Joe Aker
Medium: Fine Art Photography
Joe Aker is a nationally recognized Architectural Photographer based in Houston. His work carries him around the world. He has worked for most of the major Architectural and Development firms in the United States including HOK, Gensler, Cesar Pelli, Robert Stern, SOM, Hines, Kirksey and Ziegler Cooper. His work has been published in most of the major Architectural magazines in the US, Europe and Japan. In 2006, he began to exhibit his personal work. In 2007, he was named Artist of the Year by the Houston Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. His photography of Clouds spans 30 years and is a very personal project because of the beauty and serenity that he gets from them. He works in both color and black and white. He currently also owns with his business Aker Imaging in Houston. The lab specializes in traditional processes and is the last lab in the area professional processing color and b&w film. In addition, they also have a digital department with the latest equipment to produce the finest fine art work for artists and photographers.
Andis Applewhite
Medium: Silkscreen and Woodcut Prints
Applewhite is known for her silkscreen prints that tend toward the abstract expressionist or minimalist styles. Her subject matter is an exploration of the dualities in life and the use of spontaneous strokes and color combinations convey a symbolic interpretation of the resulting tension that is felt or the quiet space that is sought after. Applewhite's latest work consists of small woodcuts from pecan, mahogany and mesquite woods that convey the unspoken words carried within.
After graduating San Jacinto College in Pasadena, Texas, with a degree in graphic arts,
Applewhite soon found her voice in printmaking. Her work has been featured in solo
shows at the Washington Printmakers Gallery and The National Institutes of Health in
Washington, DC. She has participated in numerous group shows in Houston, California, North Carolina, Virginia, Ireland and Shanghai. She is an elected Member of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society and California Society of Printmakers. Her print “No Other” is included in the CSP Centennial Book in honor of their 100th and asked to be donated to the Library of Congress. Applewhite’s work has been reviewed by noted art critics.
Applewhite is a founding member of PrintMatters, whose goals are to promote
traditional and non-traditional printmaking, encourage print collecting, and further
the professional growth of its members. She is also a founding and key board member
of PrintHouston, a month-long celebration of original prints.
Trudy Askew
Medium: Painting
Painting is my language. As a painter, I am interested in the emotional impact of larger-than-life images. I portray mysterious subjects using bold color, or a stark black and white palette.
The psychological intersection between reality and imagination is my theme. I accentuate inscrutability and contradiction, and challenge the viewer to resolve the ambiguities of truth and meaning.
Pretense is a series of paintings that investigates the disguises and deceptions we employ to create our personal identities. Is the “brave face” we put to the world nothing more than a fragile mask which conceals and protects our true persona?
John Bernhard
Medium: Fine Art Photograpy
I always work on themes, I actually keep several on the stove at once. I like to think that I specialize in versatility, it stimulates my creativity and gives me a sense of accomplishment. I like to explore new grounds and I constantly work on ideas, producing essays, photographing people and the female body.
I guess my choice of themes fluctuates between dream and reality, between reflection and emotion and also a bit of fascination with transformation. It is the transformation, transition and change in people, bodies, myself and our environment that I am after.
Jennifer Dunn
Medium: Painting
The creation and exploration of art has been a life long love -- the process of painting colors on canvas, drawing on paper,
and cutting on wood and printing. When I look at my work I remember my making of it. The craft allows for the meditation and
dictation of feelings, stories, and ideas. Words require a beginning and end -- structure and logic. Art remains open to
mystery and contradictions.
The human body provides inspiration for most of my work. It is beautiful -- in the image of God. But, we also find it
grotesque -- blood, guts, fluids, etc. It’s inner-workings -- giving us nothing-less than life -- are extraordinary, but it’s
failure creates great pain and fear.
Our bodies also hold a physical history as individuals -- with scars, aches, appearances, movement. A vessel for our selves.
