A photographer in training, an artist in the making.

Raised in Virginia and Maryland, Rick Callender started writing songs ever since he picked up the guitar well over twenty years ago. While living in the Midwest for 13 years, he cut his musical teeth refining his songwriting craft and playing in a myriad of bands, festivals, and musical projects. His songs have been acclaimed for their vivid imagery and unique musical approach. Rick’s very eclectic taste in music is largely inspired by the golden age of college radio during the late ‘70s-’80s and listeners have compared him to the likes of Robyn Hitchcock, Bruce Cockburn, Elvis Costello, Ron Sexsmith, Bill Mallonee, and others.

He has released two CDs, the fully orchestrated "Undone" in 1998 and the sparse "Spark" in 2000, a collection of songs recorded live in the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. He is currently also part of the songwriting trio Chapter Three.

In the world of art, nothing is sacred--not even the art itself. I believe that, at its best, art is a public experience. I see real value in a piece being made available to the general public, not only to look at, but also to interact with when possible. Instead of feeling obliged to "appreciate" art, I would like for people to think of it as part of their daily lives.

This is part of the reason I paint with acrylics. With their bright colors and synthetic texture, they can serve to demystify the world of art, perhaps because their qualities are reminiscent of plastic objects that people use every day. This is important to me, because having art available does not accomplish that much if it does not feel accessible.

The durability of acrylics is also important for my work. Some of my works are made to be touched and moved instead of being kept safely out of reach. The fact that the viewer can physically manipulate the works embodies my belief that the viewer is just as important as the artist in giving meaning to a piece of art.

My photographs come from what I can't see. Surviving a cancer I was told was just there has brought to light many insecurities and fears. I use fragmented non-contextual forms with a lack of identity to depict the need to hide personal imperfections. My suggestions and glimpses of the human form and emotion are shadowed, veiled, and often contained as they are in thought.

I am interested in the subtle nuances and changes in form and identity that flash for a moment and are revealed through adverse experiences. The focus of my lens is on reincarnation, shinjin, and rebirth as part of the Buddhist reality of suffering we all share.

Evan Michio Cantwell

Just trying to be creative...

Acoustic folk-blues. "Porch music."

KT Cappellini made the photos comprising his Artomatic exhibit, "Ain't that America" in July of 2005. As usual, he brought a camera along while on a writing assignment at the Little Sturgis Biker Rally in eastern Kentucky. The result was a collection of bold images that capture the America of John Mellencamp songs with its pants down, an orgy of sex-and-speed-crazed consumption that only a group of 28,000 Americans from the Heartland could pull off.

KT spent two years in Berlin, Germany, where he worked as an associate editor/staff writer for EXBERLINER magazine, Berlin’s only English-language city paper. As the Berlin correspondent for THE FACE, one of the UK’s foremost fashion and lifestyle magazines, he tangled with Berlin's edgy street-couture set.

KT has also lived and worked in Italy, the Balkans, and traveled extensively throughout the U.S. His ongoing journalistic interests include political protest, the biker image, and the end of civilization as we know it.

KT currently resides in Washington, DC, where he's a producer for ARD German Television, the largest broadcaster in Europe. Prior to that, he produced for Fox Television on the show America's Most Wanted. In September and October 2005, he spent a very long two months in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas covering Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

www.tonatosart.com

Well I draw and I paint
and with pixels I play.
Is it really fine art?
That's for others to say.

Go to PelicanArts,
click a Studio link
to see some of my works.
So now what do you think?

AMERICAN SPIRIT will feature the creation of a documentary video. This video will feature the visitors and participants in Artomatic 2008 as they express themselves about Life in America. The video that results from this exhibit will be available in the summer of 2008. Watch www.RedSkyArt.com for an announcement.

Growing up with both parents being active artists, my unconventional art training began at home. An interest in dream interpretation then drew me to psychology and later to working as a family crisis mediator. I found painting offered insight and expression for the complex and turbulent emotions I encountered in that work. Art became a crucible for the visual representations of dynamic themes in conscious and subconscious material. Images would emerge from lines and shapes, finding their own form. Just as dreams lend themselves to many interpretations, art elicits various responses reveled in self-dialogue.

Moving away from purely figurative, the work with squares is an exploration of narrative within the abstract. The squares together become symbolic of an inner remote dialogue excess-able through the imagination. Dialogue rises from their contrast, from ambiguity, incongruity.

The Cityscapes are a study of duplicity: anonymous, cold, manufactured, but also the homes, cemeteries, the dwelling places of humanity. Using planes of color rather than strict line to form composition. These pieces offer narrative with subtle imagery.

In pursuit of an articulation of representation and abstraction which then inspired my use of crosshatching as a vehicle to composition. Desiring the reintroduction of representation, cranes fulfilled the narrative. As purely
utilitarian tools of creation these kinetic not static cranes are here forced into a new role, incongruent as the subject of creation. The crane is understood in context: movement and impermanence, always suggesting what is coming after. The crane then becomes paintbrush for the city. My crane work explores-- with the narrative of folk, the incongruous harmonies of jazz-- along with the subtleties of our human condition. A marriage of representation and abstraction retaining the narrative both personal and universal.

Jazz inspired music with some classical and rock elements.

My art explores human interaction with the environment. My most recent work, created from computer board taken from an assortment of appliances, reminds us of the inherent beauty, the shortened lifespan, and the problems with disposal of these materials. By roughly sewing together circuit board to create impractical quilts, I draw a juxtaposition of some of the earliest with the most contemporary art: from the Neolithic to the Mondern and Postmodern. The quilts can defy scale by reminding the viewer of an aerial view of a metropolis. By displaying these materials, which otherwise might go unnoticed, I hope to illuminate the aesthetic and dangerous qualities of our mundane surroundings.

DC Premiere! The 1922 silent Swedish cult classic, 'Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages,' (featuring grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns and a satanic Sabbath) with a live, improvised score of monstrous medieval music on the electric viola da gamba by Tina Chancey of HESPERUS.