Schedule of Events

Born and raised in El Salvador, Michelle Handal’s art represents the natural environment and embellishments that make up what she calls home. The naturalistic motifs represent the way she sees home from the different lenses of fantasy, illusion, and reality. The basic themes in her work revolve around the concept of beauty of El Salvador that is often overshadowed by the assumptions or stereotypes broadcast by the media. These themes are embodied in a series of digital and ceramic pieces that represent the culture of her home country, depicting its legends, landscapes, cuisine, flora, and fauna. The illustrations of these cultural elements portrayed in this exhibit are arranged into three panels or groups separated by color that, as a result, create a gradient. The gradient starts in the first panel, made from work that is black and white or without color. The second panel presents a group of work that introduces color in their compositions, but still preserving darker values. The third panel and final layer of the gradient is made up by a group of work that has contains full color.

Donaldo Lopez, a printmaker and poet from Santa Maria, CA, discovered his artistic passion through the hardships of learning a second language, English. Having difficulty in talking, he would find comfort being alone in quiet places, especially the outdoors. His focus and observation with nature led to his fondness of animals and plant life structures. Now, they serve as symbolic and allegoric figures in his work. By doing so, art has become his voice to communicate about the symbiotic relationship between the natural world and human connection. His themes are driven towards the expression of love and sorrow via this relationship.

Hallie Maxwell is a ceramic figurative sculptor from Westlake Village, CA. Through her art, she explores the shared human conditions of love and suffering by creating emotional human forms that are both realistic and abstract. She sculpts the human figure because it is the most universally recognizable and relatable form. In particular, she has a fascination with hands, because they allow us to create, feel and communicate. A majority of the figures Hallie creates are from her imagination. She has studied the human form through models intensely at California Lutheran University. Going further than her training, she seeks to create faces and bodies that are entirely unique, just as each individual is. Thus, there is a life to her forms that could not be expressed from being modeled after a singular human. She believes that her art is not a copy of nature, but rather the reflection of her inner self, emotions, and the hidden figures within.

Johannah Peterson was born in Monrovia, CA, where she attended high school and found her passion for the arts. At California Lutheran University, her studies continued, where she gained a love and knowledge for the human figure. Her semester abroad in Florence, Italy catalyzed her dedication and love towards the human form, as if everywhere she went and what she saw confirmed her legacy of the figure. In the beginning of her artist career, she immediately knew there was something beautiful about the human figure. At a young age, her father introduced her to the artist Frank Frazetta. She was captivated by his representation of the form and began copying his works. Today, he still lives as the main influence in her work. Now, developing her own style, she enjoys using the human body as a way of telling a story without using words. Simply exaggerating the form and allowing the muscles and skin to speak on its own is the main objective of her work.

Quinn Rosenblatt is an abstract artist from Westlake Village, CA. Quinn has been creating her own work since second grade, both in and out of school. She struggles with anxiety, which is fueled by uncertainty. Her abstract process allows her to explore, create, and experience something new and different while feeling in control. Quinn uses colors to express emotions like passion, love, fear, and gratitude; emotions she struggles to put into words or express on paper are on full display on her canvas.

Most of my work is intertwined with the drive to open minds and seek a higher consciousness which is practiced in scenes different from our day to day experiences. My intention is to have a scene be a specific moment that is new to the viewer, so they must make their own meaning of the representation. A good amount of my works incorporate landscape rooted in my connection with nature, as I try to replicate its beauty as well as highlight its importance in our lives. My interest in the unconscious mind and raising consciousness is reflected in my work by not having just one subject in view. I want there to be movement in this still piece of life I created that engages the viewer. The inspiration for my style stems from surrealism with the quest for unconscious thought in a disoriented reality, influenced by artists Salvador Dalí, André Breton, M.C. Escher, and Rob Gonsalves. The mediums I most commonly use are graphite and charcoal, recently exploring oil painting, and pen. With graphite, pen and charcoal I pay very close attention to detail and play with shadows. For oil I utilize color. The fluidity of the these mediums convey the movement I create in my pieces as it connects artist to paper. There’s a flow I believe we have in our lives that can move us from place to place, decision to decision, but is all connected with us and the world around us.