Get to know our artists (past and present)
Robin Bruce
Robin Bruce is a poet, singer-songwriter, and visual artist from Schertz, Texas. Her first writing forms were inspired by East Coast MC’s and expressed through local hip-hop crews in San Antonio, TX. Currently, her writing is influenced by the Eastern Wisdom Traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and Yoga studies; where she interrogates the intersection of eastern spirituality in America and racial construction through the lens of ultimate and relative truth. This is reflected in cross-genre texts weaving together poetry, non-fiction, fiction, essay, and images. Her art installations are visual-audio-sensory and invite the emergence of wisdom and intellect through movement and spatial arrangement.
Instagram: @robindbruce1
www.robindbruce.com
owen buffington
Owen is a multimedia artist whose work explores the intersections of geography, history and landscape. Owen earned an MFA, with an emphasis in drawing, from the University of Arkansas in 2017, and has taught at universities, community art non-profits, and public schools. He finished a two-year artist residency at the Lux Center for the Arts in Nebraska in 2019, and for the last two years, worked in Chicago as an art instructor at Misericordia – a facility that provides support for people with developmental disabilities. Owen currently lives in Fayetteville, AR.
Visit www.owenbuffington.com
Joy caffrey
Drawing teaches me to see and understand the physical world: earth and matter, light and shadow. The colors in organic materials bring me joy. I observe in nature subtle, complex, luminescent hues, awakening my senses. The process of making art informs me. The lines and marks on paper take on a life of their own, mirroring information that I would otherwise miss. I love the visceral connection to childhood, the natural flow of the hand giving way to expression. I appreciate the process of learning by doing. Observation, action, and reflection are great teachers. External observation connects me to the outer world, its rhythms, seasons, a sense of time and place. Introspection (internal observation) helps me to perceive and express abstract thoughts, feelings, and sensations which I apply intuitively and experimentally to the materials that call to me. I trust and flow with creative waves that tell me: I am alive. Life force energy moves through me. For me the making of art and the viewing of art invokes soulful connection. Joy Caffrey has had the diverse background as artist, arts educator, yoga teacher, healer, workshop facilitator,and public speaker. Joy holds a fine arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design and is a graduate of Living Lessons, an energy medicine training program. She has exhibited her work in collective and solo shows.
Visit her website at JoyfulHealingCenter.com on Instagram or Facebook
Angela Carpenter
Angela combines the use of digital technology with traditional architectural building methods, shaping her approach and strategies for material experimentation. With a background in design-build and additive manufacturing, she explores multi-scale investigations in material manipulation and construction advancements. Angela holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arkansas in 2006 and a Master of Architecture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2012. Currently, she is the Fabrication Lab Manager of the Build Lab at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.
Natalie conway
Natalie Conway (b. 1989) is a painter and public school teacher in Fayetteville, Arkansas, her original hometown. After receiving her degree in Psychology and Philosophy, she returned to the University of Arkansas to study Painting from 2013 to 2015. Additionally, she attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art (2015) and Mount Gretna School of Art in Pennsylvania (summers 2014 and 2015). For Conway, creating and teaching are inseparable components of a practice focused on healing, both inward and outward. In fact, she draws no clear boundaries between the wide-ranging aspects of her daily life, which include yoga, tutoring math, studying history, and therapy work.
My paintings are my attempt to give form to my internal experiences, ranging from the visceral to the logical to the realm of dreams. The topics I represent are the ones for which I have needed the most therapy, and include femininity, romantic relationships, mental illness, relationship with self, and moral reckonings with family history. Meanwhile, I reference image making from all over the globe and all of history as a way of anchoring my personal experiences in the universal. My process involves rotating among a variety of visual languages as I search for recognizable elements that embody my chalkboard mind, churning stomach, palpitating heart, and ever-curious spirit.
Camille delaune
Camille Delaune is fashion, brand, and wedding photographer based in Arkansas & available for travel.
Loves sunrises, analog film, her family, and a strong cup of coffee, all of which you can check out at @camilledelaune on Instagram. www.Camilledelaune.com
Shelby Lynne fleming
Shelby Fleming holds a BFA in Studio Art from Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Arkansas School of Art. Fleming’s artwork has been exhibited nationally and international at the CICA Museum, Gyenoggi-do, South Korea, the International Sculpture Conference, the Kansas City Art Institute, Art Center of the Ozarks, Arsagas at the Depot, The Apothecary Gallery, The Saint Louis Artists’ Guild, Art Saint Louis, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, and Buchanan Center for the Arts.
