Audubon de México’s second annual Wild Arts Festival nature art exhibition and sale took place on March 21, 2019 in the beautiful garden setting of Instituto Allende Escuela de Arte y Español. It was a spectacular evening of art, champagne, music and wonderful people who came to purchase original works of art and support Audubon’s Niños y Naturaleza program.
The festival theme, CELEBRATING NATURE AS A WORK OF ART explored the timeless relationship between art and nature as a conduit to our emotional and spiritual connections to the elements of the natural world.
- Over 50 original works of art were created for the festival by local artists. Each artist used a 10″ x 10″ wood box as a canvas, frame, or base for their individual paintings, mixed-media, glass, metal, clay, assemblage, jewelry or photography.
- 4 wooden benches, were transformed by artists into an amazing work of art by painting, carving or embellishing with mosaic. The four-foot benches were built by students of the Escuela de Educación Especial wood-working program.
We were honored by contributions from the following artists who drew us into the world of nature as seen through an artist’s eyes.
Standby for details about the 2020 Wild Arts Festival!
Wild Arts Festival – Participating Artists
Oscar Aguirre
Béa was born in Paris in 1956. She is a self-taught multimedia artist, a published poet, author, and art critic, a lecturer and independent scholar, as well as a stage performer. She holds a BA in History of Art, an MA in French Literature and a PhD in Philosophy and Comparative Literature.
Aaronson has exhibited her paintings, sculptures, assemblages and photographs in France, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, South Africa, and the USA. She was the official Piccolo Spoleto poster artist, in 1989, 2001, and 2005, and also created posters for The Alliance Française and the Jewish Cultural Center of Charleston, SC. She has published many essays, poems, articles, drawings, paintings and photographs in numerous magazines, journals and encyclopedias in Europe and the USA.
Contact: bea_aaronson@hotmail.com
Website: www.artcasaverde.com
Gallery and Studio: By appointment only.
Ri Anderson
Ri was born in Boston MA and spent her childhood mainly in the northeastern United States. She received her MFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art in 2005, and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico shortly thereafter.
Her “Mariposas” series is based on her relationship with her two daughters and their bicultural lives as US expatriates residing in Mexico. The monarch butterfly has a migratory route between the northeastern United States and central Mexico and represents the delicate but unshakable balance between the two. Anderson creates each butterfly image by assembling selections of photographs of her daughters’ and her hair through a technique she terms “digital embroidery.” For Anderson this time consumptive, meditative process is revelatory of both the fragility and fortitude of the mother daughter bond.
Anderson has shown her work at numerous museums and galleries throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada. She has received numerous awards, and her work has been reviewed extensively. Recently she has had solo shows at the Museo de la Ciudad de Queretaro and Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende. Her work was published this year in the Australian journal “BETA-Developments in Photography” and the UK publication “Printmaking Today.” In addition to being an artist and mother Anderson is also a designer, master printer, and aerialist in the performing circus troupe Gravityworks Mexico.
Contact: ri@rianderson.com
Roberto Buchanan
Roberto was born in Argentina, and have been living and creating jewelry in México for the last five years. His jewelry is mainly characterized by the inquiry into the beauty through design, originality and the creation of unique pieces.
Made entirely by hand, his pieces are the result of the combination of different materials. In each piece, there is a new universe: no piece is the same as another. With a markedly modern and architectural style, he engages people with a new organic and natural line inspired by the semiarid flora that surrounds part of Guanajuato State; this is how Árida was born.
Studio/Showroom: San Francisco 66, Interior 1, San Miguel de Allende
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buchananjoyas/
Kathleen Cammarata
Kathleen is an oil painter and a draftsman of contemporary drawing. She has been an artist for 35 years and has taught in two museums and a university in the United States.
