Full-Feel

Alice Combs @alice.com.bs

After a 90s childhood spent in Rochester, NY and after completing a biology degree in 2008, Alice Combs moved to San Francisco for an MFA. With a little bit of research and a little bit of humor, she works in diverse--mostly scavenged-- media from sculpture to drawing to ephemerally polished rusty metal, highlighting the breakdown of everyday objects and ideas. She lives, works, and gardens in San Francisco in an intentional community with others who believe art is worth doing.

Statement: My current mode of working is in textiles--using reclaimed industrial felts to make folk-inspired patterned quilts, and using fabric scraps and old clothes to make patches, making wearable pieces of quilted clothing, and even using stringed instruments as looms. "Hair Guitar" meticulously destroys a guitar's ability to make sound by weaving in thousands of strands of my own hair in between its six strings. I've tried at various points in life to learn musical instruments. Music can move people emotionally more reliably than visual art. I'm jealous of that. Inevitably the practice of music fails to hold my attention. But tedious weaving practices? That I can do.

Alison Alstrom @heyheydouble_a

Alison Alstrom was born in San Francisco in 1969, and lives and work in San Francisco's Mission District. She began painting in oil as a little kid alongside her aunt. After leaving home and high school at the age of 16, she took classes in drawing and painting at city San Francisco City College and elsewhere through the 80s and 90s. In 1999, she received the Merit Fellowship award in Painting to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. After a period of gestation, she began showing work in 2023

Statement: I work primarily in oil, in contained palette of earth tones in a naturalistic style. My paintings explore the dual acts of seeing and being seen through close examination of my subjects. Objects of nature, especially birds and parts of birds in various states are a recurring mechanism, serving as stand-in protagonists in an ongoing study of being human and alive, even as they function more traditionally as things of beauty to be contemplated. I also work in portraiture, using the same process of close looking to try to achieve a felt sense of my subject. I mostly paint on traditional canvas or panel, but also have a fondness for found wood as a surface, as it reflects my interest in the idea of beauty inherent in the real.

amy lange

My name is Amy Lange and I am an artist, curator, and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I work in textiles and soft sculptures, exploring psychology as it relates to the inner child. I received a BFA in Fibers from the University of Oregon in 2009, and an MFA in Studio Art from California College of the Arts in 2017. I am a founding member of both Borderline Art Collective and SF Artist Gift Shop, and have worked in arts education in classrooms and museums since 2011.

Statement: My work utilizes the consciousness of childhood to explore ideas of freedom, pathology, and transformation. Using blanket forts and other soft sculpture, my work centers children--they are my primary audience, no matter where the work is shown. Through prioritizing the experience of children in arts spaces, I am able to delve deeply into my own consciousness and explore the full range of my human experience, especially as it relates to fear and anxiety.

Anna Lippert @annartistsjourney

Anna Lippert is an oil painter and clay sculptor based in San Francisco, CA. Before moving to the bay to pursue art she was dedicated to ballet, training in the art form for over 18 years while in her hometown of Fresno. The discipline and bodily awareness ballet enforced has since had a huge influence over the focus of her work which explores the relationship between our physical and psychological body. Her larger scale figurative works on canvas use pose and color to communicate experiences of anxiety, self doubt and mental struggle in combination with observations of subtle body posture and movement. In practice she’s studied emotional anatomy, which theorises where emotion is held within the body, and color theory in order to emulate the complexities of these emotional states. Anna morphs the figure into a representation of this inner turmoil, often set in open, ambiguous spaces that give the figure and the viewer the experience of being fully succumbed to these moments. While painting is her main focus, she has also translated her painted figures into sculpture using clay as well. Her figural motif is translated into the 3D space where they become part of their surrounding environment, despite being isolated. In focusing on the darker, heavier experiences Anna reveals how they are times of transition that are necessary in order for self discovery and growth to occur.

Statement: In my work, the human form becomes a vessel where emotion embeds itself into the body’s memory. The painting emotes the figure reflecting the inner turbulence beneath. My eighteen years of ballet training deeply inform how I approach painting and sculpture, shaping my understanding of physical form and the body as a site where the complexity of the human psyche becomes visible. Through this lens, my artwork explores how subtle, and sometimes deeply rooted, emotions manifest outwardly. In doing so I highlight the possibility of transition and self growth these moments allow for, reflecting on the good that can come from our darkest moments.

Elena Low @elenalowart

Elena Low is a San Francisco–based visual artist working primarily in oil painting. She received a BFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Painting from New York University. Her work has been exhibited in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Statement: My work explores the tension between instinct and our cultivated identities, using layered interior and exterior spaces as psychological metaphors. Working primarily in oil, I create paintings that blur the boundaries between the domestic and the wild, containment and vitality. I am interested in how this ongoing interplay shapes our inner lives and emotional experiences. Informed by dreams and the subconscious, my paintings begin with an idea but are guided by intuition, mood, free association, and the process of painting itself.