Visit Shelby Fleming Studio Art |Contemporary art | United States (shelbylynnefleming.com) - instagram @shelbylynnefleming
Gina Gallina - Crochet Artist Extraordinaire!
Her approach to creating art stems from a lifelong love of innovation and experimentation, employing traditional skills in her own unique style. Leaving home she continued to crochet and sew, with a keen eye for vintage lines and curves, in both fashion and furniture. Along the way, she amassed an Alice in Wonderland style tool kit full of faerie totems large and small. To make ends meet, Gallina crocheted hats and gloves with colorful motifs of daisy flowers, lucky cherries, and her signature fried egg and bacon wooly scarf! During the pandemic, she sewed and embroidered thousands of beautiful face coverings friends sent all across country, and crocheted colorful pot holders raising hundreds of dollars for local charities.
visit www.ginagallina.com
fred goss
Fred Goss (born March 25, 1961 in Orchard Lake, Michigan) is an American TV actor, director, writer, producer, artist, and comedian. Goss began writing and staging his own plays in his twenties. He wrote sketch comedy during his thirties, primarily at the Los Angeles-based, ACME Comedy Theater. More recently, Fred wrote many of the episodes of his ABC comedy Sons & Daughters. He's written pilot scripts for ABC, NBC, and FOX. In 2014, he developed a half-hour comedy for ABC called The FunHouse. In 2013, he developed a half-hour comedy for USA Network called, HR. He currently has a deal with Paramount Digital for a comedy series called FOCUS.
You can view his wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goss
You can view his artwork here: www.gossfilms.com
and you can view his IMDB here: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1533705/
Diana Michelle Hausam
Diana Michelle Hausam holds a BA in Photography and a BS in Biology. A photographer and documentary filmmaker, Diana’s work has been featured in galleries and film festivals regionally. She is currently working on a feature length documentary about the artist Tim West, as well as a book documenting the experience of off - grid Arkansas life and tintype photography.
You can view her work at www.dianamichellefineart.com
Dale Heath
I appreciate the tender and the terrifying and I seek to merge these elements in my work. The images come about in the process of making marks and the effort to divest myself of what I know. Both occur if and when I let go of my own idea and the limits of my vision, and follow the work where it needs to go. I like the fluidity of house paints and big brushes, especially when combined with the tentative and fragile nature of cardboard.
Dale Heath studied art at Pratt Institute in New York City in the 1960s and with William Christenberry at the Corcoran School of Arts & Design in Washington, DC in the 1990s. She lives in Fayetteville, AR with her daughter, her son-in-law, and her grandson.
Visit www.daleheath.art
samantha hussey
Samantha holds a BFA in visual art from the University of Arkansas. She is currently building a new body of work and profile, details forthcoming!
The idle class
A quarterly magazined devoted to the best undiscovered talent for poetry, prose, cinema, sound, etc. in Arkansas.
Dana Idlet
Dana Louise is a singer-songwriter, painter, hider seeker based out of Northwest Arkansas.
On a 2011 solo journey to the mid-Atlantic, Dana Louise found herself in the Açores. Dana grew up in a musical family in the wooded foothills of the Ozark Mountains, the daughter of Ezra Idlet of folk duo Trout Fishing in America. But it wasn’t until she was thousands of miles away, wandering trails along the volcanic archipelago with a borrowed guitar, that she taught herself to play and sing. Back home, Dana began to find her voice as a songwriter and performer and launched a career as a touring musician.
Dana has since built a following playing festivals and performing arts centers, living rooms and clubs. Over the past two years, Dana toured the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe as Dana Louise and the Glorious Birds to support that band’s self-titled album. Currently, Dana is recording a series of previously unreleased songs and developing her sound with the help of a rotating cast of musical friends and collaborators.
As she explores the elastic capacities of language, sense, and song, Dana Louise continues to offer audiences what has been most important to her from the beginning: genuine human connection.
Amber imrie
Amber Imrie was raised off-the-grid in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas. Largely homeschooled throughout her childhood, Imrie first attended public school consistently at the age of twelve. Imrie attended school for three years before testing out of high school and moving out on their own at age sixteen.
