Lois Cantor, a Berkeley resident, grew up on the east coast and spent several years in Italy. She received degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and Hartt College of Music. A child prodigy, she was a professional pianist until tendonitis ended her career several years ago. At that time she turned to composing electronic music as well as exploring computer art and painting. She has had shows in several local venues including the Albany Library and El Cerrito City Hall.  This acrylic painting is an homage to Matisse. The artist states, “In painting, I improvise in much the same way I improvised with my music; I like the paintings to emerge spontaneously as I go along, and sometimes I am surprised and delighted by the outcome.”

Louis Cuneo & Marcia Poole, both originally from the East Coast, settled in the Berkeley in the 1960s and 70s. They met in the early 90s and began a 20 year partnership and collaboration that has grown more productive each year. Cuneo’s artistic career spans over 40 years, beginning in Greenwich Village where he honed his skills as a poet and continued in the Bay Area where he worked as a poet, photographer, editor/publisher, coordinator, Haiku expert and grants recipient. He founded and still coordinates, with Poole, the Berkeley Poetry Festival, Mother’s Hen and Touch of the Poet Series. His photographic skills are self- taught, but he has the Zen eye of a Haiku poet, preferring to photograph landscapes and animals, saying “that have retained their natural state.” Poole traveled extensively, pursuing studies in philosophy, art and politics. A former Zen lay priest and still a yogi, she attempts to bring spirit to form. She earned her B.A. from San Francisco State University in computer graphics/conceptual design and studied various artistic disciplines with some well known Bay Area artists & teachers in Mexico.

Joan Di Stefano-Ruiz is a working artist who has maintained a studio that primarily does liturgical arts. She works primarily in the mediums of stained, leaded glass and mosaics. She has exhibited in Venice, Brescia and Bologna, Italy; Tepic, Mexico and Paris, France. She recently finished restoration work on the stained glass windows that were once part of St. Francis de Sales Cathedral in Oakland, Ca. These were then shipped to a new church, St. Paul Catholic Church, in Pensacola, Florida. She also made angels for the tabernacles plus mosaics for the wall and alter. She states: “My spiritual life and art life are entwined. The various faith traditions of liturgical work have expanded my awareness, reverence and appreciation of other faith traditions.” She is half Jewish but also embraces Buddhist philosophy and she is a professed Secular Franciscan established by St Francis of Assisi in 1221. In searching for one’s faith she states: “Fundamentally, I believe what we know to be true, deep in our hearts is what is right for us.Faith is not a ‘one size fits all’”

Christine A. Dougherty resides in the Oakland Hills. Originally from Colorado, she was surrounded by nature & the arts. Phyllis, her mother, a violinist, took her to concerts, art museums, & galleries. Constantly creating, she has won many awards. Designing & making her own clothing lead to design school in Chicago, a career in fashion with her own line of clothing that segued into total costume design. She received her MFA from UCSD in Theatre & continued as a member of United Scenic Artists as Costume Designer for professional theatres across the USA, often working with her husband, Scenic & Lighting Designer, Kent Dorsey. They enjoyed travel, skiing, scuba diving, & were married in Venice, Italy. Her father Ted, acted on stage while operating his own construction company, and engineered many of Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s art projects beginning in 1971 with The Rifle Gap Curtain. While a freelance costume designer, Christine also worked as: quality controller, trouble shooter, fabric consultant, trainer, team leader, monitor  on site with Ted, Christo & Jeanne-Claude on Wrapped Walkways, Surrounded Islands,  Le Pont-Neuf Empaquete, The Gates, Central Park, NYC, & preliminary work for The Umbrellas  & Wrapped Reichstag. Christine resumed painting while traveling, exhibiting her watercolors of  nature in a variety of venues with collectors  from East to West Coasts & Japan. Over the years, she has studied art & painting with notable artists: Joe Wetherbee, Faith Ringgold, Irina Gronberg, Howard Rees, Kay Russell, Fred Kling, & Karen Frey. In 2010 she was Co-Chair/Director for CWA 41st National Exhibition in the Presidio. Always connecting with colors, movement, texture, water & nature, her favorite medium is watercolor, especially while painting en plein air.    www.ChristineDoughertyWatercolors.com

Jan Dove was raised in the East Bay and currently lives here. She has been an artist and teacher since before she can remember. She had the good fortune to receive an art education at Cal State Hayward and at the Art Institute of Chicago where she earned an MFA in printmaking. Jan's current work is in the digital realm, though she is most interested in combining the traditional with the new in some way. Her work has been shown in many venues including the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; the University of Oregon Museum of Art, Eugene; the National Academy of Design, NY; the Municipal Art Gallery of Modern Art, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela; and Gallerij de Telloor, Alkmaar, Nederlands. For her work she has been honored with artist-residencies at Blue Mountain Center in upstate New York and at Ucross in Wyoming. Her work is the Alameda County Arts Commission collection. It is also in the Kaiser Permanente collection in Stockton and in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Artist Book Collection

Albert Edgerton has been a resident of the east bay hills for over forty years. He grew up in a southern California beach town and spent as much time as possible in the ocean. A school assignment had him making an extensive report on Italy in book form. The Italian Consul in San Francisco provided massive amounts of material, especially the art of Italy. After that the artist was an inveterate museum goer. He graduated from Northwestern University and had the Chicago Art Institute available and discovered the work of Lionel Feininger.   Foreign travel afforded the opportunity of photography and the Berkeley Camera Club honed his abilities where awards included Print of the Year. With the advent of digital imaging and photoshop he enrolled at Berkeley City College art department under Joe Doyle and has continued in those classes to the present where he can take  his art from scans into photoshop manipulations and print the finished result on a variety of archival products. He has had three one-man shows at The Sea Ranch Lodge, one at Wente Winery and has participated in numerous group shows. The present work shows his interest in architecture.

