Photography Exhibition Winners - October 2017-January 2018

Twenty-six photographers were chosen to participate in Fusion Art’s third quarterly group exhibition. All the photographers who participated in the competition have uniquely creative talents but the winners chosen exemplify a mastery in their chosen craft. Below are the biographies and/or artist’s statements along with the artist’s websites.

Please visit the Photography exhibition page and contact the artists directly for purchases or to see more of their work.

Congratulations again to all the winners and thank you for sharing your incredible talent with us.

My passion in photography, and in life, is to make the invisible, visible. I take the everyday ordinary patterns in life and change the way we see them, the way we feel them. I am interested in pure art from the camera, exploring ways of seeing the world through a camera lens. I create my art by painting with my camera! The capture screen (like film) in my digital camera is my canvas. The camera and lens are my brushes and the palette is whatever I find, or finds me, that has a good choice of colors to create the art I see in my mind. The art I am creating today is mainly about Motion, Time and Color. I am excited and motivated by the unknown and the process that creates the peaceful, simple, calming, soothing art relaxes the inner viewer. My original fine art photographs are created in the camera at the time of exposure. None of my art pieces have had any post manipulation. I do some post-processing to each image to bring out the colors. I love what I do!

To see more of Gar’s work please visit his website.

As with most of the general populace, Julie spends the majority of her days in front of a monitor, with deadlines looming; white light burning her eyes; and, stress eating away her life on a GOOD day at work. By day, Julie is a virtual hybrid of graphic artist and website developer, able to switch between her artistic and technical hats at the client’s whim. A rare breed in the world of the web. By night (and, morning, and any minute available), her camera comes out and she jumps into her alter ego of wildlife and landscape photographer. Photography is her way of escaping that work stress. She can take her camera and disappear into the woods, or the city, or the backyard, listening for familiar sounds of birds and critters. Looking for that one image that most people never see. She knows she’s blessed with the ability to take a little time here and there to pursue her passion – as well as having a family of VERY understanding people. Her goal as a photographer and artist is to share that passion with others. To facilitate a smile, or genuine awe, from another person; to open their eyes to what is in the world around them if they simply stop and look. That is one of her joys in life.

To see more of Julie’s work please visit her website.

Bessie Baudin is a multidisciplinary artist. She is a teacher in audio-visual cinema school, event photographer and videographer. She made her first steps in the field of image as a light engineer on shooting of clips, shorts films and features films. Her previous photographic work named “Allegories” in which she had the audacity to create scenes of classic paintings of the great masters from the 16th to the 19th centuries, has already been exhibited in France, art gallery and festival (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cce450ZfjRo). Her new photo creation “Chamanes” is a fanciful and mystical vision of a shamanic ritual following the Siberian traditions.

To see more of Bessie’s work please email her directly.

Deborah Bucy has a creative spirit and seeks to find overlooked moments of beauty hidden in plain sight. As a flight attendant, she constantly travels throughout North America and has used her photography as a way to document her explorations and bring her friends along with her. Armed with her smartphone camera and a sense of adventure, she takes photos that allow her viewers to connect with the moment the photo was taken. Whether a comical sight, a serene sunset, or an action-filled shot of a downtown street, she aims to transport her viewers and evoke emotional reactions.

To see more of Deborah’s work please email her directly.

After retiring from spending over 40 years in the scientific and management fields, Marcia became interested in exploring her creative side. During the subsequent years, Marcia began to learn the possibilities involved in drawing and painting. She rapidly discovered that no single material or set of techniques satisfied her completely.

Today, Marcia uses her art to display her vision – her love of nature, it’s beauty, patterns, and incredible range of possibilities. – her love of the man-made, the power and possibilities of man’s structures and their interactions with the world around them. – her love of the non-physical, the possibilities of what never existed, the emotions of the inanimate, the communication of that which has no mouth or external sound. Her art has lead to the desire to show existence through the senses and emotions and has led her to concentrate on three forms of artistic endeavor: non-representational painting, her ‘fractured fotographs’, and views she captures through ‘realistic’ digital photographs.

In her painting, she use several mediums such as acrylics, inks, and watercolors, to create original work that conveys emotions, feelings and mood. The goals are to convey the reactions to the world and everything it contains. Marcia’s current work is based on creating layered works which use both texture and color to evoke ideas of what might be. The ‘fractured fotographs’ are computer manipulations of her ‘as taken’ photos to something that does not exist but is, instead, a changed form of beauty. She tries, through those pictures to reflect a more general truth about the subject and it’s interaction with the viewer. Marcia often tries to focus attention on parts of the whole that might not be noticed otherwise.

