SUBMISSION GALLERY & ARTIST INFORMATION
Sohini Basu (she/her)
Ava Bock (she/her)
As I Live and Breathe
AAJIR IN BENGALI ("THE BONDED LABOUR")
Carol Bouyoucos (she/her)
A Storm is Coming
Kris Campbell (she/her)
installation of #iamCOLOR: #iamRED, & #iamPINK
Susan Casey (she/her)
Propagation
Meghan Oona Clifford (she/her)
Dancing with the Baby
Claire Coté (she/her)
Finding Your Song
Amy Daileda (she/her)
Yarrow
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Sohini Basu is a theatre and dance artist for more than two decades. A Nrtiya Prabhakar in Kathak dance – an Indian Classical Dance form, and a trained theatre practitioner from Lebedoff School at Russian Cultural Centre, Kolkata, India, she is now a part of the theatre group, Shudrka Hyderabad. She is also an All India Radio artist in elocution and drama divisions. She has performed in more than 15 stage plays and 20 radio dramas and elocution programmes. Her deepest passion is to find a way to combine my background in Bengali (her mother tongue) theatre with her current explorations in dance and theatre for social change.
Sohini’s current project is on Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) which is an effective tool for generating collective social action. She works with young men and women with refugee background to better the dynamics of the oppressions and to recognize how participants themselves can become agents of change themselves. TO is not about helping others only, it is essentially about how to fight the oppression in a nonviolent way, which means constructing a situation in which the oppressed acquire agency rather than remaining passive recipients.
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Mahasweta Devi’s “Aajir” (The Bonded Labour) – a production in 2015 - is a story of a slave held by a bond signed by an ancestor – a slavery that denies him the right to love, marry and live a life of a human being – discovering that the bond has long turned to dust, but discovering it only too late, is a metaphor for the traditional constraints that bind the individual in our country long after their legal authority has given way. Sohini played the role of the master’s wife, Mataang. He relegates his wife to a position of inferiority and subjugation tantamounting almost to the bonded position of Paatan. Religious traditions, under the preponderant influence of Hinduism, provide the ideological basis for patriarchy and assign women an inferior role in the family and society.
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Carol Bouyoucos is a contemporary American artist whose photography-based work is created in collaboration with new media, or digital technology. The artist explains: “ I shoot with an iPhone and manipulate my pictures using various in-phone apps and Photoshop. The inherent features of these A.I. programs are as important in directing my work as the choices I make within their vast menu of tools.” Born in 1959 in Ohio, Carol has a BFA from The University of Michigan’s School of Art and Architecture. She has exhibited her work internationally, and considers her most successful efforts to be her collaborations with fellow artists and curators. Ms. Bouyoucos lives and works on The Marsh Sanctuary in Mount Kisco, NY.
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In this piece, the intersection of nature and technology has opened a new visual language for me to tell the story of an urgent environmental situation.
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Kris Campbell is an artist from New York who is a contemporary fiber artist that has an MFA from School of Visual Arts, a BA from Lafayette College, and studied art theory at the original Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
Recently, Kris was named 2021 Visual Artist of the Year for Rockland County, NY.
Color, Surface and Soul are the ideas threaded throughout the work. Barriers, energy and space connect the ideas. She has big ideas.
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In 2020, I started a new series in response to the pandemic.
Indoor spaces were not safe or even open. To see art, art had to go outside. The #iamCOLOR series is intended to be hung from trees or in the open field.
During the quarantine, I looked at art every day online, through Instagram. The new series is intended to be photographed and posted to social media. When a person stands in front of the piece, it will make a crown, a halo of color. They will see themselves and others in their glory, Their true colors shining through. The art is complete when the viewer has their picture taken with the piece.
Each piece is of a flower on 9 foot square plastic debris netting, and each flower is part of the rainbow. Our souls vibrate with different colors. These works complement soul colors. When the series is complete, the entire series will make a crown on the earth.
The people complete it. I miss people.
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Susan Casey is a sculptor based in Philadelphia, PA who makes work out of discarded items and handmade paper. Her relatively ephemeral sculptures can feel tender, yet anguished, and eerie, yet dream-like. She often applies the haunting quality of her handmade paper to iconic visual references like industrial chains and childhood ephemera in order to explore the daunting topics of dysfunctional family dynamics, the deterioration of compassion in our social contracts, and the snowballing climate crisis.
