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Svetlana Artemoff

Visual Arts: Painting

I was born and raised in San Francisco and took for granted the great art programs in my public school and the ability to access local museums free. As a child, I took classes at the SF De Young Museum and could wander the galleries with sketchbook in hand. Art had to take a back seat while I worked and raised a family. Now that I’ve retired, I am able to take inspiration from the beautiful scenery of Sonoma and Mendocino County and enjoy their supportive artist communities. Although I started painting in oil, and still offer pet portraits in that medium, I also work in watercolor, colored pencil, pen/ink and collage. Most recently, I’ve tried pastels and came to love their texture and softness, especially when used for painting outdoors. Whatever medium I use, I try to capture the emotional essence of what I’m painting.

Susan Blackwelder

Visual Arts: Ceramics, Painting

I am primarily a painter but enjoy dabbling in ceramics, especially clay sculpture. I specialize in portraits of people and pets in oil or pastel though I also enjoy doing landscapes and still life painting. My training in drawing has given me skills that I use in every medium. See more on Susan Blackwelder’s Corner Gallery web page.

Garry Colson

My creative work includes landscape paintings of what I see around me every day. To capture the experience and mood of the subject, I may choose either watercolor, pastels, acrylic, or ink to express what I see and feel.

Suzanne da Rosa

Visual Arts: Crafts, Jewelry, Mixed Media, Printmaking, Textiles; Knitting

I am a knitting historian and master lace knitter. The last 7 years I’ve been researching the earliest knitting manuals from the 1840’s cataloging, reviewing, knitting, updating and charting patterns from these early handwritten lace patterns. In 2021 I created a deck of Victorian Lace Knitting Cards to be used by knitters who want to practice their lace knitting skills, practice designing their own pieces and use them along with their favorite simple patterns to make them their own. The cards are available through my website and will be available for shipping in late January 2022. Along with the cards I’ve designed four Victorian Long Shawl knitting patterns. With this project complete, my 2022 plans are to work with these cards in different mediums than yarn and create outdoor sculptures. I would like to collaborate with other artists to combine lace knitting with other mediums. Other interests include linoleum block printing, solar plate etching and felting and to continue working with Pacific Textile Arts in whatever way I can to increase participation and encourage support of he fiber arts community in the Mendocino/Fort bragg area. Bio/history at: suzannedarosa.com Mendocino Art Center artist in residence (2019-20) bio: https://www.mendocinoartcenter.org/air-20192020/suzanne-da-rosa

Danza Davis

Graphic Arts; Visual Arts: Graphic Arts, Illustration, Murals, Painting, Visual Arts Instructor

Danza Davis is a professional artist based out of Mendocino County, CA. She majored in studio art and botany at Humboldt State University and studied science illustration at California State University Monterey Bay. In addition to her studio practice and public art projects, she is proud to work for California-based Ink Dwell studio whose focus is on creating art that explores the wonders of the natural world. Western Columbine, Acrylic on Canvas,48 x 48 Danza’s current studio work, The Kaleidoscope Series, is a posthumous collaboration with her father that pairs geometric patterns inspired by his work with items from the natural world. North County and Coastal Zone Murals, Mendocino County Juvenile Hall, 2018-2019 Her current public artwork engages incarcerated youth in mural making, made possible by the Arts Council of Mendocino County and the California Arts Council. See more at her website: www.danzadavis.com

Laura Diamondstone

Visual Arts: Mixed Media, Painting, Works on paper

SF Bay area native with many hairpin turns and destinations, currently rooting as a small homesteader in Anderson Valley. Inspired from a lifelong absorption of a spectrum of visual, writing and performing arts by extraordinary and ordinary creatives. My art making is expression, giving tangible form to what sustains inner to environment exchange and dialogue as well as how materials/color/creative process/experience informs and shapes the process. It is an act of indulgence, necessity, and evolution. Abstraction is challenging, experimenting with materials is research, representational and figurative work exercises neurotransmission. I believe in all of it and nature and giving back.

