Rick earned his Bachelors degree in Art with an emphasis on Glass and Valerie was awarded her degree in Human Services Administration and Political Science. Both went on to Southern Illinois University where Valerie completed Masters coursework in Educational Psychology and Rick earned a Master of Fine Arts with a specialty in Glass.

Between 1991 and 1994 Rick was Instructor and Artist in Residence at the Penland School of Crafts, NC. He also served as a teaching assistant at the Pilchuck Glass School, Washington State, and Artist in Residence at the Appalachian Center for Crafts, TN. In 1995 Rick was awarded a SAF/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship.

Rick started working in glass in 1978, Valerie in 1984. They established their own studio in rural North Carolina in 1991.

In 1991, the Becks were among only 100 glass artists selected from among thousands by the Corning Museum of Glass to be published in the prestigious New Glass Review 12. Since 1992, the Beck’s work has been featured six times in American Craft Magazine, as well as Glass Magazine.

Their work is included in numerous private, corporate and public collections throughout the world, including Dutton Lainson Company; Federal Reserve Bank, NC; Glasmuseum, Denmark; Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, WI; Mint Museum, NC; Johnson Wax Corporate Collection; and McDonalds’ Corporate Collection

Andrew Smith is one of Utah's most promising young artists. His intricate sculptures, which meld industrial motifs with organic elements, present works of fascination and fancy. His art seems to be a rediscovery of life’s simplicities. Smith’s sculpture has quickly gained national attention through various exhibits and commissioned works. In 2007 he was approached by the National Inventors Hall of Fame to exhibit his work in the show “Art of Invention, Invention of Art”, located at the United States Patent and Trademark Office Museum in Alexandria, Virginia. The largest work in the show is titled “Driving Force” and is a forty foot long kinetic sculpture that incorporates a series of large brightly colored wheels and shapes, all powered by a single motor.

Smith has built a reputation on creating objects of curiosity, including many Rolling Ball Sculptures. Yet he retains the ability to create sculptures in a small scale. It is this wide range that has exposed Andrew to so many different types of projects and experiences in his career as an artist. Some of his works include elements such as a water cylinder with a pod like shape rising and falling as it fills with air, or sculptures that launch smoke rings across the room, or even a “tornado in a can”. People often ask if he draws out detailed plans or sketches before beginning a piece. Usually, he doesn’t. His works seem to grow as they are being built, in a “form follows function” sort of way, involving a lot of trial and error. Young and old alike are continuously drawn to his work which has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles and media reports.

Smith was born and raised in Highland, Utah, the son of Dennis Smith, a well-known and highly respected sculptor and painter. Growing up in this environment gave him a wide exposure to the world of art. After attending art classes at Utah Valley State College, Andrew began to seriously pursue his interest in sculpture. Dennis describes his son's work as a "celebration of curiosity." As Andrew explains, "I like to incorporate moving elements into my sculptures, something that will draw people in and make them wonder how it works. I want to encourage people to step into a new frame of mind where they can see forms and shapes in places they normally wouldn't."

Sean Diediker is a painter’s painter. His sweeping, faceted brushstrokes and painterly surfaces generate works that reveal the artist’s sensitivity to his medium and attention to the act of painting itself. Diediker assembles bold colors, chiascurro and a cutting-edge sense of design to create a highly original body of work that separates him from his contemporaries.

His imagery captures biblical allegories, narratives and concepts and renders them contemporary. Classical iconography, in Diediker’s hands, becomes a thoroughly modern symbolic language that is fresh, visually striking, and germane to our times. “To me,” states Diediker, “they seem to represent timeless ideas and situations. I have made an attempt to take these biblical concepts and, through contemporary subject matter, bring them closer to the viewer.”

What the viewer is brought closer to are portraits, still-lives, landscapes and combinations of these forms that are balanced and timeless. All of Diediker’s works are tied together by their solid sense of form and compositional structure. Whatever he paints, the same expressive vision and reaction to subject and medium are present. “I enjoy the whole creative process, taking an idea and constructing a painting around it,” states Diediker, whose father is a general contractor, “I feel paint much in the same way that my father would erect a building. Much thought in planning, careful design, step by step and layer upon layer…until the work is done and standing on its own.”

The oldest of four brothers, Diediker is originally from Newbury Park, California. After his formal training in Fine Arts, he has lived and worked in the Rocky Mountains of Utah and has just recently returned from a year-long trek around the world. Travel and environment are important to the artist. “I enjoy using subjects that are tangible to me,” states Diediker, “You might say that my work is directly affected by where I’m living, the people, city, landscape—the things I see every day. I enjoy observing the stimulus and reaction of different human situations. Environment should affect and artist’s work; If it doesn’t, you’re painting decorations.”

