Planet Blue
Biography – Cassandra J Bloedel (C J Bloedel):
2024:
1. Washington, DC, Naturalist Gallery of Contemporary Art Gallery – Online Paintings Exhibition acrylics (November)
2. Laguna Beach, CA, The Hummingbird & Dragonfly Art Gallery – Online Small Wonders Exhibition watercolor (November)
3. Laguna Beach, CA, The Hummingbird & Dragonfly Art Gallery – Online Halloween Exhibition acrylic (October)
4. Albuquerque, NM, Genuine Southwest Art & Crafts Gallery – Art demonstrations (watercolor, acrylics, and drawing) (October) | Featured artist in 2024
5. Washington, DC, Naturalist Gallery of Contemporary Art Gallery – Online Photography Collection Exhibition (September)
6. Gallup, NM, Inter-Tribal Ceremonial Juried Art Show and Exhibition (August)
7. Washington, DC, Naturalist Gallery of Contemporary Art Gallery – Online Landscape Collection Exhibition watercolor (June)
8. Moriety, NM, Mini Comic Con – Artist Alley (April)
9. Laguna Beach, CA, The Hummingbird & Dragonfly Art Gallery – Online Beauty and Splendor Exhibition watercolor (January)
10. Albuquerque, NM, Comic Con – Artist Alley (January)
2023:
1. Albuquerque, NM, Genuine Southwest Art & Crafts Gallery – Art demonstrations (watercolor and acrylics) (October) | Featured artist in 2023
2. Albuquerque, NM, New Mexico State Fair Juried Art Show – Native American Art Gallery – 2nd place photography (September)
3. Gallup, NM, Inter-Tribal Ceremonial Juried Art Show and Exhibition (August)
4. Gallup, NM, Comfort Inn Veterans Art and Craft Conference room permanent exhibit (August)
5. Gallup, NM, ART123 Gallery Art Exhibitions – Honoring the Families of Navajo Code Talkers (July)
6. San Francisco, CA, VIDA Clothing & Accessories – Featured Artist
2022:
1. Albuquerque, NM, New Mexico State Fair Juried Art Show – Native American Art Gallery – 3rd place watercolor and Honorable Mention drawing (September)
2. Gallup, NM, Inter-Tribal Ceremonial Juried Art Show and Exhibition (August)
3. Gallup, NM, Hubbell Trading Post Rug and Art Auction participation (August)
4. Albuquerque, NM, Genuine Southwest Art & Crafts Gallery – Featured artist
5. San Francisco, CA, VIDA Clothing & Accessories – Featured Artist
2021:
1. Albuquerque, NM, New Mexico State Fair Juried Art Show – 1st place watercolor
I’ve participated in juried art shows since 1995.
“I am a Navajo woman with German ancestry who grew up in Window Rock, Arizona, and throughout my many years of an environmental career, I began to work on art for painting and crafts in 1995. I create artwork using watercolors, acrylics, and graphic art. My craft is custom jewelry. I continue to write poems, short stories, and one book with another being developed. I enjoy photography while traveling. I enjoy providing my art for others, including art demonstrations if an opportunity arises, and juried art shows”.
Planetary No. 6
Kim Lanier is a vibrant and emerging artist based in Texas. With a background steeped in music and creativity, Kim’s journey into the world of art has been both organic and transformative.
Kim grew up singing with her Father in church, which laid the foundation for her deep connection to music and performance. Her family owned and operated a successful country music show, The Alvin Opry, for more than 25 years, where Kim honed her musical talents. Over her professional music career, she achieved notable accolades, including winning 2nd place in the Houston American Idol Contest in the early 2000s and 2nd place in the Magnolia Opry Singer Competition in 1989.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and a diagnosis of Lupus marked a turning point in Kim’s life, prompting her to seek a new creative outlet. She turned to painting, discovering a passion that has since become her heart’s passion and soul’s salvation. For over three years, Kim has been dedicated to creating cheerful, colorful, and whimsical artworks that promote positivity and well-being. Her preferred mediums are watercolor, inks, and acrylics, with figures and nature being frequent subjects of her pieces.
Kim’s art is deeply intuitive and inspired by everyday life, conversations, and music. She follows her creative instincts, allowing the process to lead her to new and expressive forms. Each piece she creates is imbued with emotion, aiming to evoke feelings and stretch the imagination and introspection of her viewers.