Diza Hope

Visual Arts: Murals, Painting, Works on paper

Diza Hope is a Northern California painter working in oil, acrylic and pencil. She studied at California College of the Arts and draws inspiration mostly from natural forms. Lately she has been interested in investigating the architecture, rigidity and beauty of animal skulls juxtaposed against the delicate, undulating and graceful shapes found in flower petals. Besides the formal interest; the distillation of the skull becomes a symbol of our universality and basic oneness, being that we are all made of the same carbon, calcium and stardust and the flower, a symbol of our impermanence, but also the beauty we all have the capacity to create and share. Color plays an important role in her painting process as well and she enjoys pushing the boundaries between harmony and discord through her use of it.

Sanna Koski

Visual Arts: Painting

Painting and drawing have been a lifelong pursuit for me. I focused on realistic portrait drawing in black and white for many years, before deciding to dedicate myself to learning to paint landscapes and the figure from life in watercolor and oil. I also paint portraits of people as well as animals in both mediums. You can see more at my website: SannaKoski.com I show my artwork at the Prentice Gallery in Mendocino, and I welcome commissions.

Larain Matheson

Visual Arts: Mixed Media, Painting; Encaustic wax and oil

These recent paintings I’ve done reflect my love and inspiration from nature, and abstracting the forms I see in the universe. I have been working in ENCAUSTIC WAX and OILS for over 8 years. I have been an artist for over 35 years and received an M.F.A. from U.CL.A. I am captivated by the medium of encaustic which reveals new space and depth, colors, transparencies and surprises. Use of multimedia and collage in my work to experiment with the pigmented wax , I can pour, paint, monoprint and texture the paintings. My work spans abstract to realism. I am always connecting with the energy of the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. See more at larainmathesonart.com Encaustic is an ancient medium dating back 2000 years, and was used by the Greeks and Egyptians. I am a member of the Encaustic Art Institute in Santa Fe N.M. and have exhibited my work in Mendocino Art Center, Dolphin Gallery , Cirrus Gallery in Marin, Sebastopol Art Center, Berkeley Art Center, and numerous other galleries and shows throughout California and Colorado. My work is published in the EAI catalogue in Santa Fe, and in “Art Takes Miami “book for 2012. I have taught art at Riverside City College, Santa Ana Jr. College and Marin JC . in California. I continue to teach Encaustic Workshops at my ocean studio twice a year, in Fall and Spring. The process I use takes many turns and as long as I am open to the way the paint moves and the process of heating each layer with a torch to “fuse” the paint, the patterns and images begin to emerge. I paint to discover the unseen, make it visible and return to the connections that nature inspires.

Jazzminh Moore

Visual Arts: Illustration, Mixed Media, Painting, Visual Arts Instructor, Works on paper

I was born at Breitenbush Hot Springs in the Willamette National Forest of Oregon. At age two, my mother and I moved to Encinitas, California. My childhood hinged on making this 1200 mile journey twice a year to see my father, first by car and later by plane, and set me up for a life of travel. After high school, I lived in every major city on the west coast and then spent years in NYC, building an art career and traveling the world. I now live in Willits with my six year old daughter. Willits happens to be equidistant between my two childhood homes and for that reason, feels like a perfect place to have landed. Spill, acrylic on birch panel, 23” x 48”, 2013 For nearly twenty years, I was known for painting dynamic portraits with a sense of movement and psychological complexity. In 2018, I ventured into collage and have not looked back. My work has been fundamentally changed. Through the medium of collage, I can unlock subconscious content and imagery heretofore unmined within the confines of representational portraiture. All recent paintings are informed by collages. My work can be viewed at http://www.jazzminhmoore.com I received my BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and MFA from California State University, Long Beach, both in Drawing and Painting. I have had solo exhibitions in NYC, LA, SF, Paris and elsewhere. My work has been featured in various publications, including New American Paintings, American Art Collector Magazine, the Village Voice, Interview and Zing Magazine. Recent teaching experience includes seven years in Cornish College of the Arts’ Summer Program and an intensive painting retreat at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen, Colorado. I currently teach Portrait Painting and Figure Drawing at Mendocino College. Claire de Lune, mixed media, 36” x 36”, 2018

