Raised in rural Oregon, Laguna Canyon-based Sandra Jones Campbell describes her acrylic paintings as “a composite of social sightings, portraying evocative associations from a voyeuristic perspective.”  In her simultaneously whimsical and sophisticated work, Campbell features multiple subjects to depict social and political scenes, reflecting her optimism and candor.

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For more about Sandra Jones Campbell, go to www.pacificedgegallery.com/artist/sandra-j-campbell
 

Born in Wisconsin, Berkeley metal sculptor Kati Casida studied Art Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  She studied abroad extensively and was an Artist-in-Residence in both Oslo, Norway and Hydra, Greece.  Casida’s abstract pieces, comprised of aluminum painted in brilliant colors, reflect a range of artistic influences, from landscape images as altered by movement, Greek and Cypriot dance rhythms, modern dance patterns, the seasons, and Norway’s rushing waterfalls.  “My sculptures imply motion, a continuous passage through space.”  

For more about Kati Casida, go to www.katicasida.dreamhosters.com
 

Raised in the Bay Area, Christison, based in both Bangkok and San Francisco, has exhibited sculpture professionally since 1991.  After receiving a Fulbright Scholarship in 2002, he relocated to Bangkok, where he gave university lectures in sculpture, bronze casting, and figure modeling.  Influenced by Greek and Roman portrait busts, his work is expressive, capturing “the lines of the human body in dramatic states of contortion or active gesture.”
 

For more about Kevin Christison, go to www.kevinchristisonstudio.com

New York born sculptor Albert Dicruttalo, who fashions large scale, life size, small scale, and wall hanging pieces in bronze, stainless steel, and steel, grew up in the Adirondack foothills.  After extensive travel in Alaska and South America, Dicruttalo worked at Cornell University, where he explored the use of technologies in the creation of sculpture.  Since 1996, he has maintained a studio and foundry in Oakland, CA. 

For more about Albert Dicruttalo, go to www.albertdicruttalo.com 
 

Born in British Columbia, Canada, Stan Dann (1931-2013) resided in Lafayette, CA for over forty years following art and design studies in Vancouver and Los Angeles.  He used power tools to create his large-scale bas-relief wood sculpture, featuring finely finished surfaces.  Early influences included the monumental carvings of Pacific Northwest indigenous artists and wood patterns made for industrial machinery parts in his brother’s Vancouver shop.

For more about Stan Dann, go to www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Dann

Born and raised in New York, Jeff Downing, whose father was an avid sailor, spent his youth on the waters of Long Island Sound.  He became fascinated with the daily life of lobstermen, teaching himself all the tasks and handicrafts in which they engaged, from boat building to trap making to net weaving.  Downing moved to San Francisco in 1983 and encountered the groundbreaking work of California ceramicists.  “His prodigious ceramic output overflows with nautical references – playfully, cryptically floating like emotional flotsam and jetsam through his works.”  Downing teaches at San Francisco State University.

For more about Jeff Downing, go to www.jeffdowningart.com

Tom has been the Director of the Firehouse Art Collective since 2004. Firehouse is a progression of four community art spaces providing art studios, communal housing, and event spaces in the East Bay of the Bay Area in California (namely the Cities of Berkeley and Oakland). The Firehouse’s mission is to empower the practice of artistry for the benefit of personal and community well-being.

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In addition to his main profession as a fine art sculptor - using found objects, mixed media and paint - Tom works with his wife and film producer Iris Torres as a partner in Firehouse Films. Firehouse Films develops and creates movies, short content, television series, and documentaries.

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For more about Tom Franco, go to: FirehouseArtCollective.com and instagram.com/tom_franco

“I build abstract sculptures from shapes too simple to think about in configurations too complicated to hold in your head.”  Dan Good’s visual vocabulary consists mainly of boxes, rectangles, and lines.  He works in steel, aluminum stainless steel, wood, and, most recently, PETG 3D printing.  He holds graduate degrees in Electrical Engineering, Electronic Music, and Media Recording.

For more about Dan Good, go to www.dangood.org

From a young age, Rue Harrison has enjoyed making art. She has degrees in English, Fine Arts and Creative Arts from three universities in three different states. After a career as a graphic designer, she became a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, where she works with adults on issues related to trauma. Her training as an artist is deeply useful as a healing tool in her therapy practice. Harrison is author and illustrator of Indigo Animal, a book which inspired her to build the namesake sculpture.   

