June Li was traditionally trained in art and design in Guangzhou, China. She moved to Sonoma County, California in 1999 and, in 2006, earned her BFA from Sonoma State University where she began to explore more energetic and abstract work. While June is an established graphic designer, her true love is painting and she explores life passionately along canvas roadways. Brilliant colors and organic shapes, expressing beauty and spirit, are frequently found dancing together poetically within her work. Elements that are at once elegant and erotic take on many forms, often in silhouette or more aggressively and abstractly, as June

My concern as a conceptual artist is making the viewer think about something in a new way. I like to blur the line between the medium and the image, and often make pieces that are self referential or involve the viewer as a coconspirator. Aesthetically, I like to use unusual textures and optical effects. My pieces are playful, at least on the surface, but have a deeper, often disturbing meaning. As I've evolved as an artist, my work has become political and philosophical. 

I find found objects fascinating, and whereas many artists use them as elements in an assemblage, I like to feature them as they are, and by embellishing them, they are seen fresh, active perspective. For example, a gas mask is at first frightening, but upon reflection, one is never as vulnerable as when one is wearing one. 

As for involving the viewer, in The Judgement, one is forced to pace back and forth to read the curved text on the heads, just as a prisoner does in a cell. I also have a body of work using objects with lenses. For example, a microscope head mounted on the wall. When you look though it, you see the message “This is how they’ll find out that you’re dying.” A similarly mounted WWII bombsight focuses on text which says “This is how your grandparents’ house was last seen”.

I believe art should move us, either through beauty, emotion, or ideas. 

My Syracuse University BFA during the mash-up of the 1960s-70s reflects the confluence of all we learned from the old masters, merging with the fast flowing stream of modern movements and sub-movements. An additional 30 years of broad interests and experience find me now with a free-ranging style- representational, abstract, impressionist. I paint and photograph what pleases me. I hope it pleases you too.

Most of my work is in acrylic paint on stretched canvas. Large, bold, lively, complex, imaginative, and emotional. Lots of paint, and bight colors. Years of work. Intense. Different and memorable. Ok, I'm out there!

Mixed Media Constructions

My sculpture derives from the human figure, whether representational or abstract form. I begin a sculpture by looking for a figurative gesture within the stone I am carving. By working from a gesture I am able to contrast the movement in the form with the solidity of the rock, and to also contrast the texture and weight of the rough stone with the beauty of the final polished stone.

Sara is mesmerized by visual delights; the color of light going through a prism or the way colors run together when one puts them on the paper; a beautiful brocade pattern; a marvelous dream. She paints in an attempt to take visual notes of what she finds intriguing.

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.

Jason Bernhardt is a native San Franciscan, who has been active in the local arts and music scene for a number of years. Originally a musician both here and internationally, Jason is now also a working artist and sculptor. His organic pieces are reflections of his appreciation for nature and its evolving condition. Self taught, Jason's creativity is unique, leaving raw stone to blend with polished figures simultaneously portraying both life and its decay. Existence is the underlying theme of his works.

     Jason is a reguler visiting artist and teaches at the Urban School of San Francisco, his work is shown locally and has been sold to collectors nationally. As well as creating original pieces, Jason also works closely with clients on commissions and site specific work. To learn more about the collection, where to purchase or how to commission a piece, please contact Jason directly.