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In "Propagation" I draw parallels between planting a garden box and planning for childhood. The paper castings of porcelain doll parts balance over copper stems standing proud above the wood base. A plan is in place, but no roots are established and the future is unknown.
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Born on 7/7/77, Meghan Oona was blessed with a sense of magic early on. She made art since she could hold a crayon.
Following dreams of enchanted forests to the West Coast, Meghan Oona graduated from Evergreen State College with her BA in Interdisciplinary Art, then earned her MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Her work has been featured by MTV, Bored Panda, The Art People, Pool Tradeshow, Surrender to the Flow, PhanArt, moreTrees clothing, Lip Magazine, White Apricot, Carve Out Time for Art, The Utne Reader, Eco-Chick, G Living Network, iCanvas, We'Moon, and Meditation Talks. Her art is enjoyed by private collectors around the world.
She lives on five acres in Santa Cruz County, CA with her husband and two miracle babies. Every day they wake up and say "Good morning, we are blessed."
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I am an interdisciplinary artist experienced in video, sound, animation, installation, eco interventions, textiles, and computer art. Painting is my true love and the foundation of my practice.
My work explores energy, movement, and consciousness. With personal and ancestral history steeped in textile work, I like to think I'm painting the fabric of the universe.
I weave colors together with a biomorphic, freestyle painting technique. I work with acrylic on paper-mounted wood panels, and I use animation to enhance the 2D work with hypnotic, mesmerizing energy.
I’m interested in illuminating and activating those little moments of enlightenment we all have - a sudden feeling of wholeness, a glimpse of awareness, a memory of our interconnection, or a release of emotional pain.
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"Dancing with the Baby" is acrylic on paper-mounted cradled wood panel, 20x24." It explored movement and joy, and was partially painted in the kitchen, while dancing with the baby. However, I realized it was going to get spilled on so I finished it in the studio ;)
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I am a multi-passionate artist, mother, off-grid homemaker and community collaborator in the Northern New Mexico high desert. I make art to awaken the senses, and to remind myself and others to take time to notice. For me, art is a form of field work, a study of “place,” interdependence and the human experience. Motherhood, rural living, off-grid homemaking, experimentation and collaboration are all strands of my practice. Collaborators come in many forms - family members, other artists, community members, elements of place and materials too, textures, pigments, papers, fibers, especially those sourced from daily life. I experiment across mediums - drawing, water-based painting, collage, cyanotype, sound and occasionally interactive sculpture, installation and social practice. I love to make art outdoors and to bring the outdoors into my art.
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Medium: Cyanotype, pigment pen, joss paper, and cold wax on floated panel
Physical Size: 12 in x 6 inch
Delicate botanical forms in black pigment pen combine with flowing flowing cyanotype gestures in this work on paper. This piece steams from my series, "Botanical Shadows" that celebrates the experience and color symphony of unique microclimates and plant species in Northern NM. Plein air interactions of light, shadow and wind reveal intricate, ephemeral, plant form silhouettes. I arrive in a place - a corner of my high desert yard, bank of the Rio Grande or alpine trail. Survey. Explore. Absorb. Next, a “Calligraphy of Place” - loose strokes reflecting landscape, light and movement. Wait. Watch. Listen. What plants are inviting me in? With my paper on the ground, I catch shadows, watch them move, observe shapes. Between gusts of wind and sun going behind clouds, I quickly render plant shadow contours cast on my paper with black pigment pen. With leisure in this place or in my home or studio, I darken this detailed silhouette, research plant names, qualities and significances. My goal is understanding and relationship. This process connects me with a place, members of its botanical family and unique moments of elemental play. The artifacts of these evanescent experiences, allow me to share this relationship with others.