Imrie graduated with honors from UC Berkeley with a BA in Studio Art and Excellence in Sculpture award. Imrie received her MFA from Stanford University and was awarded the Anita Squires Fowler Award in Photography. Imrie founded Venison Magazine, an online contemporary art magazine, and Camp Venison, an art micro-residency.
Imrie has been an artist in residence and exhibited work nationally and internationally. Imrie was awarded the Murphy Cadogan award in 2017 to foster further exploration of her artistic potential in hybrid practice. They were a finalist for both the Summer SOMA residency and the Headlands Graduate Fellowship Award in 2018. Amber currently resides in the Åland Islands, Finland and is a founding member of The Alternative Art School.
Website : www.amberimrie.com
Rachel Jermain
ARTIST STATEMENT
Hi, I'm RJ!
Rachel Jermain is a mixed-media artist who works primarily in the realm of 2-D, physical art. A mastery of various mediums is a therapeutic balm, lending her a sense of peace and control in a world that feels so often frighteningly chaotic. She enjoys bending her talents to the creation of fantastic and often silly art, which serves as an allegory that life is what you make of it, and a reminder that there is refuge to be found in beauty and imagination.!
Visit RJ’s website at www.lunarspelunker.com
Jason jones
Jason Jones has been a working muralist for over 20 years. His whimsical art can be seen in many public and private spaces throughout the Ozark region.
In addition to his murals, Jones has gained recognition by painting on top of discarded art. One day in the studio he decided to paint a robot on an old damaged print that he had picked up at a thrift store. His original intention was only use the frame, but that day he decided to salvage the print, too. Ever since that first painting, Jones has been creating Altered Thrift Store Art. Whether a vintage print or an oil original painting, Jones alters each one by hand-painting on the piece, matching the color palette and the style, while adding his own twist to the discarded artwork.
Currently, Jones lives and maintains a studio in Fayetteville, Arkansas where he does sketches for commissioned murals and creates his altered thrift store art. Visit www.artistjasonjones.com
Maryevelyn Jones
I received my first art award at age seven. In adulthood; I proposed, planned, and painted over seventy murals in exam rooms and halls of the ACH/UAMS Center for Children in Lowell. I have experience making and selling paintings, drawings, pet portraits, other art, and organizing art events. I created short animation videos for Community Access Television in Fayetteville, painted on the set for Chrystal that starred Billy Bob Thornton and Lisa Blount in Eureka Springs, and worked on other film-making projects.
I currently work with recycling, reusing, refurbishing, and repurposing electronic waste. There’s a tremendous resource of art supplies from computer components and other electronic items. E-waste can be a resource instead of just more landfill material.
I’m inspired to try new media like assemblage art and metalworking. I’ve made jewelry from circuit boards in resin. I encourage other artists to use electronic components to make art. I’ve been creating digital designs on refurbished computers that I can send to a Silhouette cutting machine and generate a physical representation of some digital work. I’m exploring art methods with polymer clay to add to my assemblage, metal and wire, and mixed media forms.
Rescuing an unwanted professional photo printer is allowing me to make new prints out of my old art. I create art pieces using traditional handmade techniques as well as contemporary digital forms of making art. Mt Sequoyah Creative Spaces is where I can refurbish and repurpose my creative self.
Acadia Kandora
Acadia Kandora is a printmaker, rock collector and nature enthusiast. She holds a MFA in Printmaking from the University of Arkansas and a BFA with concentrations in Graphic Design and Sculpture from Shepherd University. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally in cities such as Baltimore, Indianapolis, Bentonville, and Korpo, Finland. Her work revolves around her relationship to nature, the natural, landscape, and the intersection between the imaginary and the concrete.
Instagram: @acadiakprints
Email: acadia.kandora@gmail.com
Sam king
Sam King works at the intersection of painting’s material thresholds and the viewer’s instinct for interpretation to produce visually and sometimes physically disrupted continuities. King has collaborated with other artists and musicians on a number of occasions, most recently with Brooklyn-based experimental rock quartet JOBS, for the exhibition/release 'Similar Canvas / Different Properties'. In recent years he has exhibited at The Painting Center, NYC; Unrequited Leisure, Nashville; The Provincial, Kaleva, MI; DRAWL Southern Contemporary Art, Little Rock; Laconia Gallery, Boston, among others. In 2019, he curated 'Shelters, Monuments', featuring the work of artists Whiting Tennis and Sarah Norsworthy, for The Provincial. He was a 2007 recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council’s Individual Artist Fellowship. With Christopher Lowrance, he co-founded MW Capacity, a website devoted primarily to painting in the Midwest. With Stephanie Pierce, he co-founded Lalaland, a DIY community projects space in Fayetteville, AR, active 2011-2019. His work is held in a number of public and private collections. King attended the University of Tulsa (BFA, 2003) and Indiana University (MFA, 2005). King resides in Fayetteville, AR, where he is an Assistant Professor for the University of Arkansas School of Art.
