Artscape Spring & Summer 2019 Exhibition Artist Biographies
Allyson Allen is a former high school English and Special Education teacher. For twenty-five years she has been teaching quilting and doll making through state funded programs in public and private schools, including three southern California Youth Authority facilities for seven of those years. Allyson also teaches at quilt shows, quilt retreats, for quilt guilds, and on multi-guild quilt cruises. Workshop venues have included the Disney Music Center, California African American Museum, African MarketPlace & Cultural Faire, and California Craft & Folk Art Museum. Her quilts, fiber art pieces and handmade journals have been featured in numerous newspaper articles, exhibit catalogs and books. Exhibit venues include galleries, cultural centers, museums, art venues and embassies throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Europe and Africa. Allyson is a multiple California Arts Council grant award recipient, has been nominated twice for National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship consideration, and has been recognized for more than two decades as an award-winning Master African American Quilt and Doll Artist by the state of California. kuumba421.wixsite.com/quilts421
Phyllis Binkley is a retired art teacher who loves to hike in the mountains. It is only in retirement that she has found the time to pursue and develop her creative energy and abilities in the form of art quilts. Returning to her love of fiber, fabrics, yarns, threads, dying and needle felting, she has found unlimited possibilities in expressing the beauty of the world. Since 2002, Phyllis has taught landscape workshops and has been giving lectures nationally, including Hawaii. Her quilts have been in national shows since 2006, and she has been winning awards in local and regional shows since 2005. International Quilt Festival published two of her pieces in their catalogues, Houston 2008 and Chicago, 2009. www.phyllisbinkley.wordpress.com
Gustavo Camacho is an abstract artist who was born in Montebello and spent his early childhood in Maywood before moving to Moreno Valley at age 12. After high school, he moved around to many different cities in Southern California, from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. Gus has now spent more than 10 years living in Riverside where he and his girlfriend own a home. Gustavo has been experimenting with art since childhood, starting with graffiti and eventually expanding into all different mediums. He works as a full time artist, and this year has had a solo show at Mind & Mill, where he is exhibiting approximately 30 of his pieces from January through May 2019.
Gideon Cohn is a Swedish-born artist who primarily paints in oils and acrylic. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, and also lived in Holland. In 1983 he moved with his family to the United States. They moved to his current home of La Quinta in 1986. Possessing a zest for art since early childhood, he drew and painted whenever he could find the materials. “Serious art work” started in the early 90s after his life in California had been established. Much of Gideon’s art revolves around the human figure with a hint of surrealism. He developed his own unique styles through new techniques, being inspired by his surroundings and his extensive travels. Gideon has a studio gallery in La Quinta, and his art can be found in homes and establishment. He is very involved in the art community and is a member of several art organizations. Gideon is the originator and the visionary of the art component of The Ophelia Project, a mentorship program involving 750 middle school and high school girls. He has been the Art Director of the Ophelia Project for nine years. www.GideonArtist.com
Melody Cohn is a painter who resides in La Quinta. She expresses herself through her spirituality, and has artistically evolved from creating batiks to acrylics, and on to painting with watercolor on canvas. Melody learned the watercolor on canvas technique by a master and has been exploring with it ever since. Melody loves to let her light and heart shine through her art. Melody’s art can be viewed in her studio gallery in La Quinta. www.Images-Gallery.com
Sydney Edmond is a 26 year old painter who has lived in the City of Temecula for 17 years. She has autism, movement challenges and is unable to speak, but learned to type at the age of 10 so she could communicate. She soon began writing poetry, publishing a book of her work when she was 16. On a whim, Sydney began painting with watercolors when she was 21 in spite of her movement challenges. Starting off by first daubing paint onto the paper, her talent soon became apparent. She was commissioned to create a painting by the City of Temecula. It now hangs, along with an accompanying poem, in their city. Her paintings and poems were also featured on the Autism Society of America’s Self Determination Conference folder in Los Angeles. Sydney has had solo exhibits at the Ronald H. Roberts Temecula Library in 2016, the Grace Mellman Library and the Gallery at the Merc in 2017. Sydney acts as a representative for individuals with autism who cannot speak and who need to be given a means to communicate in order to live fulfilling lives. Through an app on her iPad that gives her voice-output, she has spoken at many conferences and schools in Southern California. Sydney loves to immerse herself in nature and the arts, and regularly enjoys the outdoors, musicals and ballet. Painting has become her passion, as it has given her another way to release more of her creative nature. www.facebook.com/pages/Sydney-Edmond/549059158540764
Donna Elliot is a painter, photographer, mixed media and textile artist who was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She has been living in Idyllwild, since 2011, though she discovered rock climbing there in the early 1970s. Her passion for vibrant colors is captured in her alcohol ink paintings, and her love of nature is featured in her work as well. Her imaginative vistas are borne of time spent in the outdoors amongst mountains, canyons, waterfalls, flora and fauna. She joined the Art Alliance of Idyllwild (AAI), of which she is the current president, and sells her award-winning art in local galleries and at art exhibitions. She is a strong supporter of art education and teaches art through the Idyllwild School PTA smARTS program.
