Feelin’ Safe
I was born and raised in Neihart, Montana. The mountain behind our house became a giant playground for me full of nature’s wonders from moss-covered rocks to spring creeks. My love of what nature could produce was firmly rooted. My family moved to California when I was in my teens and I later graduated with a degree in design and industry from SF State University. While I always felt a pull toward sculpting, that was put on hold until my business career was winding down and I could turn my attention to my true passion, giving birth to works through clay and mixed media, fortunate to have gained experience with working with a variety of materials and tools that prepared me well for sculpting. Most of my works are driven by humor, the one thing that keeps me somewhat sane in a not-so-sane world. At times my mind flips to the serious side and a work pops up that I take to its conclusion. If my works bring an observer to laugh, ponder, or appreciate, I have accomplished my mission.
Maybe because I’m getting older or maybe because I’m an introvert, it’s the little, almost imperceptible things that bring me joy. A warm cup of coffee in the morning, particularly when I can enjoy it outside with the early birds while the rest of my family sleeps. This brings me to birds and the joy I take in caring for them and their insatiable appetite, although there is the countervailing frustration in fending off the squirrels. Sounds of nature bring me immense joy – the wind through the trees, birds calling to each other, and the rumbles before a thunderstorm (which I’d never really heard or appreciated until moving to the East Coast).
Creating art in my makeshift studio in the basement over classical music brings me joy. Of course, no matter how introverted I may be, being in the presence of my family brings me immeasurable joy. I’ve been fortunate to witness my three grandsons discover their own voices, paths, and loves. I’ve recently been fortunate to share a home with my daughter’s family, and our new traditions (such as Saturday pancake breakfasts and Fall bonfires) bring me joy – and remind me to remain playful and optimistic. As does our dog and cat and their varied interactions with each other and their food bowls. And I’m extremely fortunate that I get to experience all these beautiful life bits with my best friend and wife of 52 years. She brings me, and everyone around her, joy through her endless optimism and faith in others and the universe.
Feeling Alright
Laura Louise Lester is an artist working in abstract painting, sculpture, printmaking, and other media. Lester’s work references cityscapes, landscapes, and studies of interior spaces. A student of Elizabeth DaCosta Ahern for over 18 years, Lester continues the thread of excitement for vibrant abstract works, movement, and the nature of form.
Travel and time spent in the Caribbean, Europe, and North America, have influenced Lester’s art as she continues to explore the lands and spaces from her travel journals.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts she later moved to Florida to attend the University of Miami. Later she became an art teacher for Hialeah-Miami Community College.
Lester’s work is exhibited in galleries and juried exhibitions and in private collections. She currently lives and works in the Boston area where she creates in her studios as well as on locations.
As a printmaker, trying new techniques helps to push boundaries and breathe life into new creations. Experimentation is crucial to the creative process, as it inspires fresh vision in exciting ways. I experimented with crocheting fine wire into a matrix of designs for use in monoprints. This new technique gave intricate designs with embossed dimensionality. Working with wire demands precision and patience to withstand the printing process, but it opens up a world of possibilities, adding texture and depth to art and prints. Summer gardens inspire a love of nature and provide endless inspiration for printmaking. And just as the garden grows and changes, my work is also expanding and constantly changing. One goal as an artist is to create meaningful, beautiful work that connects people across cultures and generations, inspiring wonder and appreciation for the world we live in.
Feels Like Home
Juels Pellow is an Australian artist who resides on the beautiful Gold Coast of Queensland and is completely captivated by the wonderment and joy of creation and the unseen realm.
Her background in interior design & decorating, clothing design, and slow fashion has helped to feed into the creativity & uniqueness of her pieces, with a tendency to lean towards textured acrylic, watercolor, and pencil, but no medium is off limits and no style is un-touched! Most of her inspiration comes from nature or dreams and visions, where she is inspired by encouraging messages and insights from the unseen realm. She has been a featured artist in the Luxembourg art awards, a local gallery exhibitor at Creative Hearts Art Gallery on the Gold Coast, and an Internationally recognized artist with HMVC Gallery New York where her inspired piece on the Garden of Eden was shown on the big screen in Times Square for a 4-week event and is a contributing published artist, poet, and writer in a recently released book called “The Voice in the Paint”.