Marge Essel lives in Berkeley.Ca. She was born in Western Pennsylvania. She became interested in fine arts at the age of 6. She took up painting & attended her 1st classes. While attending high school, she began her formal art training by studying figure drawing in preparation for an Art degree. Following graduation she took a position as a designer & artist for the Lovelace Marionette Theater. She returned to Berkeley to further her studies & became the head costume designer for a dance company. She returned to college in 1980 to attend UCB. to receive a Fine Arts credential. Marge continued her studies & in 1982 received a B.A. from New College. She began to exhibit her ceramic sculptures in the community. She studied ceramics at CAL State. She exhibited in shows there. She received a Fine Arts & Multiple Subjects credential. She has been an artist in residence with the Berkeley Arts Center & the Oakland Museum. She has studied art in London, England & Hawaii. She has exhibited ceramic sculptures, paintings & photographs in group shows in Berkeley, Oakland & Alameda. She has received several artists grants from the Academy of Art In S.F. where she studied photography & photographic processes. These along with her sculptures & paintings were exhibited in 2 one woman shows.

Debbie Fimrite is a deaf, Japanese-inspired artist with over 30 years of experience studying, creating, exhibiting and occasionally teaching art. She enjoys painting, drawing, sculpture, computer graphics, photography, origami, creating art dolls and altering Barbies. Always interested in art as a means of inspiration, self expression and healing; she was fortunate to grow up in the presence of many supportive artists including her mother who is a painter and sculptor. Over the years she has exhibited in a number of Bay Area Galleries including the Fort Mason Art Center, the Nanny Goat Hill Gallery, Gallery Sanchez, The Tea Spot Cafe,  the Japan Center, Red Ink Studios, the Market Street Gallery,  Art 94124 Gallery, Age Song Gallery and participated in San Francisco and East Bay Open Studios.

Rinna B. Flohr lives in Oakland, California. She grew up on the East Coast in New Jersey and New York. She graduated from Syracuse University with a B. A. in theatre arts and a Masters of Social Work. She also completed a Certificate in Psychodrama at the Moreno Institute of Psychodrama in New York. She received her license as a clinical social worker and for 37 years she worked as a licensed psychotherapist in private practice and as Deputy Director of Mental Health for Alameda County; Director of the Center for Special Problems, San Francisco Community Mental Health and Assistant Director for San Francisco County Behavioral Health Services. In 1991 her house burned down in the Oakland fire, which led her to study Interior Architecture and Design in order to rebuild her home. She completed the program at UC Berkeley in 2001. With an interior design degree she started Design Ideas and she began doing remodels and designing new interiors that later led her to staging and floral design. She studied floral design with Ron Morgan. Her floral designs were part of the Bouquets to Art Show at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco in the past and she was a member of the San Francisco Museum flower committee. She also makes jewelry from recycled materials left over from interior design projects and later from other found objects such as found rubber from inner tubes of tires or cement from building sites. She was President of San Francisco Women Artists in San Francisco, one of the oldest women’s art galleries. Currently she is founder and Director of Expressions Gallery in Berkeley, Ca. (expressionsgallery.org )

Sue Mary Fox splits her year between her winter workroom in Berkeley, CA, and her summer workroom in the village of Robbinston, Maine.  Born and raised in a rural hamlet on the wild Maine coast, Fox spent her early summers organizing bits and pieces of nature’s “art parts” into patterns on 2- and 3- dimensional surfaces.  Much of her outdoor time was spent along beaches assembling installations of flotsam & jetsam that would become rearranged by time, tide, and weather.  Participating in the long term process of building & observing the progress of disintegrating beach installations has been a life long interest. Although she trained in ceramics at university, Fox spent 32 years in the field of design & construction using the sewing machine– at various times employed making Art to Wear clothing; costumes for theater, dance, opera, & circus; and more recently in creating site specific installations for commercial interiors.  A full time studio artist since 2001, Fox maintains a fully equipped sewing studio on each coast where she primarily produces boldly colorful quilts with an abstract contemporary edge. Her large format quilts have been exhibited across the United States and in Europe. Scarf making offers the joyful opportunity to play with color and texture.

Chandra Garsson lives in Oakland, California. She grew up in Los Angeles, California. She has two degrees in fine art, including a Master of Fine Arts from San Jose State University, with her B.F.A. from U. C. Santa Cruz. After making perhaps two thousand or so paintings, sculptures, etchings, and mixed media works, shown nationally and internationally, Chandra has returned to an earlier and more ornamental mode, that of jewelry making. Her work has been most recently shown at Deep Roots Tea House Gallery, in Oakland. Before that, in the last show in the old space of Pro Arts Gallery (the first solo exhibition of the gallery at the time), over two hundred of Chandra Garsson’s works were shown in the exhibit, Insomnia (Awakening).  For now, after many years of work observing problems concerned with our human condition, she finds joy in the simplicity of beauteously decorating the people of our world. Artist states: “a Google search of my name and a click on my websites will confirm the radical nature of the change I have made in my work when I began making jewelry.” Her jewelry has been exhibited at Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, The Gem Gallery and Bill’s Trading Post, Berkeley, and Itsy Bitsy, Rockridge.

Rohilah Guy is an abstract expressionist artist who creates works with acrylics, pastels, watercolors, collage, and sumi-e. She is interested in color, light, shadow, movement, and reflections. She also has a background in textile arts – weaving, batik and clothing design. Rohilah has become involved in photography, composing all shots in the camera itself. Over the years, she has been influenced and helped by manyshe continues to study, explore and expand her craft and her work.

Bruce Heppler was born in Berkeley 1955 (Kaiser).  He graduated Berkeley High in 1973 and worked at Lawrence Berkeley Lab from 1975 to 1983 as a mechanical technician.  He moved to Covelo, Mendocino Country and opened a welding and repair shop.  Bruce has been working with metal all his life. He did an art sculpture for a benefit for a local music teacher whose mobile home burned (made a phoenix from trailer frame), got positive comments and started making other things.  He takes inspiration from many sources, notably Louis Armstrong, the Three Stooges, and the Marx Brothers. When he’s not working on farm equipment, he’s making art.