The botanical shadows in "Finding Your Song" is that of Convolvulus arvensis, "field bindweed, captured near my tiny off-grid studio, Hope House Property, Virsylvia Farm, on Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), Pueblos, Jicarilla Apache lands in present day Northern New Mexico. (Information gathered using @NativeLandNet app, https://native-land.ca/)
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Amy Daileda explores the beauty and infinity found in the details of nature through her vibrant painting and macro photography. By sharing her passion for plants and the vivid universe she sees within them, she invites others to connect to nature and live harmoniously with our planet. Amy has a degree in painting from the University of Nevada, Reno, and is an award winning slow fashion designer. She has shown her work around the Pacific Northwest as well as in London. She works out of her Portland, Oregon home studio that overlooks her Backyard Habitat Certified garden, which is a constant source of inspiration for her art.
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When you look closely at Achillea millefolium, aka Yarrow, you can see that it is a flower made up of many tiny flowers. This painting features only one of those tiny flowers. I painted it with the aid of macro photos that I took in the garden. Yarrow is a Pacific Northwest native plant. It is used in a wide variety of medicinal preparations by many Native American people.
Elizabeth Edelstein (she/her)
Four Seasons
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Elizabeth is a multi media artist focusing on abstract visual art.
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Acrylic painting, 3.5’x4.5’.
Carine Fabritius (she/her)
Sleeping Leaf
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Helsinki-based artist Carine Fabritius creates emotionally resonant works that explore space and the relationship with nature. Skilled in installation art, photography, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality, Fabritius combines large and small-scale spaces to craft immersive experiences. Her works feature various spaces, including nested, layered, physical, digital, and symbolic, unified by strong colors, contrast and narrative. By integrating new technologies with a content-driven approach, Fabritius pushes the boundaries of artistic expression to connect with audiences and spark meaningful conversations. Fabritius received her MFA from the Uniarts Helsinki's Academy Of Fine Arts in 2017.
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Sleeping Leaf
2022
Duration: ∞
Still-image
Augmented reality: Instagram face effectSleeping Leaf is an interactive augmented reality (AR) face filter which reacts to the viewer's facial expressions. Sleeping Leaf opens the way to touch our inner space and creativity.
The starting point of the work is old Finnish beliefs about spirits and creatures living in forests. In Finnish mythology, trees and bushes were associated with beliefs about good and evil forces. Sacrifices were made to the tree spirits and trees were used to communicate with the dead and heal sick. The tree spirits were asked for protection and luck.
The artwork asks what kind of relationship modern humans have with nature, technology and mythology. Could old beliefs about nature help us appreciate more our planet, the space we live in?
Harper Hazelmare (she/they)
Pollinator
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Harper Hazelmare (she/they + we/our/ours) is a non-binary, queer botanical artist, writer of cautionary tales, and keeper of a community apothecary. When not loving the color yellow, they are most often experimenting in their home studio with found objects or growing black peppermint for Herbalists Without Borders.
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Acrylic on board
Betty Holloway (she/her)
'Portrait of a Woman' (From an on-going body of work called 'Perception is an Ecology'
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Question:
Who you are and what kind of art you make? -
Answer:
I am an Australian-based artist & digital native who produces creative works both in traditional and new media such as A.I & creative code.
I have recently turned my attention to using more digital mediums such as video and machine learning to visualize the recurring patterns of machine-made, natural and perceptual systems. Both hyperreal and abstract, I take my inspiration from personal meditations, lucid dreams, autoscopic encounters and nature; transforming these encounters into scenes suggestive of a synthesis of external and internal realities.
My art is an expression of my continued fascination with data, mechanical processes and in-depth exploration into the concept of perception; in particular the formulation of what it is as an ecology.
Question:
To answer the question 'Why I make it?' -
Answer:
With perception as the foundation of human experience, I hope to contribute disruptive and critical art that aims to deepen our understanding of human nature. The more we can visualize the connections the more we as artists and art audiences become our own agents of power, changing our world through changing our perception of it.
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This artwork is part of an on-going body of work called 'Perception is an Ecology'. I have been creatively exploring systems & tools used in interpreting A.I’s neural network processes (such as the grids in the image).Activation grids seen within my image are used in interpreting A.I’s neural network processes. They offer insight and attempt to make sense of the deep hidden layers of the network to study how they learn visual concepts and identify images.
