Christa Assad
Currently based in Baja Sur California, mid-career artist Christa Assad is best known for her Re-objectification series -- teapot designs based on objects and buildings from American industry. Assad explains the inspiration for her pieces:
"Growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, I was strongly influenced by the Steel City’s dying industry and the grit of these oft-abandoned sites. Tagged with graffiti and other remnants of trespassers and squatters, the physical remains of these sites serve as archaeological artifacts in the study of human behavior and societal evolution.”
A teacher, traveler and full time ceramicist with an MFA from Indiana University (1999), and BA from Penn State (1992), Assad’s work is in the permanent collections of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Cafesjian Center for the Arts (Yerevan, Armenia), The Ceramic Research Center at Arizona State University Museum, and The Penn State Fulbright Scholar Collection. She was named, “Ceramic Artist of the Year,” in 2012 by Ceramics Monthly.
Mark Gabriel
At the threshold of the desert and the sea, Mark Gabriel has tapped into the primal energy of the desert bringing an essential raw power to his art. A series of works called Marine Salvage Rights - where small scavenged pieces of driftwood become sculptural paintings of Flying Whales and Ranchera Musicians, acts as a gateway to large scale renditions of his subjects on stretched canvas and wood panels.
Painting subjects the artist describes as dreamscapes inspired by ghosts of the desert and the movements of celestial bodies, these desert and seascapes are inhabited by mythical creature mash-ups of revolutionaries and birds, ranchero cowboys, musicians and stray dogs, as well as the flying “dream whales" of which he has become known. These characters all have stories - they occupy familiar yet exotic geography - they dance, they play, they fight, they love – and they will reveal their secrets if you lean in. Look again, and again as these creatures take form and celebrate the light.
Mark paints mostly with knife. As he scrape’s and slashes the paint - one can see how essential that energy is to his work. Acrylic is also good because it’s fast. The paint goes on thick and wild, then dabs of prevision. And if paint isn’t sufficient to the story, Gabriel employs ink, or mono-print, chalk and charcoal and oil stick. Some of the work requires collage and mixing of all of the above.
Anne Hebebrand
Anne Hebebrand creates luminous paintings rich with color and a tactile sensuousness. Her most recent work is less restrained and feels authentic and immediate. Creating art during the pandemic has been a reminder to embrace life’s messiness in all its glory and despair.
Through experimentation and improvisation, her process is supported by both a keen understanding of her materials and a deep knowledge of artists who have preceded her.
Born into the three generations of German artists Anne Hebebrand’s paintings are anchored in the tradition of the German Expressionists. A recipient of the Dana Pond Painting Award, Hebebrand received her BFA from the Boston Museum School and Tufts University, after moving to the United States in 1978. She received her masters in art history in 1992 from University of Alabama in Birmingham. Having taught for many years at the college and high school level, Hebebrand was named outstanding secondary arts educator by the Connecticut Art Education Association in 2012.
Hebebrand’s paintings are in private collections in the United States, Germany and Mexico. She is represented by Pez Gordo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and the Carverhill Gallery in Camden, Maine and currently lives in Bath, Maine and Todos Santos, Mexico.
Archie Gomez
Born in Ocotlan, Jalisco in 1978, now living in Todos Santos. Jose de Jesus “Archie” Gomez Jimenez, graduated in architecture from the I.T.L.P in La Paz and took painting lessons with the teacher Margarita Mendiola.
First solo exhibition in 2003 at the Paris room at the Roger de Conynck of the French Cultural Alliance, titled “Fragmentations of sex and death”
Solo exhibition/conference at the school “Center of Industrial Technological No. 230” in 2003, titled “Distortions of space and time (plastic arts and architecture)
Solo exhibition at the Art Gallery “Carlos Olachea” La Paz, in 2004 titled “Carne onirica”
Collective exhibition “Entijuanarte” in Tijuana, BC in 2011
Collective exhibition in San Carlos, Sonora. Titled “Dos Venus y un Marte” in 2014
Collective exhibition in Tucson, Arizona. Titled “ Solar Culture” at the Solar Culture Gallery in 2014.
Development and elaboration of artistic installation as collaboration for the exhibition “Deep Blue” by Silvia, in the Desert Museum of Tucson, Arizona in 2014.
And have been designing and building houses in the Todos Santos/Pescadero area since 2018
Heath Kane
Born in Australia, Heath quickly took flight to explore the world in his early 20’s. During that time has been working at the forefront of design, working for many of the world’s leading advertising and branding agencies.
Now turning his attention back to art, his debut collection draws inspiration from his commercial art background and origins of urban art – a blend of design and art. His approach follows the practice of design thinking, with a focus on creating simple, iconic and memorable pieces that have the ability to tell stories and are linked to a larger narrative. Within the, often lurid colour, artwork he tries to distill subtle but often subversive themes.
“The important thing for me is not just what it looks like and feels like, it is what it makes you think.
My approach to art is responsive. I respond to what I see and feel. I have continued to make art in response to what I see happening in the world – often things that scare and trouble me – as well as what inspires me."
Fernando Ramirez
Fernando Ramírez (Huajuapan De Leon, Oaxaca, Mexico) is an artist graduated from the Faculty of Arts and Design of the UNAM. He has specialized in lithography and has working with great masters of this technique such as Rafael Sepúlveda, one of the artists with the most knowledge of this ancient practice that allows an image drawn on a smooth stone block, which has the property of registering the subtleties of wash ink, sgraffito and crayon, be the support to make a run that is printed with a press mechanical on paper, achieving high quality in each piece.
