More Photos from Art on the Ridge, 2010

More photos from Art on the Ridge, 2010! We hope next year will be just as great!!

ARTrails

This will be the second weekend for ARTrails.  There are a few Bennett Ridge artists on my list to stop and see.  Colleen Cotton's kiln formed glass is at 2880 Bardy Rd. and Donna DeLaBriandais's visual art is at 2927 Old Bennett Ridge Rd.

I also hope to check out my former web instructor, Tim Fleming, and his large format photography at 1579 Anna Way in Petaluma.  I have to credit Tim for teaching me how to create a blog and website.  He teaches both website start-up and Photoshop.

Photos from Art on the Ridge

What a Great Time

Thanks to everyone who came out for Art on the Ridge! We hope everyone had a wonderful time!

A.J. Trombetta

I would admire the beautiful, Italian glass figurines on my Nonni’s fireplace mantel, as a young child, but I did not appreciate the potential of Venetian glass as jewelry until I traveled the Italian islands of Venice and Murano with my husband, in 2006. I was amazed by the craftsmanship of the Murano glass artisans, and by the way that the gold and silver foil, glass beads caught the light like gemstones.

commissioned for wedding party bridesmaids

I originally started making jewelry for myself. I was influenced by the modern simplicity of the designs of Los Angeles based, jewelry designer, Suzanne Felsen. I listened to friends lament that they could not easily find quality jewelry, within their budget, and so, I also began making custom, glass jewelry pieces for friends.

I strive to create original, modern designs with quality metals. I generally opt to use Venetian glass, instead of gemstones, due to its beauty, affordability and sustainability, and I recently began to incorporate the use of recycled glass. I am in the process of getting my own website up and running.

more about Venetian glass making....

My Background

I was fortunate enough to grow up on Bennett Ridge, and one of my childhood influences was my neighbor and late artist, Ruth Dicker. Her unique style of painting, and her modern home, with mobiles and African masks on display, captured my imagination forever. Her bold, creative energy will be missed. When I was a teen, my father encouraged me to study photography and ceramics classes at Santa Rosa Junior College, where I obtained my Associate in Arts degree in Humanities. I also studied pottery at the Mendocino Arts Center with local potter, Harald Nordvold.

I have recently moved back to the Bay Area, after spending the last 20 years in Southern California. I worked for the City of Los Angeles as a sworn, legal policy researcher and writer for the Los Angeles Police Department, after obtaining my Bachelor in Arts degree from San Diego State University, in political science and journalism. My hobbies include photography, writing, hiking and going to the beach with our dogs, urban animal rescue, and anti-dogfighting awareness.

Sally Spiegel Weare

Sally Weare has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1969 after returning from four years in London. She now lives mostly in a studio in Sonoma County, California, on the edge of a 5000 acre State Park, where coyotes howl, and deer and wild turkey abound. She is extremely lucky to share her life with her husband Shane, their 3 grandchildren, Nisi, Elias, and Ian, son Tobias and his wife Elena, daughter Kate and her husband Kurt, their Jack Russell Terriers, Poppy and Gus, her Arabian, Zephyr, and her Spanish Mustang, Laguna.

After undergraduate work in Humanities at the University of Chicago, Sally received a B.A. in Fine Art from the University of Iowa, then spent a Post-Diploma Year in Painting at St. Martin’s College of Art, London, and received an M.F.A. in Painting from Mills College, Oakland, California.

Sally’s painting, drawing, and photowork have been exhibited widely at museums, galleries, universities, and she has received numerous honors and juror’s awards, among them an Exhibition Grant from the U.S. Embassy for her 1996 Solo show in Belgrade, Serbia, the Catherine Morgan Trefethen Fellowship for Graduate Painting, as well as Artist Residency Grants at the Millay Colony, N.Y., Virginia Center for Creative Arts, VA., and the Briarcombe Foundation, CA. Sally’s work appears in private and public collections both in the U.S. and abroad.

She has taught Interdisciplinary and Experimental Art at San Francisco State University, at University of California, Berkeley, A.S.U.C. Studios, New College, S.F., as well as drawing and photography at the City College of Berkeley, CA. and has guest lectured and lead workshops at the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Michigan, Ohio University, University of Kansas, Berkeley Art Center, CA, Sonoma State University, and Falmouth School of Art, Cornwall, England. Sally is on the Board of Directors of the Women Environmental Artists Directory, WEADARTISTS.ORG.

Daughter Kate Weare, continuing the family’s artist tradition, has created a thriving
dance company based in NYC (yes, a plug! see KATEWEARE.COM).

