BIOS

Lita Albuquerque

Lita Albuquerque is a multidisciplinary artist and writer with an international reputation. She represented the United States at the Sixth International Cairo Biennale, and was awarded the Biennale prize for her artwork Sol Star. In 2006 she received the National Science Foundation Artist Grant for the artwork, Stellar Axis, which was realized in an installation in Antarctica. Recent exhibitions include the Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival, 2012; Desert X, 2017; Desert X AlUla in Saudi Arabia, 2020; Light & Space at the Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark, 2021; and Lita Albuquerque: Liquid Light presented by bardoLA at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia, Biennale Arte 2022. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Trust, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. She is represented in Southern California by Kohn Gallery and by Peter Blake Gallery.

Marthe Aponte

Marthe Aponte is an artist who draws her inspiration from her life in France, Venezuela and the US. Aponte’s signature technique Picoté is an artform produced by piercing tiny holes into paper. Her artwork is widely exhibited in California art galleries and museums including the Museum of Art and History (MOAH) in Lancaster, Launch LA and United Kingdom University of North Hampton. She has been awarded the Beryl Amspoker Memorial Award for Outstanding Woman Artist by MOAH. Her work is published by Red Hen Press, and by the Revista National de Cultura in Venezuela. She lives in Lancaster, California.

Visit: martheaponte.com

ArtButMakeItSports

LJ Rader is a full-time sports media professional and part-time artist living in New York City. LJ’s hobby - the Instagram & Twitter account ArtButMakeItSports - bridges the gap between the two disciplines, showcasing sports imagery alongside pieces of fine art. Since its inception in 2020, the account has grown a strong following online and has been covered by numerous outlets, including Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, USA Today, Hyperallergic, and Artnet. LJ is a graduate of Vanderbilt University, and is an Emmy Award winning Olympics Producer. This is LJ’s first physical showing of his artwork.

Justin Berardi

Justin Berardi is a Director, Producer, Writer and Creative Marketer based in California. He was born and raised in Buffalo, NY, where his love for exploration, athletics, the arts and outdoors all began.

Justin has worked in the advertising and entertainment industry for over 15 years. He studied Psychology at Dartmouth College before moving into film, and it's that fascination with the human psyche and sensitivity to human behavior that underscores much of his work.

An opportunity through the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences took Justin to Hollywood in 2004, and since then his career has brought him to companies like Walt Disney Studios, GK Films, Intralink Film Graphic Design, SHFT.COM, Visual Icon, Halo Neuroscience and more.

While Justin’s experience spans development, production, marketing, advertising, licensing, branding and PR, his true passion is directing and producing impactful stories with depth.

Luc Bernard

For the last decade, color field artist Luc Bernard has been exploring, through his body of work, social and cultural changes in day to day life. While living in Los Angeles for many years, his work emphasized movement and interaction within a large urban setting, using color and shapes to express how one copes with a continuous bombardment of sound and visual chaos, while still using a minimalist aesthetic.Then came a move to the desert. With a new sense of space and light, he was compelled to further minimize both composition and much of the gestural movement seen in his previous series. The scale also changed. Color took on a new dimension. With slight variances in hues and tones and use of color combinations, the work creates a new sense of energy and tension. Shapes may appear crisp and perfectly drawn, but one eventually observes unexpected lines or deviations that makes the viewer question the overall intention or feeling observed. The challenge has only become greater; the simplicity of the work, even more complex. Luc has enjoyed several solo and group exhibitions across Canada and the US, is a recipient of the Federation of Canadian Artists Grand Prize Award and is represented by Heather James Gallery.

Visit: lucbernardart.com

Andrew D. Bernstein

Bernstein’s photography has appeared in thousands of newspapers and magazine covers worldwide, as well as major advertising campaigns for over 30 years. Recent commercial projects include featuring some of the world’s top athletes for Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Icy Hot and GlaxoSmithKline. The unique personal rapport Bernstein has developed with athletes over the years allows him exclusive access to special behind-the-scenes moments, some of which were showcased in the 2010 book he co-authored with legendary Hall of Fame NBA coach Phil Jackson, “Journey to the Ring”, documenting the 2009-10 Lakers championship season. In 2018, Bernstein collaborated with five-time NBA champion Kobe Bryant on the worldwide bestselling book “The Mamba Mentality: How I Play,” a unique look at Bryant’s 20 year career through Bernstein’s lens.

Andrew and his company, Andrew D. Bernstein Associates Photography, Inc., has served as team photographer for the LA Lakers, LA Kings, LA Clippers and LA Dodgers. In addition, Bernstein holds the position of Director of Photography for STAPLES Center and Microsoft Theater L.A. Live, the sports and entertainment complex in Los Angeles.

Recognized as a highly-skilled and innovative action and portrait photographer, Bernstein was involved in the creation of NBA Photos in 1986, which is recognized as the worldwide leader in licensing of NBA photography. He was instrumental in the creation of the position of Senior Director of NBA Photos, a position he held from 1986 through 2011, and he continues to serve as the longest tenured league photographer. He is the key photographic contributor to NBA Entertainment’s global media platforms, which include NBA.com, all league publications and NBA licensed products.

Bernstein was instrumental in the development and use of new technology, both on and off the court, including the multiple camera Flash Wizard II system, which revolutionized indoor sports action photography by using triggers and remotes with strobe lighting.