Lithography is, of course, quite a complex process, almost alchemical and depends on the expertise of the printer. Recently Fernando carried out a residency at La Ceiba Gráfica where experimented with new materials and was able to see the self-sustaining proposal of this art center.
Like the images of a pre-Hispanic codex, the characters of each work is surrounded by a fictional cosmos that suggests a cryptographic system. The figures are represented by a cluster of ways in which head, hands, legs and fingers. The faces are very close to the masks Mexican women whose theme is death, animals metamorphic, monsters or fighters. We are facing a world endless graphic sustenance of imaginary rituals and anagrams that in themselves express energy and power: the eye as an almost religious element or the hand as a symbol of creation. (review from Alberto Castro Lenero)
Diego Rodarte
Diego Rodarte focuses his visual practice on different technical supports, highlighting the exploration of painting. He began his studies with Mtro. Enrique Monraz in the city of Guadalajara. 16 years of experience has led him to exhibit in various cities of the country and in foreign galleries, museums, and cultural centers.
He is currently selected for the XIX Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial. Lives and works in Mexico City.
Exhibitions of Note: Center Culturel duMexique in Paris, France (2008); USC Fisher Museum, The Huntington Libary, San Marino, California (2017); Art Division Gallery in Los Angeles (2018); Latin center American Studies, UC Berkeley, San Francisco (2017); MACAY in Mérida Yucatán (2009), Museo Exconvento del Carmen in Guadalajara (2009); LAMM House in the City of Mexico (2015); Centro de las Artes San Agustín in Oaxaca (2016), Galeria Mark Hachem and at the MR80 gallery in Paris, and at the Scope international art fair in Miami (2019). He has participated in artistic residencies in Los Angeles (2018), Paris (2008), Oaxaca (2017) and Torreón (2016).
He was the winner of the First Club Art Show carried out by the Reforma Group in 2007. He has been a qualifying jury in the XXIV Awards of the Salon de la Plástica Ahomense ‘Edgardo Coghlan’ in Los Mochis, Sinaloa in 2012 and in 2018 Jury for Residences in plastic arts from Colombia for the Arts Laboratory of La Curtiduría in Oaxaca.
Oliver Martinez
(1983-. ) Architect by profession, sculptor and Mexican painter originally from León, Guanajuato (Mexico) dedicated to the arts since 2010. Since February I have lived in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur and I have another workshop in León, Guanajuato. I was the Winner of Honorable Mention at the IV Biennial of Valencia, Spain (2019).
I recently participated in the fifth edition held last year in Barcelona and Valencia simultaneously as a selected artist. I have made more than 60 collective and 30 individual exhibitions in different cultural venues in different museums in Mexico and Spain such as the CCC Centro Cultural de Octubre Arte Contemporáneo (Valencia 2021), Muxart (Barcelona 2021), University of Guanajuato (Guanajuato, 2020), Chavez Morado Museum (Guanajuato, 2013) and León Museum (2010), among others.
My work is a constant reflection of the natural and urban environment from two different languages that complement each other.
My profession as an architect is constantly reflected through the use of specific concepts of composition and geometries that give unity and structure to the entire work. The objective of my work is to open an inner dialogue and a deep reflection on the importance of recognizing ourselves as individuals and that our identity should not be lost or transgressed under any human condition.
Terryl Tagg
The more that I paint and communicate with paint, the harder it seems to communicate in words. Through my paintings, I strive to portray a feeling or spirit of the person or place that I am describing. My subjects are all personal and become a kind of time line of our journey through these last 17 years, since moving from San Francisco to Fiddletown. My partner, Linda Sue Scott, is a photographer, and most of my work is inspired from her photographs. Almost 25 years ago, she told me that, " My lights are my paints." Unknowingly, this was the beginning of my education about how to see light.
I love the way that I feel when I am painting in the zone; my canvas seems to throb with a life of its own almost bouncing off the easel at times. It can be a very physical and even visceral feeling entering this world of creation, color, and texture. Painting brings me a sense of peace and purpose. I have found what I love to do!
I also paint at my new studio and gallery at our home in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur. The artist community there is vibrant and in itself inspiring. In 2005 we were so impressed with this small Mexican village that in a three day visit, we left with a house and a dog. Since then we have driven the 1,000 miles of the Baja many times, feasting our senses with jaw dropping vistas, and vast expanses of rugged beauty that warm my soul. Every drive has been a new adventure, challenge, and inspiration. These experiences then become themes for new paintings.
Chris Wyrick
“Through various media, I am exploring the dialectical relationships in our lives: the self to the other; parent to child; past to future; reason to absurdity; corporation to consumer; black to white; good to evil.”
Chris Wyrick is a painter from Charleston, SC. He studied classics, geology, religion, and painting at St. John’s College, NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School), and at Davidson College. He worked as an apprentice to painter Jack Beal in New York City and studied at the New York Academy of Art before receiving his MFA in drawing and painting from the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. He relocated his studio to Los Angeles in 2011.
Wyrick works in a wide variety of media and his artwork draws inspiration from many sources. Recurring themes in his work are transformation and duality - the polarities in our world that both divide us and unite us. His paintings are often based in natural forms, though he also works with images from photography and film. He embraces the dialectic of collaboration in the creative process and welcomes the opportunity to partner with other artists and designers.
In addition to working with more traditional drawing and painting media, Wyrick has invented a medium of drawing with checkerboard. He started drawing this way as a teenager as a mechanism to focus during classes in prep school, but it has grown over the years into a more politically charged means of expression. “The black and white of checkerboard is a divided line - a broken vocabulary - that I use to explore the shared and often divisive symbols and icons in our world.”
Chris splits his time between his home in Los Angeles and is currently building a home in Todos Santos, BCS