Category Archives: Visual Arts

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Ginny Zermeno-Brennan

Artist, Life Coach,Watercolors, Acrylics, Mixed Media

Having grown up in Sunny Southern California, into a very colorful and artistic Latinx family, Ginny has been exploring art since early childhood. Her father would spend time drawing animals for her and encourage her to know both Spanish and English names of each animal they would draw together. Life and career allowed the fortune of living in the beautiful western cities of Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle and Spokane all bringing on the continued exploration with art. While also residing in the central US in Chicago brought a new connection to urban appeal for painting buildings and lastly while thriving in Southwest Virginia where there is sunny, natural beauty abound provided more exploration in beautiful Appalachia.

Ginny has spent over twenty years painting and studying art. Her art has also been influenced by her early introduction to use of color with her mother teaching her how to sew and the colorful selection of fabrics that were used. Ginny’s love of visiting Mexico and wonderful artist studios and museums, while vacationing in Mexico she schedules studio art time with local artist to continue to learn more about Mexico and local art. Ginny’s background in commercial interior and furnishings career allowed her to continue to study the use of color. Throughout her adult life Ginny has studied art study with art instructors, as she moved around the country and all the while studying the works of her favorite artists, Winslow Homer, Roldolfo Morales, Charles Reid, as well as English Artist, Richard Taylor.

During her residence in Seattle Ginny was part of the Seahurst Co-Op Gallery and participated in one of the largest watercolor societies in the country, the Pacific Northwest Watercolor Society also taking advantage of the many great local artist workshops that were available. She also welcomed and is still a member of the Arts Depot in Abingdon, VA during another career move there.

Now a second-time resident of Spokane, Ginny has become actively involved in the art community not only with her art but with her work in advertising sales with Art Chowder Magazine and is a member of Avenue West Art Gallery, Spokane Watercolor Society and River Ridge Association of Fine Arts .

The uncertainty and excitement of watercolor and the challenges of new artistic directions keeps Ginny striving for an even better composition or capturing a great light or finding just the right color. Ginny is always searching for a beautiful landscape, a great human interaction, or a lovely flower.

http://mimanomiarte.blogspot.com/

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Frances Grace Mortel

Biography

Frances Grace Mortel (she/her) is a photographer and filmmaker, born and raised in Manila, Philippines. She studied in University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI) and worked as art director/production designer for several film and television projects. She moved to Spokane, Washington in 2016 and completed the Digital Media Production program at Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC) in 2019. She graduated with a BA Film degree at Eastern Washington University (EWU) in 2021, receiving the Dean’s Student Excellence Award, Social Justice Advocate of the Year Award, and Achievements in Screenwriting and Criticism.

A member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Filipino American Artist Directory, and Spokane Film Project — she has exhibited in Terrain, FemFest Art Festival, Spokane Arts’ Saturate, Pagdiriwang’s Larawan in Seattle Center, and other group shows with local collectives such as LFrances currently works as Communications Specialist for APIC Spokane and serves as board member for Spokane Film Project. A member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and Filipino American Artist Directory — she has exhibited in Terrain, FemFest Art Festival, Spokane Arts’ Saturate, Pagdiriwang’s Larawan in Seattle Center, and other group shows with local collectives such as La Resistance and Shades of Me. She participated in Santa Barbara International Film Festival – Film Studies Program (2020), Telluride Film Festival – Student Symposium (2021), and is part of the pilot batch of WA Filmworks Media Mentorship Program (2021). She recently won the Most Promising Filmmaker Jury Award at the Spokane International Film Festival 2022 for her short film, Dear Nanay, which also took the Honorable Mention Jury Award at the Local Sightings Film Festival 2021 and Cinemetropolis Award for Best Local Short at Seattle Asian American Film Festival 2022. You may find her upcoming exhibits and screenings here: mortelmedia.com/calendar

About her work

The challenges of being a mother, immigrant, and queer artist of color fuel her desire to tell empowering visual stories that expose human truths and stand for social justice. Frances is currently capturing conceptual portraits with focus on women and QTBIPOCs (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color), exploring street reportages highlighting the working class, writing and producing fiction & non-fiction films about the plight of immigrants, and experimenting on other alternative and accessible ways to create intersectional and intergenerational media.


https://www.mortelmedia.com/

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Elaine Gerard

Biography

I am a Native American artist of Blackfeet descent from Montana currently working with acrylics on canvas. I have been painting with acrylics for about ten years after retirement from office work. Rather than aiming for photo-realism with my subject matter, I endeavor to mine the spirit and mood with bright earthy colors. I share studio space with the artists at Yes Is A Feeling art gallery in the Steamplant Building in downtown Spokane.