Contact: katcammarata@gmail.com
Website: www.kcammarata.com
Erica Daborn
Erica was born in England and received my MFA from the Royal, College of Art, London. She moved to the United States in 1984 and permanently to Mexico in 2015. Her recent solo show “Diálogos con la Madre Tierra” was exhibited at Centro Cultural El Nigromante Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 2017 and at Clark University, Worcester, MA in 2016.
Her previous body of work “Interplay: An Artist’s Dialogue with Photography” showed at Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA; the Turner Center for the Arts, Valdosta, GA; and the Olin College Fine Art Gallery in Needham, MA. Her most significant solo exhibitions have been at the University of Denver; Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago; Sherry Frumkin Gallery and Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum. In 2008 her drawing “Interplay: Carafe” was purchased by the British Museum. “Dialogues With Mother Earth” has received support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Berkshire Taconic Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
Contact: dabornstudio@gmail.com
Website: www.ericadaborn.com http://dialogueswithmotherearth.org
Jane Dill
Jane Dill is an internationally known calligrapher who has spent over 30 years working as a freelance lettering artist specializing in commercial hand lettering for headlines, product identity, wine labels, and corporate logos (including the Galeria San Francisco).
Since moving to San Miguel de Allende in 2012, Jane has been taking her lettering to a new and exciting level, combining it with painting and using calligraphy and lettering as design elements in her mixed media works. Jane also teaches a monthly Mixed Media, Texture & Mark Making class, and a new Collage, Color & Symbols class at the Galeria San Francisco’s new Art Workshops space.
Contact: Jane Dill Design, janedilldesign@gmail.com
Website: www.janedill.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco at #1 San Francisco , San Miguel de Allende, GTO, Mexico
Marcela Evans
Marcela studied Graphic Design at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, and later took several workshops in Textile Design.
She received an MFA in Visual Effects from The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She worked as a Graphics Designer at Walter Landor & Associates in San Francisco. As an Art Director and Senior Artist for Broderbund Software, The Learning Company and Mattel Interactive, she was responsible for the creative development of award-winning educational software, such as: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Print Shop, Kid Pix and Prince of Persia.
She is returning to her roots as a fine artist by painting one of the benches for Audubon’s Wild Arts Festival.
Contact: marcela@evansplace.com
Leah Feldon
Leah’s photographs have appeared in magazines, been transposed into best selling greeting cards, and exhibited in New York’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum and galleries in the USA and Mexico. Her most recent exhibit, “REFLEJOS” was presented at San Miguel’s Centro Cutural El Nigromante Bellas Artes during July thru Nov 2015. Her work is also featured in The Other Face of Mexico, a full-color art book commissioned by, and sold at, San Miguel’s Mask Museum. She is also a best-selling author and former TV host, reporter, and spokesperson.
Contact: Leahfeldon@gmail.com
Website: Leahfeldonphotography.com
Luisa Field
Working with clay has always been a part of Luisa’s life, since she first saw it being formed in Puebla, Mexico as a child. At eight years old, she was fortunate to attend classes in NYC at the Greenwich House Pottery, which was around the corner from where she grew up in Greenwich Village. Surrounded by potters of all ages at this incredible institution – and inspired by them over the years – she had hoped to become a professional potter, but she needed to earn a steady income. According to her parents, both artists, art as not the path. So she became an Early Childhood Educator.
Over her many years of teaching and traveling, clay was always a part of her life. Wherever I was she managed to find a clay studio. Clay is what finally brought her to San Miguel as she had always known about the Instituto. Now at an independent studio, she is focusing more on sculpture than wheel throwing.
Contact: agnini38@gmail.com
Susan Fiori
Susan is primarily a metals artist. She makes small enclosures that reflect her feelings and beliefs about nature, self, her world, her dreams.
Contact: fiori.susan@gmail.com
Website: susanfioriart.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco at #1 San Francisco , San Miguel de Allende, GTO, Mexico.
Alan Goldfarb
Alan is an American craftsperson who spent 25 years blowing glass in Burlington Vermont. He is currently living in San Miguel de Allende and working in wood. His pieces are included in several public and private collections including: Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Corning Museum of Glass and the George and Dorothy Saxe Collection.