Blake More

Graphic Arts; Literary Arts; Multi Arts; Performing Arts: Dance, Spoken Word, Theatre; Visual Arts: Constructions/Collage, Functional and/or Decorative, Graphic Arts, Murals, New Media/Technology, Painting, Performance Art, Performers and Writers

A 1987 graduate of UCLA and a lifetime member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, Blake More is an artist with many creative voices and expressions. Blurring the boundaries between disciplines, her work embraces visual art, poetry, video, performance, costume design, teaching, functional mixed media art/life pieces and hand-painted art cars, including her newest artcar, a Mercedes SL500 painted with a metallic palette she calls “Star Yantra” (staryantra.life). Blake first stepped on stage in Japan in 1994, when she agreed to recite poetry with a friend’s jazz band at a Shinjuku music club in Tokyo. Since then, she has performed her spoken word art in a range of venues—from cafes, art galleries and museums to 1000 seat theaters—in major cities all over the world, including Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York City, Amsterdam, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Her performance art is a fusion of spoken word, music, yogic contortion, dance, trapeze, clowning and costuming. She creates to reveal, questions to inspire and shares to engage the audience in soulful expression. Among her performance highlights are the time she shared the stage with jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and beat poet Tony Seymour in a Bob Kaufman tribute reading at the Main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, and the International Poetry Festival in Amsterdam (sponsored by the Provost Poets). She has traveled cross country on a performance tour with a group of San Francisco performance artists and musicians that then became the movie “Head Trip”. But her favorite project to date is a multimedia play called Boxing Pandora, which she wrote, produced, costumed, directed and stared in; 75 minutes long, the play itself involved the efforts of over 20 local artists and included an original score, original video (both live and prerecorded), a 13 member Greek-inspired chorus, poetic monologue, dance, audience participation and a trapeze (no monkeys though). A freelance writer for 15 years, Blake’s work appeared in Utne Reader, Yoga Journal, Intuition Magazine Alternative Medicine Digest and Tokyo Time Out. To date, she has written two non-fiction books, one fiction book, and three poetry chapbooks. Her most successful book is a holistic health book entitled Alternative Medicine’s Definitive Guide to Headaches, which has sold over 100,000 copies sold to date. Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals and books, including Heart Flip (CPITS anthology), The Alchemy Of The Word: Voices At the Edge, San Francisco Poets Live At Venue 9, Wood, Water, Air and Fire: Anthology of Mendocino Women Poets, Hard Love: Looking at Violence & Intimacy, The Toaster Broke, So We’re Going To Get Married. Author of five books of poetry, her book godmeat is a collection of poetry, prose, color artwork, and a DVD compilation of poem movies (available at godmeat.com), and her chapbook Up In the Me World is available on her website. In addition to her writing, she teaches poetry, multimedia art and performance to K-12 youth. A California Poets In the Schools (CPITS) poet teacher since 2000, she is also the Mendocino County Area Coordinator for CPITS. She organizes two annual Mendocino County High Schgool Poetry Slams and serves as the coach of the Point Arena Youth Poetry Slam Team. She also writes grants to do special, longer residencies, including: One of these projects was entitled “The Poetry Of The Blues”, in which she and New Orleans blues pianist Nelson Lunding guided 2nd thru 8th grade students in the writing of original 12 bar blues songs (with titles such as “Rocks in my Shoes”, “Our Bus Life” “Soap Opera School”), which were then arranged by Nelson and sung by the kids. These recordings were compiled into five original Kids Blues CDs, and one compilation CD entitled “We’re Playing Blues”, which is currently on sale as a fundraiser for “Gualala Arts In the Schools”. In another especially noteworthy youth project, she and videographer Christian Birk guided six Native American youth in the creation of a documentary film about living on the Pomo Reservations of Kashia, Point Arena, and Manchester in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. Because of its raw power and unadorned honesty, the youth film crew became one of 14 youth groups in the nation to be invited to participate in the 2003 Reel Studio Young Filmmakers Workshop at Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah; the film has been widely shown to diverse audiences, from schools to art centers, from tribal centers to businesses and social service organizations. It even managed to land a spot on the shelf in the Smithsonian Cultural Heritage Library. She hosts an hour-long public affairs program called Women’s Voices on KZYX&Z FM Mendocino. She is also sits on several non-profit arts and education boards, and volunteers with many local organizations. For an extensive list and exploration of Blake More’s creative world please visit her website: www.snakelyone.com

