Mercedes Arensberg
After spending a decade running a fashion design business in Buenos Aires, Mercedes returned to the United States to complete a degree in Visual Arts at Columbia University. For the last ten years, she has been creating paintings, sculptures and installations, both video and sculptural for her clients.
She defines her style and ethos thusly:
"My style is stripped bare to what I see as the minimum possible build up of technique or what we call skill. I wish to convey a thought or emotion in a simple and immediate manner—a style that anyone could read and understand, a bit like an illustrative or representative graffiti, street mural, or bold advertisement. I believe in the new and attempt to come up with visual imagery which embodies the new."
Eric Camiel
Eric Camiel has had a distinguished career in the visual arts. His architecture and design work has been on the cover of House Beautiful and several of his works in other media are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Library of Congress and the Library at Lincoln Center. His film work has won multiple Emmys and an Academy Award nomination. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Glamour, Time, and many more. Time magazine's ”Man of the Year” article also featured his work. His sculpture has been featured in the Sunday New York Times and has won several prizes, has been shown in the Katonah Museum, several galleries and a large piece has recently been in front of the Westport Art Center. For more information and to visit his site, please go to: www.ericcamiel.com
Valerie Gross, author
A native Manhattanite, Valerie Gross recently completed her latest novel, Sacred Heart, while her first novel, Our Lady of Everything, is being considered for a screenplay. She also works as editor on a wide range of projects, from works of scholarship through poetry to fiction.
Sacred Heart, a historical fiction of the life of Mary Magdalene, offers a radical re-vision of the New Testament Gospels. Mary begins life destined to become the long-awaited priestess queen who will free Israel from the Roman Empire’s iron-fisted rule, alongside her betrothed, the warrior king Jesus. But in her depths, Mary, a gifted healer, knows there must be a different life than that for which her fellow priestesses of the ancient order of Magdala carefully train her. When her arranged marriage turns into reckless passion and a formal celebration collapses under devastating violence, her cloistered world vanishes and her heart breaks open to new truths about healing, freedom and the power of love – a power which Mary only fully understands when she arrives at the transcendent end of her tale.
Laura Lenhard
Laura is the owner of the unique store, Talisman in Monroe, CT. She has celebrated the Winter Solstice with a drumming and prayer circle here, as well as providing Intuitive Counseling sessions. For more information and to visit her site, please go to: www.talismanct.com
Suzanne Urban
A long-time Fairfield County resident, Suzanne runs Smirking Goddess Studio, where she creates remarkable designs in many mediums. Humor and whimsical designs are her specialty and she sells her work locally and over the Internet. For more information, please visit her web site at: http://homepage.mac.com/urbanradio/smirkinggoddessWEBSITE/Homepage.html
Barbara Bernstein
Bernstein has participated in more than 200 group and national juried shows, including the prestigious Salmagundi, Allied Artists of America, and Art of the Northeast, USA. She has won forty awards in addition to the Grumbacher Gold Medallion for outstanding achievement in oil painting and is a juried artist member of the Connecticut Watercolor Society, Connecticut Women Artists, and the New Haven Paint and Clay. Her works are in many private and public collections including General Electric Corp., the town of Westport, CT and the Connecticut National Bank, among others.
“My work is representational and draws upon the traditional range of subject matter; landscape, interiors, still lifes, and figures. There is an interplay in my work of the abstract and the objective. The high key of the color coupled with painterly strokes gives my work a strong expressive bent. My dominant themes concern the inner serenity and restorative power of nature, and the celebration of the familiar. I place an emphasis on the relationships of colors and shapes, especially mindful of their rhythms and interactions.”
Beverly Branch
Beverly Branch, of Branch Art Studios, has devoted her working life to her art. She has worked as a successful illustrator. Her true love, however, has always been painting. Her portraits and fine art, as well her illustrations, exemplifies the joy she takes in both life and her art.
She was educated at Paier School of Art. Her achievements include shows at both museums and commercial galleries, awards, commissions and placements in major corporate offices such as Hartford Legislative Building, Bradley International Airport and the Stamford Government Center.
“As a painter I have had the privilege of roaming freely in a fantasy world.
Allowing images to float up from my subconscious and, then, having them direct me
is a powerfully spiritual gift. My figures are expressive of the collective fragility of life,
not so much in themselves, as in the act of interfacing with this world of matter and time.”