Bernstein is a founding partner of a new media and events company called Legends Of Sport that celebrates legendary athletes, teams and moments in sports. Bernstein hosts a weekly podcast called “Legends Of Sport.” The show’s third season is co-produced and distributed by the Los Angeles Times and is available to download through the L.A. Times App and online. The podcast can also be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, as well as other platforms. The platform and podcast can be followed on Twitter: @legends_ofsport, Instagram: @legendsofsport, Blog: www.legendsofsport.blog, YouTube and TikTok: Legends Of Sport.

Diane Best

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Diane Best moved to California to study at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. Later she moved to Los Angeles where she worked as a commercial artist for the entertainment industry. In 1995 she moved to Joshua Tree, continuing to work for animation studios but eventually shifting her focus to capturing the intense drama of the desert landscape that surrounded her through painting, photography, and the moving image. The iconic Joshua Tree has been a favored subject for 25 years -- she thinks of them as “tree portraits” and loves their movement and unique form.

Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibits throughout the country, including shows at the Carnegie Museum in Oxnard, the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles (part of the Autry Museum), and the Joshua Treenial in years 2015, 2017 and 2019. Her moving image work has been shown at several film festivals and theExploratorium in San Francisco. “Seeking more and more remote, uninhabited and overlooked corners of the desert," she says, "I am interested in preserving or recording a single incredible moment of converging light and landscape."

Visit: dbestart.com

Steven Biller

Steven Biller is the longtime editor in chief of Palm Springs Life magazine, as well as the editor of numerous artist monographs and exhibition catalogues. He’s a founder and board member of Desert X, the biennial exhibition of site-specific art in the California desert, and an adviser to several arts organizations in the Coachella Valley and Morongo Basin. He often lectures on the art history and contemporary practices of the region

Keith Boadwee

Keith Boadwee was born in Meridian, MS in 1961 and currently lives in Emeryville, CA. He received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, CA in 2000 and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, CA in 1989. Boadwee’s work was the subject of one-person exhibitions at Atelier 34zero Museum, Jette, Belgium (2017) and SF Camera Work, San Francisco, CA (1994). His work has been included in thematic exhibitions such as AA Bronson’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (2015); AA Bronson’s Sacre du Printemps, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria (2015); 15 Minutes of Fame: Portraits from Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2010); Prospect 1.5, New Orleans, LA (2010); Into Me / Out of Me, MoMA PS1, Long Island, NY and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2006); Grey Area, California College of Art, San Francisco, CA (2003); Bay Area Now 3, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2002); The People’s Plastic Princess, Banff Center, Calgary, Canada (2000); Double Trouble: The Patchett Collection, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (1998); Selections from the Peter and Eileen Norton Collection, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA (1995); Bad Girls, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1994); Slittamenti, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (1993); and Performance Behind the Curtain, White Columns, New York, NY (1992).

Keith Boadwee's latest works embody playfulness in both narrative and gestural paint application. Boadwee’s unique sardonic sense of humor is ever present in the works, which engage with painting’s history both critically and earnestly. A common theme is painters making paintings, or the re-working of compositions by masters. Boadwee's paintings relish in carnality and sexuality, often times presenting humorous scatological narratives. The artist possesses a childlike joy for all things sexual, fecal, and phallic, all the while remaining engaged in a critical reflection of art history.

Keith Boadwee & Club Paint is the artist's continuing body of collaborative paintings. Club Paint initially started as a collaborative painting project organized and initiated by Keith Boadwee with former students. Over time, Boadwee has taken control of all narrative and aesthetic decisions. The paintings are made using Boadwee's drawings as blue prints. While they are sometimes painted with the help of other hands (Club Paint), more recently they are just as likely to be made solely by Boadwee.

Fred Brashear Jr

Fred Brashear Jr is a photo-based artist focusing on the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Fred holds an M.F.A. from California State University, San Bernardino and has contributed to the mentorship and instruction of diverse student populations in the field of photography throughout Southern California. Balancing a professional teaching and artistic career, Fred continues to investigate the vital relationship between humans and their environment, allowing him to inform society of the necessary changes that need to happen for a sustainable coexistence with nature. Fred lives in San Bernardino County with his wife and two children.

Visit: fredbrashear.com

Victoria Burns

Victoria Burns has over 30 years of experience in the international art market and a degree in art history from Northwestern University.

With a commitment to connoisseurship and investment portfolio development, Burns advises both new and experienced collectors on building art collections that reflect the client’s personal vision, enhance their environments, and contribute to their wealth. Her clients include: the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, the MacArthur Foundation, Harris Associates, Children’s Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and Hines Developers among others. In addition, Burns has also advised private clients in Los Angeles, Vail, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, Dallas and Miami.

Burns is an Executive Board Member of The Association of Professional Art Advisors, a member of Art Here and Now and the Modern and Contemporary Art Council at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Hammer Circle at the Hammer Museum. Believing passionately about supporting artists as part of strategic philanthropy, she is also a partner with the VIAART Fund and a Co-Founder of Angeles Art Fund. She lives and works in Los Angeles, where she has resided since 2010.