Performing Arts: Spoken Word, Storytelling, Vocal; Visual Arts: Film, Illustration, Murals, Painting, Performance Art, Visual Arts Instructor, Works on paper

JAYE ALISON MOSCARIELLO, MFA, Transart Institute/Plymouth University Cell/Studio: 310.970.4517 artisall@earthlink.net www.chasethemonkey.org BORN New Haven, CT RESIDE Redwood Valley, CA SELECTED MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS 2007 “The Last Show,” Asto International Art Festival, Asto Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA “Simultaneous Multiplicity,” Asto Museum, Los Angeles, CA Gwangwhamoon Int’l Art Festival, Korea National Assembly Library of Korea GIAF, Korean Cultural Center, Bejing, China 2006 “15th Lantern of the East LA International,” Asto Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2002 “Mane Manebu,” Kid’s Plaza Museum, Osaka, Japan. 2000 “Bridging Two Milleniums,” Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India 1999 “Group Show,” Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India. Rutman, Howard, “What’s Up & Coming,” LA City Search.com, January 2002. Emenegger, Ashley, “How to Get Unstuck,” Artline Newsletter, Los Angeles, CA, Fall 2001. Etkin, Jay S., “Body & Self – A Hit in Memphis,” I.A.S.G. Newsletter, vol.7, num.2, Mar 2000. Lalit Kala Akademi, Catalog, I.A.S.G. Invitational, March 1999. Shaw, David, “1nE Review,” Memphis Flyer, Memphis, TN, December 1999. Shay, Daniel, “7th Street Int’l: Round Up the Usual Suspects,” I.A.S.G. Newsletter, vol.4, num.10, Washington, DC, December 1997. ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCIES 2006 – 2008 SEA, Montebello, CA Berendo Middle School, Los Angeles, CA La Vida West Pregnant Minor Program, Lawndale, CA Sponsored by Theatre of Hearts/Youth First, Los Angeles, CA PUBLIC ART 2008 Walgrove Elementary School – Courtyard Mural , Mar Vista, CA Hillcrest Elementary School – Outdoor Mural, Los Angelels,CA 2007 99th Street Elementary School, Library Mural, Los Angeles, CA 42nd Street Elementary School, Outdoor Mural, Los Angeles, CA ART WORKSHOPS 2000-2005 “Breaking Out”, Art Bootcamp for Blocked Creatives, Santa Monica, CA “One Minute Storytelling” Sister Corita Art Center, Los Angeles, CA “Sending a Message,” Sister Corita Art Center, LA, CA EDUCATION MFA, Transart Institute/Plymouth University, Berlin, Germany and Plymouth,UK

Jaye Alison Moscariello

Performing Arts: Storytelling, Vocal; Visual Arts: Film, Murals, Painting, Performance Art, Visual Arts Instructor, Works on paper

