I have an
addiction to ceramics that I love to share with the world. I
believe in the infinite potential of clay; it can serve as
an amazing form of therapy and expression. I try to include
my life experience in my work, from stylistic, functional
pottery to conceptual, figurative sculpture. Over the years
I have developed a personal philosophy derived from the
process of art and its relation to life. I studied ceramics
and fine art at San Francisco State University, and have
taught sculpture and pottery classes in Puerto Rico, Alaska,
and the Bay Area. My most recent work has been an ardent
attempt to mirror the intricacies and delicate properties of
nature, extracted from observations of my home in the Santa
Cruz mountains in California, as well as from my travels.
Lisa Alexander
began painting with oil paints when she was 11 years old and
later studied art at three different universities. She has
taught in some capacity for over 25 years and has worked
with children and adults of all ages. As a teaching artist
she stresses fun, experimentation, discovery, and free
creative expression. She takes an easy, step-by-step
approach to skill building. Lisa teaches sculpture,
pastels, drawing, and painting. Here at the Santa Cruz
Mountains Art Center, Lisa also helps coordinate and
organize all of the children’s art classes.
Lisa believes the arts
provide a vital counter-balance for our very linear-logical
oriented society. She has seen that children who do art are
better thinkers, better learners, and are generally better
equipped to cope with the stresses of life. Taking art
classes (as well as teaching them!) enriches our minds,
hearts, and souls.
Cynthia Armstrong brings to her students a wealth of knowledge and
talent from her years of study and experience.
From an early age, art and
science have been twined influences for Cynthia. Her work as an artist
and teacher is drawn from the exploration of nature, capturing and
expressing the intricacy to be found in the observation of details. Her
artistic vision is influenced heavily by the scientific explorations of
Leonardo Da Vinci, which were augmented by drawings and journal notes.
Close study of the natural world leads one to ask more and more
questions. “What chewed on this leaf?” “What other animals are living
in community with the one that I’m drawing?” “What are the stages of
development of this plant or animal or event ?” “How and in what way
does this plant or that animal affect it’s environment?”
Cynthia holds Master’s
degrees from UC Santa Cruz and Stanford University in Science
Illustration and Education. She has been a freelance illustrator and
artist for over 15 years, and a teacher for the past 10 years. She has
acted as a liaison between the National Park Service and local school
communities. As a published illustrator, Cynthia has traveled and
journaled extensively throughout her career, illustrating the tropics of
Panama for the New York Botanical Gardens, drawing grizzly bears for the
National Park Service in Montana, sketching extinct wooly mammoth
remains in Maine, and creating signs for the Mono Lake Visitors Center,
California Native Plant Society and the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum.
1965 -1967 Director of exhibitions and education at Spiva ArtsCenter in Joplin Missouri
1967 - Art Instructor Missouri Southern.
1993 - Symposium in Russia and introduced the Raku process to the Russian
artists
Current - Raku Master at SC Mountains Art Center I enjoy working in ceramics as a challenge in
physics as well as the quest for the superlative object. In this series I am fascinated with the immediacy of the Raku
and in particular a copper glaze called "pickle's luster".
TEACHING ADULTS: Brenda Berg
is a Boulder Creek, California-based visual artist and
teacher.
Berg’s art
making process involves manipulating paint, surface, and
sometimes the viewer through modes of covert surveillance.
Berg’s recent honors and awards include the 2008 Carol Anika
Mihalik Memorial Fund Grant for new media, a nominee for the
2006-07 Santa Cruz County Community Foundation's Rydell
Fellowship, and her work is in collections throughout the
United States. Berg graduated Magna cum Laude from San Jose
State University's Art and Design Department and completed
her postgraduate work in Studio Art at the University of
California at Santa Cruz. In addition to teaching visual
arts to youth and adults at the Art Center, Brenda has
taught art at UCSC since 1992.
TEACHING
YOUTH: When Brenda’s children were
young, she studied early childhood education with several
creatively gifted teachers while organizing a parent co-op
in Mission Hills, California—which is still in operation
today. Thoroughly enjoying working with children, Brenda
accepted a teacher/director position at a Montessori School
after a move to the Bay Area. She later became the owner and
director of her own schools in Santa Clara County. In 1989,
Brenda moved to the mountains and returned to making art
full time; she also joined forces with the Valley Arts
people, who are now the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center.
Still amazed by short people and their creative spirit,
Brenda is always delighted to return to the Art Center’s
youth classroom where, according to one of our students,
“you get to spread your imagination!”
