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Robert Ragazza

Visual Artist: Photographer

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…..

Joe Ragey

Performing Artist: Lighting Designer, Set Designer; Visual Artist: Painter

I paint “alla prima” working on location and in the studio. My work centers on creating the effects of light found in nature. I paint landscapes and seascapes capturing the scenic vistas of the California west coast. In the studio, I work on larger salon sized paintings, from small ‘alla prima” studies done on location. The paintings of French, Russian, American Impressionists, and in particular, the early California Impressionists influences my work. Some of the artist’s that I admire include, Joaquin Sorolla, John Singer Sargent, Charles Hawthorne and Guy Rose. As a painter it is important for me to capture the unique California light at various times of the day and year, under a variety of lighting conditions.

Michael F. Ramsaur

Educator; Performing Artist: Lighting Designer, Set Designer

Michael Ramsaur is a professor of lighting design at Stanford University. He also serves as an Honorary Professor at the Central Academy of Drama, Beijing and has taught regularly at the Bavarian Theater Academy Munich and as a Guest Professor at the University of Arts Belgrade in the Interdisciplinary Program in Theater Design and at Trinity College, Dublin. Professor Ramsaur was awarded a Fulbright Grant and has given lectures or workshop in 19 countries. He has had a 40-year career in theater including owning and operating San Francisco Theatrical Supply, a stage lighting sales and rental company. He has served as Lighting Designer, designing over 200 productions for many theater companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Berkeley Repertory Theater, San Jose Civic Light Opera, West Bay Opera, Scholar Opera, Lamplighters, TheatreWorks, and the Broadway by the Bay where he is the resident lighting designer having designed over 70 productions. He has been awarded Outstanding Lighting Design awards from the San Francisco Bay Area Critics, Dean Goodman Award, and Drama Logue Awards. His articles on lighting techniques have been published in three countries and he has created a computerized software program to aid lighting designers.

John Reily

Visual Artist: Animator, Filmmaker, Videographer

Fanny Retsek

Visual Artist: Mixed Media

Fanny Retsek combines printmaking with drawing, collage and stitching. Some of her pieces use the multiple of print to create larger-scale installations. Her work focuses on animal rights, species decline, and the cohabitation of humans and wild animals. She exhibits internationally and her prints are included in the collections of Fine Art Museums, San Francisco, Oakland Museum of Art, and the Corcoran in Washington DC. Her work has received honors, including an award from the curator of prints and drawings at the Chicago Art Institute. She received her MFA from San Jose State University. In addition to her own studio art practice, Fanny has worked as a professional master printer collaborating with artists on print projects. She is the Adult Studios Program Director at the Palo Alto Art Center.

George Rivera

Visual Artist: Mixed Media, Painter

George Rivera, M.A., is the former museum of art Executive Director & Senior Curator, at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara. Rivera was with the Triton Museum of Art since 1985, before stepping down from his position in July 2013. Prior to the Triton, Rivera was the Executive Director & Curator of the San Jose Art League from 1982-1985. Rivera received his academic training in art for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from San Jose State University. Since 1977 he has organized and curated over 375 exhibitions including local, state, national and international projects, collaborating with small and major national museums, galleries and private collections. This includes developing, organizing and overseeing in-house curated exhibitions that toured nationally in both museums and art centers. As a juror of art Rivera has served as a solo juror or as a member of a panel of jurors for over 400 (1978 to the present) exhibitions and competitions of local, regional, statewide, national and international art programs, projects, fellowships, artist-in-residency programs and competitions. He is an Associate Faculty Instructor of Art at Mission College in Santa Clara (1986 to the present) where he has taught drawing, design, color, life drawing, museum and gallery studies, air-brush painting and oil, acrylic and watercolor painting. He was an Art Instructor of life drawing, figure and portrait painting at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto (1998-2008). Rivera teaches a life drawing/portrait and figure class throughout the year at the Triton Museum of Art School. In 2005 he began instructing a class at De Anza College in Cupertino for a course entitled Art Exhibition Analysis where he meets his students throughout the Bay Area at museums, art galleries and artist studios to discuss contemporary art. Currently an Extension Instructor of curatorial/art history studies for the University of California at Berkeley extension program (1996-2000, 2007 to the present), Rivera presents lectures of Bay Area Art history from 1945 to today throughout the region. Since 1979 he has taught art studio, art appreciation and introduction to the arts/art history classes at San Jose State University, San Jose Art League, Pacific Art league, UC Berkeley Extension, DeAnza College, Triton Museum of Art School and Mission College. Committed to giving back to the art community, Rivera participates year-round in artist critiques to individual artists, students and art groups/clubs/associations and organizations, portfolio reviews and career counseling. As an artist, Rivera has been included in over 100 exhibitions locally, nationally and internationally. Since 1974 his drawings, mixed media and paintings have been presented at art centers, galleries and museums. His work have been represented by art galleries including the Group 21 Gallery, Los Gatos; Freeman Gallery, Palo Alto; Branner-Spangenberg Gallery, Palo Alto; Sperling Gallery, San Jose; the Pope Gallery, Santa Cruz; Ebert Gallery, San Francisco; Michael Himovitz Gallery, Sacramento; d.p. Fong Galleries, San Jose; Washington Square/Togonon Gallery, San Francisco, and now currently with the Sandra Lee Art Gallery, San Francisco. Locally his drawings and paintings have been presented at the San Jose Museum of Art; the De Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University; the Art Museum of Los Gatos; the Euphrat Museum of Art, De Anza College, Cupertino; the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara; National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA.; Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts, Saratoga; Olive Hyde Art Gallery, Fremont; Union Art Gallery San Jose State University, ICA Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose; WORKS/San Jose, MACLA San Jose, the San Jose Art Center, Michael Rosenthal Gallery, San Francisco, among others. In 2012 there was a 30 year survey of his paintings and drawings at the Art Museum of Los Gatos. This solo exhibition featured a publication with an introduction and essays by art historians Preston Metcalf and Helayna Thickpenny and by Catherine Politopulus, Curator of Art at the Art Museum of Los Gatos. In 2013 Rivera will be in multiple two person exhibitions with his wife Kristin Lindseth Rivera at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, CA. and the Sandra Lee Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Rivera and his wife Kristin contribute works of art to art auctions, fund-raisers and gallery/museum events throughout the year in support of community art programs throughout the Greater Bay Area. Since 1978 he has produced numerous commissioned portraits of many of this region’s community leaders as well as general portraits and commissioned work. Rivera has been a recipient of numerous awards in the field of art, art education, curating, arts administration and community service, including annual recognition in the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th and current editions of Who’s Who in American Art, and in 2005 was selected annually into Who’s Who in America 60th and 61st edition. Twice he has been nominated by peers and colleagues for the prestigious Fleishhacker Foundation Artist Award. In 2013 Rivera was honored with the 2013 Artist Laureate Award Legacy Laureate from the Arts Council Silicon Valley. He also received a Proclamation from the City of Santa Clara in recognition of this award. As an arts writer his works have been published throughout the Bay Area including museum/gallery publications, catalogs and brochures, and he was an art reviewer and contributing editor for Artistwriter publication. Rivera also served as a host of INSIDE ART! A South Bay televised art program produced by award-winning and exhibiting artist Sandra Beard that was presented on public television community access channels throughout the area focusing the art of the South Bay Area region. This program featured artists, alternative art spaces and art programs from throughout the South Bay Area. Besides his activities as an art administrator, instructor of art, faculty member and artist Rivera has and continues to serve on numerous art/community boards and advisory board/committees for non-profit organizations and educational programs throughout the Bay Area. Both Kristin and George share their knowledge and experience in assisting artists, art clubs and community art programs throughout the region.