Heartfire

Terri Hamilton-Gahart

Beads
I have been creating with different mediums throughout my life. My Granni introduced me to beads and I spent hours in the back room of her house looking at, touching and stringing them. In 1999, I sold my first piece of jewelry to a friend who also encouraged me to start a business. I chose the name Heartfire to express my passion about and love of beads, especially gemstones that come from the “heart” of the earth. For me, assembling the patterns and colors of the beads is a consuming passion, literally the fire of my heart.

Glass
Working with kiln formed glass satisfies my creative need for engagement and transformation. Working alone in my studio cutting and assembling the pieces of glass engages the colorful images derived, on many occasions, from my dreams. Once the glass enters the kiln, the collaborative process continues where the glass transforms from pieces into a unified whole. The work holds all time perspectives for me; during creation, the present moment is experienced, while the piece before firing holds the past and its form suggests the possibility of the future. In my creations, I strive to hold the paradox of movement in a static piece, the tension of randomness and order, and the excitement of the interaction of the color combinations.

Shane Weare

SHANE WEARE (b. Lyndhurst, England, 1936)

Went to Falmouth College of Art in Cornwall, England. Received an A.R.C.A in 1963 from Royal Collegeof Art (London). Taught at many colleges including central School of Art and Design (London),Universiy of California (Santa Barbara, California), Central School (London), and recently retired fromSonoma State University (California). Weare is in many museum and corporate collectionsincluding The Art Institute of Chicago, British Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Library of Congress,Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Stan Sommer's Trace Monotypes

Stan's "Twin Raptors" monotype is done in the 'trace-monotype' method. Stan draws on the back of the paper over an inked plate. The hard pencil picks up the ink only where the pencil or other object went over the paper. Stan first prints backgrounds for this transfer using the traditional monotype methods. Using this printed paper gives the object depth.


What is left on the plate after the transfer is also interesting and can be printed as well.

Karen Sommer's Monotypes

View Karen's new textures series of Monotypes at the upcoming Art on the Ridge. There are 14 images from this series and each one is composed of rich layers and depth of color.













What is a Monotype?
To make a monotype, the artist paints or draws on a flat plate of almost any kind, metal, and plastic are often used. Oil based inks are used for the monotype and can be rolled or painted onto the smooth surface plate. Using various tools, ink is removed from the plate to help form the image.


When the plate is done, it is printed onto paper using the pressure from an etching press. Some ink remains on the plate after printing. If the plate is reused with this residual ink, it is called a "ghost print". The artist can use a a portion of the ghost and rework the plate, applying more ink and producing another unique image.


The monotype process offers many variables to give the artist options for expression: photo transfers, collage (chine colle), or reprinting on the previously printed image. Monotype allows the artist to work quickly and with great flexibility.


Monotype became an accepted art medium in the nineteenth century when printmaking became generally accepted as a primary medium.

Sherry Parker

SHERRY PARKER
Mixed Media Collage

“Parker’s diminutively-scaled works reflect her passion for the great masters of the collage medium – Schwitters, Ernst, Höch and Cornell – however, the particularity of her own vision emerges from its sources in beguiling feminine perspectives, dream language, keen compositional orderliness, and a rich new palette.”
– Stuart Denenberg, USART Expo, San Francisco

Sherry Parker was first introduced to collage and assemblage in New York in the late Sixties where she was a player in Ray Johnson's Correspondence School. She has been (actively) working in the collage medium since 1987. Her work, as described in an art review, "reflects an intense response to the poetics of a life suspended between the real and the surreal."

In the artist's words: "Collage is a happening. What excites me about this medium are the ideas which flow from chance, from a serendipitous discovery – and the spontaneous (frequently unconscious) combining of textures and images from objets trouvés and out-of-print materials."

Parker spent her professional career in advertising and marketing. For two decades, she was in account management with J Walter Thompson, D'Arcy, and DDB Needham. In 1990, she founded Parker Jones Marketing Research from which she retired in 2007 to pursue art full time.

Her work has been shown in galleries in New York, San Francisco, Berkeley, Napa, Seattle, Santa Fe, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.

Parker has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Occidental College in Los Angeles, and a graduate degree in French Literature from the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland.

Digital Grange

I use Digital Grange to professionally photograph some of my artwork. Bill Kane is a great resource for artists with custom photography, custom printmaking and many other services for artists. - Karen Sommer

About Digital Grange

Digital Grange is a professional collective of experts specializing in fine art services including photography, custom printmaking, digital imaging, fine art supports and framing.

