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  • Shannon Amidon
    Shannon Amidon
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Videographer
    Shannon Amidon was born and raised in San Jose, CA. She is a mixed media artist using alternative process photography, encaustic and paper ephemera as her main mediums. Her subjects often involve objects the artist has found in nature or collected in her travels such as: seed pods, insects, botanicals, fossils, feathers, bones, and vintage paper ephemera. Using these items and mediums, Amidon creates unique pieces that explore the beautiful, repulsive, and mysterious sides of natural history. Shannon’s artwork has been exhibited worldwide with emphasis on the US West Coast. In 2011 she was named the Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Laureate, receiving a Fellowship Grant in photography. She was also the recipient of an Eco Art Grant and studio make-over from the Art Inspector part of the Zero One Art and Technology Network. In 2013 Amidon was one of eight artists chosen to create a large, 400lb, 5ft x 6ft public art heart for San Francisco General Hospital Foundation. Amidon has been an artist in residence at the Herhúsid House Artist Residency in Iceland as well as the David and Julia White Artist Colony in Costa Rica. She is active in her local arts community contributing her time, knowledge and art whenever possible. She is also involved in arts education outreach for children and young artist mentoring through the SPARK program.
  • Renee Billingslea
    Renee Billingslea
    Visual Artist: Mixed Media, Photographer, Visual Artist
    Renee Billingslea is a visual artist whose art practice is a “call for action.” Her artwork addresses profound issues of race, racial violence, trauma, and white privilege. Billingslea’s process most often begins with historical photographs or hidden stories that direct her toward research, which she uses to inform the construction of objects and non-traditional photographs. Billingslea earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Southern Oregon State University and a Masters of Fine Art from San Jose State University.  She is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History at Santa Clara University, where she teaches photography.
  • Jonathan L. Clark
    Jonathan L. Clark
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Visual Artist
    Jonathan L. Clark is a multi-faceted artist whose work encompasses photography and the creation of books using letterpress, gravure, and digital printing. Clark is the 2012 recipient of the Oscar Lewis Award for outstanding contributions to the Book Arts from the Book Club of California. He has received two USIA travel grants to Poland and Spain; a fellowship from the Arts Council Silicon Valley; the JGS Foundation Book Award; the Western Books Award of Merit; and Photo-eye’s Best Photography Book Design of the Year Award. His work is included in many permanent collections in the USA, Japan, and Europe. Solo shows of Clark’s photographs have been held in Japan, Spain, and Eastern Europe, as well as the United States. A show organized by the US Information Service traveled to museums throughout Poland. His books and prints have been included in scores of exhibitions at venues including: J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco; Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; Stanford University Library; De Saisset Museum; Center for Photographic Art, Carmel; Photo Gallery International, Tokyo; Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco; San Francisco Center for the Book; George Krevsky Gallery, San Francisco; Gallery 291, San Francisco; and many others. He has lectured or held residencies at: The Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco; Stanford University; The Book Club of California; University of Barcelona, Spain; Institute for North American Studies, Barcelona; Center for Photographic Art, Carmel; University of West Florida, Pensacola; University of South Florida, Tampa; University of Rochester; and the US Consulate and Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, among others. His publications include: Carmine (Artichoke Editions, 2011); Ottawa, Illinois 1967 (Nazraeli Press, 2008); Prospects of Florence (a photogravure album with text); Cut-Paper (with Frederick Sommer; 2006);  as well as articles and photographs in various books and journals. He is co-editor of The Hedgehog, an international arts review published in San Francisco. Clark was born in Ottawa, Illinois in 1952, and has spent most of his life in California. He began taking photographs at the age of 14. He studied with George A. Tice at the Aspen School of Contemporary Art, and enjoyed long creative friendships with Wynn Bullock and Frederick Sommer. He received a BA in Photography from UC Santa Cruz and a MA in Humanities from CSU Dominguez Hills.
