Artist: Michelle Thomas

Title: Meneka: Big Brush Study

Medium: Watercolor

Dimensions: 22 X 30 in

Michelle Sindha Thomas is a California-based writer and artist whose award-winning work contributes to international collections. In January 2023, she opens the doors to a creative community space, Michelle Thomas Fine Art Gallery + Studio. She works in a variety of media and essays themes of memory, place, and identity.

From the artist's statement: "My watercolor collections represent a sense of place, addressing themes of an identity between cultures in which imagery from childhood, portraits of the melancholic and the joyous and the fearless, cityscapes and earthy vignettes fuse to express my existence and craving for home. Art creates meaning where none previously existed."

Artist: Karen Ganz

Title: Red Shadow Print

Medium: Limited edition signed print/ink on paper

Dimensions: 20 x 30 in

Karen Ganz is influenced by 1920s cartoon and comic strip characters. She works often with large canvases and collage, using ink drawings overlaid with bright colors. Her paintings and drawings invoke a sense of nostalgia, humor, and concern for the predicament of the "common man."

From the artist's statement: "...I use these images and very gestural painting as metaphors for psychological states of mind. Attachment, questions of being an "individual" within "the group",assimilation and role-playing interest me. I use a frankenstein-like approach to piece together figures/images and use multiple broken-up canvases to further the fragmentation of those images. This first came up in the heavy collage work of my drawings which I allowed to change the way that I approach my painting. My approach to painting also has been influenced by early films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton that I arrived at by way of Twyla Tharp and Samuel Beckett. I approach a show as a "staged" experience, and my job as that of choreographer of the work."

Artist: Takeshi Nakayoshi

Title: Mythic Dance

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 40 x 40 in

Takeshi Nakayoshi is a is a Japanese Asian Modern & Contemporary painter.

From the artist's statement:

"These paintings are the result of my life searching process for getting to something neither I, nor other people, have ever seen before as a potentiality of color phenomena.

Artists need an original voice, When as a young man, I realized I did not yet have a such thing. So, from this point on I started from zero to find my own original voice. That was decades ago. I was under Diebenkorn's influence, attracted to his thin layering upon transparent gestural strokes, which I found myself fascinated by, and thought it was important for the destiny of my future painting. I first combined my investigation with Latin flavored color, since I very much preferred Latin subtle color. My formula was LATIN x ABSTRACT = Takeshi Nakayoshi."

Artist: Yunan Ma

Title: Love 8

Medium: Fiber art

Dimensions: 22 X 22 in

Yunan Ma Fiber Art is designed and handmade by Yunan at the artist's studio in the SF Bay Area. Each unique piece is executed with the finest natural fibers including merino wool, alpaca wool, mohair, silk, cotton, and novelty accent, that are carefully selected from top yarn mills around the world. With a fine arts and knitwear design background, Yunan believes art is more than beautiful texture and exquisite craftsmanship. Every piece depicts a storytelling experience by interpreting energy and emotion in a cheerful way.

Born and raised in China with a background of eight years of learning fine arts, Yunan came to the US at the age of 17. In 2018, Yunan graduated from Academy of Art University with a MFA in Knitwear Design, and she was mentored by the famous knitwear designer Midori Sergent. Yunan was the only knitwear designer attended the NYFW graduation runway; in addition, she was selected for 2018 CFDA+ Design Graduates Program.

Artist: Uma Rani Iyli

Title: Brocades-Blue Green Gold 2

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Dimensions: 36 X 36 in

From the artist's statement: "While time-based meditative processes such as wrapping and repetitive mark making inform my paintings, fiber work, installations and photographs, conceptually it is the idea of connective threads that ties them all together. Merging up-cycled daily objects with ancient practices, each resulting series acts as an avenue for dialogue between culture and time. My meditative process employs practices tied to my female identity of my Indian background and childhood memories.

Through various media, I intentionally integrate the vibrant colors inspired by traditional Saris into my artwork considering notions of women's work and its link to the hand. Each line that crosses another echo the tradition of weaving and storytelling from my heritage. It is my hope that my work contributes a positive and hopeful energy to our contemporary art landscape instilling a sense of playfulness and curiosity through color, material and thoughtful constructions."

Artist: Andrzej Michael Karwacki

Title: Equanimity Redefined, 1800-blue

Medium: Acrylic and resin on birch panel

Dimensions: 24 X 72 X 3 in

Andrzej Karwacki's painting technique started by looking at the processes of weathering, where wood, paint, and water, meet and dissolve into each other, imitating nature and its material evolution. Karwacki also has a private practice as an MFT, so he "understands the value of therapay for those in need."