Elizabeth Estrada @elizabethroseestrada

Elizabeth Estrada is a multidisciplinary artist working between painting, poetry, sculpture, and performance, often intertwining these mediums to explore themes of spirituality and body politics, alongside the internal and external processes of decay and regrowth. She is interested in how socialization shapes our somatic, emotional, and psychological experiences. Recently, her work has focused on assemblage and collage/decollage, incorporating natural and found materials. Her work has been exhibited at SOMArts, Art Share LA, CCA Playspace Gallery, and has performed poetry at Beyond Baroque, Tamarack, 120710 Gallery, Abrams Claghorn Gallery, among others. Currently residing in the Bay Area, she recently completed a bachelor’s degree in Art Practice and Creative Writing at UC Berkeley and was an artist in residence with Recology SF.

Ember de Boer @emberdeboer

An award-winning multidisciplinary artist, de Boer is in the collections of Robert T. Matsui Gallery and Johnson County Community College. A 2025 Creative Growth Fellow, a year long program by City of Sacramento, a 2023 California Creative Corps Fellow an Artist in Residence in Government program by the California Arts Council for one year, and an Artist in Residence two consecutive years in a row, for a month long collaborative performance and choreography project with Capitol Dance project. Most recently, part of her curatorial debut, “/Altered/ State” 2025, was a multidisciplinary group show of 10 regional and international artists, this exhibition was featured by Solving Sacramento,and SNR. With a diverse background as an entrepreneur and business owner, a non-profit founder of Community Shop Class, an arts administrator for organizations like City of Sacramento and Friends of Sacramento Arts, and many years in fabrication and skilled trades, de Boer has expanded the boundaries of artists' role and challenged the function of living artists through her cross-sector work and collaborations.

Statement: As a multidisciplinary artist, I explore identity, materiality, and collective consciousness through sculptural abstraction and multimedia installation. My practice begins with research—delving into environmental histories, cultural motifs, and philosophical questions. These investigations become the foundation for tactile, deconstructed forms that challenge conventional notions of self and our relationship with the natural world. Rooted in my Dutch heritage—where “de Boer” translates to “of the land”—my work embodies my midwestern up-bringing and my commitment to environmental sustainability. I engage in a dynamic process of layering, dismantling, and reconstructing; each piece invites introspection. Every creation, from intricate sculptures to interactive installations, reflects a deep commitment to material play, philosophical inquiry, and the transformative power of art to inform and shape the human experience. My work is grounded in both individual reflection and communal memory; through material exploration I examine the paradigms of cultural tradition, the fluidity of gender, and the intersection of self and society.

Hope Fisher

Jaebin Lee @77h77777

Jaebin Lee (b.1997) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, video, installation, and performance. Drawing on her upbringing in a devout Korean Catholic household, she explores how religious imagery and narratives can be reimagined through feminist and technological lenses to open up multiple readings and bodily possibilities beyond established frameworks. She creates speculative reinterpretations that blur sacred/secular, gendered, and spatial binaries. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts with a minor in Religious Studies from Seoul National University and is an MFA candidate in Art Practice at UC Berkeley.

Jan Blythe @dumbrecksix

Born in Scotland, Jan was raised in Glasgow, a city with a strong arts and culture heritage. A painter early on she decided to train as a textile designer and received her BA in England before moving to California. After building a successful business as a surface designer Jan decided to return to her first love, fine art. She earned her MFA from the prestigious San Francisco Art Institute. Her work in solo and group shows has been exhibited in Scotland, England, Cyprus, Chicago, Missouri, New York, New Jersey and throughout California.

Statement: My practice explores memory, belonging, and the ways personal and collective histories become embedded within everyday materials. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, I transform found domestic objects, textiles, natural materials, and wax into works that examine identity through inheritance, migration, ritual, and loss. I am drawn to materials that carry traces of previous lives. Through processes of collecting, stacking, stitching, casting, and repair, familiar objects are transformed into sculptural forms that speak to both absence and presence. Recurring motifs of the house, the vessel, and the fragment become metaphors for home, the body, and the fragile nature of memory. Rather than offering fixed narratives, my work invites reflection on how we carry the past with us, asking how ordinary materials can become repositories for memory, resilience, and belonging.

Jeff Hurlow @hurlowjeff

Jeff Hurlow is an artist, designer, tinkerer, husband, father, son, friend, enemy, fair-to-middling guitar player, walker of dogs, petter of cats, traveler, homebody, minimalist, hoarder, and many other contradictory traits.

