All These Miles 230923
Lee Willett, an American-born, Swiss-trained polymath, seamlessly blends the worlds of art, photography, typography, letterform design, and education. His distinguished career is adorned with accolades from esteemed entities such as Print Magazine, AIGA, Art Director’s Club, and Type Director’s Club, attesting to his exceptional talent and creative prowess on both regional and national scales.
Hailing from Ohio, Lee’s artistic journey began with an undergraduate degree from Ohio State, followed by immersive studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland. There, he delved into the realms of drawing, photography, and color theory, shaping the foundation of his diverse skill set.
A former design instructor, Lee Willett currently resides in the vibrant art scene of the New York area. Beyond his artistic pursuits, he finds solace in trail and ultra running, complementing his deep-seated love for photography.
Commencing on January 1, 2023, the All These Miles series encapsulates a distinctive approach to artistic creation by seamlessly merging the physicality of trail running with the intricacies of visual storytelling. Each piece within the series is an embodiment of a trail run, capturing elements such as distance, elevation, route, time, landscape photography, and discovered objects.
The genesis of every artwork lies in the immersive act of running, shaping courses that span from brief jaunts under a mile to epic 38-mile odysseys, lasting an entire day. Before, during, or after each run, the landscape and found objects become subjects of photographic documentation. Subsequently, within the studio, these visual elements are meticulously interwoven with run data to compose unique collages, serving as poignant visual journal entries. Notably, snippets of conversations overheard during the run or relevant news articles from the day find their way into the artwork, enriching each piece with contextual depth.
A distinctive feature of this artistic endeavor is the commitment to yielding only one piece of art per run. The resulting digital artwork is then transferred onto a 30”×30″ stretched canvas, serving as the canvas for further artistic expression. Additional media such as paint, pencil, and crayons are applied to create bespoke mixed media pieces, each infused with the energy and narrative of the run.
In the year 2023, this immersive exploration is set to document approximately 2,400 miles, culminating in the creation of nearly 240 unique pieces. This solo art show promises to be a captivating journey, inviting viewers to experience the convergence of physicality, data, and artistic expression in a truly one-of-a-kind visual narrative.
All You Need Is Love
Karen Safer is a photographic and digital artist, published writer, and poet with a musical bent. As a native Angelino, she was given a camera and crayons at 3 and exposed to dominant California motifs: light, palm trees, the ocean, music, and vernacular architecture that helped define and influence her left-handed aesthetic. Fortunate to begin a life of travel as a pre-teen, shaped her love of the exotic paired with an eye for the formal, accidental and unusual and the “beautiful” that jiggled the lens/frame of her eye; subsequently, she has traveled and photographed in over 230 countries (and territories).
She received a master’s degree in art while studying at CSULB and UCLA. Her career includes design and architecture firms; she is the principal of ArtFocus International. Initially, she began painting and printmaking alongside the study of art and architectural history before wholly embracing photography with influences from Mesopotamia to Vermeer/Matisse to Atget to Cindy Sherman. She has been in 8 solo shows and in numerous juried and group national and international exhibits, and private collections have received awards and is a member of several art organizations. She is a self-described “romantic soul” with intellectual cravings, currently residing in Playa del Rey, CA.
I got a camera and some crayons as a kid,
journeyed along a path in life – far from what I’d expected,
moved from youth to middle age,
did some work, had some fun, got high, got low,
and just continue doing it – never tiring of the next visual surprise.
– Life is still a mystery, after all.
Alone
Born in 1958 in Höchst on Lake Constance and an art teacher for almost 30 years Gerhard Rasser has been working since his youth with various artistic techniques of oil, watercolor, and pastel painting and with various graphic styles including Chinese ink painting and calligraphy. Even when he was studying architecture and art history, the art practice subjects particularly made his heart beat faster.
Due to his life path – through my commitment to children, cooking, and art education – the last few years have made it possible to really stick with it and quickly develop his artistic expression. He was also encouraged by numerous international awards, several exhibitions, an art book, and other artistic projects.
Gerhard Rasser’s work is supposed to make people think and pause just like my themes of melancholy, fugacity, threat, loneliness, desire, and hope – all very emotional topics. Once a friend of his characterized his work as follows: “Your pictures always tell a story und hold a secret.” … and that’s his intention.
Alone Again
Vin Palma is a figurative oil painter who lives and works in Northern New Jersey. After taking painting classes under Julie Heffernan throughout college, he elected to pursue art, despite earning his degree from the Feliciano School of Business at Montclair State University. Since then, his work has been featured in group shows at the Bendheim Gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut as well as the Limner Gallery in Hudson, New York. Palma continues to work at his own independent studio practice to further develop his understanding of painting and how it can transcend the locality of the art world to touch the larger environment that surrounds it.
My art investigates the dichotomy between the “known” meeting the “unknown”, and the liminal landscape found between the two polarities. Here, established mores and new insurgent ideas confront one another. The known and the unknown have a relationship of consistent conflict, wherein familiar imagery is juxtaposed against alien effigies. Borrowing from the surrealist tradition at large, evocative imagery is used to achieve desired moods of ambiguity that are symptomatic of the vagaries of undergoing change.
Alone At The Cafe
G.M. Owen is from the middle Tennessee area; he is a self-taught painter with no formal training other than art classes in middle school. He started painting around the age of twelve years old, placing art in the annual juried art competition at the State Fair Art Show, and later joining a local art guild in his late teens. After high school, he was hired as a staff sign artist for the Coca-Cola Bottling company in Nashville, Tennessee, and later worked as a sign artist for trade show/expo companies working in the southeastern states. By the mid-eighties, the art of free-hand lettering was replaced by computers and wide-format printing. He re-entered tech school to study desktop publishing, and he has worked for the last 30 years as a graphic designer in the wine & spirits industry. He has always painted and placed art in venues, restaurants, and juried art shows along the way. His style of art ranges from portraits to still life fruit. He uses non-traditional oil paint which is an oil-based enamel and reflects back to paint he used as a sign artist painting billboards and walls for Coca-Cola company when he was younger.