From the artist's statement: "My artwork is an exploration, a gesture which reflects a moment in life, a composition which tells a personal story and as "Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day." -C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections; so do my paintings, narrative events experiences, learned and forgotten and learned again by the human mind."

Artist: Kara Maria

Title: Static #7

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions: 6 X 6 in

Kara Maria is a visual artist working in painting and mixed media whose recent work reflects on Earth's biodiversity crisis and the place of animals in our increasingly unstable environment. Borrowing from the broad vocabulary of contemporary painting, Maria blends geometric shapes, vivid hues, and abstract marks with representational elements.

"I recognize that broader access to mental health care is urgently needed in San Francisco - especially during this time of economic and social crisis. Supporting Access Institute is a small way I can help make my city a better place to live for all."

Artist: Leo Bersamina

Title: Shadowplay

Medium: Archival digital print

Dimensions: 25 X 25 in

From the artist's statement: "I am an ardent observer of life's visual rhythms and fleeting moments. I am especially interested in the relationships and patterns that we create during our lives, which over time, come to define us and make us definable to others. I look for patterns that we create through our living: relationships with natural forces and objects, models created through encounters with other people- travel, shelter, struggle, habit, and with our own genetic makeup. With my work, I hope to communicate simplicity and complexity simultaneously.

When I make work, I set out to make a unique object that draws from the way I look and perceive the world that I live in. Sometimes this process relies on some specific visual element or artifact from my various backgrounds (as a mixed-race person, as a father, as a surfer, as a teacher), sometimes it is implied, and other times it exists very quietly in between the layers of paint."

Artist: Eric Zammitt

Title: Echo Spectrum

Medium: Laminated acrylic plastic

Dimensions: 33.5 x 3 x 1.75 in

Eric Zammitt's intricate, geometric wall sculptures are made of tens of thousands of solid bits of boldly colored acrylic plastic, which are laminated into cohesive panels through an intensive process of construction, division, and reconstruction. This process is followed by wet-sanding and polishing. His works have been associated with energy fields, music, light and space, quantum and string theories, landscape, mosaics, weaving and genetic patterns.

From the artist's statement: "My work alludes to the dynamics and interplay of dual elements; matter/energy, spirit/body, emotion/intellect. It is simultaneously about our Gestalt experience of the drama and beauty of creation, and our intellectual fascination with its parts and how they relate to create a whole."

Artist: Isca Greenfield-Sanders

Title: Wading II (Blue)

Medium: Direct to plate photogravure and aquatint

Dimensions: 31.5 X 30.5 in

Isca Greenfield-Sanders' landscape paintings based on found vintage photography, invite her viewer to forge a connection to their own experience. Using the old pictures as a starting point, she creates several iterations of each image, which she alters with pencil and watercolor, and finally paints over with oil. Image fragments are distilled into carefully composed paintings, which emerge simultaneously familiar and enigmatic

Artist: Lee Materazzi

Title: Tilted Pink

Medium: C-print

Dimensions: 39.5 X 29.5 in

Lee Materazzi is a contemporary artist from Miami, FL now living in San Francisco, CA.

Materazzi uses her body as a medium alongside color and texture, at times responding to remnants of material or work left by her children in the studio. Her compositions are off-kilter and investigate autonomy- rejecting acceptable social norms that regulate the human body. Materazzi's works are considered sculpturally, but exist only temporarily. She documents what she creates with medium format photography to preserve it.

Artist: Eileen Keller

Title: Bend at the Rio Grande #2

Medium: Oil

Dimensions: 16 X 20 in

From the artist's statement: "...Having achieved many of my professional goals, I began to turn my eyes again to landscape. I bought a house in Taos, New Mexico twenty years ago and spend vacation time there twice a year. My drives out through the most incredible country, including Utah canyons, the Navajo reservation, the high plateau across Colorado, the high Sierras and Yosemite, began to fuel a desire in me to record what I so loved gazing on as I drove East to begin a vacation and then West to come home to California. Oh, the places I've gone! I bought some watercolors and began painting images from memory. While I loved doing these little paintings, they were few and far between as I worked, taught and concentrated on my career. Six short years ago I signed up for my first oil painting workshop. Since, I have kept my easel set up to be ready for those short sprints of hours on the weekend when I have the time and the mental space to paint..."

Artist: Jessica Anne Schwartz

Title: Chopin Nocturne

Medium: Goache and sumi ink on murillo

Dimensions: 9 X 9.5 in

Jessica Anne Schwartz is a multi-disciplinary artist living in New York City. Her work is held and exhibited in private and public collections.

She has an uncommon form of synesthesia that inspires and informs all of her art. Her senses are cross-wired such that her hearing, touch, taste and smell all generate real-time moving images (some translucent, some opaque) in her visual field. As a result, she has an immense and strikingly beautiful internal visual landscape. What would appear to be abstract paintings and drawings are in fact, for her, naturalist renderings. She describes the process as "butterfly netting" the components of the ever-present sense generated three-dimensional moving images in her visual field and representing them in two dimensions on paper or canvas.