Statement: During my time at UCSB as an art major, I was heavily influenced by my professors. Specifically, Ann Hamilton’s large-scale installation and performance pieces shifted what I even considered to be art. I was also fortunate to be at school with my good friend, Art Domantay. His work exceeded what I thought someone could do while in school. But at the same time, after graduating, I had no idea how I would be able to make a living from doing work of this scale. By accident and out of necessity, I discovered graphic design, and this ended up being where I spent the bulk of the last 30 years of my career. Over the years, I would occasionally dabble in some work. There was a time when I got really into drawing and had a few shows when the kids were little. I was fortunate that they were shown in LA, NY, and Chicago, but they still seemed like something you would do as a hobby. About two years ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to oil paint and found the art school, Mission Renaissance. The one I went to was in a strip mall in Arcadia, and my fellow students were generally high school kids and the occasional adult. There would’ve been a time when I thought that was ridiculous, but their program is similar to an atelier, where you have to start from the ground up. See first. Draw. Paint. I think that discipline brought me back to the right frame of mind to create work. Two events led to this new series of work. In March of 2026, my dad passed away. A few weeks later, I bought an old drive-in speaker. I’m not sure why, but I was drawn to this object, and I began tinkering with it as a way to peek into the past. Not knowing anything about electronics, I relied heavily on Claude to help me understand what I was doing and how to manipulate it. A lot of alone time in the studio created time to reflect on my dad and his memory. Eventually, these two things merged, and a series began. This body of work inadvertently became a way to process my dad's death. Not in the way people expect it to look. More like the way your mind keeps returning to things. The conversations that happened... The ones that didn't... The ones you didn't even know you needed to have until it was too late. There's a preciousness to the mundane that you never feel in the moment. A Sunday phone call. A shared meal. A movie at the drive-in. You don't know you're making a memory while you're in it. His death has also made me think about my own... and about the people I love who are still here. What I'm saying to them. What I'm not saying. Whether I'll regret it. These pieces are my attempt to sit with those questions.

Jen Lothrigel @JenniferLothrigel

Jen Lothrigel is a multidisciplinary artist based in Lafayette, CA whose practice spans photography, painting, and poetry. Her work is deeply informed by the natural world, embodied experience, and ancestral narratives. Through her art, she creates pathways for reflection, connection, and expanded ways of seeing, offering an invitation to engage with the intuitive and often unseen dimensions of human experience.

Statement: My photographic work emerges from the landscape of my psyche. Through my connection with the natural world, I enact and express the currents, memories, and emotions that feel most alive. I experience nature as a living collaborator in my work—a mirror through which the inner world becomes visible. I am drawn to the threshold where body, spirit, and earth meet. My photographs often explore themes of embodiment, transformation, memory, ritual, and the unseen dimensions of my experience.

Jordan Metz @jor__art

Jordan Metz is an interdisciplinary artist and designer using creative coding, performance, and sculpture to explore digital identity. They create interactive computer vision systems as a way to generate embodied relationships with technology. Their practice involves 3D scanning, ceramics, and audiovisual programming as a means of forging connections between the real and virtual worlds. Jordan’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at CultureHub, Gray Area, Stove Works, Boston Cyberarts, The Intersection of Art and Technology, and Sister’s Room in Tbilisi, Georgia. They were an inaugural resident of Mozilla Foundation’s Creative Futures Counterstructures Residency. Their interactive thesis installation at the Rhode Island School of Design Digital+Media MFA program, The Me I’ve Made For You, was shortlisted in the Artsthread x Gucci Global Design Graduate Show. They are currently a member at The Compound Gallery in Emeryville, CA and a member of the Gray Area Cultural Incubator cohort.

Joseph Vaughn @horsescissors

Joseph Vaughn is a multimedia artist from Bozeman, MT who currently lives in Berkeley, CA. He works in painting, sculpture, drawing, video, and ceramics. His practice is informed by his childhood experiences in a new age doomsday cult, where he was exposed to diagrammatic representations of religious dogma such as the human-divine connection and future visions. His abstract work, spanning watercolor, egg tempera, charcoal, colored pencil, and sculpture, are a reaction to these diagrams. They engender a performative practice of meditation, and sometimes penitence in their meticulous production, to help him process intense and irresolvable feelings and memories. The resulting artworks are a similarly meditative visual, which loosely mirror the human body’s unseen interiority and its materiality, where feelings collect, overlap, glow, flow, and fester before they are externalized.