JAYE ALISON MOSCARIELLO 12400 Bakers Creek Rd. Redwood Valley, CA 95470 310.970.4517 artisall@earthlink.net www.chasethemonkey.org www.jayesite.com @jayepo BORN New Haven, CT RESIDE Redwood Valley, CA EDUCATION 2013 – 2015 Transart Institute, Berlin, Germany and New York, New York Masters of Fine Art 2012-2013 Mendocino College, Ukiah, CA 2004 Santa Monica Community College, Santa Monica, CA 2000 University of California Los Angeles, CA 1993 Art Students League of New York, New York, NY 1977-1978 Creative Arts Workshop Studio, New Haven, CT 1972-1976 Paier College of Art, Hamden, CT SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2016 “The Anthropocene Show”, Redwood Valley Grange, Redwood Valley, CA* 2015 “Transient Transgressions”, Somos Gallery, Berlin, Germany* 2015 “Loose Ends”, Somos Gallery, Berlin, Germany 2014 “Pop-Up” Show, Transart Institute at Somos Gallery, Berlin, Germany (July) 2014 “Fifth Annual Altered Books Exhibition”, MarinMOCA, Novato, CA (Apr.) 2013 “Pop-Up” Show, Transart Institute at SuperMarket, Berlin, Germany 2012 “Food for Thought” Mendocino College Art Gallery, Ukiah, CA 2012 “Anderson Valley Artists” Oddfellows Hall, Mendocino, CA 2010 “Anderson Valley Artists” Oddfellows Hall, Mendocino, CA “Artist Collective at Elk at Gualala” Gualala Arts Center, Gualala, CA 2009 “Artists Collective at Elk” Gualala Arts Center, Gualala, CA* “113th Annual Open Juried Exhibition” Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, National Arts Club, NY “Art in the Redwoods,” Gualala Arts Center, Gualala, CA 2007 “The Last Show”, Asto International Art Festival, Asto Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA “Simultaneous Multiplicity,” Asto Museum, Los Angeles, CA Gwangwhamoon Int’l Art Festival, Korea National Assembly Library of Korea GIAF, Korean Cultural Center, Bejing, China 2007 “Paris Open 2007” Atelier Grognard, Rueill-MalMaison, France/Espace, Villpinte, France 2007 “THE Swimming Pool Show” ROARK, Los Angeles, CA 2006 “15th Lantern of the East LA International,” Asto Museum, Los Angeles, CA 2006 “15th Lantern of the East LA International,” Doizaki Gallery, Japanese American Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA 2006 “10 Points of View,” ROARK Gallery, Los Angeles, CA * 2004 “Hollywood Bowl Sphere Art Project,” Cause & Effect Gallery, Torrance, CA. 2003 “From Korea to Iraq…” Anti War Posters Show, Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA. 2002 “Reactions,” The Williamson Gallery, Pasadena, CA. “Naughty Bits & Pieces,” Gallery 825, Los Angeles, CA. curated by Christopher Miles “Reactions,” Exit Art, New York, NY 2002 “Mane Manebu,” Kid’s Plaza Museum, Osaka, Japan. 