CREATIVES

Andy Sewell Audio, Crew, Equipment, Film Office, General Services, Media, Multi-Media, Multimedia, Production Andy Sewell is a Petaluma based audio producer. He provides education and production services to podcasters, media agencies, radio and public art. He is most interested in using rich audio to tell compelling stories.

Karen Silberg Artisan, Ceramics Karen Silberg was originally born in Sonoma County and went to school in Ithaca, NY. She spent two years as a Peace Corps Voluneer in the Philippines before finding her way back to Santa Rosa where she began her love of ceramics in 2013. Inspired by function and nature, shared and cherished cultures across the world, used for every celebration and intimate gathering in history and made from the earth, pottery has an infinite amount of stories to tell. Karen began building her pottery studio after one year of classes at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts where she throws year round and vends at Sonoma County holiday craft fairs in the spring and winter.

Kusuma Sparks Artisan, Design, Fashion Design, Fiber Art Kusuma Sparks is an environmentalist who fought the urge to create beautiful things with textiles (and lost).

Despite her youthful ambition to land a Fulbright Grant and ‘save the world’, she finally (and begrudgingly) had to admit she had a gift and passion for textiles and, in the end, she became an artisan of fine garments for women who share her vision of a better world. Maybe it was because she couldn’t stand seeing her for-a-cause friends suffer bad aesthetics. Maybe it was a rebellious act against the industry.

Keyaira Terry Artisan, Design, Fiber Art, Functional Art, Interior Design, Mixed, Other, Other, Teacher/Instructor, Visual Arts Keyaira Terry is an artist with a bold spirit and an old soul. Born and raised in Ukiah, a small farm town in Northern California, Keyaira had a childhood that was deeply connected to the soil and earth, learning to use everything around her as a tool or resource. Keyaira spent her formative years with her grandmother sewing, tending to the land they lived on, and caring for an array of farm animals. Trading goods and commodities among their close-knit farm community was commonplace and shaped Keyaira’s perspective on sustainability and the true meaning of “locally sourced”. Keyaira recalls utilizing all the resources available to her and minimizing waste as being a paramount part of her existence, “if we didn’t have it we made it, if something broke we fixed it”. These collective experiences helped cultivate Keyaira as an artist and inspire her present-day work and ethos — A homespun nostalgia with a modern sensibility, rooted by a love for natural, sustainable and ethically sourced materials. Keyaira currently resides in Santa Rosa, California with her husband, Weston, and their two English bulldogs, Lola and Olive. She splits her time between running her own business as a designer and maker, weaving instructor, and creating commissioned pieces. She has collaborated with companies such as Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, Studio 11 Designs, Bustle Events and has been featured by Sonoma Magazine, Apartment Therapy and Etsy.

Patti Trimble Literature, Mixed, Multi-Media, Other, Painting, Performance Art, Poetry, Theatre, Visual Arts I'm a Marin native, and have been a painter and poet most of my life, exhibiting paintings in galleries and museums and performing lyric poems in theaters, festivals, and other venues, often with music, sometimes with projected images. My work has always touched on wild places and environmental issues, and these days my focus is entirely on climate change and the anthropocene. I think by writing and painting, as wholistically as possible. In my poems, there has always been a freedom to bring themes and styles together. I have been painting a long time, and now I just want to think better about the world and our place in it. In the studio these days sticking to a single prescribed style feels way too limiting. I want wholistic images to appear, images that tell me something new: from gestural abstraction, to realism, science diagrams, words, intuitive and imaginative surprises, appropriation, automatism, surrealism. Poetry and painting are professions, and I have also worked as a National Park Naturalist; as studio assistant to first-generation abstract expressionists (for ten years in New York); as a science and literature writer; and as creative writing and visual art professor.

Kathleen Truax Illustration, Painting, Visual Arts How many times did I choose a career path? The first time: My major. Art was my preference, but disliking the attitude of the art department I abandoned it for psychology. It turned out the professors were behaviorists, and that didn't suit me either. I settled on history, a good place to start when you are only 18! But art wasn't forgotten. I married at 21 and while my children were young I took 10 years of studio art classes, enough to constitute a minor, if anyone was counting. The second time: An advanced degree: Again I looked at an art degree. Still no. Psychology won and this time it was a better fit. I became a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and practiced for 29 years. Possibly the all of this was necessary to mature as an artist. The third time? 5 years ago when I retired. I was itching to paint more than ever before! Now I have the time--and perhaps not the worry about starvation! I have not settled on a style nor narrowed my subjects of interest. Portraiture, Figure & Landscape still predominate in my work. Since retirement I have embraced abstraction and surrealism as well. Because of my background as a therapist, both are far more interesting to me than they might have been earlier. I have a lifetime storehouse of sights, ideas and feelings: shapes, colors, lines, concepts, symbols, images, dreams, & fears that may emerge on a canvas— sometimes surprising me--when I play with paint and then develop whatever shows up, almost unbidden. While it is true that we don't get to return to an early choice and re-do it, I feel as if I have had the opportunity to do the next best thing--return to an early love, painting, and go at it with even greater enthusiasm than before!

