art makes me make art makes me. i work in a variety of mediums, reflecting my take on everything from societies absurdities to its beauties. Often I work quickly on impulse and find i achieve my best results this way. In the past i have worked with ceramics, but currently focus on latex painting, drawing, silkscreening, installation, and performance art.

Oliver Klink – Nature, Wildlife and Fine Art Photographer 

I like to make people dream and to tell stories with my photography.

My intent is to capture the complex ecosystems that we live in. Any subjects I photograph, whether it be nature, wildlife, culture or landscape, reflect the challenge to preserve some of the beauty of our rapidly changing planet.

I photograph with a print in mind as the output and rely on advanced techniques to capture details. My intention is to print images “almost” life size, so that even a trained eye discovers new interaction, new feel, new creatures, and the intricacy of the ecosystem every time he looks at the images.

One of my secrets for capturing intimate scenes is the use of shorter lenses and cameras traditionally employed for portrait and fashion photography. It requires extensive knowledge of the subjects, so I can capture their personality at close proximity and deliver images that make you feel you were there.

My photography takes you to places that are real but can also be turned into dreamlands. I use both staged and real events to discuss the blurred boundaries that exist between reality and fantasy. At first, the photographs may tell a story that is real, until one discovers only gradually that they contain elements of fiction, or vice versa. This was the premise for my work entitled “Romance”.

In my most recent project on the African wildlife, titled “Life”, I even go a step further. I use multiple cameras, take exposures from various angles, and composite images in post processing. My intent is to go back to my main goal and make people dream.

Additional information about my work can be found at www.incredibletravelphotos.com and www.oliverklinkphotography.com

“The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations — each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony.” — Ruth Bernhard.

As a photographer of urban and rural landscapes, I’m elated when there are clouds giving texture to the sky. The elusive, ethereal, and elemental beauty of clouds has always enthralled me.

I tend to see patterns of color, shapes and shadows in both natural and man-made environments, capturing the beauty created when these two environments combine. I’m now working in my studio with kiln-formed glass— transforming these images into layered glass "paintings". Working with different types and sizes of glass (opaque, translucent and clear sheet glass, powders and frit) lets me manipulate the light, depth and texture in each image.

"Using nature as metaphor to explore human spirituality and connectedness the common thread I weave throughout my photographs reflects upon the poignant meditative beauty of spirituality, loss, fragility and hope that reaches beyond the eyes and into the soul."

HUMAN • NATURE • SPIRIT

My love of nature and humanity combined with my love of photography and design have guided me towards what I feel is my higher path in life. I am deeply inspired by spirituality and all of the divine beauty that God has created on this earth and I feel that it is my duty to share this inspiration with others through my art and my creative vision. It is my hope that my art will remind people about how important our natural world is to us and that we, too, are part of it – integrated with it on many different levels from the air we breathe, to the food we eat, to the remedies that heal us.

By integrating my photographs of humans, animals, and other elements of nature, I create fine art photo collages that evoke a world untouched by man-made objects. Through my creations we are reminded that we are one with nature. The organic theme of my art places emphasis on the fact that our natural world provides us with all of our basic needs and an insurmountable abundance of beauty on this earth.

Hava is a visual artist working in painting, photography, and video. She is interested in seeing beyond the visible eye to the microscopic and molecular elements that make up our world, those elements that invisibly control our destiny. She takes the word visual seriously.

Hava completed her MFA in painting at San Francisco Art Institute in 2010. She lives and works in San Francisco's hopping Mission District, where visual inspiration of all forms is extreme.

What is the point of abstract painting? For me it's a response to years of making photographs. A photograph is inherently representational because it is a capture of light bouncing off, or emanating, from a physical form. One can crop, print or otherwise manipulate an image into an abstract representation but there is still a sharp divide between my hand as an artist and the finished piece.

A few years ago I began having dreams in which I was moving and manipulating color directly with my hands. Shortly after that I happened to be at a demonstration of paints, received a small sample bag to take home and here I am. In truth it is a bit of coming home as I grew up in a household with an abstract painter and it feels like I absorbed more of that ethic than I was aware of.

A successful piece is evocative. I want it to draw you in at different times and for different reasons. I want it to suggest or evoke memories and feelings. These will not likely be the same ones I experience. Perhaps they are but at a more primal level. I spend a lot of time involved in rational thought processes. I want my paintings to pull me out of that for a bit.

Some pieces come so rapidly they seem to emerge unbidden. Others are the result of a more laborious birthing process. "How do you know when it's done?" Every piece takes on some sort of character as I lay it out. When I approach it I engage in a sort of internal dialog, an iterative process of making a mark, putting in dome color and seeing what it feels like. Through this comes the form and color and motion. This goes on until eventually there is nothing more to say. Then, like any relationship, it's done.

Finally, I'm skeptical that anyone ever actually reads these sorts of things. If you have please step inside, say hello and disabuse me of this notion.

This year, Joshua Ets-Hokin celebrates thirty-five years of photography in San Francisco. 

His photos reveal intimate moments in family life:  the toddler in mid-pirouette, the child day-dreaming on an unmade bed, the teenage girl perched tentatively on the edge of adulthood.  At a time when life seems to be moving at warp speed and each day is a blizzard of sensation, Ets-Hokin's photos capture these singular family moments before they vanish into the past. This year Joshua brings his family sensibilities to landscape photography.