Primadonna
Serena Allen-Szatkowski had a love for art making ever since they were a kid. In Highschool they began to expand their creative outlets by learning sewing and foam construction for costume making. Through cosplay, they found their crafts coming together, Painting, drawing, sculpture, all intertwined to make costumes that took characters from fiction and brought them to life.
At Boise State University, Serena found their passions were as multifaceted as their costume making hobby. Once school returned to in-person classes after 2020, Serena decided to take a few art classes, which soon became their degree path.
During their time at Boise State, Serena had a chance to work on marble carving in Florence, Italy, for an Independent Study with a Grant from the Alexa Rose Foundation 2023.
The summer of 2024 came with an unsuspecting opportunity with a City of Boise Art Call for the Assembled Form Class taught by Professor Lily Lee. Serena became the first student Art Port holder with their piece, “Reclaimed Majesty”, which will be on public display by the Modern Hotel till July 2026.
Fall Semester of that same year, Serena Allen-Szatkowski graduated from Boise State University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts and a Minor in Art Entrepreneurship and began working as a prop maker with Ghost Ride Productions INC.
My art brings retrospect through a contemporary lens; it blends echoes of the past with an understanding of today. It aims to bring consideration towards where and how our beliefs and cultural traditions come from, and what we make out of them moving forward.
Mythology, folktales, and legends of old bring me inspiration and give a starting place for my own interpretations. I find connections and embrace their context while providing a modern outlook towards old stereotypes. I find humility within the gods and the wisdom of characters pained by misfortune.
I want to change the cycle, the recurring themes of sexism and victim shaming that still has grip on the modern era. I start from a motif from the past and contextualize it, finding what intrigues me and what could be reutilized. I then think of how I can reintroduce the narrative. I think about how symbols of the past can be altered to fit modern critique and bring insight into how our lingering perceptions of the past have molded our culture.
I am interdisciplinary when it comes to my practice- fabric, clay, paint, wood, metal- every material has its place and speaks differently. The subject is just as important as the material it is made of. A relic provokes the viewer through its medium, whether it’s wooden carpentry or a resin cast.
Art brings me a sense of connection to the past. I feel drawn to ancient mythology and creatures that invoke symbolism. It provides a surface to grow and blossom from while reaching for meaning that connects my contemporary life with what came before.
Princess
Shallon Fadlien is a professional artist who works primarily with acrylics, digital and mixed media. Shallon was born in Saint Lucia and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Canada.
She presently resides in Canada but her work still shows evidence of her strong affinity to her homeland. Bold colors and simplistic lines are integral to her compositions as she explores themes of fantasy, love, and life while blurring the boundaries of realism.
Shallon held her first solo exhibition at the Francaise Ste. Lucie in 2000. She won 2 consecutive gold medals and one silver at the prestigious M&C Fine Arts awards in 2001, 2002, and 2003. While she resided in Saint Lucia, her work from this period was described as lyrical, story-focused, and hovering in between abstraction and realism.
Since 2016 Shallon has engaged in several collaborations with Ekphrastic poet John Robert Lee. Some of the projects they have produced include Song and Symphony where the poet responds to a series of 15 paintings based on the cyclical nature of relationships in an extended poem, the Blue Mountain Review https://issu.com/collectivemedia/docs/bluemountainreviewseptember2022, The Missing Slate, Spotlight Artist –November 2017 and The Connotation Press- May 2017. Her art can be seen on the cover of John Robert Lee’s Pierrot, Peepal Tree Press2020,
Presently, she works with digital mediums producing pieces that combine different techniques. She engages in online exhibitions and recently some of her pieces have been displayed online at galleryring.com. Her work can also be seen on the cover of Acalabash https://acalabash.com/acalabash-caribbean-poetry-portfoli-no-11/ and inside previous editions.
In exploring the theme of color the idea of “the colorful personality” is evoked in this artwork. The piece explores gender issues. It portrays a figure that could be easily interpreted as either male or female.
The androgynous figure whose face is presented in predominantly pink and red tones is seen in a natural background of greens. The outdoors reinforces the notion of freedom and the need to freely express ourselves despite societal constraints. The rise of tattoos has enabled the skin to be used like a canvas and the face comprises unique and colorful markings that emphasize the idea of someone constructing themselves.
There is a basket on top of the figure’s head which represents what we hold in, our insecurities. The markings on the forehead that resemble a religious cross hint at a possible source of internal conflict as gender ambiguity can often clash with religious ideas.
There appear to be several dichotomies in the piece (red versus green, male versus female, cultural versus modern, core static identity versus fluidity, religious adherence versus individual beliefs, etc.) that contribute to providing tension and creating an overall unease. While the figure is preoccupied with constructing itself, the internal struggles faced are undeniable and are apparent in the lack of an easily definable expression on the figure’s face.