Juels also has many of her paintings on display locally at the Bank of Queensland, BeScene framing and event hire, and local cafes. She is an inspiration to her art students who love how she breaks down and simplifies techniques, helping them to realize that they were born to be creative. Most of her artworks and unique business logos are held in private collections and businesses all around Australia and the United States.
“ I truly believe that we are all born to be creative, it’s embedded in our DNA. All of us have unique perspectives, gifts, and talents to share with this world. I love the fact that I get to encourage, empower and uplift others with all of the creative talents that I have been gifted”.
Feet In The Sand
Debrah Block Krol is an artist based in New Jersey. She is known for her expressive brushwork and use of colors. She has been juried into many national shows and exhibitions. When not making art, Block Krol enjoys traveling and listening to music, both of which provide inspiration.
My paintings are about a collection of experiences. I want my work to evoke emotions and provoke thought, and make a connection with the viewer. By exploring the dynamic interplay of light and color, I try to create works that reveal the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Female Freedom
My name is Jennifer Linders. I am here as an artist, to tell a story through my artwork. My artwork involves the sculpture of stone with chisels, hammers, files, diamond blades, and hours of sanding. I have been called a direct carver, because of my style of approach to the stone. I examine each stone, and with my imagination I let the stone tell me the story. I wake at night to dreams of how the story will unfold.
This particular story comes from a Middle Eastern woman standing in the wind. As you see her face is covered… her hair covered in hijab. From the front of the sculpture you see a quiet woman, yet standing strong in the wind. As you turn the sculpture you will see her emerge from behind the hijab, fierce, ready to face the world!!!!
You see that she has set her hair FREE!!! As the sculpture is turned once again you will see a form that represents 3 things, The mouth, The vulva, and The flower.
When the sculpture is turned into the light you can see it GLOW!!!
My sculptures all tell a story. In this piece, I am working on marble from Marble, Colorado. Working to find the light and how to make it come through each
Sculpture is important to me. I use a variety of tools, including chisels, diamond blades, and files. Thank you in advance.
In this sculpture you can see a woman in a long dress, blowing in the wind, her face and head covered. Then… you see a face coming from behind, what appears to be her head covering. Yet these beautiful waves also represent her lovely hair which is hidden behind her hijab! Her face emerges. On the back of the sculpture, you will see what appears to be a mouth, vulva, or flower. It is beautiful and smooth and the light flows through it with a certain glow! All of these things represent FREEDOM! Female empowerment. The coming of new and better times.
Feral Wom+N: Nikki & Hannah 34
Lauren Kalita is a writer & artist living further & further out on Cape Cod w/her family. Her writing has appeared in High Shelf Press, the Cultural Center of Cape Cod’s Mutual Muses 2021 & 2022, the Wellfleet Library’s Quarantine, & two of Columbia University’s journals. Photos & assemblages have been shown in the US across MA as well as RI, NY, & CA. Lauren is at work on a joint poetry & art project Slit; a hybrid novella “Ring Cycle;” & a 21st-century feminist “Bartleby the Scrivener” tentatively titled “our girl, Nell.” Lauren continues her collaborative photo project feral wom+n, as well as her milagro assemblages which increasingly use text within them.
My idea of the feral is that which is unmediated in one’s nature. A feral wom+n is one who maintains their sense of self/selves in defiance of what cultural gatekeepers deem acceptable for “women.” I am interested in moments of access to the feral selves, & the ways in which such freedom is passed between wom+n, often mothers & children. My writing, photography, videos, & multimedia assemblages are essays at slitting the difference between expectations of the performance of femininity & my lived experience as a wom+n slit by multifarious factors including gendered violence.
Festival Solstice
Shroon, a student of the renowned abstract expressionist artist, Francine Tint. Of her many influencers, she has studied Christopher Wool, Paul Klee, Gerhard Richter, and Georgia Totto O’Keeffe, to name a few.
Shroon’s work represents her deep energetic life and playful spirit. Each painting absorbs your attention. Revealing subtle decisions occurring through implicit feeling. One senses her playful yet masterful use of strokes to evoke composition, glittering details, perfect color balance, and masterful subtle textures.
An expert in movement, her joyful energetic and strategic glittery patterns dance with musical influences. Her bold strokes explore the potential for manipulation of the material. Her intuitive strokes harness powerful reverberations. Giving each painting a story that reveals itself slowly. One can study each painting for long periods of time and never completely see the beautiful nuances.
