Artists of MIVAL

She was born in Iran and had Ph.D. of Art research with background of handicrafts and industrial design as a master and bachelor’s degree there. As an Iranian- American artist, she is interested in use symbolic motifs in her paintings. She wrote several books about art history element’s meaning. She is interested in old object’s design and how the motifs were designed with together to express especial meaning. She believe of four basic elements of old philosophy(water, fire, wind and earth), made fundamental of all symbolic motifs.
The sole of Persian art is based on nature. It can be easily distinguished on Persian carpet that most of its motifs are a plan view of traditional Iranian homes.

Iranian style of painting, “miniature” is just following the same concept which broken perspective of yard is being considered as paradise.
Now, the new Iranian paradise-Pardis, is seeking for a rope that connects the contemporary art to that old miniature.

Her PHD about 1000 AD Iranian art history shows her point of interest on making a bridge between that era to the today’s lifestyle.

My artwork for the past decade has been an immersive exploration into the weaving of vintage, found images into an intricate mosaic of mixed media materials. By reinventing nostalgic images through adornment and context, my intentions are to alter an image’s narrative, reveal innuendoes, and provoke emotional response. My mosaics illustrate connectivity, intimacy, illness, humor, healing, and other human conditions.
I am currently focused on images from vintage health, safety, and medical guides and encyclopedias from the 1930’s – 1950’s, as well as comic book images from the early 1960’s. I select images that I find evocative, or humorous, or that I am moved by, and then adorn them using broken shards of glass from holiday ornaments, pieces of colored eggshell, ink, and paint. The torn paper borders of the images are then treated with an oxidized iron paint which will continue to rust over time. The finished mosaics are then placed into shadowboxes and treated as “modern artifacts”. These images are interpreted in ways not originally intended as they are seen out of their intended context and through a contemporary lens.  A medical instruction photograph now illustrates an intimate moment between men; a knowing exchange between spies in a comic tells a new, erotic tale.
The materials I use, old broken glass and eggshell, are incorporated with specific intent. The fragile nature of both materials and the reassembly of them speak of taking care and consideration, repairing what is damaged, and presenting a manipulated but equally beautiful version of itself. I consider this adornment a reverence of sorts, coming from an acute dedication to the detailed processes of my work. 

My life in art began when I joined the volunteer Art Docent program at my childrens’ elementary school.  Wonderful and imaginative art lessons were attached to all the prints we showed the children.  The work the children created was stunning!  Their art inspired me to take numerous art classes.
My favorite genre is abstraction.  Abstraction seeks to express something of the essence of things.  Common subjects are: (1)  still lives or nature;  (2) feelings, thoughts, reaction or experiences;  (3) the elements of design ( line, shape, color, value, pattern…etc.) and principles of design (unity, variety, contrast, movement…etc.).
The experience of painting leaves me feeling refreshed and renewed just like exercising, an afternoon tea break, or visiting with good friends.  In creating art to share with the public, I hope to impart these beneficial feelings to those who encounter my paintings.

I have rekindled a love for watercolor painting after many years of working as an urban planner in government and nonprofit sectors and am so appreciative of the warm welcome and support that I have received from MIVAL.

I grew up in northern New Jersey outside of NYC in a town that was steeped in its revolutionary war roots, nineteenth century railroad suburb prosperity, and in my youth, had become a modern ‘edge town’ blessed with buildings, street plans and natural landscapes that reflected this history.

I have always been interested in design, form, and function. Early on, my glass art was greatly influenced by architect Mies Van der Rohe and his philosophy that less is more. Beauty exists in any object. In an attempt to maximize on clean lines of a piece and allow the radiance to shine through, I have experimented with many art forms.
During my journey, I discovered my true love for glass blowing. Since then, I have studied under many of the best and talented glass artists at the Pratt Fine Arts Studio in Seattle where I had the pleasure of working with Kathrine Gray, Sabrina Knowles, Jennifer Pohlman, Karen Willenbrink- Johnsen and Mitchell Gaudet who have all shared their love of glass and glass techniques with me.
I also had the honor of studying New Bohemia glass techniques with Master Glassblower, Josef Zubac. I studied Italian and Swedish techniques with John Collins and Denis Mullens.
I have always believed that life and art are on-the job training. As my life progresses so does my art. In recent years I have used my glass art to help raise money for various charities, a passion that has grown and one I continue to expand.