The diversity of her output can be attributed to what she describes as a "population of artists" who reside inside of her. These artists, each with their own personality and interests, compete for her time in order to manifest their own particular creative endeavors. As a result of this, all of her various series of work are continuously ongoing and evolving, and have been for decades.

Artist: Vanessa Marsh

Title: Boy and his Dad (4/5)

Medium: Chromogenic print

Dimensions: 11 X 26 in

Vanessa Marsh explores the intersections of time, geology, and man-made, natural, and cosmological power, creating otherworldly landscapes that merge hazy atmospheres and crisp silhouettes through a process rooted in both painting and photographic techniques. Her images evoke a sense of the sublime, foregrounding the beauty and scale of the natural world while meditating on humanity's role within it.

Artist: Matt Gonzalez

Title: The bellows, beautiful

Medium: Found paper collage

Dimensions: 10.5 X 6.75 in

From Dolby Chadwick's website: "Matt Gonzalez's collages are meditations on the nature of equilibrium, specifically between our sensuous, emotive experience of the world and our rational interpretation of it. Geometric lines and figures form compositions that are so complex and self-contained that they look like living systems. Featuring striking tonal palettes, they are assembled using discarded pieces of paper and packaging he finds on walks through San Francisco."

Artist: Beth Moon

Title: Frizzle

Medium: Platinum/Palladium print

Dimensions: 20 X 16 in

Beth Moon is a highly accomplished photographer working in a wide range of unique subject matter. In her series Augurs & Soothsayers, formal portraits of heritage chickens carry a sense of wit and humor while also honoring these under-appreciated animals. Her recent Oak Seed series celebrates the birth of oak trees as small roots emerge from their shells in these sensuous and intimate platinum / palladium prints.

Artist: John DiPaolo

Title: Drifter #79

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 8 X 10 in

With their powerful orchestrations of color and gesture, John DiPaolo's abstract paintings are prisms through which we can reflect upon how we exist in the world as matter and energy. Their intensity and impact reverberate through the body and awaken an upsurge of memories and emotions. About his process, DiPaolo has said: "There is no formula, no method, just a compulsion to experiment.... The interaction with painting is so primal."

Artist: Amy Ahlstrom

Title: Used to #2

Medium: Silk and cotton quilt

Dimensions: 12 x 12 x 1.5 in

I am a textile artist creating modern, conceptual pop-art quilts. The common thread in my quilts is often text; I utilize words to convey meaning and as visual elements. My background as a graphic designer and illustrator informs my process; I design my work digitally, then make patterns and cut images to create appliquéd quilts. They are fused together and quilted using hand-guided machine quilting; I "draw" on the quilt with thread, guiding the quilt under the needle. This quilt, Used To #2, was created in the fall of 2019. It is about my experience living with chronic anxiety and episodic depression; it is a self-portrait that is slowly fragmenting. I made this quilt when my depression returned, inspired by the song "Used To" by the band Wire; "Does the pain remain when the head is turned/And the body walks away?/You used to know". With this quilt I hope to convey the feelings of disembodiment and detachment that can occur during my depressive episodes. Since 2019, I have been creating quilts that honestly address mental health while celebrating creativity and resilience. I am designing visual representations of my personal experience with anxiety and depression in hopes that viewers with mental health conditions feel seen, and to create a space in which mental health can be discussed openly, free from stigma and judgement.

Artist: Denise Laws

Title: Mylar Reveries, Maze

Medium: Mixed Media: variety of foil-lined packaging, on 100% rag board, archival adhesive, in gold metal shadow box frame

Dimensions: 15 X 15 X 1 in

Denise Laws strives to elevate what has been discarded through arrangement and revealing hidden beauty. Everyday cast-offs are re-cast and combined into shimmering baroque futuristic topographies mirroring the agile exquisiteness of nature.

From the artist's statement: "While some artists work in precious metals and gold leaf, the remnants of our current disposable consumerism have become my silver leaf. The surface is essential. Fusion, texture, and an emotional and meditative dialog navigate my decisions. I start with organic shapes, forms, and patterns and indulge in a repetitive, systematic journey to allow and realize an image. I go with what resonates-the agile exquisiteness of nature."

Artist: Tomas Nakada

Title: Modern Setts

Medium: Oil on wood

Dimensions: 24 X 22 in

From the artist's statement: "Art cannot be fully understood through science or philosophy. It is its own way of exploring the world and ourselves. Art shows us who we are and challenges us to see things differently. It helps us break free from our everyday routines."

