Estelle Akamine, a leading designer in the wearable art as costume movement, created outfits out of material she found at the dump, some of which were glamorous enough to be worn to the San Francisco Black and White Ball in 1993. The materials for Akamine’s imaginative formal wear include computer tape, zipper discards, plastic bags, […]

Russ Nordman is a multimedia artist from Iowa who works in video and assemblage.  He and Katina Huston collaborated for four months and created twelve sculptures and assorted drawings during their residency. Nordman makes sculptures that evoke nostalgia.  They are deep in atmosphere and emotional tone. His constructions are formed from found materials that create […]

My father was an archaeologist. He would travel to foreign countries and dig for relics of past civilizations. He would find things and look at them. He would figure out what they were and how they were used. The relics would be labeled and displayed, revealing just a little bit more of what it was […]

Among the philosophies I have accumulated over the years is a belief that if there is no passion in what you do, you must do something else. I also believe the best time to change is when things are going well, not when motivated by anxiety or desperation. At the height of an executive career […]

I moved to Brooklyn in the summer of 1986 to attend graduate school at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. This was my first experience living outside of California, and in an East Coast city. The sculptures made during that time reflect my initial reaction and observations of life in a big, densely populated, […]

My medium is sculpture in glass and light. I combine glass and light along with water, rocks, metal and other materials. Most of my sculptures are site-specific installations that provide light and drama to both outdoor and indoor spaces. In January 1998, the office in which I had been working as an environmental planner for […]

My interest in recycled materials stems from an innate thriftiness, disgust at the wastefulness of our society (along with an appreciation of the wealth of potential it affords), and a love of the unexpected. In 1987, I began a series of painted collages using scraps Xeroxed from photographs, advertisements and art history books, finding a […]

My work is a tribute to contemporary women and shows the beauty of ordinary women. Recurring themes are fashion, health, age, beauty, adornment, body image, and gender polarization, all addressed in humorous ways. My work is also a social statement, a reaction to society. How people relate to one another, how culture dictates gender behavior, […]

As a site-inspired interdisciplinary artist, I want to find the medium/media most appropriate to each piece I make. I am not rigidly bound to any particular material or method. Instead, I let the task at hand suggest the forms in which it should be expressed. In this way, the media are interrelated by virtue of […]

My first creations in the visual arts came about as a direct result of working with Peter Schuman’s Bread and Puppet Theatre in New York City in the early 1960s.  It was after performing as a masked dancer in Schuman’s TOTENDANZ production in 1962, that I began mask-making and also creating small hand puppets.  The […]