  • Marty Coleman
    Marty Coleman
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Visual Artist
    Marty Coleman (me) is the creator of the Napkin Dad drawings. I am a full-time artist and photographer living in Glenpool, Oklahoma (known the world over as the town that made Tulsa famous) with my wife, Linda. Also in cohabitation are wiggle dog, stubby dog, and normal cat. I am the owner and artist behind ‘MAKE Studio’ with a focus on Photography and Design.  I maintain an active career as an exhibiting artist with an exhibition of my photo-collage work slated for January 2012 at Living Arts Gallery in Tulsa. I got my start as an artist when my Grandfather, Buck Powell, who was an amateur artist, began teaching me how to draw around the age of 5.  From then until now it’s what I do.  My mother and father encouraged me and I had gathered 2 degrees in art as I reached young adulthood. After spending 9 years teaching art at the college level I went in the new direction of computer art, eventually spending 14 years in interactive and internet design before moving into my present work as an artist out on my own. During that time I was married and the proud father of 3 daughters (for whom I drew the original napkin drawings).  After a divorce I remarried and had the good fortune of gaining a fourth daughter. My four daughters are all up and grown now, living all around the country and making me proud in every way.
  • Tricia Creason-Valencia
    Tricia Creason-Valencia
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Videographer, Visual Artist
    Tricia is currently producing a one-hour documentary titled Stable Life, which tells the story of a family of undocumented immigrants who live and work on the backside of a racetrack. She also directed the award-winning short films, Eighty Layers of Me (that you’ll have to survive), a documentary about former cheerleaders turned activists and We Got Next, a narrative about young women basketball players. Both films won numerous awards and screened at festivals throughout the United States. Tricia is the founder of FLACAFILMS, where she works as a director/producer and digital video editor. She has taught film/video production and documentary filmmaking in the Social Documentation department at U.C. Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, Drexel University and in collaboration with several youth-related non-profit organizations. Tricia is a PBS/CPB Producer’s Academy Fellow (2008) and a Latino Producers Academy Fellow (2008). She serves on the Board of CreaTV San Jose, a community access television station and traning center. Tricia received her BA from U.C. Berkeley (Psychology and Chicano Studies) and graduated from San Francisco State University with an MFA in Film Production. She lives in San Jose, California, with her husband and two children.
  • Kathryn Dunlevie
    Kathryn Dunlevie
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Visual Artist
    Two-time recipient of Arts Council Silicon Valley’s Fellowship in Photography, Dunlevie is a graduate of Rice University’s Fine Arts Department and studied film at the University of Paris, photography at Madrid’s Taller de Artes Creativas, and painting at California College of the Arts. Dunlevie’s work has recently been featured in Saatchi Art’s BEST OF 2014 and in the US Art in Embassies program in Moscow. She has exhibited her work at Belgravia Gallery and Vertigo in London, Studio Thomas Kellner in Germany, Gallery TPW in Toronto, as well as at Washington DC’s Art Museum of the Americas, the Southeast Museum of Photography, and Claudette Lussier Fine Arts in Los Angeles. She has had solo shows in conjunction with FotoFest since 2002 at Hooks-Epstein Galleries in Houston. Dunlevie’s work has also been included in exhibitions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area at San Francisco Camerawork, the Exploratorium, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Stanford University, the San Francisco MoMA’s Artists Gallery, the San Jose International Airport, the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, the De Saisset Museum, the Triton Museum of Art, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art, and Frederick Spratt Gallery. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Camerawork – a Journal of Photographic Art, ArtLies, the San Jose Mercury News, and Artweek, as well as internationally in Spain’s La Fotografia Actual, South Korea’s Photo+, England’s Saatchi Online Spotlight, Art of England Magazine, Germany’s Profifoto, and on Myartspace.com. Additionally, Dunlevie’s work has been the subject of four books: Detectives of Fiction and Women of Mystery, Waverley Press, 2014; Cover Versions, with essays by Gerald Brett and Thomas Leddy, Waverley Press, 2012; Kathryn Dunlevie: Syncopated Spaces, with essays by Cathy Kimball and Geri Hooks, Waverley Press, 2012; and Kathryn Dunlevie: Another Look, with essays by Glen Helfand, Frederick Spratt, and Don Snyder; Waverley Press, 2012.
