Annual Summer Invitational
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Alex McLeod Andrew Hem Becca Midwood EVOL   Judith Supine Lola Marco Mazzoni |
Morgan Slade Nate Frizzell Nicoletta Ceccoli Oliver Warden Oscar de las Flores Tran Nguyen |
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
- Alex McLeod, based in Toronto, uses 3-D digital modeling software to create his self-described virtual installation imagery. His saturated, glossy print editions depict fantasy landscapes—resembling postcards from another world.
- Andrew Hem is a Cambodian-American artist and award-winning illustrator currently based in Los Angeles. In 2006, he graduated from Art Center College of Design. His paintings portray somber, stylized figures with references to his native heritage, influenced by American popular culture.
- Becca Midwood, born in Brooklyn in 1967, received a BFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in painting from Art Institute of San Francisco. In the 1990s, she wheat pasted her images of young girls and women, inspired by children’s book art and mid-century fashion illustration, throughout Richmond, Virginia, as well as the Bay area and Los Angeles, California. She has since shifted her focus to studio work for gallery exhibitions.
- Evol is a German artist, based in Berlin. Using layers of stencils on cardboard, his photo-realistic studio works portray un-populated cityscapes. He also paints these images within urban environments, creating the illusion of scale-model buildings on electrical boxes and concrete slabs throughout the city streets.
- Judith Supine is based in Brooklyn, NY. His brightly colored figures are created with collaged black and white imagery, enlarged and painted in washes of fluorescent greens, pinks and purples. His gallery installations include large-scale cut-out works on top of electric dioramas, and his street art interventions have not only appeared on the building facades of the city, but also hanging on bridges and even floating in rivers.
- Lola based in Los Angeles, the former tattoo artist is a self-taught painter. Her doll-like figures with large round heads and small facial features inhabit a world full of curiously imaginative details. Her art evokes early childhood memories and the innocence and purity of youth. Lola paints because it is her most precious gift in life.
- Morgan Slade, born in Los Angeles, received a degree in studio art from the University of California in 1991 and a BFA in Photography from Art Center College in Pasadena in 2002. Slade’s mixed media work creatively combines his inter-disciplinary skills. By applying paint, ink, gold leaf and collage onto digital prints of the models he photographs, he transforms images of bikini-clad female subjects—adding masculine elements such as football helmets, animal mascot heads and rich textural backgrounds. Slade is married to Liz McGrath, this husband and wife team are visual artists as well as musicians—as they both record, perform, and tour together in the band Miss Derringer.
- Marco Mazzoni was born in 1982 in Tortona, Italy, and is currently based in Milan. His portraits feature isolated figures floating within empty white space or solid color backgrounds. He takes a realist approach to skillfully render the faces—a focal point of his subjects, while unpainted silhouettes subtly suggest the shapes of their bodies, creating a dichotomy that is both lush and delicate.
- Nate Frizzell was born in 1984 in Riverside, California and is currently based in Los Angeles. In 2006, he graduated from Otis College of Art and Design. Frizzell’s striking paintings of youth wearing animal masks in natural settings evoke a contrasting sense of wild adventure, and innate inhibition.
- Nicoletta Ceccoli is currently based in San Marino, Italy. Ceccoli is an award-winning illustrator of over 30 children’s books distributed by major publishing houses throughout the world. Her whimsically narrative paintings portray female figures interacting with birds, insects, and other creatures in a dark and dream-like fantasy atmosphere.
- Oliver Warden was born in Cleveland, OH and is currently based in New York. Warden received a BFA with honors from School of Visual Arts and a Masters degree from NYU. His work is created by pouring layers of paint onto digital composites that have been printed onto stretched canvas. His imagery is taken from satellites, video games, radar, telescopes and other digital sources. Once printed on canvas, he pours multiple layers of semi-transparent oil paint over the composite to create a low-relief topography mapping texture.
- Oscar de las Flores was born in 1975 in El Salvador, and raised during the nation’s civil war. His family relocated twice; first to Guadalajara, Mexico, then to Ontario, Canada. In 1997, he graduated with honors from Ontario College of Art and Design in Canada, and in 2005 from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture of Maine. He is currently based in Mexico between Oaxaca and Mexico City. With extreme horror vacui, his highly detailed pen and ink drawings capture large crowds of figures with masterful draftsmanship. Combining grotesque subjects with sinuous lines, his work is a commentary on sociological struggles for power in world history.
- Tran Nguyen was born in 1987 in Vietnam, and raised in Augusta, Georgia. In 2009, she received a BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work is created with a soft, delicate quality in a muted palette using graphite, colored pencil, and thin glazes of diluted acrylic on paper. Nguyen’s romanticized subject matter, composition style and use of geometric patterns are inspired by Art Nouveau. Her figurative imagery explores surreal dreamscapes and subconscious desires.