Melanie Hofmann lives in South Berkeley. She has loved viewing and creating art since she was a child.  She has a degree from California College of the Arts in Textiles. In addition to her hand painted and printed fabric pieces, Melanie has ventured into the digital realm with her photographic, video and image transfer work. In this exhibit, she is showing her work on Italian Charm Bracelets. The 18mm charms on the bracelets feature her work or can be custom made to feature your photographs or artwork. Melanie has a collection of seven works of digital art in the corporate collection of Lifescan in Milpitas. She has been the featured artist in several corporate lobby exhibits curated by William Torphy, an art consultant. Melanie is currently inspired by the hummingbirds in her backyard that have provided lots of opportunities to photograph them when they are sitting in a tree, feasting on flower nectar, or playing in the fountain. She also ventures into the field to photograph hummingbirds in other Bay Area locations.

Stan Huncilman was born in Indiana but he is a product of the San Francisco Bay Area art world.  He attended San Francisco State University where he was introduced to Funk Art and Happenings in the ‘70s.  He received his M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1984.  S.F.A.I. is the home of the Bay Area’s leading art instructors. He has been a sculptor for more than 25 years.  Stan works in a variety of materials.  As a matter of practice he uses the material that is most expedient to creating the sculpture he wants rather than “pushing a particular material.”  His sculptures often begin from a simple sketch.  He prefers to work in a direct manner rather than making molds of models before the final sculpture. The artist states: “I combine a child-like playfulness with primitivism. This creates a wonderland of intriguing forms and convoluted messages.  When I enter my studio there is a mental sign post reading “Linear Thinking Stops Here.” Through my sculpture I create a world of nutritiously puzzling paradigms whose roots may be in religion, folk art, nineteenth century industrialisms or Greek mythology.  In this world, a whimsical sense of humor walks arm in arm with an obstinate determination to create.  The sculptures in this exhibition are part of his “All My Psyches” series, a whimsical yet intriguing observation of the complexities of consciousness.  His solo exhibits include Holy Names College in Oakland, California and the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

Diane Jacobson lives in Oakland, CA. She is a transplant from the Little League capital of the world, Williamsport, Pennsylvania. As a veteran teacher in the Oakland schools, she used many art projects and visual cues to instruct her English learners. Although she dabbled in art classes an undergraduate, her interest in glass art was not kindled until the 1990's.  Through classes at Studio One and the Crucible, she has expanded her areas of expertise to include kiln casting and working deep, as well as fusing and slumping glass.  Her pieces are represented in Pro Arts Open Studio as well as several galleries in the Bay Area.  Artist states, "What I like best about fused glass is its element of surprise.  Glass is a chameleon.  Observe the pieces as the light changes.  Glass is a fickle and somewhat undependable medium, as reactions to color and temperature cause a visual dance of light and texture.  Enjoy the dance."

Ann Jasperson lives and works in Stamford, CT but grew up north of Chicago the youngest of a large family. Always drawing, the fire that is art was started when a family friend gave her a Paint by Numbers set-then it was off to the races. Nurtured by her sister Joan and many wonderful teachers she attended the Cleveland Institute of Art and graduated in 1981 with a BFA in Drawing/illustration. Moving to New York soon after graduation, she “fell” into the toy business, then became a toy inventor which is her “day job”. But always in the background was a love of stones. Designing and creating jewelry has become a word of mouth business that has grown over the last five years. One of a kind pieces inspired by the natural beauty of stones and pearls done just Once makes for wearable art. Other interests include her internet cartoon Cranky Bears, her garden, dogs and husband G.C. Stone.

Minal Jeswani lives in the Bay Area. She received a BFA in pictorial art, San Jose State University, December 2009. She has exhibited her work in numerous places Including: Art Object Gallery, San Jose, August, 29, 2009 -September 19, 2009.Kalied Gallery, San Jose, August, 2009-January, 2010, Works Gallery, San Jose, May 28th-June 12th, 2010 Alameda County Fair: Juried Exhibit, June 30th to July 11th, 2010. Sun Gallery, Hayward, CA. June 28th to July 24th, 2010, Phantom galleries, 2cc Gallery, Tesserae exhibit, Sept 4th-Oct 3rd 2010, Mystic Art Center,  Art in Pieces, CT  Oct 1st-Nov 13th, 2010, Art and Soul Gallery, Burlingame CA Sep-Nov 2010, Tesserae Tile and Stone gallery, Gloucester MA Oct-Nov 2010, Silver circle studio and gallery, CT, Reasonable and seasonable exhibit Nov/Dec 2010. Artist’s Statement My work is about chaos and order, about struggling to find balance in the ever- changing world around me, about keeping steady amidst the turbulence of a constantly altering world. Over the last three years my art made the switch from representational to non-objective. Art is a medium that allows me to be in the present moment and helps me connect with my subconscious. I’m interested more in the unseen than the seen world. I am primarily interested in the essence, the life force that connects us all, the underlying life source that inhabits every plant, animal, and human. My art is connected with my everyday world, whether perceived or conceived. My relationship with my work is a quest for getting to know myself; art is a gateway to my inner world. 

Zohra Kalinkowitz currently lives in Berkeley, CA, where she has been for 22 years.  She grew up in New York City and lived for many years in Oregon.  She became interested in art at a very early age, attending the Art Students League and the High School of Music and Art in NYC. After majoring in Art at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, she received a Thomas J. Watson IBM Fellowship on which she studied Brush Painting in Kyoto, Japan and Art in Europe.  This intensive study of Asian and Western Art was the foundation of a course she taught, “The Philosophy and Practice of Asian Painting” as an Adjunct Professor at four Universities in the Bay Area for close to 20 years.  Zohra concentrated on painting in various media with photography as a sideline until she discovered the joys of digital photography and digital printmaking, which she now does exclusively. The pieces in this show exemplify the synthesis of Asian and Western Art often apparent in her work.  She is a long time student of Buddhist Meditation which has had a strong influence on the subject matter and emotional tonality of her work.  The three images in this show are each composites of two or more photographs and create a dreamlike reality.

Suzanna Klein has been living in the East Bay for years. She was born and raised on the East Coast. She graduated Goucher College in 1966 and then studied at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts 1968-69. She was employed as biological illustrator through the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut; she illustrated Womenfolk and Fairytales, published by Houghton Mifflin, 1975. In 1976-9 she worked, at Faunus Furniture, Berkeley. She has been in various small shows and open studios. Suzanna studied with Roland Worthington and did many paintings in acrylics and oils, made small plaster objects and recently completed a ten year stint of digital painting. Working on the computer awakened her desire to make "hands-on" projects; this has led her into fabric work...weaving and most recently needle-felting. She is experimenting with converting her digital images into a softer, felty medium.