Florence Dohanos
Flo is a self-taught artist, however, she studied color design, drawing & painting at Bridgeport University, Print-making at Silvermine School of Art and Computer Graphic Arts At Fairfield University. Flo has also studied painting with private instructors in Connecticut, England and Mexico.
Flo enjoys the richness of oil paint for portraits and the diversity and spontaneity of water color for landscape paintings.
Light and dark patterns are an important element in her water color landscapes where she caught a moment in time.
Julia Provey
As the daughter and granddaughter of painters, she was surrounded by art her whole life. She grew up in urban Brooklyn N.Y, which is a fairly tough part of the city and wonderfully diverse. A constant people watcher, she studied the faces and the character of the people surrounding her. Her art has been greatly influenced by the beauty of other cultures.
She attended SUNY Purchase, where she studied painting and art photography. At that time, she began photographing friends in costume, as well as creating photo still life collages. After becoming a mother, she squeezed in her artwork anywhere she could. Photography was one art form that has been easier to continue with through out the hectic years when children are small.
Another way she has included art in her busy family life is by creating sculptures using the natural materials that become available with the seasons, snow, sand and clay; at a natural river bank in upstate N.Y. She would try to preserve these temporary sculptures with photographic images. As well as painting, photography and sculpture, Julia works with fabric crafting quilts, hats and dolls of her own design.
Scott Clarke
Scott is from Vancouver, Canada. He has been making custom furniture since he was a teenager. He lived in Los Angeles for many years making custom furniture, and very unique playhouses and treehouses in Malibu and the surrounding areas. His work is inspired by nature and he uses materials such as saguaro cactus, copper, clay and stone mingled with various woods which he finds as well as antique lumber.
He built a timber frame post and beam studio for his wife. He cut down the trees on his property and milled the lumber with a portable sawmill. He hand hewn the timbers and used the traditional and very labor intensive method of Timber Joinery whereby wood beams are joined by shaping the adjoining wood members to interlock using mortise and tenon joinery. The mated joints are restrained by inserting wooden pegs into holes bored through the interlocked beams. This craftsmanship illustrates the artistic energy which flows through him intuitively and how nature and its natural materials inspire him to create earthy and whimsical pieces, all original and unique.
Lynn Chalk
I learned the art of fine hand sewing at age 11. I designed and hand made a collection of clothing at age 16. I studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) in Manhattan. I turned down job offers to work for well known designers in favor of making custom hand made clothing. My interest has always been in the beauty of hand work and creating unique one-of-a-kind pieces that cannot be mass produced.
In New York City I designed and hand made stage clothes within the entertainment industry. I did a lot of leather work and hand embellishing. I moved to Los Angeles where I continued my work with leathers and where I learned the art of tambour beading. I designed hand beaded leather, suede and velvet vests for musicians with lizards, alligators, snakes, spiders, and dragonflies and also did a line with various Peruvian designs. Musicians such as Tom Jones, Rod Stewart and Joey Kramer from Aerosmith wore my vests on stage. Actresses began commissioning me for hand beaded dresses and tops in silks, velvets and chiffons. Goldie Hawn, Tina Sinatra, Jacqueline Smith, Valerie Bertinelli were some of the actresses who purchased my unique designs. I also sold an exclusive line through Maxfields and Fred Segal in Los Angeles. My clothing has been worn by many celebrities on stage, in MTV videos, TV award shows and movies, and in magazines. My work has since evolved where I learned to design and hand weave fabrics on a loom. I custom dye the yarns and through color, texture and design create unique one-of-a-kind fabrics. Through this work I began designing window treatments, pillows, accessories and bedding for the home. I have a good eye for combining colors, patterns and textures and I love collaborating with people to create rooms in their home which are beautiful and comfortable for them to live in.
Linda Dohanos
My work is influenced by the Latin American Spiritual art and iconic images. Having lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for almost ten years and traveling in Mexico several times has been my greatest inspiration. Recently, I have been exploring the idea of the inner workings of the mind and dreamscapes. I use whatever medium that will satisfy to expose my idea. The "gray Matter" is the newest in the series of this exploration of our "states of mind'. I chose to use heads (faces) as they are very compelling symbols. Throughout history, different groups have "defaced" or beheaded works of art for political or cultural reasons. This reveals how powerful putting a face on an idea can be. Each of the heads represents a state of mind. In particular the interaction of the subconscious and the conscious mind.
Each piece in this series is an "Encounter" with inner workings of the mind. The paintings and sculptures are meant to be icons of an archetypal world within our minds. I believe this is the conduit which connects us all on a intuitive level, regardless of ones culture, language or history.
