Asha Menghrajani ~ Painter of Jewel Art

Coming from East Indian descent, Asha Menghrajani grew up in the Philippines and traveled extensively before choosing the United States as her home in 1992.

Asha’s art training began at age 14 when she learned the art of Chinese painting and calligraphy. A year later, after garnering her first show, she was motivated to pursue her passion in fine art. Coming from a family of merchants, it was practical for Asha to pursue her Bachelor degree in Commerce, and at the same time finding time to explore her creativity as an artist. During her school breaks Asha would continue to train in charcoal drawing, oil, Chinese watercolor painting and fabric design. The freedom to explore different mediums, combined with her love for travel, is well represented in her paintings. Asha fuses all of her disparate knowledge into a rich mixed media process. Her painting transports you from reality to a vibrant, mystical and abstract world, where you are the storyteller, creating and interpreting your own stories.

“When I consciously step into the unknown, my uninhibited self-expression is a painting. It is a distilled, bottled essence of my experience when I am in that uplifting and wonderfully mysterious state of creativity.”

Halle Treanor

Halle Treanor ~ New Mexico

Halle has been an avid fan of the creative arts since she was seven. Her pursuits include painting, pottery, photography, travel and dancing. She loves the ability of art to expand both the artist’s and viewer’s perception, and believes in the power of both making and viewing art to heal and soothe the soul.Santa Fe, New Mexico

Halle has studied art and art therapy at Notre Dame de Namur University, San Diego State University and the Packard Art Studio. Halle has shown and sold her artwork through various exhibitions over the past several years.

Education: Notre Dame De Namur University, Belmont, CA, Masters coursework in Art Therapy
Packard Art Studio, Private Instruction, 1996-1998, 2000-2003
San Diego State University, Studio Arts, 1998-1999

Exhibits: Santa Fe Brewing Company August 2005
Notre Dame De Namur University, Wounded Souls Healing Nation 2004
Notre Dame De Namur University, Student Art Therapy Exhibit 2003
Packard Art Studio, Student Exhibition, 1996, 1997, 2001
San Diego State University, Accreditation Exhibit, 1999

Experience: Assistant Art Instructor, Fine Art for Children and Teens 2004
Assistant Art Facilitator, Volunteer Art program for Homeless Children 2002

Kari Lonning

Kari Lonning has been a full-time contemporary basketmaker since 1975. She is best known for her double-walled constructions and a complex weaving process she refers to as her ?hairy technique.? She works extensively with graphic patterns, using both bold and subtle color schemes. She dyes the natural rattan reed with commercial, colorfast textile dyes for depth of color and longevity. Her interest in patterns and complex weaving techniques began in college where she minored in textiles, while many of her vessel forms reflect her college major – ceramics. Basketry became the natural union of the two.

Kari designs and weaves all the baskets herself. Her work is in numerous public and private collections including the White House Craft Collection, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC and the US Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. Kari is the author of “The Art of Basketry,” a comprehensive resource on design and construction techniques for contemporary basketry. In 2007 and 2008 Kari won awards for her work from the Smithsonian and Craft Boston craft shows.

When Kari isn’t working on baskets, she and her Old English Sheepdog, Emma, are often in the garden or greenhouse. Plants, with all of their color variations and textures, are a major source of inspiration, as is her facination with building structures and her respect for architectural space.

Sally Lee Candles

Sally Lee Candle Co. owners, David and Marie Rhoades, recently decided to make lemonade out of lemons! Together they experienced the tragedy of losing both of their mothers in March 2008. This ordeal deeply affected their hearts and souls, but sent them a strong message to re-evaluate life. After almost 25 years of marriage they decided to simplify their world from top to bottom. They had always shared a love for the ocean so their simplification process included relocating from a big home in a large city to a simple home in the quaint little town of Ocean Park, Washington.

