Kathleen Durkin

I was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland and encouraged from a young age to explore nature in my city. My art practice is the result of my desire and effort to know land: specifically the hidden, emotional, and historical ecologies of the land. I am inspired by my conversation work in Baltimore and my years teaching in wilderness of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. My current practice involves site specific and non-site specific installation and sculpture, video, performance, and artifact documentation. A great deal of my professional career has been spent teaching both art and environmental science to students of all ages. I love creating art events that allow for participants young and old to experience both. When not in the studio, you can find me digging in the dirt and teaching others to dig in the dirt as well.

Website

Nicole Brunel

Nicole Brunel is a Canadian artist attending the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s studio arts graduate program. She studied Painting and Sculpture at the Alberta College of Art + Design in Calgary, Canada, and at the New York Studio Arts Residency in Brooklyn. Her art practice researches how art and humor can be used as tools for social justice. Before studying art, Nicole worked as an archaeologist and a musician (separately). She was born with 4 kidneys. 

Website

Ghi Fremaux

Ghislaine Fremaux is Assistant Professor of Art in the discipline of Painting at Texas Tech University. She holds her MFA from the Pennsylvania State University, conferred in 2012. Her undergraduate studies began in 2003 at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and culminated in a BFA from Tufts University with SMFA, Boston, in 2007. Her work has notably shown in the 2014 Nicaraguan Biennial and 2014 Biennial of the Central American Isthmus, and is exhibited widely in juried shows throughout the country. She presented a solo show at K Space Contemporary in Corpus Christi, TX, in January 2017. Current projects examine the aging body, bodily self-knowledge, and the practice of nudism.

Website

Neurotik

“My name is Allen Creamean (a.k.a. “Neurotik”), born and raised in Illinois my whole life; most of which in Northern Illinois in a small town outside of Rockford called Byron. My primary course of study in college was not in the arts, but in psychology. I currently practice as a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor at The Pavilion Hospital, working with youth and adults in acute psychiatric crises. I have learned the importance of creative expression as an outlet for emotional distress through seeing the benefits with my patients while experiencing the benefits as a human. The artwork that I create intends on exposing the reality of emotional distress, which is commonly suppressed, in efforts to break the stigma expressing emotion currently has” 

-Neurotik

Maya Bauer

Raised in Urbana and schooled in Western MA, Maya Bauer currently lives in Chicago where she works in the non-profit sector. Her art practice includes many media and is integrated into many aspects of her personal and professional life, bridging self-care, community engagement/justice making, function, and sentimentality. Lately she has been drawn back to simple graphite drawing.

Shannon Tomanovich

Shannon Tomanovich received her BFA from the University of Delaware in 2011 where she was the recipient of a summer research grant. She has exhibited her work in Philadelphia; Delaware; Baltimore; East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania; St. Louis, Missouri; Athens and Savannah, Georgia. She is inspired by human perceptions of physical, social and emotional environments and how individual landscapes change constantly with history and memory. Over the last six years she has lived in Delaware, Georgia, Philadelphia and, currently, Pittsburgh.

Website

Jason Michael Bentley

“I am often moved to make an impression of what is beautiful and graceful. Even the simple aspects of applying a mark on paper or canvas can be a joy. And working with a suite of marks that eventually deliver form is a way of giving life all over again. I have not been an artist that desires to create something radical and leave a wake of mystification behind my every stroke. To me, for now, my drawings and paintings act as an outlet and reference to my studies and curiosities. They are embellished only by the way a unique individual can see the world as compared to another, honestly, and without agenda for something greater. I am not against exploration or fanciful ideas that help transcend one’s existence and understanding, rather, I simply enjoy growing into such a revelation by way of appreciating the smaller aspects of the application itself.”

-Jason Michael Bentley

Website

Featured Artist: Hong Chun Zhang

A Chinese born and US based artist, Hong Chun Zhang received BFA from Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (1994). In 1996, she came to  the USA and graduated with MFA from University of California Davis in 2004.  Hong currently lives and works in Lawrence Kansas. She is represented by Haw Contemporary in Kansas City.

Hong’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally from Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, The Museum of Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo to The 9th Shanghai Biennale in China. Her work can be found at Sylvain Levy/ DSL Collection in Paris, The White Rabbit Collection of Contemporary Chinese Art in Sydney, Australia and Spencer Museum of Art at University of Kansas in Lawrence.

She has received many awards including Skowhegan Artist Residency Full Scholarship, Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship and Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant.  Hong has been invited as a visiting artist and public speaker at universities and museums.

Website