Karin Denson @karinkorneliadenson

"Karin Denson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Northern California whose work explores the intersection of nature and technology through glitch-based paintings, photomontages, and collages. Born in Silesia, Poland, and raised in Germany, she moved to the U.S. in 2014 and draws on her intercultural background and deep-rooted fascination with wildlife to create pieces that reflect ecological fragility and the aesthetic beauty in technological disruptions. Educated as a Montessori, art, and special‑education teacher, Denson has worked in Germany, North Carolina, and the Bay Area, including as an art instructor at the Duke University International House, and art and resource specialist at the German International School of Silicon Valley. She is a member of Edgewater Gallery in Fort Bragg, CA, and the "non/phenomenal" collective with Brett Amory and Shane Denson.

Statement: In my paintings, collages, and photography, I explore the delicate connections between nature, technology, memory, dreams, and time. I am drawn to moments that feel temporary or uncertain—when something is changing, fading, breaking, or beginning again. My work reflects on the fleeting passage of time and the circle of life and death, where beauty, loss, and renewal are always connected. Glitches are central to my practice because they reveal both rupture and possibility. A glitch marks a break, a failure, an interruption—but also a moment of renewal, transformation, and unexpected emergence. In this sense, glitch aesthetics offer a way to think about ecosystems, bodies, memories, and dreams as unstable living systems. Nothing remains fixed. Forms dissolve, reassemble, and speak to one another across media. My work comes from my love of nature and my curiosity about technology, especially the strange and unexpected things that can happen when digital processes “go wrong’ or rather surprise with unexpected outcomes. I am interested in how living things, memories, dreams, and technological images become connected. Nature is always changing, and so are the systems we use to see and understand it. These changes remind us that we are part of the same fragile and shifting world.

Kayde Griffin @Kayde_griffin

Kayde Griffin was raised in the rural town of Corning, New York, within a multiracial family whose contrasts and closeness shaped his understanding of belonging. As a queer artist, he draws from an awareness that identity is layered and fragmented—shaped by family, lived experience, and the spirit's ongoing process of becoming. Working primarily in oil on canvas, Griffin often cuts, rearranges, and hand-sews his paintings back together as an act of repair, reflecting the continual process of becoming whole. A self-taught painter before earning a BFA from the University at Buffalo, Griffin has remained deeply engaged in both his studio practice and the creative community around him. Since relocating to Oakland, California, in 2022, he has presented the solo exhibition Threaded Roots at the Queer Arts Center and participated in several group exhibitions, continuing to explore themes of identity, fragmentation, healing, and transformation through his work.

Kim Boerner @kimboerner

Kim Boerner is a San Francisco-based artist working in watercolor and oil. World events, music, literature and the natural world inspire her to create paintings imbued with emotion. Her teaching experience with teens in Oakland, California, and her union leadership and activism often show through in her work. She studied painting and drawing at SUNY Albany, San Francisco State University, Laney College (Oakland), City Collage San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and the San Francisco Art Institute. In the past few years her paintings have shown in numerous juried group exhibitions throughout the country.

Statement: Kim Boerner’s art expresses the intimate emotions and struggles of people. They might be anxious, or in transition. Their feelings may be public or private. In her work she creates, as John Berger said, “the beauty which expresses hope”. That beauty is in those who ask for/demand change, relief, or a better life. The people in her paintings may be vulnerable, but are never just victims. Taking a situation in the world or in her community, she paints a private environment that tells a story. Some of her figures are “complete”, others exist as incomplete gestural bodies. By leaving out some of what we usually see— the viewer can focus on that beauty which goes beyond differences.

Kodandi Nithyananda @kodandi.n

Kodandi Nithyananda is a multi-dimensional, multi-media artist whose work touches themes of the body as ephemera, esoteric landscape, and spatial interiority. The artist’s work comes from a meditative space and is informed by life in an ashram and time spent as a monk. The artist studied traditional material forms of sculpture at California College of the Arts, focusing on metal working, welding and bronze casting. Kodandi now works primarily in digital media and machine knitting. The artist received their MFA in Visual Arts from Maharishi International University. The artist also hold a BA from Mills College, in anthropology and sociology, and cross cultural communication study at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Tokyo, Japan.

