“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways."

― Oscar Wilde

Linda Bolhuis

The Serti (French for "enclose") technique of painting on silk allows Bolhuis to capture the shifting qualities of light found within the intimacy of a water garden. While this medium is liberating, it is also deliberate and demanding requiring precision while applying a resist called Gutta that is used as a barrier to contain the fabric dye. With her graphic design education she was given the discipline and tools necessary for her real-life occupation, designing art glass. Many subjects hand drawn in pencil during her 30 years working in the glass art world still appear in her paintings today. Her attempt to capture the breathtaking moments found in the natural land and water-scapes around her have become her conversation with the world.

Steve Gruenau

Ideas come to him from nature, sculpture, paintings and dreaming. Sketching ideas lead to the start of a sculpture in metal and/or glass. The final piece, however, rarely looks like the initial drawing. Going through the process from start to finish is usually the most enjoyable as well as challenging part for him. If a piece evokes a positive emotion or comment- he feels that that is the ultimate compliment.

Wendy Wilkerson

When she was very young, she would trace printed images and become familiar with graceful lines, form and space. Mainly through self-taught studies, art became her lifetime focus, profession, expression, and joy. Her current works have taken on the intense colors and vibrancy of the Yunnan school of painting. Delicate rice paper, with untrimmed edges that are left floated in their frames, are painted on both sides in “heavy color” gouache that bring visual depth, and dimension to the various depicted imagery of the Sun and the Moon. The brushwork moves the viewer’s eyes and mind between the spatial relationships, while bold color and visual image attracts and holds the imagination. Subtle shadings, fine line work, and unique subjects make these works her finest achievements.

Steven Derks

Born in Dubuque Iowa June 30, 1957. He has shown work in CA, NM, TX, and all over AZ. The two most important tools in his work are a stick to push and pull paint around and the sun, to accelerate the drying in such an extreme way that cracking and crazing happens. The desert is the perfect place to make this work. When he places a painting in the sun to dry, it’s similar to firing ceramics in a kiln; he can anticipate and plan for a desired effect, but he can’t always predict what will happen. Finding and collecting curiosities in thrift stores and junkyards is a lifelong preoccupation and a passionate experience for him, rather like going to church. Most of his sculptures are conceived right there in the scrap metal yards, where he finds both the vision and the ingredients for his work. Liking the immediacy of welding, he never bends or cuts the metal he uses as his art lies in the assemblage, not the cutting and shaping of its individual parts. Making art allows him to have a spiritual and a psychological life without being directly involved in any theology or ideology. When he discards something, he feels he betrays it. When he finds it, conceives a vision of it renewed, and makes art from it, he feels he redeems it. All objects have the potential to be redeemed through art, to be transformed through human vision and so do all people. Art makes his own personal redemption possible. Part of many private collections, a few of his corporate collectors are the American Heart Association, Tucson, AZ; DeGrazia Foundation, Tucson, AZ; Microsoft, Seattle, WA; Regal Company, Inc., Sonora, Mexico; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; UMC Cancer Center, Tucson, AZ; and he even has works at The White House, Oval Office in Washington, D.C.

Bobbi Mason

Born in Amarillo Texas, she now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She studied pottery, sculpture, and oil painting as she traveled with her husband who had a career in the military and lived 15 years in various South American countries. As the daughter of Tommy Hicks, the founder of Shidoni Foundry, she has turned her attention to steel sculpture in the form of functional art. Her welded steel tables reflect the simplicity of design and the beauty in the patina. She states that she loves to get into the welding process and esthetically soften up the hard steel; that once the fabrication of the table is finished, the patina is just as exciting by softening the steel table to resemble rich wood.

David Maple

His work is a culmination of 42 years of what he describes as “being, of people, places, experiences, and the natural world around me”. It is his humble intent to bring those things that he holds dear to him; wood, metal, paint and found objects, that when put together in such a way can convey his expression of the "moment". He states that it is his hope that in that "moment” that is expressed in his work, it will invite the viewer to come closer because of something they perceive as familiar to them, that will then lead only to finding the unfamiliar in the end.

Denise Williams

A self-taught artist, working diligently for the last 20 years to create a new and unique style utilizing traditional archival materials, it is thought she accomplished this goal in 2004 within what she refers to as the “Diaphaney Series”, both in artistic representation of subject matter and in the finish of pieces as well. The end result is a depth and luminosity of product that is felt to be unique in the market. This technique involves the building of many layers and textures utilizing Acrylic, paper, canvas, varnish and gel medium. In Santa Fe, she has learned many things about art; first to let her instincts guide her; to not worry about ambitions nor be concerned about what is therein; and to render art as born from the soul. Art, as her child taught her, “should have a life of its own as the night and day of which we inhabit and one should render many views therein – that is what we mean by abstract art or thinkin.”