Postcard

Ben Millerwhite

Clarissa Charles

http://arrowpiercedheart.com/Index.shtml

I'm Clarissa, a painter. If I could, I would draw and paint all the time. I marker up CDs, paint flaming hearts on buildings, draw cats in chalk on the sidewalk, sketch portraits on the back of government forms, sculpt insanely-detailed clay busts while on the phone, and sometimes I paint on canvases.

I trained at the University of North Texas, which surprisingly (for being in Texas) has a good art school; I moved/fled to California in 2000, where artists are known to paint things other than horses at pasture and cherubs saluting flags.

My painting style is illustrative. The images have a storybook quality and are populated with mischievous and curious characters. The paintings are theatrical and rich, textural, using highly pigmented colors and deep blacks.

Influences include broken hearts, Japanese animation, jilted lovers, rusty cars, hearts and arrows, keys and locks, crowds, wiry dogs, crows, calamity, foxes, serendipity and coffee.

Denise Collier

I am a stationery designer by day, artist by night, bound together by my love of paper. Paper. I love its functionality, simplicity, and beauty. It can be flat and take up very little space, or it can be folded, sculpted, stacked in three-dimensions.

My artistic education harkens back to Kindergarten, when I “mastered” cut-and-paste using construction paper and that glue all the kids ate. As a five-year-old my world perspective was fresh and innocent. Today, my 3-year-old daughter keeps that perspective alive and covers the walls in our Emeryville home with her art; she is a constant source of inspiration. I still enjoy gluing paper to paper. Collage is great because almost anyone can do it and my challenge is taking a simple medium that is paper and to give it a unique spin that reflects me.

I am a fourth-generation Japanese American and spent much of my childhood being more “American” than “Japanese.” Now that I’m an adult, I am curious about my roots and want to learn as much as I can about my cultural and ethnic background. I am inspired by Japanese dance like the summertime dancing festival called obon-odori, Japanese dress like the kimono from the Heian and Edo periods, and the Japanese love of nature, from the delicate Sakura cherry blossom to the stoic Mt. Fuji.

My aim is to find an artistic balance between Eastern sensibility and Western design. The papers I incorporate in my pieces range from Japanese silk-screened papers referred to as Yuzen or Washi that are dense and rich in design to the delicate Thai Unryu tissue paper that conjure up images of airiness and clouds and represent the transient nature of life.

Heather Feeney

Melissa West

Michele Rudenko

http://artofraku.com/

After many year of expression through a variety of artistic media I found my true passion in ceramics, more specifically through the art of American Raku.

I deeply appreciate the entire journey from its beginning as a quiet contemplative moment when I first press my hands into a mass of clay. What follows entails the design and crafting of a piece, it’s burnishing, bisque, glazing and then completing with the Raku firing and post firing reduction phase.

My work grows and expands, subjected to a vast range of influences. I love pushing the limits of the clay, experimenting with and fabricating new glazes and firing techniques.

American Raku is a specific challenge. While I can and do plan for a particular outcome, the very nature of Raku often creates a result that is surprisingly different from my original vision resulting in the unique power of each piece. Raku is a marvelous lesson in non-attachment, guiding me toward a deeper understanding of myself, the process and abundant possibility.

Michelle Logan

Sara Waugh

The images I create are inspired by my background in archaeology and science as well as my interest in gender and sexuality. My paintings combine imagery of nude women or mermaids with that of sea creatures and other water-inspired motifs. I work with a mix of media including watercolor, gouache, acrylic, ink, oil stick, and pastel on watercolor paper to create these introspective and dream-like worlds. The source material for the nudes in my work includes pornographic magazines and self-portraiture. I am interested in the art-historic roles of artist and model, and I enjoy playing with and challenging these traditional roles in my work. In addition, I am exploring ideas of female sexual power and the voyeuristic implications of looking at art.

Star Woodward

http://web.mac.com/starwoodward/stars/Art_of_Allowing_-_Hubcaps!.html

Star Woodward has been entertaining herself in various ways her whole life: singing dancing painting building crocheting dressing up writing glueing; lately mostly painting and mostly hubcaps and some bowling pins. she used to find them on the side of the road and in bowling alleys. now people just bring them to her. the most asked question? do you put the hubcaps back on the cars? the answer is that they are mostly pretty broken when we pick them up. and the pins could be bowled with, but why? they are really in retirement an would rather just sit pretty.

Susan Van Der Mellen

Talya Jackson

Telopa

Tim Brown

Tom McCormick