorporating found images, objects, and text in his art.  “I integrated these elements slowly into more of my work, producing work that looked more and more like mixed media pieces and installations and less like photography. Recent work has included found x-ray, vintage 35 mm black and white movie film; hack saw blades, text, Braille and Morris code. ”

He is attracted to objects, the artifacts of daily living, the things that people discard, overlook or are taken for granted.  “Objects for me are broken down into two groups. The first group consists of objects that I need to finish a particular project. The second, and ultimately the more important group, is composed of random objects that I come across while searching flea markets and junk stores. It is not always clear to me why I find this second group interesting; they just call to me. An interesting thing happens to objects in group two; they compel me to think about them and in doing so serve as catalyst for new projects and greater insight.  ”  Shown at Expressions Gallery are his globe series using found objects recycled into interesting sculpture.

 

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Roz Joseph

Roz Joseph's photographs have been exhibited and published since l978.  Her work has appeared in calendars, note cards, magazines and on the Web.  Her photographic book, 'DETAILS: The Architect's Art" with text by Sally B. Woodbridge, was published by Chronicle Books.  Her photos are in the corporate collections of IBM, Security Pacific Bank and Transamerica Corporation.   Roz’s work captures things we see everyday but often do not notice -- found art.  She captures the image with her creative skill, with an eye for the richness of  color and presents it in a way we can’t help but notice it. Her subject matter has varied over the years from natural subjects, to architecture, to festivals and celebrations and to detailing city scenes. She turns these images of everyday encounters with our world into modern abstractions.  Color is definitely a driving force in her photography. She says that she used to work primarily in Black and White when she lived in New York, but  since having moved to bright and colorful California, color photography has become her prime medium.

 

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Athens Kolias

Athens Kolias known as Athens K Designs, lives in the Bay Area and handcrafts elegant and whimsical purses.  A veteran of the fashion accessory world, Athens started designing her handbags as an answer to the need to carry some essentials when she went out dancing.  She has been a textile packrat for many years. She uses many wonderful recycled fabrics collected over the years. These include fabrics from the window displays of the high-end fashion world and scraps from the interior design worlds. All her bags are made individually, with no purchased handles.  All zippers are embellished with either a tassel or a bead or something interesting.  Linings are just as important as the visible side of these purses, and many times present a whimsical design sense.  Tassels, beads and dangles frequent these artful wrist bags.  Athens fabric art is on exhibit at Expressions Gallery from August 12-31,2006.

 

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Kristin Lamb

None available at this time.

 

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Rafael Landea

 

Rafael Landea is a local Bay Area Artist who came to the United States from Argentina. His works are exhibited and admired in galleries around the world.  He recycles old 33 1/3 records which he uses  as his canvas and paints various
scenes of people listening to their record players. The records spin  if you spin them manually.  Much of his art depicts music, dance and theatre. His art is on exhibit as part of the Art: Recycled and Found show at Expressions
Gallery from August 12-31st.

 
 
 

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Jennifer Wallace Mack

 

Jennifer Wallace Mack has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute.   She works in various media: painting, photography, mixed media, and jewelry. Her work is consistent in the quality and detail in each medium she applies.  She has exhibited at a number of solo, and group shows, many of which were juried.  Shown at Expressions Gallery are her mixed media paintings and her magnificent jewelry.   Jennifer has served on various Board of Directors for long standing Artist Organizations such as the San Francisco Women Artists where she was a past President and continues n the current Board as Vice Treasurer and The San Francisco Gem and Mineral organization where she is currently Treasurer.  Jennifer has an eye for detail she can work in minute scale with tiny beadwork or large scale with paintings. She has a desire to and accomplishes finding new ways to use the tools of her art to create beautiful and out of the ordinary pieces of work.  Her jewelry uses recycled beads and her paintings that are part of this show, are collage that contain found objects that she incorporates as part of her art. Her work is on exhibit at Expressions Gallery from August 12-31st.

 

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Sonia Melnikova

 

Sonia Melnikova was born and trained as an artist and then architect in Moscow, former USSR. She holds a Master’s degree in Architectural Design from the prestigious Moscow State Architectural Institute, and at various times worked as an architect, graphic artist, exhibit curator, and interior designer, first in Moscow and later, since 1987, in San Francisco. Her artworks in various media were exhibited in art salons in Moscow and The Jewish Museum San Francisco, as well as Virginia Brier Gallery, Spectrum Gallery, Fort Mason, Show'n Tell Gallery, The Painted Lady Gallery, Gallery Route One, College of Marin, Bradford Gallery, Euphrat Gallery, De Anza College, Koret Gallery, FLEUR't, and other venues. Her works in this exhibit represent three portfolios: “Concrete Art”, “Rusty Things”, and “Still Lifes on Sand’,  all of which in some way reflect on the central theme of this exhibit, recycled and found art. Its message is that real worth is not necessarily in the preciousness of the material or conventional attractiveness of things, and that beauty and artistic ideas can be found even in a pile of trash, a fragment of a decaying concrete wall, rusty fence, or the broken stairs.

 

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Udi Peled

 

Udi Peled is a local artist whose work has been purchased for exhibit at the Berkeley Jazz School.  In addition, his work adorns many a catalogue cover for UC Berkeley.  He has shown his art at various select galleries.  Born in Israel, he is now living permanently in the United States. Udi blends expressionism with a style based on raw talent.  Udi’s versatile works are a favorite amongst local art collectors. He is available for commissioned art works as well as the artwork that is displayed in this show for which he painted a man drinking beer and tossing the cans into the recycling truck. His is one of the few works in the show that have painted man engaged in the recycling process.

 
 

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Kimiko Sakuma

 

Kimiko Sakuma is an innovative artist who experiments with various mediums and material. She finds inspiration in the re-use of objects, such as newspaper and recycled material, because it is the process of transforming an ordinary item and redefining the way that people identify with it.

She holds a B.A, from the University of California, Los Angeles in World Arts and Cultures and a M.A. in Instructional Design from San Francisco State University. She is currently the Artist and Founder of Work Art World (www.workartworld.com), a program incorporating Art within the office and cubicle space. Her work is currently in various office buildings and restaurants within the Bay Area.

Her Artwork is currently on exhibit at the Artist Exchange Gallery in San Francisco. Kimiko has also been selected to create an Art piece depicting Fisherman’s Wharf at the eleven mile mark for the San Francisco Marathon 2006. Kimiko has been an Art Editor for Tea Party and Arts and Culture Magazine and a promoter of Masterteecom, a website which supports Japanese Art and Folklore. Her work is in mixed media and is on exhibit at Expressions Gallery as part of Art: Recycled & Found show August 12 – 31.

 
 

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Mikio Sakuma

 

Mikio Sakuma is an imaginative artist who uses found objects in nature to create tranquil zen scenes using his signature Japanese Miko Doll. He believes that objects found in nature possess an organic beauty and conveys various levels of energy when arranged in different artistic ways.

Mikio grew up in a small town in Chiba, Japan and over the years has evolved his craft in the United States. He was a contributing Artist in Tea Party an Arts and Culture Magazine for issue #16 He is currently the Artist and Founder of Miko Dolls (www.mastertee.com), a website which displays Japanese Dolls and explores Japanese folklore in addition to illustrations, decorative food carving, and comics.

Mikio has exhibited his work at the Artist Exchange Gallery in San Francisco as well as various craft shows throughout the Bay Area. His work is on exhibit at Expressions Gallery as part of Art: Recycled & Found show August 12 – 31, 2006.

 

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Andrew Wickens

 

None available at this time.

 
 
 

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