Contact: goldfarb.alan@gmailcom
Website: Studio del Toro
Elaine Grenier
Elaine has worked in clay for over 30 years and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia PA in 1999. She currently lives and works in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Each ceramic piece she creates is one of a kind. All are interpretations of the patterns and shapes found everywhere around us, from the smallest seeds and shells to the grandest cloud formations. Clay is the medium of her choice because it has qualities ranging from mud to stone-like hardness, offering many opportunities to alter structure and surface at each stage. The development of each piece takes advantage of intentional and unintentional changes that are edited and refined as work progresses from the initial idea to the completed form.
Website: www.ElaineGrenier.com
Leigh Hayes
Leigh lives in both San Miguel, Mexico and Chapel Hill, NC. Throughout his career as a chemical engineer, he maintained a passion for the visual and sensual beauty of fine art glass. He began glass blowing in 1999 at Urban Glass in NYC and continued in apprenticeships with acclaimed glass artists such as Robin Mix and Mike Hatch. Because of their visual clarity and rich, deep colors, he grew fond of working with transparent colors, building on this fondness by studying Venetian style techniques at the Pilchuck School, founded by glass artist Dale Chihuly, in Washington state in 2013. His work is represented in several galleries, including the Gallery on Madison outside DC and Liberty Arts in Durham, NC.
Contact: leigh075@gmail.com
Studio and gallery: Liberty Arts Sculpture Studio www.libertyartsnc.org
Thomas Humphrey
Thomas photographs people. All of his photos are taken in available light and none are posed. He moves about with his camera for hours at a time and photographs whatever attracts him.
Bruce Janklow
Bruce became a photographer in earnest in March 1955 when he received a 35-millimeter Kodak Pony camera for his tenth birthday. At the urging of his father Leonard Janklow, a noteworthy visual artist, Bruce began to capture images of his surroundings and developed and printed them in a small darkroom in the basement of the family’s home.
Bruce combines his love for travel, authentic cultures, nature, and photography. Focusing principally on people and landscapes he has traveled extensively to places such as India, Myanmar, Nepal, Georgia, Armenia, Mexico, Guatemala, Sicily, Scotland and the Mississippi Delta and Appalachian regions of the United States to capture images. His goal is to go beyond documenting the physical reality of places to introduce an impressionistic component that stimulates the viewer to have feelings and reactions, creating a powerful emotional reality. This means communicating the texture, movement, noise, silence, beauty and grit of these places. Bruce has had both museum and gallery shows featuring his work and collectors in the U.S., Mexico and Europe.
Contact: beejay455@gmail.com
Website: www.brucejanklow.com
Rohana Laing
Rohana is a Canadian artist who spends winters painting and drawing in Mexico. A graduate of the four-year program at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University), Rohana spent many years making batik wall hangings, prints, acrylic and oil paintings. She taught drawing, textile design and design at Kwantlen University. She has exhibited her art in many countries but now mainly in Canada and Mexico.
Contact: rohana@shaw.ca
Website: www.rohanart.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco at #1 San Francisco , San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Alberto Lenz
Alberto is a sculptor, painter and jewelry designer, linked with geometric art and constructivism. He was selected to participate in the VIII Bienial of Monterrey FEMSA, one of the most prestigious events of contemporary Mexican art. His work has been exhibited in thirty solo exhibitions and fifty group exhibitions in Mexico, United States, Canada, Spain, France and Venezuela.
