Marni's Biz Talk posts

MEET CHRIS HEADRICK

Finding the joy and intrigue in the most basic of objects; reinforcing details that identify them; portraying the very essence of them as centers of interests of a work instead of accessories in a greater whole-those are the elements that define my work.

I can truly say, without regret, that my style and technique is entirely self-taught and merged into my architectural roots processing an eye for detail and a great desire to express the emotions I feel when I observe a subject and want to convey those emotions deeply into the piece.

My background in architectural design has developed a focused lens looking at the hidden or obscure detail in subjects, hoping to capture their inner complexities. Watercolor brings out the subtle and delicate qualities of the objects in my paintings. Watercolor is demanding and exacting while simultaneously being unpredictable and somewhat uncontrollable. The very nature of watercolor painting is a direct complement to the intricate though simple subject matter I choose to include in my art.

LOOKING FOR A CHILDREN'S BOOK ILLUSTRATOR FOR TWO BOOKS!

In exchange for Interior Design, Feng Shui Consultation, or Art. I have a gallery in Pioneer Square and rep many artists. www.marnimuir.com

NEED ART???? For your own personal place/space OR for your business on a much more corporate level?????

I've got it! ANY artist in the Pacific NW and/or United States, ANY art, and I am offering a rental program for residential, temporary staging, realtors, designers, architects, etc. and on a more corporate level, an amazing lease to buy program - 4 years to pay, zero interest and you get the art upfront, with an accomplished interior designer who will work with you to "hand pick" for your project - This is an incredible opportunity! Can't wait to hear from you! By the way, I didn't mention that BIZNIK members get the creme de la creme with amazing BIZNIK 'benefits' - ......please inquire 'within' :) Onward and Upward, Marni marnimuirgalleryrentals.com.....coming

NEED ART???? For your own personal place/space OR for your business on a much more corporate level?????

I've got it! ANY artist in the Pacific NW or United States, any art, and I am offering a rental program for residential, temporary, staging, realtors, designers, architects, etc. and on a more corporate level, an amazing lease to buy program - 4 years to pay, zero interest and you get the art upfront, with an interior designer who will work with you to "hand pick" for your project - inside and out.... What I am willing to trade or barter, is "free rental" OR a percentage for the lease to buy option, ....in exchange for web design, a personal chef, a personal trainer, I need to lose weight kindof person...a gardener, and more.........WIN WIN situation!!!!!!! NO ONE IS DOING THE LEASING PROGRAM IN SEATTLE!!!!! So, this is an incredible opportunity! Can't wait to hear from you! Marni check out my profile Marni Muir; marnimuir.com, marnimuirgallery.com.....coming soon...marnimuiraglleryrentals.com

Meet Sheila Ranero - Graphic Artist

I've always been into art ever since I was a little girl. I was into drawing pictures. Once I got into high school, I discovered computer graphics. I was real good at that and came easy. After high school I enrolled in The Art Institute of Philadelphia. I graduated with an associates degree. I started working part time at my current job while I was still in school. Now I'm full time designing a lot of logos for all kinds of clothing. Most of my side projects are for friends & myself, and I have more artistic freedom. All my work starts out as a thought, I get a picture in my head of what I want to design. If a client for example: (water bottle labels) They were for guests at a wedding staying overnight at the hotel. When I thought of her wedding I thought of roses. I have a rose bush behind my house. I took many pictures before I found the right one. I imported the picture into Photoshop. I used one of my favorite tools to desaturate or turn into black & white except for one rose was pink. The picture was used as a background, I added the bride & grooms logo and a few ingredients about love. I sat back in my chair and took a long look at what I designed, A big sigh of accomplishment and satisfactions fell over me. My work was done, it looked great, it looked professional, and the bride loved it! I was thrilled! Everyone loved the labels. I always like hearing what people have to say about my work, even if its just one word it makes me smile. Most people don't realize the kind of time goes into even the smallest things, because even the small things that I do are still as important as the big things. I've attached a Water Bottle Label - done for a wedding

MEET ANNE WALKER - Swim 1, 2007 pastel 10 x 17

ARTIST STATEMENT Whether I am drawing, sculpting or making a video - I am basically doing the same thing, again and again. Trying to wake up to where and who I am.
Which as it turns out is never a thing, a role or an idea, but rather it is a feeling.
A subtle feeling of being, here and now, for the moment.
If other people are brought home to themselves when they look at something I've made - I'm happy.