Kindra Fehr believes that hands and feet tell stories. They dance, sew, caress, make music and art, feed, nurture, jump, walk, run. Their veins and wrinkles map out a life as it unfolds and the palms are believed to tell the story of an individual.

“I’ve always been intrigued with the complexity of these extremities and how they are always portrayed as a secondary subject, so my thought was-what if I painted them large scale? What if I made my compositions about the stories that they tell and made them, instead of their possessor, the subject? This thought process is where her work originated.

Fehr was born in Salt Lake City, but spent her elementary years in Arvada, Colorado then returned to her place of birth with frequent sabbaticals to places like Europe, Asia, Nepal, and the east coast. She began painting at age fifteen under the direction of Bonnie Posselli, Dan Baxter, and Ken Baxter. She earned a BFA in drawing/painting from the University of Utah in 1990, and has studied at the Lacoste School of the Arts in France and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally.

Willcox has always been fascinated by the human form. Her aesthetic decisions are based on intuition and driven by her obsession to constantly make and create art. She loves the creative process of problem solving.

Presently, she is creating 3-dimensional objects from transformed materials. Her sculptures have grown into kinetically alive figures that tell their story of renewal. Her ideas stem from the world around her-a blend of conscious and sub-conscious imagery.

Willcox has never been constrained to a single medium. She works within a vast range of materials and techniques. She loves to discover the unexpected and to leave a room just for spontaneity. Her goal is to create a unique art form that shares a seamless integration between the world and the human spirit.

Through excessive decoration, she examines the way we perceive domesticity and the contemporary home. The floral patterns she employs in her work are inspired by the patterns that appear on both printed and embroidered textiles. The patterns also borrow from contemporary advances in digital textile production that eliminate the need for repeat patterning. Floral patterned textiles have often played a crucial role in the creation of the home, yet the rise of Modernism relegated these patterns to the margins. The removal of floral patterned textiles from the home parallels the devaluation of domesticity and femininity in interior decoration. However, the recent outburst of floral patterned objects coincides with a renewed interest in the home.

By recreating furnishings and pillows using floral patterns rendered in steel wire, Auman eliminates the need for internal structure. Each object becomes a visual signifier of the ideals of the home, rather than a functional object. The loss of function highlights the tension between comfort and display in the contemporary home. She eliminates conventional indications of comfort such as padding and fabric through the use of steel. While her living room is intended for display, it creates the illusion of an inviting, comfortable space, through the articulation of subtle, curving surfaces.

Auman resides in Jonestown, Pennsylvania, where she maintains a studio making sculpture and jewelry. Her work explores the floral patterns found in textiles and decorative ironwork. Auman employs a torch welding technique to create her steel jewelry and sculpture.

My work and ideas have evolved over the years from a confluence of traditions such as primitive folk art, expressionism, and abstract modernism, which is expressed in my colorful and eclectic paintings.

The process includes laying down various mixed medias, especially old sepia toned papers and other found objects, on stretched artist canvas or paper and then laying down plaster and then painting/drawing on top. I then add and remove layers for a textured, dimensional aged look.

The most prevalent memories from childhood have always been creating art. My mother continually offered projects for my sisters and I to do. A clay artist herself, she was always inspiring. Looking for direction in my college years, I always came back to art. It's what has always made me the happiest.

I graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1994 where I studied metalsmithing. My artistic career started by making jewelry scale sculpture with exhibitions at the Susan Cummins, Mobilia and Mia Gallery's from 1995 to 1998. In addition to a few private collections my work was published in Metalsmith Magazine as well as Jewelry: Fundamentals of Metalsmithing by Tim McCreight.

After this period my focus turned towards raising a family and finding another artistic outlet that was more accessible. With the encouragement of my painter sister-in-law I started to paint.

Following the style I practiced in metalsmithing, I paint in the narrative. Taking stories and vignettes from experiences and interpreting them symbolically. I enjoy using recognizable symbols in each work with the hope that the viewer can draw their own meaning.

By the time I was eight years old I had discovered the love of making things with my hands. Right away I was knitting, stitching and sewing my own designs to give as gifts. I would ask my mom, who's creativity and talent I inherited, to take me to art classes and to antique shops to find treasures to work into my pieces. I remember having antique dish sets and collectibles while still in grade school.

My Passion for art and creating were here to stay! I studied art in college and art history in France. I met my husband in Paris and we moved to New York where I began designing children's clothes for 4 years. After our move to California with a dog and baby in tow. I began to look for creative outlets in sunny California. Within a couple of years I had a ceramic business with a friend. I continue to study ceramics under various teachers and have a kiln in my studio. My love of beads and jewels happened quite by accident when I attended a bead show to buy embellishments for my sculptures. I couldn't believe my eyes and a new love was born!