Statement: I use reclaimed materials, and technology that is old, discarded and obsolete. I see the unsustainable obsolescence of functional older technologies, and prioritize reclaimed, recycled, and secondhand sources. Accessing data from obsolete software and connecting old hardware to new hardware is an extreme exercise in impermanence, fleeting physical states, and letting go. I am interested in the process of moving through dimensions, from a point to line to two-dimensional shape and three-dimensional shape and beyond. Unraveling, or “frogging” in knitting terminology, is a fundamental part of the knitting process. A knitted piece can be completely frogged and returned to its original form in a ball of yarn. The yarn will be changed in the process, but it is still in essence a ball of yarn. The journey of the yarn from line through a two-dimensional pattern to three-dimensional constructed piece that exists in a four-dimensional space is exciting for me. I feel that this is a spiritual process that reflects my experience in meditation and Hindu ritual. Knitted fabric feels like a nexus between body and landscape. I use garment making techniques to make sculptural objects. Knitting is a representation of my body as well as a landscape. I am now working with my own medical imagery and biofeedback data. Digital technology has made it very easy to access these secret inner worlds of the body and make them visible. This data is now feeding my digital art and determines the speed and layout of my animations.

Laura Van Duren @laura_van_duren

Laura Van Duren is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California, recognized for her innovative approach to ceramics, and mixed-media sculpture. Her practice often merges drawing, ceramics, glycerin soap, and recycled materials, reflecting a commitment to experimentation and abstraction. She works with the Peter Voulkos family helping to manage the archival aspect of his collection which has had a profound influence on her creative process. Van Duren’s work has been exhibited at major institutions across the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Crocker Museum (as part of the feminist exhibition Making Moves), Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Sonoma Museum of Art, Southern Exposure, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Paul Thiebaud Gallery and Berkeley Art Center. She is dedicated to arts education, teaching ceramics and sculpture as an adjunct professor at several community colleges. Her achievements in the field include residencies, such as the Open Studio residency at Haystack in Maine (2023), Dream Farm Commons in Oakland (2025) and Okuyama House Japan (2026). Notably, her work has been acquired by The Crocker Art Museum.​ Van Duren holds a BFA in drawing from Carnegie Mellon University and she completed her MFA in sculpture at San Francisco State University in 2017.

Statement: How do our bodies influence our minds? How does our corporeal wisdom shape our perception of the world? These questions are at the heart of my practice. Through the tactile processes of coiling, casting, and reassembling, I mirror the adaptive, playful negotiation between body and thought—inviting intuition to guide the emergence of each work and allowing the irrational to transcend the rational. My inquiry is grounded in the science of interoception: the subtle awareness of inner bodily sensations. I am fascinated by how our internal physical states ripple outward, coloring emotional landscapes and filtering our encounters with the world. I transform clay, glycerin, and found objects into an evolving vocabulary—each material a metaphor for tissue and cell, pulse and synapse, the layered interdependence of the body’s systems. Like the architecture of our own flesh, these forms rest in delicate tension, always contingent on one another for meaning and stability.

Leitha L. Thrall @leitha.l

Leitha received her BA in Studio Art in 1984 from San Jose State University. Prior to graduating, she briefly attended University of Hawaii at Manoa, before heading off to Europe for two years. The first year in Europe was spent in the international community of sculptors in Pietrasanta, Italy. There, she worked for established sculptors, such as Manuel Neri from the SF Bay Area, and Canadian sculptor, William McElcheran. Leitha has worked at a few commercial art foundries. Monterey Sculpture Center, Fine Arts in Metal, and finally, Mussi Artworks Foundry. She has also cast her own work at the Crucible in Oakland. She has been active Pacific Rim Sculptors group in the Bay Area, serving as chairperson for a term, then recently treasurer, and secretary. She is a long standing member of the International Sculptors Center (ISC) and volunteered at the 15th International Sculptors Conference in San Francisco. Leitha has shown in many local exhibitions and, throughout the U.S. and abroad, in national and international exhibitions. The settings are as diverse as in art centers, galleries, universities, and museums. She has received awards, a Puffin grant, and has been published in catalogues, newspaper articles, and has been featured in a sculpture book. Her sculptures are included in private and public art collections.

Statement: A person can have feelings of being hopeless and helpless, but can hide that behind a mask. The feelings can last for untold amounts of time until it can be dealt with by a change in behavior and/or a slow change in the mental state of mind. THE PAIN OF CHAINS/THE NEED TO CHANGE is a symbolic sculptural manifestation of those feelings. Each chain adds weight and pulls down a person's life and mind. There is always hope, though. Through a change in thought patterns and physical circumstances, one can drop the chains one by one and have a newer and wiser state of mind. (I encourage the viewer to touch and feel the bronze sculpture.)