Galleries: Galería Intersección Arte Contemporáneo, Fábrica La Aurora Local 18A, San Miguel de Allende (sculpture and painting). http://interseccionart.com. Galería Atotonilco, San Miguel de Allende (jewelry). www.folkartsanmiguel.com
David Leonardo
David was born and raised in Mexico City and received a degree and employment in International Relations. However, he had also painted since his teens, and eventually headed to the acclaimed San Carlos Academy of Art to study mural painting with Arnold Belkin and other masters. Belkin, who went on to achieve international acclaim, conveyed to Leonardo a belief in the power of culture to have a positive influence, on individuals, groups and even nations. All togethern Leonardo has painted twelve major murals, five of them in San Miguel de Allende at such places as the City Hall, Public Library and the famous art and language school, El Instituto de Allende. His themes range from the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, the Mexican Revolution with Spain and the History of the Aztecs, among others.
His work has been shown and collected internationally. He has participated in over 38 solo and collective exhibitions in galleries and museums in Mexico, the United States and Nicaragua. One of his most recent honors is having work acquired by the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California.
Website: www.facebook.com/davidleonardochc
Gallery: Instituto Allende, Ancha de San Antonio No. 22, San MIguel de Allende
Heidi LeVasseur
Heidi is an artist and teacher, and co-owner of Casa de la Cuesta folk art gallery and mask museum, Another Face of Mexico, and Casa de la Cuesta Bed and Breakfast in San Miguel de Allende. She primarily works in clay sculpture and textiles, but all aspects of exploring the traditions of Mexican folk art inspire her creativity.
Contact: 415-149-1466
Joan Majerus
Joanie has been working with mosaics for several years after being inspired by taking a class from Dulce Heinrich in San Miguel de Allene. Her art works mostly include 3-D mosaic projects, such as butterflies and birds, and she has created table-tops as well.
Contact: joanmajerus@yahoo.com
William Martin
Internationally recognized artist William Martin took up oil painting in Los Angeles at the age of twenty. Through more than forty years experience portraying the beauty surrounding him, he has honed his abilities as a Master Painter. Although most recognized for his classical oil still life paintings, many employing Old Master techniques, he possesses the range and ability to paint in diverse styles. His current body of work reflects his love of the Western genre.
Martin’s work has been shown in Aspen, Beverley Hills, Carmel, Palm Springs, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and is found in private collections around the world. He divides his time between San Miguel de Allende and the American Southwest. When not painting, he enjoys playing blues harmonica and guitar.
Contact: wmartinoils@gmail.com
Website: www.williammartinfineart.com
Marti McGinnis
Marti McGinnis, like many other artists, arrived at her art when she was busy doing something else. Hers is a happy story. Her unique point of view is the association of her art with happiness… but, while It may seem light hearted and bubbly, it embraces very deep subjects and reaches far into the fields of quantum physics and spiritual connectedness.
Marti has written and illustrated several books, paintings on canvas and wood and has a line of fabrics, apparel, custom boots and home furnishings. From her ranch in the hills of San Miguel de Allende, she continues to pursue her happy art every day.
Websites: www.happyart.com facebook.com/happyart
Anado McLauchlin
Anado is a Assemblage Artist and the Curator/Director of the Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery located 5 kilometers from San Miguel in La Cieneguita . The Gallery is open by appointment only and is situated amongst the Casa de Las Ranas Compound. Tours are available to see the whole compound.
Contact: anado@madebyanado.com
Websites: www.chapelofjimmyray.typepad.com
Raé Miller
Raé’s fascination with light has been a recurring theme in her work, where she uses translucent layering and excavation techniques to capture and express it. Raé’s paintings and monotypes have been shown and collected internationally, in galleries, and in public installations.
Contact: rae.miller.artist@gmail.com
Website: http://www.raemiller.com
Gallery: Raé Miller Studio/Gallery/Encaustic Workshops, Fabrica La Aurora Local 14-C, San Miguel de Allende
Gordon Morris
Gordon studied illustration at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. Upon graduating, he was employed by the Canadian Broadcasting Company as an illustrator for a nightly news program. With the CBC he learned to use graphic computers at a time when computers cost over a million dollars and only a few people could create with them. As a result heI was able to move to Hong Kong, then New York City, Chicago and finally Los Angeles where he started his own company at a time when Photoshop had pretty well taken over the graphics and illustration field. In 2006 he retired to San Miguel and began oil painting. He still uses the computer to create a reference for the images he paints, which are usually very realistic in technique but surrealistic in concept.