Artist: Anne Veraldi

Title: The Year of the Rat

Medium: C-print

Dimensions: 20 X 30 in

This piece is from a series of photos using found toys to depict the 12 Chinese zodiac signs.

"I believe that mental healthcare is an under funded and under utilized part our healthcare system. Access Institute provides an important mission to provide mental healthcare to all especially low income clients. "

Artist: Thekla Hammond

Title: Meditation #12

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 42 X 36 in

From Terra Gallery's website : "Thekla Hammond is a masterful painter who cares deeply about the world around her and whose imagery imparts richly nuanced and intelligent narratives. Her vision transcends the purely physical. With intuitive color patterns and subtle layering techniques, Hammond leads the viewer gradually into stillness and quiet emotion and to find space and peace in the work. Hammond holds B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an M.A. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles...

Hammond evokes ethereal, dreamlike spaces in her recent body of atmospheric paintings, Holding It Lightly. In Hope, Tenderness, Grace and Solace, she addresses issues of tension and balance; and the formal relationship of line to form, of surface to deep space, of drawing to color, of structure to mark-making. These dramatic works suggest sky, ocean, and celestial images in a wondrous palette of passionate color."

Artist: Michele Pred

Title: Equal Rights

Medium: Vintage purse and electroluminescent wire

Dimensions: 12 X 9 X 3 in

Pred's Power of the Purse bags have been carried on the red carpet at the Oscars, and have been featured in Vanity Fair Magazine, Style Magazine, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Vogue.com, and MsMagazine.com They are in the collections of Hilary Clinton, Ariana De Bose, and Amy Schumer amongst others..

From the artist's statement: "I chose purses as my canvas as a way to marry the powerful, politically-charged language of today's resistance with representations of women's modern economic power and the possibilities for change that come with it. For me, the use of purses from the mid-twentieth century also calls back to that critical era in the women's movement and reminds us how much power we have to effect meaningful change. The purses are meant to be carried and serve as small-scale political billboards."

Artist: Lorene Anderson

Title: Peach Oscillator

Medium: Acrylic & polymer on panel

Dimensions: 10 X 8 in

Lorene Anderson is a painter interested in the manipulation of two-dimensional space: math, cosmology, physics and their relationship to biology inspire her work. She frequently pours paint, and more recently, employs gestural brushwork & carved squeegees to pull paint across surfaces creating linear, layered compositions. Born in Kansas just days after a major tornado, Lorene Anderson went on to spend her childhood in Ohio and West Virginia. She received her B.F.A. from Miami University of Ohio and her M.F.A. from U.C. Berkeley, where she received the Eisner Award for painting. Anderson's work is held in various private and public collections, including the Berkeley Art Museum, UC Davis Health, Walnut Creek Public Library, Imagery Estate Winery Artists Collection.

From the artist's statement: "My work explores themes of shifting space such as air currents, sound-waves, the cosmos (spectral analysis/ subatomic particles/ matter), wifi, mobile data, and especially light. I'm not illustrating these interests, they're feeding the work & influencing my methods, material choices and my approach to making paintings. I paint what exists between the eye and what is being observed; turning the invisible into something visible."

Artist: Tracey Kessler

Title: Gracious Wonder

Medium: Mixed-media

Dimensions: 24 X 36 in

Tracey Kessler's work reflects the calm she finds in the daily interactions and conversations with acquaintances, friends, and family. Though inspired throughout the turbulent times of our modern era, her work (influenced by such artists as Tapies, Frankenthaler, Mitchell, Polke and Burri ) possesses a soothing, calm and organic feel clearly paralleled by her California lifestyle. Using a wide variety of mediums including oils, acrylic, inks, charcoal, gesso and natural pigments, the works begin to have their own voice.

From the artist's statement: "In my work of process painting, the experience of painting can be more important than the outcome. The goal being process the creative act itself, without concern, and my layered abstractions are born and transformed during time moving forward. I explore the circumstances of life through a diversity of media, textures and gestures, which imbue my compositions with vitality and a sense of motion. My work mediates between turbulence and joy. As layers of material are melded and molded by hand, time and their reactions with each other, the beauty of the piece begins to appear. I often use references from nature, history and design elements in my mixed-media work to explore color, themes and objects."

Artist: Christina Xu

Title: Kept Wild

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions: 48 X 48 in

From the artist's statement: "As a first generation American, I have spent most of my time and energy understanding what it means to belong to a place where one doesn't have roots: a common anxiety that many may face, be they immigrants or not. As I honor certain aspects of my life as an Asian woman and as a child to immigrant parents, my conversations with my pieces evolve, and I grow through the relationships I have with myself and the world.