Lianne Running @lirunningpaint

I have been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. My life started out in Toronto, Canada, and then I moved to Florida. In college I studied Fine Art and I received an Associate of Arts degree at Valencia College in Orlando, FL. Upon completion, I decided to move to California. It was the move to San Francisco and the beginning of a new job in 2018, that started my nightly ritual of painting. Working with acrylic paint on canvas, I paint moments and photographs that inspired me, such as the lighting of the sky at dusk and the contrast of light glowing in windows, to moments in TV shows or movies that were beautifully lit and had a significance to the story that was unfolding. I try to capture the realism as much as I can in my figurative paintings. It is my hope that the onlooker of my art feels something and appreciates the mood it conveys. In March and April of 2022 my paintings were a part of two online exhibits for Las Laguna Art Gallery: “Light and Shade” and “Landscapes and Seascapes”. In San Francisco I have been a part of the Pancakes and Booze Pop-up Art Show in 2024-2026. My paintings were also in two group shows in SF Open Studios and the “SUPER HYPER LOCAL” show at The Drawing Room Annex in 2025. I continue to paint in San Fransisco, and I am pursuing future exhibits and opportunities.

luka vergoz @lukavergoz

luka vergoz is an Oakland-based artist who finds, alters, and arranges material scraps into sculptures and installations addressing physics, language, and the transsexual experience. They hold a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from UC Davis. A 2023-4 Graduate Fellow at Headlands Center for the Arts, Luka has shown work at ICASF, Root Division, Pelota Gallery, and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.

Statement: Searching for specificity in abstraction, my work begins with discarded scraps, matter that is a byproduct of construction or a casualty of time. All matter used to be something else before it was this and will become something else after it’s done being this. All making is unmaking. Drawing on my experiences as a transgender person and my understanding of matter’s transformation over time, I place priority on the process of thingness–how seemingly static objects not so much “are'' as “happen.” Zoom out and consider the continuous shuffle of matter over time on a planetary scale. Zoom in to observe how subatomic processes maintain the forms we interact with at our bodily scale. If all being is happening, ‘form’ as noun becomes ‘form’ as verb. ​ I release boundaries of works in space and time, allowing components to expand and collapse, to break apart, combine, shuffle and change—presenting and re-presenting themselves in multiple stages of their perpetual becoming

Macyn Metten @metmac.art

Macyn Metten is a fine artist based in Sacramento and the Bay Area engaged primarily in graphite drawing and oil paint. Much of her work explores existential themes of the discomforts of the human experience, entangling both surrealism and realism. Her artwork aims to connect with viewers by offering a window into the connection that is shared among us through a diverse range of creative work. Her most recent work has shifted focus to identifying with femininity and monstrosity. In 2023, she was awarded the Kingsley Merit Award grant from the Kingsley Art Club to financially support her creative projects and was exhibited in the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. She has also been exhibited in galleries such as the Axis Gallery in Sacramento, Pence Gallery in Davis, and most recently the ACCI Gallery in Berkeley. She has recently been awarded the LIFT grant from UC Berkeley Arts Research Center to financially support her senior thesis project. She is currently studying at the University of California at Berkeley to receive her Bachelors in Art Practice.

Statement: My artwork serves as an introspective journey into the depths of the human experience, unraveling the intricate phenomenon of my existence. Rooted in both surrealism and realism, my oil paintings and graphite drawings draw inspiration from the Old Masters, infused with a contemporary and eerie perspective to capture the idea of the human condition. I explore existentialism through inspiration by artists like Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon to continue this representation of the uncomfortable experience of being alive. In my own practice, this manifests through layered graphite drawings and oil paintings that hover between figuration and abstraction. I often include traces of revision, both visible and unnatural limbs. These gestures show my broader interest in how art can reflect the fragility of the body and the contradictions of embodiment. My work also often depicts imagery of fragmented figures or multiple selves, directly engaging with the concept of identity. They reflect a personal navigation, a self genesis, and self-discovery of transformation, touching upon my experience with derealization as a metaphor for questioning perceived realities and defining one’s place. At its very core, my practice is an inquiry into what exists in this gap between seeing and understanding. My goal is for my work to invite quiet attention and make visible what defines being human.

Malachi Arthur @malachi_paints

Born in the midwest and currently living in San Francisco, CA, Malachi Arthur (b.1999) specializes in discovering meaning and narrative behind the images we see throughout our lives. A student of composition, paint application, use of color, and brush handling, Malachi seeks to balance the classical tenets of skill building and making as a process with finding his subjective voice and ever changing approach to expression. As an artist who split his upbringing between Omaha, NE and California, Malachi is interested in the recurring motifs within Black American life and investigates the unique societal context that Black people exist within. Interested in the iconography of the world around him and the meanings behind them, he seeks to prioritize the unpacking of questions and the reflection that comes with them over static, closed-ended answers. His work seeks to encourage these questions in the viewer. Leaving his hometown of Sacramento after high school, Malachi studied Environmental Studies with an emphasis in Community Organizing gaining a BA from Cal Poly Humboldt in 2022. This helped inform his perspective on the world, giving him insight on the dynamics of power, privilege, and socioeconomic dynamics pertaining to race, gender, and class in America. Having worked on murals, commissions and a few shows, Malachi continues to build the foundation of his career around honest investigation of the world around him. He now resides in the Bay Area and is completing his Masters in Fine Art at Academy of Art University.