I came to art-making later in life. During my career as an engineer, I was always drawn to museums, galleries, and all manner of art books. After a period of soul searching, I decided to dip my toes into art by taking some random art classes. Then I fell in love with abstract art. For me, it opens up a whole new world of thinking, communication and synthesizing. It gives me the freedom to explore the language of shape, form, color and line to create an image and assign my own meaning to the piece. The challenge is that now I have to make my right brain work as hard as the left one.
I have an open experimental attitude towards materials and tools. At this time, I am exploring cold wax medium. All of the following, and more, can be found in my work space: tube paints, pigment sticks, carbon discs, brayers, rags, twigs, scrapers, palette knives, and bits of plastics. I find that the cold wax surface is super malleable. You can layer, scrape, gouge and burnish it, and you will be surprised every time by the result. I feel each layer is a snapshot in time in the long running dialogue with myself.

My interest in photography took a big leap forward when I retired from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 2002. At that time, I was using medium format cameras with black and white lm. I had a darkroom and was able to print my own images. Photographic workshops took me and my husband, Ron, to the Northwest and Southwest. There I absorbed the lovely landscapes, learned much about composition and the use of light. When digital cameras came along with a quality similar to what I could get with film, I embraced the new technology and abandoned my darkroom. Adding a telephoto lens to the equipment gave me the power to do wildlife photography.
In addition to wildlife, I love taking landscape photos. Over the years, I am drawn to manipulating those landscape images into how I want them to look rather then what they were at that moment the camera captured the image. With computer tools such as Lightroom and Photoshop, I am able to process true landscape images, or create something totally dierent. I refer to this process and end result as “photomontages”. Basically, I layer images on top of each other and select the parts that I want. It gives me freedom to take images of things that do not make a composition. A stock of images stored on the computer for later use is quite liberating. Photography over the years has gotten easier, and yet ever challenging.
I need to give credit to my husband for all the help he has given me over the years in Photoshop skills. And, I give MIVAL credit for allowing me to show my work. My first hanging was with the Holiday Show where I sold my first piece. My advice to novice photographers is to check out the work of as many photographers as you can. Inspiration comes from many sources. Begin in your own backyard!
 It is the light and shapes of nature that catch my eye.  Photography freezes in an instant what the mind tries so hard to remember. I enjoy altering nature to reflect my creative vision. Lately, I have enjoyed layering images to create a feeling that is not static, or real. 
www.judyroan.com

Born and raised in Seattle, I attended Roosevelt High School and then the University of Washington as an “Art,Textiles and Clothing”major. I met and married my husband, Clyde, at the end of our college careers. He was an ROTC cadet and soon aer graduation and our wedding went on to serve in Korea. He eventually rose to Major General. I kept the home fires burning raising three girls, Diana, Teri and Claudia. In those days I was sewing up a storm – these days mostly shortening and repairing clothes for my granddaughters Alex and Natalia.
I have always enjoyed entertaining and try to make it special with a theme. Thus, my art background comes into play. I began to have fun working with silk flowers, cones, pods and shells. Later this led to “totems” (gluing fun pieces together) creating unique decorative pieces and later serving dishes. As I have a huge collection of seashells, I occasionally return to shell wreaths and mirrors and still make an occasional cone wreath.
Photography is another interest (quite untrained – more point and shoot) and I use my pictures for cards. I’ve been a MIVAL member for some years. I’ve made many friends there and appreciate it as a wonderful outlet for my creativity.

I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area (Half Moon Bay) and moved to Mercer Island 10 years ago, where I live with my wife, Sue and our dog, Winston. Professionally, I work full time in the Insurance Industry, while photography is my passion.  In the near future, I plan on providing local workshops to those who also wish to pursue their passion, as this area has so much to offer.  
I joined MIVAL in 2017 and it has been a wonderful experience and opportunity to be able to show and sell my art along with all of the other talented members.
Although I have been photographing wildlife, nature and landscapes for a long time, it wasn’t until I moved to the Pacific Northwest, that my enthusiasm for photography really took off.  I started taking classes, attending workshops and broadening my knowledge of my craft.  A majority of my work is definitely influenced by the West Coast, but I love to travel and take my “gear” with me everywhere.  My primary focus is photographing birds but I try to find and capture the beauty in everything, even my own backyard.

