Through the layering of dye, loose but emphatic brushstrokes, and a quest to convey sensuality though color and shape, I seek to express what is evocative, poetic and vibrant. I am drawn to organic lines and shapes, and also to intense and unusual color combinations that strike a deep, hidden chord with the senses and subconscious mind.

My inspiration comes from nature and my own spiritual exploration. I also draw from the textures, colors and earthiness of textiles, and fine crafts like pottery or blown glass. As a textile itself, my artwork (dye on silk) can come off the walls and into the living space – brightening up a lonely corner, visually separating two rooms, or billowing across a ceiling to soften and anchor the entire space. The effect on the emotional and design-scape can be dramatic.

I have a deep affinity for old stuff - funky junk, rusty things, bits and pieces of detritus most often referred to by the uninitiated as "garbage" or "trash".  ( Ah! but therein lies the idiom! )  Often, If it speaks to my soul, I leave the tattered and threadbare unadorned... but mostly, I live to make things! -put a new spin on an old standard; uncover the 'art heart' of a found object, recycle and restyle timeworn finds.  I love to put paint to paper, walls, canvas and furniture. Color it in!  Embellish it up!  Strip it down!  Whee!  I'm drawn in particular to whimsical themes and the thrill of the unexpected.  Second-hand DOGS are likewise my passion. ( Is there is a more profoundly beautiful artistic tome than Berkeley Breathed's  "Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers At the Piddleton "Last Chance" Dog Pound" ? Not in my world, my friend! )  Canine "beauty in imperfection" can be found snoozing  in every stuffed chair and sunny spot at my home studio, The Sit and Stay Atelier.  My dogs are a constant source of inspiration, artistic and otherwise.  And should there ever be a shortage of shopworn chairs needing a make-over - the dogs will happily tatter to order.  The coffee's hot -c'mon over!

Rice and Beans is a collaboration between Geoff Campen and Diana Ruiz. We are artists and architectural designers interested in the interaction between constructed reality, and the natural world. Geoff Campen explores these themes through architectural and construction imagery. He finds and displays inherent order and chaos in both construction and nature. He then contrasts these images with natural materials and colors. Diana Ruiz creates organic forms and surreal botanical creations with found objects, wood and wool in many variations. She is inspired by creatures (real and imagined), and collects a little of everything. Diana Ruiz and Geoff Campen are married and live, work and make art in San Francisco.

Amy Ahlstrom is a contemporary urban quilter creating modern fiber art. Drawing upon her background as a graphic designer and illustrator, Amy digitally photographs the visual details of cities

I try to appropriate (when appropriate) from artists of the past and use iconic images of the present to create a body of work that uses ideas and materials that have been discarded and ignored as useless or trivial and transform them into something that can be appreciated.

Business has usurped the very meaning of manufactured and perverted it. As taken from the two Latin words manus for hand and the verb factere for to do/make, manufactured literally means made by hand. In other words, art is all that's left in our world that is manufactured. Andy Warhol's use of the term "factory" for his center of production was a reflection of this reality. Everything else, if it were put more accurately, is machinafactured goods.

To then share these creations, I have made greeting cards and websites and, of course, a Facebook page, learning along the way that the marketing of art takes far more creativity, toil, time and expense than producing the art in the first place does. 
 
So the goal of my Open Studio participation is to share the excitement of creating and showing (and hopefully, selling) art.

Having worked as an artist for 3 decades, Melissa Shanley's history spans many mediums; however, recent years and recent works bring her to focus on various forms of fiber art sculpture.  Images have also been finding their way to her again through photography. 

Melissa was exposed to the shape, feel and grains of fine wood at a young age by her parents who were restorers of fine antique furniture and worked from their apartment.  This influenced Melissa’s need to create tactile, fiber art and sculptures: work which can be felt even when it is not being touched.  As a child before a Van Gogh painting in a museum in Paris, Melissa told her mother she wanted to make art which made others feel the way this painting made her feel.

Throughout her life, she experimented with various standard and unconventional materials.  At Scripps College, she was exposed to fiber art and the process of wet felting.  She was also immediately drawn to copper wire and has been working with both ever since.  

At the Claremont Colleges, Melissa was also greatly influenced by the artist and Pomona College figural art professor, Charles Daugherty.  He taught her to not merely see and draw the figure, but to explore the line which came off the figure and out of her charcoal-- to follow the line, not the image.  This sense dramatically altered her perception of what she was seeing and how it was translated to the medium in front of her. 

The concept of "nest" emerged for her in the 1990s.  It was at that point that she began to incorporate egg shells and other found objects into her fiber sculptures.  Again, natural texture-- which the viewer can feel without actually touching-- holds importance in her work.  

That texture, however, often has its own natural limitations of size.  Fiber and objects which can produce that exquisite texture and line are of limited (and often tiny) size.  To increase the size of her “canvas”, Melissa is currently exploring the use of 5' to 15' eucalyptus bark with its intense natural undulations and color variations in an effort to surpass the size limitations of most natural fibers and textures.

Until the natural problem of intense texture in small quantities can be solved, however, Melissa endeavors to find other ways to bring the viewer in closer and to spend time with that texture.  One of the ways she has found to do that is to photograph the fiber sculptures.  The images of the fiber sculptures-- capturing light not found in all settings-- magnify and highlight the sensual texture which Melissa strains to bring to the viewer.

It was in this process of photographing her own work that Melissa returned to the use of photography in its own right.  Over time, she began to use the camera in daily life as her "sketchbook".   Thousands of images later, the world of texture, fiber and structural sculpture, as well as the importance of the line, re-emerge for Melissa in two dimensional format in her photography.  She also found that her early exposure to wood, grains and structure came out in her photographic images.  The beauty of line and of texture are magnified and concentrated, again bringing the viewer closer to question what they are seeing.

A new style of image also became prominent in her work at this time of photographic exploration.  Because she often had her sketchbook/camera with her, Melissa found she was capturing colorful, unusual, sometimes fun and often odd anomalies of daily life.  The resulting images often stop the viewer, producing emotional responses-- which is ultimately the goal of all her work.  

Most impressions are captured in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Europe, where she spends most of her time.  She ultimately feels successful with her photography when she hears a viewer laugh or question what they are looking at.  Knowing they are trying to decipher a sensual, tactile state they are inspecting and, ultimately feeling, she feels she has succeeded in bringing the viewer in close enough to interact with the subject.

Although her photographic images will not be mounted for viewing at SF Open Studios 2013, the images will be available in digital format for review and can be ordered, purchased and scheduled for free delivery within the San Francisco Bay Area.

For more than 30 years I’ve considered myself a weaver. Weaving requires structure, order and balance interlaced with texture and color.

In the last few years I’ve expanded my artistry to include collage, mixed media and assemblage, incorporating weaving into the collage work. Collage and assemblage represent the unknown to me. That is to say, I don’t necessarily know what the piece will look like when I start. which is in contrast to weaving where I have to know what the end result will be before I start.

Creating collage and assemblage offers me the opportunity to explore the not so visible parts of life, the subtle messages woven into and between the unsaid and to express myself in new and creative ways.

Weaving and collage are very different and that is what’s fun about each of the processes.