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/

Our Stories Our Visions Continued

Stephen Marc

Biography

Stephen Marc is a Professor of Art in the Herberger Institute’s School of Art at Arizona State University, an ASU Evelyn Smith Endowed Professor of Art (2021-22), and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. Marc began teaching at ASU in 1998, following 20 years at Columbia College Chicago. He received his MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA; and his BA from Pomona College in Claremont, CA.

Marc’s most recent book: American/True Colors (2020) addresses who we are as Americans in a polarized country with changing demographics, from an African American perspective. It was a 2021 IPPY Gold Medalist for best book in the Photography category. Marc’s three earlier books include: Urban Notions (1983), addressing the three Illinois communities where he had family ties; The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States (1992); and Passage on the Underground Railroad (2009), digital composites that provide insight into the historic sites, and the institution of slavery. His Passage on the Underground Railroad is registered as Arizona’s first and only Interpretative Program of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom division of the National Park Service.

Artist Statement

As a documentary/street photographer and digital montage artist, my focus is on politically and culturally relevant gatherings, as part of my ongoing work that collectively addresses who we are as Americans. Since 2019, I have been creating a series of digital “street story montages” along with photographs of public space events and everyday life that explore what is proving to be pivotal time in this country’s history.

American identity is a cultural combination of reality, idealism and myth. How we shape our environment, define ourselves and recognize each other as Americans is culturally complex, socially charged, historically layered, and constantly in flux. As a photographer, I am interested in the photograph as an interpretative document; and as a digital montage artist, exploring the ways and reasons to combine photographs to extend the visual narrative, considering the constructive nature of memory as an informed witness.

This selection of work focuses on the African American community, where most of the photographs come from my recent book: American/True Colors.

https://art.asu.edu/student-and-faculty-work/stephen-marc?dept=160341&id=1

Our Stories Our Visions Continued

SARAH TORRES

Biography

Sarah Torres is a multi-disciplinary artist based in both Spokane and Seattle, WA, working in painting, video, photography, and digital art. Sarah holds an Associate’s of Fine Arts degree from Spokane Falls Community College and is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Washington. Sarah’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including “Express Yourself” and “Power to the People – Stick it to the Wall,” at the Terrain gallery (Spokane, WA) and the Apostrophe 2021 Exhibition at Bridgepress Cellars (Spokane, WA). Public works include projection and net-based work for the Black Lens’ Creating Health Initiative and numerous collaborative murals around the city of Spokane, including the BLACK LIVES MATTER mural commissioned by Seven2 + 14Four. Sarah’s illustrations have been published on the cover of The Inlander, an Inland Northwest newspaper based in Spokane, WA.

Artist Statement

Exploring the implications of living in a highly digital world, I am investigating the intersections of video, digital photography, painting, and printmaking. I regularly question how materials can be transformed through an extended process, both digitally and physically. Highly inspired by texture and pattern, both naturally occurring and artificially created, I create high contrast motifs that reflect this interest. The source material is typically taken from nature and abstracted to create familiar but non-representational patterning. Interrogating the relationships between human and non-human life is the content of much of my work. There, in the content of my work, can also be found an interest in the function and purpose of language as well as how language can be manipulated and subverted. I explore the meanings and context of visual, verbal, and digital/computer language as well as how they can be used in art to engage different audiences.

Transcription #1 Oil on Canvas 13×13
Transcript #2 (Erasure of Memory) Oil on Canvas 24×25

These paintings are from a new series of work titled Transcriptions of Memory. This body of work explores the mutability of memory, both mental and digital. Do people of the digital age depend more on their devices versus their minds to store their memories? Are our photos, notes, contacts, and even language more or less secure when stored on a piece of hardware? Is there just as much room for manipulation and transformation of our memories when they are digitally stored? The paintings titled Transcription 1 and Transcription 2 are representations of a single video still, or a memory. They were painted in differing manners to emphasize the tendency of experiences to be recalled from memory differently, depending on circumstance. This visually exemplifies the potential for memories or past experiences to live in the body, or device, as an essence or representation of the truth; always subject to change. As some formal elements of the video still were transcribed by hand with paint, some visual information has been selectively omitted.

https://www.instagram.com/art.storres/

Our Stories Our Visions Continued

Sironka and 20 plus artists sharing their stories and visions. Come to the Carl Maxey Center at 3114 E. 5th Ave on Saturday April 9th. Youth can meet with the artists in the exhibition from 12 – 3 pm. Have wine and Lébakes cheesecake with the artists from 5 – 7 pm.

I am Nicholas Sironka, (I go by Sironka) a Maasai batik artist, with a God given talent. I was born and raised in Kenya, a country in East Africa. We have 42 different tribes in Kenya. Each tribe speaks a distinctively different language from the other. There is however a national language that helps all these tribes communicate with each other – Kiswahili. (Remember ‘Hakuna matte” in the movie Lion King?). I am Maasai, a small pastoralist tribe living mostly in the southern plains of Kenya known as the Rift Valley.

In the year 2000, I was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholar-In-Residence Award from the U. S. Government to com teach batik art and Maasai culture at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington.

Ever since childhood I was always fascinated by my Maasai culture, a culture that was very much misinterpreted and misunderstood. It is then that I made it my life’s ambition to find a way to tell the truth about my people and to do so with dignity and truth. With my God given talent I determined that batik was the medium I would use to make good of this quest.

Today I sell my original art and enjoy teaching batik art classes and also continue to hold lectures on the Maasai culture whenever I am invited to do so.

My passion to speak on the facets of my culture portrayed in my pieces has many times been impactful emotionally for those buying my art or simply coming and listening to my explanations of deeper meaning for the paintings. Many asked if I was a counselor, and after much thought, I decided to go to school. I am happy to say that today I hold a degree as a certified substance abuse counselor!

You can also see more on my work at https://youtu.be/aC0mhiCCZ18
In 2016 I published a book “Feed me with words – A journey through Maasai culture in batik art” https://youtu.be/qs9IhkUirRk 

My philosophy: “If I can use my talents to touch another life, and make it better, then I will be fulfilling the purpose for which God put me on this Earth!”

Our Stories Our Visions Continued

https://www.madcolabstudios.com/sironka-batik-artist

Biography

Stephen Pitters currently has eleven titles of poetry on Amazon and Kindle. The latest is “Aftermath”. He hosts the Spokane Open Poetry Program on Thin Air Community Radio, www.KYRS.ORG 88.1/92.3 fm for 14 years. He directs “Poetry Rising” a poetry, prose, music event at the South Hill Library. He holds Masters degrees in Clinical Social Work and Public Health.

Artist Statement

I use poetry as a means of self-expression and community involvement, encouragement, and collaboration for all ages.

More Our Stories Our Visions Artists

HOST: Stephen Pitters

Thin Air Community Radio

88.1/92.3

Steve joined us for Thursday’s Coffee discussion. This week we discussed developing grassroots community building on the precinct level. He said we may want to put in a proposal at Spokane’s KYRS radio for airtime. He left us a copy of the June schedule so that we might see the programs the station is presently airing.