DRAWING

Nadyia duff

Nadyia Duff creates eleborate narratives using her method of drawing and painting. She combines the painterly artistic styles with the realistic. Every layer of her traditional work is a unique and uncalculated build- up of mediums and colors. Together, the juxtaposition of roughly drawn background imagery and the detailed subject imagery creates vast visual narratives.

My work is about telling stories and “snapshots” of time. A lot of the imagery we are exposed to in media and in life, are curated snapshots that often do not tell us the complete story. However, it is up to us as viewers to interpret it in our own way. Many of the subjects in my portraits are strangers who give me creative freedom to use their image. I create narratives with their images by placing them in backgrounds curated by me. I make up a visual story that the viewer can interpret in their own way. The backgrounds are randomly chosen and based on my world view. I depict them with a minimalist style to keep the viewers eye moving around the subject. The backgrounds are often out of perspective and simplified to contrast with a realistic but stylized figure since these people I choose to draw/paint do exist but the space behind them isn’t real.

JEWELRY cathi rivera

Formerly an award winning Art Educator for MDCPS, Cathi Rivera has been creating Art to Wear and Fine Jewelry for 43 years. Her work has been exhibited by galleries, art festivals & museums across the United States and is in many private collections around the world. Cathi’s work is inspired by travel, nature, water and light. It includes glass, silver, stone, base metals, beads, and found objects. It tells a story, captures a moment, and inspires remembrance of people and places that have touched her life.

Catherine Rivera, The Flowers that Remain, pendant, 1 x .75 fused glass, silver, pearl, 26” satin ribbon Detail

Luminescence, botanical and marine organic forms inspire me to create my unique sculptural pieces of wearable art. Incorporating fused glass, pearls, clay and bone I am able to capture a moment in nature. As a metal artist, I create fluid forms that appear soft, warm and inviting in a usually cold, rigid material. Fusing the dichroic glass in each piece is reminiscent of the iridescence of butterfly wings, tropical fish, sunsets, coral reefs, and tropical Florida. Pieces are fabricated using traditional metalsmithing techniques with silver, brass, bronze, and copper. Other materials are collected from the many places I travel, African bone, Angkor Wat clay tablets, Venetian glass, Tibetan sand, and Egyptian rocks. Each piece tells a special story and shares a spiritual connection with another place and time. Each piece is a wearable work of Art. When wearing one of my pieces, others are drawn closer to examine and talk about the work, and that’s where the story begins.

PAINTING

Lizzie Hunter is an artist and art-educator based in South Florida. She has proudly served as a Magnet Fine Art Instructor at South Miami Senior High Magnet School for the Arts since 2007, and in 2020 she was appointed as an FIU Dual Enrollment Courtesy Lecturer in Art. Her work is included in several Florida International University art collections, including the Reagan Presidential House, and Fros Art Museum’spermanent collection. Lizzie has explored a variety of subjects and concepts over the years, investigating each one in series. These works all share the common thread of capturing the essence of a moment or location, while recording the joy of pushing materials around on a surface. The pieces oftentimes reveal the history of how they were created, featuring thicklyapplied layers of buttery paint in some areas and revealing thin under-paintings in others. Most recently, plein air landscape painting has been Lizzie’s focus. The urgency of capturing fleeting light and shifting subjects pairs well with her intuitive, energetic approach to painting, oftentimes resorting to directly applying and scraping pigment with gloved fingers.

Lizzie Hunter, Early Riser, , 9 x 12 in., 2021

PLEIN AIR PAINTING

Lizzie Hunter, Shark Valley, 9 x 12, 2021

Maria Lantigua, Within, 2021 Maria Lantigua, In the Mangroves, 2021

MARIA LANTIGUA

My photographic montages focus on the environment, especially the unique ecosystem of wetlands in the Everglades and the diverse ocean landscapes throughout Florida. I use my images to create a photo montage that heighten our awareness to the inherent relationship we have with our landscapes. I do this by combining images of both land and oceanic environments, depicting their importance and the connection we share with them. This imagery allows me to connect with nature and open my eyes to how we treat our environment. As an artist, I feel that using my photographs will bring awareness to how fragile our natural environment is and why we should all come together in playing a role to ensure the conservation of these natural wonders. I was first introduced to the fragility of our environment while studying the design of the “Surrounding Islands” project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. I began to understand the environmental impacts that occur in our oceans because of how people misuse our environment. These artists created artwork that embraces our connection with the environment and, in turn, lit my passion for conserving the wellbeing of our oceans. Therefore, this art is made with the aim of rethinking our relationship with nature.

ANGELICA LONDONo

I engage post-conceptual methods to address the tensions between meta-reality and technology in contemporary art. I am also interested in revealing and generating feminist narratives, as well as, exploring generational issues through addressing these tensions.

Ocean, 2019 Video https://vimeo.com/579605450

Angelica Londono’s work was a judge’s choice award for new media.