Statement: I am primarily an oil painter committed to the investigation of the world around me through visual motifs. Primarily focused on metaphors surrounding cultural phenomena centered on the Black experience, I am passionate about asking “why” and highlighting juxtaposition as often as possible. A lot of my process hinges on the idea of exploration with much of my work starting as generalized observations that eventually layer in complexity as the work develops. I acknowledge my subjective perspective as an active participant in the world around me and hope that in engaging with my work audience's explore how the work’s themes are present in their experiences as well. Curiosity is the motor that drives much of my creative process with many of the themes present in pieces developing after sitting with a piece for extended periods of time. My work features allusions to literature, sports, recurring imagery within the Black community, and music. I urge the viewer to interrogate their own beliefs and the aspects that led to their formation. I acknowledge the lineage of Black artists before me and seek to continue that conversation.

margo majewska @margomajewska_cca

Margo Majewska is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of media: architecture, video, drawing, and installations. Born in Warsaw, Poland, she attended the Women’s School of Architecture and the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw before moving to New York, where she received a BFA with Honors from Parsons School of Design and an M.Arch from Columbia University. Margo’s professional interests began with the integration of art and architecture and gradually moved towards installation art. She began exhibiting her own work in 2001. She is now pursuing a two-faceted career combining art and architecture with a focus on installation art. Currently, she lives in Oakland, California, and she teaches drawing and design at the California College of the Arts.

Statement: I am a Polish-born multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of architecture, video, and installation. My practice is shaped by a life lived between cultures and languages, and grounded in a deep sensitivity to place, memory, and transformation. With a background in architecture and fine art, I create immersive environments that invite both sensory and emotional engagement. I work with light, sound, moving image, and translucent materials to explore how identity and perception shift across time, space, and memory. My installations often unfold as quiet meditations on impermanence—bridging the visible and invisible, the physical and imagined. At the heart of my work is an ongoing inquiry into transitional states—of the body, the environment, and the self.

Marshall Elliott @marshallmelliott

I was born in the panhandle of Florida, but I live in Richmond. I received my MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute and BA degrees in Film Studies and English Literature at the University of Colorado. In addition to spaces such as The deYoung museum, The Headlands Center for the Arts, Mills College, USF, Bass & Reiner and the Jules Maeght Gallery, I have shown work in places as far away as Puerto Rico, and was an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands for a few years. I currently live and work in Richmond, CA. My practice often works with archival material, research, interviews, and gathering of stories as a generative inspiration for producing site-responsive visual artworks that rethink histories that have disappeared, or been forgotten, and places them into new contexts. I also make things that don’t follow that plan, (because you can't just do one thing) although they are also byproducts of inquiry.

Statement: Usually, I'm drawn to work that has some kind of conceptual angle, work that embodies some sort of idea. But I also find that you can have too much of a good thing, like too much fancy food, and often you just need a good burrito.

Megan March @meganmarchstudio

Megan March is a Bay Area based interdisciplinary artist working in ceramic sculpture, sound, performance, and 2D media. Her practice explores questions and narratives around the activation of empty spaces, identity within the body, motherhood, resilience, and the parallel lines between the body and land. March received her BFA in Music, Studio Art, and English from Mills College, and recently received her MFA from California College of the Arts. She has released albums and toured much of Europe and North America with her musical projects, pushing the boundaries of performance, form, and genre. Thriving on the physicality of sculpting and percussion, on any given day you can find March in her studio using her hands to form clay or sound.

Statement: A near-death experience during childbirth at an understaffed hospital fuels my focus on the connective tissue of fragility and resilience between human bodies and the body of the land. I sculpt these forms in clay—an ideal, volatile, and imperfect medium—to explore the visceral feelings and landscape of the body and geographical narratives of violence and healing. While my vessels provoke questions on the presence of emptiness and potential, my clay impressions are artifacts of a hidden reality - allowing us to see and feel what the air touches on the surface of our environments.

Ru Lyons @rubb3rtree

Statement: The concept of “biological reality” is frequently misrepresented in conservative propaganda to delegitimize transgender identities. As a transgender painter with a background in the natural sciences, I am interested in exploring notions of biological reality in my work. I paint in layers, letting parts of the underpainting and earlier iterations of my compositions show through. Using this obstruction method, I paint seemingly unremarkable organisms and present them as windows or portals to queer self-realization; Or, more specifically, conduits for epiphanies about the joy, sadness, and laughing-crying absurdity of being transgender in this current political moment.