MEET THERESE BUCHMILLER

A r t i s t S t a t e m e n t

The activities of selecting, sorting, and arranging objects are exercises I employ to address issues of language and memory and to question the relationship between place, identity, and experience. My work is an inquiry about how various ways of knowing intersect: intuition, intellect and touch. New associations occur where order fails in the spaces between systems and categorizations.

I am engaged by the polarities of orientation and dislocation, intimacy and vastness, stillness and fluidity, physicality and perception. The work presents a personal taxonomy of color and shape intended to shift attention from the minute to a mass: a changing system that mutates, one that expands on itself, and unfolds. As both a maker of things and environmentalist, I’ve become increasingly aware of the significance to create more with less. I do so by repurposing fragments from one body of work into the next, employing materials that are recycled, and choosing new materials that are ecologically low-impact. Small-scale collage and painting are the impetus for wall drawings, temporary installation, and sculpture.

MEET MONIKA DALKIN - (Artist of the Week) Aerial Landscape

In a world of over-stimulation, over-scheduling, technological dependence and disregard for limited natural resources, it is the little things in life that hold great importance for me. Simple things can lead to closer examination and new discovery. By manipulation of color, shape and objects, I am rewarded by a transformation of the materials into art that adds meaning to my life.

I am compelled to create. I conceive of an idea and work toward its outcome, using techniques that my go awry to my advantage in further developing and enriching the end product. I try not to fixate on a perceived end result. These challenges feed my compulsion and act as a form of personal meditation.

I am a contemplative observer of cycles – those simple ones we see on a daily basis as well as those in the larger scheme of life. These events may manifest themselves in shapes, circles or otherwise, that denote the continuum of life, or as objects and symbols that are associated with domestic roles and the home. There are always personal symbols or images that I consciously or unconsciously use. I can investigate them more fully and make them specific or I can use them freely to create a personal language and landscape that may range from ambiguous to mysterious.

Formally, my work addresses shape, space, color, balance, order, repetition and rhythm. Each layer is a response to its time. Recently I have been working in a more modular form that allows for further manipulation and reconfiguration of the work. For me this symbolizes the duality of complexity and simplicity in our lives.

My primary focus is printmaking, but I enjoy the ready combination of many materials.

HOW CAN WE LIVE UNRREASONABLY

Living unreasonably goes beyond asking people to supply you with an unreasonable request. It is first thinking outside of the box, for without that, you cannot hope to live your life with a larger vision than that already drawn for you by parents, circumstances, and past decisions. It is more than having a bucket list of things you want to accomplish before you die. It is having the capacity to soar on the winds rather than being buffeted by the storms of life.

When an eagle approaches a thunderstorm, it will lock its wings and ride the thermals, letting them take it up, up, up above the storm, even 10,000 feet up. It may get ice on its wings, but once it locks its wings, it cannot unlock them until it is on the other side of the storm. What would happen if, when we are in the midst of a serious storm in life, we lock our wings and ride it out rather than let it batter us into the ground? Storms always come. How do we handle them?

It doesn’t mean we quit a job without another one in place, but if a job is death to our spirits, perhaps it is looking creatively for another way. It doesn’t mean we no longer do the laundry, dishes, cleaning, changing dirty diapers. But maybe it means we give it a break for a morning or a day and do something amazing like taking the kids to the river, the lake, the ocean, the mountains, whatever you live near that is out of the ordinary for you. Maybe it’s taking yourself there and having the time to listen to your spirit, and to that small inner voice inside each of us that is always speaking to us, but for which we are too busy and too noisy to listen. In the midst of a hectic, crazy, frustrating day at work, perhaps it’s saying a quick prayer to give you the attitude you need to thrive rather than merely survive the day.

When life is going well, it is learning to live above the ordinary. Perhaps to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. To see life as an amazing gift, and one in which you have the capacity to change the lives of those around you. In small ways, in large ways, but to change your world for the better. We all have this ability, but when we live unreasonably, we include the people we encounter in ways that will gift them. When we get outside of ourselves, our circumstances, we get a different perspective. It’s like being on the top of a mountain for the first time, and thinking that you could get used to the visual majesty all around, the wind in your face, the wind that makes you think you could fly, the fresh, fresh air. But it’s when we bring that mountaintop experience down into the everyday that our lives truly become extraordinary, and we begin to live unreasonably.

THE LAUNCH OF THE ART RENTAL AND LEASING PROGRAM AT THE MARNI MUIR GALLERY

AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY TO OFFSET OUR MOST CHALLENGING MARKET !