Visit: www.burnsartadvisory.com

Tay Butler

Tay Butler is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Houston, TX. He received his BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston and recently completed his MFA in the University of Arkansas’ Photography program. After retiring from the US Army and abandoning a middle-class engineering career to search for purpose, Tay reignited a rich appreciation for Black history and a deep obsession with the Black archive. Using past and present images to create a historically-layered body of work, Tay reorients cultural material from the ever- growing Black experience. Tay works with photography, collage, video, and sound exhibitions and installations. His solo exhibitions and installations include RE.Migrant I & II at Project Row Houses, Houston, TX and We Are Still Searching at the Louise J. Moran Fine Arts Courtyard, Houston TX. Group exhibitions of his work have been featured in ArtPace, San Antonio, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Texas Biennial at Fotofest. Performance exhibitions include Jefferson Pinder’s Fire and Movement for Diverse Works, Houston and Tay has collaborated with the Houston Rockets, amongst many others.

Awards include the Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council, and First Prize in the 2019 Citywide African-American Artists Exhibition at TSU. Tay currently teaches in the University of Houston’s photo department, and has also led private and community workshops for Crystal Bridges Museum, Arkansas and The Center for Fine Art Photography, Colorado

Ryan Campbell

Ryan Campbell (1981, Los Angeles, California) is an accomplished painter and muralist. He garnered technical skills for painting early on in his years while creating murals in the graffiti culture of the 1990s and early 2000s. Ryan refers to his practice as investigations in geometric abstraction, minimalism, and hard-edge painting. His Line Segments series are evidence of this description with their groupings of hard-edged layered bands of color that intertwine in abstract and geometric patterns. Campbell’s work and practice are inspired by acclaimed artists LeWitt, Martin, Stella, Soto, and Phillip K Smith III. Campbell was commissioned to create a large-scale Line Segments mural for the City of Palm Springs directly adjacent to the Palm Springs Art Museum. Corporate commissions include AEG World wide’s Goldenvoice, Pernod Ricard, Red Bull North America, Covered California and Branded Arts. Campbell’s works are in several important American collections, including the MacMillan collection, and private collections around the world. Campbell works and lives within the scenic backdrop of the Santa Rosa Mountains near Palm Springs, California. He is represented by Melissa Morgan Gallery.

Visit: rmc1studio.com

Andi Campognone

Andi Campognone has over 30 years of arts experience in the southern California region. She is the Owner/Director of AC Projects, a private consulting organization focused on promoting arts and culture. Projects include developing museum exhibitions, public engagement, mentoring programs and book and film publications of historically relevant southern California artists. Campognone is also the Museum Manager/Curator for the City of Lancaster. She is responsible for the development and maintenance of partnerships and community engagement initiatives with local artists, local businesses, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Los Angeles County Supervisors office and higher-level institutions. She develops curatorial direction for exhibition and educational programming and is directing the Museum accreditation process for MOAH. She has previously served the City of Pomona as Cultural Arts Commissioner where she co-wrote and implemented the City’s Master Cultural Arts Plan and the adopted Arts in Public Places Policy. Campognone is on the Board of the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation and served on the Board of the Holualoa Foundation for Arts and Culture. She volunteers as a regular speaker and mentor to art students at both the undergraduate and graduate level and is on the advisory boards of Start Up Art Fair Los Angeles and Los Angeles Arts Association. She is a current member of ArTTable.

Sophie Chahinian

Sophie Chahinian, a documentary filmmaker and founder of The Artist Profile Archive, earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Occidental College and an M.A. in Contemporary Art from the University of Manchester through Sotheby’s Institute of Art London.

Drawing upon her work experience in film and her formal education in contemporary art, she created The Artist Profile Archive as a platform for primary information, showcasing artists talking about their work in their own words in intimate, short documentary portraits made up exclusively of the artist speaking and footage of the artist’s work.

Sophie’s hope is that by sharing these films, more people will become engaged with contemporary art and realize its capacity to unite people by helping to identify the parameters and the commonality of the human experience.

Scarlet Cheng

Scarlet Cheng is an arts writer and college professor. She has been fascinated by the desert ever since she visited Egypt and took a memorable cab ride from Cairo to Alexandria, and later when she visited Xian, China, and explored the Taklamakan Desert on foot and on the back of a motorcycle. She writes regularly for The Art Newspaper and Artillery art magazine, and has been published in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Vogue, and The Village Voice. She also teaches art and film history at two of Southern California's major art schools, Art Center College of Design and Otis College of Art and Design.

Gerald Clarke

Gerald Clarke is a visual artist, educator, tribal leader, enrolled citizen of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, and cultural practitioner whose family has lived in the Anza Valley for time immemorial. His work is exhibited widely and collected by major museums. In 2007, Gerald was awarded an Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Native American Fine Art and in 2015, served as an Artist-in-Residence at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Palm Springs Art Museum hosted the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in 2020. He is a Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Burzeen Contractor

Burzeen Contractor is an Indian born visual artist/architectural designer currently based in Palm Desert, California. He was born in Bombay, India and spent his childhood in a small princely town of Baroda. After graduating with great distinction in the discipline of architecture he pursued his education further at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, where he got his masters in architecture and during which he also did a semester in Venice, Italy. He moved to the Southern California desert to work for the acclaimed light artist Phillip K. Smith III as a designer and visual artist, where he has worked for the past 18 years. His work investigates atmospheric color and the subtle, ephemeral shifts in luminosity, tonality, and light that happen over time creating works of layered luminance, deeply informed by and inspired by his ritualistic sky recordings and contemplative experiences with light in the desert sky. He had his first solo show “Perpetual Light” in November 2021and since been working on private commissions.