Shroon has had a diverse art career. A career that includes designing for mainline musicians and multiple celebrities. Designs that have been seen in well-known Broadway shows, souvenir brochures, mainstream magazines, fashion design features, websites, data visualizations, mobile apps, and much more.
Shroon has won over 20 prestigious design awards. She continues to paint in her studio in Briarcliff Manor NY.
My name is Sharon Seidl – known by friends as Shroon
I live, work and paint in New York.
I love the sense of play in life and especially when I paint. Singing and dancing while working.
I have never been afraid to take chances. In my life as in my artworks, I am known to take bold moves. I take pleasure in the uncertainty of each piece. Each piece develops through uncertainty and reveals itself through color, composition, and texture.
I have had a varied design career. which includes designing mainline musician album art, fashion design features for well-known magazines, and data visualizations. I have also hired thousands of illustrators and photographers. Having had so many years of designing under my belt, I am a lover of many styles. I find this experience weaves itself through my various painting styles. My work fluctuates from the joy of creating messaging and meaning to simply create something with beautiful color. Since I can not identify with a single style, I decided to coin a new art term to describe my work. I call it Popstrabstract!
Field Of Heather
As early in her life as she can remember, Alison would lose herself in her drawing and painting. Alison received her Bachelor of Science in Art and Art Education at Miami University before embarking on a career in merchandising design in the fashion houses of NYC and Los Angeles. Since 2013, as her art became her focus, she has developed her fluid style of painting. She finds inspiration from her days living on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, to her frequent travels to Maine and the East Coast beaches. She works mostly in acrylic paint, with occasional works of mixed media or watercolor.
I believe that a connection to nature defines the human spirit, and that belief inspires my work. From broad abstracts of the land and sea to intricate works of botanicals, I use color, layer, and texture to define my painting. As I create my works, I often think of past experiences as our own human layers that all build up to what we are. Bringing years of experience in design, the aesthetics of my paintings welcome the viewer in while creating a sense of aspect that conveys a relationship of the work to a larger context. My paintings are bold, warm, and thoughtful, reflecting the positivity and importance of nature and providing joy and meaning in any space. My work infuses modernity into more traditional representations of the world around us, bringing abstract and contemporary ideas to the canvas. I love using a mix of freestyle and gestural brush strokes with more detailed sculpted florals to create harmony through contrasting effects.
Field Study Two
Nicolas C James is an emerging artist living and working in Warwickshire, England. His style and methods are governed by the natural world and thoughts of the healing powers of art & color. Nicolas studied at Coventry University, graduating in January 2022, with much praise from tutors and peers alike. Before Coventry, The studios at Coventry gave Nicolas the opportunity to work as a painter, rather than imagine. While at Coventry Nicolas produced a wide and varied array of work, latterly using watered-down acrylics, pouring and canvases on the floor to create subtle watercolor start landscapes and other imagined spaces. Nick has had a few private sales and has two works from this series exhibited at Walsall New Art Gallery (New Contemporaries) and Two further group exhibitions at Coventry University.
The focus of my work is to observe my surroundings and consider the ever-changing world. These observations focus on nature and the sky. Furthermore, my work considers cultural and spiritual change in our societies, countries, and the planet, I like to think that hope and positive changes can be provided through arts and color. Additionally, I have long been fascinated by the overview effect, ’an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it.’ – image 1- This work is a resolve from a series of nine abstract, lyrical landscapes: Imagined Cosmos.
My work also considers the psychology of arts and I hope to promote healing, aligning with changes in societies, worldwide. ‘We are so adept at recognizing and creating natural patterns: we embody some of the very patterns that are ubiquitous in the natural world in which we evolved.
Before my MA I was self-taught and my knowledge of art history was limited. However, I see the depths and influences of nature in the way artists create. The foundation for my painting is often inspired, by something I heard along the lines of, ‘Lord Krishna awakes before everyone and paints the skies.’ To me as a painter it seemed bizarre, that it was the same every time, it is true, there are seasons, emotions, and different moods, however, the pallet is repetitive. Although, my paintings often revert to colors of nature and my surroundings. This allows me to become a physical part of the work while I create it, while also allowing me to become meditative and, of the moment, working instinctively. My hope is that my work inspires inner peace and tranquillity and healing. Painting is magic and, as painters, we are magicians!’