Art and music are
my passions. My first art award was winning the 1952 SPCA’s
BE KIND TO ANIMALS Poster contest.
I’ve managed
sprints of both in my life including singing professionally
in the Bay Area during the Sixties as Tom & Lee, and
studying fine art in college in the Seventies. The next
decades were devoted to raising my two children some time of
which we sang together in the San Jose Peace Chorale.
In 1995, I found Jayme Kelly Curtis’
once-a-month acoustic jams, first in Boulder Creek, then at
the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center in Ben Lomond. There, I
attended Life Drawing classes held Tuesday evenings. Through
the Art Center I’ve enjoyed plein air excursions and
exhibiting my art and currently I am on the Board
representing Music in our community. I produce the summer
Ukuleles Gone WiLD!
concerts.
In 2007, I and a
couple of friends created the Side By Side band, now called
All Shook Up (ASU). We perform Fifties Rock & Roll for
senior centers and local groups like Newcomers. As
bandleader for ASU, steering and cheering is my role.
Marty
Carlson has been teaching folks to
play the ukulele in the San Lorenzo Valley and Scotts Valley
for over 10 years. His mission is to get as many people
playing the ukulele as possible. Marty always volunteers his
time and his classes are free except for a $3 donation
collected for the centers.
Marty’s motto
is "If it ain’t fun, don’t do it!” He de-emphasizes
practicing and emphasizes "just playing songs and having
fun.” The ukulele is really an instrument that you can have
fun with at many levels; you can just strum chords and have
fun or you can get just about as complicated as you want to.
The venues
where Marty teaches often have functions where his classes
perform; for example, the Art Center’s Monday night classes
play for the Ukuleles Gone WiLD! summertime shows; the
Spring Lakes group often plays at the Park’s dinners and
parties; and the Scotts Valley Senior Center group has
played for their monthly barbeques.
A Brief
Musical History
Marty
has been playing guitar since his college days and besides
ukulele he also plays a resonator (Dobro), banjo, and the
harmonica. Before moving to Boulder Creek, Marty played
Tuesday nights at an English pub in Half Moon Bay. In
January of 2000, Marty attended his first acoustic jam at
the Art Center in Ben Lomond led by Jayme Kelly Curtis.
Jayme held her jams once a month for nine years – and
inspired many local musicians to play with others.
Marty
learned to play the ukulele because Jayme kept telling him
how much fun she was having at the Ukulele Club of Santa
Cruz. Marty first learned ukulele from Patti Maxine at the
Highlands Park Senior Center and ended up teaching her class
because Patti was really busy and because he found playing
the ukulele was even easier than playing his guitar
(Carolee Burrows currently teaches the
Tuesday (1-2pm) Highlands Park Senior Center ukulele class).
One of Marty’s
best memories, is a lady named Ilene. She was in her
middle eighties and was often his "Ukulele Club Date,” and
also went to a couple of jams with Marty each month. She
used to own a chain of music stores and loved music. Marty
swears she knew more songs than anyone he’d ever known. She
now lives in Colorado near her son who has a music store
there.
What’s
surprises Marty the most is how many seniors are playing the
ukulele and having a great time. There are lots of
opportunities for people to get together and play on a
regular basis in the Santa Cruz area; for example, there’s a
regular Saturday morning group (10 to noon) at the Harbor
near the Crow’s Nest. There are usually around 150 people
who get together and have a great time.
For
over thirty-five years Rob Court has worked as a freelance
illustrator and graphic designer. He has contracted with
large corporations, small businesses, and non-profit
organizations. His client list includes publishers such as
The Walt Disney Company, Scholastic, Los Angeles Times, and
Los Angeles magazine.
Now
a full-time drawing coach, Rob is thrilled to help students
find their own voices in drawing and visual art. He has
written and illustrated numerous
how-to-draw books and started the Scribbles Institute to
help people develop their drawing skills.
Rob lives in Santa Cruz,
California, where he enjoys mountain biking, surf/skateboard
culture, reading, and sketching.
I've been lucky enough to visit a
number of amazing locations over the
years, and there's always been a
strong desire to somehow extend the
experience indefinitely. In my work
I try to capture not only the 'look'
of the place, but what it must feel
like to actually be there. I'm also
mindful of the fact that future
generations may not have the
opportunities to visit these same
places, so my images are as much
perhaps a historical record as they
are a celebration of what we have
today.
Most of my work is from my home
state of California, though from
time to time I do venture further to
other locations in the West such as
Utah and Arizona. Landscape work is
my passion, though from time to time
I'll try to capture interesting
architectures.