Contact: gordon@gordart.com
Website: www.gordart.com
Maureen Allesia Morris
Maureen was born in Vancouver, Canada, and studied art and design at Ryerson School of Design in Toronto, where she obtained her BAA. She and her husband, Gordon Morris, have lived in Hong Kong, China, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles where her creativity was guided by experiences and surroundings. Her love of ceramics has taken her to Lill Street Studios in Chicago, Santa Monica College in Los Angeles, and other studios along the way.
Maureen lives in San Miguel de Allende, where she creates geometric and organic ceramic forms influenced by her environment. She works in La Luz at the studio of Blanca Garcia, using traditional firing methods in gas and electric kilns as well as pit firing, raku and naked raku techniques and create some of her own glazes. She was a finalist in the first National Ceramic Art competition in Tijuana, Mexico; her piece was displayed at the Centro Cultura de Tijuana.
Contact: Gor-maur@hotmail.com
Hope Palmer
Contemporary Art Historian and artist whose art quickens to the beauty of nature and the human who dwells within. Each painting speaks to an individual moment in time.
Contact: hopeepal@gmail.com
Gallery & Studio: Estudio Arte Esperanza. Centro de Arte y Deseno Fabrica de la Aurora, Casa 3, inside Zona Grafica office, upstairs
Evelyne Pouget
Evenlyne began painting in 1992, after realizing there must have been a reason why her teacher, Baba Muktanananda, used to call her “The Painter” — although until then, she had never picked up a paint brush or ever once thought about a career as an artist.
Born in Paris, she lived for a time in Rome, India, and New York City, and now divides her time between Woodstock, NY and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Inspired by the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley and Mexico, as well as the many extraordinary people and animals she has met in her travels, her paintings embody the three aspects of life that are most meaningful to her: beauty, soul, and the quest for heartfelt connection.
Most recently, her work has been suffused with the spirit, sacredness, and color of Mexico, my subjects being a mix of street vendors, elders, pets and costumed dancers from various indigenous traditions.
Contact: EvelynePouget@gmail.com
Website: www.EvelynePouget.com
Adrian Ross
Adrian Ross creates paper mache sculpture, using mixed media to create intricate representations of birds. He made his first birds in 1980 for a competition in Vancouver, Canada. He was really just having fun, however he won first prize and was commissioned for an installation of a flock of birds for a new children’s hospital. He continued making birds and held a show of his work once a year for three years, before moving to New York and going on to other things. He started making his birds again eight years and hasn’t stopped and is still having fun. His birds are sold exclusively at Camino Silvestre in San Miguel de Allende.
Gallery: Camino Silvestre, Zacateros 46 and Correo 43
Marisa Ross
As an artist, Marisa’s inspiration has always been Nature and she paints to communicate the energy of natural forms. She loves the simplicity of the sumi-e style of painting. Using hand-ground ink, she seeks to depict the essence of a subject with minimal strokes of my brush.
Contact: Kokoro Studio, San Miguel de Allende (415) 120-0793
Lavinia Ruiz
If you are an artist and think you are not, or ignore it, it’ll follow you forever. If you are lucky, it will follow you anyway.
Contact: lavinia@laviniasartframes.com
Sheridan Sansegundo
Among her many talents, Sheridan is a writer, artist and the creator of the weekly crossword puzzle in San Miguel’s Atencion newspaper. Her most recent exhibition of her work was at the Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery, in San Miguel de Allende.
