Colleen Cotton

Colleen Cotton - Kiln Formed Glass

As an artist of many media since childhood, I became fascinated with fusing glass years ago. As a media, it is relatively scarce, and thus offers me the opportunity to explore an unusual material that has the creative tension of fluid and solid, soft and hard properties. Living and working in the country, I am inspired by the colors of nature. Oranges, reds, purples, yellows and greens are the palette that surrounds me every day.

Fused glass is an ancient art form dating back approximately 4,000 years. With this in mind, I insist on being a ‘purist’, using only the most basic of hand tools in an effort to explore the medium in its original form – no power tools such as grinders, saws, or polishers are used. Merging shapes, colors changing and transforming with the play of light and shadow or with the reactions to extreme temperatures are the foundation of my work.

The fusing process involves cutting, layering, repeated melting and cooling of compatible type glass. Each piece of glass used in the process is handmade, bringing its own character to the work. Each kiln firing takes 12-14 hours, at temperatures in excess of 1200°, and, most of the work must go through multiple firings to achieve the desired result. Thus, each work is a product of intense time and labor inputs.

As in nature, there is an element of surprise with every piece I create. Working with glass offers exploration and use of its innate qualities - visual, liquid and solid, and the reactions at extreme temperatures. Singing colors meet, merge, overlap. The shapes are organic, fluid and natural, as well as highly stylized. They contain elements found in nature such as the undulating edges, and at the same time exhibit enforced patterns and color variations. As in nature, each item is unique - even if attempted, no piece can be duplicated.

I frequently employ a 'mosaic' technique on many of the pieces that gives different views from all sides as well as through the layered works. Bold, inventive color combinations, constantly changing and intensifying with the surrounding light - the effect is like finding a hidden secret. I also enjoy embedding other compatible materials within the glass - yet another wonder to discover.

All products are individually created to inspire a sense of serenity and connection with the outdoors when viewed or used. Each of the materials has a distinct personality, often dictating the final form of the product. Hence, all items are markedly unique.

Treat these original, one of a kind works as you would fine china.

Artist Tom Berto

Paintings and Prints

Almost all of my paintings are from photographs, generally slides. I use the photographs as color and light references, and to help lay out the paintings. All paintings are acrylic, on art board unless noted otherwise.

My paintings are done using a combination of airbrush and hand brush. The airbrush work varies between hard-edged, tightly defined masked work and free-hand, free-form right-brain work. These have totally different attributes, and I go back and forth as to which I enjoy most. I've found that the final appearance of a painting is heavily dependent on the processes, and in particular, the sequence of processes used to create it. Determining that sequence is one of the most enjoyable parts painting for me. There are no messages behind my paintings. They are intended only to capture and display the physical and visual essence of the objects and scenes being painted.

Giclée prints are all in signed and numbered limited editions of 100 or 250, created using an Epson or Roland printer with archival pigments on Somerset 250 gm Enhanced Velvet paper.
Framed prints are matted, behind glass in black sectional aluminum frames, and are ready to hang. I prefer regular glass because I've found that anti-glare glass reduces the crispness of the images.

A.J. Trombetta

A.J. Trombetta's jewelry is now available at the Blue Line Gallery gift shop! Thank you to Roseville Arts for including my work at your gallery!

Please take the time to visit the Blue Line Gallery if you are in the Sacrament area!

Thank you also to Joshua Moore and Joe McDonald for your patient assistance with photographing my jewelry!

Karen Sommer - Sculpted Paper Fragments

Monotype prints make up most of my work but printmaking produces many pieces that don’t make it for viewing. They go in a drawer and wait for other ideas to spawn.

The birth of Sculpted Print Fragments was an idea that became somewhat of an obsession. Cutting up these prints that didn’t quite make it for me gave them a new life. I have many ideas for new designs after making these pieces.

It isn’t easy and takes lots of time and patience to mold each sculptured element. Once a form is completed I apply several layers of a hard polymer medium.

These sculptural elements are meant to be decorative. They can be cleaned with a damp cloth.

Karen Sommer

Charles Quibell

We were pleased to see Charles Quibell's woodwork in the Marin Arts Council exhibit, "Paths in Studio Craft: Masters and Apprentices of the Baulines Craft Guild." Although the exhibit was in January, at the Marin Community Foundation Gallery in Novato, the Baulines Craft Guild Master Show video, provides an excellent example of this craft. The below photo is from the Marin Arts Council exhibit.

Charles Quibell will be at the Marin Art Festival, June 18th and 19th.

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).

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.

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

Artist - Mark Trombetta, Digital Prints

As a photographer, I appreciate the clarity of photographs as records of particular moments in time; as a visual artist, certain aspects of the captured moments become the focal point of my attention. I work from my own original photographs through a digital printing process seeking to bring forward those aspects which seem to be visually, emotionally, and artistically relevant to each image, scene, or abstraction.

I've lived in the hills above Sonoma County for 30 years, on what was once a small dairy farm. I am surrounded by the beauty of the land as well as a sense of passage of time.