SMAart Gallery & Studio was founded in September 2012 and opened its doors at 1045 Sutter Street in San Francisco.

SMAart offers gallery exhibits, studio rentals and ceramic classes.  While the center primarily caters to ceramic artists, artists of every media are welcome.  Founder Steven M Allen opened SMAart to fulfill a longtime dream of having a gallery, a place to teach art to the community, and a place to create art in a creative open environment surrounded by other inspiring artists.  

Conveniently located in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood with access to several major bus lines.  SMAart is also positioned in the heart of the Lower Polk Art Walk offering participating artists access to a burgeoning art scene.

Story of a Comeback: In 2006, I was in a car accident and experienced chronic migraines. These subsequently lead to a diagnosis of fibromyalgia in 2009. At this time, it was as if I was caught in a long, dark tunnel. The tunnel was the dealing with the debilitating pain. I almost thought I wouldn’t be able to do art again.

 To my surprise, there were steps at the end of the tunnel that led to a new place. The first steps started by my working with fused glass. This was something I could work with because of the small and more easily contained nature of the work. I was finding meaning and new strength through the journey as I slowly made my way through the darkness. I found renewal and new energy because of the art that was finding its way back into my life.

The Color of Healing: Turquoise has always been a favorite color of mine. It seemed to always find its way into my art; turquoise glass, and touches of it here and there. It’s a strong color that I’ve always been attracted to. The fusion of blue and green color has always had to be a part of my work. It’s a feeling of centrality and balance. This old favorite became a symbol of the healing light, the healing touch and a force that kept me going through adversity. It’s like my life becomes right somehow when turquoise is present. It continues to find its way into my art, whether in a subtle hint of the color or as a strong and obvious presence.

The New: Paintings and Drawing: I began to work with my old figurative drawings as a way to get back into painting because with fibromyalgia, it was too painful to hold gourds. I realized I could paint easier and play with color. It was more pleasurable for me. One of the few things, I could still do was keep experimenting with acrylic inks, Luna-papers, ice [glitter], colored inks, color-changing nail enamel, acrylic paints, gloss gel medium, gel pens, and different sizes of glitter. In working with paintings and drawings, I start with color and move to the design. The patterns and textures come as I carefully follow wherever the color wants to take me. The colors of the paints and drawings reminded me that one can’t have light, happiness, and growth without pain and darkness. As I embraced and accepted the pain, I found a new light that brings joy as it dances before my eyes, upon the frames, on the walls in front of you. My vision is that these paintings and drawings may provide similar inspiration and lightness for other women who have worked with their own versions of healing and courage.

People often ask me if I like to do puzzles, or tell me I’d make a great dentist (based on the intricate poking, prodding, scraping and filling that I do in my work).  I used to feel that working on mosaics was a way to bring order to chaos, by rearranging a multitude of tiny pieces together to form cohesion.  Realistically, for me, it’s none of these things.  Rather, it’s the possibilities that can come from a variety of pieces and materials.  It both astonishes and entices my mind.  Something about discovering an unknown combination or design that doesn’t exist in the world, is intoxicating.  This is how I feel when I am creating mosaic art.

Mosaics are not a fluid art form; they don’t blend into one another like oil paints, or mold into figures with soft lines that gently curve.  They are rigid and abrupt and can be unforgiving.  However, it’s the adventure to create these illusions, with proper coaxing of the medium, which I find intriguing.  I work with ceramics, glass & stone, like a linguist when they are interpreting.  I feel like I’m giving a voice to materials in a new and expressive way so people can visually understand what the gathering of pieces have to say.

