I have enjoyed drawing all of my life and tried other things like watercolors. I started learning how to paint with acrylics a few years ago. The experience of growing as an artist over these years has added much to my life. I have enjoyed the process and I am grateful for the opportunity to show my work.

Creating art challenges me to conceptualize ideas and communicate them in a way that is both pleasing to me and enticing to the viewer. While that process is difficult, it is also tremendously rewarding. Often I work with religious, in particular Christian, imagery and enjoy mixing in social and historical themes as well. I aim to make pieces that are both humorous and thought provoking. Since the beginning of my education in art, I have been most attracted to printmaking. I enjoy the methodology as well as the very tactile link to the past this medium provides. In addition, through printmaking I am uniquely poised to integrate and borrow from new technologies and methods. For example, the most recent cast-prints I have created are most certainly the only of their kind because they blend the traditional art of woodblock printing with very recent techniques in sculptural casting. Aside from making a living with my art and having many successful shows, most of all I aspire to always find happiness in the creative process.

Art is not the absolute of existence — we can all survive without it. I value art’s enhancement of life through aesthetics, so I choose to focus on the existential rather than trends in art. I tend to “destroy” a canvas by painterly gesture and the let accidents happen during the process. I then rescue it with more controlled marks later on, leaving the accidents’ benefits. My work is self-expressive, but not just of one aspect of my emotion because my self is a part of the world. Everyday happenings such as getting disgusted at bugs, a flirtation, or hearing the cacophony of radio commercials can inspire a painting.

Creative interpretation of everyday life as seen through the eyes of Kat Wallace.

Artist Statement - Absense of Structure
The process of illness, injury, and healing of the human body is the basis for this work. The work is derived from personal experience and close inspection of openings into the outer layer of skin. Moments of injury or specific events in a body’s history has driven my thesis work in creating seduction of the viewer in events that are both beautiful and horrific. This work also deals with ideas of inside and outside, the privileged viewership of the medical profession, and the mystery that is left for the rest of us. The works on Mylar are introduced elements of chance and the opportunity to react rather than plan in the work. By working with paint on one side and ink on the surface the transparency allows to hint at the mysteries of the interior of the body, creating a shadow on the wall behind the surface, much like skin. The ink works to energize and highlight specific areas to create action and connect seemingly unconnected elements, creating chain reactions within each piece.

I am a self taught photographer who also had formal training at the University of Virginia and in Florence, Italy at Studio Art Centers International. Dealing almost exclusively in black and white film photography--now branching out into color--I thrive on this traditional form in this ever increasingly digital world. My work is primarily from my travels and seeks to find unique perspectives in any location no matter how profoundly beautiful, challenging, heart-warming, or heart-breaking each place is of its own right. I photograph because I can and because I must. However, other’s words more adequately describe my motivations:

"[To photograph] is putting one’s head, one’s eye, and one’s heart on the same axis." Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." --Walker Evans

"If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint." --Edward Hopper

The indie psychedelic pop duo from Baltimore have been compared to the Pixies, the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and the Violent Femmes, yet sound like no one else.

By choosing what to shoot and how to shoot it, a photographer can use the camera to present an idealized scene or apply it as a tool to capture reality. For this reason, the editorial power of photography fascinates me. My images tend have two distinct styles; photojournalistic-inspired portraits of people going about their daily lives, and ideal-inspired work that omits the “noise” of the world.

In this particular set of portraits, I selected a series of images depicting marginalized people in Brazil. These are not the popular, often widely seen images of Carnival or the beach beauties in bikinis -- instead, I chose to focus on the harsh influences of poverty, and the innocence of children living within these conditions.

My portraits include shots of schoolgirls in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, a brother and sister who live on the banks of the Amazon, and a child I met in a seaside town in the state of Bahia.

The second set of images includes an experiment with both wide and cropped interpretations of votive candles burning in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

The final set of images consists of landscapes that I took while visiting New Zealand and Eastham, MA. I was drawn to both the light and texture of the terrain.

The purpose of art in my opinion is to take a concept, pile of "junk", or situation that no one else understands and make them see the beauty that you see in it.

Lee Olson Weaver (b. 1981) is an American artist born in Atlanta, Georgia but raised amongst NOVA suburbanites around the turn of the 20th century. During this time in the USA there was great societal complacency and extraordinary civil lethargy which did indeed compel his decision to pursue art making. His paintings, drawings, and prints are heavily influenced by this theme and include subject matter often at odds with itself, with color schemes usually determined capriciously, and a style derived from the distillation of various acts of urban and suburban vulgarity. For purchasing information please contact via Email or visit the Website LEEWEAVERDP.COM

I describe my work as 'digital outsider'. My work owes as much to futurists as it does to the artists I admire. I am not a visionary technologist, obviously, but neither is my art easily quantified in traditional terms. In this work, I re-imagine the bombardment of information we survive daily into ciphers that explain memory and connection. I hope to demystify both worlds by combining their tools, language and cultural landmarks to reveal new insights and offer a lens to measure evolutions both global and personal.

THE Voice
Pure, simple, and endearing …Tamara’s voice. Accompanied by guitar, bassist, percussionist and drums, she sings uplifting songs of experience…Tamara usually opens her set with the quiet of her voice and the guitar alone. As the rhythm sets in, the groove becomes familiar yet distinct. It is as if old school revivals meets bossa then meets the dance floor. Tamara’s calm nature and southern accent makes you feel right at home. Her music swings rhythm and blues and pours soul into a steady stream of half and whole notes, not masked by vocal runs, but her music makes way for the song to be heard.

Known chiefly as a saxophonist in the DC music scene
(performing regularly with blues great Bobby Parker, among many others) Ken Francis Wenzel is now bringing his roots and Americana-based songwriting to Artomatic's Cabaret Stage. Touching on themes of love, restlessness, dreams and deeper yearnings, his songs paint melodic, heartfelt pictures of the human soul searching for a little sanity in an insane world.

For over 14 years I have been involved in outdoor, in-school and out-of-school time education in both rural and inner-city settings. I simply use photography as a visual journal to capture my travels, trials, triumphs and defeats, and most importantly, the growth of my young son. Presently, I coordinate the ArtSpace, a youth and community arts program in the Shaw neighborhood, www.artspacedc.org . My current project is "The Mighty, Mighty, Halftruth", a portrait show that will be on display at Artomatic along with selected photographs from my portfolio.