Lee Holcomb Holcomb is a high school French teacher, who has lived in this area most of his life. Currently, he serves on the 1078 Gallery's exhibition committee. He writes: “I really never considered myself an artist. I take pictures in a small attempt to capture the beauty around me. I have spent the last couple of years trying to force myself to stop, look about, and take a few moments to appreciate my surroundings. My photos, I hope, capture the awe I feel when out in nature.”
Logan Kruidenier Kruidenier writes: “I seek to create art that illustrates a narrative and a strong emotional state. Many of these narratives reflect upon moral conflicts, such as those between lust and love or optimism and fatalism. However, I am most captivated by scenes of intense calm. That is, I am more interested in the rise of tension and the post-conflict than I am in the actual point of conflict. I believe that an illustration is strongest when it leads the viewer to infer an ending without directly showing one. For materials, I utilize—often in tandem—colored and graphite pencils, pen and ink, and acrylic paints. My main influences stem from people and situations that I have come into contact with, but also from artists such as the Japanese manga artist Taiyo Matsumoto, the Belgian illustrator Sam Vanallemeersch, and musicians such as Bradford Cox (Deerhunter, Atlas Sound) and Southern California-based The Growlers.”
Elizabeth Newman Kuiper Newman Kuiper resides in Chico and earned her MFA in photography and MA in mixed media/photography from CSU Chico and her BA in art/theatre from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She has been on the board of the 1078 Gallery since 2009 and has served in various capacities at the 1078 since 2003. She has held numerous positions including gallery director and curator for Southwest Center for Arts and Crafts in San Antonio and curator/preparator for Avenue 9 Gallery in Chico and for Laxson Fine Art Gallery at CSU Chico. Newman Kuiper has had many solo shows in Chico venues and in Lake Wales and Tampa, Florida. She has been in many group shows in the U.S. including ones in Tampa, Sacramento, San Antonio, Chicago, Turlock, Redding, Philadelphia, and in Whiteville, North Carolina. Her work can be found in over a dozen private collections.
Mariam Pakbaz Pakbaz writes: “My picture is revealed through concealment. I've buried drawings within drawings. I have excavated images from my mind. I have dug up the bones of previous sketches, I have sifted for an aesthetic of combination, imagination, and repossession. The crafting of each of my drawings is based on three conditions: the characteristics of the medium, stray thoughts and mistakes. The image is malleable from beginning to end, it changes a minute slower than the speed of thought. Several drawings reside in each piece. They are erased, built up, painted over and rediscovered until I am satisfied.”
Amber Palmer Palmer is a Northern California native whose memories are alive with images of expansive skies, tall grass, symmetrically planted orchards, rice marshes, and rivers. Her water colors are influenced by the mood and atmosphere of changing seasons. When she paints, she reaches a state of reverie and meditation. Palmer, who has an MA and MFT, has a 30-year private practice in which she regularly employs art therapy.
Daniel Papke Papke writes: “I aim to make paintings that I wish existed. I believe in beauty, and am always compelled towards its impossibility. Oil painting offers a way to ask the subtle questions of the human drama, those topics not concrete enough for rhetoric; where words trail off and imagery surfaces. Paintings are the morning after a dream, when trying to find the words rubs away the vision.”
Anastasia Samoylova Anastasia Samoylova’s Illinois/One Percent project is focused on the impact of non-sustainable use of resources on the natural landscape. Initially, this project began as a response to the new environment, since rural Central Illinois was the place of the artist's relocation from highly urban Moscow. The vastness of crop fields appeared fascinating and highly artificial at the same time; then came the discovery that the natural Illinois landscape has been on the verge of extinction, and less then one percent of the original prairie was left unaffected - most of the land converted to large industrial farms. This series of multiple-exposure images are the result of exploring and closely examining the forest and prairie preserves of Central Illinois, where each exposure overlaps with tens of others made from another focal point over a certain period of time. The images seek to reference and expand upon the traditions of landscape art, and contribute to the contemporary disputes in sustainability and ecology.
Jennifer Tancreto Tancreto is currently an MFA student in printmaking at California State University, Chico. Her studio practice is focused on collecting and recording information and then reorganizing it through printmaking, books, and installations. Working through references to maps and atlases, she draws upon familiar and common tools for locating ourselves in a place. Upon closer examination the work reveals nothing concrete. Instead, it asks questions about our relationship to information, to place, and to the spaces we inhabit.