In my role as an artist, I highlight the beauty that already exists; beauty that often gets the least amount of representation. I paint people-people of color, women, students, workers-the pillars of society. I paint to represent my culture, my community, and to facilitate a conversation between piece and viewer. I hope my paintings evoke feelings of joy and wonder and that those feelings evolve into reflection and exploration. "

Artist: Ellie Fritz

Title: Sidestep

Medium: Ink, acrylic and embossing on paper, mounted on wood panel

Dimensions: 30 X 26 in

Ellie Fritz produces large-scale works on paper and panel that combine various printmaking techniques with painting and drawing. She has exhibited her work at Sardine, Brooklyn, New York; Art on Paper, New York and the Vulcan Materials Gallery, Birmingham, Alabama; as well as the Diego Rivera and Swell Galleries at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), Mission Art Center, Herbst Pavilion, and Art Explosion, in San Francisco, California. Fritz completed both her BFA (2004) and MFA (2008) at SFAI and has received several honors, including the Spring Show Award (2004), and a Teaching Assistantship (2008), both at SFAI. In 2008,

From the artist's statement: "These hybrid works evolve from a dialogue between painting and printmaking. Painting introduces gesture and form, while collage imprints positive and negative space. The final stage of embossing introduces conversations between thick and thin, transparent and opaque, soft and hard, light and dark. Geometric forms and chance coverage in an expected moment."

Artist: Carissa Potter

Title: The origins of love

Medium: Sumi and watercolor on arches

Dimensions: 18 X 24 in

Carissa Potter is a human longing for connection. She writes books, makes art & public commissions, and hosts the series Bad At Keeping Secrets (one of Substack's featured newsletter of 2022) where she talks to other humans doing really interesting things. Carissa is the founder of People I've Loved, the author of three books, and was one of AdAges 24 Most Inspiring People of 2021.

Carissa received her MFA in Printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010 and is a founding member of Colpa Press and the founder of People I've Loved.

People I've Loved has over 600 stores globally and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Create Magazine, New York Times, The Lily, Cup of Jo, Teen Vogue, Real Simple, Happinez Magazine and more.

Artist: Joseph Enright

Title: Icarus

Medium: Photography

Dimensions: 20 X 60 in

Joseph Enright is a San Francisco native and fine artist, with a passion for photography but in his spare time, he likes to paint. He has always loved art and when he discovered photography, he realized that it is the same as any other art process, light and imagination are my brushes and the concept and subject are his canvas. Joseph likes to create images that you can get lost in, where you can\'t help but stare at them or want to touch them.

From the artist's statement: "This is one of my favorite pieces, it is a self portrait."

Artist: Joseph Enright

Title: Broken Blossoms

Medium: Photography

Dimensions: 30 X 30 in

Joseph Enright is a San Francisco native and fine artist, with a passion for photography but in his spare time, he likes to paint. He has always loved art and when he discovered photography, he realized that it is the same as any other art process, light and imagination are my brushes and the concept and subject are his canvas. Joseph likes to create images that you can get lost in, where you can\'t help but stare at them or want to touch them.

From the artist's statement: "This is a self portrait that means a lot to me, it was from when I was going through my divorce after 13 years and I felt broken but also blossoming into a new beautiful version of me."

Artist: Joseph Enright

Title: Fire Within

Medium: Photography

Dimensions: 20 X 60 in

Joseph Enright is a San Francisco native and fine artist, with a passion for photography but in his spare time, he likes to paint. He has always loved art and when he discovered photography, he realized that it is the same as any other art process, light and imagination are my brushes and the concept and subject are his canvas. Joseph likes to create images that you can get lost in, where you can\'t help but stare at them or want to touch them.

From the artist's statement: "This is one of my favorite art pieces made with one photo of the Golden Gate Bridge used over and over again. I am born and raised in San Francisco and this piece is meant to inspire the passion of living."

Artist: Robert Zimmerman

Title: Building Code

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Dimensions: 20 X 25 in

From the artist's statement: "I like to make things. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not."

Artist: Mark Perlman

Title: Solid

Medium: Encaustic on panel

Dimensions: 18 X 13 in

Mark is an artist in residence at Nancy Toomey Gallery. He has exhibited his incredible work in countless public and private collections both nationally and internationally over the last 40 years.

From the artist's statement:

"Over the years I have been continually fascinated and in search of combining luminosity with the layered surface of buried or forgotten images. In an attempt to record my present and past thoughts and memories, I place as many images, markings and words as possible into the process of each painting. I am continually editing myself in hopes of reaching a balance of noise and solitude. The images and textured surfaces represent the energy and activity level I experience throughout the day, while the light and open space of the paintings signifies the more reflective moments."