Coral Lambert, currently living in the US, was born and raised in England and studied at Central School of Art in London, Canterbury College of Art, Kent and received her MFA in Sculpture from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1990.  Since then Coral has shown her work extensively in England and America including The Barbican Center, London, Franconia Sculpture Park, MN, Convergence, in Providence, Rhode Island, Grounds for Sculpture and twice in Chicago’s International Navy Pier Walk. Coral Lambert has lectured as a visiting artist at the Royal College of Art, London and RIT, New York among many others. From 1995-1998 she held the position of International Artist/Research Fellow in cast metals at the University of Minnesota. In 2000 she was invited as the semester visiting artist at the University of North Carolina and has returned there several times since. Coral is the Founder of the US/UK Contemporary Cast Iron Sculpture Residency Program that has taken place in England and America annually since 1997. A recent recipient of the Jerome Fellowship and Gottlieb Foundation Award, she also has artwork in several private collections. She and her husband spent a brief time here in Berkeley, Ca after they were evacuated from the Gulf Coast hurricane Katrina where they lost much of their work. Coral is currently Co-Chair of the 5th International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art. Her artwork references asteroids, standing stones and volcanoes; icons of transformation that careen between astronomy above and archaeology below. Central to her work is the exploration of concepts related to growth and form, with a particular interest to those specifically found in natural phenomena that contain some kind of metaphysical presence.

Mary Lanza currently lives in Oakland California where she was born and raised. She became interested in collage art at an early age.  For many years she shared her talent with friends and family who encouraged her to sell her work rather than give it away. Although she did not have any formal training she found herself creating collage after collage and showing her work in cafes throughout the bay area. Mary, inspired by her love of vintage magazines, found herself creating collages from popular magazine from the 40s, 50s, and 60s.  By creating these collages she feels she is creating scenes and scenarios for her viewers to reminisce.  Her belief is that the viewer would recognize images from their past but by seeing them in the context she creates, the images seem new and fresh again.  She decided to join the Oakland Art Association in 2001 in order to share her work with the public. Her collage art has been shown and sold in banks, cafes, and retirement homes throughout the bay area.

Lucy Lewis, grew up in Los Angeles, Ca. She began her career as a dancer at the age of 10. She studied with Bella  Lewitsky and Masami Kuni, and Murray Louis before coming to San Francisco State College. There she met John Graham and began performing with Anna Halprin, The Dancer’s Workshop, in the 1960’s.  She has lived and worked in the Bay Area ever since. She created her own company bringing together artists, musicians and dancers, in what were some of the first multimedia productions in the Bay Area.  She incorporated masks, visual arts, and inspiration from nature, animals and dreams into her work.  She produced full-length compositions, Dreamscapes (1985), at the Matrix Gallery and Between two Worlds (1998) and many shorter pieces, The Planets (2005), Waters of Life (2006), The Voices of Earth (2007). She is now working with dance as a healing art, looking at dance from a cross-cultural perspective. Lucy has a masters degree in cultural anthropology and the role of arts in healing. Her love of art and painting came from her mother who was an accomplished painter. For the last 10 years she has been painting and drawing.  She is especially inspired by the human figure as a study of the beauty and depth inherent in the human form the expression of human emotion. She has exhibited her work at, ECLECTIX GALLERY, 2006, ADDISON STREET WINDOWS U.N. SHOW, 2007, EXPRESSIONS GALLERY, 2008. GEORGI  GALLERY.

Charles Lucke lives in Hercules, CA. He began borrowing his father’s cameras while growing up in Stratford, CT, and has been a freelance photographer since the 1970s. He added a darkroom to each of five consecutive residences, and though he shoots mostly digital today, he continues to mine an inventory of thousands of slides and negatives for images to exhibit. His first solo exhibit, “Four Ways to Abstraction,” was on view at the XZIBTit Gallery in Hercules for two months in 2007, and in July 2008, the Hercules City Council awarded him First Place in the first annual Hercules Photography Contest. Charlie’s inspirations include Hugo Steccati and Ruth Bernhard, who, though their work is very different, were both creatively involved in photography to the end of their long and interesting lives. Regarding his interest in abstract photography, the artist states: “There’s a desire in me to create something that no one else has created (or at least, not precisely the way I have created it.) It’s a way to free the form and change it from a visual reality to an unreality. It’s a way to free the process from the precise reproduction of tone, colors, and forms and let the right brain reign.” Charles brings to us visions of nature we all wish to preserve.

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 is her magnificent jewelry.  Jennifer has served on various Boards of Directors for long standing Artists Organizations such as the San Francisco Women Artists, where she was a past President and Vice Treasurer and The San Francisco Gem and Mineral organization where she was Treasurer.

John Mallon grew up in the East Bay Area being born in Oakland, his present residence. Arts and crafts have been an interest since early childhood. While in the Navy, pencil portraits were a hobby. From there sculpture and painting became an interest as time went by, resulting in private painting instruction from a bay area teacher. A long list of “How To” art books have helped along the way with sculpture and pencil drawing, as well as a teacher in woodcarving. Awards came from Art shows presented by the Oakland and Alameda Art Associations the past 20 years.  Mallon was a Member and has been President of both Associations. Mallon states: “Monet, Dali and CA painter George Otis are an inspiration to me.  Color and graphite pencil are my favorite and best mediums. At the beginning of 2000, he states: “ I was inspired by the dot paintings of the Australian Aboriginals, somewhat similar to Seurat’s pointillism, using dots of acrylic paint to build texture.” For ten years, he focused on dot painting and then discovered the color combinations that create 3-D seen with 3-D glasses. Many of his dot paintings created during the 10 years period were 3-D, he discovered as he just happened to use colors that create the 3-D effect without realizing it. Most of his work now is in 3-D deliberately. Another interest has been in fun projects decorating hats using fabric paint and making fun clocks and masks.