Visit: theartcollective.com/artists/burzeen-contractor

Shana Nys Dambrot

Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Downtown LA. She is the Arts Editor for the L.A. Weekly, and a contributor to Flaunt, Art & Cake, and Artillery. She studied Art History at Vassar College, writes book and catalog essays, curates and juries exhibitions, and speaks at galleries, schools, and cultural institutions nationally.

Melissa Daniels

Melissa Daniels is a writer and digital media consultant in the Coachella Valley. She has reported on business, politics, arts, and culture for a wide variety of publications including The Desert Sun, the Associated Press, Law360, Forbes, and various digital outlets.

Dani Dodge

Dani Dodge is a Los Angeles artist who uses unexpected sculptural materials to alter surfaces and spaces with an air of magical realism. She works in installation, performance, paint, sculpture, music, and video. A former journalist, she turned to art after working as a war correspondent. She has a fascination with the desert and the ability of life to flourish within harsh, desolate conditions. Her recent work has explored survival, and her love of the hideously beautiful Joshua tree. Her art has been shown across the globe, and she’s been recognized nationally for outstanding public art.

Visit: danidodge.com

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, author of Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s, and Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe, has written numerous other books, essays and articles about modern and contemporary art and design in California.

Visit: www.HunterDrohojowska-Philp.com

Sharon Ellis

Born in Great Lakes, Illinois, Sharon Ellis grew up in San Diego, CA. She received her BA from the University of California, Irvine, and her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. As a child, she was introduced to the desert on visits to her father’s aunts in 29 Palms and Wonder Valley. Since 2013 she has lived and worked in Yucca Valley.

Her artwork is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and others. Recently she was one of the artist selected for the “California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold” at the Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa. She is represented by Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Fiore

Elizabeth Fiore founded her art advisory in 1996, with the aim of helping collectors navigate the complex and sometimes daunting art world. Since then, she has enhanced her reputation year-onyear, representing clients’ interests with determination and integrity. As the advisory has grown, so have the scope and prestige of the collections assembled. Many works from clients’ collections have been loaned for museum exhibitions.

Ms. Fiore’s access to the broadest spectrum of artworks, bringing established artists into dialog with emerging talent, depends on the relationships of trust she has developed with a global network of art world professionals, as well as on her discerning eye. Far-reaching travel is central to Ms. Fiore’s success; among the many international art fairs she regularly attends are Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Basel, Frieze (New York and London), Paris’s Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC), The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht, and Zona Maco in Mexico City. Her extensive contacts allow her to draw on colleagues’ specialist knowledge, coordinating in-depth research on behalf of her clients. Over the years, Ms. Fiore has deepened her expertise of art and its markets while maintaining her sense of curiosity, flexibility, and open-minded exploration.

Before launching her career as an independent advisor, Elizabeth Fiore was the director of the Annina Nosei Gallery, where she nurtured a number of young artists, giving some, such as Ghada Amer, their first solo exhibitions. Ms. Fiore is a board member of the Fountain Gallery advisory team, a member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors (APAA) and ArtTable, and an active participant in the New York art scene. Profoundly at home in the art world, she takes pride in fostering clients’ enthusiasm and individual tastes in a way that is financially strategic and personally engaged.

Erik Frydenborg

Erik Frydenborg was born in 1977 in Miami, Florida. He holds a BFA from MICA in Baltimore, MD, and an MFA from the University of Southern California. Frydenborg has held solo exhibitions at The Pit, Glendale, CA, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL, Albert Baronian, Brussels, BE, The Suburban, Oak Park, IL, and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, CA. Previous group exhibitions include NADA House, New Art Dealers Alliance, Governor’s Island, New York, NY, 100 Sculptures, Anonymous Gallery, Paris, FR, Divided Brain, LAVA Projects, Alhambra, CA, Real Shapes, Dateline, Denver, CO, Skip Tracer, M. LeBlanc, Chicago, IL, Knowledges, Mount Wilson Observatory, Los Angeles, CA, Re-Planetizer, Regina Rex, New York, NY, Brian Kokoska/TRAUMA SAUNA, ASHES/ASHES, Los Angeles, CA, Full House, Shanaynay, Paris, FR, BAD BOYS BAIL BONDS ADOPT A HIGHWAY, Team Gallery, New York, NY, Trains, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Set Pieces, Cardi Black Box, Milan, IT, and The Stand In (Or A Glass of Milk), Public Fiction, Los Angeles, CA.

Frydenborg’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, FlashArt, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. From 2017 through 2019, Frydenborg was a partner in the cooperative artist-run Los Angeles gallery AWHRHWAR. Erik Frydenborg lives and works in Los Angeles.

Danielle Giudici Wallis

Danielle Giudici Wallis is an artist and educator residing in Redlands, California. She holds an MFA from Stanford University where she was awarded the Murphy Cadogan Grant, the James Borelli and Cantor Center Fellowships in Art, and the Anita Squires Memorial Fund in Photography. Her work has been exhibited widely including shows at Catharine Clark Gallery, A.I.R. Gallery, and The Legion of Honor which holds her work in their Achenbach collection. In 2022 she was the recipient of grants from the Puffin Foundation and Arts Connection. She currently teaches at the University of Redlands, Johnston Center for Integrative Studies.