Rachel and I are launching the gallery rental and leasing program - this is BIG - we are not in competition with anyone, but in expansion, that is how I would like to present this. We need to work together, be a team, in our ever-changing, challenging economy and come up with new ideas and ways to promote art....YOUR ART.....SO, that is why we are creating a rental gallery as well as a lease with option to buy gallery. it would be an advantage to EVERY one of you to participate, but I need your OK, and images of the work that you would like to be included in the "inventory", as well as artist's statement AND for those of you who can come with an example/sample of your work....PERFECT! Looking forward to hearing back. Onward and Upward, Marni send images and statement if interested to rachel@marnimuir.com or rachel@marnimuirgallery.com or marnimuir@comcast.net

MEET PAULA BIDWELL - NATIVE AMERICAN COSTUME

I am an American Indian artist, jeweler and author. I am also considered an Indigenous Healer and spent many years on the reservation learning. I combine both worlds into my art. I draw, paint and illustrate the visions, dreams and mystical experiences I’ve had. This work is so gratifying because it resonates with so many other people. I also believe strongly that we are all related and there is very little separation between us. When making jewelry or creating traditional crafts I use materials and symbols that have meaning and substance in a spiritual sense.

Zalman Berkowitz - Featured Artist - Love (Image on Opening Page)

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science” :: Albert Einstein

Contradiction is a part of this work, which attempts to communicate a fixed position…

I believe that every human experience has at its core a longing for unity.

I love to wrestle with the Big Questions in life as I play with the mystery and reality within my experience. I generally find an abundant source of strength as well as comedy in my aspirations.

Harmony seems to be more a challenge of organization.

I do not know if Artists are born, or if they are made. I am not always sure I know what Art is. I feel compelled to express my experience of change. Painting, writing, performing is how I understand more of who I am and what I am about.

Mostly, I just work to keep painting and follow the brightest parts of feeling and possibility that occur to me.

MEET CAMERON KARSTEN

Cameron Karsten Photography

Born May 15th, 1984, Cameron Karsten decided to step off the radar at age nineteen. He was raised on Bainbridge Island where he was compressed by the waters of youth and rebellion. After graduating high school in 2002, he attended his first year of college in Los Angeles where he felt limitless among the diversifying aspects of another school, another classroom, and more work. Life as a philosophy student at Occidental College quickly escalated to boredom. It was uninspiring; dull and stagnant like a marooned map left in tropical sands. So he saw himself at a crossroads. He felt he could do anything. He believed could do anything. And he understood he had a choice. Following the possibilities, Cameron awoke to his dreams—surf, sun, exploration and spontaneity. The classes skipped, the waves ridden, the procrastination heightened. Thus began his new life: Cameron turned to Mother Earth and left his formal classroom setting to indulge in world travel.

From his first steps through the pulsating cities of Bangkok, Saigon, New Delhi, Kathmandu, Lagos, and Paris, his trails wandered amidst the realms of Southeast Asia, Central America, West Africa and Europe. Cameron immersed his concentration within these cultures, observing their customs and movements as a meditation. All the while, he chose to travel alone, a self-discovered journey by which he sought to broaden his depth of living through self-reliance. It was—and continues to be—a way of acceptance. Life is moment to momentl and so, day-by-day he explored finding himself camped on the uninhabited islands of the Andaman Sea, walking waths where landmines lay hidden beneath scarred years of Cambodian history, or trekking solo to Everest Base Camp with a one-day lead ahead of shoot-outs between Maoist rebels and Royal Nepalese soldiers.

Today, travel continues in the Pacific Northwest, weathering seasonal storms while creating the patient connections to launch a career as a professional photographer and writer.

The images reflect Cameron Karsten’s eye of Mother Nature and Her details extracted within each frame. The photographs involve a deep contrast of black & white to draw out those subtleties and their sensuality. Contact Cameron for questions, comments & more at www.cam2yogi.com.

-- Monsieur Karsten 2547 13th Ave W. Unit #3 Seattle, WA 98119 USA Earth #: 206.799.9318 www.cam2yogi.com www.cameronkarsten.blogspot.com www.mytb.org/cam2yogi

SARAH DILLON

STATEMENT OF PRACTICE

The work embraces the notion of looking through a window watching obscure events that tell stories about life around us, or perhaps more specifically tell stories about us while hinting at lyrics of folk songs, children’s stories or games, experience and personal contemplation. Humans are imperfect beings and realizing this allows us to de-centralize ourselves and see reflections of ourselves in life around us that is commonly overlooked. It allows us to find the wisdom to parallel natural pulse rather than contradict it, and thereby discover truth through experience – humor, mystery and stories waiting to be told.