I seem to be unable to choose only one medium in which to express myself. I am equally inspired by painting, sculpting, sewing, and making jewelry! I find inspiration in everything I see and everywhere I go. The best part is that my three children have begun to show their love of art and creating! We can often all be found in the studio making things!

Jones is an active member of the Glass Art Guild of Utah and in 2006 was nominated Chair of Public Relations Committee. Sarinda was awarded 2004 “Best of Show” at Patrick Moore Gallery and was an invited artist to the 2006 Utah Arts Festival. She is also a member of the Glass Art Society (GAS), an international organization whose purpose is to encourage excellence, to advance education, and to support the worldwide community of artists who work with glass.She is currently working with Bad Dog Rediscovers America, a children’s art institute in Salt Lake City to set up a teen apprenticeship program in kilnformed glass.

“I use a phrase “ Left of Center” to describe the details in my work. This phrase is also used to describe the relationships of the visual line and emotional motivations. Much of my work is a manifestation of the emotions and events surrounding my son’s hospital stay, early in his life. We all experience a time in our life when we have been uncertain of an outcome and recall that moment when time stands still, the tipping point. I try to capture that moment and condense the elements of my work to their essence: to a sense of space that has a concentration of spirit, character and physical presents.”

Ed Branson’s designs in hand-blown glass are distinguished by elegant, fluid shapes and jewel-like colors. Working alone, without the help of assistants, Branson creates unique vessels. "In my work I try to combine the most precise glassblowing skills with the freedom of motion of hot liquid glass, which I achieve by dipping, dripping and pouring the glass," explains Branson.

Many of his pieces are done in a single transparent color, which is then cased over with clear crystal for added depth and brilliance. By manipulating the glass while it is hot, he is able to create graceful, organic shapes that mirror natural forms.

Branson attended two of the country’s finest glass schools, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine and the Pilchuck School of Glass in Washington State. He has worked as a glass artist since 1981 and prior to forming his own studio in 1987 he worked as an assistant to glass artist Josh Simpson. In 1992 his work was one of a hundred selected from thousands of international entries for inclusion in the prestigious New Glass Review XIII, published by the Corning Museum of Glass.

As a classically trained sculptor, Hansen depicts the human condition by altering the perspective, shape, texture, and context of the figure. Her artwork incorporates the fundamental skills of traditional figurative sculpture in combination with abstract gesture, pose, and nuance to express life's triumphs, challenges, loneliness, and loss. The raw materials for her art are those daily experiences that have woven the tapestry of her life.

Hansen studied received her BFA at the Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in 1991.

A native Arizonian, Chelsea Stone of Eye Candy, has been making jewelry for fifteen years. Chelsea received her BFA from Northern Arizona University in 1995 and her MFA from Texas Tech in 2001. Her one-of-a-kind pieces have been exhibited in national competitions and museum shows, and she currently sells her work in over 50 galleries across the country. She has been featured in the books 1000 Rings and 1000 Glass Beads, both Lark Books publications, and Lapidary Journal and American Style magazine.

Living in Salt Lake City, Utah, he enjoys widespread representation by local galleries and throughout the region. His background has developed through his life experiences living in New York and Europe. It is during this time that he developed his appreciation and knowledge of art.

Warren's involvement with opaque silver glass began during his training in 1970. Boyce Lundstrom’s strong background in glaze calculations (reduction colors, copper reds) led him to experiment with silver. Under his supervision, Warren mixed, loaded, adjusted reduction and oxidation levels, dumped batches, recalculated, reloaded—learning to perfect the glass in the furnace. Warren went on to use this knowledge to create colors and ‘Cats Paw’ Design in ‘Bull’s Eye’ Sheet Glass. Warren's focus is on finding all ways to create line designs and color ranges—most importantly, to control them.

Warren's work is a single homogenous mixture that can give a wide array of opaque colors. What’s in the glass is a mix of tin, silver, and copper. Knowing how to melt the batch is a start, more importantly is knowing how to work the glass during blowing. Each design and color range requires a different approach. In general, early in the process, Warren works the surface to create a memory that with heating/cooling will produce the desired results. Adjusting how he works, produces different colors and patterns in the next piece.

He makes his own color. Images are created and controlled during the blowing. After cooling, many forms are cut, ground and shaped before all are acid-etched.

For the past twenty years, Scott Hegan has been making the finest contemporary glass for the best American designers. During the nineties, he was regularly on the glassblowing teams of Dale Chihuly, Martin Blank, Jim Mongrain, Jim Nowak, Cliff Goodman and Randy Strong. During that period, he did individual projects with Therman Statum, Leon Applebaum, and Flo Perkins, as well as being a gaffer at The Glasshouse, Seattle’s first studio glassblowing operation, leading the glasshouse team.