Artist: Suhas Bhujbal

Title: Lady on the Pink Chair

Medium: Mixed media on panel

Dimensions: 14 X 11 in

Suhas Bhujbal captures abundant ambiance, mood and movement in his figurative paintings. From the artist's statement: "I create compositions of colorful, overlapping forms and marks to describe various architectural facades. For me, architecture provides a tangible scaffolding around which to construct a specific mood or narrative. Many paintings depict the effects of modernization and population growth in Indian cities. These congested horizons are much different from those of US cities, where urban planning codes have regulated construction and preserved open spaces. The juxtaposition of old buildings and flashy new architecture and the whirlwind of commercial signboards, banners, and colorful stalls where merchants sell saris and spices provide the inspirational springboard for my compositions, which create harmony out of chaos and conflict.

I capture the characters of people I see everyday. Whether it is in San Francisco or where I am traveling, I find people from various cultures, ethnicities, nationalities and ages. I create expressive, rapid sketches of people that I have encountered, developing these drawings into the final works of art."

Artist: Phillip Hua

Title: Compounded Call

Medium: UV cured acrylic print and gold metal leaf on acrylic, Edition 2/5

Dimensions: 20 X 48 in

From the artist's statement: "I create photomontages that interweave images of nature celebrated against a backdrop of stock indexes from financial newspapers. The juxtaposition of nature and commerce places these values vying for attention in the same visual space. The migration of attention between the images of nature and the stock indexes mirrors real life when we consider what we pay more attention to. What do we focus on? What are we willing to sacrifice for one or the other?

The gold symbolizes wealth and opulence and nature becomes reflected as a commodity. But the gold metal is merely a perception of gold, representing a false sense of abundance. All that glitters is not gold. What we assume to be an endless supply is, in fact, an illusion. I want viewers to be lured by the beauty of nature and ensnared by the conscience of conservation."

Artist: Jesselle Sue

Title: The Autumn is Far Off

Medium: Oil, cold wax and oil pastels over acrylic

Dimensions: 24 X 24 X 1.5 in

From the artist's statement: "Chinese-born, San Francisco-based artist Jesselle Sue creates elegant abstract compositions. Sue experimented with a host of mediums, until she found her preferred mode of expression in oil on canvas, linen, or Arches Cover paper. While working, Sue retains the formal elements of her medium, but frees them from artistic logic in order to embrace the vision in her mind's eye. Her preferred abstraction fosters this exploration and allows her to improvise liberally.

Sue's love for art developed in foster care, where she lived in the homes of sculptors and painters. She studied interior design in China, and has been published in various interior design magazines. Sue moved to San Francisco seven years ago, where she now works as a full-time painter and belongs to the San Francisco Women Artists organization and Asian American Women Artists Association. Sue's greatest inspirations are Chinese landscapes, Japanese watercolors, a lifelong passion for travel, and abstract painters such as Joe Bradley."

Artist: Laine Justice

Title: Kitten Bird Clouds | Pink Sky

Medium: Watercolor and ink on hot press paper

Dimensions: 22 X 30 in

From the artist's statement: "I am an intuitive maker working in painting, textiles, bookmaking, and more. Markmaking over extended periods of time, I create sculpted, emotive animal landscapes. Composed of overlayed creatures shifting identity and form, marks and hybrid animals push and pull to recenter us while we recenter them back into landscape, or further into abstraction. Raw pigment, drawing and impasto combined with spectral materials like mini glass mosaic, give surfaces sheen and texture that bounce animals back and forth between conflicting visual planes, creating image within image. ?Pareidolia is the concept we are all so familiar with: staring up at the sky, searching, and finding a familiar shape in the clouds. Even though it's autonomous we often ask someone, do you see that too? My work explores these these imaginative, elusive spaces and their intersection with our sense of place and self. The spirit of the wild, ecological world with our human, emotional worlds, passing through the personal lens of trauma and disability. The role of curiosity and play which provides endless possibilities, questions, and answers as we relate to ourselves and each other is ever present in my work: always asking, "I'm right here" and "what do you see?"."

Artist: Tricia Rissmann

Title: Passages

Medium: Acrylic, plaster on wood, framed with wood and stained

Dimensions: 32 X 32 in

From the artist's statement: "My love of painting is also very much connected to my love of design, architecture and music. I have always been drawn to color, balance, shape and especially to texture and form. I use these things to find unpredictable harmony and balance.

The paintings create a portal for the viewer to go through that I have gone through first. Each piece encompasses the complexities of human emotion presented and contained within the composition.

My job as an artist is to excavate mystery. The mystery is that which cannot be explained, the alchemy beyond technique and preconceived modern imagery.

Presently, I am using paint, chalk, putty, plaster, oil and pastels on wood panels. I paint layers on layers to create and unify other dissimilar elements that might otherwise not stand alone."

