La Florida1
Based in Montreal, Canada, Ackad is increasingly showing her works in the United States and internationally. Most recently; The San Diego Museum Artist Guild, at Ludington Center for the Arts, The Yellowstone Art Museum, in Montana, The Cultural Center of Cape Cod, the San Fernando Valley Art & Culture Center in California, the Alexandria Museum of Art in Louisiana, The Hopkins Center for the Arts in Minneapolis, Texarkana Regional Art & Humanities Center in Texas, The Center for Contemporary Art in New Jersey; at the Dab Art Gallery in California at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis and at the Brownsville Museum in Texas and numerous other venues.
As well, in 2016, her works were featured on a billboard in central Los Angeles, California for The Billboard Creatives. She was a participant in the Help Hope Nepal Mural project for Spectrum Miami 2015 during Art Basel Miami. She was interviewed on television, in journals, and in newspapers. She is a recipient of many awards.
This series of multi-media works seek to explore patterns of representation and how examining visual culture can tell us so much about history, our current societies, and the future. Using art as a method of archival collage, Marie-Ange Hoda Ackad uses pieces of various paper media, combined with oil paints to address the images we see from day to day and how they impact our understanding of social issues
La Luna Sunset
I was educated to be a scientist with a Ph.D in Physics, but after finishing post-doctoral work at Los Alamos, New Mexico, I took a position in the research department of a Multi-National Oil company where I did fundamental research to image the interior of the earth. It was here that I learned the fundamentals of signal processing that I now use for photography. I spent a career with this company performing both research and operational oil exploration. It was a great opportunity to travel and see the world.
I live in a world of visual pollution, but I know worlds of Physical and Spiritual beauty exist. I am constantly on the lookout for small enclaves of beauty, but they keep getting harder to find. So I try looking in different ways. I try looking at different types of light … soft light, strong light, light disturbed by strong weather, and the invisible light of infrared light. I try looking at complexity from new perspectives and nature the way other creatures see it.
I can find beauty in symmetry, and asymmetry. and chaos. I find beauty in nature as well as architecture. I find beauty in life and in the day-to-day struggle to survive. I find beauty in simplicity and in complexity. Beauty is everywhere if you look the right way.
La Macedonia
Cecilia Anastos is an award-winning, Italian-American, multi-cultural, and polyglot artist. Ms. Anastos received the 2020 Artist of the Future Award and the 2021 Certificate of Artistic Excellence. Her paintings are colorful, profound, and uplifting.
Ms. Anastos uses her voice in fine arts to enhance the imagination of the viewer, to bring attention to matters that will generate a conversation, and sometimes to express a personal story. All her paintings have a story, a piece of my soul, a raison d’être.
Ms. Anastos is known for her colorful, profound, and uplifting paintings. Her medium of choice is oil and/or acrylic on canvas, acid-free paper, or wood. Ms. Anastos’ themes are landscapes, cityscapes, and figurative portraits. All her paintings have a story, a piece of her soul, a raison d’être. Ms. Anastos also enjoys creating commissioned paintings. One of them now hangs at the San Diego Supreme Court, office of Hon. Judge Muñoz.
When asked why these three themes are in particular, she replies that she would like the viewer of her paintings to feel in the location, to imagine being part of the landscape or the cityscape. As for the commissioned paintings, she enjoys the process of merging her emotions with the idea proposed for the painting.
Her voice in fine arts has been influenced by the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism painters for her figurative compositions, and some Modern artists for her abstract compositions, such as Mondrian and Mirò.
La Traviata
Maria’s artwork reflects a deep expressionist emotionality. Not easily categorized, her multi-media works are at once whimsical, serious, feminine, and concrete. A first-generation Russian-American, she brings a unique point of view, one that conveys the seriousness of the current times and inherent sensitivity for the colorful abstraction of the modern Russian artistic tradition.
I don’t just make art—I turn it into something you can live in.