Scott has been enrolled in postgraduate design and production classes with Dante and Paul Marioni at the Haystack School. He has a bachelor’s degree in art and a master’s degree in business.

In 2004 Scott’s work was featured in the New Product Showcase of San Francisco’s Harvest Festival and the Fifth Annual Exhibition of Decorative and Functional Art at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco. In 2005 he was selected for a group exhibit at Poppy Fine Art in Columbia, MO. And the Buyers market of American Craft in Philadelphia, PA. In 2006 he further extended his professional recognition by being invited to exhibit at the American Crafts Council Baltimore show and the Oakland Museum of California, as well as receiving the Mayors Award at the Los Altos Rotary Art Show.

Scott’s work is exhibited internationally. He owns and operates a private studio that produces, in limited quantities, contemporary sculptural glass objects, large-scale architectural casting, and individual commissions.

Antol produces work that reflects the beauty and frality of life. His main body of work is built in layers of colored and clear glass. Different opaque and transparent colors are added and subtracted to create variation in tone and mark. The resonating color is richly textured and unique, much like the surface of a canvas painted with oils. The poetry of the color finds compliment in form. The symmetry of the vessel is often subtly augmented to respond to the color, creating a delicate balance within the work. Antol's glasswork references the Italian tradition of glassblowing in craft and aesthetic while maintaining a distinctly personal expression. Influenced by the work of DaVinci, Monet, Tagliapietra, Degas, and Rosin, he bears strong consideration to their historical innovations when conceptualizing his own pursuits. Antol's artwork is consistently changing and developing in both conceptual content and formal aesthetic, growing with time, and with knowledge.

Elodie Holmes is the founder and owner of Liquid Light Glass, Inc. The name comes from the process of working molten glass in an intense torch flame of light. The unique glass of Liquid Light is hand-sculpted using traditional techniques of glass blowing, lampwork, cutting, polishing, and etching. Through these processes, she creates sculpture, jewelry, and ornamental furnishings such as vases, bowls, paperweights, and aroma lamps.

Holmes first came to Santa Fe in 1981 to co-manage a cooperative hot glass studio on Canyon Road. In 1987, she founded Liquid Light Glass. Her business goal to create and distribute a series of innovative and sculptural glass art for collectors continues successfully. Holmes effectively combines both flame-working and off-hand glass blowing to expand her innovative and unique designs. Her work is available in galleries and museums both nationally and internationally.

In 1997, Holmes was asked to participate in a four month exhibit of her work by the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie in Cadwalader park. This exhibition spanned four generations of Holmes artists: aforementioned Frank Graham Holmes, noted ceramicist and painter Graham Holmes, Jr., award winning design architect Stephen Holmes (Elodie's brother), and Elodie herself. Another highlight of the year was Elodie's acceptance of a White house invitation from President and First Lady Clinton to create a unique glass Christmas ornament which is now part of their permanent collection in Washington, D.C.

Holmes recently purchased the Baca Street Art Studios, in Santa Fe. She has renovated part of this art complex to house her permanent studio where all aspects of her glass art are created. The remainder of the complex is occupied by a variety of artists. The Baca Street Art District, where Liquid Light Glass is located, is one of Santa Fe's newest areas for artists. Holmes generously extends an open invitation to all those interested in visiting her studio, where they can watch her create her glass art.

Nathan Hunter began making furniture in his father’s shop as a child, where he was influenced by an extended family of professional artists. He moved on to pursue fifteen years of intensive professional training as a classical pianist. At university, Nathan was given the opportunity by his teachers to expand on his background in visual arts, where he found a way to combine his diverse influences in 3-dimensional functional art.

“I have always found it impossible to isolate the various art forms. Sculpture, music, architecture, and mathematics make up a single pursuit in my mind. Functional art is a pursuit that satisfies my need to combine line, lyricism and logic into one integrated form.”

A central hallmark of Nathan’s work is a design sense which often explores the tension and harmony between opposing forms, ideas, and materials. The angular truncated trapezoid set against a group of flowing curves – the graceful scoop of a chair seat interrupted by a bold wedge of color – all invite the viewer to gaze at an object both sophisticated and direct.

“I try not to limit the design process by fixating on a single material or discipline of execution. Instead, I let myself play with the possibilities, working out the technical details of construction in the development stage. “

Nathan Hunter works in wood, metal, glass, and other materials, incorporating traditional joinery, hand carving and shaping, and more modern techniques such as vacuum-forming.