Artist: Anna Kim

Title: Playful 1

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions: 16 X 20 in

From the artist's statement: "Anna Kim is a Filipino artist based in San Francisco. At a young age, Anna discovered her talent when she started drawing portraits and nature. She later developed a love for photography which she considers another extension of her artistry. Her career in photography spanned 15+ years; it started in the darkroom and culminated in professional photography. She was also a proprietor and cake artist making one-of-a-kind custom cakes for a few years while raising her family. Today, she focuses on her love of painting where her style is recognized by vibrant abstract landscapes. Through her art, she wants to stimulate healing. She paints in her private studio in San Francisco Design District.

Anna grew up in a family of artists where she developed different styles and studied art in California. Her paintings are colorful with striking textures, movement and depth. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions and solo exhibitions in the United States. Her paintings can be seen hanging in private collections and corporate businesses both locally and internationally."

Artist: Jock McDonald

Title: LAX

Medium: Woven photography

Dimensions: 42 X 42 in

Jock McDonald has photographed the famous and the infamous, the beautiful and the triumphant, the ridiculous and the sublime. Living and working in Napa, CA, McDonald's work is an exploration of portraiture and landscape photography which aims to capture the essence of humanity by focusing on the bonds that unite, rather than the walls that divide. As McDonald says, "If art represents the highest form of hope, it is my desire to throw visual, emotional weight on our shared humanity."

Artist: The Tracy Piper

Title: Begin at the Beginning

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions: 24 X 20 X 1.5 in

THE TRACY PIPER (b. Oakland, CA, 1987) is a female-identifying, contemporary painter, muralist, author and art activist. Best known for her vibrant portraits and figurative acrylic paintings, Piper's illustrative work tackles social constructs in an abstract-realist style. She has shown at SCOPE and SELECT in Miami, FL; stARTup Art Fair in San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA; SCOPE New York, NY; and exhibits internationally. In 2017 Tracy competed on the GSNTV show "Skin Wars: Fresh Paint" and emerged victorious! Tracy's murals span both coasts with a focus on positive and inclusive messaging. Both her first published book 'Worthy' and her latest collaborative book 'Seen' are available now at Voss Gallery. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Illustration from California College of the Arts and is represented by Voss Gallery.

Artist: Deborah Oropallo

Title: Boy with Grapes

Medium: Pigment print on Hahnemuhle paper

Dimensions: 34 X 46 in

Originally trained as a painter, Oropallo incorporates mixed media techniques, including photomontage, video, computer editing, printmaking, and painting into her practice. Whether still or moving images, the resulting works bear traces of the distortions that evolve or remain from the image manipulation. Her composite works layer visual sources producing dense interplay between time, place, form, and content.

Artist: Harumo Sato

Title: Pray

Medium: Acrylic, gold foil, and oil pastel on canvas

Dimensions: 24 X 36 in

Harumo Sato is a Japanese visual artist that lives in Mountain View, CA.

After living in Japan, France, Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, Spain, she earned a BA from University in Buffalo, NY in 2015. Through experiencing a life changing sudden sickness and severe natural disaster in her early life, she aims to find a new harmonic view of our lives with chaos viewed as a necessary force within the universe.

From the artist's statement: "Many of my works are inspired by Carl Jung's theory of collective unconscious. I believe that we are all connected unconsciously, and that the mental and physical wellbeing of each individual is crucial to achieving greater collective goals, such as addressing issues like global warming and energy problems.

I feel deeply honored to support the Access Institute, an organization that provides psychological support to anyone who needs it, regardless of their financial situation."

Artists: Sandow Birk & Elyse Pignolet

Title: AK-47 Palmette #1/ 99 Names of God Series

Medium: Ink and gouache on paper

Dimensions: 30 x 22 in

From the artist's statement: "Sandow Birk has been concerned with the politics of contemporary life since graduating from the Otis Art Institute in 1988. With an emphasis on social issues, frequent themes of his past work have included inner city violence, graffiti, politics and civil rights, travel, war, and prisons, as well as surfing.

In 2023, Birk's work will be featured at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Detroit Institute for the Arts, and San Jose Museum of Art, among others. In 2022, Birk's White Out: New Paintings for the US Capitol debuted at Catharine Clark Gallery.

In 2001, Birk began collaborating with Elyse Pignolet. Pignolet is an American with Filipino heritage who attended California State University, San Francisco and graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach.
Birk has worked with Mullowney Printing since 2004 and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, since 1994.

Artist: Nina Katchadourian

Title: The Naked Lunch from the series Kansas Cut-Up ("Sorted Books" project, 1993-ongoing)

Medium: C-print

Dimensions: 12 x 19 in

Nina Katchadourian was born in 1968 in Stanford, California and currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Brooklyn, New York. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography, and public projects.