I am fascinated by these grid breakdowns that show the initial simple pixel patterns it first learns up to higher & higher levels of representations. In my work I see these as a self-reflective tool for ourselves too. What if we had our own visual insights to how our perceptions are formed? Not just the low level perceptual experience of vision but also the higher level cognitive act of making meaning and constructing how we make sense of the world. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we each had visual grids of understandable information to see how each other arrives at their thoughts, assumptions, decisions, behaviours etc? Maybe it could be used to help us understand and empathize with one another better. Or help us with our own perceptual biases & unhealthy patterns of behaviour that we wanted to correct at their important activation locations.
Joey Kleckner
Reven Truh
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Joey Kleckner is an immersive mixed media artist based out of Saint Louis, Mo.
Fascinated with memories, human history and the idea of personally established artifacts she interweaves a metamorphosis of perspectives. Though the use of intersecting mediums from: found objects wearable sculptures, to reflective images printed on alternate materials, and even interactive community based engagements. Joey believes there is so much importance to be found in what lies ahead, while also in looking at what is left behind. By incorporating new technologies in her work the possibilities become never ending to how a person can experience art, directly from the artist perspective! The result is a body of work, carefully curated in storytelling, built on visual imagery, layer it with subconscious messaging and use alternative materials that directly correlate to it. You can find Joey and read more about her latest projects at: JBKreative.com/connect
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What you seen on the surface is not what lies beneath. What you think is deeper level may not be really there. It might be hard to tell the difference but in reality it is all still really there.
Nansi Lent (she/her)
Untitled
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My art is an exploration of language and writing as visual poetry. I work to connect with the collective unconscious across time and cultures.
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This piece represents a language form I have evolved over years.
Laura S Martineé
Traveling through Time
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Writer, illustrator, designer & visual storyteller.
I always try to capture the imperfection in the reaction versus the perfection in the elaborated thought.
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This artwork is based on the metaphor of chance, of the evolution of thought and action based on the current context . The colors gain strenghth, though she feels pale in comparison to her high voltage surreal-looking emotions. She won't stop. She will take the helm of her journey that will take her to the destination her Dreams dictated.
Jocelyn Mathewes (she/her)
Geography of Hope #01
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My current work centers on my everyday experience of chronic illness, related medical procedures, and ongoing treatment—expressed through alternative processes & conceptual experiments in mixed-media. A variety of mediums intermingle in much the way that medication, physical symptoms, and mental health do. I confront the impersonal systems of healing on offer by expressing emotional and spiritual effects of my own illness and medical treatments.
I have found my art practice to be an essential component to my past and ongoing healing process. When that practice is shared with others, it has opened up new opportunities for connection, discovery, and further healing. I find community, which then feeds back into the practice and what I choose to say next about healing. It’s an ongoing dialogue in community with others.
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GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE is a series of mixed-media collages completed in 2021 using vintage road maps, cyanotype origami shapes, acrylic paint, glitter, spray paint, gel pens, cotton gauze, medical wrap, prescription sheets, and more. These mixed-media pieces are meant to capture bits of what it's like to navigate the uncharted landscape of illness--psychological, temporal, emotional. It's full of its own beauty, but made up of scraps of things, of hope mingled with pain and getting up over and over again.
Kira McCoy (she/her)
Line drawing of a bird
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I am a multi disciplinary artist, teacher, and healer. The art I create is inspired by nature and patterns. I love playing between media, often starting with simple pen and ink, digitizing my work, and taking it into various iterations before deciding it is complete.
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I played with the form of "bird" while using arbitrary pattern to suggest feathers and body parts.
Shalini Mitra (she/her)
The awakened
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I am a painter and I work with oils and acrylics. My work is characterized by a fusion of both realism and abstraction as well as a confluence of oriental and occidental styles. My art is focused on equality for all and unrestrained expression.
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Acrylic on canvas (24"X 36")-the message is to dare dream, have the strength to awaken to harsh reality, and the courage to dream again
Jean Gray Mohs (she/her)
Pearl and Pocket
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Jean Gray Mohs, a narrative, abstract artist based in Raleigh, NC, uses her bold, bright objects to bring attention to fragility and resiliency. Selected exhibits include the Contemporary Art Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and Duke University Hospital.
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Through various media and with a current focus on painting and sculpture, her work merges her lived experience as a person with chronic illness and past disability into art. Using maple plywood and waxed thread, she hints at the presence of two bodies born separately but now bound in a new, perfect balance in a reflection of her experience with a double lung transplant.