Over the years, her photography has focused more strongly on capturing the patterns around her: from nature; plants, animals, birds, flowers, trees and landscapes and from the man-made; structures such as buildings, unique industrial configurations, construction sites, and recreation sites such as golf courses or children’s playgrounds, and outdoor sculptures. Most recently, her photography has focused upon the patterns and shapes of the world around her, rather than just capturing the physical nature of the object.

To see more of Marcia’s work please visit her website.

I’m self-taught with a good base learned working in a professional lab long before Photoshop. I really appreciate the level of control Digital offers. It’s like comparing a computer guided laser to an old dull rusty wood saw you might find in an old barn in rural Vermont. Many of my images are a visual “Whose line is it anyway?” The “BOLTS” image was a picture of the bolts securing a light pole in a parking lot. …If nothing else, I really love doing it!

To see more of Woody’s work please email him directly.

An interest in strong images that build a moving narrative began with stacks of National Geographics in my grandparents’ attic. Along the way I’ve been influenced by most every photograph, painting, or graphic image I’ve seen. As an artist, I approach the world as a flâneur, looking for images that are intuitive and of the moment…if my photographs were words, I would like them to be Haikus.

My work comes out of my training and work as an architect and as a sociologist; both create a combined vision of how individuals and society interact with our built and natural environments, an ecology of our culture. Through my camera I seek to capture specific details that isolate a strong graphic element, reveal what otherwise might not be seen, create an insight into our common humanity, and combine to tell a story that stirs unexpected feelings and enriches our lives.

My focus is on capturing images easily overlooked, showing the present and preserving the past through photography. Currently I am working on a series inspired by Thomas Church’s Course of Empire and Byron’s Childe Harold that records artifacts of man’s attempts to tame the natural world and how these survive, (or don’t) over time. In ruins we see the intersection of man’s striving to conquer nature and nature’s response: converting indoors into outdoors. To keep our fast-changing world in perspective we must acknowledge that any creation decays over time.

To contribute to our artistic community, I have served on the Palm Springs Public Art Commission, the Board of the Riverside Art Foundation, and currently on the Board of the Artists Council of the Palm Springs Art Museum. I regularly collaborate and shoot around Southern California as a founding member of Fugawi Photographers.

To see more of Hunter’s work please visit his website.

Colin Killick currently resides in Melbourne, Australia. He obtained a Ph.D in geology and then embarked on a 25 year career with the New South Wales National Parks & Wildlife Service. In 2011 he left National Parks to accompany his diplomat wife, Wendy, on her 3 year posting attached the Australian Embassy in Moscow, Russia. On his return to Australia, he developed a particular interest in Photoshop and photoartistry. He has had numerous images published in ‘Living the Photoartistic Life’ and ‘Artists Downunder’ magazines. Colin’s wife has now secured a 3 year posting to Shanghai, China, commencing March 2018.

To see more of Colin’s work please visit his website.

Brady Lane’s photography is inspired by the area in which he spent most of his life so far. Beautiful landscapes marred by no people and dotted with historical buildings show the essence of life in the wilderness of northern New Mexico, where Brady grew up. Brady was first introduced to photography by his grandmother, who soon instilled in him a passion for transforming the natural world into a work of art. Now based in Denver, Colorado, Brady enjoys backpacking, mountain biking, and shooting macro and abstract images. Besides local landscapes, a few foreign travels have added intrigue and variety to his photographs.

“My goal is to capture ordinary things in a creative way to show a unique view of nature.”

To see more of Brady’s work please visit his website.

Bette Levine is known for her mix of digital photography and artistic techniques that compels the viewer to participate in the story created by the photo-art composition. She notes that she often asked what kind of photographer she is – nature, landscape, urban, portrait. Her reply is, “Yes, to all, because wherever I am, whatever the circumstances, I am looking for subjects to photograph that I can just sense will help me start a conversation.” Her most recent work overlays textures, multiple images, digital brush-work, and camera effects.

To see more of Bette’s work, please visit her website.

Barbara Mierau-Klein’s fine art images reflect her fascination with the beauty of color and light. Her artwork covers a wide variety of subjects, sometimes with whimsical elements, at times with a hint of the fantastical, often with elements of nature, always with intriguing color and light effects. Discovering the world of digital photo compositing a few years ago, Barbara fell in love with the creative possibilities. Layering multiple images, textures and effects feels like working with magic and allows her to design something unique and new that transforms and morphs the reality of the constituent parts. She hopes her art captures your imagination as well, resonates with you, and makes you pause and wonder if only for a moment. As a passionate landscape and nature photographer since her teenage years, many of the photos Barbara uses in her compositions are her own. Yet going wherever her inspiration of the day may take her, she also uses stock photos and relies on textures and artistic elements from others.