Caryn Gilbert is a photographer and native of Los Angeles who has lived in Riverside County since 2009. She has shown her work in several solo and group exhibitions throughout Idyllwild, where she currently resides, as well as throughout the desert. While our local mountains and desert provide Caryn with the inspiration for much of her work, her images have, over time, become increasingly abstract and experimental in nature. Indeed, her most recent work reflects her growing fascination with intentional camera movement, light and shadow, and the lines, details, patterns and textures that can be found in the natural world. An avid road-tripper, Caryn goes exploring every chance she gets and never travels far without her camera bag riding shotgun. www.CarynGilbert.com
Steven Higgins has, for the past 10 years, exhibited at various galleries throughout the Southern California area. From 2012 to 2014, he was the director of Blackstone Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. As of late, Higgins has been working diligently on a new body of work. His artistic efforts are influenced by such sources as people, politics, science, mortality, emotion, psychology, consciousness, metaphysics, music and landscapes. His work simultaneously explores various modes of picture making.
Luke Jackson is a mixed media artist and a native to Riverside. He is a founding member of Mind & Mill, curator of Toil Gallery and owner of Frequency Factory Studios in Riverside. After returning home from college in Hollywood, he set out to build more artistic and musical infrastructure in his hometown and share native talent abroad. Luke uses his own art to exercise his attachment to the paraphernalia of moments. Working primarily in mixed media collage, the subject matter is often completely dependant on the materials available. Pulling tangible items from periods of his own life, he creates time capsules of arbitrary moments through personal objects and images that are subtly relatable. There is an ironic satire that threads through each piece, acknowledging the tedium of the process.
Ulrike Maria was born in Salzburg, Austria and moved to Los Angeles in 1981. In 1992 Ulrike began a career in entertainment events at a major Hollywood studio, a position that would span nearly 20 years. In 2011, she left the studios and decided to write articles about her metaphysical passion for inspirational magazines. Her passion for painting started in early childhood, but she finally fulfilled her dream of being a fulltime artist, when she moved to Palm Springs, where she continues her creative journey. Ulrike works mostly with acrylics and texture on canvas and loves bright vibrant colors, nature and wildlife. She is a chosen artist for the Idyllwild Deer Project where her fawn Opal is part of the mountain community’s installation. Ulrike was also elected to be an artist for the Heart for Hope Fundraiser at Loma Linda Children’s Hospital in Indio, which was exhibited at Heather James Gallery and CODA Gallery, Palm Desert. www.thehappypaintbrush.com
William Myerchin has been a photographer in the Inland Empire for thirty-five years. He owned a commercial photo studio in Riverside from 1981 to 2006, providing services for local businesses, manufacturers and educational institutions. After graduating from the University of North Dakota in 1970, William taught in Rialto until being drafted into the US Army the following year. While serving in the army, he was stationed in Vietnam. There he worked as a combat photographer, photo journalist and general staff photographer, documenting various events at the very end of the war. His service as an army photographer nurtured his passion for taking pictures. Upon leaving the Army, William decided to make photography his life’s work. He attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and assisted various commercial photographers in Hollywood. He finally opened a studio in the Inland Empire in 1979 and has been shooting photos ever since. Now semi-retired, his involvement in photography has become a fine art discovery of self and the world. Each of his current photos were captured as a single event, with each image being the subject’s reflection created by mirror beyond one focal length. Art, as expressed in photography, and particularly these images, are serendipitous encounters with the outside world.