2001 “California Open,” curator, Christopher Miles, Gallery 825, Los Angeles, CA. “Watermedia,” Bigfork Art & Cultural Center, Bigfork, MT. 2001 “It Figures,” Key Club Video Billboard Show, Los Angeles, CA.4- Person Show, 1st LA Billboard art show. page 2/Moscariello 2001 “Lust & Revenge in the Year of the Snake,” Josephine Butler Center, Washington, DC. 2001 “I.A.S.G. at MOCA,” Museum of Contemporary Art DC, Washington, DC. 2000 “Bridging Two Milleniums,” Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India 2000 “Invitational,” MOCA-DC, Washington, DC. 2000 “California Open,” curated by Carol Ann Kloneides, Gallery 825, Los Angeles, CA “Reflections of Humanity,” Marlboro Gallery, Largo, MD. “Body & Self,” Cooper Street Contemporary Gallery, Memphis, TN.* 1999 “1nE,” Vertigo Gallery, Memphis, TN. 1999 “I.A.S.G. Group Show,” Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, India. 1998 “Downtown Lives_,” Downtown Artists Development Association, Los Angeles, CA “Erotica,” Olympia Hall, London, England. “Speak Out_,” Matrix Arts Gallery, Sacramento, CA. 1997 “Generations,” A.I.R. Gallery -25th Anniversary Invitational, New York, NY. 1994 “Art of Northeast America,” curated by Holly Solomon, Silvermine Artists Guild, New Canaan, CT “Group 1V,” Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Brooklyn, NY. 1993 “Art of Northeast America,” curated by Eliza Rathbone, Silvermine Artists Guild, New Canaan, CT “Group Annual,” Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Armory, Brooklyn, NY. 1992 “Salon of the Mating Spider,” Testsite, Williamsburg, NY. “Annual Show,” Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, New York, NY. SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2017 “Politic-OH!”, Willits Center for the Arts, Willits, CA, Oct. 2011 “Chase the Monkey,” Scharffenberger Cellars Art Gallery, Philo, CA 2010 “Mendocino Coast” Lauren’s, Boonville, CA “Land and Sea,” Artists Collective at Elk, Elk,CA “Ocean Series,” Canele, Los Angeles, CA 2003 “Narrative Works,” Flynn Gallery, Raleigh, NC 2002 “Inside/Out,” Modern Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA SELECTED ARTICLES AND PUBLICATIONS Reith, Sarah, “The Anthropocene Show”, Ukiah Daily Journal, April 2016 Museum of Contemporary Art – KIASMA Studio,“In the Middle of a Movie,” Catalog, Helsinki, Finland, November 2004. Dickson, Laurie, “Artists Interiors…,” Rockport Publishing, November 2003. Mastbaum, Blair, “Art Pick,” DigitalCity.LA, Los Angeles, CA, November 2002. Emenegger, Ashley, “Drive-by Art,” Artline Newsletter, Los Angeles, CA, Spring 2002. Rutman, Howard, “What’s Up & Coming,” LA City Search.com, January 2002. Emenegger, Ashley, “How to Get Unstuck,” Artline Newsletter, Los Angeles, CA, Fall 2001. Etkin, Jay S., “Body & Self – A Hit in Memphis,” I.A.S.G. Newsletter, vol.7, num.2, Mar 2000. Lalit Kala Akademi, Catalog, I.A.S.G. Invitational, March 1999. Shaw, David, “1nE Review,” Memphis Flyer, Memphis, TN, December 1999. Shay, Daniel, “7th Street Int’l: Round Up the Usual Suspects,” I.A.S.G. Newsletter, vol.4, num.10, Washington, DC, December 1997. . SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Los Angeles, CA Library of Congress, Washington, DC National Archives, Washington, DC Paier College of Art, Hamden, CT St. Joseph’s Hospital, Bob Hope Wing, Los Angeles, CA *Co-curator