Princess Rose Sleeps In A Rose Bush
Heini Mika is a Finnish artist who works and resides in New York City. Heini has a BA degree in Fine Arts from the University of Worcester (UK) and a Fine Art and Visual Communications degree from the Pekka Halonen Academy of Art (Finland). She has exhibited her paintings worldwide, most notably in The United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and New York. Her paintings have been published in a variety of magazines including the British Vogue and some of her artworks are held by private collectors.
Heini’s contemporary paintings serve the viewer with a palette of vibrant colors and dynamic shapes while she gives you her unique perspective on women, fairytales, and history. They have been an essential source of inspiration for Heini throughout her career as an artist and this can be observed in her rich and intriguing original artworks. Heini Mika is also the co-founder and chief curator at her own online art gallery the HMVC Gallery New York.
“Princess Rose sleeps in a rose bush” is part of my ongoing painting-collage-storybook series that tells the tale of a young Princess who decides to leave her cushy life and arranged marriage to go on a self-discovery journey. In this oil on canvas painting, Princess Rose is taking a nap in her garden, dreaming about all the things she wants to do in life.
Prinzessin Der Mahnwacht
His main artistic work deals with people with all their facets of the question of existence, the mystery of being human. He also likes to be allowed to do so inspired by myths and fairy tales or ideological or pseudo-religious ideas of the different cultures and epochs of human history. The strongest driving force for his work is the blatant discrepancy between his dream image of a world worth striving for in harmony, beauty, and innocence and often found reality in the form of violence, alienation, and abuse.
Thorsten Boehm was born in 1974 in Hamburg, Germany. According to his own statement, he lived – ”born in the zodiac sign of the fish – since the beginning rather in the dimensions of dreams, Intuition and ”Anti-Reality”. In his early childhood, drawing and painting were his favorite pastimes. Traveling in silence fantasy worlds and fictional places of longing and expressing them visually on paper led to deep happiness.
Later, his heart`s desire, for the profession of the artist, was reinforced to take. After successfully completing his studies as a communication designer at the BILDKUNST AKADEMIE HAMBURG in 2000, today he works as a freelance visual artist for specialist magazines and agencies. He favors classic painting and graphics and their diverse mixed techniques and forms of expression, especially the work with the airbrush. Boehm`s works have been shown in numerous, well-regarded art exhibitions and international events in recent years and presented to a broad public. These often polarizing and provocative works and exhibitions have also been in the past few years several art prizes have already been awarded for their quality and issue.
ERKENNE DICH SELBST – ERLÖSE DICH SELBST
RECOGNIZE YOURSELF – DELIVER YOURSELF
Prisoner Of Time
Czech painter Veronika Sekotová’s abstract paintings express the inherent movement of Creation and the dynamic strive for balance and harmony embodying all things. Sekotová treats the surface of the canvas as the blank sheet of a diary. Each page is an impression of the artist’s experiences and responses to the natural environment, which she externalizes through lively patterns of intermingling and overlapping shapes that expand, merge, and collide. “I believe everything is constant motion; flowing, transforming, evolving,” Sekotová says. “In my work, I embrace the movement of life […] until unity and harmony are restored.”
I am constantly trying to develop a relationship with visual art and the whole field of visual culture, so I can perceive the beauty of nature and the aesthetic values in what is happening around us.
As I believe that a creative outlook enriches our lives immensely, I aim to promote creativity not only in the field of fine arts but also in my entire way of thinking.
Painting is my joy, pleasure, and relaxation, and helps me express my feelings. I like to try new techniques, but mostly I work with acrylic paints on canvas.
Prize
Jennifer Bain is a painter interested in spirituality, nature, and the relationships between these themes and contemporary art. The artist was introduced to the concept of art as a spiritual practice by attending The Rudolph Steiner School in New York City. The school embraces education through the arts, strongly emphasizing mystic ideology.
Wanting a practical yet creative profession she earned an A.A. degree in Fashion Design and worked successfully in that field, but yearned for more creative expression. Returning to school she earned a B.F.A. from The California College of the Arts in 1982 and a M.F.A. in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985.
The artist spent ten years living “underground” in an old paint factory which introduced her to a vivid life full of artists, musicians, dancers, playwrights, and street performers. She participated in many group shows in nonprofit spaces during this time.
Jennifer has been a full-time artist since 1994. She has dedicated her practice to painting in series, employing different styles of painting based on the content of the work, which has spanned from the abstract to the narrative.
The artist has been represented in prestigious contemporary galleries throughout the U.S., Asia, and the Middle East. Her work is in private and corporate collections and places of healing such as The Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, UCLA, San Francisco General, and Stanford University Hospitals. She was honored to represent The U.S. in the Art in Embassies program twice in 2005 and 2009.