Elena E. Maroth lives in Kensington, CA. Born close to the sea in Cuba, Elena has been surrounded throughout her life by nature, music, and visual beauty. The rhythms of the ocean and the culturally vibrant life of Havana  inspired Elena early on to dance and paint. She studied ballet with dancer and choreographer Alberto Alonso at Pro Arte Musical, continuing at the legendary Alicia Alonso Ballet School in Havana. She also studied art the celebrated Havana Escuela San Alejandro, where many outstanding Cuban artists received their early training. After moving to the U.S., Elena’s art has continued to be inspired by her early environment as well as by her ballet training: she has brought to her visual art work the joy and rhythm of color and movement. She works mainly with acrylics; most of her canvases are 3x3 or 4x4 feet in size. Her published work includes a Univ. of New Mexico New Music Festival brochure cover painting and several classical music CD cover pictures for the Berkeley CD label Music.

Juliet Mevi, a native Californian and a resident of Berkeley, CA., is a full time artist working in Berkeley. She  studied painting and figure drawing at Berkeley City College with art professors Susanne Yeiser, Evelyn Glauber and Mary Louise Stanley.   Julie's work is heavily influenced by the school of Bay Area Figurative Artist and she is currently studying with Lynne Fischer, a local figurative artist. She is a member of  The Oakland Art Association, East Bay Plein Air Painters Group, California Art Club, and Pro Arts Gallery.  Julie is skilled in the use of acrylics and oils and often combines the two in her work. Working on canvas, paper and panels, Julie has shown her work in several group and solo shows.  She won “Best of Show” at the Flyway Festival in Mare Island in 2007,  and “Best of Show” at the Characters Show at The Frank Bette Center for the Arts.  She recently participated in a group show at Studio Gallery in San Francisco and at Warehouse 416 Studios in Oakland.  Artists Magazine awarded her an Honorable Mention in their 2011 Annual Artist Contest. Her work can be viewed on her website at www.mevi-shiflett.com.

Joanie Mitchell was born in Ohio and educated in New York and London.  She has had a traveler’s life and as she went about, she drew the world. She writes of her art ‘I was the master of the quick sketch and with a few lines I captured the markets and temples of India, Balinese ceremonies, the rainforest of Hawaii and Peru.  And when I came to long for color, I found the art of batik painting. I found batik, or batik found me.  It was in a little Balinese guesthouse that I first saw the dye spreading to meet the golden lines of wax, and I was determined to learn all about it.  I started to study in Java with Umar Hassidin in the batik city of Solo, Java, and continued my work at the studio of master batik painter, Ketut Sujana in Ubud, Bali.  For fifteen years I have created batik in Ketut’s studio. I also made oil paintings and continued to follow my original passion for line drawing. Joanie has exhibited in Bali, Hawaii and Northern California and her work has appeared in magazines and books, including several collections of drawings and writing for the SEVA Foundation.

Maj-Britt Mobrand lives in Berkeley, CA but was born and grew up in Stockholm, Sweden.  As a little girl, she saw her grandmother’s loom in the attic and was very intrigued by it and knew she wanted to master one of those.  She has taken weaving classes both in Sweden and the U.S., but is for the most part self-taught.  She has been teaching weaving here in Berkeley since 1968.  Some of the juried shows she has participated in are U.C. Berkeley and Live Oak Art Galleries in Berkeley (1969); Artist League of Vallejo Gallery (1975); Olive Hyde Art Gallery in Fremont (1988); and Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland (2006 and 2008).  She has also participated in many Open Studios and has shown her work at various local venues and as a result has weavings in many private collections. Artist states:  “I enjoy using traditional weaves and patterns in a non-traditional manner and am striving to find a harmonious balance between the natural and the artificial or planned.  My inspiration is derived from music, nature, travels, and from my students.  It’s wonderful to see the enthusiasm of my students as they develop their projects on their looms after I’ve given them the ‘know how’.”

Julia L. Montrond lives in Berkeley. She grew up in New York City and was involved in all the arts: painting, acting, dancing & singing. She majored in Theatre arts at Hunter College and studied art at U.C. Berkeley, CCAC Extension, a studio in Florence, Italy & another in Guanajuato, Mexico, as well as numerous workshops in the Bay Area.  Painters she most admires: Turner, Sargeant, and most of the Impressionists.  About what inspires her, she says:  "I'm intrigued by the challenge of trying to capture the effect a scene or other subject has on me--of creating different moods; and of course the joy of working with color."   She works primarily in watercolor & has begun painting with oil.  Awards won in Art Shows include: Napa County Fair 2x.; El Cerrito Art show 3x, and being exhibited in numerous juried shows of: Marin County Art Fair; The Giorgi Gallery, Berkeley;  Shadelands Gallery, Walnut Creek; and the MTC Gallery, Oakland.

Christine Morlock and Joanna Ruckman are both Artists living and working in the East Bay.  Studying art on the east coast before moving to the Bay Area, Joanna and Christine met in the Multimedia Arts Program at Berkeley City College.  Similar interests in their art esthetic brought them together in the print lab to collaborate on their current series.  InnerDiemension is a selected piece from that series. Joannas eye for pattern and texture paired with Christines pop-inspired designs creates truly unique work.

Joanie Murphy currently lives in Vallejo, and was born and raised in Oakland. She first became interested in art while in grammar school and  received a degree in Fine Art from San Francisco State University where she served as a Gallery Attendant/Intern. Her painting is most influenced by the Impressionists. In the world of photography she has always admired the Weston family. Joanie also works in ceramics. The two works she is presenting for this show are an acrylic painting and a watercolor. Previously she has shown her work at various venues through the Oakland Art Association, where she served as both President and Exhibits Coordinator. While exhibiting with OAA she received several awards in juried shows. Joanie has also shown her art with the Benicia Art Association.  