Sally Smith @sksmithart

Sally K. Smith is a painter based in Berkeley, California. She studied music and biology at Stanford and earned a law degree at the University of Utah before refocusing on visual art and studying at Cambridge Center Studio School and City College San Francisco. Smith’s work has been exhibited at Icarus Gallery in Berkeley, Gallery 60Six in San Francisco, MarinMOCA, Sanchez Art Center, and Arc Gallery in San Francisco, among others.

Statement: I create oil paintings that are rooted in observation. Although my paintings originate in the real world, I take them to places beyond their origin. Sometimes I introduce people and objects from disparate places and times to create dreamlike collages that transcend the familiar. I also paint simple landscapes that are charged with an underlying tension or irony. For example, I depict California wildflowers battling invasive oat grass, or stained glass church windows with garbage bins looming in the foreground. As source material I sometimes use vintage or found photographs, honoring the magic of a single moment yet ruing the passage of time. Train stations and places of travel often appear in my paintings, as do strangers from different places. My intent is to create a feeling of interconnectedness and ambiguity so that we can experience the world a little differently. I also create charcoal from unique materials such as money, food, documents and plants. These materials have meanings that I can integrate into a drawing or painting. I have developed methods for applying these unconventional charcoals to surfaces. Sometimes I use repurposed objects as templates. Often these relate to the meaning of a piece. Some of my charcoal pieces are conceptual whereas others revolve around pattern or gesture. The materials become a partner in my artistic process.

Sarah A. Smith @smittumz

Sarah A. Smith was born in Boston, MA, 1969 and studied fine arts at Carnegie-Mellon University, (’91). She then trained as a scenic painter in Pittsburgh, PA working on multiple movie sets, theater productions and television programs including work as a scenic artist for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Upon moving to San Francisco in the early 2000’s she refocused on her own art heavily inspired by the energy and creativity of the SF arts scene during that time. Many galleries she has shown at in the Bay Area have since closed their doors but nevertheless deserve a mention and deep gratitude: Ampersand International Arts, Mimi Barr, Swarm Gallery, The SFAC’s Grove Street Windows and Round Weather. She was an AIR at The Headlands Center for the Arts and had a solo show Southern Exposure. Her work has been included in group shows at The de Saisset Museum, the UC Davis Memorial Union Art Gallery and the Palo Alto Art Center. Her drawings are in the collection of The Battery in San Francisco, CA and 21C in Louisville, KY.

Statement: Sarah A. Smith is a visual artist whose work exists in the intersection of drawing, sculpture, installation and collage. Various styles and a variety of techniques contribute to a body of work marked by constant experimentation. Employing a vast array of materials like wood, shells, dried wildflowers, gold leaf, patinas, plaster, twigs, feathers, twine, cardboard, powdered pigments and sawdust. Like disjointed lines of a poem her works across mediums can seem disparate yet they remain connected. Though not overtly political her ecologically centered themes and narratives offer ways to try to process the loss we are experiencing on a staggering scale.

Shire-Baden Brown

Statement: My interest is in spare observation through sculpture and photography; distribution of mass is the subject of the sculpture, and perspective itself the subject of the photograph.

Steen Kjorlie

Thomas Lewis @im_linkedin

Multi media artist living and working in San Francisco.

Statement: My work is rooted in the south and has strong ties to my home state of North Carolina.

Zander Bice @zanderbice

Artist in Berkeley, CA

Zoe Spikerman @zoespikerman

Zoe Spikerman is a San Francisco-based artist working across print, paper, and textile crafts. Often using foraged, recycled, and naturally-dyed paper and fiber, she’s especially interested in how the spirit of an artwork is shaped by the life and history of its materiality. Influenced by the ecological ethos of Hawaiʻi, where she was raised among farming communities, her artwork explores our complex relationship to the natural world, examining, with both reverence and disdain, the forces that obscure our interconnection as stewards of the Earth. She earned her BFA in Print Media from the California College of Arts, and currently works as an editorial associate for Art Bae.

Jules Bachrach @juleszebra

A student at Berkeley High School who has been interested in self-expression through photography, fashion, drawing, and mixed-media artwork from a young age. Recipient of Mayoral visual arts award 2025 and 2026.

Statement: Art is the most fulfilling thing I could possibly imagine doing with my time. It is one of the core things that makes us human, making us extremely exceptional. Each and every one of my photographs takes precious time, exposing negatives, digitizing them by scanning them in, and editing them, but the unique final piece is always satisfactory and worth while.