After living in Oakland California for thirty-seven years she relocated to Santa Fe New Mexico in 2016 after her husband died of cancer. She is presently engaged to a native New Mexican, and flourishing in a new life with two small dogs and a huge cat.
I create abstract compositional grounds with gestural, chromatically layered surfaces and geometric forms, against which I juxtapose realistic renderings of birds. I combine abstraction with bird imagery to symbolically represent ideas such as freedom versus structure while alluding to concepts like adaptability and transition.
New Mexico’s landscape influences my painterly space. I attempt to translate the constantly shifting geology of the high desert earth and the moving veils of cloud formations by layering paint and sanding it back to reveal marks and colors laid down previously. Buried forms and scruffy lines compete for dominance on the surface, while washes of color evoke shifting light and shadows. Sanding creates a window into the layers below, the way wind and water erode the land.
The carefully rendered birds dominate this landscape, exemplifying that nature still prevails. Sitting in perched postures, away from flight, they display expressions of thought, gazing at us silently, asking us to interpret.
Procession
Tina Ybarra lives a mixed-media life. Born in the urban city of Lynwood, CA, Ybarra attended Cal State Univ., Long Beach off and on (mostly off) for several years, eventually earning a degree in General Art. Currently residing in South Gate, CA, Ybarra is a veteran elementary school teacher, a reluctantly-retired softball junkie, a former high school coach (softball, basketball, and volleyball), and a weekend/spare-time/summer-break artist.
Raised on Motown and Santana, Ybarra is just as likely to glean inspiration from Hip Hop, Rock, or Mozart. She is mesmerized by TV, fascinated by movies, fanatical about books, and enchanted with theatre.
For the most part, Ybarra’s work deals with issues that are personally relevant such as the hypocrisy of religions, the brutal realities of inner-city education, the relentless despair of poverty, and the inequalities of gender and race.
In Ybarra’s current work, there is a tendency towards mixed media and an attempt to bring dimension by cutting into and/or attaching objects to the canvas. Still, on occasion, Ybarra will return to basics; to something straightforward and traditional; to something as comfortable and familiar as the velveteen texture of charcoal on paper.
Although I think of my art as extremely personal, I believe the themes are somewhat universal. The subject matter will likely include inequalities pertaining to gender or social status; the state of education; the failings of organized religion, faith, and spirituality versus religion; or anything that catches my eye and sparks an idea.
I think art should change the world. With each new canvas or page, I endeavor to change my small part of the world for the better. With each new idea or concept, I hope to send an ever-increasing ripple effect that could someday wash away the recurring atrocities and injustices that tend to plague humankind.
I am often inspired by things I see on TV or hear on the radio. However, more often than not, my own reality becomes the subject of my work–expelling my darkest fears, revealing pent-up frustrations, or releasing my deepest hopes.
I find influence in my surroundings and environment, but also in my day-to-day routines and experiences, including the students I teach, the city where I live, as well as, a lifetime of sci-fi movies and shows.
Procession
Kylo-Patrick Hart is an award-winning photographer and chair of the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media at Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, Texas, USA). He received his formal training in digital media arts while a student at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, with additional instruction provided by offerings of the Maine Media Workshops and Santa Fe Workshops. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous cities throughout the United States and in several countries abroad.
Photography has been my passion since early childhood. My motivation is to discover and capture the beauty, even when it is not always readily self-evident, that surrounds us continuously in all areas of our everyday lives. I believe the finest images are those that are serious yet playful, aesthetically appealing yet a bit quirky. As both an artist and an admirer, my favorite photographs tend to be ones whose contents speak loudly for themselves — even when it is not immediately clear exactly what they are saying. They seek to inspire their viewers to wrestle with their intriguing content and, as a result, ponder various aspects of our surrounding world in new and unique ways.
Profile Companions – Rose
Amelia Hainaut is an emerging contemporary artist based in Colleyville, Texas. Her work blends pop art and geometric abstraction through portraits that explore identity using simplified forms, vibrant color, and intentional composition. Her background in industrial engineering and engineering management informs a structured, methodical approach to shape, pattern, proportion, and visual systems.
My work explores identity through simplified form, bold color, and geometric structure. I create contemporary portraits of people and animals by breaking faces, hair, and figures into deliberate planes, reducing detail while preserving personality and presence. My background in industrial engineering shapes my interest in proportion, pattern, and how individual forms come together as a whole. Working primarily with acrylic paint and paint markers, I balance precision with intuition through flat color, clean edges, and hand-mixed palettes. Inspired by modernism, pop art, fashion imagery, and portraiture, I create work that feels confident, contemporary, and approachable. By simplifying each subject, I leave space for viewers to see their own experiences, identities, relationships, or aspirations in the person or companion before them. My goal is to show how simplicity can still hold individuality, emotion, and presence.