I follow a 'hybrid' approach to
photography – starting with medium
format film then scanning the
developed negative for fine-tuning
and printing in the digital domain.
As far as I'm concerned,
claywork has it all. I came to ceramics with a
painting/drawing/collage-mixed media background and it took
time to explore the endless possibilities clay offers. I
feel I have married my 2D and 3D artistic skills so that I
feel that I "draw" with the wet clay and I "sculpt" with my
surface treatments. It's a powerful unity and I thank clay
and ceramic materials for it.
Like most endeavors, claywork
has laws and rules and we can benefit by knowing them well
enough to push them around a bit, taking lots of calculated
risks and learning from our mistakes, real or imagined. I'm
here as a guide, as someone who has meandered along that
path of passion and curiosity, and as one who can help with
formatting an approach to learning and experimenting. I
especially enjoy helping students to interpret their
individual creative process as each encounters the self in
the art-making and its results.
I am a local ceramic artist,
an avid supporter/volunteer in the Ceramics Department of
Cabrillo College, an Open Studios artist, an Exhibiting
Member of the Association of Clay and Glass Artists and a
member of Santa Cruz Clay. My work can be found at Many
Hands Gallery in Capitola, the SC Mountains Art Center and
online on my website and my Etsy Shop.
Heidi Drew has
been teaching and showing artwork in Connecticut,
Massachusetts, California and New Zealand for the past 30
years. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the
California College of Arts and Crafts in photography and
illustration and her Masters degree in art education at the
University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. She has studied at
several other art schools in the U.S.
She relocated
her life to New Zealand in 2003 when her youngest of 3
children left home. She has written a memoir about that
wild and wonderful year of transition for her. Heidi is a
painter, a photographer, an illustrator, writer, and enjoys
improvisation and theater. She creates from her
imagination, from photographs and from life. The human form
and condition has always been central to her creative
expressions.
Currently
Heidi resides in Boulder Creek, Connecticut and Wellington
New Zealand where she practices life drawing and
improvisation on a regular basis.
Rick Duncan has been playing
anything with strings on it for most of his life. He has
recorded over 300 original songs, written poems, parodies
and humor articles. His musical forays have taken him into
rock, country, dixieland, ethnic folk dance, children's and
comedy music. Radio personality Dr Demento featured several
of his songs on his national radio program. He won a trip to
Hawaii with KLOS and staff in Los Angeles with a song
performed on the ukulele. A Boulder Creek resident now for
five years, he wishes to give something back to the
community. Teaching is something he loves to do. "As long as
the students practice!"
Every Monday
evening, Rick teaches an ongoing Ukulele Class at the Santa
Cruz Mountains Art Center in Ben Lomond from 6:30 to 7:30.
I paint in order to witness
the light in some of the most interesting places I can find.
I find I am closer to the actual living of my life and the
people in it through the Plein Aire Experience. I paint
because it is a visual problem solving process requiring an
idea that must be carried through to completion. And,
ironically and unlike printed circuit design, it has
absolutely no function!
What is the function of a
painting?! Hardly anyone can give a decent answer. Painting
is the antithesis of design. Beauty? Yes! IF I am good
enough, I may create an image with beauty and keep-ability
and it may find the one person who also sees those qualities
who can afford the ultimate luxury. Yes, that’s it!
Each class
is designed to educate and inspire by combining nature
exploration and the arts, nurturing respect for and
understanding of the local environment. Classes are
interwoven with natural and cultural history and help
students to develop a sense of belonging to a particular
place and helps teachers integrate art and poetry into core
curriculum subjects, especially science. This program
promotes literacy in all of its forms, with a special
emphasis on ecological literacy. Each class includes
exciting visual presentations, demonstrations and hands-on
opportunities using quality tools and materials to produce
thoughtful expressive work.
Anouk
Johanna
is an accomplished pen and ink artist, painter, ceramic
sculptor and printmaker as well as a jewelry designer
and scrimshaw artist whose work has
been sold nationally and internationally for more than 30 years
to private collectors through shows and her website as well as
through galleries. Her scrimshaw art has been written up in many
national and international magazines.
Presently Anouk is teaching
watercolor painting in which she incorporates monotype printmaking as a way to
start a painting. She finds it to be a wonderful way of passing on
techniques and exchanging ideas.
In the
past years, I've displayed my artwork in San Francisco &
Monterey bay area group shows, restaurants, galleries and
universities. Current work has been displayed at the Santa
Cruz Art League, the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center,
Cultural Council, Works Gallery in San Jose, the Davenport
Gallery and various on-line web galleries. A listing of
these are detailed on the adjoining page.