Therese Van Wiele Painting, Visual Arts I've been painting for 45 years with just a bit of formal art instruction. I paint representational  "landscapes with a twist." Every painting I do has a story within it or something unusual about it that viewers can find if they are inclined to look for it. I describe my paintings as not merely "pretty pictures," although at first glance they might be considered pretty.  Yet they always have a deeper story, or personal meaning, or something hidden within the painting that viewers can interpret or discover for themselves. I like to create art that leaves people wondering and curious about what is really going on within the pretty picture. Each painting I do has a reason to exist. I frequently don't find the reason myself until I'm almost done painting it. Then it tells its me its story. I'm always glad to provide an explanation of why it exists or the meaning behind it, or, of course, a viewer can interpret it for him or herself. Over the years I've had my work accepted into several juried art shows. I've displayed and sold much of my artwork in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area in Minnesota where I used to live. I moved to Petaluma 7 years ago and am now trying to re-establish myself as a known artist in Sonoma County. I currently have 2 paintings on for sale at Gallery One on Western Ave. in old downtown Petaluma.

Carole Watanabe Mixed, Painting, Sculpture, Visual Arts Watanabe's past (leading to this romantic present), includes establishing the first nationally recognized Gallery for the Fiber Arts in San Francisco; founding the Apprentice Alliance (a non-profit organization dedicated to placing apprentices with masters in all fields of endeavor); and a life-long commitment to creating supportive communities that nourish the wild art spirit in all of us. Her tapestries, sculptural handmade paper works and paintings hang in private collections, hotels, banks, hospitals and corporate offices across the country. Currently, she is living and teaching the concept of "life as an art form" during the winters at her art school in Sebastopol, CA known as Art Heaven, and summers in the French fauvist village of Collioure where she paints and sells her work in her own gallery L'Art Vivant. Carole resides in Sebastopol, California on Ragle Road at Chez la Vie, a retirement compound created with her husband, Jazz Musician, Don Watanabe.

Barbie Watts Artisan, Creative Sonoma Grantee, Functional Art, Illustration, Mixed, Multi-Media, Other, Other, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Teacher/Instructor, Teaching Artist for Youth, Visual Arts Living through some iconoclastic times, I feel like the truth seeker and the magician, asking viewers to see what I see in my drawings, paintings, sculpture, video’s and writing about it all.  I grew up in a family of exceptional people.   Trained in painting and ballet from a young age, I would move on to different mediums and styles of art for the the rest of my life. I would pour myself into every style, medium and philosophy I could afford. Having to find alternative sources for the necessities of, say, painting, I scoured alleys and dumpsters at businesses, looking for and finding paper for drawing or mat board, wood for stretching canvas, sometimes the canvas.  I also found canvas and more, not at the art store, but discount fabric stores or hardware store.  I still reuse today, making paper mache containers, boxes and pencil cups, using plastic clamshells, soup cans, as molds.  Old aluminum foil makes great armatures for my smaller pieces, the mermaid candlestick holders or boxes and such. Water is my current interest and being able to make air to water collectors in a way it would catch the public s attention. I think there power in having some control over those things that are normally out of our control, like the drought in California.  Water from Air collectors on’t depend on anyone or any company, to work. They can be made from the simplest materials. WHY aren’t there more?

Asherah Weiss Arts Administration, Creative Sonoma Grantee, Folk Art, Illustration, Improvisation, Mixed, Multi-Media, Muralist, Other, Other, Other, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Puppetry, Sculpture, Teacher/Instructor, Teaching Artist for Adults, Teaching Artist for Youth, Theatre, Visual Arts Asherah Weiss is an educator, community artist, and organizer.  Since graduating from California College of the Arts in 2011, she has helped start many projects that bring people together around arts and placemaking, in Sonoma County and the Bay Area, including the PLACE for Sustainable Living in Oakland, and womb space collaborative arts in Santa Rosa.  Her belief in the democracy of the arts has inspired her to bring creativity to people of all ages and abilities, including as a credentialed art teacher at Healdsburg Junior High through the first school years of the pandemic.  In 2022, she co-created the globally known project Peptoc, a hotline and series of posters with uplifting messages from kids (call 707-8PEPTOC), and is now continuing the project with Jessica Martin in the form of a book full of young people’s wisdom and humor from around the world.  Her excitement lies in what creativity can do for the world— making things more collaborative, sustainable, beautiful and meaningful.   Current Projects include:

• Co-creator of the Peptoc Project, currently taking submissions for a book of uplifting messages from young people around the world.  See peptoc.net
• Programs Director at Artstart
• Coordinator of Earth Protector Parade at the 1st Climate Fest on April 22nd, 2022 in the Healdsburg Plaza
• Artist in Residence at West Side Elementary School

Amy A. Whitcomb Artisan, Fiction, Functional Art, Holidays Shop Local, Literature, Non-Fiction, Other, Other, Poetry I create fine art, functional art, and opportunities for myself and others to observe, reflect, discover, and build community through the written word. Please consider supporting my paper and book arts by purchasing blank journals for yourself and your loved ones. Each journal is unique -- made from repurposed, locally sourced materials -- to encourage reflection and creative expression. Please visit www.amyawhitcomb.com/artist to learn more about me.