Paul Nguyen is an entrepreneur, tattoo artist and muralist born and raised in Riverside. As a tattooist for 18 years, he has worked at some of the most prestigious shops around the world including Shamrock Social Club in Hollywood, Lyle Tuttles Tattooing in San Francisco and Inkvaders in Geneva, Switzerland. Paul has also done numerous murals throughout Southern California, most notably the Downtown Gaslamp Hilton in San Diego and The Dive in San Gabriel. He has recently joined forces with the 70s hip hop boombox company, Lasonic Audio, where he is now the creative director. Paul and his team are working to revive the iconic 90s boombox brand and reintroduce it to the international market through Co Branded Artist Collaborations via educational pop-up museums and activations. Paul currently resides in Corona, and for the last 10 years has worked in his private studio and creative space called 11th Door.
Christina Quinn is a painter and ex fiber artist who was born and raised in Yorkshire, England. As a world traveler, she has lived in Australia for 2 years, New Zealand for 10 years and found herself in California in 1984. In New Zealand Christina became a successful fiber artist, and in 1988 she picked up painting when her children had grown. She enjoys nature and the outdoors which has recently begun to come out through her artwork. Christina is also a published author, and she uses both her artwork and her writing to express herself. She has shown her artwork at several galleries in Palm Desert, Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage.
Sunny Patton has a degree in fine arts from Pepperdine University and has lived in Riverside county since 1982. She has taught art for Desert Sands School District and Young at Art for the Coachella Valley Historical Museum. She has also produced several how-to demos on YouTube. Sunny loves to paint in many mediums including watercolor, oil and acrylic. She is an active member of the Coachella Valley Watercolor Society, and was judged Painter of the Year a few years ago. It has been a lifetime love for Sunny to draw and paint. Many of Sunny’s paintings have been accepted in national and international shows including Harness Tracks of America, Grass Valley Draft Horse Classic and Horse and Country, Canada. Her paintings hang in private collection in the US and Europe. Her acrylic painting, The Champion, was chosen for the cover art for the 2000 HITS Indio Desert Circuit horse show. She has two grown children and lives on a mini ranch in Bermuda Dunes with horses, a cat and a German shepherd. www.SunnyPatton.com
Alan Sponholz is a photographer who was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but from age 4 was raised in Southern California. His passion for photography began around age 7 when his mother gave him a little plastic camera. His family could not afford a 35 mm camera when he was in middle school in the 1970s, so he made friends with people in the photography class and helped them with their projects. That is how he learned to develop film and prints. Today, Alan shoots mostly in digital for his commercial photography. As an artist, Alan is always looking for inspiration.
Ricardo Vela is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who began his journey in photography when he was 8 years old. A simple reflex camera became his passport to exotic worlds right in front of his eyes. Vela’s journalistic career started in the third grade when he started a school newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Ever since then, he has been involved in some aspect of mass communications. For many years of his life, photography was his only outlet to express himself, but his emotions grew stronger and that led Ricardo to set aside the camera, pick up the brush, and use the canvas as his new means of expression. It is on the canvas where raw emotions, bold colors and their meaning start to take shape. Ricardo works in an emotional, expressionistic style, with rich colors, broad, gestural brush strokes and vigorous applications of paint. He intends to continue to challenge himself artistically, and will continue to express who he is through his work.
Sean Winn is a fine artist who was born in Rancho Santa Margarita and raised in Corona. He has been creating art from the time he was 7 years old and is currently attending the University of the Arts London, receiving his Master’s degree in Fine Art. Sean has shown his work at Mind & Mill in Riverside and various galleries and organizations in London. Within his work he gains inspiration from fashion photography, science fiction, psychology and the philosophy of human beings, as well as the relationships we build with one another. On his days off, Sean spends his time reading Juxtapoz art magazine, knitting, shooting photographs, hiking, camping, hunting for new and exciting coffee shops, and of course spending time with his friends and family. Sean currently works as a graphic designer for Uncovered Collective, a group of artists that are involved in the London art scene that work with up and coming artists putting on exhibitions, helping the artists build up their resume and give them more exposure. While studying full time he has been active in showing work both in Riverside County and in London, but hopes to further his career as an artist and let the public view how he sees today’s modern world.