Visit: daniellegiudiciwallis.com

Rob Grad

Rob Grad is known for his introspective, yet bold 3D collages, sculptures, writing and music. He has shown in museums, galleries and art fairs from Basel to Miami, and Los Angeles. His exhibitions include the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA, Torrance Art Museum and the Griffin Museum of Photography. He has large scale commissioned works installed on both coasts, and his work is held in private collections. He also gave a TEDx Talk in Culver City, CA and participated in a global video project for TikTok China. Rob a southern California native, and lives in Los Angeles.

Visit: robgrad.com

Dr. Juniper Harrower

Dr. Juniper Harrower works at the intersection of ecology and art; specializing in multispecies entanglements under climate change, using quantitative science methods and a multimedia art practice to consider the ways that humans influence ecosystems while seeking solutions that protect at-risk species and promote environmental justice. Her award winning work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her research and artistic products have received wide exposure in popular media such as National Geographic, Kunstforum International, KCET Artbound, the associated press, podcasts, music festivals and conferences. Harrower is the director of the art+science initiative at UC Santa Cruz and teaches art at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.

Visit: juniperharrower.com

Jeremy John Kaplan

Jeremy John Kaplan (b. Philadelphia, 1982; Lives and works in New York ) is an artist and ballplayer. His social and studio practices explore the perennial intersections of art, activism and sports. Kaplan is self taught and formalized his artistic practice by opening his Brooklyn studio in 2014. His artwork has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Cannes, and London. Documentation and press include coverage in SLAM, amNewYork, Hyperallergic, Believer Magazine, and the 2021 comprehensive publication Common Practice : Basketball and Contemporary Art. Recently announced museum acquisition in the collection of the FRAC PACA (fonds régionaux d’art contemporain provence Côte d’Azur) in Marseille, France.

Yulia Kazakova

Yulia Kazakova was born in 1980 in Moscow and lives in Germany since 1998. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Brazil, Turkey. Works in private collections in Germany, Brazil, Austria, Switzerland, and USA. Public collections include Museum Angerlehner, Upper Austria. Since June 2017, she has worked on the S21 series, which artistically documents the emergence of the new train station in Stuttgart. She was a Master student of Prof. Wolfgang Petrick, Berlin University of the Arts (MfA) in 2007 and completed studies at Art in Context, Berlin University of the Arts (M.A.). in 2017.

Visit: yulia-kazak.de

Sant Khalsa

Sant Khalsa is an artist, educator, curator, and activist whose projects develop from her mindful inquiry into the nature of place and complex environmental and societal issues. Her artworks are widely exhibited, published, and acquired by museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Nevada Museum of Art, National Galleries of Scotland, and Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. Her recent monograph Crystal Clear || Western Waters (Minor Matters, 2022) features 60 of her photographs. Khalsa has been awarded fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, California Humanities and was the inaugural recipient of the Society for Photographic Education Insight Award for her significant contributions to the field of photography. She is a Professor of Art, Emerita at California State University, San Bernardino and lives in Joshua Tree.

Visit: santkhalsa.com

Billy Kheel

Using felt and thread, Billy Kheel creates soft sculptures, wall hangings, portraits and installations. He uses historical fabric techniques to commemorate and analyze sports and pop culture. His use of material questions the boundary between art and craft. Regardless of the subject of a given series, a sense of humor and warmth runs throughout his work.

Billy welcomes collaborations, past projects have included Jordan Brand, NBA2K, Madison Square Garden, Nike, Hulu, the Knicks and NBC.

Bernard Leibov

Bernard Leibov is the Founder and Director of BoxoPROJECTS, a residency and programming initiative based in Joshua Tree, CA. He is also co-founder and co-curator of the Joshua Treenial. Prior to moving to California, Bernard was Deputy Director of Judd Foundation in New York and Marfa. He also operated a non-traditional gallery space in New York City which featured artists from Joshua Tree and other non- urban areas.

Stevie Love

Stevie Love earned a bachelor’s degree with honors from Cal State San Bernardino and was awarded a merit scholarship at Claremont Graduate University. Love has shown in museums and galleries in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, Sacramento, St. Louis, New York, Seoul, Beijing, Vienna, and Venice, Italy, has earned artist residencies at Idyllwild, California, working with Roland Reiss, and a residency in Venice, Italy, working with master printers. Her artworks are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, California, and the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California and was selected for auction at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Visit: stevielove.com

Brendan Lott

In his new series of powerful figurative images, Brendan Lott proves he is both “Looking In and Looking Out,” the title of his most recent show at Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles. This work continues Lott’s exploration of life in a pandemic photographing his neighbors engaged in their daily lives as seen from his loft window in downtown Los Angeles. The voyeuristic images are poignant, haunting and poetic in composition and subject. The result is an intimate look at these isolating circumstances, and the expression of human longing for connection. Candid shots composed in a painterly, formal style create a narrative that grew from Lott’s own isolation. They capture loneliness, boredom and solitude, as well as small gatherings or couplings as the world began slowly, gestationally to expand.