My mom,
who has always been encouraging of my art once suggested
illustrations and I fell in love with the concept. While
trying out practically every artistic technique in the book
I became drawn to watercolors and the subject matter of
people. I find the human face to be exquisite, because each
person on this planet is different in some way. I feel like
capturing an expression is like saving a moment in time and
I enjoy the challenge of creating it. Some of my watercolor
paintings are done in mixed media, where different designed
paper is applied to the painting to give it a unique look.
"I am not interested so much in what I do with my hands or
words as what I do with my heart," a quote by Hugh Prather
and like Prather's quote I create each one of my paintings
with passion and care.
From a young
age I have taken a wide range of art classes and have
participated in creative events through out my life. I
became active in the art programs offered at my high school
and after I graduated I went to Santa Barbara City College
to continue my education in art before transferring to
California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo. I
graduated from Cal Poly in 2010 with my Bachelors of Fine
Arts with a concentration in studio art.
For over
20 years I have been a studio potter creating fine art for
the wall and funky functional ware all from that amazingly
versatile medium, clay. Along the way I’ve become a mother,
a teacher, and a student of children. Watch a child make
art. There is no fear. Our best work emerges when we
operate in a place of no judgement. So I scribble.
I’ve
taught classes and workshops about my techniques since
1989. I’m passionate about teaching as it provides the
endless give and take of creativity that makes all of our
work better. I have yet to teach a class where I’ve not
said, “I’ve never thought of doing it that way before!” I’m
always on the look out for a result I’ve never seen before.
This teaching/learning process is a constant supply of fresh
ideas that eventually changes my work consciously and
sub-consciously.
I live and
work with this intention: Pay attention to the process.
You may just find that the accident along the way pleases
you more than the original goal. And make sure you laugh
and play along the way!
"I
enjoy pushing the boundaries of the clay medium; I use the
techniques of studio pottery to convey the philosophies of
subconscious imagery and stream of consciousness prose to
push ceramics out of its traditional utilitarian realm.
C.G.
Jung referred to subconscious imagery as "prima material" ;
this idea is central to my work. The sculptures I create are
unfiltered poetic expressions; they are whimsical and
animated images of man and nature drawn from personal
experience as well as mythology. Each piece is a journey, as
I work I allow each image to emerge spontaneously from the
previous one, a metaphor for the soul's journey.
My
materials consist of clay and a variety of stains and
glazes. I layer and fire the pieces according to a specific
process of experimentation to achieve the effect I desire. A
piece is completed when I feel it captures the idea I wish
it to convey.
Although a native of Massachusetts, over the past 25 years I
have spent time in Germany, England, Boulder, Colorado, san
Francisco, and now reside and work in Santa Cruz. I was a
potter's apprentice in Germany, my Undergraduate studies
were completed at Southeastern Massachusetts University and
the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. I received my
M.F.A. from San Jose State University, California.
For the past eight years I have studied with and assisted
Coeleen Kiebert at U.C.S.C. and at her home studio.
Coeleen's emphasis is on the creative process and the
concept of the creative personality which she has studied
extensively with Frank Barron.
I have been teaching creative sculpture to children and
adults for the past twelve years in Santa Cruz, California.
I am currently exhibiting works in Northern California.
Jody Snyder is a community
minded arts activist/therapist skilled in working with
diverse groups of people. Her spiritual sensitivity helps
students and associates achieve balance.
She has studied art, art
history, art therapy and been involved in arts communities
from Paris (studied at the Sorbonne), Cambridge Mass., Los
Angeles, and now Santa Cruz, teaching
ceramics Handbuilding at the Mountains Arts Center, “Finding
Your Way with Clay.”
Seeking
to create art which transcends time and culture, I will my
evolution from single-celled illustrator to proto-simian
fine artist, leaving behind the comfort zone of my past art
toward something more evocative and powerful; in essence, I
drag my primal self from the viscous primordial goo of image
and representation toward the light.
My
simple constitution is empowered by the light, color and
energy which infuse the atmosphere. I am free to evoke
visceral emotional response using only color and gesture, as
I am no longer bound to the traps and pitfalls inherent in
attempting to communicate using the words and icons of an
assumed vocabulary of shared experience.
The
structure of my paintings are synonymous with the
choreography of a dance. The colors leap across the canvas,
twisting and colliding, playing tag and running amok. I
forsake a central focal point in order to draw the viewer’s
eye over the entire surface as if tracking the flight of a
butterfly. leaving out images laden with cultural meaning,
my paintings strive to access a more reactive response which
allows them to span cultures and generations, making them
accessible to a larger audience.