My work begins with me: my face, my expressions, my moods. I use them to explore identity, emotion, and transformation in a way that’s personal but meant to resonate with anyone who sees it. Some pieces are playful, some bold, some a little offbeat—but all of them are honest. I’m drawn to that soft, hazy, almost dreamlike quality because it lets feeling lead over perfection.
I’ve never believed art should stay on a wall.
Through The Woke Lobstah Gallery, I transform my work into wearable pieces—so it moves, breathes, and becomes part of everyday life. Fashion becomes the canvas. The person wearing it becomes part of the story. My goal isn’t just to be seen, but to create something that helps you be seen.
I’m based in Maine, but my work isn’t about place—it’s about presence. It’s about stepping into who you are, fully and without apology.
From brush to print, I transform my art into fashion. Unapologetically you.
La Vista
California native, currently living in Truckee. Both of my parents are artists and also growing up in Carmel gave me a great creative environment. Discovering photography very early, around ten, helped me find my unique vision and sense of aesthetics. I was always drawing, figuring it out on my own. In college, Cal Poly SLO, applied art and design with photography were my studies. To give myself time to find my direction and style I landed in the restaurant business, so the nighttime career was supporting my art career. I found opportunities to exhibit my art throughout California and Scottsdale Az through gallery features. Dealing with the demands of life there have been slow times, but currently, I am constantly working and making my most exciting work.
I have a thing for realism and minimalism. With my background in photography, I see things within a frame. By learning to focus on what’s primary in a scene and just develop that imagery it doesn’t need a bigger context or classic scene. This lets the viewer imagine their own context and story. That’s what can make a piece personal to each viewer. I learn as I go, improving my technique and how I use color. Experimenting more with texture and classic looks. Always trying to achieve new levels of harmony and finesse. Since I’m self-taught I’ve figured out a mixture of media that I use to achieve my drawings. Through mixing and layering colored pencils I have found a painterly style to make my effects happen.
La Zoo Flamingos
Joanne Chase-Mattillo was born in the beautiful Midwestern University town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. While the natural surroundings of her childhood were inspiring, the beauty of nature surrounding Los Angeles was the impetus for her entrance into the field of photography. Joanne began vigorously studying photography and other art arenas to hone her skills as a visual artist. In 2000, she graduated from California State University, Los Angeles with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA). She is now a full-time artist.
In addition to color and black-and-white film, Joanne shoots digitally and employs the techniques of infrared imaging and enjoys creating 3D anaglyphs to be viewed with red/blue lenses. As an extension of photography, she has branched out to do videos and has a YouTube Channel, THE VIDEO ART OF JOANNE CHASE-MATTILLO. Along with nature, Joanne frequently photographs female and male subjects at themed studio shoots. She often uses photographs of models combined with images of her nature photography to create unique photo montages.
Joanne has exhibited throughout California, nationally, in Korea, France, England, Switzerland, Scotland, Greece, Spain, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Holland, Taiwan, Brazil, Dubai, and Italy.
As a photographer, I am constantly in search of iconic imagery. The craftsmanship and perfection of classic Hollywood cinema have always been an inspiration and a goal I seek to achieve in my photography. While enjoying the technology of the present and how it has enhanced photography, I am very drawn to recreating photographs that reference the best of the past. It is my intent that the viewer of the images I create will be taken out of the everyday present to a magical place where, at any time, they would dream of going. Whether photographing people or nature, I strive to honor the best and the beauty of all that I have an opportunity to capture with my camera.
Summer days are the dream moments of the year that are looked forward to in dreary seasons. The beach, pool, lakes, and oceans draw all to embrace the sun and beat the heat. When we think of summer, we embrace all that the warmth of the sun brings.
Labyrinth
I’m an artist based in NYC. I have a degree in Art and Design. I love nature, and I often raise a theme of ecological issues that we face, such as animal extinction, global warming, pollution, and overuse of planet resources. Also, I take part in many national and international exhibitions and publications, such as Grand Bohemian Gallery, Boomer Gallery, Van Der Plas Gallery, Jones Gallery, Divide Magazine, and others.