Nathan Hunter lives with his wife and two children. He performs his work in his studio in Bloomington, Indiana.

Steven Larson paints cities much the way cities themselves are created. The forming of rich texture through the application of multiple layers in many ways reflects the chosen subject. While capturing the gritty, multi-textured feeling of a large metropolis, Larson adopts a surprisingly lighter pallet, using colors of orange-peach and blue-green.

The cities in these paintings are, like the ghostly figures that inhabit them, transient states of evolution and change. There is a constant transformation reflected as forces from both man and nature build up and tear down the layers that can define or obscure them.

Often in Larson’s work, realism and abstraction co-exists together creating an atmospheric, almost ethereal environment. Both subtle and aggressive marks make up a rich surface quality, exploring numerous ways of getting paint from pallet to canvas. Though Larson's use of paint is free and energetic, the paintings develop slowly, often arriving at colors indirectly through glazes of transparent colors, allowing layers of color to run and drip.

After 20 years in the animation business sculptor Vicki Banks knows how to bring a character to life in subtle ways. Whether it is an introspective moment as an ice-skater ties a bootlace or the private thoughts of a giraffe as it perambulates the savanna, she captures fleeting moments in her subjects’ lives.

To Banks, bronze is the perfect medium. She loves it permanency, its range of colors and textures. Even in an edition of several bronzes each piece is lovingly and individually worked on until it is just right then matched to its own individual base, making each piece completely unique.

Originally trained as a sculptor, Banks spent many years in animated films working with companies such as Disney, Dream works, Warner Bros. and Jay Ward. More recently she returned to her first love, sculpture, and now exhibits in art shows and galleries throughout California, Arizona, Idaho and Utah.

Jade glass is a husband and wife team working together to build a beautiful quality piece of art you can enjoy in any room of your home.

One of the most exciting features of these glass flowers is the ability to customize each piece to your liking. Each stem is threaded and the glass flower screws onto each stem via a short screw which is attached to the back of the glass flower. This enables you to build your own designs from our selection of over 30 different glass colors as well as very safe and trouble free shipping.

Please browse through our site and look at all the different options available using or many styles of bases and colors of flowers. We have designed this piece of art in a way that allows you to be able to participate in the outcome of the final piece by customizing it to fit your own taste and style.

Working in Raku, Barbara Harnack creates magical, one of a kind sculptures that bring to life the character of people. Raku, meaning spontaneous dance, is a tea ceremony name dating to the sixteenth century. The works are pulled from the kiln when red hot and placed in a barrel of straw. Then, working with the fire, Harnack continues moving the piece in the fire until completed.

"My work has been a dialogue between a sense of humor and our own divinity as human beings. When I was a girl I studied with a wonderful puppet maker from Paris named Madame Sorrell. I never got over the experience of creating 'living beings' from nothing. As a result my figurative artwork has been a study of characters from dark to light.

Lisa Gordon was raised to ride and train horses in Southern California. Through working with horses her love of the animals grew. As California expanded the stables Gordon knew slowly vanished as tract homes moved into the area. Seeing the stables vanish became the meaning behind her bronze sculptures. Giving a voice to these graceful animals.

Gordon received her MFA from California State University. During her education she found her passion from bronze sculpting. Both the love of sculpting and the love of horses can be seen in her work.

Growing up on Long Island, NY, I spent the first 21 years of my life on the water, or beach. I relocated to Colorado in 1977. Almost 30 years later, still on dry ground, I find that I still think in a way based on those early coastal experiences. Constantly examining the relationship of human being to ocean and the separate but connected worlds we share. Being distanced physically from the ocean has enhanced my memories, and brought more meaning to these connections. I find the parallels of survival in water to that of survival in life profound. The most basic lesson that the water provided me personally was that of learning how to relax and trust it, realizing that once I did I would float.

My work is typically narrative, speaking of the things that I experience and surround me in my day to day life. I interpret these incidents using metaphor: imagery of things that mean something to me, but are also identifiable to the viewer. Although I personally may intend specific meaning and purpose to a piece, it is my hope that the work is flexible enough to allow individual interpretations by each viewer. I create art because it is the way I think, the way I share my thoughts, and the way that I strive to assist others in conceptualizing events in their own lives.
I work in clay and mixed media. Each piece hand-built, using techniques such as pinch, slab, coil or 2-part press molds into which slabs are pressed and the pieces assembled and altered. My work is typically finished post-firing, using a variety of mediums such as acrylic paints and washes, inks, wax pigments and metallic surfaces.