They had formerly run several successful retail and Internet businesses, including the manufacturing of soy candles. Even though they had thoroughly enjoyed the soy candle business they got caught up in their 9 to 5 jobs, big house and nice car. After many hours of tears and soul searching they decided to follow their hearts and they formed Sally Lee Candle Co. Their new mission in life was to do something rewarding, not just money motivated. They honestly want to make a difference in the world by helping the environment, educating consumers on taking care of themselves including learning the enjoyment of using earth-friendly candles as well as assisting several worthwhile causes.

David and Marie have spent countless hours researching to find the highest quality essential oils, soy waxes and fragrance oils for their products. They have had many family and friends mention that their soy candles smell much better than major manufacturer’s candles (Yankee for example) plus their prices are very fair for such high quality.

The Rhoades’ work hard to produce a superb soy candle for their customer’s pleasure and delight. Sally Lee Candle Co. encourages you to take a bit of time each day to soothe your senses with soy…

Art by Nemo

Nemo was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. He has a background in architectural and graphic design and is currently working as a professional artist. He and his wife Hannah started their own art and design business from their historic home less than a mile from the Alamo. They now live in Denver, Colorado with a great view of the Rocky Mountains.

words from nemo:
The focus of my art is not the subject, but the method by which I constructed it. As a trained architectural draftsman grown weary of computer aided drafting, I had the desire to put my manual drawing skills to work. Drafting requires a steady hand, mastery of one?s tools and patience, as does my art work. I use various line weights combined with multiple styles of circles, spirals and swirls to compose the subject. The entire image is drawn freehand with number two pencil and an accent of colored pencil on vellum drafting paper. I choose my subjects due to their beauty, but for me the real beauty is found in the complexity of details made with the most primitive of tools.

about my style:
Most of my career as a professional artist has been spent making abstract acrylic on canvas paintings. While I have found a measure of success with this media, I have recently happened upon a new media which is getting much more public attention. Since July of 2006 I have been experimenting with pencil on drafting vellum. I started drawing indirectly due to my financial situation. I needed more income than I could earn selling acrylic paintings, so I got a full time job at a local architectural firm.

My main focus in life has always been to make art, so it was a difficult transition for me to switch to a desk job. I felt the need to be making art when ever time allowed and realized that I had an hour to myself every work day for my lunch break. I didn’t think bringing my paints to the office would be a good idea, so I decided to try something I had been thinking about for quite a while. My wife had lots of fashion magazines lying around the house that would eventually get thrown away. I had wanted to somehow use them in my art in order to find a new purpose for them. So I brought a few to work with me. I flipped though the ads and found an image of a woman I liked and started doodling in permanent marker right on the page.

I have always been a doodler ever since elementary school. I used to fill entire sheets of notebook paper with random circles, spirals and swirls and give them away to my friends. So when I started drawing that first day during my lunch break, I used my normal familiar circles and spirals which I had also always incorporated into my acrylic art work. I covered the entire magazine image with marker using the edges of the subject as stopping and starting points for the different styles of spirals and circles. Once finished I stood back and looked at it and realized that I would rather see just the lines without the background magazine image.
That’s when I grabbed a few sheets of forgotten vellum left over from the manual drafting days and dug some half used pencils out of my desk drawer and started drawing the next magazine image, again using the edges of the subject to stop and start the lines. But this time I filled the entire page with just pencil. I used different styles of spirals and different line weights to create the image. About two weeks of lunch breaks later the drawing was complete. I knew it was great and that I needed to continue with my discovery.

Since I started drawing in this style I have had several successful art shows and received many raving compliments regarding my work. I have even had return customers and commissions. Many of my art pieces have found homes across the United States, Canada and Spain. I am also represented by several galleries in San Antonio, Texas, as well as many others throughout the state of Texas.