Contact: ssansegundo@aol.com
Susan Santiago
Susan Santiago, founder of Galeria San Francisco, moved to San Miguel de Allende upon retiring from teaching art in Los Angeles for over 25 years. Susan has exhibited in galleries on both the East and West coasts and was represented by Orlando Gallery in Los Angeles for 28 years, and by Magenta Gallery, in San Miguel de Allende for 2 years. She opened Galeria San Francisco in 2016, where she currently exhibits her work along with 12 other artists who reside in San Miguel. Galeria Francisco offers ongoing workshops in drawing, mixed media, and collage and Susan teaches Acrylic painting at the gallery throughout the year.
Contact: galeriasanfranciscosma@gmail.com
Website: www.galeriasanfrancisco.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco at #1 San Francisco , San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Linda Soberman
Linda is an internationally recognized printmaker, installation artist and educator with studios in Michigan and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her work is widely represented in national and international venues, including recent solo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte, Queretaro, MX, “The Empty Chairs” at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, MI, and her recent “Women and Architectural Objects”” at the Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, MX.
She translates her ideas into a variety of media: printmaking, photography, found-object sculpture and installation. Her recent multi-media work embraces themes of remembrance and the universality of loss in “The Empty Chairs” and women’s role in contemporary culture, in “Women an “Architectural Objects”.
She has received the Lifetime Achievement for Jewish Woman in the Arts, and inclusion in the book, Jewish Women in the Arts. International residencies include Scuola di Grafica, Venice, Italy; Sanbao Institute, Jingdezhen, China; and Proyecto ‘ace in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For the past three years she has been a visiting artist and resident at The Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Linda has a MFA in Fine Art Photography and taught fine art photography at the University of Michigan and The College for Creative Studies. She continues to teach workshops in the United States and Mexico.
Contact: lindasoberman@gmail.com
Website: www.lindasoberman.com
Carol Schifman
Carol has been creating art most of my life for gifting family and friends. She now devotes more time to her process of translating depth and expanse of the natural world onto canvas, conjuring both the exquisite and astonishing qualities of our every day experience of nature. She desires viewers of her paintings to enter into the distance, the point where land and sky melt, where there are no defining lines between anything.
Contact: caschifman.company@gmail.com
Robert Merrill Sweeny
Robert is a full time artist and permanent resident of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He earned a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and am represented by the Galeria San Francisco in San Miguel.
Contact: rmsweeny@hotmail.com
Website: www.robertmerrillsweeny.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco at #1 San Francisco , San Miguel de Allende, GTO, Mexico.
Richard Trumbull
The paintings of Richard Trumbull have been shown in Mexico and California in a wide variety of exhibitions and solo shows including:
Emerging San Diego Artists (Robson Gallery); juried into the San Diego Museum of Art: “All California Exhibit”; juried into Masters of the Moment, San Diego County Art Association (with two accepted entries, “Julia Dancing”, an 11 inch bronze sculpture, and “Martha”, an oil portrait winning First Prize); Festival of Arts, East County Art Association (oil portrait “Silk” winning Honorable Mention); two solo exhibitions at Warner’s Ranch; juried into six annual San Diego Portrait Society shows (including three award winning portraits); Southwestern College gallery; Boehm Gallery; seven exhibitions at Market Street Group; San Diego Art Walk. He has been juried into seven San Diego Art Institute exhibitions.
Since opening his studio in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, his work has been exhibited at Pergola Gallery, Teatro Angela Peralta, La Fenestra, Manantial, Bordello Gallery and a month long inaugural solo exhibition at the new Ambos Gallery in Puerto Vallarta. He currently shows, and is represented by, the prestigous Zoho Gallery in San Miguel de Allende.
Website: www.richardtrumbull.com
Gallery: Zoho Gallery, Fabrica la Aurora , 16C, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Diane Varney
Diane is a trained botanist who brings her love of nature into her art. Humans and nature are a recurring theme in her work. She’s lived in San Miguel for 9 years, and in Mexico for over 20 years. She rode her bicycle around the world for 2 years and has walked over 2,500 miles in Spain and France over the past 5 years. She wrote a book about spinning fancy yarn with a spinning wheel.