Visit www. sam-king.com
helen Kwiatkowski
I attended graduate school at A&M University in Commerce, Texas and received my MFA in 1983. After graduate school I lived in California where I did freelance work in San Diego, and taught art at Mira Costa College in San Marcos. In 1991 I began teaching art at Mary Hardin-Baylor University in Belton, Texas where I taught Design, Drawing, Painting, Mixed Media, Digital Photography and Book Arts.
In 2019 I retired from full time teaching and moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas where I make art, teach workshops and play the ukulele. In 2021 I joined the Creative Arts Community at Mount Sequoyah where I currently maintain a studio.
I have always been a narrative painter, interested in exploring small moments in time that help define our connection- or disconnection to ourselves and to each other. Most of my work involves intuitive juxtaposition of images in both real and imagined spaces. Rather than begin with the narrative intact, I generally start with a singular image and allow the content to unfold as I work. This process often results in unexpected relationships and multiple layers of meaning in the finished painting.
Visit www.helenkwiatkowski.com
Kellie LEhr
Kellie Lehr is an artist living in Fayetteville, AR. Lehr holds a BS in International Economics and spent 2013–2018 studying in the Drawing and Painting program at the University of Arkansas. In 2019, she was selected for Art File by The Painting Center in New York and for the National Museum of Women in the Arts juried registry by it's Arkansas committee. Exhibitions include 21C Museum Hotel in Bentonville, AR and the 59th Annual Delta Exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, Tapped at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnatti and in 2020 New Optics at The Painting Center in NYC. Her work is in private collections throughout Arkansas, California, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, New Jersey and New York. Lehr will begin her MFA in Visual Art at Lesley Art and Design (Boston, MA) in June, 2020.
Lehr is the Gallery Director for 211 South (formerly The Gallery at Midtown), a contemporary art gallery located within Engel & Volkers NWA at 211 South Main St. in Bentonville, AR.
Visit www.kellielehr.com
Taylor Loftin
Taylor Loftin is an artist from Jackson, Mississippi. He received his BFA from Memphis College of Art in 2015 and his MFA from the University of Arkansas in 2021. Primarily a painter, Loftin approaches art making as an opportunity to re-examine his relationships to love, labor, familial and cultural histories, masculinity, religion, and art. He is a 2019 alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Drawing and has been a resident at the Wassaic Project in New York and at Stove Works in Chattanooga. His work is currently on view at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson.
Visit Taylor’s website here https://www.taylorloftin.com/
Sarah loucks
ARTIST STATEMENT
As a playwright, I am invested in a nuanced examination of economic inequality in America, the systems that enforce it, and the consequences of such for the American people. I craft working class stories into theater that is visceral and intelligent, employing both a delicacy of psychology and boldness of theatricality. My work often uses dark humor and vernacular to create realistic portraits of American people as they struggle and celebrate, fight and make peace, and search for themselves against the backdrop of a complicated and often frightening country.
ARTIST BIO
Sarah Loucks is a playwright and theatre maker. She produces her plays under the name MouthRadio in Austin, TX and is currently an MFA candidate in playwriting at The University of Arkansas. Most recently, Sarah produced a performance festival dedicated to Dolly Parton called DOLLY FEST 2019 in Austin, TX. Her work has been presented or developed in Austin, TX and New York City at Hyde Park Theater, The VORTEX, Jimmie’s .43, The Museum of Human Achievement, MastroGeorge Theatre, and ATM Gallery. She is a winner of the Three New American Plays Award from Forward Flux Productions.
Big bot design (chad maupin)
All the design work I create starts in my sketchbook with a pencil and paper and an eye towards creating a unique piece of Graphic Art that serves your brand.
I’ve managed Art Departments and the process of taking a design from initial concept to a finished product for decades. I have extensive experience with print and the technical side of design that allows me to not only create memorable pieces of Graphic Art but ensure that you have a creative tool that serves your brand properly.