By using sturdy wood and the seemingly fragile waxed thread as art-making materials, she explores the emotional, physical, and psychological space in those moments of vulnerability, anxiety, fragility, and resiliency. Her work zooms in on ideas of strength, fragility, and balance, a world those with chronic illness know all too well.
Jill Nahrstedt (she/her)
I've Been Here
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Jill Nahrstedt is a visual artist based in Chicago. She is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a member of the Thrive Together Network, a community of over 200 artists from around the world. Through art and travel, Nahrstedt is seeking not answers but questions.
Working primarily in paint, Nahrstedt explores relationships between people, the physical world, and the the memories that build up around us. Nahrstedt layers natural elements in brilliant hues and loose shapes using large brushstrokes and quick movements. She finally weaves delicate details into the compositions with fondness and restraint. The layers create depth in a way traditional collage does, minus the scissors.
Nahrstedt also prints serigraphs of local architectural groupings, dabbles in surf art, and paints portraits of hipsters she sources from social media.
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This painting explores relationships between the self and place. Materials drive discovery while the desire to understand identity, memory, and social consciousness push the work conceptually. The artist is seeking the gasp that occurs when one steps away from a newly made mark and discovers it. Each of those marks also cover something once there, but now hidden. The marks, and those they cover are like riddles about what one can and can’t have. Nahrstedt is balancing the weight of the joy that accompanies creation with the concern for those without access to it. There is a struggle to balance the weight of concern with joy.
Annie Norbeck (she/her)
Over Under II
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Annie Norbeck (b 1979, Chicago suburbs, US) is an oil painter informed by place and landscape. Depending on the subject or emotion being conveyed, her work veers from representation to abstraction. Norbeck holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited work in the northeast and virtually, and currently lives and works in Montclair, NJ. Her work is held in private collections in the US and internationally.
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Borrowing from the tradition of chorography (mapping based on perception versus analysis), I paint associations of place. Informed by land, my work considers themes of appropriation, land use, and absence. The horizon emerges in the composition as a place at once defined and yet unattainable; the limitation of our vision. In exploring these transactional spaces, I define color and form, and then build and remove layers in a physical manner through wiping, scraping, scumbling. I flatten and disfigure space. These actions allow me to mimic how we put distance between ourselves. This perception distortion forms the base for the work.
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oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches. When I paint I'm often thinking about the 'ease' and difficulty of physical distance, and what we share vs what we keep to ourselves. In this case, the dual meaning also leans on the betting term over/under, relating to the likelihood of an outcome being more or less than the expected result.
Jen Palmer (she/her)
Waveform
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Jen Palmer was born in Southwestern Pennsylvania in 1981 and currently resides in Savannah, Georgia. She studied foundations, fashion, and photography at the Columbus College of Art and Design. She earned her BA in studio art at Seton Hill University and completed coursework in art therapy at the graduate level. Palmer also earned a MA in digital photography from the Savannah College of Art & Design.
Palmer is a multidisciplinary artist who uses her practice to hold space. Her process begins with intuitive artmaking as a meditative exercise, and over time becomes a dataset of phenomenological knowledge. She digitizes the body of work and uses it to train an artificial intelligence model. She continues working with the AI-generated results, reflecting on internal themes and patterns.
Palmer acknowledges that the process is similar to therapy in its reflectivity. For her and the viewer, her work accesses acceptance and harmony through ever-shifting shapes that culminate in printed and digital forms.
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I'm a multidisciplinary, chronically ill, and disabled artist making expressions of radical hope. I work with a variety of media and artificial intelligence.
I'm drawn to the reflective nature of AI, its ability to converse beyond language, and how it relates to the therapeutic process.
I've studied art therapy and done a lot of personal work to heal C-PTSD, and am passionate about making these processes more accessible through experiences with my work.
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I chose this piece for the project because it's one of my favorite Waveforms, which I've been making since 2020, when I started training AI models on my work. The waveforms emerged from a body of work containing mixed media, paint on canvas, wood panel, ink on yupo paper, and mixed paints on watercolor paper, which were all created through mindfulness practices. This piece reminds me of the magic I felt when I saw those first results of AI training, reflecting my work back to me in new ways, which felt appropriate to share for this project.