  • Terri Garland
    Terri Garland
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Visual Artist
    Terri Garland is an artist who specializes in photographing the social and cultural fabric of the American South. While not limiting herself to any particular genre,she finds that her most enduring projects have fit solidly into the documentary tradition. She received her BFA from the Art Institute in 1987 and her MFA in 1990. She teaches photography at San Jose City College. As a graduate student at the Art Institute, Garland began an examination of white Supremacist culture that has spanned over two decades, photographing individuals within the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, American Nazi Party and the Christian Identity Movement. Since 2005, she has divided her time between Louisiana and Mississippi. Her current project, Louisiana, Purchased, is a visual study of the ways in which we depend upon and demand, continuous supplies of fossil fuels and the resultant damage and ongoing destruction to coastal communities in Louisiana. Her photographs are included in the collections of The Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, The Art Institute of Chicago, The di Rosa Preserve in Napa, California, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Saint Elizabeth College in Morristown, New Jersey, the Bibliotech Nationale, Paris, France and Special Collections at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Among her awards are a WESTAF/NEA Fellowship, Silicon Valley Arts Council Grant and a Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship.
  • Lissa Jones
    Lissa Jones
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Visual Artist
    Lissa Jones comes from a fine arts background with an emphasis on site-specific installations. She worked on the Ties That Bind project through MACLA and the Japantown Mural Project. Lissa continues her involvement and support of the art community, exemplified by her years working at Arts Council Silicon Valley.
  • Robin Lasser
    Robin Lasser
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Visual Artist
    Robin Lasser is an artist residing in Oakland, California. She is currently a Professor of Art at San Jose State University. Lasser produces photographs, video, site-specific installations and public art dealing with socially and culturally significant imagery and themes. Lasser often works in a collaborative mode with other artists, writers, students, public agencies, community organizations, and international coalitions to produce public art and promote public dialogue. Lasser is currently working on a collaborative project with Adrienne Pao titled Dress Tents, Nomadic Wearable Architecture that conflates public art, fashion, performance art, and photography. The most recent public art commission, Edible Dress Tent, is currently on display at the Montalvo Art Center. In 2011 Lasser received a $30,000 commission to create a public artwork titled: Ms. Yekaterinburgh: Camera Obscura Dress Tent and publish a book about the international exchange with Russia. In 2010 Lasser and collaborator Marguerite Perret received a $50,000 temporary public art commission from the San Jose Public Arts Program in collaboration with the ZERE01 International Arts Festival to create a sculpture, sound, and light public works titled:  Floating World: A Campground/Tent City for Displaced Human and Bird Song. Lasser exhibits her work nationally and internationally. Recent international exhibitions include solo shows at museums such as: The Metenkov Museum of Photography, Yekaterinburg, Russia, The Recoleta Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and The Caixa Cultural Center in Rio De Janeiro. Lasser also participates in international biennials such as ZERO1: Global Art on the Edge, San Jose, California, Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Canada and the Pingyao International Photography Festival in Pingyao, China. Earlier national and international exhibitions include: Aronson Galleries – Parsons School of Design in New York City, Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery in the Bronx, New York City, L.A. County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, California, Osaka World Trade Center Museum in Japan and the Academy of Film in Prague, Czech Republic. Her work has been published in numerous books and periodicals. Newspaper reviews include: The New York Times, New York Post, Time Out New York, Los Angeles Times, and the SF Chronicle. Magazine feature stories include: COLOR magazine (International), Flaunt (International), TOP (Brazil), Playboy (South America,) Marie Claire magazine (Taiwan, Greece), Dazed and Confused, (England), and Craft Magazine (US). Periodicals include: Afterimage, Artpapers and Artweek. In 2012-2013 Lasser’s work is included in the following books:  “Not a Toy: Radical Figures in Architecture and Costume,” PICTOPLASM Publishing, London, “Creative Fashion,” Olo editions, France, “We Are Photogirls, D.I.Y. Fashion Shoots Back,” London, “A Waiting Room Of One’s Own,” NEA and Washburn University Press, “Seven Days-Sister Cities-Artist Exchange,” published by the U.S. Department of State, and “Viz. Inter-Arts: Interventions,” University of Santa Cruz Publishing, U.S. Lasser’s work has also been included in books such as “Made in California, Art Image and Identity, 1900-2000, LACMA”, University of California Press, “Facing Eden 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,” University of California Press, “Pregnant Images,” Mathews + Wexler, Routledge Press, “Fasting Girls”, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Vintage Press, “Women Artists of the American West”, Susan R. Ressler, McFarland & Company, Inc. and “Overlay Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory,” Lucy R. Lippard, Pantheon Books.