My journey into art has been an organic and transformative evolution, guided by a lifelong connection to creativity and self-expression. With roots deeply tied to music, I grew up singing with my Father in Church and performing as part of my family’s country music show, The Alvin Opry, which thrived for over 25 years. Those years shaped my love for storytelling and connection through the arts, leading to notable achievements like placing 2nd in both the Houston American Idol Contest in the early 2000s and the Magnolia Opry Singer Competition.
When the COVID-19 pandemic and a Lupus diagnosis reshaped my path, I found a new outlet in painting – a new way to express my emotions and stories that have always driven me. My work can be categorized as “Intuitive Expressionism,” a style that allows me to create directly from the heart without constraints. I paint freehand, letting the flow of paint guide me through the process, trusting my instincts to shape the colors, forms, and emotions that emerge. Each piece is an organic exploration, reflecting the spontaneous energy of the moment and capturing a raw, unfiltered expression of thought and feeling. This intuitive approach ensures that every painting is a unique journey, designed to evoke emotions and invite viewers into a deeper connection with the story unfolding on the canvas.
Painting is both my passion and salvation, especially in recent years. Creating has become a new way to heal, explore, and connect, drawing inspiration from my family and favorite memories.
The migration, from professional musician to emerging artist, is a testament to the power of resilience and the beauty of transformation. I’m thrilled to share my work and connect with others through this new chapter of creativity.
Plant From Elsewhere I (Page 16)
Klara Sedlo
*1993, Prague, Czech Republic
Klara is a figurative painter living and working in Prague. She finished her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague with a master ́s degree (MgA.). She is a finalist of the BBA Artist Prize 2019, Germany, and Mostyn Open 21, GB.
She works mainly with oil paints on linen canvas and prefers to work with life models if necessary.
Latest solo/group exhibitions (selection):
2023: Hairdressing ́s Salon, Gallery Mega, Prague, Czechia
2022: Here Kitschy Kitschy, ShockBoxx Gallery, Hermosa Beach, USA
2022: Re/Creation, Palladium Prague, Prague, Czechia
2022: Art Prague Fair 2022, Hrzánský Palace, Prague
2022: Leave a Trace, Palazzo della Cancelleria Vaticana, Rome, Italy
2022: Mysterons, The Holy Art Gallery, London, UK
2021: The Annual Spooky Art Show, HIVE artspace, York, Pennsylvania, United States
In my art practice, I focus on human psychology, mythology, folklore, and dreams. I have been deeply fascinated by everything mysterious since childhood. Therefore I could not miss the famous Voynich botanical manuscript, which became one of my biggest inspirations a few years ago.
Voynich manuscript is probably a botanical book from the 14th century, written by an unknown author in a weird language that was never decoded. Also, the flowers depicted in the book look strange. They do not exist anywhere on Earth.
Those flower illustrations are schematic and a little bit naive. Going through them I thought: “How would these flowers look in a more realistic depiction? What if I transfer them into baroque-like still-lifes, with proper lighting and details?”
And so I did. I painted the plants as if they were in front of me. My goal is to re-paint every single flower from the Voynich manuscript. Right now I am in half of that process, with over 75 oil paintings of Voynich flowers done.
Play The Dream
Arlette Stella is an abstract painter with occasional work that expresses in surrealism. Her work is characterized by bold colors since she is mainly color blind and needs bold colors to see the work. Arlette’s philosophical nature is the basis for her work. Every work is the result of a conversation she has had with canvas, paints and colors.
She is self-taught, late-blooming and unstoppable.
Arlette Stella works predominately in acrylic paint. Because of open nature is always exploring, she also experiments with gouache, acrylic ink, molding pastes and water. Painting is, for Arlette, an exploration into the possibilities and depths of thought and feeling.
Each work aims to incur, inspire and maybe even nudge (kick you in the yeah-butt!) the viewer to experience and act on kindness. Arlette states clearly: Kindness is my brand!
Arlette Stella is an artist member of San Diego Artist Guild of the San Diego Museum and Artist Guild of Palm Springs/Palm Desert, among other groups.
Abstract. Philosophical. Colorful.