I work hard to produce a professional product and also offer prints of some works to make it accessible and affordable to all who wish to have my art in their homes.

Artist Statement

As a visual artist working with acrylics, I am endlessly seeking that elusive composition, that outstanding color, that singularity that I need to capture on canvas. But the search doesn’t end in a simple recreation of what I see, because inside all of the creatures and people and scenes I portray, I am also looking for the energy within to bring it out with the language of color. I want to appeal not only to my indigenous people but to all peoples and to share the beauty that I see in the simplest animal or the most complex human being’s face. This is what drives my art, this search to find the language of color and to be able to speak it with competence some day.

My subject matter includes portraits, scenery, animals and Native American peoples. I am an enthusiastic advocate for my people and my art reflects our Blackfeet people’s love of horses and bison, our ancestral lands, the energies and magic that these animals represent to us. I am challenged by the medium of paintbrush and canvas but energized by color and the inner life of all of creation and I hope to convey that excitement to the viewers of my art.

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Denise Roberson

Biography

Denise Roberson’s mother taught her how to sew when Denise started middle school. Many years later, her mother asked her to attend a doll-making class. That was over thirty years ago. Denise creates little sistahs using the female form as inspiration. She believes women are powerful, strong, and capable. The theme of powerful women is evident in her work. Denise writes stories for her little sistahs, giving you a little insight into the sistahs character.

Artist Statement

For over thirty years, I have taken flat pieces of fabric and created 3-dimensional figures, my Little Sistahs. When she is fully dressed, her hair and make-up done, she is ready for her story. We sit down at the computer, select a name and write her story. The Little Sistah is now ready for her debut. I want people to find something they can relate to when they see my dolls. I want them to realize the power and beauty of women and recognize we all have something to give.

Story for the Dolls with a shell

Power to the “V”

“IT” is called many things, Vi-Jay-Jay, Yoni, Box, Snapper, and the one we all learned on the playground, Pussy. Reviled and revered, condemned and celebrated. Yet, “IT” is the sacred gateway to life and a beautiful flower that should be honored and protected. The cowrie shell is an ancient symbol of fertility and prosperity.
Many cultures have used the cowrie shell as currency

https://www.littlesistahswittudesshop.com/

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Consuelo Soto Murphy

Consuelo Soto Murphy studied Art and Art Education at Eastern Washington University and Spokane Falls in Spokane Wa.

In second grade, her teacher declared her an artist when she brought Consuelo up to the front of the class and she held up a drawing of a twisted and very large and brightly colored octopus. Consuelo believed her and from then on she was an artist.

Consuelo graduated from Sunnyside High School in 1979 and Graduated from Eastern with degrees in Art Education, Studio Art and K-12 Education. In 1989 Consuelo began teaching Art at Richland High School in Richland, Washington where she taught Art for 32 years while continuously pursuing her painting career.

Consuelo Soto grew up as a child migrant worker along with her family, doing field work across the United States, season to season, before eventually settling in the Yakima Valley of the Pacific Northwest.

Despite the grueling, backbreaking work, Consuelo’s art pieces are inspired by the positive memories of the beautiful landscapes, the flourishing crops, and the love and relationships forged with her family and friends. Consuelo was the seventh child of nine children. While the older ones worked all day in the fields, Consuelo was able to go to school during the day, working before and after school and during the summers.

While Consuelo works primarily in acrylics on canvas, she is far from limited to this medium. The magnificent pieces produced by Consuelo Soto Murphy have gone to homes all over the world. Her work has been featured in publications and galleries as well as featured on television productions.

https://www.sotoart.com/

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Chip Thomas

The question I’m asked most frequently is how a black doctor in his 50s working on the Navajo reservation started doing street art on said reservation. In retrospect, it was only natural for this evolution to occur.

I started working in a small community between the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley called Inscription House in 1987. I’d always been drawn to photography and built a darkroom shortly after my arrival on the Navajo Nation. My passion photographically is shooting black and white in a documentary style inspired by people like Eugene Smith, Eugene Richards, Joseph Koudelka and others. By going out and spending time with people in their homes and family camps, I have come to know them as friends. Interestingly, these home visits enhance my doctor/patient relationship by helping me be a more empathetic health care practitioner.

I’ve always been drawn to street art, graffiti and old school hip-hop. I was attracted to the energy of the culture in the 80s and though I was miles away from the epicenter, I thought of myself as a charter member of the Zulu Nation. I would travel to New York City to see graffiti on trains, on buildings and in galleries. I did some tagging in the 80s before coming to the Navajo Nation and participated with a major billboard “correction” on the reservation shortly after my arrival. My early interventions on the street were largely text based saying things like “Thank you Dr. King. I too am a dreamer” or “Smash Apartheid” and so on.