I was born in 1955, in Port Jefferson, NY. In 1977 I relocated to Alamosa, CO to attend Adams State College with the hopes of double majoring in Art and Special Education. After one year I had run out of funds, and rather than create more debt for myself decided to move to Denver and return to work in retail management, my previous career path. Several years, a marriage and two children later, I found myself yearning for the time to create art. I ‘dabbled’ and experimented, creating things for my own enjoyment. In 1992 I made the conscious decision to take my love of art into a more serious direction. This move towards being a professional artist was one that I had no reference point and began by researching the paths of other artists. This was the beginning - meeting and becoming friends with other artists, learning of other exhibition opportunities, etc. At that time I was working in metals creating hand fabricated jewelry pieces and found object sculpture. I worked in this medium for approximately 3 years while feeling pulled towards working in clay. I made friends with several clay artists along the way and loved their work and the possibilities that clay seemed to offer. In 1995 I was given a raku firing by a good friend, Bebe Alexander for my 40th birthday. That was it, I was hooked on this medium.

Anthony Hansen is a metal artist that works primarily with found automotive sheet-metal. Born and raised in northern California he graduated with degrees in Liberal Studies and Fine Art and received his teaching credential in Elementary Education. His work has been shown nationally at different fine art festivals and galleries.

As an artist, Anthony has focused on using found and reclaimed materials. He uses automotive sheetmetal because it has such character and warmth. Every scratch, spot of rust and faded patch offers visual texture and interest. Text and type, through the use of old signs and license plates adds a dimension of interest and implied storyline. He enjoys creating pieces that are a patchwork of the past and the present, a mixing of the bright and shiny, as well as the dull and faded. Every piece of scrapmetal and license plate has a story. He enjoys trying to weave some of those stories together into my own metal poem. Creating hearts out of found/reclaimed elements constantly reminds Hansen of the humanity that we all share, and how closely all of our different lives and journeys are connected.

I extract my artwork from the experience of travel - not of a particular place, but from the velocity of travel itself - its visual bombardment, and its alteration of spatial perceptions. While traversing the urban landscape via car or bus, this hyper-fluid viewpoint engages me. My obsession with my environs compels me to notationally sketch architecture, cars, trees, and urban clutter flowing by - capturing elements in a state of flux and removing them from their original context.

In my drawings and paintings, I invent ambiguous scenes and spaces by accumulating and compressing miles of space and time into one image. This process creates a dense layering of geography, reflecting the current condition of complexity, simultaneity and disjuncture in our lives and society. As traditional time/space barriers break down, the distance between us and our natural origins ever-accelerates. As the land is reconfigured to suit our ambitions, the environmental quandaries facing us are ever-accumulating.

I feel a connection with the 19th century tradition of the urban ambler, the "flaneur," aimlessly strolling city streets, most notably Paris. Walt Whitman, James Joyce, Charles Baudelaire, and Walter Benjamin were prominent among them - observers of the urban scene, writing about their experiences. Riding buses and continuously sketching different neighborhoods, parks, schools, warehouse/industrial districts, and strip malls - I delve into the drawing process while recording what I see.

The way of the world by horseback is a wonderful experience. Growing up in the beautiful San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, my love of horses began with a bareback ride on the beach. The horse and I rode deep enough into the water to swim. It was at that moment, when the horse and I were totality in sync with each other, that we became one. I will never forget this profound event. It has greatly influenced the representation of horses in my work.

Developing a close relationship with the painting happens during the creative process. The art and I communicate as I explore chance happenings through experimentation and discovery. Texture embodies the color and captures the energy I feel, guiding me as I venture to unveil the tranquil, graceful and powerful essence of the horse.

Paul Brigham paints intuitively, punctuating lush fields of saturated color with hand-drawn or silkscreened motifs. He is inspired by the natural world, and often borrows the silhouette of a sapling, flower, or fossil for his abstractions.

Paul's aim is to evoke the universe as a system of constant flux. Moment by moment, layer by layer, everything changes. By allowing us to excavate with our eyes the layers of paint that accumulate over months of work, Paul gives us a tangible record of time and transformation. Though inclined to draw boundaries between the elements that emerge as he paints, Paul invites chaos into his compositions as well, courting drips, spatters, and elisions.

Brigham studied at the University of Massachusetts and at the College of Marin. As an artist, however, he is primarily self-taught. Robert Motherwell, Asian art, haiku poetry, and the inherent mystery of nature serve as abiding influences. Paul has exhibited extensively throughout the Western states, and his work is in collections worldwide.

Allison Willingham believes every instant is as unique as a snowflake. Through her paintings you feel a cry to stop and smell the roses in an ever expectant world—the melancholy of moments lost and the anticipation of ones yet to be found. You can almost see the water running, feel the gentle breeze, and witness the blooming and wilting of flowers and trees in her landscapes and still lifes. She is drawn to the vastness of the forest, desert and sea and the confined spaces created by suburban life. Her images evoke contradictory emotions—the claustrophobic security of the backyard to the romantic nostalgia of her flower studies to the vastness and organized chaos of nature.