Margaret Phinney (she/her)
Imagine
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Margaret Phinney is a self-taught artist. She began using acrylics during her most intense time dealing with her PTSD. Over the years, she has found painting and drawing to be the therapy she needs to help her get through the flashbacks that torment her. She uses a variety of media to express what she is feeling and seeing in her head. There are occasions, though, when the environment has influenced her as well.
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I like to blend different colors together to see what comes out. After the first coat of paint, I saw I needed to play around with the painting. The result is this painting.
Stacey Pydynkowski (she/her)
In My Head, an Unruly Meadow
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Stacey Pydynkowski is enchanted by the magic of the creative process – the way pigments merge to convey a spectrum of emotion and depth beyond the confines of language. She collects and preserves her favorite flowers and uses the petals to create emotive, mixed-media pieces. She is a cancer survivor and an advocate for art in public spaces to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to connect with and find comfort and strength in visual imagery. She holds degrees in studio art and psychology from Saint Vincent College, and her nature-inspired paintings have been exhibited throughout Western Pennsylvania.
Her work is represented by Firebox Art Studios in Carnegie, PA.
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Note from the artist:
As you view my work, I invite you to feel and let the images transport you to somewhere meditative, somewhere lively, somewhere old, or perhaps somewhere new.I invite you to find shapes in the clouds and explore a wide range of emotions: nostalgia, trepidation, joy, triumph – the images are unified by a common thread of resilience and hope….rain or shine. ☼
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Acrylic on Canvas. I like to imagine our minds as unruly gardens --within each of us, a chaotic kaleidoscope of brilliant blooms.
Kristen Regan (she/her)
Vessels of Femininity
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Kristen Regan received a Master of Fine Art degree at Savannah College of Art and Design and a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is currently a Professor of Photography at the Anna Lamar Switzer Center for Visual Arts at Pensacola State College.
She has had numerous solo and two-person exhibitions and has been featured in galleries across the country. In recent years her work has focused on environmental issues associated with plastic pollution.
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"Vessels of Femininity" explores the idea of women as vessels, with the potential to hold and nurture life. The piece combines an AI-generated portrait with analog film photography to illustrate the interconnectedness of women utilizing old and new art forms.
Nyoka Reed (she/her)
Magenta Waves
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Nyoka Reed’s work explores a variety of mixed media. Featuring mostly female subjects in brilliant colors, Nyoka’s work blurs the lines between realism and abstraction.
Nyoka is an Adjunct Professor of art at Bakersfield College and Taft College. She earned her MFA from Academy of Art, San Francisco.
Her current mixed media series experiments with watercolor, colored pencils and thread on paper.
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Watercolor and colored pencil on paper
Michele Randall (she/her)
Rusted Roots
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I create abstract and narrative works using encaustic wax and camera-less photography techniques. I'm influenced by my rural upbringing and the strong women that raised me. I currently live in Pennsylvania, and work as a full-time artist and instructor.
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My encaustic practice focuses on the abstract use of color and form to consider ideas of boundary, constriction and movement. I assemble ambiguous shapes and bold splashes of color within the edges of framed artwork. Micro environments of chaos and order assemble side by side. Encaustic becomes fluid with the addition of heat, and slowly cures into a luminous shell over time. In this way, the process requires spontaneity and patience.
By choosing a process-heavy method like encaustic, I force a tactile engagement between myself and my work. Each piece is built using multiple steps . As the work progresses, the fatigue builds in my muscles and my mind, mirroring the act of care taking, a practice that requires constant attention and spontaneity, and often shows invisible progress.
Teresa Selbee-Baker
The Noise From People Who Don't Know
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I have a need to understand life lived. No matter how present we are in our lives, the world continues. My work reflects that presence and connection, both to the feminine role and the world in motion. I create compositions that ask questions and consider positions. I ask which came first and how one influences the other - what information do we take in, what pieces do we leave behind? Is what I remember, really what happened.
I treasure bold colours, geometric shapes and the details of nature. I am passionate about presenting a particular thing larger than it is, abstracted yet recognizable. I blend images, figures and landscapes in a dream like way, influenced by surrealist compositions, collage and absurdism. My oil paintings allow an organic movement and flowing imagery.