Vicki Pierpont was born in California and raised in the Bay Area.  She presently lives in the Lamorinda area where she paints weekly with a group in Walnut Creek and Orinda.  She graduated from the University of Oregon with a major in Art Education.  She has always had a deep interest in the arts but only started painting seriously five years ago as a diversion to caring for gravely ill family members.  Her primary media is oil, and she paints a variety of subject matters including the abstract paintings on display.  She has work in private collections through out the greater Bay Area, the wine country, Lake Tahoe, Southern California, and in Coeur D' Alene and Sun Valley Idaho.  She has also displayed her work in galleries in Palm Desert, and Soquel California and in Ketchum, Idaho.

Jo-Anna Pippen, originally from Chicago, is a long time resident of Albany. She began as a painter, earning a B.A. in Art from UC Berkeley. She loved the challenge of creating through painting but felt limited by the medium. She expanded her media to photography. With photography she could produce an image independent of the studio. It allowed her more flexibility but she wanted to be able to form it as she had done in painting. Digital printmaking gave her freedom to synthesize the two. With digital technology she is able to combine the immediacy of photography with the imagination of painting. In merging original photographs and scanned objects, her work is a synthesis of realism, abstraction, and surrealism. She won the People's Choice Award at the Albany Art & Music Festival in 2008 and was awarded Visual Artist of the Year by the Albany Community Foundation in 2009. Her work has been exhibited around the Bay Area and was chosen for The Best of the Bay Area 2010show at CSU East Bay and the 33rd Bradley International Print Show in Peoria, Illinois.

Winthrop Prince has lived in Berkeley for about 30 years but grew up in the Boston Area. He is from a family of artists; his grandmother was an illustrator, his mother and aunt were Painters. He met the Illustrator Bill Shields at the Academy of Art in SF and chose him as a mentor. After graduating with a BFA in Illustration from the Academy
Winthrop made a living as an illustrator, a nationally syndicated newspaper cartoonist and a fine artist showing his art at galleries and cafes. He has received awards from the East Bay Watercolor Society and Print Magazine for his drawings. Growing up he always admired artists who had a certain humor to their approach. Today some of his influences are Red Grooms, David Park, Robert Crumb, Moebius, Phillip Guston and Saul Steinberg. He is presently involved in a graphic novel that aspires to stretching the medium by abstracting the images and story in the manner of the fine artist with the intention of lending more “sophistication” and soul to the comic medium.

Charlene Richter currently lives in San Francisco where she was born and raised.  Her first adventure into the world of art was when she learned to knit at the age of 5.  From there she taught herself how to crochet, sew, weave. spin and dye raw fiber, and then about 6 years ago she moved into the the world of jewelry making.  Currently she is designing jewelry and multi-pieced silk scarves.  The unifying factor in all her work is the essence of color.  The artist who has influenced her the most is Kaffee Fassett, who started out as a painter, but who is now working with textiles.  She admires his unique sense of mixing different patterns and colors.  Artist states, " I love to work with colors,... to watch what happens when you put them next to each other and to make them sing".

Selma Rockett lives in Berkeley, California and was born and raised in Lewiston, Maine. As a very young child, Selma learned to use “make believe, fantasy, whimsy and pretend” to enhance her days and this is what influences her art. Many wonderful people she has met in life inspire her work. Hats have always had a role in her life. Selma is primarily self-taught however she did study briefly with Bertha Underwood in Oakland, Ca.  Her mediums include fabric, straw, yarn, wool and “lovely trinkets, feathers, buttons and all things shiny.”  The hats are hand molded, using an art medium to set the design. The hats are not ‘named’ as most are one of a kind—therefore ABSOLUTE WHIMSEY.

Terrie Rockwell lives in Auburn, CA.  She grew up the seventh of ten children in upstate New York.  After attending SUNY Plattsburgh as a math major for a year, she moved to California. There she took figure drawing from Fred Dalkey, and learned printmaking by working in a silkscreen shop.  She did freelance artwork with her husband while raising two daughters in the Sierra foothills.  When her girls were grown, Terrie returned to school at UC Davis to complete her BA in Art Studio.  Terrie has been resident artist at the Arts Building in Auburn.  She has studied art in Europe and shown and sold her work in many parts of the world including France, Germany, Japan, New York and California.  This painting “The Tree of Life” is about her take on it all… “Where did we come from?”, “Where are we going?”  “Why are we here?”  This dream piece took seven years in the making.  Painting and repainting, every mistake only making the final work richer.

Rosie Rosenthal lives in Berkeley and grew up in the Bay Area. Her grandfather was a rock hound, her grandmother crocheted and painted china and watercolors; her mother was an artist – she painted and made jewelry. As a child she took classes at Studio One. As a young adult, she did jewelry and batik before pursuing a BFA in Fine Arts at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1975. She states, “Alexander Calden’s Jewelry and Faberge inspire me.” She has received a number of awards for her printmaking, and is in Arthur Murray’s collection. Her current modality is unique jewelry with handmade beads, semi-precious stones, and pearls, that is whimsical and elegant which she is showing at Expressions Gallery.

Christian Schiess is a San Francisco Bay area artist primarily concerned with the use of luminous and kinetic materials to create permanent sculpture, assemblage, and site specific installations. Woven throughout his work, is a concern with technology. His education includes a B.A. degree 1966-1970 from the Univ. of New Mexico-Albuquerque, in Anthropology; a B.F.A. degree 1974-1977 in Visual Arts from the Univ. of San Francisco, S.F., CA, and an M.F.A. degree 1977-1979 in Sculpture from Mills College, Oakland, CA .He was awarded a number of scholarship and grants.  He also completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Light Transmission Art at the Royal College of Art in London, UK 1990-92, where he began the book “The Light Artist Anthology” published in 1994 by S.T. Publications Cincinnati, OH. His has an extensive list of artist-in-residencies in the US and abroad.. During 2004 and 2006 he was chosen as a visiting guest artist in Sculpture at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont . His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and is in several museum collections in the US and overseas. Recent directions in his work include the “Cyber Arboretum Series - Prosthetic Repairs to an Injured Environment ,” and “Studies in Bioremediation” The materials used in the works have a clinical, prosthetic appearance and incorporate a range of elements from multicolored radiant light, glass, machined stainless steel, aluminum, plexiglas, paint, and laminate to wood cuttings from natural trees. In the first series the technology that causes injury and damage to the environment paradoxically becomes necessary for its repair and recovery. However, in the series “Studies in Bioremediation -The Seedlings” technology is no longer used to simply make prosthetic repairs to nature’s injuries. In acute situations technology is needed to attempt the restoration of a destroyed environment. Unfortunately, such extreme efforts can result in an environmental transformation rather than its reestablishment and culminate in the loss of an environment that may never recover. The work in this series represents remediation that transfigures nature with sparse , austere consequences.