"We never know what hard patches we will face in our lives, and artists have both the blessing and sometimes the curse of extremely sensitive antennae. Everyone deserves access to mental health care and I have been supporting Access Institute for a long time because of the life-stabilizing, life-enhancing, and also life-saving importance of mental health support. There would be many fewer artists without it."

Artist: Soad Kader

Title: Golden Repair

Medium: Unique uv print on wood panel

Dimensions: 16 x 16 X 1.5 in

From the artist's statement: "Golden Repair from my 'Inner Worlds' series is inspired by Kintsugi, translated from Japanese kanji meaning gold + repair, inherit, succeed, continue. The practice of kintsugi, repairing broken vessels by sealing the cracks with lacquer and carefully dusting them with gold powder is an inspiring art form. What if we apply this to ourselves? We too are vessels that experience cracking and breakage and can be repaired to come out stronger and more beautiful.

I am a San Francisco-based interdisciplinary artist with an arts education from the University of California, Davis. Working with both analog and digital methods of photography, collage, painting, and printing I arrived at the one-of-a-kind portrait of "Golden Repair". My work explores the process of listening, seeing and being with the parts of us that are on the inside, often hidden and yet playing a very powerful role in shaping our lives. Noticing all the thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, values, desires, how do we consciously and creatively become fully ourselves? How do we know what to keep and what to let go?

The ongoing journey becoming more fully myself with my multiracial, multicultural, immigrant heritage and experiences, however challenging, is most certainly worth the work. It's the way to be free. My work invites us to appreciate the beauty of our inner treasures and tribulations, the gold and the repairs to better align our pleasures, power and purpose toward our most authentic, wondrous being."

Artist: Peter Samuels

Title: Einstein the Llama

Medium: Photography

Dimensions: 20 X 24 in

From the artist's statement: "Originally a product still-life commercial photographer from Orange County, CA, the bulk of Peter's early career was spent honing his product lighting skills to perfection. Then in 2009, a dog named Leica arrived in his life, she quickly became his muse, and a new photographic passion was realized. He then soon learned she was merely a gateway dog as he'd begun photographing more dogs, cats, and horses, and before he knew it, even farm animals were becoming suspicious. While his time with Leica was sadly cut short, she lovingly inspired a new direction in his work and career - good dog!

Peter's product lighting experience came in handy as he lights animals in a somewhat similar way to his product work, something that's uniquely set his work apart. The result has been attracting clients like Natures' Recipe, Clorox Kitty Litter, The SPCA, Bideawee Pet Hospital, Hush Puppies Shoes as well as other brands featuring animals in their campaigns, such as Virgin America, Zynga, and the San Francisco Veterans Association.

Peter's personal work of Horses and his Fairy Tale Animals series has accumulated awards from PDN, the APA National Awards, American Photography, and four consistent years, 2014-2019, in the Communication Arts Photography Annual. After his equine series appeared in the Restoration Hardware catalog as framed artwork, his fine art print sales began taking off, accumulating art collectors and animal lovers from all over the globe.

Now based out of San Francisco with his current pup, Ilford (a Beagle, Weiner, splash of Chihuahua mix), Peter thrives on the hi-tech creative renaissance and continually seeks new ways of applying those new tools to strengthen his vision, broaden his audience, and sharing with the world how special the bond between human and animal can be."

Artist: Lauren McIntosh

Title: Beliefs

Medium: Gouache on paper, mixed media

Dimensions: 34 X 43 in

Lauren McIntosh is an American visual artist who lives in Berkeley California. She is known primarily for large gouache figurative paintings as well as for printmaking, calligraphy, graphic art, and product design. She is also a co-owner of Tail of the Yak in Berkeley, California. She studied art at the University of California at Berkeley.

Artist: Serge Gay Jr.

Title: Visible in the Spotlight

Medium: Acrlic paint, Prisma pencil, varnish, on canvas

Dimensions: 24 X 30 in

Serge Gay Jr. is an American visual artist and creative designer based in San Francisco, California. His skill and experience have grown to span a broad range of engagements including graphic design, art directing, gallery exhibitions, event art, and murals throughout the city. His art infuses inspiration reflective of urban realities from coast to coast. Keen to the challenges of our time, influenced by the culture of his homeland, and melded with his life experiences, his voice and the motivation in his work is crisp and clear. His aesthetic incorporates the grit of New York, the beauty of Miami, the wealth of Detroit, and the freedom of San Francisco. All of these places, in their own way, permeate the evolution of his work.Serge owns and operates his own graphic design company named SergeShop and is also a freelance visual art director working with film and video production design teams in Los Angeles, California. One of the major projects he worked on, with longtime collaborator and film director Matt Stawski, yielded a Grammy nomination for best short form music video.