Vibrant colors thickly applied in energetically handled oil paint distinguish Allison’s expressionistic oil on canvas paintings. Patterns and textures ripple and weave throughout the images, drawing the observer to the artist’s interpretation of the world and its constantly changing reality of shadows, light and content. Her jarring use of perspective, willful distortion of forms and interpretative treatment of subject matter inform us that her statement is more than just a pastoral comment. It’s about the blurring of lines, both in the painting and our lives, that leave us wondering where one thing ends and another begins.

From large six foot canvases to small intimate pieces, Allison is poised and confident in her statement—a statement made with her signature vivid color palate and thick painterly brush strokes (always using a brush, never a palate knife).

After graduating with honors from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Allison left her New York and Boston childhood for the expansive Western vistas that inspire her work. She lives in Utah with her husband and three children.

Lane Bennion has been affected by many different influences in his life. The first painting he remembers was Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. He remembers seeing a small reproduction while he was thumbing through his high school textbook. He was so fascinated by the scene, he carefully cut out the picture to keep. At the time he didn’t know much about the artist, but he remembers the way it made him feel.

While studying at the University of Utah he mentored under artists David Dornan, Paul Davis, and Tony Smith. He later went on to graduate in Medical Illustration. Through the university’s art program he learned the technical aspects of how to construct a painting that would invite the viewer to participate in the scene, helping to “finish” the work. Bennion states, “The artist can set the scene, and present a few ideas for the viewer to ponder and dream about. A painting can be a dialogue or conversation between the artist and the audience.

Hopper’s “Nighthawks” worked in the same fashion for Bennion. He states, “The stage is masterfully set with powerful color relationships and a dramatic contrast between the warm inviting interior of the diner and the cool empty street outside. The four figures are mine to direct or control like game pieces, moving either backward or forward in time.”

Bennion feels that many movies, songs, and paintings seem to be afraid to ask the audience to ponder, study, or fill in the blanks for themselves. Bennion states, “ I love it when the credits begin to roll at the end of a movie and I say to myself-I don’t quite get it….I have got to go back and watch that again!” Bennion desires to create paintings that contain this collective thought process.

Errol Beauchamp, a highly stylized bronze sculptor, carves the clay with passion. The passion to create lines of undulating motion that emphasizes primordial forms and earthy textures, and the elegance and sensuality of the female figure. He also creates dynamic forms through layering clay before carving it, to allow the natural architectural forms to counter the man-made marks.

As a sculptor, Beauchamp defines his experiences of western landscape as a minimalist statement. He uses a graphic designer’s eye to simplify ideas into 3D forms of clay that will later become a patinated bronze in a public place or private residence. He lets the clay tell the story. He’s there to embellish and romance the visual and tactile experience of his work for all to see.

Errol is a past board member of the Art Students League of Denver, where he began his training in bronze sculpture. His first major gallery show was followed by three Invitational Shows and gallery representation in Santa Fe, NM and Colorado. His work is in private collections in Paris, France and Colorado. The response to his work in bronze encourages his newest exploration of combining glass and bronze. By creating these forms, he invites you to look inside and around corners, as you redefine your perceptions.

Years of experimenting with different mediums and seeking new ways of expressing his creativity has led Davoud Khosravi to the wonderful world of wood. He is passionate about working with wood not only for the beauty and mystery of the material, but also for the challenges it presents, the invention of new techniques, processes, and tools to create objects. He incorporates several techniques in his work: inlaying, laminating, turning, carving, and sanding.

The many small pieces in each form are cut and aligned in stunning medleys of grain, color and pattern. Each form is hand sanded or shaped and polished on a large lathe then varnished to a high gleam. The sensual shapes are purely from his imagination. Khosravi uses a variety of North American woods such as maple, cherry, walnut, oak and intensely colored exotics: ebony, purple heart and padauk in his creations.

I have become a still life painter-a painter of objects I consider to be beautiful. I'm not exactly sure how this happened, as I love many painting genres, but I think it has to do with ease with which objects can become symbols. Fruits, flowers, and found objects often have an elegance, grace, fullness or "juiciness" of their own-which makes them very "paintable" but in addition, for me they come to represent ideas, principles, incidents and stories. And while I can't usually interpret a painting of mine element by element, there is a meaning which springs form a combination of my experience, knowledge, reading, and what I have recently been thinking about. I often title my paintings to give a hint to the thought behind the piece. Also, I use geometric elements, such as an arch to suggest an underlying plan or orderliness. The technique of glazing or layering transparent oil paints contributes much to the final look of the painting.