Through her newest series of painting, mixed media assemblages of sewn collage and drawing, Dillon has developed an artistic language through seemingly ordinary narrative subject matter presenting her contemplation about human interaction and the environment we live in. Dillon projects these thoughts on the common, often overlooked and sometimes comical urban creatures of similar pattern, adaptation and survival; birds.

Dillon’s thick expressive paint, mixed media collage drawings and woodblock prints provide a rich blend of visual texture and experience bringing to mind not just the subject, but also how the art object itself was created.

Dillon uses nautical charts and maps along with other collage materials stitched together as a surface. The charts and maps sometimes define a specific place and sometimes express the ambiguity of place. They suggest travel by land, water and sky and contribute as a layer to the overall narrative.

Being an Irish fiddle player as well as an artist, Dillon is fascinated with rhythm and pattern. In this series, Dillon uses painted and drawn pattern and collaged elements as visual texture activating and abstracting space through the implication of movement from place to place. Negative space is stitched together like a quilt, creating a rhythm and pattern in and of itself.

LANCE DOOLEY

I like to draw because it makes me feel like I'm worth a damn. I like to sculpt because it's like doing a thousand and one drawings. I like the human body and face as subject matter because nobody is the same and when you sculpt the irregular shapes and forms of people It provides never ending artistic and technical challenge. Some people say that classical art is all the same. Well, it's not. Yes, we all have bones and flesh and the same genetic templates. But each of us is so wildly different than the other, that if you stop and look at people carefully, you will notice just how much. Every face is a canvas on which life has left it's mark. Everyone's body displays a unique historical record of the kind of person we are and carries with it endless things to say. The challenge of being a realist sculptor is to capture the stories, moods and personalities of each individual and let them talk to you in this chosen visual language... www.lancedooley.com

LAURA LAVIGNE

(New work in image box - "Ann's Cup" As an artist, I get wildly excited about the use of rich, rich colors combined with textures that make the whole piece sing - sometimes softly and sometimes loudly. I thrive in the creative process of discovery, invention, playfulness and surprise. This is what makes me jump out of bed in the morning and run to my easel…

My intent (besides having fun) is to create work that invites the viewer to “feel” just a little bit more

www.lauralavigne.com

YOU'RE INVITED TO A PRIVATE PREVIEW OF: BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN - EASTERN EUROPEAN MASTER PRINTMAKERS

Preview Reception: Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 6 to 8pm First Thursday Opening: April 2, 2009, 6 to 8pm

Gallery Hours: 12-5pm, Wednesday - Saturday

Marni Muir Gallery is proud to present the work of master printmakers: Karol Felix , Igor Benca, Robert Jancovic, Kamilia Soukupova, and Peter Klucik among others. The artists are well known internationally for their meticulous technical prowess and skill, each with a distinct character andsubject matter ranging from abstraction to "magic realism".

The exhibition will include etchings, lithographs, wood engravings and large scale mezzotint prints all completed before the lift of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. During this time, artists were not allowed to present any political viewpoints in their work. These works, from the collection of George Brandt, represent a subversive artistic response to politics, society and the human condition through commentary rooted in irony, humor and abstraction.

Sergej Tjukatnov (Ukraine) Project Tower Colored etching 4 x 8 inches

check it out: www.marnimuirgallery.com (Upcoming Exhibit)

RUSSELL SMITH

Artist Statement:

I attended The Art Student's League of New York from 1978 to 1980, and I've worked in the collage form since the mid-eighties. My collages are created with pasted paper and cloth to create strongly designed pieces, using visual elements of the natural world as a connecting thread. Using bright colors and shapes that resonate with the way the eye perceives nature in a heightened state is a large part of what my artwork is about. The rest is up to personal interpretation.

A CALL FOR UNREASONABLE STORIES

I am writing a book which has been endorsed by a NY Best Seller author. What I'd like from everyone who has joined the group, and by the way, it's fabulous having you a part of the group - thanks for joining! Post your story or stories about BEING UNREASONABLE - if you need a thought or idea, go to 'articles' and read an excerpt from my book. I would love to include your stories as well!

Gordana Curgus

"In the moments when our soul speaks to us in a quiet, perhaps even a silent voice, giving us a great power and influence at both a conscious and unconscious level, the best art is created. It’s that energy of the soul that artist waves into the creation that can be recognized and felt by others. That is why the art is a universal language and its truth is accessible to all who view it regardless of culture, nationality, language, age or status in life. It is the tool that crosses cultures, breaks boundaries and grants access and connections that are not available through any other means."