Bill Mulvihill

Graphic Arts; Media; Visual Arts: Graphic Arts, Mixed Media, Painting, Works on paper

Bill Mulvihill has lived on the north coast since 1970. In the early seventies he worked with Mendocino Art Center instructors Charles Stevenson and Dorr Bothwell. He was also involved in theatre productions performed there, doing posters, stage managing, costume and set design. In the years since then, Bill has worked in many art mediums, drawing, portraiture and printmaking being particular favorites. After completing the College of the Redwoods Graphic Communications Program, he received the certificate in May 2007. Currently, in addition to working with the Arts Council of Mendocino County, he is assistant editor for the Fort Bragg – Mendocino Coast Historical Society newsletter, “Voice of the Past”. Bill also does other design/layout work, digitizing analog audio, & CD and DVD disc design and duplication.

Marie Pera

Visual Arts: Graphic Arts, Illustration, Mixed Media, Painting

I am a visual artist who loves to paint and to draw. I have two teaching credentials-mulitsubject with an art option and secondary education for art and english. Since 2009 I have been retired from full time teaching. I am an active member of MCAA in Ukiah and also the Ukiah Valley Artist Cooperative. In addition I have memberships in the DeYoung Museum and the Olive Hyde Art Center in Fremont. For the past six years I have taught preK-high school art classes for he GASP program.

Janet Rosen

Visual Arts: Illustration, Painting, Works on paper

Why make art? For many of us it is a way to mediate reality, to integrate and make sense of the world and then put it “out there” for others to experience. My aim is to create a narrative with enough space for the viewer to enter and find their own story. See more drawings & paintings in the gallery below and at www.janetrosen.com I enjoy working in series, some of which may be completed within weeks while others encompass years of intermittent work. Most projects end up being meditations on time, whether it’s capturing the play of light on moving water, the distortion of time created by illness or isolation, the passage of the sun and the seasons across an oak-studded hill, or the temporality of human life. During the pandemic I began a daily drawing practice focused on the faces of fellow artists on the Sktchy app and more recently this has led me to picking up water-soluble oils for portraiture. You can reach Janet Rosen at mendojanet(at)gmail.com

Lillian Rubie

Visual Arts: Illustration, Mixed Media, Painting, Performers and Writers, Photography

Owner/Artist at Lillian Rubie Photography & Illustration and co-founder of Deep Valley Arts Collective. Lillian is a photographer and illustrator. She has a love of children’s books, costuming, Old Hollywood photography, and all things Halloween.