Clay Wagstaff loves the trees, rocks, sky, and clean dry air that surround him in Southern Utah. He resides in an old pioneer home near the rim of Bryce Canyon National Park, located in the rural town of Tropic, Utah.

Painting continuously, Wagstaff attempts to balance all the pictorial elements into a harmonious whole by employing Greek orthicons-mathematical formulas developed by the Greeks for use in architecture and art. Theses formulas are believed to invoke a strong emotional response in the viewer, and depend heavily on the idea that strict order and complete disorder should blend together to create a “wholeness.”

Besides employing these Greek orthicons, Wagstaff intends the elements in his paintings to be metaphoric representations, but does not feel it necessary for the viewer to understand these personal symbols in order to enjoy his work. Most importantly, Wagstaff desires that the viewer feel a strong sense of peace while exploring his work.

Completing his BFA from Brigham Young University and his MA and MFA from California State University, Wagstaff has been a professional painter for over fifteen years. He and his wife, Rebecca, also a painter, have recently been featured in Southwest Art Magazine.

Valentine is a Utah artist, who captures the personalities of mans best friend using acrylic. Her simple and fun style perfectly describe each dog, making the viewer smile. Valentine has studied under numerous mentors, including Paul Davis and David Dornan.

RKS Glass Studio in Reading, Pennsylvania produces limited edition and one-of-a-kind hand blown glass. Each design is innovatively and masterfully created with the highest quality.

The variety of intriguing RKS designs reflects the distinct sensibilities of artist Magan Stevens, her experience totals over twenty years in hot glass. Stevens a graduate of Tyler School of Art, has received the CGCA fellowship, been awarded “Outstanding Artist” by the Florida Art Alliance, the “Window of Opportunity” grant from the Leeway Foundation as well as Scholarships to both Pilckuck Glass School and Corning Museum of Glass.

Magan’s one of a kind painted pieces are uniquely her own. The technique incorporates reverse painting encased between layers of glass to create imagery with movement. Magan then custom fits found objects which she has collected over the years. She has been working on this body of work since 1999 and with it has been national and internationally recognized.

Ceramic in appearance textured branch “pots” incorporate rich layers of shifted glass powders with hot sculpted branch lids. Teardrops are Venetian influenced; they combine hand pulled glass cane woven hot into the form. Each piece is unique and distinctive. Whimsical teapots derived from summer fun in the Glass Studio. Bright colors, fun flowers and a gathering of friends, bring a smile to your face.

Cathy Broski includes both archetypical and personal symbolism in her work. She chooses to create vessel forms, because they have several levels of meaning that she finds intriguing to explore. Broski states, “Figures, houses, boats, and pottery are all vessels that contain things we hold dear, and sometimes those things we would cast off.”

Broski strives to instill a story of a journey into each piece, by adding wear and tear marks. To accomplish these telling marks, she uses a layering technique. Layering slabs and coils, and then working back into the piece by carving. The base color is then applied and the piece is fired. After this first firing is complete, Broski applies and wipes off a combination of terra sigilattas, slips, stains, and glazes, and then fires again. She repeats this process until the desired affect is achieved.

Receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Kansas City Art Institute in 1990, Broski has continued to work in the ceramics field in many capacities. Teaching pottery classes, instructing workshops, publishing her work in my magazines, and participating in art festivals, Broski is very involved. She simply states, “Life is good.”

My collage work is heavily influenced by lifes’ objects-signs, buildings, music, advertisements and nostalgia. Sometimes my art begins on the side of the road where I’ve found an interesting object. I search garage sales, junk yards, and antique swap meets for items I can work into a painted collage construction. I use photos I’ve taken, acrylic paint, wood, metal, silk-screened images and found objects to weave a story with my art.

I want people to draw their own conclusions when looking at my work. I want them to look and look again because there is always something else to see. When I’m not working on collages, I paint. My acrylic paintings on canvas and wood are spontaneous commentaries of pop culture, coffee cups, television, hearts, and the spaces we live in. They are created with a fun and whimsical feel because I tend to view life in that way.

"I began making clay towers and shrines in the spring of 2001 after a trip to Mexico. Inspiration came form the colorful and creative forms found in the local artwork and architecture. Soon, my work evolved and I started making Prayer Towers."

Included inside each tower is a folded piece of paper for writing down messages or prayers of one's choice-giving a special purpose for each sculpture.

Mary Williams describes her work as "transforming nature into unexpected sculptures. I've found magic in the Aspen tree. Using various carving and painting techniques, I transform fallen timbers into unique sculptures. A simple log can become a familiar object with a whimsical and organic style. Drawing on twenty years of graphic art experience, she envi