Vallejo-raised Doug Heine spent years applying and honing creative and technical skills at UC Berkeley, from working with Nobel Laureates in particle physics, to working in the art department as foundry supervisor to Peter Voulkos.  He took up his own art full time in 1986, following his curiosity and interest in many different materials.  Heine works in wood, marble, aluminum, and clay.  “Each design challenge has its particular set of restrictions and opportunities, leading me toward a solution that is unique and specific to location, aesthetic, material and spirit.”  

For more about Doug Heine, go to www.art13.gallery

Originally a pre-med student at UCLA, Held found his passion in art, graduating with degrees in Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Arts.  An internationally recognized metal sculptor who works primarily in bronze and stainless steel, his pieces often incorporate water.  Since 1985, he has worked out of a sprawling complex of warehouses in Richmond, CA, where he has produced over 500 pieces, aided by a team of talented artists and metal fabricators.

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For more about Archie Held, go to www.archieheld.com

Trey Hill is a professional sculptor and Associate Professor at The University of Montana where he teaches both ceramics and sculpture. He received his BFA from Bowling Green State University in 1999 and his MFA from San Jose State University in 2002. His work has been shown in galleries and museums throughout the United States and internationally. Trey has extensive travel and creative experiences through his vast artist residencies including: The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT; the LH Project Joseph, OR, Da Wang Cultural Highlands, DaWang, China; HAP Studios, Beijing, China; Fule International Ceramic Art Museum, Fuping, China; and the Rojal Art Laboratory, Roja, Latvia.

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For more about Trey Hill, go to www.treyhillstudio.com

A native of Missouri, Robert Holmes grew up during the Great Depression.  In his teens he helped his father design and build homes.  Before becoming an award-winning sculptor, Holmes earned a Civil Engineering degree at the University of Arizona and owned successful construction, design and development businesses in California and Arizona. 

A Sea Ranch resident, Holmes devoted the last twenty-five years of his life to creating contemporary figurative bronze sculptures at Bronze Plus, his Sebastopol foundry, which continues to operate in Santa Rosa, producing his work and that of others.  As one collector noted, a nurturing and joyful vitality is present in all of Holmes’s work, evident in the graceful movement of his dancers, runners, and seated figures.

For more information, see the artist’s website:  www.robertholmessculptor.com

Second-generation sculptor, ceramicist, and mosaicist Wes Horn works in clay, cement, steel, and tile.  Living and working in Davis, CA and Todos Santos, B.C.S., Mexico, the artist specializes in large-scale public art and functional installations.  Horn’s sculptural forms and murals feature local plant and animal imagery, human relationships, and humor.  He engages students and community members in creating certain finished works of art.

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For more about Wes Horn, go to www.weshornart.com

Indiana-born Berkeley sculptor Stan Huncilman worked as a welder in the Louisiana shipyards and a machinist in a Vermont foundry.  He studied art at San Francisco Art Institute and San Francisco State University.  Huncilman’s work-- fashioned from metal, wood, paper, and fabric -- is mysterious and difficult to comprehend, with titles (such as Dharamaticand Bunda Mambo) which are even more enigmatic. Many pieces have movable parts or suggest the need to move, inviting the viewer’s physical interaction with the art. 

For more about Stan Huncilman, go to www.stanhuncilmansculptor.com 
 

New York native Susannah Israel is a longtime West Oakland-based artist, writer, and composer.  With degrees in Chemistry, Art, and Ceramics, she is a frequent visiting artist at schools and universities.  The “visual parade of urban life” inspires Israel’s highly expressive, colorful, recognizable ceramic figures.

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For more about Susannah Israel, go to www.susannahisrael.com

Bay Area native Bruce Johnson studied art at UC Davis and maintains a prolific sculpture studio in rural Sonoma County.  For over fifty years, he has worked with salvaged old-growth redwood to create massive contemporary sculptures, accentuated by copper, for which he has received national and international acclaim.  Johnson describes his work as a combination of Stonehenge (with its scale and mass) and Shinto shrines (with their elegant details). Beyond his work in redwood sculpture, Johnson is a master builder, having designed unique buildings and outside structures, including sacred buildings. 

For more about Bruce Johnson, go to www.formandenergy.com
 

Having escaped from post-WWII, Soviet-dominated Hungary to the American Midwest with her family, Gyöngy Laky eventually made her home in the San Francisco Bay Area.  After undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Laky founded the internationally recognized Fiberworks, Center for Textile Arts in the 1970s and went on to join the faculty of the University of California, Davis in 1978, establishing its Department of Environmental Design.  An internationally and nationally renowned textile artist and sculptor, Laky was once described as a “wood whisperer.”  Her exquisitely individual, puzzle-like pieces marry timber and textiles, reflecting Laky’s commitment to environmental sustainability.