Kay Kemp
Medium: Painting in Acrylic and Mixed Media
In the early 90s my heart ached to express itself in a more meaningful and creative way. During this period I trained in an intensive spirituality-based coaching program in California which profoundly changed my life and influenced my art. That transformation was in full bloom when I also began to study in an art program that emphasized the creative process. Focusing on the process rather than the end product continues to propel all of my work.
I allow both my mixed media work and my paintings to unfold spontaneously and to be informed by the materials themselves. Trusting the creative process is not always easy but knowing that when I do a depth and innate presence seem to radiate from the piece.
My paintings combine graphic representation with precise details to illuminate the complexity of the subject. Many people remark on the detail often present in my art. Creating that detail is extremely meditative and offers a quiet place. It feels like being curled up in a blanket reading a good book on a cold winter’s day. If the process becomes tedious, I know it is time to go elsewhere in the painting.
Renata Lucia
Medium: Encaustic, mixed media & drawing mediums
The encaustic "quilts" of my Vintage series weave together indexical remnants of an unknown person whose life was documented in a small found photo album from Southwest Houston. Due to the iconically vintage nature of some of the photos - with bouffant hairdos, yellow plastic lawn chairs, and go-go boots - I don't think the album owner is alive. By using her images though, I feel that her memories, treasures, and loves are reanimated in a sense, in an echo of an echo.
I employ quilt pattern language to piece the images together: cathedral windows, for the glimpses into the moments that build a life; ocean waves, for the cyclical nature of families; grandmother's flowers, for a mother's hopes. These personal images will never occur again in their particularity, but I think the knowledge that they will repeated in other similar forms over and over again taps in to the universal pattern of life. I find some comfort there and, like my quilting relatives before me, I celebrate these events with my work.
Carol McKee
Medium: Painting
My paintings are inspired by nature and her moods. Rather than reproduce a landscape, I take what I see into my own psyche and create many layers of underpainting on each canvas until the final image emerges bringing into being nuances of color. I want the on looker to have a sense of serenity and the opportunity to experience their own personal landscapes, both physical and emotional.
Acrylics are especially suited to my technique because of the speed with which images can emerge, be washed away and rapidly be brought forth again with new resonance.
I was born in Yorkshire, England and have lived in Scotland and Alaska, where I attended University of Alaska Anchorage for art and for the past nine years I have worked out of my studio/gallery at Winter Street Studios, here in Houston.
Tami Merrick
Medium: Mixed Media Painting
I studio in First Ward Cultural Arts District of Houston. I’m a co-founder of Art Chatter artist critique group. I have studied extensively at the Glassell School of Art. Color and color juxtaposition are primary threads in my art work. Geez Bend quilts initially inspired studies of loose geometric, compositional shapes, color palettes and odd pattern combinations. I explore painting patterns from Japanese papers, photos and work with colors cards. Thumbnail sketches evolve into compositions where the work evolves thru color and pattern selection. A spotted shirt at the coffee bar one morning can sneak into my canvas. I use all mediums including ink, paints, spays and meticulously taped masked patterns. There is no collage in my paintings. I will brush, spray, drip and stain to explore unique patterns. My latest series creates cartoon figures of real life experiences which I flattened like a quilt and try to evoke the essence of emotion in a contemporary flat plane.
Tracey Meyer
Medium: Painter and Sculture
Tracey Meyer, painter and sculptor, finds value and beauty in the simple and ordinary things in life. This is why she utilizes shapes as the basis of her work. Geometric shapes are not complicated, but Tracey finds the eternal qualities which they represent to be the very foundation of a good life. By focusing on shapes she questions what it is to define something as universally 'good'. Does a thing have to be expensive or showy to have merit?
Tracey Meyer creates all her work by hand. Tempting though it is to rely on the computer for modeling and tracing, The choice to rely on her hands and eyes is related to a concern that many manual skills are being lost in this age of technology. Undeniably it would be faster on the computer, but she enjoys the time she takes in planning each work because it is an opportunity for self-reflection and a way to create order in her life. She embraces the foibles/qualities that can find their way into her work as a consequence of designing by hand.