For the past seven years I have developed two artistic styles, both dominated by a preoccupation with the virtual world of the screen. It started when I moved to San Francisco from France in 2006 and suddenly realized I was living in the very movie sets that had entertained my childhood. What were once imaginary backdrops of Hitchcock films now figured prominently in my trips to the store. It was a surreal and unsettling sensation that lead me to question the realities of virtual and real space. It was also at this same time that Facebook and social media spaces started taking hold of popular culture and redefined who and where we were as people. I found myself fascinated with the world as something we understand and live through screens and thus turned to my training as an academic painter to explain and explore these ideas.
    The first of my two styles focused on cinema and my aesthetic experience of it as a child. With a palette knife I reproduced scenes from VHS tapes that had affected me and questioned my relationship with them. It was both a study in these iconic moments that now overlapped into my new geography and an artistic meditation on what the screen actually looked like. Computers had already accustomed us to flat, high definition virtual worlds but the truth is that these scenes were filled with static and  imperfections. My work has pushed me to analyze the power of these memory images, how I see them in relationship to my current life and memories, and to question the overlap of the television screen and the world around me. Recently these questions have lead me to apply the moiré effect found in old television screens to reproduced images from my personal life and Californian culture.
    The second of my styles turned to the concept of the screen as a portal to our identity in the age of internet. I spent eighteen months in residence at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery painting over 180 portraits of people who contacted me through Facebook. I wanted to find a way to bridge my training as a portraitist with the concept of visual identity in a world that was becoming rapidly digital. In a day of excessive personal sharing and over exposure it was fascinating to realize how few of us actually consider our image as something outside of the digital screen space.
    As I continue to explore the concept of the screen and its implications on space and identity, I hope to expand my practice and discover new meaning in an increasingly virtual world through both traditional and modern painting techniques.

Whereas I am always engaged with more complex bodies of work that often take months, if not years, to come to formal fruition, these pictures, these squares, they are always constant, and they are right here and right now.

The origin of this group of pictures can be traced back a number of years ago to an image I made of myself in my underwear with a large coffee filter on my head, holes cut out for eyes. This image was the start of many playful performative portrait sessions for me. Over time, what was once a practice of using exclusively my image in these pictures has now expanded in scope to include various friends and people I meet in the course of my journeys.

This work has become a collaborative practice of “making” pictures with others, versus the less collaborative “taking” pictures of others. I think of the pictures as part of a collection that I can always add pieces to, and get excited in the moment when I’m working on a completely different and unrelated project and I realize I’ve made one of these squares, something to add to the constantly evolving collection of performative portraits.

The portraits themselves happen quickly, and are often unrehearsed, a result of inviting friends over for breakfast or dinner, or from meeting someone who seems to be equally interested in my beard as they are my unusual camera and photographic techniques. An explanation of my practice usually includes me asking, “Will you make a picture with me?” Most people usually agree.

Although possibly lacking a period at the end of the sentence they create, these images should be viewed as no less intentional than anything else I create. They are quite possibly more intentional and hold more promise because they don’t have a permanent home in a more formal body of work. They are nomadic and wandering, but always contain the same motivations and goals. 

I make colorful mixed media paintings. The subjects vary from urban scenes to landscapes. I try to show a reality that might not be obvious but uses a combination of elements that are surprising.

I want to make an emotional connection with the viewer that will captivate your imagination, draw you into the story, and be memorable.

Claudia is a self-taught British artist currently residing in San Francisco. After selling her first painting at London's Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers when she was seventeen, she went on to obtain a BA in Philosophy & Psychology from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Social Anthropology from University College London. Fascinated by the human condition, Claudia has worked with communities across the world in both mental health and therapeutic art settings.

Claudia's portraits have been selected for a number of prestigious international exhibitions including the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London and the Pastel Society of America in New York where she was awarded the Herman Margulies Award for Excellence. Claudia was recently selected to attend Project 387's artist residency in Mendocino where she produced a contemplative art project exploring the relationship between transience and wellbeing.

“I have met many people because of my artwork and feel privileged to be able to bear witness to the stories of both old friends and strangers. My encounters help me to understand how we both build and are built by the world around us; through the roles we perform, the narratives we imagine and, ultimately, the lives we choose to lead. Amongst these idiosyncrasies, a deep commonality is revealed that unites us all as human beings.”

I was inspired to photograph Crustaceans after finding containers of crabs, shells and bugs in my parents garage where they had been hidden and placed in jars for the last 53 years. I photographed the Crustaceans and made beautiful prints but I needed to take things a step further. Working with my hands has always been a love of mine - particularly working with beautiful woods, since I was sixteen years old and I apprenticed a master cabinetmaker. Recently, I've combined this love of creating beautiful objects with my career as a professional commercial photographer, in creating Photographic Cubes. Each cube is hand made and these measure 2ft x 2ft and house four archival photographic prints covering four of the six surfaces of each cube. The two remainder side show the ornate wood of the cube. Hence, the cubes can be viewed from any angle with varying effect. The cubes are self contained units and can be displayed in any number of ways including stacking them upon one another. They can be made in any size and configuration. I wanted the cubes to become their own entities and combining the sculptural with the photographic without taking away from the photography but adding to it and making it something new and alive.