I am self-taught and late blooming, as they say. That means I pretty much found the need to express this way deep inside. Once found, it would/could not stay quiet. Sometimes it even screams to express. I am unstoppable.
The colors, brushes, and surfaces guide and sometimes demand my attention. I have been held hostage, enticed, and called to share what is. Sometimes I argue with the canvas/work so we don’t speak for days. There have been times when I make a ‘mistake’ and am guided/pushed to use it. Those are fun! It helps that I am partially color blind because then I demand more of the colors. It helps that I know nothing about art because then I have no self-judgment. It helps that I surrender to the experience because then I can be the conduit, as it should be.
May all find benefit in viewing this work.
Playbill
Lisa Boozer is a mixed media artist and leather worker at Blue Skies Gallery in Hampton, Virginia. She graduated from Virginia Peninsula Community College
earning an Associate of Fine Art degree. She plans to pursue a postgraduate degree in Fine Arts.
The majority of Lisa’s work combines traditional fine art with mixed media and assemblages to create unique and imaginative pieces. She also creates paintings of landscapes and still lives using various painting mediums and techniques. Lisa’s work has been exhibited in many local galleries across the Tidewater area of Virginia including Blue Skies Gallery in Hampton, Charles Taylor Visual Arts Center in Hampton, Downing-Gross Cultural Art Center in Newport News, d’Arts Center in Norfolk, and For All Mankind Gallery in Norfolk. She has also exhibited in national and international online galleries.
I am a visual artist and leather crafter. I make unique mixed-media artwork and masquerade masks from scraps and other odds & ends from previous leather projects. As a
self-proclaimed Steampunk artist, I try to incorporate the elegance of the Victorian era and combine it with an industrial look. I also get inspiration for themes from many places around the world. However, I do try to stay close to my Celtic roots, with its folklore, themes, and designs.
Darker hues set the tone of the vintage timeframe during the industrial revolution which inspires my Steampunk art. Characters in my work are portrayed with aged and weathered-looking metallics. Backgrounds and inanimate objects are usually given more vibrant colors. Second-hand gilded and misfit frames complete the aesthetic.
Playing To A Captive Audience
Izzy Anderson has a multi-faceted career as both a professional musician and an award-winning artist. Her love of teaching has culminated in the creation of Izzy’s Artistic & Musical Academy.
With over fifteen years of private piano teaching experience, Izzy meets the needs of each student she encounters. Following her Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from Missouri State University, Izzy graduated from the University of Texas – San Antonio with her Master’s in Piano Performance and Pedagogy. During her Masters, she wrote a paper examining adaptive approaches to teaching students with dyslexia. Izzy has also worked with students with autism, visually impaired children, and children with learning disabilities. Izzy firmly believes every child deserves a positive musical experience!
Izzy is a member of the San Antonio Music Teachers Association, and her students participate in numerous area events. Her students join her in playing at local assisted care facilities to bring joy to the residents. Izzy partners with Hearts Need Art, a non-profit that provides creative support for patients and caregivers. Every week, Izzy plays piano to both staff and patients in area hospitals.
In 2019, Izzy wrote and illustrated her first children’s book, Princess Zoe and Her Marvelous Carriage. She published her second children’s book, Princess Hallie and the Intergalactic Marvelous Carriage, in 2020. She is now working on her third children’s book. She often visits elementary schools during career days or as a visiting author. She presents on anti-bullying, and the creative process, and often brings her 1970 VW Bus along as a surprise character from the series.
Izzy accepted a weeklong music composer residency in 2023 with Alta Community Enrichment, in Utah. She is working on her first piano songbook. This project prompted her to explore Texas-based en Plein air competitions to grow and develop her outdoor painting skills. She seeks out quirky, local finds to paint.
As an artist, Izzy was accepted into the international artist residency program with the Hungarian Multicultural Center in Budapest for three weeks in 2017. Her painting “Rhapsody, Rocky, and Roy Take Master Hunting” was on exhibition in Budapest. At the same time, “Prescription for Pain” was accepted into the international show East Meets West Juried Art Exhibition and was displayed in Wisconsin. “Summer 1938” was awarded Honorable Mention in Inspire’s 8th Annual Juried Art Exhibition in 2017. “Prescription for Pain” was also previously awarded the “People’s Choice” award at the Inspire Gala 5th-Annual Juried Art show in 2015. In mid-2016, Izzy had her first solo art show, Izzy’s Rhapsody: A Life Journey of Music and Art. She also had three pieces featured in the 13th Annual Fredericksburg Art Guild Exhibition, Earthly Delights. “Just a Girl and Her Dogs” placed second and “Encore” received an honorable mention.