As an
artist I have found that I can initiate emotional response
but not control it. By
attempting to communicate the excitement of creation without
resorting to representation and story telling, each viewer
is afforded a window into their own memories and personal
mythology. My paintings are a gift certificate for your
spirit, once given it can be redeemed for any emotion of
your choosing.
I think of
my work as primarily sculptural, most of my baskets are functional as
well. they are woven from strong light weight rattan reed , which
I purchase & dye with various wood & basket
dyes. Most have a handle of antler,
driftwood, or manzanita. Color was added to the equation when I started
weaving with rattan and learned the art of dyeing.
Antlers have been incorporated as handles, frames and
stands
What do we value? As a species, we have
created wondrous things: skyscrapers, iPods, satellites, the Mona
Lisa, and countless other miraculous works of art and science. We
have also created every problem that exists in our world today. Through
shortsightedness, greed, and intolerance, we have designed
overpopulation, poverty, pollution, depletion of natural resources, war,
a tanking economy, and a government that spends 10,000 times more money
on arms and armed forces than it does on educating its young.
If we had decided
consciously what world to create together, would this be it? What are
we creating today, and how will it look tomorrow? In this country we
claim to value things such as freedom, fairness, intelligence,
tolerance, and respect. The time has come for each of us to take action
in a more global, conscious way with regard to these values.
Conscious action
begins with whole education for our children. We must equip them to
face the challenges they will inherit. Now, more than ever, our
children need an education that includes more than just information. It
must also provide the creative experience to sharpen the cognitive tools
that can build new solutions. Every advance ever made by humanity,
every problem ever solved, sprang from creative minds. And yet arts
programs are being cut from public education almost universally. Can we
really afford to eliminate creative training for our young people? To
ignore it as though it was unimportant?
Higher brain function
is facilitated not by particular centers in the brain, but by systems of
interaction—like webs—among many areas. The ability to access many
parts of the brain at once allows one to gather numerous bits of
information and formulate something completely new. The arts help to
build and strengthen these interconnecting pathways in our brains.
The correlation
between arts education and SAT scores is well established: more arts
exposure equals higher verbal and math test scores. Higher
scores hold not only for standardized testing, but also in the
scholastic areas of reading, English, history, citizenship, and
geography. Students who play a musical instrument score up to 34%
higher on tests that measure spatial and temporal ability. Studies show
that within two to three years after arts programs are cut in schools,
attendance and test scores go down; incidents of vandalism (crime) and
disruption go up.
Some of the skills
that are developed by arts education are:
·Abstract
reasoning, which is vital in problem solving, forming theories and
ideas, understanding subjects on a complex level, and thinking about and
combining things symbolically (i.e. adding in your head rather than
counting on your fingers)
·Discipline
and focus
·Self
confidence
· Spatial
thinking, which is critical for learning in the areas of complex
mathematics, science, and engineering
·Enhanced
communication and expression
Arts education
fosters original thinking—and healthy, adaptable, tolerant human
beings. Imagine, for a moment, a world in which individuals and
societies were able to:
·Creatively
find peaceful resolutions for conflicts between individuals,
groups, and countries.
·Design
homes, buildings, transportation, and lifestyles that are
sustainable and symbiotic with the planet (rather than parasitic
and resource depleting).
·Create
community, family, and individual health through fair trade,
fair wages, fair prices, and universal access to excellent
education and healthcare.
·Design
ways to clean up and eliminate environmental toxins.
These are not
outlandish ideas. They are real solutions to devastating problems. If
we value these things, they are possible. They are simple ideas to be
orchestrated and embraced by creative, well-educated minds. But
well-educated minds need to be supported and nurtured.
In 2009, the U.S.
Government spent roughly $1,784,000,000 (that’s Billion) per DAY on
defense. On Education, for the entire YEAR: $64,882,384 (that’s
million).
What DO we value?
Demand from your
representatives that education be made a priority. That priority needs
to be expressed through substantial financial support. Refuse to allow
the arts to be cut from curricula; demand that arts programs be expanded
and integrated with other subjects. Support your local school’s arts
department with money, supplies, and/or volunteer time. At home, expose
your children to the arts through attending community classes,
galleries, and live performance.
We can take
conscious action that is aligned with our highest values. We can
provide a better world for our children. The arts can help to make it
happen. Imagine that. Create that. Do that.
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