Environmental Issues

These powerful sculptures of animal and nature combined with human parts has a magnetic eye-catching effect. Kate MacDowell stated in her artist statement, "In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops."

Kate usually starts with words to describe her work prior to envisioning her pieces in order to start the process of sketching and sculpting. She uses modern technology for research, i.e., Google, to search for images for references, as well as any visual imageries she collects from her many travels. Kate MacDowell uses porcelain clay for her artwork which normally take 3 days to a month to sculpt and additional 2 weeks for firing and finishing. Her work has been exhibited globally with numerous write ups.

Exhibitions:

Mindy Solomon Gallery (group exhibition)

St. Petersburg, Florida, USA

April 10 - May 15, 2010

Patrajdas Contemporary Art (group exhibition)

Chicago, Illinois, USA

April 30 - May 3, 2010

artKitchen Gallery

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

May 2010

bo.lee Gallery

Bath BA1 1HE, United Kingdom

June 26 - July 10, 2010

Night At Valencia

Acquiring his skills as a photographer from being an assistant to professional photographers are a great trade off. Jakob Wagner has no prior experience to photography, yet his work displays great talent for composition of night shots, consisting architectural geometric shapes and lines with intense saturated colors.

Jakob Wagner is residing in Düsseldorf, Germany, while working for Rüdiger Nehmzoh who is known for his portrait and photojournalism. Jakob uses a Canon EOS 5D, EOS 33V, and lenses from Sigma, 24-70mm, 105 mm macro, and his favorite focal length 12-24mm. His biggest inspiration is traveling.

Lucky Hsu

I recently purchased a few reprints of Martin Hsu because of my attraction to the high energy, fun, colorful, impactful work of art. Chinese folk art, the love for animals, and family are the main inspirations for Martin Hsu, who have been painting with acrylics and cel vinyl yet excited to experiment with other mediums.

Martin studied animation with the concentration in character design at California State University, Fullerton. He began his career as a graphic artist and a character designer for an apparel company and later migrated to Nickelodeon Studios for a show called, Ni Hao, Kai-Lan as a character designer. Currently, Martin is working at Disney TV Animation as a character designer on shows such as Kick Buttowski and Fish Hooks.

Apart from his creditable career in animation, Martin Hsu is focusing on his personal artwork, with an up-coming exhibition "Tree Show" at GRSF in May, and "Sweet Streets" at Gallery Nucleus in September, as well as his self published book based on his paintings due to release at Comic Con International this July. Martin quoted to Monzuki, "All in all, I'm a lucky guy to be doing what I'm doing. And I try my hardest to remember that."

My thoughts... that's what we're all about.