Robin’s Rage

Katie Gresham (b. 1987, Virginia, USA) is a multimedia visual artist living outside of Washington, D.C. Her artwork has been exhibited at local galleries, including Falls Church Arts and Rhizome DC. Gresham’s work has also been shown in online exhibitions, including the Woman Made Gallery, Roaring Artist Gallery, Brandi Hofer Gallery, and Art in the Time of Corona. Gresham was a contributor to Lenka Clayton’s Mothers’ Day collaborative project and book, which was displayed at the University of New Mexico Art Museum and The Arts Club of Chicago. Gresham’s embroidery and collage works explore the inherent tension in caregiving within a society that provides insufficient support to and holds unrealistic expectations of mothers. She seeks to validate the complicated and often suppressed emotions and burdens of mothering and assert the value of a more honest conversation about the needs and values of caregivers.

I use personal experience as a point of departure to portray and normalize ambivalence as part of the maternal experience. The mother figures in my work are slumped, hold themselves up under immense weight, and are either faceless or with faces overwhelmed by intense emotion. In my embroidery series, portraits are stitched on kitchen towels stained from daily household use. These towels embody the ongoing, repetitive maintenance labor of the mother and become the container for her emotions as well. The portraits are expressive, conveying feelings that are often viewed as inappropriate for a mother in our society to have–rage, exhaustion, regret–with thread color chosen to either render the emotion nearly invisible or to call it out dramatically. As contemporary society propagates a myth of the “perfect” mother, my work pushes back by validating the complicated, tense reality of caregiving and asserting the value of caregivers’ complex identities.

Robot Love

I drew all the time as a kid but didn’t get serious until art class in high school. I then attended Pratt Institute (1968-72) in New York City, where I majored in fine arts and illustration.

I founded Clownbank Studio in San Francisco in 1976, specializing in air-brushed murals, illustrations, and signs, and have been commissioned by Disney, Universal Studio Tours, 6 Flags Discovery Kingdom, Dell Publishing, The Santa Cruz Boardwalk, Buck Owens Productions, and many others.

In 2017, I started painting full-time for myself, inspired by a low-brow pop surrealism show in L.A., and have been in 20 shows across the country, both virtual and brick-and-mortar galleries, since 2021.

I love the ironies and paradoxes of life and find it funny that we discover the truth where the supposed opposites meet – contrast, contradiction, and conflict. My job as an artist is to shake people out of their day-to-day daze so they will view ordinary things and events in a different light. My images are catalysts to evoke magic, which dies when we stop being open to the odd. I don’t offer solutions – only more interesting questions. I enjoy making the big small, small big, the ordinary unusual, and the unusual normal. Surrealism gives me a lot of freedom to shake up old assumptions and I wrap everything up in a beautiful light, just so it goes down easier.

Good art gets a reaction – whether it is bad or good doesn’t make a difference. Indifference is the worst insult.

Rocking It

During the late 1970s, artist Nancy Marie Barnes officially began her career in abstract art, using mostly pencil and pen&ink. Since the early 1990’s she has sold dozens of her pieces throughout the United States and Canada. She displays and sells her work on her website while maintaining her own personal collection on display in their home studio.

Nancy enjoys and creates contemporary abstract art, seeking to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures. Her art pieces are a study of lines, free-flowing curves, space, contrast, natural abstract forms, and shapes. In her art, she strives for fluid movement, creating grace, freedom, and airy lightness. Her artwork embraces, the ordinary or simple, immense beauty in its utter simplicity.

Nancy mostly “expresses herself” in a free-form technique, and her art has been categorized by some as surrealism. Most of her pieces involve one continuous twisting line which reverses upon itself, with many small lines to fill pattern pieces.

She has worked in oil, watercolor, ink, and pencil, but her love is black ink on white, with double or triple white matting accompanied by a narrow black trim with a simple wide black or silver frame.

The 1920s represents a remarkable transition and depicts upbeat singing, dancing, and a raucously unique time in the United States. My art pieces represent all of these elements.

Rocks Sky Lake

I accidentally became an artist late in life. After my husband of 35 years passed away in 2004, I found myself in deep despair.

A year passed, and I gave myself the assignment to find joy. I had no idea HOW I would do that. Since I had done a lot of drawing and some painting when I was young, and had a career as a decorator consultant, I realized I was very fulfilled when seeking a creative endeavor. With that thought, in late 2006, I enrolled in oil painting courses. I thought at best it would be a distraction, but it became so much more. I discovered she had talent.

After a few years, I started to submit my artwork to juried art exhibits. I have exhibited my oil paintings in many art shows and galleries throughout Southern California and international online exhibits and have won some awards. One painting even won FIRST PLACE in the 2017 City of Los Angeles Senior Art Exhibit! (And I am happy to report, that I did find joy!).