For more information, see the artist’s website:  www.gyongylaky.com

The son of a Swedish photographer and Danish contractor, Ivan McLean developed an appreciation for art and construction early in life.  He learned to weld while working on ranches near the family home in Point Reyes Station, CA.  McLean later cared for the cows and built gates, fences, and some sculpture and furniture.  In North Carolina, he carved both abstract and representational art from native marble.  After relocating to Portland, Oregon, he created sculpture of all sizes and shapes for public and private spaces, using steel, marble, glass, and wood.  “I’ve built functional things since I could hold a hammer, but the sculpture I make now is based on the desire to create pieces that have no use other than to make people smile.”

For more about Ivan McLean, go to www.ivanmclean.com

Raised in Southern California, Messenger received a BA in History from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, a Teaching Credential in Art from California State University, Fullerton and a Masters of Fine Arts from San Diego State University. He moved to the San Francisco East Bay in 1996 to begin a teaching position at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill. 

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His work represents a personal mythology based on a contemporary perspective.  This includes a combination of drawing, painting, modeling and pottery techniques.  Through these he explores social, political and psychological issues in the form of narratives.

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Messengers work has been exhibited extensively and is represented in a number of national collections, including The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento the permanent collection of the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary, the Toki Collection in Berkeley, and the Archie Bray Permanent Collection in Helena, MT. Two recent international projects included a group sculpture in Cuba and a large scale, permanent installation at Parque La Carolina in Quito, Ecuador. 

Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, Walnut Creek-based sculptor David Mudgett spent years working as a pipefitter.  When he applied his metalworking skills to art, he found the experience exhilarating, appreciating a newfound creative freedom.  Mudgett’s motivation comes from “the excitement, intrigue, tests and triumphs” of forming metal into limitless objects.
 

For more about David Mudgett, go to www.davidmudgett.com

Educated at the California College of the Arts, Alex Nolan has worked for and studied under some of the most prominent ceramicists and metal sculptors in the Bay Area.

A kinetic sculptor and metal fabricator based in Oakland, his work is often solar-powered, wireless and a vehicle to promote conservation and renewable energy. One example of reuse of materials in his work is the drive sprocket of an old downtown Berkeley BART escalator used in the Ursus sculpture currently on display.

Nolan is a strong advocate for public art; he appreciates that it enlightens and inspires viewers as well as “becomes part of everyday life and keeps us company.”

For more information, see the artist’s Instagram page: 

https://www.instagram.com/nolanwelds/

The late Kent Roberts (d. 2019), earned degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Art.  His diverse educational background and world travel experiences influenced his body of work, which includes painting, sculpture, drawings, and prints.  Roberts earned great respect from his colleagues at the SFMOMA, where he specialized in exhibition design.

For more about Kent Roberts, go to www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=kent_roberts+pid=193910111

An East Coast native, Jos Sances attended the Montserrat School of Visual Art in Beverly, Massachusetts and has been a printmaker and muralist in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 45 years. Founder of Alliance Graphics (a successful union screen print shop) and co-founder of Mission Gráfica (at the Mission Cultural Center), Sances has maintained a steady output of art addressing issues and ideas which concern him.  In 2010 and 2016, the Library of Congress acquired nearly 500 prints broadly representing his work.  Sances’ work has appeared in such venues as Avenue 50 Gallery (Los Angeles), Vessel Gallery (Oakland), the Richmond Art Center, the American Museum of Ceramic Art, the Berkeley Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  

From 2019 to 2021, several venues including the Richmond Art Center and the Sebastopol Center for the Arts featured the artist’s 51’ x 14’ life-size scratchboard drawing of a mature sperm male.  Sances is the proud founding and lifelong member of the Great Tortilla Conspiracy, a political performance group that produces satirical edible art screen printed with chocolate on tortillas.   

For more information, see the artist’s website:  https://www.josart.net

San Francisco-based sculptor and art educator Danielle Satinover works primarily with metals and industrial materials.  She originally trained in media and visual arts.  Satinover finds inspiration in her own photography and in the wonder of nature.  She finds fascinating the contrast between the industrial nature of her materials and the organic forms of the final creations.

For more about Danielle Satinover, go to www.daniellesatinover.com
 

In his own words, Walnut Creek-based Colin Selig describes his upcycled salvaged propane tank creations as the “synthesis of sculpture and sustainable design.”  A lifelong metal worker who was influenced by ecologically-conscious parents, he has earned a series of patents and won national and international acclaim for his colorful, playful, ergonomic, and ecologically responsible designs.