My art is a creative marrying of two or more of my passions and talents. My art began by using musical elements like the piano and surrealism to process the difficulties and achievements I had while taking piano playing from my own emotional outlet to developing through two college degrees, and ultimately a successful career.
My next creative endeavor combined the love of my nieces and my 1970 VW bus. After my niece was bullied at school, I set out to author and illustrate a children’s book for her. My bus is a beloved character in the book series that I drive to book signings, author visits, and other fun book events. I’m currently at work on my third book, on the topic of heaven- based on my own loss of friends to cancer. We met in the oncology unit while I played piano for them.
My VW bus was also a huge turning point discovering how valuable the outdoors is to my emotional and mental well-being. I also discovered the joy of en Plein air painting. By combining my art, composition interest, and pedagogical knowledge- my piano songbook is my current creative project.
Plein Air Painting
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.
Pliny’s Demise: World On Fire
She was an art museum administrator for 39 years, exposing herself to all forms of art across all historic periods and cultures. This allowed her to combine her knowledge and skill set as a practicing artist, as well as her love of art history and aesthetics. During this time, she continued to practice her studio work (painting) and she actively exhibited throughout the United States, having received awards and grants with her works entering into private collections in the U.S. and Europe. Her practice suddenly came to a halt for reasons she still cannot explain.
She became increasingly interested in craft and craft practices incorporated into the daily routines of indigenous craftspeople. Through a chance encounter, the local fiber store offered a class in bead knitting. Long ago, Anita collected antique beaded purses. She enrolled in the class, not knowing how to knit, and produced a small amulet bag in one color. She was hooked on the process, but her interest was in multi-colored compositions –a compliment to her paintings and mixed media collages utilizing patterns and inventive forms from nature that she produced over the years in her studio practice. The portability of these small, knitted works also allowed for “knit on the go,” thus incorporating the practice of working throughout the day routine and a full-time job.
In 2009, she was invited to participate in the Missouri Fiber Artists city-wide biannual exhibitions in St. Louis and the regional galleries, where her tiny works were received enthusiastically. Ten years into this invented process of hers, she had not identified as a fiber artist.
Due to the very slow process of knitted beads, she has not pursued one-person exhibitions as ambitiously as she once did, but she has been included in juried exhibitions and invitationals nationally and internationally ever since. Now retired from museum work, she has expanded her disciplines into paper weavings, Joomchi collages, and abstract patterns and forms found in nature through her digital photography, all of which inform her beadworks.
Education
Indiana University School of Fine Arts, BA
Area of Specialty and Expertise:
Visual artist, painter, fiber artist, landscape designer, photographer, landscape historian, lecturer, freelance writer
Art Museum professional (registrar) 1982 – 2021
Selected Exhibitions [in fiber arts only]:
Solo Exhibitions
Blooming-Ton, undistillung for tekstil (Venue for Textiles), April 29 – June 18, 2022, Copenhagen, DK2009,
September, Innovations in Textiles “8”, Bead-It, Edwardsville, IL, Missouri Fiber Artists
2007, September, The Devil is in the Details, Prima Gallery, Bloomington, IN
Juried/Invitational Exhibitions
Interplay, A National/International Juried Exhibition, Surface Design Association, The Dairy Barn, Athens, OH, June 27 – August 2024 Book of Hours
National Open Juried Exhibition 2024, Providence Art Club, RI, June 27 – July 19, 2024, Merit Award
Embankment, Undercurrent,
By Hand, Blue Line Gallery, Roseville, CA, Winter, 2024, Book of Hours, Winter Creek,
Craft Forms 2023 28th International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Fine Craft, Davenport Gallery, Wayne Art Center, Wayne, PA, December 2, 2023 – January 20, 2024, 500 submissions, 96 chosen Embankment, Meditations Along the Water’s Edge
47th Midstates Craft Exhibition, Evansville Museum of Art, November 23, 2023 – March 17, 2024, Lost River, Indiana
Still, Embankment, Meditations Along the Water’s Edge, online exhibition, Artstonish, 2023