After my husband passed away in 2004, I found myself in deep despair. A year later, I gave myself the assignment to find joy. I had no idea HOW I would do that. Since I had done a lot of drawing & some painting when I was young, & had a career as a decorator, I realized I am very fulfilled when doing something creative. With that thought, in late 2006, I enrolled in oil painting courses. I thought at best it would be a distraction, but it became so much more. I discovered I had talent. After a few years, I started to submit my artwork to juried art exhibits. I have shown my paintings in many art shows & galleries throughout Southern California & have won some awards. One painting even won FIRST PLACE in the 2017 City of Los Angeles Senior Art Exhibit!

Retired. Introspective. My artwork is a reflection of my life. It makes me feel grounded and fully present. My paintings are inspired by a celebration of the human spirit, and an appreciation of whimsy and beauty.

Rocky Hill East Elevation Home Is Where I Drink Coffee

During the last three years, David Orr has been able to focus exclusively on his art projects – having retired from careers in architectural design, facilities management, and web development/user experience. Besides art, Orr is hooked on education. He has his B.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and a Master of Architecture degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Recently, at the age of 70, Orr completed a Master of Liberal Arts in Media and Popular Culture at Henderson State University in my hometown, Arkadelphia, Arkansas – as well as a program in Stand Up Comedy with the Second City Performance Center in Chicago. Now, at the age of 71, David has just been admitted to the 2023 incoming low residency MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hardly afraid of leaving his comfort zone, Orr hopes to take his writing, illustration, and graphic narratives into new dimensions.

Born and raised in a small college town in the U.S. South, Orr grew up among raconteurs who often invoked the Southern tall tale form, as well as magical realism and surrealism. Aspects of these traditions appear in both his writings and illustrations. David sees his work as grounded in fun and in a desire to show how differences bring people together. David finds that he resolves most problems with graphic narrative layouts in his head while taking his two bull terriers for walks. If he could do life over again, he would arrange to be born in an era that knows how to travel at the speed of light. Yet, he is happy with who he is and where he is in his life adventure.

During the last three years, my creative focus has progressed from sequential painting in triptych format to sequential drawings and digital media in graphic narratives. I first write a script that builds on emotional as well as factual truths. My scripts aim to capture innocent yet astute concepts of identity — as seen in themes of both the early civil rights movement of the 1960s and culture wars now. After a few script edits, I sketch. I develop characters and scenes through layered techniques in photo editing software. I find that sketching typically reveals more and more of the story to be told. Many of my sketches, such as the ones submitted to HMVC’s “Home,” are square formats with layered components. As story arcs build, I seek to create graphic narratives in which two-page spreads can stand alone as works of art. I believe that a two-page spread for a graphic narrative is missing a powerful opportunity if component text, images, and frames and their patterns based on scale and proportion do not form one all-encompassing super image. A leading U.S. scholar of comics and graphic narratives sees my current artistic approach as “part of the graphic narrative avant-garde.”

Roe Is Me

Kara Greenwell is a California-based visual artist who creates works of self-reflection and societal investigation. Her gestural, mixed-media paintings juxtapose vivid personal narratives with provocative feminist themes. Ms. Greenwell’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries nationwide including, the Oceanside Museum of Art (CA), Prince Street Gallery (NY), Tarleton State University (TX), and The San Diego Museum of Art (CA). Kara attended the Vermont Studio Center Artist Residency in Johnson, VT in 2023 and the ChaNorth Artist Residency in Hudson Valley, NY in 2022. Ms. Greenwell is a self-taught artist with an MBA from Harvard Business School.

I tell the tales women are taught to hide. As an abstract artist, my gestural, mixed media paintings juxtapose vivid personal narratives with provocative feminist themes. For as long as I can remember, I struggled with expectations of femininity. As a youth, I learned girls should be small, be quiet, and be obedient. As an adult, I heard women should be wives, mothers, and caregivers. But surely females can do more, can be more?

My practice challenges conventional notions of femininity with large-scale, aggressive gestures and confrontational messaging. In layering traditional painting materials with up-cycled ephemera such as children’s artwork, delivery packages, and dress patterns, I deconstruct domesticity while reassembling my own definition of womanhood. A flurry of emotion and intention, my work illuminates the impossible mix of optimism and despair defining femininity today.