  • Sarah Puckitt
    Sarah Puckitt
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Visual Artist
    Photographer Sarah Puckitt has more than twenty-five years of hands-on experience with traditional silver and non-silver photography as well as digital media.
  • Robert Ragazza
    Robert Ragazza
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Visual Artist
    Photographer and Ceramics artist, Robert Ragazza, was born in the Philippines and raised in San Jose. He grew up embracing the diverse cultures, believing that they all have commonalities. As one of his passions, community volunteerism, he has donated countless hours of his time as well as his artworks for fundraising, supporting the arts and to give back to the communities that inspire him. He currently juggles multiples projects while still find times to work as a Volunteer Teaching Assistant for Terri Garland at San Jose City College Photography Department. Robert is a prolific photographer. He has shot covers, fashion and editorial portfolios for modeling agencies and product lay-out for magazines. Never without a camera, Robertino engages himself in knowing his subjects, making them aware he is genuinely interested in their stories. An observer who loves to capture the moment, his influences are countless and spontaneous. Observations through life experiences and travels affect Robert’s creativity, finding he is at his best with street portrait work. The visual expressions of emotion is apparent in each photo he takes, whether the focus is a young girl chasing a pigeon, a homeless man with multiple layers of blankets wrapped around his waist, or an older man who just been startled and awaken while in transit. “Light becomes my paintbrush and printing provides the meditative process that brings life to my subjects, giving me patience and a sense of peace,” says that Buddhist convert. Robert’s photographic style is composed of images that are captivating yet poignant, a culmination of sharp attention to details, precise lighting, and strong composition with great visual sense. In today’s world of digital images, Robert still works with films, finding the excitement of waiting and element of surprise fascinating. Robert’s photographic series are ongoing documentations of the beauty, struggles, grief and joys of life around. His eventual ambition is to create a narrative exhibition from the imagery he has taken around San Jose. Goals: Exhibit about 200 black & white traditional selenium-tones silver gelatin photographic images of San Jose in a gallery and concurrently project those same images as a slide show on the side of the City Hall and throughout the city’s buildings visible for the public to see…..
  • Brian Taylor
    Brian Taylor
    Visual Artist: Mixed Media, Photographer, Visual Artist
    Brian Taylor was born in Tucson, Arizona. He received his B.A. Degree in Visual Arts from the University of California at San Diego, an M.A. from Stanford University, and his M.F.A. from the University of New Mexico. Brian is known for his innovative explorations of alternative photographic processes including historic 19th Century printing techniques, mixed media, and hand made books. He has been a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Polaroid Corporation. His work has been exhibited nationally and abroad in numerous solo and group shows and is included in the permanent collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. His work has been published in American Photographer, Photo Asia, Exploring Color Photography, Photographic Possibilities, and Artworks. Brian has taught photography workshops for over 20 years at institutions including the Friends of Photography, the University of California at Santa Cruz and Berkeley, Stanford University, Photo Alliance, and f/295 at Carnegie Mellon. Brian is currently Professor of Photography in the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, San Jose.