Material World: A Contemporary Fiber Arts Exhibition, July 28 – September 9, 2023, The Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County, NC, Under Current
Afterlives, Surface Design Association, online exhibition June-August 2023, Winter Creek
Indiana Now, Greater Lafayette Museum of Art, May 5 – August 6, 2023, Lost River, Indiana
Through the Eye of the Needle, Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, February – April 22, 2023, Peekskill, NY, Lost River, Indiana
Tenuous Threads, Atlantic Gallery, NYC, February – March 2023 Undercurrent
Site Brooklyn, Series, online exhibition, Fall, 2022 Midwest Landscape I: June; Midwest Landscape II Tornado; Midwest Landscape III Rural Crafts
2022 Yarn, Rope, String Fiber Art Now, December 8, 2022 – June 26, 2023, New Bedford, MA, with publication Fiber Art Now, Summer 2022, limited invitation to exhibit at the New Bedford Art Museum, New Bedford, MA. Midwest Landscape III: Rural Crafts, Breadbasket Doylie
2022 Surface: A National Juried Exhibition Highlighting the Use of Textures and Patterns in Artwork, May 28 – June 25, 2022, d’Art Center, Norfolk, VA. [Exhibition is archived at d’Art Center] 62 artists/ 64 artworks out of 738 entries Undercurrent
2020 The 11th Lausanne to Beijing International Fiber Art Biennale “Symbiosis to Coexistence” online digital, less than 10% of foreign submissions/applications accepted. Chance Encounters Bloomington-Madrid-Beijing
2019, Summer, Patterns, online exhibition, Surface Design Association
2018, Micro-Macro, September – December 1, 2018, The Foundry Art Center, St. Char
My textiles are constructed of knitted beads comprising interlocking ordered patterns, which frequently dissolve into nonlinear disorder, randomness, and reinvention. The knitted beads are strung (backwards) onto the working thread and then knitted off. I am deeply engaged in both the process and technique.
I am interested in the intersection of human experience, nature, non-human creatures, the universe, and these relational patterns within entities. Formally, my ideas derive from an intimate encounter with patterns found in nature, the universe, and an eye towards the material culture of textiles found worldwide. We are habitual creatures living a patterned co-existence with fellow humans, nature, and the whole of the universe. Our lives are structured within a duality of behavioral patterns, beneficial, destructive, personal, communal, local, and global. Our perceptions are transient and exist on many levels simultaneously, awaiting inquiry, challenge, question, and dissolution. My inner thoughts and ideas evolve in tandem with the slow progression of the knitting process. While my compositions appear carefully constructed in a linear structure, in fact, they are created in an ever-evolving method of reassessment and spontaneity in a non-linear development. The interweaving of the micro and macro structures serves as a metaphor for the human/nature relationship.
Formally, I trained in painting, and my art practice moved through abstraction to figurative, landscape, back to abstraction, and pattern painting, which led me to an appreciation of textiles. While still a practicing artist, I worked as a museum administrator, exposing me to all forms of art across historic periods and world cultures. This allowed me to combine my skill sets as a practicing artist and utilize my art history and aesthetics in my daily work. I became increasingly interested in craft and craft practices incorporated into the daily routines of indigenous craftspeople, many of whom I had the honor of meeting. Utterly by dumb chance, I enrolled in a “bead knitting” class at the local fiber store. I produced a one-color amulet bag. I was hooked and moved towards what I call “beaded panels”, thus reinvesting in some of my earlier ideas in patterns and abstraction in my paintings.
I know of no precedent for my beaded compositions. This newfound craft-making allowed me to “knit on the go” and incorporate my making throughout the day, being inspired by indigenous craftspeople and their culture of craft and work. As in a painting, the very uselessness of my beaded panels defines its own function transcendentally as wholly an aesthetic contemplation.
As material and medium, beads have a universal appeal and transcend historical epochs, and speak to an ethnographic past and present. I have found that in sharing my works with indigenous peoples, from Native Americans, Chinese, and African ethnic groups, my works are relatable. Time is understood, marked on each knot and stitch.
Plugged In 2
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 award-winning 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 their thoughtful positioning. 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.