These compositions are layered, I create a reference image first, which begins with a self-portrait collected over the years, then I bring in surroundings that are significant alongside imagery of personal importance. I use masking to reveal old layers within my paintings, I use this technique to convey thoughts and memories within a piece.
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Acrylic on Wood Panel 9 x 12 inches
Jamie Smith (she/her)
The Waiting Room
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Jamie Smith’s monochromatic drawings, wooden wall-hanging sculptures, and installation work incorporate personal and culturally-resonant symbols in an attempt to reckon with the fragility of life, new beginnings, the passage of time and the depths of loss. Jamie is deeply inspired by Aubrey Beardsley, the Art Nouveau Movement, family crests, Toile pattern design, tarot decks, and Delft pottery.
Body Vessel series, for example, ornately decorated vases represent the life-giving potential of the female body—but crucially it is a potential not always realized, and so some are shown full and some empty. Many of the vases are drawn from antique Pomegranate Fertility Vases from the Chinese Qing Dynasty. The egg symbolizes Jamie’s own fertility journey of freezing her eggs but also the female energy and power of one’s body.
Jamie’s most recent solo show, Mother Time explores her all-consuming personal journey with fertility. She created family crests that have Art Nouveau candles, uteruses, UVF needles, and mating flowers—all woven into intricate borders and patterns. In an installation, the viewer is asked to wear a Toile hospital gown and sit on the Toile love seat—thus entering into the engulfing space of women trying to get pregnant.
Jamie also founded a global community of artists called Thrive Together Network in 2015. Currently, she lives and makes art in East Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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This is a modern adaptation of classic "toile" pattern design and the illustrations depict the artist’s personal fertility journey. Toile fabrics were first created in sixteenth-century France as artists shared stories and scenes of the culturally-important motifs of their time. The repetition of the toile pattern on the wall, the love seat and the lamps reference how overwhelming and all-encompassing fertilely issues can be for the woman and her partner.
When you are “in it”, it is all you see. The toile pattern was used to create an installation art piece where the viewer is asked to put on a hospital gown and sit on the love seat surrounded by the Toile inspired pattern. The hospital gown invites the viewer to wear the glamorous garb women must wear as they bring life into this world or go through IVF or recover from either. The love seat has space for two, representing the two components needed (sperm and egg) to make a baby, whether the fertility journey includes a partner or not. Partnership during this process goes through many ups and downs as each person involved has such a different experience. Just like in parenthood, the work is to find a way to sit together in the love seat. To comfort the other or be comforted as the cycle seems to never end.
The antique cuckoo clock on the wall represents Mother Time, her sounds amplified to convey the constant, engulfing worry about one’s biological clock. Mother Time is always there and the biological clock is always ticking.
Verona Sorensen (she/her)
Urban Writing on Interstellar Walls
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I am a Montreal-based painter, born to a Filipino nurse and a West Coast Nordic artist. Presently I am exploring how the different lineages from both my parents come together through my paintings. As I dig and dive into my past, I am also using A.I. tools and technologies that lean into the future. My hope is to bring all of these branches together and root them in the present, though my art, towards new modalities of healing.
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This painting is an interstellar landscape, where concrete forms intermingle with elusive space. In it, I explore the way complimentary and contrasting colors create depth in a play of intertwining the foreground and background. In a world increasingly dominated by technology, finding balance, where the machine can meet the ephemeral, is of importance to me. I strive to reflect a macro/micro space journey, with machines venturing into unknown realms. The concrete container is as much a spaceship traveling through the galaxy, as it is our bodies holding space for our spirit/soul to exist and reside in this world of the material.
Tery Spataro (she/her)
Quantum Experience
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I am a storyteller and creator who often explores the intersection of humanness and technology, and I am always seeking to push the boundaries of creativity. Science fiction and fantasy are particularly inspiring to me. My goal is to create art that entertains, inspires, and energizes.
I use various digital tools and AI services, including Playform AI, MidJourney, Google Colabs, Stable Diffusion, and Adobe Creative tools, to produce unique and engaging creations, fine arts, digital art (NFTs), books, videos, music, fashions, and products.
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The emergence of Quantum Experience at both the atomic and humanistic levels within the universe is a remarkable phenomenon and creating a sense of belonging to all.