Roe Vrs Wade Is Settled Law…

Michael Angelo was born and raised in NYC. In 1985 Michael Angelo graduated from C. W. Post College of Long Island University with a BFA in painting and sculpture and a MA in Theatrical Design. Although he was heavily influenced by the Neo-Expressionist style, Michael Angelo spent his early career pursuing the creation of art in an impressive range of techniques, styles, and forms. During the same time, Michael Angelo began working as a professional scenic artist and stage craftsperson with off-Broadway productions. In 1989, he moved to Chicago, where he continued working at scenic studios and moved more into stagecraft working as a carpenter, rigger, and later, automation. Michael Angelo started touring the country with Broadway musicals in 1996. Since 2014, Michael Angelo has lived on his tree farm in High Springs, Florida with his wife. Michael Angelo has shown throughout his career in Galleries and Museums in NYC, Brooklyn, and Chicago, as well as other cities.

“Art flows like water but burns like fire with passion.”

My artwork tells stories around a character or characters in conflict within an environment rich with symbolic imagery and motifs. For me, the nature of the story determines the medium and technique. I work in both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional materials, using oil and acrylic paints, and crayons, as well as steel, cement, and stone.

Water and fire, love and hate, pain and joy, life and death, loneliness, and contentment–all these juxtapositions can be found within the characters and environments of my work. The physical nature of my art requires me to use everything I feel: love, hate, anger, pity, and pain. My art becomes real because I fight and dance with it, and it is this dance of creation that brings my characters and stories to life.

Rolling In The Deep

Canadian artist Lori Burke draws much of her inspiration for her work from her inner voice and the pull of the human connection. A self-taught, ‘intuitive’ artist, she honed her craft through research and workshops.

From a very young age, Lori felt a strong affinity for the creative process and this soon evolved into a serious and life-long passion for painting. And, while she attributes her gift to a strong intuition and a deep connection to the soul, one cannot deny that she also comes by her craft, quite honestly. Her great-grandmother was a well-known artist who painted and exhibited her work well into her 80s and was known as the Canadian Grandma Moses in her hometown of Moorefield, Ontario.

Originally from the Horseshoe Valley ski area, north of Toronto, this full-time, internationally recognized artist now resides in a picturesque waterfront town in Ridgeway, Ontario, where, more often than not, she can be found in her home studio working on one of her well-known nature-inspired series. While her primary medium is acrylics, she often incorporates mixed media to enhance the movement, grace, and drama ever-present in her work.

A full-time, internationally recognized artist, Lori lives in the waterfront town of Ridgeway, Ontario, where she spends most of her time in her home studio working on her nature-inspired series, Soul series, and Ethereal abstracts. While her primary medium is acrylics, she often incorporates mixed media to enhance the movement, grace, and drama ever-present in her work.

Lori is continually creating new pieces for competitions, collaborations, and commissions.

Romance By A Fountain A New York Moment

Steve Ember is a photographer, writer, and voice actor based in the Washington D.C. area.

While partial to capturing the brawn, sinew, vitality, and drama of large cities including the spontaneity of “street” moments, he is also drawn to the charm of small town and countryside motifs, as well as nature’s always stimulating variety.

Steve has never lost his appreciation for shooting film and continues to do so alongside his digital work. Aside from its equipment-tactile pleasures, he finds film shooting “a ‘comfort food’ in a sometimes too coldly technical milieu. It calms and keeps me connected to all the elements I had to learn back when I started out with film in my teens. I like to feel that the deliberateness that goes with shooting film also manages to inform at least some of my digital shooting.”

In exhibiting his work, whether online or in galleries, Steve derives special pleasure in sharing with others the fruits of those usually solitary moments looking through the viewfinder, as well as some of those images’ back-stories and adventures, whether in articles (https://medium.com/@emberphoto) or in “PhotoMoments” audio productions (https://soundcloud.com/steve-ember).
Galleries of Steve’s work, by subject category or location, may be viewed at https://500px.com/p/steveember?view=galleries

For me, photography has always been a rather Januslike pursuit, for while the activity of shooting is usually a solitary one, there is always the strong desire to share the fruits of such work – and even the adventures that often are the “back-stories” of favorite images.

That desire has led to displaying in galleries or on various websites and entering competitions.

While a photograph can often tell the “whole” story, I do often enjoy “taking viewers along” for the shoot with a bit of narrative accompanying the visual.

Especially since the social isolation brought on by the Covid pandemic, it has been a strong desire of mine as an artist to share moments of joyful togetherness, whether between people or between humans and animals. Thus, the theme of this competition particularly inspires and I hope my three selections convey a measure of such joyfulness as observed by a wandering photographer.
As to images in this submission…

“Romance by a Fountain – A New York Moment” – After enjoying a live-to-film concert by the New York Philharmonic of John Williams’ score to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” at Lincoln Center, an enjoyable post-concert interlude was spent on the plaza, as I captured this (pre-pandemic) close encounter – of the romantic kind.