Lauren Sinnott

Visual Arts: Murals, Painting, Works on paper

I am an artist, historian and former politician. www.goddess.graphics will show you how so many things in my life and work have recently come together in the perfect project: my monumental history mural on the north wall of the Ukiah Valley Conference Center. But let’s back up a little. My diverse portfolio is partly the result of making a living through art in the modern world. Before photography was invented, everyone would want me to create their image. Now, it’s really only dogs that people commission portraits of. I even paid a vet bill once with a mural of dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and mice. At Point Arena High School, I painted a face that gets walked on: the sports mascot, a 6 ft. grinning pirate on the floor of the basketball court. A local big wave surfer modeled. Art entwines with life… and also its loss. That surfer was part of my California family and I portrayed him as a life-size 3-dimensional winged angel after his death at sea. The lady who commissioned this work died recently and now the angel has come back to me. It all started in Wisconsin’s dairyland, where I was raised by an artist mother and poet father. My mom supported us on graphic design, and as a toddler I worked at a little table alongside her. Our house was filled with paintings and books. It was the Age of Aquarius and I knew I was supposed to be at Woodstock, but it was impossible. I was ten. I spent my senior year as an AFS exchange student in Belgium, speaking only French and learning to take class notes in perfect outline form. I discovered the art of conversation, four-hundred year old homes and good coffee. It was there that I began to feel the pull of an old culture living still where it had always been. Back from Belgium, I attended Rice University in wonderfully hot and humid Houston, TX. I earned a BA in Art and French, then a BFA in painting, and an MA in Art History. During graduate study, I encountered a work whose untold story began to open before me, becoming the subject of my thesis, The Double Portrait of Two Men in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. And the story blossomed again with stunning new research on the part of several scholars, leading to my recent paper, Beloved Disciple: Vittore Belliniano and a Double Portrait of Two Men, which explores the possibility that the exalted Venetian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini and his head of studio were lovers. I taught art history for several years at the museum school, painted my most exquisite mural in a private bathroom, and became a single mother of two. But I yearned for the ocean! Not the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, which I had never even seen. And Northern California to be specific, because friends had told me “Your kind of people live there.” My boys and I left town in a converted school bus with a wood stove and beds. We found Point Arena located with its lighthouse on a jutting tip of land WEST of the San Andreas fault. This is the other California, where populations are dwarfed by the ridged landscape and pounding ocean. This is exactly what I was looking for, except I forgot that it was going to be impossible to get my PhD. The consolation prize was my life in politics as City Council member and then Mayor of one of only four incorporated cities in Mendocino County. Point Arena is the seventh tiniest city in California, which meant the city staff was small and overworked, and our jobs as elected officials were large and unending. On top of legislative activity, we also had the tasks of employee hiring, evaluating, and firing. It helped to have an eye for detail. It didn’t help to earn only $100 a month. (See more about fights and triumphs in city government and much more of my artwork on my main website www.artgoddess.com which will be sleek and modern by Christmas!) My boys and I lived in our bus in the fragrant manzanita forest for a year and when we moved to town I supported us with art and rent. I took jobs ranging from art cars to tombstone design, from wedding dresses to sewing a life-size brocade torso complete with all female reproductive parts for a doctor. I created the Velvet Vulva line of purses for the lesbian, feminist and enlightened market. I painted curbs and hemmed pants. Business signs and design services were a mainstay. I picked blackberries, ate wild mustard greens, baked my own bread, and gleaned apples from the ground. We took in a parade of roommates to make ends meet. My house was teeming with the boys and their friends, and was full of books and paintings. Recently my son who learned Mandarin and now lives in Taiwan paid me a compliment. He said, “Mom, I never knew we were poor.” And of course, in real terms, we weren’t. All of these experiences have caused me to reflect on the ultimate purpose of the artist and the historian. Art history is a jeweled necklace, a string of masterpieces threaded on inspiration from around the world. Yet art was made by, for, and about real people who led complex lives. A man who loved men and didn’t have wealth or a noble patron in 15th-century Venice could be burned alive in the Piazza San Marco. Ghosts walk in those grand cities and on the quiet streets of my own town, where no more than a century ago, it was permitted to shoot an Indian after dark. Forced servitude, kidnappings and massacres took place across California, including multiple occurrences here in Mendocino County. During the 1850s, the new state government’s official position was denial of rights and extermination was seen as inevitable. Depravity haunts exaltation, and the sacred charge of the historian is to give voice to the fallen, to shine light on the common and hidden, as well as the great. As a Renaissance painting mutely accomplishes merely by surviving, the historian keeps a subject alive with his published words, and the muralist with her imagery. I love the motto of Yale University: Lux et Veritas. Light and Truth – with one we find the other. My current, four-year project, the huge historical narrative mural on the north wall of the Ukiah Valley Conference Center, is the result of these threads interweaving. I can use all those hours of life drawing, all of that house painting, all my knowledge of narrative art through the centuries, and all my experience working with the public in administration. This is a public work for everyone and about everyone. It contains over one-hundred portraits so far and tells many stories of people who live here now. People can see why this art has meaning. They understand the argument I once presented to a dear friend over dinner: “You will be fascinated,” he was informed, looking doubtful as he questioned art history and the importance of such things. “History is to humanity as memory is to the individual,” I said. We are each of us walking backwards into the future. “Would you want to do that with your eyes shut?” My companion smiled, saw it was true, and ordered champagne, since he was about to hear what had been revealed by a Venetian inventory from 1569.* *That the great collection of Gabriele Vendramin included a little box portrait of Giovanni Bellini with the portrait of Vittore, his disciple, on its cover.

Barbara Ware

Visual Arts: Mixed Media, Painting

I came to Potter Valley in 1973 and live quite remotely near the Eel River. My garden, the natural beauty of Mendocino County, and the plants and animals that surround me give me the majority of my inspiration. I work primarily with watercolor and acrylics and love experimenting with mixed media. I’m in love with my experience with color as I paint, the mingling and mixing of colors on the page. And I love the total engagement that absorbs my full concentration in the process of painting. It’s transforming!

Laura Wiecek

Visual Arts: Crafts, Mixed Media, Painting, Textiles, Works on paper; Book Art

Go to my website ShesNartist.net for all information

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