This extraordinary creative process is facilitated by a unique set of prompts to create AI art and enhanced with accents seamlessly incorporated through the use of Adobe Photoshop.
Leigh Webber (she/her)
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Ava Bock is an artist and photographer working out of Asheville, North Carolina. Born and raised in the lower regions of New York, Ava moved to North Carolina in 2011. She has remained a resident of the Tar Heel State, splitting her time between its coastal and mountainous regions. Learning to reimagine industrial plastics as a medium to sculpt, paint, and photograph with, Ava found her artistic voice. As it developed, her style evolved toward the spiritual and abstract. Now she focuses her creative energy on harnessing the light-transferring properties of plastic. She uses the medium to visualize, process, and infuse the emotional inner processes of self-exploration and healing in her art.
Ava has worked for a variety of private clients and local brands. She embraces collaboration with other artists, festivals, and companies. Contact Ava for custom commissions, collaborations, licensing, live workshops, and memorial encasements. Read her blog or social media to learn more about her journey.
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I first began to study light through photography formally. While I explored light through the lens, I discovered an ever-present yet otherwise hidden connection between the various expressions of light and its symbiotic relationship with plastics. Photographic coatings, negatives, and colored films were the only plastics in my life at the time. Still, when my health required more than an annual visit, my world immediately transformed into one full of plastic sheets and silicone tubes that have kept expanding since then. Spending months in full view of the vast diversity of life-saving plastic became the catalyst I needed to evolve my practical use of plastics from a simple material into a full-time medium.
My growth with plastic shifted toward creations that supported an abstract analysis of my internal perceptions and experiences. As I opened myself up to this new direction, my senses went from an external reactionary state to one that is more personal and intimate. Following this new path, I found myself in a place of meditation and contemplation. Here, I found myself at home using plastic to communicate and illuminate the parts of my perception hidden in the abstract pulses of my mind. I now translate light through the medium of plastic to create colorful expressions of emotional experience, textured displays of physical relationships, and visual displays of memories preserved.
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As I Live and Breathe is a visual map documenting a spectrum of the most common results given through the mental health process of emotional check ins. This process is done at a semi-regular basis during any given day.
Underwater Altar
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Leigh Webber is an underwater photographer based in Charleston, SC.
Her underwater photos bridge the commercial and fine art worlds. Her images have been exhibited throughout North America and are held in private collections across the globe.
Personal projects serve as catalysts to her work, and play off personal themes such as nostalgia, childhood and play. At her core, Leigh is a traveller. Often traveling to out-of-the-way places alone, this allows her time and solitude for themes to emerge and imprint her work.
Professionally, Leigh is a contributing photographer to various publications and travels regularly for commercial shoots and underwater commissions.
Leigh’s mantra, DIVE IN, is an invitation to the viewer and a directive. It’s a reminder to take risks, to get beneath the surface. It is a summons to seek uncertainty, possibility, and to find Silver Linings in the chaos.
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Leigh Webber's newest collection, “Underwater Altars” is a meditative series of still lives photographed underwater.
Collected objects, both natural and manmade, are submerged under the water, where they take on a life of their own. Lit by the sun, the patterns of light traveling through water are constantly changing. They are affected by Leigh’s movement through the water as she photographs, illustrating the idea that we all have an effect on each other’s lives.
Coral Stengal
Oh, The Drama!
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I am a Photographer.
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Subtle and yet dramatic lighting captured at the Conservatory.
Holly Vivian (she/her)
At the Bottom of Everything
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Holly Vivian is a contemporary painter and multi-disciplinary artist who creates detailed, vibrant antidotes to the grind of urban life. She draws inspiration from the Pacific Ocean, Desolation Sound, stars and planets, confetti, seasons, emotions, and human connection.
She holds a diploma in Theatre Design and Technology from Red Deer College, is a graduate of Accomplishment Coaching, and is a member of the Thrive Together Network of female and non-binary artists.
Vivian resides in Victoria, BC, where the Lekwungen speaking people have created and danced for thousands of years.
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8" x 10" acrylic on wood panel, 2023. Part of the TTN Residency in Feb 2023. Ocean depths, contrasting organic shapes and geometric structure.