Roberto Romo

Visual Artist: Illustrator, Painter

I am an Illustrator / Graphic Designer living in San Jose, I have been awarded 2015 SV Creates Artist Laureate in February 2015. My work has become part of bay area culture through many publications as well as art exhibits. Concurrently I work as an art instructor at The School of Arts and Culture. I hold a BFA from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in Traditional Illustration, and an AS in 2 Dimensional Design From Evergreen Valley College. Currently I am producing a series of 54 paintings, which focus on interpreting “La Loteria” ( Mexican Bingo) with new and fresh illustrations, which will be published by August 2015.

Tim Ryan

Visual Artist: Sculptor

Tim’s work is 3-D, spatial sculpture that generally begins on a constructive surface Tim builds upon. Sometimes he paints or collages on the surface. He uses electro-mechanical, time-related aspects as well, but right now he is making an effort to reduce these elements. “I’m returning to working on panels,” he says. “For artistic reasons, I’m in a reductive phase with my work.” Tim’s art career has taken him up and down the West Coast, from Oregon to Alaska to California. He currently resides in North San Jose, where he alternates remodeling his home with working in his studio. “I need a lot of space to walk around in, to think in. I always end up pushing myself out of my work space. My tools take up too much room.” If Tim could have anything, it would be a bigger studio. “And time,” he adds. “I always need more time.” After attending Portland State University, Tim found the Visual Arts Center in Anchorage, Alaska. After he received his BFA, Tim stayed on at the VAC for eight years. “I learned how to be an artist there. My biggest influences were the artists who came to VAC.” At the time, Alaska was flush with oil money, and a young, liberal population that supported the arts. Well-known artists made the trek to Alaska, living, working and teaching other artists. Although Tim showed talent as a child, drawing obsessively, his father insisted he “learn a trade.” Tim worked at construction jobs for several years before moving to Alaska. “It helped my art,” he states. “I’d give the same advice to other artists. It’s hard to count on art as a sole means of making a living.” For the last eleven years, Tim has worked as a facilities manager at the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose, and designed several of its exhibitions. He also spends up to twenty hours a week making art. In the past, he taught art at local community colleges, where he told his students, “Do one thing, then drop it. Then do another and drop that. You have to work on a lot of projects to get one really good one.” Tim noticed the tendency of students to become discouraged if they didn’t make a masterpiece the first time they tried.” “You have to work and work and work. Make a thousand pieces. You might get ten you want to keep.” Tim came to San Jose from Alaska in order to get his MFA, and though his career as an artist is clearly mature, he doesn’t feel established. “I’m always trying new things. Artists need to stretch themselves all the time.” Right now Tim would like to find an agent – someone with a grasp of the business side of art. “I’ve never been much good at marketing myself. The business side takes too much time, time I’d rather use to make things.” All art is connected, Tim notes: “poetry and art get closest to the transcendental world. I find it interesting that people seem willing to accept religion, but are resistant to art. Maybe it’s fear-based, I don’t know – to me, they’re both saying the same thing about the world.”

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