John Luckett

John Luckett was born in Humboldt, Tennessee, in 1951, and currently lives and works in Palm Springs, California. He focuses predominantly on painting, and has put together a body of work that also includes photography, installation, assemblage, and sculpture. After finishing undergraduate studies at Vanderbilt University, Luckett completed course work at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, before moving to Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles to pursue a career in graphic design. His process is primarily self-taught, and the textures and shapes that constitute his work often find form in intricate and abstract compositions, using bold color combinations to establish an energetic and complex landscape. Luckett has been featured in several solo exhibitions in San Francisco, New York and Joshua Tree. His work has also been included in a number of group shows, as well as at the Bombay Beach Biennale, Salton Sea CA and at Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market” at the Palm Springs Art Museum as pasrt of DesertX. Luckett’s work is included in both public and private art collections in the United States, Europe and Asia and he is represented by JJ Harrington Gallery.

Visit: johnluckett.com

David Mackenzie

David Mackenzie was born in Los Angeles and received both his BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute where he studied ceramics, sculpture and painting. In his words: “I have deliberately and radically reduced the elements in my work in order to clearly understand the painting’s nature. Shifting perceptions, reflected light, color/material and location are what interest me along with spacial tension. My approach is strictly intuitive when it comes to these matters.”His work has been included in the Whitney Biennial and has been shown in Italy, France, Germany, and Russia. He received grants from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation and the National Foundation for the Arts. David has work in the Phillips Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art in Embassies program, the Oakland Art Museum, and the Rene di Rosa Foundation among others. He was a member of American Abstract Artists, an organization to promote abstract art since 1936. David is represented by Flow Modern.

Visit: davidmackenzie4.com

Kim Manfredi

Kim Manfredi graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) with a BFA in 1988 and then worked as a skilled decorative painter for many years. She returned to MICA and graduated under the tutelage of Grace Hartigan and Joyce Kozloff earning an MFA in 2009. Her artwork examines how todays crisis of identity, anxieties over humanity’s effect on our planet, and an urgent sense of surviving have complicated our fluency with desire. She immerses in yearning, its pleasure and pain, while making paintings. Using spray paint and traditional oils the resulting bumps, bulges and veils share non-gendered sensuous narratives taking place in remembered spaces. After graduating MICA, Kim was represented by C. Grimaldis Gallery, 2009 – 2013 and has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Maryland Art Place and most recently a portfolio reviewed workshop at Anderson Ranch. Kim is represented by Slate Contemporary in the bay area and exhibits at various venues in the Coachella Valley. She is a founder of the Desert Open Studios Tour.

Visit: kimmanfredi.com

Aline Mare

Aline Mare began her career in downtown Manhattan, coming out of a background of theatre, experimental film, and installation art. She completed undergraduate work at SUNY Buffalo’s Center for Media Studies and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. Her work is included in several private collections in the Bay Area, New York City, China, and Los Angeles. She continues to expand her work, concentrating on mixed media and installation, exploring the body and metaphors of nature and its transformative relationship to the human psyche and the state of our planet. She lives in Pasadena, CA.

Visit: alinemare.com

Jasmine Monsegue

Jasmine Monsegue (b. 1994) Houston, TX is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with airbrush painting, clothing and furniture design. Her paintings include surrealist imagery drawn from personal experience as well as ancestral inspirations of carnival themed performances, circus parades, and dystopian nightmares. She draws creativity from the appropriation of beauty, advertisement, and dismantled infrastructures.

Chelsea Mosher

Chelsea Mosher lives and works in Long Beach, California. Her work is represented in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and special collections of LACMA, Stanford Libraries, and Virginia Commonwealth University. She has exhibited widely in the US; recently in the Art Forum Critics’ Pick, Southland, Gallery Luisotti, (Los Angeles, CA) and the landmark exhibition, In the Sunshine of Neglect: Defining Photographs and Radical Experiments in Inland Southern California at UCR Arts: California Museum of Photography. Mosher is an adjunct professor in the art departments of UCLA, California State University, Long Beach, and Orange Coast College.

Visit: chelseamosher.com

John Okulick

I was born in New York City, New York in 1947 in a hospital in Queens, NY, living on Governors Island, to first generation Italian and Eastern European parents. My father being in the military meant I traveled around much of the country as a child, living for only a year or two in one place at a time, including Panama and Massachusetts. At the age of 10, we moved from the east coast to Southern California near Disneyland while my father was at war in Korea. Disney was a significant influence on me at the time and this is where I went to school and aJso worked. I graduated from UC Santa Barbara, BFA, and UC Irvine, MFA. This kept me out of the draft during the tumultuous Vietnam war years of the 70’s. I studied a lot of An History and enjoyed the visuaJ aspects of study. During my graduate work I had my first group show at the Jack Glenn Gallery in Corona Del Mar and a most imponant solo show in New York at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery. Nancy fostered my creativity and we have had a long lasting relationship. The success of these shows staned my career as a professionaJ Anist and to many other exhibits all over the country.

In the beginning I worked out of rented garages and then a studio in Costa Mesa, CA, which was a small storage unit that I convened to a live and work space while still in graduate school. At the time in school, visiting anists from New York, frank Stella, Roben Morris, and others peaked my interest in becoming a visual artist and moving to New York. carpentry and craftsmanship captivated me at the time. From there I moved to San Pedro, CA, the colorful port of Los Angeles, having found two old storefronts to live and work in for little rent. from there I moved to Santa Monica in the mid 70's with my wife Marlene, whom I met while teaching in Graduate school, and later buying a smalI bungalow in Ocean Park. My two children were born there and in the early 80's we moved to our present home in Santa Monica. We also purchased a building in Venice in 1982, which I continue to use as a studio.