David Scouffas lives in San Carlos, California on the San Francisco Peninsula. He was born in Manchester, New Hampshire but grew up in Urbana, Illinois. He moved to California in the 1970’s and has lived in the Bay Area for most of his life. He has had a life long interest in art and made the decision take up photography seriously 9 years ago. David has stated that motivation to take this step is hard to put into words. David studied photography at the Academy of Art University, and has attended numerous workshops in San Francisco and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has been influenced by a number of photographers, including Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Andreas Gursky and Roni Horn. David uses traditional methods, film, and wet chemistry dark room printing for much of his work. He also uses digital output for some of his images. This series of Buddhist images is an expression of David’s personal experience with Buddhist practice. Representation of the Buddha and his life are ever present for those who practice. These photographs are informed by the challenges and the peace he has experienced in meditation and learning. For David, Buddhist imagery serves as a reminder and as an inspiration.

Mary K. Shisler plays with plastic cameras and enjoys her companionship with her three dogs and horse, Skimmel.  She resides in the Bay Area.  She grew up in Wisconsin and has an M.F.A. in theatre costume design from the University of Wisconsin- Madison.  She always drew as a child and had an interest in theatre from an early age.  She works in alternative photography media such as cyanotypes and
gum prints. Anna Atkins is her hero.  Anna produced the first book illustrated in photographic images , PHOTOGRAPHS OF BRITISH ALGAE:  CYANOTYPE IMPRESSIONS in 1843.  Mary adores her because she is both a botanist and a photographer. THE SILLY DANISH GOAT represents her interest in alternative cameras such as a Lomo plastic camera with a fish eye lens. The goat lived behind her in-law’s home in Denmark. She has a one person show, ALLEGRO, PESTO ADAGIO, LARGO, running from October 15, 2011 to November 29, 2011 at the Picturish Gallery in Berkeley. Over the years she has won numerous awards for her work with alternative photography.   She is also an artist in residence at Kala Art Institute.  She teaches cyanotypes there as well.

Emily Jurs Sparks is a native Oaklander. She is a soprano with Chora  Nova, and she also likes to write. She has had no formal art training, unless you count after-school art at Peggy Calder Hayes' Berkeley studio during elementary school, but she has been drawing and making things since toddlerhood. Her house and yard are her main canvas, where her biggest installations are the deer mural on the hillside retaining wall (12'X40'?), Allegra the garden dryad, and the pique-assiette (broken ceramics) mosaic wall on the driveway that delivery trucks continue to break. So far her Saab is untouched, but inside, few surfaces are safe from paintbrush or glue. Her current art form is miniature Art Cars. Currently Expressions Gallery is showing one child-size one outside in the Sculpture Garden, and one toy-size one inside as part of the "Looking Back, Then into the Future" show.

Arlene Risi Streich, grew up and lives in Oakland, Ca. and cannot remember a time that she has not been interested in art. She received her B.A. ED and A.B. F. A. (Painting) from California College of Arts and Crafts (Now CCA) and has lived and spent much time in Mexico doing painting and photography. She has taught in the Oakland Public Schools, Diablo Valley College (Painting, drawing and fashion illustration) and CCAC (Children’s classes). She is presently exhibiting her glass jewelry, a medium started four years ago, and her painting. Her Jewelry work is influenced by her background in painting incorporating a bold use of color and line. Her painting and jewelry work has been shown in numerous exhibits around the country and in private collections. Artist states: “Our role as artists is to continue to amaze, provoke, stimulate, delight and agitate the senses. The fact that we continue to do so is a testimonial to not being complacent, while trying to process the internal/external creative dialogue.”

Rachel Thoele lives in Oakland, CA .  She enjoyed an extremely liberal upbringing and was raised in The Haight, Bernal and Mission Districts in San Francisco by the surrealist artist Gwen Thoele.  She was surrounded by art and artists throughout her childhood.  Encouraged to express herself, she took up the electric bass and has been playing in Bay Area bands since she was sixteen.  These include G.O.D., Frightwig, The Mudwimmin, Van Gogh's Daughter, and Sex Is A Witch.  Rachel Thoele is currently the bass player for the seminal San Francisco punk band Flipper.  It wasn't until her mid twenties that Rachel was able to meet her grandfather Rennie Weber,  He was a proliffic and talented black and white photographer.  They were able to bond together through photography.  Rennie built Rachel a darkroom using equipment that he had saved from the 50's.  She studied black and white photography at San Francisco City College.  It was there that she found Gillian Spragens who taught a Mixed Media Photography class.  Gillian Spragens introduced her to the process of Polaroid Emulsion Transfers.  Rachel created the work in front of you by taking one of her grandfather's photographic slides and transferring the image to a Polaroid print with a Daylab Jr.  She then soaked the Polaroid in boiling water until she was able to peel the emulsion off of the Polaroid paper.  She then placed the emulsion carefully on the clock and photographed her creation.  With this process, she is able to make a Digital image more complicated and time consuming than her 35 millimeter black and white images ever were. Rachel also shoots bands and other performers.