Becky White Audio, Composition, Film, Instrumental, Media, Music, Photography, Video, Visual Arts, Vocal Becky White  (she/her) is a musician (vocalist, guitar & synth), music producer and videographer/photographer artist based in Petaluma, CA.  She has been a lifelong activist for social and environmental justice, and runs her production company MakeARTNow.org which is focused on creating media for a changing world.   Becky White has published four original CDs and has been performing her whole life. A dedicated student of music from diverse locations such as Berklee College Of Music, The Ali Akbar Khan College, and gamelan masters in the jungles of Bali Indonesia.  She also studied conservation biology and wildlife ecology, which has been a major influence In her music and support of social and environmental justice. Becky continues to learn and experiment with singing, field recordings, found and created instruments, vintage guitars, pianos & synths, computers, MIDI, and the study of indian classical music.  Along with various client projects, Becky records and produces music and videos for her band FIREKEEPER,  for her label and production company MakeARTNow.org. 

Niki Wildflower Artisan, Creative Sonoma Grantee, Design, Fashion Design, Fiber Art, Graphic Design, Illustration, Mixed, Other, Painting, Sculpture, Teacher/Instructor, Teaching Artist for Youth, Visual Arts Niki Wildflower is a nomadic Artist who currently resides in Petaluma California. She has been influenced by muralists, agitprop art, graffiti and 90’s riot grrrl bands with a focus on women’s rights. Motivated by body-positive activism and our culture’s idea of beauty standards, she chooses to depict female figures as monumental and sacred because of society's poor representation of women. She hopes to capture the strength of softness and the beauty of large women who are unapologetically themselves. As a graduate of Central Connecticut State University her background has been a mixture of easel paintings, life drawings, and murals that specifically concentrate on figurative work. Her figures show closed female forms juxtaposed open and confident power stances, representative of the inner battle women face each day as well as the destruction of female egos. Confident figures challenge today’s beauty norms by portraying large dominant women gazing back at the viewer - a concept of looking and being looked at. Her murals and paintings are the culmination of her art education and experience and are the framework of Niki Wildflower’s dexterity. Her subjects include 2nd and 3rd wave feminist icons, models from multiple social media platforms, and people from everyday life. The struggle to incorporate text and street art aesthetics is unified by her experimentation with spray paint and stickered lettering. Working on a large scale provides a mural-like ambiance that exempli

Richard Wizardsky Audio, Design, Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Media, Mixed, Painting, Photography, Visual Arts

I have been illustrating and painting all my life and have been painting on glass for about 20 years.

I graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania USA. I graduated with a triple majors in Graphic design, Illustration, and 3 dimensional design. With that education I embarked on a carrier as a graphic designer for Mellon Bank, Bd&E, A.Magazine, In Pittsburgh newsweekly, and produced and Edited Further Magazine,and then short stint into movie graphics for Disney and Lions GateFilms. I have been showing in galleries since 1989 from One Taste Gallery in San Francisco, a group show at the Buddha"s Palm Gallery, Coffee Bizarre, Frame of Mind Gallery, Main Street Coffee,Coffee Bazaar and Slice of Life, Peace in Medicine Gallery, The Pine Cone, Aubergine Emporium, Tiny Town, Hardcore, Guyaki to name a few in West County.. Then in Pittsburgh At Lascquax Gallery, The Beehive, City Books the Zenith Gallery, the Pittsburgh regional history museum as well as the Bloomfield Gallery, my works also adorn Theresa Heinze's foundation for fine arts, More recently showing at Tiny Town, hardcore, Guyaki,Fat heads Gallery , Polk street Gallery, Aubergine after Dark Emporium, Live painting at Festivals and local concert venues such as hop Monk and Lupin Lodge. I focus my artistic sights on the Images and objects of nature, using vivid color to convey their most exuberant form. Through my art I hope to bring people closer to the spiritual relm of the natural world they are immersed in.

Artist Highlights

• ArtWanted.com Gallery:    Fine Art
• Represented By:    FurtherImages
• Past Clients:    Mellon Bank, Disney, Inn Pittsburgh Magazine, Further Images and words, Film Joey coyle, Heinz Foundation, DDf&m etc