This page is dedicated to the artists who have participated in our past events.

Raha Esmaeili

My name is Raha Esmaeili and I am one of those that began a small business during the pandemic. Art helped me during a time where I felt the world was falling apart. Painting specifically became a serious hobby for me, and as an Iranian American, queer woman, it also became a form of self expression. The next best thing about art is when yours resonates with someone or teaches them something new. I’ve always believed that art and food are what bring people together, and thank god I’m good at making one of those!

Shelby Silver

Shelby Silver is an ecological artist with a background in fiber art. She utilizes plastic marine debris and ghost net in her paintings, sculptures, and installations. Her application of such free non-geographically biased resources serves as a powerful healing modality in oceanic recovery and can be defined as creative conservation and ecological rehabilitation through the artistic process. Shelby’s work demonstrates mindful intergenerational relationships, her stewardship values, and her ongoing practice of further exploring the parallels of nature and human kind.

Ana Bedolla

Ana Gloria Bedolla was born in Michoacan, Mexico and at the age of three, her family migrated to California. In 2004 she moved to San Francisco and later graduated from the Academy of Art University with a BFA in Sculpture. While in school she fell in love with book arts and has been using these techniques to create unique kinetic boxes, journals and installations. Her work is inspired by vivid dreams, nature and teachings from her elders. Ana uses art as an instrument for reciprocity between the seen and unseen worlds and hopes to amplify the awareness that we are all one universal consciousness flourishing together. 

Jess Graff

Jess Graff is a mixed-media artist who works primarily in cut-paper illustration and sculptural ceramics. She has participated in numerous gallery shows and residency programs at schools, art centers, and museums across the nation over the past decade and a half. She has also had the pleasure of presenting at arts and education conferences on the topics of creativity, collaboration, equity, and the power of play. She is passionate about creating equitable classroom spaces and artworks that invite people of all ages and backgrounds to collaborate and communicate together. As an artist with both Western European and Middle Eastern heritage, Jess draws inspiration for her artwork from her personal history, the natural world, and from moments of shared creative exploration with the families she teaches.

Naza del Rosal

Naza del Rosal is a visual artist and illustrator from Almería based in Madrid, Spain. Throughout her professional career she has travelled through Europe, Canada and Latin America working on different projects. Her artistic training began in 1999 when she entered the Almería School of Arts and Crafts where she completed the Bachelor of Art. In 2001, she moved to Madrid to start the Bachelor in Fine Arts, graduating in 2005. It is at this time when she would begin to develop a personal style based on her interest in cultural anthropology, street art and her personal imagery. In 2012, she formed the Olliemoonsta art duo with whom she has worked to date internationally in different art galleries, art residencies and festivals. From 2013 to 2015 she lived in Vancouver, Canada where she continued her career as an illustrator and artist in art galleries and independent projects. During 2019 she worked on a series of paintings called "Introspection", which she has exhibited on an itinerant basis through different places in Madrid to date.

Miss Z

Miss Z aka Zink. is an artist, designer, teacher, and creative entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. Her artwork is gradually developing as she plays with various mediums and styles but is consistent in the purpose of storytelling. She indulges her curiosities by excavating, analyzing, and connecting with people’s stories or sharing parts of her own. Creating is her strength and solace, where she engages with others and reflects on herself. She is also currently exploring designing her own line of textiles through weaving, crocheting, sewing, hand printing, and natural dyeing techniques. Her creations both in art and textiles also help fund her larger passion projects of redesigning classrooms in low-income schools.

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Claudia Soares

Hi, I am Claudia, an entrepreneur from Brazil who came to the US to leave behind an abusive relationship.

At the beginning of my journey here I was broken in all levels. I had a broken heart, no self-esteem, and no savings. My struggle made me seeking for resolutions and happiness again. Organically, I started drawing and painting during my long shifts as a hostess in a high-end restaurant in San Francisco. I used to wait for the very last table to leave before being able to go home and this made me find ways to kill time while bringing colors to my life again. I started painting on the back of the greasy menus that were about to be tossed.

I currently work full time as a volunteer coordinator of a national nonprofit supporting skilled immigrants and refugees in building their networks and polishing their interview skills, all while exploring the opportunities of becoming a full-time artist and entrepreneur again.

I am now completely thankful for being in the US and for everything that happened to bring me where I am today.

This tells a little how my path crossed the art and I am now determined to live my dreams and give back to the community.

Devon Sherman

Devon Sherman is a comic artist who works primarily in ink, watercolor pencil, and occasionally markers because they are fast and she is usually in a hurry. Devon has spent most of her life knocking around various English departments - pursuing advanced degrees and teaching literature courses - but after a fairly crushing loss of faith in academia Devon left her PhD program (Rutgers University) and turned her attention to reviving lesser known dusty classics and other esoteric knowledge with exhaustively illustrated read-alongs. She is currently working on The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, published in 1621. The Anatomy of Melancholy is a seventeenth century medical treatise and also supposedly one of the greatest works of literature ever written, which only approximately five living people have read because it is almost 2000 pages long and honestly it is not an easy read. It does have a really insightful section on werewolves though. In a futile attempt to convince others to read along with her, Devon posts commentary and drawings on her website and Instagram as she reads. 