Since then I have had more than 30 one man exhibitions over the last 30 years and more than 100 exhibitions in alI having shown work in many of the prominent US museums and galleries. Over the past 30 years I also have done numerous Public Art Installations and have also contributed work to numerous non profit and charitable organizations. At age 75 I can say I've seen and done a lot.

Georgia Powell

Georgia studied in Italy and the UK, earning a BA in Art History at the University of Warwick, continuing her studies with an MA in the same subject in London. Georgia has gained experience at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and with an exhibition designer to catalogue and display prominent private collections including The Myers Collection at Eton College and the Portland Collection at Welbeck Abbey. She then managed The Redfern Gallery on London’s prestigious Cork Street. As Assistant Curator of the renowned, private collection of decorative arts owned by The Goldsmiths’ Company in London, Georgia was responsible for managing, exhibiting and expanding a collection of more than 9,000 objects. Georgia is a featured lecturer at Christie’s Education and speaks regularly on the subject of the role of the Collector today.

LJ Rader

Marissa Reyes

MarissaReyes (b.1991) is an oil painter who holds a BA in Studio Art from The University of La Verne and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Marissa focuses on the female nude and how it has been depicted over the course of Western history, reimagining it from a woman's perspective. She elongates and distorts the body parts a man normally sexualizes. Using symbolism, bold colors, and powerful compositions combined with female-form manipulation, she creates a new type of female nude, one that reclaims power for women with in art.

Lauren Rizzo Shaffer

Lauren Rizzo Shaffer, known as @LaurenGoesHere on Instagram, is a needlepoint artist currently based in Florida. Lauren was first introduced to needlepoint while spending many holidays and summer vacations with her grandparents while growing up in Florida. From a very early age, she began to gather experience in cross stitch, embroidery, and needlepoint through encouragement from the women in her family. As Lauren matured, so did her needlepoint hobby repertoire which grew to include pattern design. Always working to further push her creativity, in 2021 Lauren attempted stitching some of her husband’s sports trading cards with surprising success. Combining the traditionally female driven art of needlepoint with the historically male driven activity of sports card collecting, Lauren is continuing work on hand-embroidered paperboard trading cards to create one-of-one pieces of collectible art.

Michelle Robinson

Michelle Robinson is an artist and animator living in Los Angeles. She studied architecture and visualization at Texas A&M University and holds an MFA in visual art from New England College. She has had her work published in Diffusion of Light, The Hand, Frames, and Precog. Exhibition highlights include solo shows at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder, CO, The Wright Gallery at Texas A&M University, and the Cecelia Coker Bell Gallery at Coker University in NC. She has been an artist and supervisor with Walt Disney Animation Studios for over 29 years.

Visit: michellerobinson.org

Cara Romero

Cara Romero is a contemporary fine art photographer. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, CA and the urban sprawl of Houston, TX. Romero’s identity informs her photography, a blend of fine art and editorial photography, shaped by years of study and a visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from a Native American female perspective. Maintaining a studio in Santa Fe, NM, Romero regularly participates in Native American art fairs and panel discussions and was featured in PBS’ Craft in America (2019). Her award-winning work is included in many public and private collections internationally. Married with three children, she travels between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where she maintains close ties to her tribal community and ancestral homelands.

Visit: www.cararomerophotography.com

Catherine Ruane

Catherine Ruane is an artist working with charcoal and graphite drawing historically significant trees. Her work has been collected and exhibited the world over including in Frosinone and Naples, Italy, Stokholm, Sweden, Kyoto, Japan, and state-side at the San Diego Fine Arts Museum, Riverside Art Museum, Oceanside Art Museum, San Bernadino Museum, San Luis Obispo Art Museum and Museum of Art and History. Her work has been reviewed in the Huffington Post, Artillery Magazine, LA Times, Art and Cake, and LA Diversions. She has been featured on KCET Outbound, the Emmy Award winning arts and culture series in Los Angeles.

Visit: catherineruane.com

Nike Schröder

Over the past 10 years Nike Schröder has developed her style of machine embroidery using rayon threads on canvas where the stitch is an extension of the paintbrush and the hanging threads form subtle gradation of colors combined with the lucidity of the surface. Her training and background include traditional Fine Arts applications and in addition to her stitched work she explores other mediums including painting, drawing, ceramic sculpture, cast bronze sculpture and installation based projects. Schröder’s interest in materiality is evident in her use of combined mediums such as the line made with a pen continuing into a stitched line of thread.

Liza Shapiro

Liza’s interest for caring for works of art began while studying art restoration in Florence, Italy. She earned a BA in Art Conservation from Camberwell College of Arts,London, and an MA in Museum Studies from University College London (UCL). Liza worked at several museums, galleries and conservation studios, including Tate Modern, the Victoria and Albert Museum and The Redfern Gallery. At the oldest hat shop in the world, Lock & Co. Hatters, Liza preserved and catalogued more than 400 ledgers and historical material in order to curate a new, permanent exhibition space. Liza returned home to California in 2015, and has established a strong LA presence, working with varied private collections and industry specialists. Liza is also a mentor for Upward & Associates, a platform that offers guidance and concrete tools to help artists meet their professional goals.