What started out as doodling during my lunch break has snow balled into an obsession that I started working on during more than just my lunch break. Collectors began to purchase so many of my drawings that I couldn’t keep up with the demand while working a 40 hour a week job. My situation soon became obvious; I had to quit in order to create more art. Leaving my day job has been a bittersweet experience, for without it I never would have discovered my true artist’s voice.

Jordé TheArtist ~ The Magic of The Muralist

The world of Murals and LIVE painting explodes with Jordé The Artist you all keep hearing about. With a magical hand and an aura of Extreme Life force that infuses every brush stroke, Jordé will take your breath away with these live demo’s and ongoing galleries of Larger than life creations…

The One And Only Jordé The Artist

Jordé The Artist LIVE

Jordé

Lucretia Torva ~ Torva Fine Art]

Lucretia Torva‘s lifetime of art experience inspires her masterful technique, clever eye, and intriguing compositions. Having grown up in Europe, she was blessed with exposure to some of the world’s greatest museums and landmarks. This instilled in her a great respect for past creations as a starting point from which to grow into the future.

Lucretia Torva has her Master of Fine Art in Painting from the University of Illinois.? Her dedication and consistent effort resulted in producing many award winning pieces of art. At the same time, she was a highly rated instructor of art, teaching both studio and lecture classes. The courses Lucretia teaches include Drawing, Painting, Design, Watercolor, Portraiture, Figure Drawing, Art Appreciation and Art History.

Lucretia Torva has developed a successful decorative art business, creating murals and trompe l’oeil finishes for homes and businesses through out the Phoenix area.? Lucretia Torva is now creating an inspirational statement taking us into the next decade and beyond. Vintage automobiles and motorcycles, as a subject, are a natural outgrowth of Lucretia’s desire to depict reflections and refractions of all types of surfaces.? Reflections symbolize the many levels and interpretations of reality.

The result is art work that is entertaining, visually stimulating and captivating.? Viewing a painting by Lucretia Torva is an experience in delight with detail that allows one to delve more deeply into the composition, thus allowing the viewer to weave their own story.

Lucretia grew up instilled with the philosophy to pursue freedom of thought, free enterprise and free will as the guiding principles for herself and as a member of society. In the spirit of re-purposing, and not reinventing the wheel, these ideas are embodied in the machines of the recent past.

Lucretia Torva’s art is at its most expressive, complete and unified.

Welcome to Torva Fine Art.

Torva Fine Art, Lucretia Torva, 480-251-3817, TorvaFineArt@gmail.com

Marjorie Wood Hamlin – Burgundy Velvet

Marjorie has studied art since she was twelve. She received her formal training at Willamette University in Salem, OR. She also studied at San Francisco State University and with Stanford University in Venice, Italy.

She now works without influence of any previously conceived school of art for the deliberate purpose of developing her own style. It is her philosophy that real creativity makes something new, rather than copies another style. While this eliminates a great deal of the art in history, it also gives the viewer something of special value. Ideas and inspirations push the envelope of imagination.

Her landscapes have a commanding, brilliant use of color and texture.

The copper and gold foil collage technique evolved after seeing gold used in illuminations in Florence and Venice. She then got the idea of applying it directly on canvas without any paint as abstract art. What resulted was a new sense to meet the eye. The images grow on the viewer. They seem to change in patina and meaning over time. The medium gives off different glows depending on the light in the room, and the time of day. Her work is in both corporate offices and private homes throughout the United States. Collectors come back repeatedly for new work or to commission special pieces.

She currently lives in the high desert of Bend, Oregon.

Chris Mason – Riding Fence

“If you want me to know you, you won’t be handing me a resume; it will be tossed in the round file. I’ll be watching and listening for who you are. Your thoughts and actions today are the reflection of the trail you’ve followed and what it’s taught you. Do you walk through life with grace? “How you treat your animals is probably the way you will treat me”. ”

“Many things should be done in silence
and talkin’ about them is a mistake”? Chris Mason ~ Montana

Chris Mason is sponsored by Patti Dragland.