Renée Berthelette & TINSTY (Claire Townsend)

Together, Renée and TINSTY are a painting duo that inspire and challenge each other with each brush stroke, utilizing the medium not merely for self-expression, but also for dialogue.  Their creativity is drawn from a deep appreciation for the beauty and power of nature, from the awe-inspiring grandeur and depths of the ocean to the vast immensity of the cosmos.  Featuring gentle washes, violent stabs of intense color, and meticulous layers of texture, their work is an attempt to create bridges between science and art, meditation and proclamation, serenity and chaos.  It is a celebration of the natural world and the universe, and an acknowledgment of timelines far greater than that of human existence. 

Lindsey Holcomb

Lindsey Holcomb an ink and embroidered paper artist and the founder of the internationally-recognized Colors of MS project. With a lifetime love of creating any manner of things, it took a MS diagnosis and an accidental discovery of alcohol ink to throw caution to the wind and choose art and creativity as a career path. She works in arts education in the greater Portland, Oregon area, where she lives with her little family and herd of dogs.​

Patricia Pauchnick

My work is made up of paintings, drawings, textiles and ceramics that explore Southwestern history, land use, and societal versus natural borders. Born and raised in Eastern San Diego County, California, I have continually been surrounded by the expanding sprawl of cities and suburbs into natural ecosystems. My work often focuses on the tension between rural and urban environments, the wild and the industrial, and the natural resources that connect us all.

Alex Bell

Hi, I'm Alex Bell creator of Abell Designs! I make and design seed bead earrings in Hillsboro, Ore. with my tabby cat Pretzel. Recently I've been exploring patterns inspired by Scandinavian folk motifs in a series called Folk Flowers. Another series I'm working on incorporates acrylic pendants which I illustrate and have laser cut on a Glowforge. It's been really fun to pair acrylic with the seed beads. I love stitching, designing, and making things with my hands, beading satisfies that need to move my fingers and create.

Gabriela Mercado

Gabriela Mercado is a Mexican-American Artist based in Los Angeles, CA. She creates paintings as her own self exploration and expansion. She utilizes visual expression enhancing reality to create a vivid depiction of her passions, beliefs and fantasies.

Her goal is to depict the beauty of her every day life while amplifying a surrealistic view point that encourages her to express her emotions using intuition, lively colors, symbolism, and alluring composition.

Magdalena Gonzales

I’m a printmaker and illustrator born and raised in the Central Valley. I take inspiration from the personal mythology of my family, superstitious and resilient and magical in ways that have fascinated me since I was little. My long childhood, my love of monsters, and my Mexican roots help my art take shape. I earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Stan State, I work as Membership and Programs Coordinator at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock, and I’ve been lucky enough to spend the rest of my spare time crocheting with my cats. 

Krista Robbins (CupCup Studios)

CupCup Studios is a one-woman pottery studio based in Portland, OR where Krista Robbins makes small-batch, functional pottery in her garage studio.  She received a Bachelor's of Art's degree, specializing in Ceramics in 2008 from Florida Gulf Coast University.  After several years of adventures and career shifting, she was finally able to make room in her life for pottery in 2018 when she created CupCup Studios.   Producing an average of 30 pieces a month, you can expect to find a variety of ceramic mugs, bowls, plates and candles in her Etsy shop. Krista plays with the line between functional and playful, whimsical and useful in her work and also loves to take on commissions for her clients. 

Gavin Bruce

My illustrations use visual storytelling to make sense of our society and culture in a historical context. People often forget that we are not isolated from history, but are engaged in it everyday. I believe this perspective is essential to our collective education and invaluable to the advancement of constructive public discourse on current issues. I am heavily influenced by my day-to-day life in the Central Valley. Because of this, the vast majority of my illustrations are set in the landscapes most familiar to me: the post-war suburbs and shopping centers that cover ever-growing swaths of the American Empire.

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Marissa Carpenter

With an affinity for thick black lines and nostalgic color schemes, Marissa Carpenter Perales’s tender compositions bring a sense of joy and comfort while also blurring the lines between abstract and representational art. Every piece is exclusively made on their bedroom floor, wedged between their bed and closet. Marissa is a non-binary chicanx who was raised in Stockton, while their creativity was nurtured in the Bay Area. They currently reside in Tracy, CA, proudly cleaning pools, pampering puppies and painting pretty pictures as often as they please. 

Emily Miller

I have spent my life on the coast, and all my artwork has its roots in my love of the sea. I often incorporate natural and reclaimed materials into my paintings, mixed media sculpture, ceramics, and interactive installation art. My work explores natural beauty and cycles of change centered around coastal environments, where our human connection to nature becomes clear. I am based near Portland, Oregon, with roots in California, Kauai, and Down East Maine.

Shannon Bodrogi

Shannon Bodrogi is a printmaker and mixed media textile artist. They live in Seattle (occupied Duwamish territory) Washington, and work out of a converted kitchen home studio where they focus primarily on an alternative printmaking photo-process called paper lithography on fabric works. With these printed tapestries, Bodrogi experiments and builds up pieces through additions of other media such as paint, collage, and embroidery. Shannon Bodrogi is the founder of Psiclops Press, which is a limited edition print and design collective, focusing on handmade textiles, books, artist collaboration and education through experience.