Contact: dianevarney@gmail.com 415.103.1590 Studio visits welcome.
Website: http://www.dianevarney.com
Lane VanDoren
Lane is a highly sought-after artist who has made a living by producing a variety of artworks in the private and public sector. He enjoys the challenge of working in context of existing architecture and natural settings. He transforms the physical environment by connecting human function with natural environment. The end result is a fabrication of distinct architectural accents, sculptural elements, lighting, and art that offer a subtle invitation to pleasure, to treasure, and to delight.
Lane and his son, Alex, are the owners of Van Doren Art Studio in San Miguel de Allende. In their studio they create commissioned metal artworks and host workshops to share their expertise with others who are interested in learning metal art.
Contact: vandorenmetalart@gmail.com
Mila Villasana
Mila is a digital artist and designer from Vermont currently residing in San Miguel de Allende. After an amazing experience working with the Audubon de Mexico, she developed a strong passion for the environment. She has been involved in the Zero Waste movement for a year now, a global effort to reduce the production of plastic and waste in the world. Her current focus is developing a program dedicated to teaching ways to lead a more environmentally-conscious life.
As an artist, she plans to someday become a professional animator. Through animation she hopes to create visual pieces with messages about issues that have influenced her life such as immigration, women’s rights, permaculture, and animal rights.
Contact: o.kami.artwork@gmail.com
Karen von Felten
Karen’s artwork is rooted in drawing, employed to explore the emotional space between personal memories and metaphors for life’s universal challenges like fear, adventure, change, grief, the past, and the future. Her work is in search of form, light, color and space striving to make images with emotional power. With her figurative and expressionist leanings, artists such as Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, and Mark Rothko have influenced her work. In addition, the Bay Area Figurative artists, especially Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Nathan Oliviera, and Jay Defeo have inspired her artwork. Her work has been exhibited and collected in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Australia.
Website: www.karenvonfelten.com
Gallery: KvF Gallery, Privada de 5 de Mayo, #11, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. 1-5 pm, Saturday or by appointment
Elizabeth Watt
As a still life photographer Elizabeth has always been drawn to the qualities of objects; why certain things resonate with a ‘quintessence’ or timeless beauty or ‘thingness’. Very often a function of patina, age and imperfection or some iconic, everyday mundane presence—think of Dali’s clocks, Morandi’s pitchers, Magritte’s pipe, Weston’s peppers, Wright Morris’ forks, Penn’s cigarette butts—there is a universality to these objects. Then, by removing the subjects from any context, photographing against a black background, a certain ‘object presence’ is created.
Website: www.elizabethwatt.com
Wendy J. Weber
After a long career in corporate America, I married my college love and we moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Here I am following my dream to paint; starting with classes from Maestro William Martin, and continuing with Maestro Edgar Soberón. While I am a realist-impressionist, painting in oil, I have moved into abstract and multi-media, playing with color.
Influences are many: from plein air, to impressionists, portraitists, to my talented husband’s photography. I continue to call myself a student and will always.
Contact: weberwj47@gmail.com
Deborah White
My paintings are about connections. Connecting in a unique and personal way with a place or an event. I try to convey the es-sence of a place through color, form and texture. Incorporating pieces of newspapers or other printed materials collected during my travels adds concreteness and a touchable authenticity to the work.
I enjoy intertwining texture and many layers within a painting. It is only when these layers feel completely interwoven and connected, that the painting is complete.
Contact: deborahwhite@me.com
Website: www.deborah–white.com
Linda Whynman
My husband, Saul, and I retired to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, over 13 years ago from New York. I have been involved in art and art education my entire professional career. I taught art from kindergarten to masters degree programs and was the Arts in Education Director in New York state bringing arts-related programs from New York City to upstate schools. My areas of media expertise include watercolor and computer graphics. I recently co-authored a book with Lori Topinka, featuring our watercolor illustrations of the historic churches of San Miguel.
Contact: vellum1@mac.com
Website: www.capillasma.org