Kevin Tikker is an artist who creates large format digital prints, and has been exhibiting them since 2003. Kevin has shown in works in a variety of venues in Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, Sea Ranch, Ojai, San Pablo, and Vallejo. Using digital technology he was part of an exhibition with the Los Angeles Digital Arts Center. Sending the images online, the gallery printed our Kevin's work and mounted them in a group show. He was also selected for the Art of Digital Show in San Diego in 2008. In this show, Neal Benezra  director of the San Francisco Modern Art Museum juried the exhibition and selected Kevin's piece along with 108 others for display, from a field of 2973 entries, from 40 countries. Kevin is represented in collections of the Irish Cultural Center, San Francisco, Jewell Publishing Redwood City, Berkeley City College Digital Arts Club Archive and the Waffensaal of Steyr- Mannlicher GmbH, Kleinraming, Austria.  Kevin is a founding member of the Berkeley City College Digital Arts Club, and he currently serves as president and archivist. On display are images from the "History revisited series". The series started in response to the work of an artist I know who kept using the image of   "The executions of the 3rd of May, 1808"  by Goya in a number of pieces. While this is a strong and iconic piece of art, I felt it was jejune and I wanted to respond with something of more immediate memory. Inspired by the "Disaster" series of Warhol I embarked on a series from 2006-08 that resulted in over 80 images. Recently I restarted the series and the image "Non-aggressors" is part of this series. For more information on Kevin's work please visit his website at: http://web.mac.com/ktikker

Pearl Jones Tranter is a third generation Vallejoan and lives there in the Heritage District. She became interested in art in the second grade when her parents taped white butcher paper on the walls of her room (the dinette of their one-bedroom flat in Palo Alton) for her to use her crayons to draw on instead of the high gloss painted surface beneath it as she had done. Formal training in matters of Art included classes and degrees from Vallejo High School, U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State, San Francisco Art Institute. She now studies digital art at Berkeley City College. Jones Tranter makes or builds pictures in cyberspace from her photographs.  Over the years she admired and was influenced by the works and teachings of Robert Bechtle, Robert Hudson, Raymond Saunders, Russel T. Gorden.  The pictures in this exhibition represent a return to taking pictures of people.  In this instance, characters "snapped" at a recent birthday party where participants wore clothing popular in the 1970s.

Gary Turchin is a long-time Oakland-based writer and artist whose humorous illustrations have adorned t-shirts, cards, posters, prints, etc. for many years and have been carried in nationally distributed catalogs. His art has also been shown in galleries throughout the West, and is currently in a show in Bryn Mawr, PA. Besides illustrations, Turchin works in photography and digital art and mixed media, He frequently hand paints on photographs directly so that they are each unique. In this show, he is exhibiting a photograph first taken with his siblings in 1975, 35-mm, black and white, then retaken this year, using a digital camera. He combined the two images in Photoshop. It represents the passing of time, of eras, of aging, and yet, what really changes? Turchin is the author, illustrator of the wondrousIf I Were You (2011 Simon DeWitt & Friends) and The Book of Self & Other Drawings (1995, LGM Press). He is also a performance poet and writer. His interactive poetry show, Gary T. & his PoetTree, featuring original rhymes and poems, has been featured it in more than 250 schools and libraries throughout the state. He was on the performance roster of Young Audiences and has released two recordings of verse,The Day Before Tomorrow and My Pants Want To Dance, and two poetry chapbooks, as well, including The Silly Verse Universe, and I Want To Write A Poem, But...

Renae Keep practiced poetry at an early age, hawking her works door to door like an Avon Lady. Since then, she has organized poetry readings on Orcas Island and in Paris, translated French to English for a Paris-based movie magazine, written as a music columnist and radio programmer in Bellingham, designed courses and lectured on writing and history at UW Seattle and UC Santa Cruz, performed music with her composer spouse, taught science lessons for her daughter’s elementary school, and edited for a Bay Area educational research institute. Renae’s poetry finds fuel in conundrums, curios and commonplaces. Her works have been published in Cricket, Raindrop, Synapse, The Daily, The Fishwrapper!, Fantastique, SHARK REEF, Fresh Hot Bread and Geist.

Jeanne Lupton is a poet and writer who has been writing since she could read.  She hosts two monthly reading series at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda, leads a monthly freewriting group at Lakeview Library at Lake Merritt in Oakland, and hosts a talent show every other month at Strawberry Creek Lodge senior housing where she lives in Berkeley.  Her tanka collection, but then you danced, appeared in 2007.  She has published three tanka booklets, numbered breaths, just passing through, and in the popular lane, and one haiku booklet,breeze in the windchime.  She enjoys featuring and reading at open mics in the bay area.

Clive Matson (MFA Columbia University) was drafted as Chalcedony’s (kal-SAID-'n-ease) astonished scribe in 2004. Where do these poems come from? Their passionate erotic and spiritual voice evolved from his 1966 work, reissued by Regent Press as Mainline to the Heart and Other Poems (2009). His early teachers were Beats in New York City, and, amazingly, his seventh book was placed in John Wieners' coffin. Taking heroin and psychedelics and idolizing women and Wieners' Hotel Wentley Poems and talking with Herbert Huncke immersed him in the stream of passionate intensity that runs through us all. He says he has finally stopped trying to go someplace else. He writes from that itch in his body, to the delight of his students, and that's old hat, according to Let the Crazy Child Write! (1998), the text he uses to make his living, teaching creative writing. He enjoys playing basketball, table tennis, and collecting minerals in the field. He lives in Oakland, California, where he helps bring up his teenage son, Ezra. Visit Clive at www.matsonpoet.com 

Janice Pang's poems have appeared in Calyx, Grasslands Review,  and the now defunct but still beloved Canary. She has taught undergraduate classes in creative writing and given informal poetry workshops. After growing up in Lafayette, Louisiana, she eventually moved to California to pursue graduate studies in classical Chinese  philosophy. She devotes far too much of  her time these days to being a mother and a data analyst but is delighted to share these poems with you.

Gael Alcock studied cello at New England Conservatory and Bennington College before moving to San Francisco in the early 1970's.  She played in the San Jose and Berkeley Symphonies, and in many chamber music groups, moved to Berkeley in 1990, and now  teaches cello and violin, studies jazz and Arabic music, and presents salon concerts in the East Bay.  Last season she played with a string quartet onstage for the run of Shotgun Players "Beardo" at the Ashby Stage. She began accompanying poets when KPFA's Bob Baldock asked her to play for the crafts fair poetry reading in 2000.  Hearing the radio broadcast, Rhythm and Muse's host Eliza Shefler invited Gael to join her improvising group, M.O.S.A.I.C., which led to collaborations with poets and musicians including Adam David Miller, Unity Nguyen, Yassir Chadly,  Moh Allilech, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jane Hirshfield, and Clive Matson.