  • Deborah Mills Thackrey
    Deborah Mills Thackrey
    Visual Artist: Photographer, Videographer, Visual Artist
    Photographer Deborah Mills Thackrey was born in the Texas Panhandle town of Amarillo in 1953. Numerous childhood trips along old Route 66 thru the Southwest instilled in her a wanderlust and love of the passing scenery including dramatic sunsets, old motel signs, roadside attractions like snake shows, desert landscapes, the Navajo Indian reservation, Burma Shave signs, and National Parks like the Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, and the Grand Canyon. Iconic images from the Vietnam War and 60’s cultural protests inspired in her a love of the ability of the photojournalist to capture a meaningful moment in time. She joined her junior high yearbook staff in order to get her hands on her first camera. As the only photographer in high school journalism class she was left alone in the darkroom to develop her skills. This put her on the path of being self-taught and independent most of her career. Thackrey migrated to California at the age of 20, unable to get into regular art classes at San Francisco State she began to study theatrical design. The influence of her makeup and costume design is visible in her projected nudes series. In the next phase of her life she began a career as a graphic designer which gave her an opportunity to work art directing top commercial photographers at major corporations such as Apple. She also spent 30 years studying modern dance with a student of seminal modern dance pioneer Lester Horton. Recent projects include a third collaboration with dancer Ishika Seth at the Theatre Yugen in San Francisco projecting her textural photographs and videos onto dancers who improvised to the content of the images. When her husband Tom returned to photography about a decade ago, she picked up a camera again as well, after more than a 20 year absence. They spent time in the esteemed photographic community of Carmel beginning friendships with photographers such as Edward Weston’s grandson Kim. Within a couple of years of serious immersion in photography, Thackrey was offered her first solo exhibit in Monterey at the Stefani Esta gallery in 2002. She began to regularly win prizes in juried shows in Los Gatos and Santa Clara with curators such as Philip Linhares from the Oakland Museum and the Triton’s George Rivera. Solo exhibits in Los Angeles and Palo Alto followed, as well as being included in more than 50 group shows ranging from the Texas Photographic Society, to galleries in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Monterey. Thackrey has recently become an activist for artists in the South Bay as one of the founders of the Silicon Valley Artists’ Collaborative with the goal of helping to create more recognition and opportunities for local artists. She has been trying her hand as a curator and gallerist founding the Axis Art Gallery in downtown San Jose’s Axis high rise. Thackrey won the coveted 2009 Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowship Grant for Photography which included a show in the rotunda of Santa Clara’s Triton Museum. Her work is in private collections from New York to LA and Marin County and in corporate collections such as Adobe.
  • Gail Wight
    Gail Wight
    Visual Artist: 3D, Ceramist, Mixed Media, Painter, Photographer, Print Maker, Visual Artist
    Gail Wight’s work primarily focuses on experimental media, including photography, video, interactive media, and printmaking. Her exhibition record includes nearly two dozen solo exhibits throughout North America and Great Britain. Her work has been collected by numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Yale University, the San Jose Museum of Art, and Centro Andaluz de Art Contemporaneo in Spain. Among her many artist residencies are western Australia’s Symbiotica, Art & Archaeology at Stonehenge, the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, and San Francisco’s Exploratorium. She has taught in the Art Practice program at Stanford University since 2003. Wight holds an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute where she was a Javits Fellow, and a BFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art. Information about her work has been published in Art and Science Now and Information Art by Stephen Wilson, Art in the Age of Technoscience by Ingeborg Reichle, Evocative Objects by Sherry Turkle, and Kunst nach der Wissenschaft by Susanne Witzgall, among other publications.
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