As an artist, I find great inspiration in the world of nature. My artworks draw references from a diverse range of animals, plants, and flowers from around the globe. Through vibrant representations, I capture their unique qualities and transform them into more surrealistic appearances, adding fictional nuances such as patterns, unusual colors, and shapes that are not inherent to real living beings. I see it as a playful experiment with pallets, textures, and forms, assembling and reassembling objects and organizing them in different compositions.
My art has a mission of raising awareness about the natural world and encouraging viewers to appreciate the beauty of our planet. I always look for harmonious color combinations using a limited palette.
Also, I often search for a balance between painting and graphics, creating a flatter surface, depriving elements of volume, falling shadows, and rules of light-air perspective, thus creating a more ornamental appeal to artworks.
Lady Behind The Fence
Sylvia Bandyke, Royal Oak, MI, USA, is largely a self-taught photographer, having taken studio and art history classes in college. She began her art career by displaying photo collages in ArtPrize, an independent international art competition in Grand Rapids, MI, from 2014 to 2018. Subsequently, she has been juried into more than 100 group exhibitions in 24 states and accepted into numerous online international exhibitions. An awarded artist, she keeps an eye open for interesting views of a subject while looking for hidden beauty every day. Most recently, she was a caregiver to her elderly mother and was able to create some memorable, unique art as a result of this experience.
I prefer using the collage format to integrate associated images into a cohesive unit that is even more compelling because of the embedded story. Having been a playwright and technical writer, I am accustomed to delivering content with a message. So now, as a visual communicator, I continue to provide meaning via the structure of the collage format, wherein the four photos confirm, augment, or even contradict each other if warranted. I enjoy offering the richness that the multiplicity of images provides, along with the impact gained through thoughtful positioning of them. Ultimately, I intend to have my work act as a doorway to the viewer’s own mental and emotional framework regarding the collection of images, perhaps finding their own very personal meaning in them.
Lady Bugs
After having spent a decade in Greenwich Village where Kelly discovered “performance art” (when she first combined visual art & poetry) she then relocated to Northport, NY, and immersed herself in live poetry, visual art, and acting. Some publications include a full-length book of poetry “Barking at Sunspots”, “On Maxwell Street”, “Bards Annual”, “Grabbing the Apple (an anthology”), “Long Island Sounds (an anthology)”, “XANADU”, “Paumanok: Poems & Pictures of Long Island (an anthology)”, numerous small chapbooks and inclusion in many small press publications. Kate has worked as a visual artist with other poets (a published book “ENTER”) and collaborated with other poets and musicians (e.g. David Amram on the CD “Northport Celebrates Jack”). She was honored to be awarded “New York State Woman of Distinction in the Arts” (2003). For over 5 decades Kelly has been fortunate to have exhibited in many art exhibits, both group and solo, involved in organizing multi-media events (Sundays @ 7), was a member of the Bare Bones acting group, “performed” her poetry in many venues, was one of the founders of the Northport Arts Coalition and served as their first co-chair. She has served as a curator for the Art League of Long Island and the Northport Arts Coalition. Recent visual art exhibits from 2020 – 2023 include curated group shows “Out of Isolation”, “Paradoxical Paradigms”, “Forever Young”, “We’ve Gone Wild”, “Artist’s Choice (an invitational)”, “Flower Power, “Abstract is Abstract”, “Home”, “Paper, Paint and Pixels” (2-person show) “Blue”, and solo exhibits, “a show of wanderings”, and “New Works”
Ah! Summer! The scent of flowers in full bloom. The early morning sound of birds chirping, the warmth of the noonday sun in a cloudless blue sky, the breezes that whisper softly as boats sail cool waters for destinations unknown. Summer delights all our senses! A full palette; Perspiration and INSPIRATION! A delicious recipe for “improvised magical realism” (how I refer to my pieces).