From paper sketches to your final finished product Big-Bot Design is uniquely equipped to tell your brand’s story. I started Big-Bot Design 10 years ago as a design studio that specializes in seamlessly integrating skilled Illustration with versatile Graphic Design. For over 27 years I’ve created apparel, flat stock and unique graphics for hundreds of clients helping them tell their brand’s story. I value my work and the special relationship with my clients that allows me to serve their needs.
For behind the scenes videos, interviews and more go to my YouTube channel HERE!
Grace McCraw
BIO - Grace McCraw is an inter-dispensary artist with an emphasis on ceramics. She is fascinated with the idea of joy and the labor that is necessary for every moment of pleasure throughout the day. She has shown work locally and nationally from Fayetteville, AR to Dallas, tx to new york city, NY. When she is not working in the studio she is working at Presley paige to help create event installations, new products, and digital designs.
John McGowan
(b. 1989) is a visual artist specializing in charcoal drawing and oil painting.
Born in Fayetteville, AR and growing up in Springdale, he was tutored as a young artist by Kathy Thompson of Fayetteville. As a teenager John attended Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, MI for two summers to continue developing his abilities. He attended the University of Tulsa where he studied under artist Binod Shrestha and where he received a degree in political science and a minor in fine arts with a focus in painting. John also holds a Masters in Teaching from the University of Central Arkansas.
John’s current artistic focus is on interior spaces, human-environment interactions and human movement. His family background as Irish-American deeply informs his connection to the world and nature. He hopes that his artwork can evoke curiosity and contemplation for all.
He can be contacted at john.thomas.mcgowan@gmail.com
Shelley Mouber
Shelley, a self taught artist who holds a B.A. in sociology has been making art objects since early childhood. Her use of non-traditional materials, vibrant color and allegory to construct content continues to influence her art process.
Shelley’s use of repurposed materials informs her mosaic-like figurative collages to explore and celebrate the interconnectedness of humanity.
Her artwork has been included in group and solo exhibitions and private collections throughout the world.
Donna Mulhollan - Craftivist and Musician
I am one half of the folk duo Still on the Hill. I make my living as a musician but my side-passion is currently needle felting.
I choose to call myself a ‘craftivist’ as most of the collages and images I create are auctioned off for various causes.
I began needle felting during the onset of Covid and created a felted bird every day. I auctioned them off and gave whatever amount they brought in to 7 Hills Homeless Shelter. I went on to create thirty endangered birds to raise scholarships for students to attend the Halberg Audubon Ecology Camp. I felted all fifteen Crane species and sent them flying around the globe to support of the International Crane Foundation.
For years a small sliver on our kitchen table served as a space for creating art but 2 years ago I got a bona fide studio up on Mt. Sequoyah and I am up there at the crack o dawn most every day playing my banjo and viola before anyone else is awake and poke poke poking with my felting needle to create whatever speaks to me on that day.
learn more at www.stillonthehill.com
L.a. noRman
BIO
L.A. Norman works in mediums across the disciplines: poetry, short fiction and visual art (watercolor, pastel on wood, ink brush painting and currently creative fine art photography). She has a long history of being active in the arts and humanities as past project director for the Arkansas Humanities Council for seven years; organizer of a women’s coffee house series featuring writers and performing artists in Little Rock, Arkansas; and a writer-presenter at the first Writers Conference and Workshop in Honor of Rachel Carson, Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Norman holds a master’s and doctoral degree in literature. She credits her interest in creative photography to the late Joseph Phillips who taught in the Art Department at University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Photography for me is a happenstance experience possible with my back alley visual adventures, capturing what might be described as “I Found Art.” Abandoned and crumbling building structures and deteriorating walls of commercial buildings with peeling paint, rusting iron, exposed skeletal structures, hanging wires are for me stunning abstract collages. Photographing such surfaces in an artistic way poses challenges that translate into engaged viewings of my pieces. Finally, large format giclee printing on high-quality watercolor paper reveals textures and depths not possible with a typical glossy photographic print. The photographs are meant not just to draw the viewer to the work but to draw the viewer into the work for more than a passing viewing.