For more about Colin Selig, go to www.colinselig.com
 

Berkeley-based sculptor Joseph Slusky grew up in Los Angeles, where he was fascinated with the colorful British toy soldiers at the farmers market, car shows at the Pan Pacific Auditorium, and the Southern California beach.  He studied Architecture at UC Berkeley and later taught there.  Slusky’s work finds its roots in the cubist, constructivist, and surrealist movements.  His hand-painted, welded steel sculptures encoded in colorful, acrylic lacquer explore the subconscious:  “[I]t is the unknown that I’m concerned with.” 

For more about Joseph Slusky, go to www.josephslusky.com/

A graduate of California University of Pennsylvania with an M.A. in education from Mills College, Pamela Stefl Toki is a monoprint artist from Oakland, California who creates prints from both clay and ink.  She studied summers with master clay printmaker, Mitch Lyons, the originator of clay monoprints, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Following a thirty-five-year career in public school teaching, Stefl Toki retired in 2018 to pursue her art fulltime.

Her artworks have been exhibited at Paradise Ridge Winery, Santa Rosa and in museums and galleries in Palm Springs and Mazatlán, Mexico, in addition to local galleries in San Francisco, Oakland, Danville, Crockett, San Pablo, and the Orinda Library Art Gallery.  

For more information, see the artist’s website:  http://pamelastefl.com

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Toki is a Japanese-American ceramic artist and educator.  He has maintained a studio in Richmond, CA since 1974.  Among his extensive public commissions are murals and large-scale outdoor clay and porcelain pieces inspired by forms found in nature (mountains, water, snow, and sky), including twenty-foot tall piece Blue Back on view at the Oakland Museum.

For more about John Toki, go to www.johntoki.com

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Patricia Vader is an astronomer-turned-wind artist and metal sculptor.  Her predilection for creating kinetic art stems from her own playful spirit and a positive public response.  Vader works from her expansive hilltop property in Martinez, where the surrounding flora and fauna inspire her.   

For more about Patricia Vader, go to www.patriciavader.com

Lithuanian-born Rimas VisGirda lives in Champaign, IL.  He studied Physics before pursuing Ceramics and Sculpture.  VisGirda exhibited his work, lectured internationally, and taught at colleges and universities on the West Coast and in the Midwest until retiring in 1998.  VisGirda’s work, addressing common themes in contemporary society, “allows us to examine and see our life and the culture we live in through eyes slanted with wit and humor.”   

 

Born enthusiastic and with a creative mind, Midwestern native Gale Wagner created his first sculpture at age five.  At his long-time Oakland studio, he works in steel, glass, and balsa wood (for his free-flight airplanes).  Some of Wagner’s colorful steel sculptures have over twenty coats of paint.

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William "Bill" Wareham was born 1941 and grew up in Maryland, near D.C. He was awarded a Yale summer art program scholarship for high school students and studied at Philadelphia College of Art, followed by attendance at the University of the Americas in Mexico City. In 1964, he joined the Peace Corps, which took him to Puerto Rico for training and then to the Peruvian Andes, where he worked in bronze casting with village artisans. 

Bill returned to the U.S. for graduate school at the University of California Berkeley to earn MFA degrees in both Painting and Sculpture. During the 1970s his artwork was influenced by Peter Voulkos, Mark di Suvero, Richard Serra and others. Among many awards and honors he received were a National Endowment for the Arts grant and two Eisner Prizes for Sculpture. 

Wareham went on to teach at various Bay Area colleges and his work is included in the collections of the SF Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum of California, as well as SF State University, City College of SF, Mare Island Shipyard, and in private collections. The first Artist in Residence at the San Francisco landfill recycling center to retrieve junk and transform it into art, Bill Wareham made sculpture from scrap, welding and even folding steel, always thinking in visual images, every moment a challenge to balance tension and harmony.  Bill Wareham died in 2023. 

For more information, see the artist’s website:  https://www.williamwareham.com

Michigan native Ann Weber, based in San Pedro, CA, originally trained in Ceramics with Viola Frey, but turned to cardboard out of a desire to make pieces that were complex and monumental yet lightweight and maneuverable.  Deeply influenced by her environment and travels, Weber’s pieces evoke charm and humor and “expand the possibility of making beauty from a common and mundane material.”

For more about Ann Weber, go to www.annwebersculpture.com