I have been making things for as long as I can remember. At a young age I began sewing my own clothes and square dancing costumes. Sewing clothes lead to sewing draperies and upholstery.
Found objects and recycled things are a constant source of inspiration. Broken dishes for mosaic projects, old clothes for braided and hooked rugs and soft furnishings.
Beautiful cakes inspired me to learn to make frosting roses. From there I made all the birthday and wedding cakes for family and friends.
We have a cabin in the woods and I am always collecting. I forage for moss, lichen, pods, and cones for wreaths and arrangements. Branches and cones inspire wood carvings and other projects. I collect oyster shells from the beach to transform into “Santa on the Half Shell” pins. I am inspired by Folk Art and Craft. I enjoy trying different techniques and am constantly finding new projects on which to work.

Wanting to travel, I and a friend applied to Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. Here, I was sequentially a ward nurse, worked on a research project and taught nurses obstetrics.
I married a doctor trained at Hopkins and following his training and national service, we lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Portland. Finally, we settled on Mercer Island with our four children. After much travel, happily, three of them have returned to live on the island. We also have six grandchildren on the Island.
About 20 years ago I took classes at BCC in many subjects, including, making jewelry and photography, including an AA in Bio-photography. Twenty years later, my family are sufficiently adorned with my creations and I thought I would see if someone other than family would like my work. I enjoy all the different methods of making jewelry and like to incorporate interesting items or stones into my pieces.
At the 2016 MIVAL Holiday Show at the Community Center, I received an “Honorable Mention” Certificate.

In my abstract art, I challenge myself to answer artistic questions in the moment without the pressure of a planned result. The abstract forms and flowing paint free me to step beyond the specificity and structure of craft and the frozen-in-time nature of photography (both long time passions of mine) and discover a kind of movement and experimentation that is different than in my other work
Each painting is a unique journey — an exploration of artistic principles and an opportunity to discover new techniques and change approaches as I create. I begin with a visual inspiration — an item, image, or pattern, often something I photographed. I examine and reconsider the subject, framing and reframing it until there is a relationship and balance that I like. I commit paint to canvas without limiting myself to the parameters of the inspirational idea or image, but letting the process suggest new line and shape. From there, it is a dance, adding color, shape, pattern and texture, building new line, repeating until the piece says stop.
In the end, each finished piece embodies its many steps, but also stands alone – process and result equally and interdependent, but also separate and independently valid. Carol is a new artist, a former attorney and an ardent teacher and mentor.

All my life I have busied myself as an artist, therefore I have never been bored and am usually happy. In high school my spending money was earned doing pen and ink drawings for a stationary company and murals and signs for the shops in my small town, Watertown, Wisconsin. At the U. of Wisconsin, Madison, I majored in Fine Arts then finished my degree at U.C. Berkeley in 1958. After starting out in the two dimensional world of painting and printmaking and six years as a graphic artist in the print industry, I found my true home in the 3-D muddy world of clay. In 1966 I took my first classes from Jane Wherrete and Maxine Gorton , Mercer Island potters. Since 1978 I have been affiliated with Seward Park Clay Studio as a student, occasional teacher, resident artist, board member and its president. I have been a member of MIVAL since the 1970’s and recently a member of the MIVAL Gallery. Since the 1980’s, I have been a member of the Washington Potters Association and have exhibited regionally including many juried and invitational shows.
Although I began throwing functional pottery on the wheel, I now exclusively hand build. I am intrigued with the asymmetry and the infinite variety of shapes that coil, slab, carving and pounding can produce. Most of my work is high fired to cone ten in a gas kiln. Occasionally I do raku, saggar, pit firing and low fire oxidation for special effects. My art has gone through many phases over the 48 years including female forms, birds, rocks, carved eggs, fruit and gourds and large vessels. What has remained constant is an emphasis on earth related forms and voluptuous round shapes with minimal color to allow the texture and form to be the interest.
Currently, most of my work is inspired by the artifacts, pottery techniques and vessel shapes of the Native American cultures of the Four Corners. My fascination with the ruins and petroglyphs of the Anasazi led to research and classes with Pueblo potters. In my pieces, I attempt to evoke a feeling of cliffs, rocks and deserts of the Southwest while incorporating designs based on ancient drawings. My intention is not to duplicate the art but to be influenced by it and add my aesthetic to that history.