Tracey Meyer takes great store in endeavoring to make the surfaces of her work flat and hard edged. She has decided that as her work is non-objective, the surface should be as pristine as possible to allow the viewer to concentrate on what IS there.
Nicola Parente
Medium: Mixed Media
Born in Mola di Bari, Italy in 1966, Nicola Parente currently lives and works in Houston. Working in a variety of media, he engages the viewer in dialogues of human encounter within the urban environment. Most recently, Parente was featured as one of Houston’s 100 creatives by HoustonPress and was the featured artist in the Bayou Review, a literary and visual arts journal published by the University of Houston Downtown. In 2011-12, Parente had a solo museum exhibition, featuring 30 paintings, at the Manuel Felguerez Museum of Abstract Art in Zacatecas, Mexico, as well as a solo exhibition at Seranade Art House in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 2011, he was selected as Cadillac Texas Spirit Honoree. In 2010, Parente's work was selected for Texas Art 2010 juried exhibition and he created a dynamic video/painting installation for Terminus, a Dominic Walsh Dance Theater production. In 2009, his work was featured in the Transparent/Translucent exhibition at the University of Texas Museum Gallery in San Antonio.
Parente’s works can be seen in public and private collections in the United States, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Ethiopia. He obtained a BS from King’s College (PA) and a Masters degree from the University of St. Thomas (TX). The artist's work is represented in Houston by Gremillion & Co., Fine Art.
Karine Parker Lemoyne
Medium: Painting
«Crossing boundaries with color and movement to beckon the vitality and sensuality of life »
I conceive through my paintings, a space where we can exceed our limits and project ourselves in imagined universes.
With the original urge to paint a specific theme, I free the colors and the brush strokes to compose the universe of my vision. I emerge from this first rush, first delivery. I then build the painting on this foundation that was given to me as a gift. The images and color combinations which emerge before and during the painting experience are the representations of my inner worlds, of their colorful essence; they transform my heritage into new unmapped realms when I listen to their movement and their music. In the midst of this burst of colors, I hide sometimes shades and shadows. They are the fears we sometimes fail to express.
My paintings cross boundaries and beckon the vitality of Life. They carry the strength and the freedom that bring me peace.
Donna E. Perkins
Medium: Painting
My newest series is entitled Touch. This body of work is a playful reaction to my Coming Undone show at Archway Gallery in September of 2013. In that show I had 32 brightly colored oil paintings based on lines from dancers. For years I've gathered the structural lines of my paintings from dancers dancing. Then I worked with these lines in a totally abstract manner.
After the Coming Undone show, I wanted to have fun and experiment with all the stray and strange acrylic paint which I seem to have collected. Some of this paint was metallic or florescent. I put my hands into the paint and played. The resulting paintings are of layers and layers of acrylic in which the lines of my hand movements create deep ridges. A real physical depth is created. Often you can view the layers beneath the surface.
In a strange way, I consider these paintings to be a series of self portraits. My hands are as unique to me as my face. Perhaps I identify more with my hands than with my face.
Lynne Rutzky
Medium: Painting and Drawing
I am a visual artist and research scientist whose work focuses on the intersection of my professional life as depicted by biomedical images; my personal life as symbolized by the animals sharing my home and their toys; and my subconscious as revealed through a repetitive mark making process. In my work, images from these sources are synthesized and layered. Some images are developed by establishing game rules to connect the dots and to create spatial, linear patterns, or figurative images. I explore everyday life issues of chaos and control by superimposing decorative grids over randomly generated fields of doodle-dots. In the series After 9/11: Pen and Ink Drawings (image above), a repetitive meditative dot making process was used to create whimsical to grotesque imagery.
Raymond Saucillio
Medium: Woodworker
There is for me an inherent joy in creation, an inherent beauty in structure, an inherent order in nature that fills me with wonder. Beauty in material, how pieces join to form a whole and the resulting proportions are what inform my work. I use machine tools where appropriate but reach for hand tools to shape and sculpt a piece that can’t be done by machine. It is this handwork that gives the piece a fluid living quality. If what I make can be useful in function, inviting to the touch and a pleasure to the eye it would of course bring me great joy and satisfaction.