In 2009 I took a 3-month sabbatical to Brasil which coincided with a difficult period in my life. Though I wasn’t looking for an epiphany, I was fortunate to stumble upon a passionate group of artists working on the street who befriended me. It was during this time that I appreciated how photography could be a street art form.  Inspired by Diego Rivera and Keith Haring, I’d become disinterested in showing my photographs in galleries isolated from the people I was photographing and wanted to pursue a more immediate relationship with my community reflecting back to them some of the beauty they’ve shared with me.  And in truth, I was infatuated with the feeling I got being with the artists in Salvador do Bahia and wanting to find a way to keep that vibe going I started pasting images along the roadside in June 2009.

My early photographic influences include the work of Joseph Koudelka, Garry Winogrand, Charles Moore, Robert Frank, Eugene Smith, Gordon Parks, Larry Towell, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meisalis, Roy DeCarava, Sebastio Salgado and Eugene Richards.  I was blown away by Richards’ work in the late 80s and early 90s for Life Magazine and had an opportunity to spend 5 days picking his brain at Santa Fe Photographic Workshops in 1991.  It’s this one person with one camera, frequently with only one lens shooting black + white film in ambient light aesthetic that informs my eye as well as 25 years spent in my home darkroom pursing the zone system.  It’s been an interesting challenge attempting to bring that look to black and white prints on regular bond paper coming off a toner based plotter. I’d like to think that my vision is a part of the storytelling, first person, humanist tradition of the people I look up to mixed with a healthy dose of Diego Rivera + Keith Haring.

Regardless, I give thanks that the journey continues.

In beauty it is finished.

https://jetsonorama.net/welcome/
https://justseeds.org/artist/chipthomas/

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Charles Tuggle

Biography

Art Institute of Chicago / University of Chicago  BFA: Studied Art History, Painting, and Printmaking; Lone Mountain College / University of San Francisco  MFA: Studied Aesthetics, Art History, and Printmaking

Information Made His Life Matter
By Robert Lloyd

In elementary school when your skin is dark and your nose is broad and your hair is kinky, your peers don’t think your life matters. So, you find a sanctuary in the library. No one beats you up. No one calls you names. You read. You discover how much there is that you don’t know and you can find in a book. A teaching career. A military career. An artist’s career. A medical technical career. A career as a professor of art in Nigeria. African history, philosophy, literature, world travels. Information made his life matter. Charles made his life matter.

Artist Statement

I am interested in bringing into focus a particular space of time which most Americans have avoided. I suppose one could say the idea is not to tell a story or narrate history but rather by presenting fragments of history in visual form, ignite thoughts of history in the viewer’s mind at several levels, conscious and unconscious.

The Nigeria Series

The series of paintings and collages is based on my time living and working in West Africa. To express the feeling that Nigeria evokes in me, visually, I use musicians and scenes of everyday life as representational elements with color and movement as the abstract elements overlying the representational ones. Kind of a theory much like music theory can be viewed as cultural constructs. In Western thought, color is described in visual terms, such as pigment or light. In Nigeria, particular in Yoruba land, where I lived, color was described in terms of temperature, from hot to cold, with various colors also having religious connotations. In Nigeria, art is meant to be multiple, multi sensual experience, not simply a matter of sight, something you look at. This series of art represents a distillation of the many feelings I have for West Africa.


https://www.shipyardartists.com/artist/charles-tuggle/

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carl richardson

Biography

My name is Carl Richardson and I have lived in Spokane for the past 25 years. I am a practicing artist and an Instructor of Art at Spokane Falls Community College. I moved the Northwest to pursue my MFA from Washington State University. Prior to moving to Washington, I lived in Florida. I completed my Bachelor’s degree from the HBCU Florida A&M University.

Artist Statement

I am a 2D artist with a primary interest in printmaking and drawing. The subject and content of my work varies and is influenced by music, conversations, observations, and the state of the world. The consistent thread in my work is my love of formal structure and design. I often use the golden mean or other geometric layouts as a foundation for my compositions. Through the act of creating I am able to express thoughts and feelings that would otherwise remain silent.

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Vote! 5 Days

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January 20, 2021 we will know if you believed Black Lives Matter. Did it or didn’t it?

It’s not too late between now and November 2, 2020. Will you ask your friends and relatives if they voted? If they haven’t encourage them to vote a straight blue ticket during this election.