Your Custom Text Here
David Christiana has been making art since he was small child and his parents found him drawing on the wall. We probably all got caught doing this, but the difference is that his parents didn't ground him, instead they stood back and said, "Hey, that's pretty good!" Christiana has been going strong ever since.
Christiana is an accomplished fine artist and illustrator. He has published more than twenty five children's books which he has illustrated, several of which he also wrote. He has also been included in national and international competitions for painting, especially of portraits. In spring of 2015 he was selected to be part of an international show of portrait artists to be shown at the MEAM in Barcelona, Spain.
Currently, David's work "Portraits of Petrichor" will be showing at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff from March 12th, 2016 - May 30th. This one person exhibition is a culmination of 20 years of work done on and about Sunset Crater National Monument and the Wapatki Loop.
Christiana holds a BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and an MFA from Syracuse University. He has also devoted much of his time to teaching. He is a full professor at the University of Arizona, where he has led young artists for 25 years, and has become a critical part of the study abroad program in Orvieto, Italy.
These are portraits of people who live in the Sutherland Valley.
Kristie Atwood has been a long time writer, photographer, and artist. It began in early childhood when she wrote original Christmas plays and insisted they be performed by her sisters for the rest of the family. She later pursued her creative drive by earning a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Northern Arizona University and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona.
This love of writing and visual art began to combine as book arts in 2009, with study in mixed media books at the University of Arizona. Since, Atwood was selected for the Purchase Award at the Tucson Festival of Books by the University of Arizona Special Collections Library, for the original book "Shells" in 2013. Also in 2013 she was awarded the Barbara Lewis Book Challenge prize, in an exhibition with Paperworks in Tucson for her book "The Ardor of Birds..."
Her work has been show nationally and internationally, with "The Ardor of Birds" traveling Australia for the past two years. Her work, "Poe and the Hollow Crown" has been shown in New York City, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and World of Words, a special collection of children's books at the University of Arizona (still showing).
She occasionally teaches bookmaking and poetry. As you can see, the tradition continues only her sisters no longer have to act out her work.
kristieatwoodbooks.com
Tucson, Arizona
© 2016 Kristie Atwood
Phillip Lichtenhan, (born Tucson 1952) has developed a fascinating series of bird nests. Made of found steel wire and objects with pristine ceramic eggs, the nests are a serene and powerful metaphor of life.
Lichtenhan received his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona in 1981 and has developed dual careers as artist and teacher. In 2001 he left teaching to devote more time to producing his art.
His work is collected privately, publicly and by corporations, including the Ansel Adams estate, the Tucson Museum of Art, and Norwest Bank.
Lichtenhan's work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the years, including the Michelson Museum of Art in Marshall, Texas, the Dallas Theater Center, and the Shemer Art Center and Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
Artist’s Statement
The nests I create are serene yet powerful metaphors of life. I construct the nests with wire, barbed wire, steel banding material and found objects, creating nests that are sometimes quite like bird nests in look and scale and other nests that are larger and more mysterious. The eggs are made of clay. I glaze or paint them a variety of ways producing natural and unnatural colors and finishes.
I find my nest materials everywhere. Along the roadside, railroads and alleyways, either in the city or out in the desert are the discards of our world. These nest materials that I pick up have gained a beautiful patina from the natural forces of time.
The eggs are made of high fire stoneware and glazed with high fire glazes.
I aim to inspire curiosity in the intricacies of the natural world, and by extension, promote nature conservation. Fueled by biology and protoscience, my work amplifies intimate and obscure forms of life in order to give underrepresented organisms a louder voice and to visualize their self-worlds or Umwelten. Much of my personal work hones in on symbiosis, or the living together of unlike organisms. Deep within these animals' relationships, I solidify interdependency– the way in which their lives cross into another.
I stay inspired by visiting natural history museums and aquaria and by tending to my nano reef aquarium. A natural curiosity pushes me along, often to places I didn’t expect to be. I grew up catching bugs and collecting fossilized sharks' teeth in Maryland, where my friends later introduced me to crabbing on the Chesapeake Bay. I currently create and teach visual art in Tucson, Arizona.
Long also holds a BFA and MFA in Studio Art from University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. He has been honored with the Critic's Choice Winner for Best Imagery, EDDY Awards, Edible Communities, 2015, an Honorable Mention, Art of Our Century Juried Exhibition, Utah, 2014, and was a finalist for the Adobe Design Achievement Awards, 2013.
Robert Long has been published in "Ark of Taste" for Edible Santa Fe Magazine, Edible Baja Arizona Magazine, COVER, May/June 2015, The Desert Sea at Biosphere 2: A Vision Portfolio. Tucson: University of Arizona College of Science, 2015, and “Honey, Don’t Forget the Pollinators: the Pivotal Role of Baja Arizona Foodscapes in Bee and Butterfly Recovery,” an article by Gary Nabahn in Edible Baja Arizona Magazine, Sept/Oct 2014.
•••
“Long's innate technical abilities are accompanied by an inquisitive vision… There is an agency in Long's investigation of the relationships between animals, and animals' perceptions of their environments, an agency that emerges from the ease with which we can recognize a parallel between the animals and ourselves... Robert Long has found harmony in the latent fragments of life's connectedness, and it is my hope he will continue to compose ever more finely crafted songs from what we persist in not knowing how to sing.”
Nicholas Pollack – May, 2012.
Michael John Nolan is an artist and teacher based in Tucson, Arizona. He earned both his BFA and MFA from the University of Arizona. Currently, he is the head of Design at Pima Community College in Tucson. His work has been featured in multiple publications and annuals, notably American Illustration, 3 x 3, The Artist’s Magazine, Blue Canvas Magazine, Creative Quarterly, and the Society of Illustrators. Michael has been art director, cover artist, and illustrator on several literary publications for Starsys Publishing Company. He is represented through Baker + Hesseldenz in Tucson, AZ and The Lovett’s Gallery in Tulsa, OK.
Michael’s narratives lie somewhere between the real and the surreal. The psychological moments he creates evoke an undeniable and definite mood meant to amplify the intangibles and make them tangible. He uses exaggeration and the concept of archetype to give the conflicts a resonating presence. Michael’s works are centered on the philosophical notions of choice and the absence of decision, and how they affect the self and define and create the surrounding environments. “Life is a construct of both choice and the absence of decision. Unfocused, both can and most likely will create a stasis and with it, in time, entropy of the construct. However, one can attempt to impose a new structure and ultimately a redefinition of the construct by the same action that produced the stasis – choice.”
Contact: michaeljnolan@live.com