Brenda Schloesser
Medium: Fiber Artist
Brenda is a full-time studio artist working in Houston Texas. A graduate from the Kansas City Art Institute (Kansas City, Missouri) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, Brenda and has been working with fiber as a studio artist for over 30 years.
The emphasis of Brenda’s work is surface design on fiber. Brenda’s works reflects the journey of life, the path we have all traveled, always changing and evolving. Her art is full of surprises that spark the optimistic emotion in people.
Brenda’s work has been exhibited all around TX as well as MO, KS, LA, MN, WA, VA, NY, PA, and The Republic of Korea. Her work has also been published in Impressions Magazine Review, Kansas City Arts Review Magazine, Houston Lifestyles & Home, Direct Art Magazine, Studio Visit Magazine, Art Buzz, Touching Fiber Arts, by Carol Ikard and Jacque Smith, ArtQuilts Elements The Islander Magazine, Galveston Monthly
and Miscellaneous Exhibition Catalogs
Kay Sarver
Medium: Painting
As a young child I was always drawing, usually creating some sort of grand scene with animals and trees. My parents fed this passion by taking me to classes at the Museum of Fine Arts in Cincinnati, the city where I grew up. Through school I won numerous awards, eventually receiving a Gold Key Award while in High School. I later attended the University of Cincinnati, majoring in Fine Arts, where I soon embraced painting with oils.
After a few years in college, and a few years in Florida, I later migrated to Houston, Texas, where I continue to live and work as a visual artist.
Becky Soria
Medium: Painting
In My work, female, males as well as animal figures are done less in the familiar outlines and well known shapes and more in their interiority; I am making visible their invisible “visceral” interiority… but not as a depiction of organs and sinews, but rather of passions and pains and hopes; women as earth Goddess, with elements from the primitive (the totemic figure) to the contemporary.
Nature has been qualified as a female organic form by most ancient cultures, but for the last millennia or so, the world has been primarily perceived and shaped by the masculine side of the species. Our very recent history however has seen a trend towards a natural reversion to a feminine bias, with women becoming increasingly more crucial to all aspects of society.
These paintings serves to remind us about these issues and others that we continue to face in the world, while reinventing the female figure as an emblem for current conditions and a new Totem for the future. The juxtaposition between the representations of the animals and plants in compromised and ailing conditions and the female form that seems to swallow and rebirth the life- infused aspects of her creation, render a sense of hope for a future in which the maternal provides a healing force to an ailing planet.
Barbara Tennant
Medium: Mixed Media
My paintings and collage paintings describe how I see the relationship between nature and the developed world. Memories from long car trips to west Texas, dramatic sunsets, or other visions inspire the work initially. However, I like to include the map that gets me there or impressions from the drive in the composition. When I paint, figuratively or in the abstract, I collage aerial photographs or other images onto the canvas or board and draw over the paintings in response to the encroachments that inevitably affect the view. I rarely see the daily world as a pure landscape. The paintings and collages suggest that visual harmony is possible in spite of all the intrusions. In my work I want to resolve the tension between nature and the man-made.
Damon Thomas
Medium: Sculpture
Working primarily in clay, Damon J. Thomas creates figurative art that explores the emotional and psychological range of the human condition, in addition to animal and organic forms. For most of his work, transformation and universal spirituality are recurrent themes.
Thomas’ work has been exhibited at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Lawndale Art Center and Art League Houston, and is part of the collections of the Houston Airport System and Armadillo Clay Company, in addition to numerous private collections in the U.S. and Europe. His work is also included in “500 Figures in Clay, Vol. 2.”
A member of the Texas Sculpture Group, Thomas earned a master’s of art degree from the University of Texas and has continued postgraduate studies at the Glassell School of Art in Houston. A writer for most of his life, he is the co-author of “The Invisible Church: Finding Spirituality Where You Are.” He was born in the Houston Heights, where he currently lives and works.