The Digital Grange is Joseph McDonald, Bill Kane, and associates John Annesley and Hamish Hafter. All artists, each brings a high level of expertise and passion to Digital Grange. Joe has been the Head photographer of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for the past 26 years. Bill Kane is an internationally exhibiting artist, digital wizard and master printer. John is the foremost stretcher and support maker on the west coast and Hamish is a ruddy mad dog Englishman who makes really nice frames.

The Digital Grange studio is located in the historic 1898 Burdell Building just a few blocks from downtown Petaluma. Custom handmade stretchers and supports are made at John Annesley’s workshop in Healdsburg. The Petaluma studio houses our complete digital photo studio equipped with Sinar and Contax cameras fitted with Phase One and Better Light digital backs, Broncolor strobes, Northlight HID lights, Creo Eversmart Pro scanner and fully color profiled 44” and 64” HP DesignJet and Epson 11880 printers. The studio is also available for rent for professional photographers.

Their vision for Digital Grange is to not only provide the finest photography/custom printing available but also to provide a forum and gallery for art and artists which will include exhibitions, workshops and seminars. They see Digital Grange as a workshop, for the creation of, and showcase for the exhibition of, artworks employing techniques that include both traditional and digital printmaking processes.

Emerging Visual Artists

ARTSpace Exhibition from July23 - August 21.

404 Mendocino Ave., Suite C, Santa Rosa

regular hours M-F 10-5

Artists Featured are as follows: Brian Anderson, Jessamyn Harris, Gordon Beebe, Gene McClelland, Joey Castor, Andrew Merris, Angie Crabtree, Alissa Dylan, Devon Doss, Richard Sheppard, David Farish, Alexander True, Itzul Guttierez, Agneta Vicklund.

These artists with their innovative work in drawing, painting, photography, printing and sculpture are expected to have a significant impact on art in the future. The annual Sonoma County Artist Awards program directly recognizes and supports artists and their contribution to our community.

One of the largest cash artist awards program in the state, the awards program is funded through an endowment at Community Foundation Sonoma County, and managed by the Arts Council of Sonoma County.The program is designed to encourage the continuing development of Sonoma County’s finest creative artists and to reward, recognize and reinforce creative excellence

Looking at Contemporary Art

Looking at Contemporary Art
Wed Jul 28, 2010 12:30pm - 1:00pm

Join Education Curator, Jennifer Bethke on your lunch hour for a discussion on Contemporary Art in the galleries.
Free with Museum Admission. Admission: $5 general, $2 for students & seniors, Free for members.

* Sonoma County Museum, 425 7th Street, Santa Rosa, CA, 95401 * 707-579-1500 http://www.sonomacountymuseum.org/

Art at the Grange silent auction

Thanks to all the Art on the Ridge artists who donated art pieces for the Bennett Valley Grange silent auction fundraiser!

Karen Sommer, painting and monotype print

Sherry Parker, collage art

A.J. Trombetta, glass jewelry

Chuck Quibell, wood turnings

Kate E. Black, fused glass

photos of us

Art on the Ridge members, Karen Sommer and Sherry Parker.

A.J. Trombetta and her husband at the BV Grange.

Jewelry at the Bennett Valley Grange fundraiser

Thanks to those who donated handcrafted jewelry for the Bennett Valley Grange silent auction!




Cane glass jewelry by Marjorie Alette (donated by Susan Dougherty).








Barnyard, lampworked glass bead, necklace
by A.J. Trombetta

How I Got Started in Photography

My father's cameras sparked my interest in photography. My first camera was a Twin-lense Reflex that shot 120 film (that's the stuff that had two and a quarter size negatives). As a teen in 1966, I couldn't afford to buy a new Nikon camera kit, so I bought the body of a new Nikon here in Santa Rosa. I remember that I drove down to San Francisco with my then girlfriend to buy used Nikon lenses. I used that camera for years! I shot photos of my wife, our first house and my two children with that camera.

I later began painting with chalk pastels. I started using the computer to do some work refining tonal value and color with my painting in mind. I then realized that I could work directly on new and old photos. I enjoy refining and tweeking my photos with Painter to create stylized works.

Bennett Ridge

Bennett Valley Grange BBQ and Auction Fundraiser

What a great time we had at the Bennett Valley Grange fundraiser!

The Art on the Ridge auction and the Bennett Valley Grape Growers wine auction raised money for the fire department and emergency preparedness in the Bennett Valley area.

The band rocked the crowd, and the BBQ had lots of great food for everyone!




Thanks to everyone involved!