Laura Smith Sweeney

Laura Smith Sweeney, a native of Los Angeles, studied Art History at UCLA followed by a postgraduate degree at the Sorbonne in Paris. After completing her MBA and 20+ years of experience in Wealth Management at firms such as JP Morgan, Laura founded LSS Art Advisory with a dedication to transparency, integrity and education. Laura enjoys collaborating with clients to build contemporary collections that have lasting value, both emotionally and financially. Laura is a member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors (APAA), the only standard setting organization for the profession with an emphasis on ethical practice.

Devin Troy Strother

Devin Troy Strother was born in West Covina, CA in 1986 and lives in Los Angeles, CA. He received a Bachelor of Fine Art from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA in 2009 and completed a residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine in 2010. One person exhibitions of his work have been presented at Over the Influence, Hong Kong [2019], Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles, CA [2018], V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2018), Marlborough Contemporary, New York, NY (2017), Ruttkowski 68, Cologne, Germany [2017], Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA [2016, 2015, 2013], Marlborough Chelsea, New York, NY [2015], and Bendixen Contemporary, Copoenhagen, Denmark [2014, 2012]. His works are in the permanent collections of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and The California African American Museum in Los Angeles as well as in prominent private collections worldwide.

Philanthropic support of the California arts community is an integral part of Laura’s ethos. Laura served as Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors at the The San Francisco Art Institute and continues to be involved with SFMOMA, the De Young, the Wattis, Headlands Center for the Arts, Artadia, LACMA and the Hammer Museum.

Mallory Tolcher

Mallory Tolcher is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist. Her work explores traditionally feminine materials, imagery and practices within the arena of sport, drawing inspiration from fashion and basketball culture. In her most recent series entitled ‘Hoop Dreams’, she hand-crafted white basketball nets inspired by female garments such as the hoop skirt and the tutu, and photographed the playable sculptures on public basketball courts in Toronto. Basketball nets from this series were recently on display at The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford, BC and will be exhibited at the Textile Museum in Mississippi Mills this summer. Tolcher can be found in her studio working with fabrics, crystals, lace, and pearls, or in the woodshop designing sculptures on the lasercutter and CNC machines.

Ruth Wallen

Ruth Wallen is a multi-media artist and writer whose work is dedicated to ecological and social justice. Her photographs, installations, nature walks, web sites, artist books, performative lectures, and writing have been widely distributed and exhibited, from the Exploratorium in San Francisco to Franklin Furnace and CEPA in New York. She was a Fulbright scholar and is currently core faculty in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College. Recent support for her work walking with dying trees includes a Puffin Grant, Lenz fellowship at Naropa University, residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute and upcoming exhibition at DeBewearschole, Netherlands.

Visit: ruthwallen.net

Julie Weiman

Julie Weiman is an artist living in Palm Springs and Boston. While abstract, her work is grounded in the landscape, specifically the Mojave Desert of Southern California. She uses a range of mediums including inks and dyes, rust, graphite, soil, pencil, pastel, spray paint, acrylic and wax. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Massachusetts School of Art and Design, and Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado. She completed a residency at Vermont Studio Center in 2015. Julie has an MBA from Boston University. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Boston, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Joshua Tree, Indio, Bombay Beach, and online, with Asher Grey gallery on Artsy.

Visit: julieweiman.com

Tracy Williams

Tracy Williams lives in Southern California. She is a graduate of Fashion Institute of Technology and Syracuse University. Her award-winning work has been exhibited in the annual international exhibitions of the American Watercolor Society, Watercolor West, the National Watercolor Society. She most recently represented the United States in the NWS/China exchange exhibition in Shenzhen, China. Her paintings explore the qualities of timelessness and minimalism. These explorations are grounded in observations of the natural world, and subsequently allowed to push to the edge of abstraction and beyond. Tracy is represented by Flow Modern.

Visit: tracywilliamsart.com

Judy Wold

Judy Wold began her personal art exploration at the University of Mexico in Mexico City, at San Francisco State College and then at The San Francisco Art Institute studying ceramics and painting. When she traveled for a year in Europe and the Middle East, she discovered Morandi and wept in the presence of Fra Angelico’s frescos at the San Marco Monestery in Florence. Judy moved to New York City in 1964, an exciting time for an American painter. Amidst these many changes of place and influences, she developed a singular and constant love of oil paint, exclusively Old Holland oil paint! To this day, 60 years later, it remains her only medium, now almost exclusively applied on linen, sealed with rabbit skin glue. Her recent work expanded after viewing a retrospective in Los Angeles of the late Agnes Martin and learning about color field painting. This new direction moves toward the continual process of refining, simplifying, reducing; the use of pure color in combination with graphing and the laying down of gold leaf. Living in the high desert landscape of Joshua Tree, Judy is continually inspired by the colors that change through the day and seasons, every moment a new possibility. Judy is represented by JJ Harrington Gallery.

Visit: judywold.com

Andrea Zittel

Since the early 1990s, Andrea Zittel has used the arena of day-to-day life to create sculptures and living situations that challenge typical notions of “how to live”. An internationally acclaimed artist, her work has been the subject of many museum exhibitions and shown internationally at such events including the Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Documenta.