A third eye. Defined as a spiritual concept associated with enlightenment, I believe I have one. This figurative third eye views and interprets the physical elements of light, shapes, and colors beyond what is considered typical, mundane, or prevailing. It clarifies and removes all ambiguity to my visualizations. It is what motivates and creates. I have always been fascinated by the dichotomies or 180-degree differences in our existence: day / night, good / bad, love / hate, true / false. I believe we can define ourselves and all things under the basic categories of light and dark. It’s all in the interpretation. My subject matter is eclectic, and my interpretations are who I am. The goal is to provoke thought and not indifference. It is much easier for me to produce an image than to describe what I do and why I do it in words. If it were possible, I would have condensed all of the above down to a quote from Rene Magritte, whose work has been a tremendous influence: “Too often we tend to reduce what is strange to what is familiar. I intend to restore the familiar to the strange.”

To see more of Patrick’s work, please email him directly.

As a young woman, Nancy pursued several different mediums, including but not limited to, batik and weaving. While both allowed her to explore her love of color, design and texture, there was still something missing. After taking time off to raise a family, she began her study of photography at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. There she was able to hone her skills in the technical aspects of photography, while focusing on the use of color and light in her photographs. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Special Education, with an emphasis on behavioral theory and a master’s degree in Human Resource Development. She has utilized her educational background to teach both children and adults various methods in art.

In the past several years, she has participated in many on line exhibitions, Contemporary Art Gallery On line and Fusion Art, winning best of show on both websites. She has also exhibited in several brick and mortar shows, Black Box Gallery, Palm Beach Photographic Center and Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA). She recently won second place in the abstract category in an international juried show at the FMoPA, where the piece remains part of their permanent collection.

To see more of Nancy’s work, please visit her website.

Extraordinary Decisions integrates landscape photography with self portraiture. In this body of work each image is intended to stand alone and even more powerful when exhibited as a series. The intended message is to be one of exhilaration and freedom as a woman. As an artist, I understand the power of interpretation so I hope with these images to create an atmosphere where there is room for interpretation and the viewers own personal identification. Extraordinary Decisions is about being free to do whatever you want to do. My work encourages women to explore new places and be confident in doing so. There is a world of opportunity and pathways to find and create yourself.

Extraordinary Decisions was created for the contemporary art world.

To see more of Markelle’s work, please visit her website.

Caitlin Alexandra Parker is a passionate photographer who specializes in film and alternative photographic process. While known for using a distinctive and whimsical street photography style in most of her work, she primarily focuses on portraiture. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, she comes from a strong artistic background. Her father, a professional photographer, studied at the Chicago Art Institute and introduced her to film photography at an early age. She furthered her study by working with other professionals in the field at a photo lab in Northern Alabama over the course of four years. She has had various showings in galleries and art walks throughout the Southern United States.

To see more of Caitlin’s work, please visit her website.

In Catherine Pennington-Meyer’s art, she seeks to distil the essence of a subject and represent it through her own perspective. She enjoys the authenticity of abstraction, allowing expression with reduced constraint. Visitors to her exhibitions often express an immediate emotional connection to her work. This is true whether the artworks are abstract, realistic or photographic. For Catherine, this is a central focus, that her work is emotionally accessible, infused with feeling and that it speaks directly to the audience viewing it. Catherine is interested with the idea of her art as a ‘white space’ because not only are the canvases and walls upon which we hang our pieces, white spaces, waiting to be filled, but our very paintings and photographs are too. Each of us interprets what we see differently through our mood, our experiences and individuality. The eyes of the viewer(s) builds half of the picture. Catherine is fascinated by this cyclical relationship between artist and viewer and that by producing a piece of art, she is only the inception of its journey.

To see more of Catherine’s work, please visit her website.

Artist Statement:

“Da’Rrell creates the images, that he would like the viewer to see. Looking beyond the conspicuous is his artistic priority. The figure in the light, odd locations, what’s in, or not in the shadows? Relishing the challenge of presentation for the viewer, to be ushered into a conscious contemplative metamorphosis. His goal is to inspire those who see his work to discover the artistic value of the beautiful, unique, and infinite variations in the world around us.”

Biography:

Da’Rrell has been working as a Professional Visual Artist since 2006; and has been Internationally published as a Photographer, Painter, and Sculptor. He has perfected a unique artistic style that has become an intricate culmination of creativity and technical skill. He creates what he calls “slices of life”, artistic photographs, through his unique methods of light, angles, composition, and mastering various meticulously used editing technics. In 2007, EnoStyle Magazine placed Da’Rrell’s paintings and sculpted work in a two page published editorial entitled “Man on Fire: America’s Genius Sculptor in Residence”. Since then he’s been focusing his efforts on creating artistic photographs using his vast photography painting, and drawing, skills, which can be described as an art fusion.

To see more of Da’Rrell’s work, please visit his website.