Ava Obert
Ava Obert was raised in Mountain Home, Arkansas but coming this Fall she will be living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Obert started professionally painting at age nine. Since then she’s grown to love all painting mediums and enjoys Plein Air painting. This year she’ll be attending the University of Arkansas, pursuing a Studio Fine Arts Degree. Her earliest art mentors were Duane Hada, John Lasater, and Jason Sacran. Obert has been lucky enough to study in Civita Casetellena, Italy with Israel Hershburg at the JSS School of Art, in 2017. Obert attends Plein Air events every summer and spends most of her days in the studio or painting outdoors.
opEn mouth
The Open Mouth Reading Series was founded in 2015 to foster contact between professional poets and our local Northwest Arkansas community poets outside an academic setting. Our founders saw that many institutional barriers limited access to the literary poetry community and believed that poetry should be available to anyone.
Each month, Open Mouth hosts a reading featuring a nationally-touring poet. This poet is joined by ten opening readers who read a poem each, giving local poets the chance to read work alongside the more established feature and promote a sense of community. The featured poet also leads a generative workshop on a subject of their choosing which is open to the public. The workshop is donation-based rather than fixed cost to ensure that income level is not a barrier to access.
In its 5 years of programming, Open Mouth has hosted approximately 76 readings and featured more than 120 poets, fiction writers, and translators, both touring nationally and based in Northwest Arkansas, who represent a range of ages, experience levels, and racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual identities. Since 2017, we’ve added special event workshops, annual retreats and festivals, residencies for local poets, and conferences to our programming.
Open Mouth strives to ensure that events are accessible to a wide array of audiences by providing ASL interpreters and CART captioners for events, gathering materials in advance to allow ASL and CART providers to prepare, providing materials for visual aid access, offering image descriptions, and keeping online options for programming in the future
Visit www.openmouthliterary.org
Erin Pinkham
Erin Pinkham is a queer poet from North Texas. Their work focuses on girlhood, and queer issues inspired by life in the south on her family's tomato farm. Her work has been awarded the Walton Family Fellowship in Poetry and the Lily Peter Fellowship in Poetry and has appeared in BOOTH and New South. They are currently a poetry MFA candidate at The University of Arkansas. In addition to the topic of poetry, she will often be heard gushing about anime, spellcasting, her dog Willie, pink velvet fabric, and the Korean boyband, BTS.
Elizabeth Quinn
Elizabeth Quinn (she/her) lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She studied photography at Sewanee, the University of the South, and has shown work at Kentuck Art Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and at the University Gallery in Sewanee, Tennessee.
Quinn’s photographs bring meaning to the energetic phenomena of the human form in states of exploration, interrogating the relationship between simple moments of personal interaction and the frameworks—natural and institutional, earthly and ethereal—that define a discourse between venue and occupant. Her experimental, even whimsical, approach to visual conventions—welcoming often distorted scales and perspectives—highlights the uncertainty at play in human experience and the permeable and translucent layers of background and foreground that give personality to shared spaces and physical engagement. Her audience finds multiple points of view in the photography and walks away with a refreshed, if not disrupted, conception of our capacity to glimpse things otherwise unseen.
Quinn studied creative writing at the University of Arkansas and Virginia Commonwealth University, where she earned an MFA in fiction writing. She writes short stories about people, most of which focus on the unusual internal lives of seemingly ordinary people and on the complexity of even the simplest human interaction.
She currently works out of a studio at Mt. Sequoyah’s Creative Spaces. Visit her website here.
Ziba rajabi
Ziba Rajabi (b.1988, Tehran, Iran) received her MFA from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and her BFA from the Sooreh University, Tehran. She is the recipient of the student artist grant for the Artist 360 Grant, a program sponsored by Mid-America Arts Alliance. Her work has been included in a number of exhibitions, nationally and internationally, such as Masur Museum, LA; CICA Museum, South Korea; Aran Gallery, Iran; Art Fileds, SC; Pensacola Museum, Florida; Site:Brooklyn, NY; Amos Eno Gallery, NY; Millersville University, Indiana University, and Mim Gallery, Los Angeles.
As an Iranian female artist based in Arkansas, my work revolves around the desire to reconcile my relationship with two distinctive spaces: Tehran (my native land) and Arkansas (where I reside now). In my paintings and installations, I re-create intimate moments culled from my home and neighborhood in Iran. Due to a situation where I am far away from my homeland, I can feel my memories of home fading away. By utilizing memories from my past, I take aspects of images that are no longer recognizable and, therefore, are abstracted into shapes that allude to elements found in my homeland.