In my youth I earned a graduate degree in Applied Art, however, with children to raise and a job to hold, I found no time for artistic pursuits. I hoped that later in life I would be able to find the time to express myself as an artist. That time came in 2006 when I moved from Romania to the United States, where my kids lived.  Here I started a new phase of my life – a late painting journey. As a beginner I was overwhelmed and scared about the whole process. I spent a lot of time in the library reading books about art, materials and process. Soon I acquired a new visual vocabulary and I tried to implement what I had learned into my work. I started with watercolor and discovered by chance the pleasure of painting on Yupo – a type of synthetic paper.  Two years later I moved to acrylics. A visit to Puget Sound’s Jones Island enabled me to discover unusual beautiful rocks that triggered a series of paintings. Later I found a good source of inspiration in stumps and bark, observed while hiking in the forests. Painting them, I proved to myself that nature is the best teacher. Later, a fascination with “abstract” energy got a hold of me.
From the very beginning I was attracted to abstract art. I dreamed about painting in an painterly style, but it came much easier to have a stylized, decorative, design style, somehow colder and rigid, determined from within by my architecture/decorative studies. While working I learned that I am mostly attracted to expressing myself spontaneously, to develop my ideas directly on canvas, without prior sketches. The more bold and uninhibited I start, the more gates I unlock for imagination to flourish and bring out details. The result, most of the time, is abstracted with an organic touch. I am still fascinated by the way the creative process works; the way it extracts information from my intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual background, and expresses itself through intuition – like coming from nowhere.
Now, eight years later I am still chasing the state where my native openness and lyrical predisposition will freely translate into a spontaneous expression of flowing masses of colors and energetic, restless brush strokes. I want my art to be abstract, ambiguous, spontaneous, and full of energy and flooded with colors. I am working on it, wanting to please my lonely spirit on this journey without a destination. http://www.lucia.neagu.com

I was born in Turkey and moved to US to study my Fulbright sponsored doctorate degree in computer engineering. I spent more than 20 years working full time in telecom industry.
While working full time and raising two kids, I found peace in playing with watercolors. I paint simple portraits, flowers and landscapes. I paint because it makes me happy!
You can follow me on Instagram or check out my website http://gamzeseckin.com or contact me via email gamzeseckin@gmail.com

While my art roots were planted in the media of paint and clay, I find digital photography gives me new methods to approach making art. I love to combine multiple images and I find endless inspiration in elements of nature and the urban landscape. 
Although a single photograph often satisfies me as a final image, I find combining layers of photographs and textures is a lot of fun and often better conveys the emotion of the captured moment. Similar to multiple exposures or applying paint glazes to canvas, for me, combining images, texture, and color is like mixing a bit of abstraction with reality. In either case, whether the final image is a straight photograph or a composite, my goal is to create an organic image which reflects the original subject with both visual depth and spirit.
More work on my website www.nancyabel.com

Zeynep was born in 1969, in Istanbul, Turkey. She studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University and finished her master’s degree in architecture at University of Arizona. After practicing for a couple of years in Atlanta and Seattle, she found herself busy with kids at home. Since then she satisfies her itch for creation and design by working on small scale projects and painting at her home office.
Since her childhood she has immensely enjoyed drawing and painting. Art always became a way to express herself, a way to anchor memories and a way to enjoy life. She is inspired by her kids, her dreams. Her background in architecture perseveres in her compositions. She likes to focus on where and how things exist in space and light. She likes to experiment with different mediums besides pencil, acrylic, watercolor, oil, and soft pastel. Her recent interest is in printmaking.