Rafael Rosas is a Los Angeles-based architect who has recently began exploring the medium of photography as a way to document the architectural richness in and around the L.A. basin. With a BA in Architecture, he moved to Los Angeles to obtain a Masters in Architecture from the California State Polytechnic in Pomona, California. After settling his residence in this city for good -and with his knowledge in construction and architectural styles- a passion for photographing buildings and urban landscapes sparked. He understood the importance of documenting the visual state of buildings characterized by their Southern California locality and the graphic simplicity of their architectural language. Through social media -especially on Instagram- he began a visual essay of influential architectural features he stumbled upon while moving around the city. The unique stylized pictorial aesthetic in his images led him to be selected for a permanent joint-exhibition in the lobby of the Cal One Plaza Tower in downtown Los Angeles.

To see more of Rafael’s work, please visit his Instagram.

Susan Phoebe is a lawyer by education and profession and is at the cusp of starting her career in international diplomacy. Not many people in her circle know about her artistic inclinations as her photographs have always just been for her personal consumption until an artist friend invited and encouraged her to share her work in this platform for others to enjoy and possibly appreciate. She developed a passion for digital photography in her yearning to capture lasting images from her travels and thus considers herself a visual travel chronicler and memory preservationist. She has not undergone any training or education in her photography but hopes to establish herself and be equally successful in her expression as a diplomat and visual travel chronicler.

To see more of Susan’s work, please email her directly.

Photography has been a lifelong passion for Mark. He bought his first 35mm camera with money he saved from babysitting and lawn mowing when he was fourteen years old and explored color film photography for several years – shooting mostly Kodachrome slides of landscapes, architecture, and sports. Taking courses mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area in composition, printmaking, color techniques, studio, and fine art black-and-white photography, Mark used his training to establish a unique style that tries to take a creative and interesting approach to his images. Mark has worked professionally in areas like pro sports and landscape art. He enjoys both the technological as well as the artistic aspects of photography and strives to use both to create lasting images.

With a love of the outdoors, the sea and the mountains have always held a special inspiration for Mark. He’s taken photographs in many different countries in North America, Asia, and Europe with an eye towards capturing aspects of subjects that, while in plain sight, are not always noticed. In addition, he is very interested in low-light, long-exposure, and night photography. Today, he shoots digital images with Nikon cameras and lenses in both color and black-and-white. Mark is minimalistic in his use of retouching and digital editing, tending more to let the original image speak for itself rather than the extensive use of post processing.

To see more of Mark’s work, please visit his website.

Monique Sullivan earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Photography from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her work is inspired by her dreams, spirituality and creative idealism. Her range of artworks includes painting, photography, printmaking, installation and video. Her artistic influences are works from artists like Andy Warhol, David LaChapelle, Frida Kahlo, Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. She is a member of the San Antonio Art League and The Greater San Antonio Camera Club. She has participated in activities such as the Student Art Guild and been Vice President of Media Coordination at her Exposure Photography Club. Her exhibition of shows include awards for photography, video and mixed media. She lives in San Antonio with her husband and two children.

To see more of Monique’s work, please visit her website.

David Swindler is a passionate landscape and wildlife photographer and outdoor enthusiast. He received a degree in chemical engineering and worked many years in the semiconductor industry specializing in optics and photolithography. Thus, the technical side of photography came very easy to him. Back in 2014 he decided to quit his day job to follow his true passion. As a photographer, he has traveled to many locations around the world and has extensive experience with landscape, wildlife, night, and macro photography. He finds great satisfaction in helping others learn photography, especially in the wild desert environment near his home in Kanab, UT.

Mr Swindler has been leading guided photo tours for several years and knows many different camera systems and how to capture the best photos. On his trips, you’ll travel to impressive locations and receive photography instruction at the same time! Unlike many other photo guides, his clients are his top priority while out in the field. Mr Swindler has extensive outdoor experience and will ensure your safety and well-being.

To see more of David’s work, please visit his website.

I am a retired man living with his wife and numerous animals on a small farm near Gainesville Florida. I discovered some years ago an interest and talent for bird and wildlife photography, but find greatest joy in creating digital art that is uniquely my own vision. I discovered the world of photo artistry through the teachings of Sebastian Michaels and am an active member of the “Awake” and “Kaizen” photo artistic groups. My artistic focus has continued to evolve to include black and white, cityscapes, street scenes and natural phenomena; such as the recent eclipse. My work has been accepted by numerous juried exhibits and featured 3 times in “Living the Photo Artistic Life” digital and print magazine. Eye-Photo magazine has included a review of my work in the September 2017 issue. My art is created using only my original photographs; including textures and backgrounds. Your comments and questions are welcome.

To see more of Craig’s work, please visit his website.