I think about paintings and I see pictures of different images and I try to convey that or what I see in a magazine or online into a painting. A lot of times I will first make a mockup of what I want to create using Photoshop and then I will paint that image on canvas. At times the painting takes a different path from what I started out thinking about painting.
Alone On The Rue Vaugelas
When I was studying architecture, photography was a tool I used in the creation of projects and to enhance the presentation of the final product. I incorporated the camera lens as a part of the design development process looking at elements of design such as form, space, geometry, light, texture, and color. Over time, as I improved my knowledge of creative design, I also increased my interest in photography learning that the elements were the same. In recent years I have further evolved into taking my conventional images and integrating them into composites, digital paintings, and abstract designs. Photography is a constant journey. It has also allowed me to broaden my horizons into earthborn street imagery and the opportunity to develop another of my interests which includes film noir. I look forward to continuing the journey.
“I look at every photo opportunity as if it were a design with architectural, structural, and artistic integrity, regardless of the subject matter.”
The study of design has allowed me to expand my horizons to all avenues of photography. Just as I had photographed the composites of my designs, my work is now focused on looking for the components of a creative design or story in every photograph I take. To me, composing a photo is similar to designing a building. I like to see how the visual building blocks in the elements of design can be combined into a unique whole.
Alone Together
In 2016, the first of Ellie’s three daughters were born, which began her fascination with the themes of childhood. She began to write and illustrate content for children’s literature to align her creative endeavors with the developmental stages of her children. The artwork from Ellie’s current book project, “For You,” has been selected for 3 publications and 5 international juried exhibitions in 2022. “For You” is a visual celebration of the animals and insects of Ellie’s native garden zone, a pandemic retrospective, and a love letter to her daughters and late sister. Garvey is a 2022 Creative Arts Renewal Fellow; her 2022 exhibitions include “Food For Thought” (Los Angeles, CA), “Flowers 4 Peace and Prosperity” (Red Bluff, CA), “Women In Art” (Laguna Beach, CA), “Kingdom Animalia” (Biafarin Platform), “Art in the Time of Corona, Vol. 3” (Dab Art Co. Online Galleries), “We Are SNAG: Anthology 2022” (SNAG virtual catalog), and “Nocturnal” (Lyons, CO).
My name is Ellie Garvey and I am an Indianapolis-based jewelry artist and children’s book writer/illustrator. In both mediums, my work employs complex patterning, floral motifs, and the beauty of nature to evoke sentiment and promote a sense of well-being. My work is colorful and folk art inspired; it explores the relationship between delicacy and wildness, and it aspires to remind the observer of some long-forgotten magic that is still accessible to us all. It is my belief that vibrant folk art can draw upon timeless themes that rouse the spirit, reorient us with the ethos of childhood, and unburden the soul.
Alps In Blue Fog
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 with 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 see nature the way other creatures see it.
I can find beauty in symmetry, 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.
Altered Bloom Orange
From childhood joy and interest to adult determination and training the road is not so different from so many other artists. Much credit must go to my parents for indulging my interest and not standing as a barrier in my development. Quite to the contrary, I was given rich opportunities along with a fair share of luck growing up. Luck came by way of wonderful art teachers in public school and Saturday classes at Detroit Institute of Arts. There is a sidebar story in all this that has to do with my poor health as a child and how it prevented me from taking part in athletic classes. That provided opportunities for more art and an interesting mix of friends. My pals were musicians, actors, dancers, writers, and of course visual artists. My childhood orientation was entirely cultural starting in the 1950s and 1960s.
Post high school I was accepted to The Art School of the Society of Arts & Crafts in Detroit. I did well, winning a merit scholarship for my work blending graphic design with fashion illustration.
I moved to Toronto, Canada after art school to apply my skills to things other than automotive-related advertising, the focus on Detroit, and that was such an exciting place for any young artist to work in the 1970s. I did graphic design and illustration for fashion, package goods, and government services like the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Now well into the second chapter of my life, and living in Michigan, I’m finally doing what my heart always wanted, fine arts. It’s not that I didn’t like my life as an applied artist, it’s that I also needed to answer a very different calling in the arts.
I am an artist working in 2D and with traditional tools and materials. I am not a message artist and resist any kind of description beyond the most basic observations and influences of my work product. My goal is to create a visceral and thoughtful experience that invites the viewer into my world rather than leave them an outside witness.
Life in all its colors, textures, patterns, and voices held together by the tread of our shared humanity…tenuously, delicately, hoping to travel with just one caring soul. My visual images seek to create sounds from the colors and stories yet to be completed in our imagination from the shapes and forms.
To see without assumptions is perhaps one of the greatest challenges I have faced as an artist. I want to look deeply, with all my senses, into the abyss and discover rather than define and allow experiences to wash over me. I don’t plan so much as to absorb what notion is presented and let the spirit guide me. This is not science. It is not predictable or rarely repeatable and is art meant to illuminate and provoke. I don’t believe in style selected or applied artificially but as more of an unconscious personal signature of how an artist speaks. Style should never be confined by subject or materials but rather part of a conversation the artist is having and sharing.
My artistic goal reflects a seeking and a desire to find those visual voices that do not always harmonize but in their distinctive expression create the texture of one’s life.