Art has been pouring in for this Saturday's art auction! (Scroll down for details). Here are some of the bios of artists who have donated thus far:
Rachelle Diaz: Except for a stint in Florence, Italy, Rachelle has been a Texas resident her entire life, in big cities and bucolic wide-spots-in-the-road alike. She has worked with DiverseArts Culture Works, served as art director for Austin Downtown Arts magazine and The BackWord online magazine, and was a founding member of Pump Project Art Complex. She recently moved from Austin, Texas to Tucson, Arizona where she works from her home studio as a graphic designer and enjoys doing visual art and fashion design in her spare time. Currently, she is producing paintings on vintage fabric and recycled fabrics incorporating embroidery and puff paint. She is also the diva behind Tu Scene, Tucson's premiere art blog.
Lisa Lennon: A commercial photographer and horticulturalist, Lisa currently lives in Tucson via Austin, Texas. She shoots landscapes, architecture and engineering projects.
Emily Yetman: An Arizona metal artist, Emily designs jewelry that enhances "the perfect curves, lyrical forms, and sensual lines that are the human figure." She takes inspiration from the texture of the desert landscape, using "stones and minerals to connect with the body on an emotional level." She is currently earning an MA in Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona.
Carl Hughes is the founder of Hughes Moto Art. According to his website, it was a passion for art and motorcycles that led him to pick up an airbrush in the early 90's. For the next few years his airbrush skills were honed and his knowledge of automotive paints and materials grew. Earning a little extra money and experience custom painting motorcycles while going to school, eventually Carl graduated from the University of Arizona with a BFA. In Phoenix, he had an opportunity to be the art director for one of the nation's largest and most reputable custom paint shops.
Scout Phillips: Self-described cowboi and bike riding ninja, Scout likes to draw and ride unicorns. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Ilyea Olsen recently began meditating.
Monica Weinheimer is a painter and an acrobat. She can be seen spinning from pieces of silk hung from the ceiling during performances by the Tucson dance troupe, Zuzi.
Kristin van Fleet worked on organic farms for seventeen years before enrolling in the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Arizona. She plays soccer and is going to France this summer to start up a garden.
Adam Frumhoff is a carpenter, musician, and bike mechanic who is converting an ice cream truck into a house.
TC Tolbert is a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice. S/he earned his MFA in Poetry from the UA in 2005 and currently teaches Composition at Pima Community College. TC is the Assistant Director of Casa Libre en la Solana and is a member of Movement Salon, a compositional improvisation group in Tucson. S/he is a collective member of Read Between the Bars, a books-to-prisoners program, and s/he spends his summers leading wilderness trips for Outward Bound.
Daisy Pitkin lives in Arizona, grew up on a farm in Ohio, and at fourteen coerced her friends to read "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on a roof. Her job as a union organizer kept her moving around the world, and for ten years she rarely spent more than five days in the same place. For the last several months she has been mastering the mysterious art of photography and photography-related processes. She will be a candidate for an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Arizona this coming Fall.
Lester Sloan: After teaching himself to develop photographs at the age of nine, Lester became the first African American cameraman at Detroit's CBS TV station. He worked as a staff photographer for Newsweek magazine for over twenty years, covering assignments in the Southwest, Mexico and Central America. He served as a contributing editor at Emerge Magazine and as a contributing essayist at National Public Radio's Weekend Edition; he currently blogs for the
Huffington Post. He is also the owner of the house where the First Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony and Exhibition will take place this summer.
Leila Ruth Sarah Simpson is a 3rd grade GATE student at Lineweaver Elementary School. Her talents include reading, writing, making art, gymnastics and magical thinking. One of Leila's many goals is to open a sanctuary for abused animals with a clothing boutique and a cafe on the premises. Leila has an older brother, Brian, and two pets: Sophie the dog and Hermione the hamster.
Laura Milkins earned an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Arizona, and most recently completed a Fulbright Scholarship by crossing all of Mexico City on foot in the company of strangers and their stories. Since 1993, she has shown her work in Boston, Portland, Maine, Grand Rapids, MI and Tucson. Prior to settling in Arizona, Laura traveled to Europe, Asia and South America, documenting the experience through email with text and drawings. Laura has worked in a variety of media from traditional painting and drawing to mattresses and altered books. Her current work seeks to create community and engagement by involving the viewer in the art making process.
Amanda Sapir defends Gabrielle Giffords from flying bricks by day, is an art therapist by night, and is also, somehow, getting a masters degree in her spare time. She can do a killer (whale) Powerpoint that will make you laugh and cry.
Emily Feingold lives here in Tucson, where she has been blissfully taking refuge from northeastern weather for nearly three years. Leaving her full-time job this year has afforded her time and energy to devote to art, which has taken the form of portraits in pencil and charcoal. Since January, she has drawn around twenty portraits and intends to keep it up.
Logan Byers grew up on an ice boat in a remote location surrounded by water for most of the year. She currently resides in Tucson, where she learned to draw from a desert tortoise named Tank.
Aisha Sloan first learned about photography from her photojournalist father as a teenager, but never got into all that technical stuff so calls herself a "multimedia" artist to explain away all those blurs and scratches. She studied printmaking, video art and New Media at NYU, where she earned an MA in Cultural Studies and Studio Art, and rode in an elevator with Ashley Olsen. She will be in Detroit this summer, interviewing her father on the sun porch over coffee.
Sarah Donnelly's brain is a fish net knit by the nymph Calypso after her infamous affair with Odysseus. The net disappeared from Coast Guard radar once when it was carried to Antarctica by a school of renegade sharks. After a raucous time fishing up sushi for Somali pirates, Sarah's brain now contains infrared maps of an ancient, buried civilization which may or may not be a metaphor for the future of mankind. Spelled backwards and translated into Farsi, her name means the distance between Saturn's cutest moons.
Andy Steinbrink - While the majority of the drawings created by the American Apparel staff are, shall we say, obsessively "anatomical," the print that will be featured this weekend makes a direct critique of the kind of workplace malaise endemic to the modern American workforce.
Patsy Gelb was born in 1987 to a couple of working musicians. Her parents separated and then traveled throughout her childhood, bringing Patsy along for many tours. Left to her own imagination, Patsy spent most of her spare time drawing and looking at bird books. Home base was the hot valley of Tucson, Arizona where Patsy completed grade school. She began studying at the University of Arizona for a few years before migrating north to Portland, Oregon where she now attends the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). It is there that she discovered printmaking, which among other things has become a versatile medium for her work to grow from.