Dohanos’ ceramic art work is both functional and decorative, capable of indoor or outdoor use. She has designed an incredible array of stoneware lanterns, which represent mosques, castles and fantasy buildings. These works have been collectively displayed at several galleries as “City of Lights”. Ms. Dohanos also creates imaginative sculptures, relief tiles, plaques and plates based on mythical themes. Her techniques include Raku firing, underglazing, and enamel painting, with the majority of her assemblages being hand built or wheel thrown.
She is currently doing a series of paintings with oil on a variety of mediums, including masonite boards, canvas and ceramics. Most of her works are intuitive in nature, as she explores and researches a number of themes, such as the Holy Grail, ancient cultures and textile design. She studied Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and at Southern Connecticut State University, as well as apprenticing with professional potters.
Ed Ross
Travel and travel photography are passions for Ed Ross, a graphic designer by trade who resides in Fairfield, CT. These digital photographic prints, which are manipulated on the computer to create an Old World sepia tone effect, reflect Ed’s use of modern technology to create traditional imagery portraying his unique vision.
Joe DeMarco
I am a self-taught artist who believes God doesn't make junk and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When showing my work, I love to watch the expression on peoples faces, it says everything from WOW to UGH. I also hear the comments from "Unbelievable!" to "Do you give a free Tetanus Vaccine with your work?"
I love character in people and try to carry that over into my work.
Bennet Durand
Bennett Durand began the generations of artists. He was the first one in a family of farmers, scholars and scientists. Although perplexed at his decision to study painting, his family supported him in his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under John Sloane and Robert Henri.
In his senior year, he won an award which enabled him to spend several months on Europe studying the old masters. This was the late 1920’s and Impressionism was a vital force. Cezanne was a strong influence on Ben’s landscapes, but his finest works were portraits. He considered portraiture a struggle for dominance over the sitter, once describing a portrait as “a picture of a person with a little something wrong with the mouth”
His finest moment was a commission to paint Henry Edgerton, judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals, one step below the Supreme Court. Graduating at the start of the Depression, he struggled to enter the world of comic book art. Ultimately he found a career doing technical illustration for the Navy Department in Washington DC, and eventually became an art director.
Lucy Durand Sikes
Lucy Durand Sikes, came to Brooklyn to study illustration at Pratt Institute. She became aware of the old brownstones, so unappreciated by all who were eager to move to the suburbs. She and her husband, Bill, worked hard for years, and ultimately successfully, to promote these urban townhouses. Lucy contributed her art to publicity for the Brownstone Revival Committee, Clinton Hill house and garden tours, and neighborhood organization.
She worked with the Brooklyn Arts and Culture Association to create logos and information brochures for non-profit organizations throughout the borough. Over the years she became known as “The Brownstone Artist” for her many portraits of New York City townhouses.
Throughout this period, while working as a freelance graphic designer, Lucy made time for fine art, always with a deep respect for nature. She painted acrylic landscapes, specializing in clouds and trees, as well as the beautiful old barns and farm houses in Western New York. She recently made a safari to Africa to paint in the wildlife preserves, especially Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.
Stevan Dohanos
The work that propelled STEVAN DOHANOS (1907-1994) to household name status was the long series of Saturday Evening Post covers he painted during the 1940s and 50s, showing slices of American life. This body of work invites comparison with Norman Rockwell, but this should be resisted; that his characterizations weren't as sympathetic as Rockwell's is missing the point.
Dohanos focused on the location and trappings of the American Dream, not those who populated it. His cooler, more objective view of society places his work closer in spirit to Edward Hopper than Norman Rockwell.
Whether the setting is an ice-cream stand, a newly suped-up motorcycle in the driveway, a gas station attendant inflating a goofy toy, or in this picture, a mobile home complete with pink flamingo, Dohanos glorified the magnificent and absurd rituals and fetish-objects of post-war American life.
As the most widely followed exponent of American popular culture (before television shows took over that function), The Saturday Evening Post had great power. Their regular publication of Dohanos images on its covers was equivalent to his appointment as a cultural spokesman.
In the 1960s, after the Post ceased to show art on its covers, Dohanos moved to a comparable position: Chairman of the National Stamp Advisory Committee to select art for postage stamps. He also began to paint still-lifes - not so much apples or peppers, but decoys, weathervanes, and hydrants - his beloved, culturally resonant American objects. (Courtesy of Roger Reed)