Suzannah Schreckhise Art
Suzannah Schreckhise is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She earned a Bachelor of Art at the University of the Ozarks. She is a 2018 Art Inc Fellow. She has participated in and won awards at numerous state and national exhibitions, including shows at the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, Topanga Gallery in Los Angeles as well as exhibited at the Ceres Gallery in New York City. She received 1st place at the NEA Big Read Recycled Art Exhibition at the Windgate Gallery at UofA Fort Smith. As well as the Best Sculpture Award for her piece “Falling to Pieces” in the 2018 Artists of Northwest Arkansas Exhibition. She has participated in group exhibits including “Our Front Porch '' sponsored in part by the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Her art has been featured in several publications, including the international juried magazine Studio Visit. In 2021, her work will tour the state as part of Arkansas state Women to Watch exhibition Paper Routes, curated by Allison Glen for the Arkansas National Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts; she was juried onto the committee's artist registry in 2019. She most won 1st Place at the RAM 2019 Annual Invitational that was awarded this 2020 solo show and a cash award. Suzannah was awarded the Artist 360 grant in 2020.
Kathy P Thompson
Kathy Thompson was born in El Dorado, AR and graduated from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA after attending college in Fayetteville and Little Rock, AR. In 1976 she and her son returned to Fayetteville and from that year to present she has worked as a visual artist.
Visit Kathy’s website at kathypthompson.com
jody travis thompson
Jody Travis Thompson was born in 1972 in Sulphur, Louisiana. He began his formal artistic education in 1982 in his hometown, through private classes with Jane Ludwig-Johnson. This education would instruct Thompson on the mechanics of manipulating the medium of oil paint in Renaissance tradition. “I was being trained to see the world as paint” Thompson states. The system this forced him to concentrate on a painting being first and foremost about the process of paint, instead of being about the subject matter. Thompson adds, “…by training my brain to see the world in paint rather than seeing a photograph, therefore the life of the painting is free in the action of making it instead of being confined by the thought of what it should or shouldn’t be”.
Jody completed his Masters of Fine Arts from the university of Arkansas in 2019.
Tommy tropical
Murals, Painting, Advertisement indoor and outdoor; large and small!
Mary trulock
I interpret my world through movement. I’ve been a ballet dancer for over 45 years dancing, teaching and choreographing. I’m now choreographing storybook Ballets for Rhythm and Shoes. Using music, costumes and choreography I create my own version of the stories.
I taught art and G.T. In the public schools for 26 years. I love children’s art, it’s natural approach to color and form. After two trips to China in 2006 and 2008 I was deeply influenced by the Chinese paintings produced with bamboo brushes and ink as well as their many styles of calligraphy. I approach my watercolors contemplating each stroke, it’s movement, and the way I hold my brush. Each painting hoping to infuse light and shadows. I paint on the floor so I can move around, hold my paper at all angles, let color fall off the paper, do a pirouette…
At this point my studio is filled with paintings of my ballets, animal portraits, and costumes in the works.
Rosalind Waiwaiole
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a visual artist and I work in oils, charcoal and mixed media. I am drawn to the natural environment and architectural structures.
jana whatley
ARTIST STATEMENT
Jana Whatley is a multi-disciplinary artist and art facilitator. Her primary foci are liberatory art education, performance art, sculpture, and lo-fi media-based art.
“We can live many lives through art. My practice is deeply rooted in this. I make little allegories that dig around in wispy, elusive territories. I examine the artist's role in the dynamic facilitation of shared reality. I am chasing the fuzzy little threads that tie the experience of the individual to the experience of the collective whole.” -Jana Whatley
Visit Jana’s website at www.janawhatley.com
Brenda Yelvington
Brenda is a multi-talented inspirational wanderer. She has a Ph.D. in Accounting. She is a singer/songwriter with 3 albums. She co-owned a recording studio for several years. She was the music director for a national award-winning youth theater and she just finished a 3-year-long project filming a feature length documentary film. She is also a photographer, director, film maker, blogger, and life coach. In short, she is busy, but always makes time to really be present. If you would like to learn more about her, you can visit her at Gently Do What Is Right For You to see the many projects she has ongoing (psst you can download her free coloring book there too!) or follow her posts in instagram @gentlydowhatisrightforyou and @brendayelvington