June Artists - Zofia Kostyrko and Catherine Yu

The Coffee Gallery is pleased to present our June artists, Zofia Kostyrko and Catherine Yu.

In the main room we have Zofia Kostyrko's wonderful portraits of local residence from Altadena and Pasadena. 

Zofia Kostyrko, the Brainy Brush Diva: Fine Artist

Exploring the Yin & Yang Between Portraiture and Commercial Conceptual Design

A native of Warsaw, Poland who  escaped communism as a child.  Zofia Kostyrko has spent a lifetime telling stories.  A classically trained fine artist and designer and a graduate of the Art Center College of Design and the WDI Disney Masters workshops, she uses bold lines and dynamic colors on both digital and cloth canvas as her creative playgrounds.  Under her two separate companies, Zofia Kostyrko-The Brainy Brush Diva and deZign sKape, LLC, the artist offers fine portraiture and commercial conceptual design services respectively.

Lauded as an award-winning conceptual and experienced designer, illustrator and creative director, Kostyrko, as the creative lead behind deZign sKape, LLC, boasts an impressive career spanning over 20 years with a variety of international entertainment-based clients ranging from theme park, exhibit and stage design to network children's programming children's publishing and brand development.

Through Zofia Kostyrko - The Brainy Bush Diva, she is committed to using fine art portraiture as a catalyst to shatter stereotypes and social barriers to celebrate the human spirit and acceptance of others.  Her paintings are held in pultiple private collections and exhbited in both group and individual gallery shows.

Kostyrko has resided in Altadena with her family since the early nineties, where she continues to tell stories through art; drawing inspiration from her loved ones, her community, nature with all of its variations and quirks, music and modern pop culture.

For more details regarding these wonderful portraits please click on the following link:

www.youchangemyworld.com
 
ARTIST RECEPTION:


Sunday, June 13th, 7 pm - 9 pm.

Artist Website: www.brainybrushdiva.com

Artist e-mail contact: zofia@dezignskape.com

Artist Studio Phone #: 626.296.8686

In the conference room we have the lovely oil paintings of artist Catherine Yu.

Catherine Yu, an up and coming Taiwanese American artist, had shown talent in art since she was a little girl.  throughout her childhood and adolescent years, she won numerous art contests and plein air painting competitions in her homeland of Taiwan as well as in the United States.


She's a lady with a diverse background.  She holds two bachelor degrees from UC Irvine - one in Studio Art and the other in Environmental Analysis and Design.  During her time at UC Irvine, she was featured in many group shows as well as having a solo show on campus.  she then attended UCLA for a masters degree in Urban Planning.  Since graduation in 2004, she has been working full-time as an urban planner.


Although art is not her current full-time career, she continues to cultivate her art by taking classes, workshops, and association with other artists.  In recent years, she has studied with California artists Steve Criqui, Kevin Appel, Steve Metzger, and Tom Brown.  She is a permanent member of Gallery So Ho, a co-op gallery located in Pomona.  She also exhibits her paintings twice annually with the Taiwanese American Association of Art.  In May 2008, her paining was published by the City of Los Angeles.  In March 2010, she was invited to exhibit her work in her native country, Taiwan.


Her inspiration comes from American landscape, her travels to different countries, as well as simple daily happenings.  She hopes her art can evoke awareness to the daily blessing that we so often take for granted.


Both artist's work will be on exhibit through June 29th

May Artist - Assemblage Artist Cynthia Paige Aaron

The Coffee Gallery is pleased to present the artwork of Cynthia Paige Aaron.

Cynthia Paige Aaron has been drawing since childhood, and eventually began constructing mixed media works that delve into a semi-fictional world, inspired by dreams, the macabre, the absurd and the mystical.  Using a combination of objects and ephemera, painting, collage and drawing she manifests a map of her mind and her world.  Synchronicity plays a large part in the construction of the work, and a series of coincidental happenings usually occurs, driving the work forward until completion.

Mostly self-taught, Cynthia has studied at the Fashion Institute, Otis College of Art and Design, Chouinard School of Art and is a member of a SOPA Studios in South Pasadena.  When she is not searching for found objects in the urban landscape, she is exploring the many unique parts of Los Angeles, gathering images and inspiration, and enjoying many genres of music and film.  Cynthia's home and studio is in Los Angeles, California.

Exhibit runs through May 30th.

Reception Information TBA.

April Artist - Karen Bagnard

The Coffee Gallery is pleased to present the artwork of Karen Bagnard.

Karen Bagnard is a local Altadena artist.  She is largely self-taught and continues to learn from the artists around her.  She has displayed her work in this and surrounding communities most of her life, as well as San Francisco and Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  Working with pen and ink, watercolor pencils and washes, collage and acrylics, her inspiration, in part, is derived from the joy she finds in her life.

This exhibit is a celebration of the artist's joy and gratitude.  Moving out of her "comfort zone" of drawing, Karen has created some bold, bright canvases with brush and paint.  She hopes her work will spark a kindred spirit in her viewers!  Enjoy!

March Artists - Clarence Stubblefield and Paula Delfosse

The Coffee Gallery is pleased to present the artwork of painters Clarence Stubblefield and Paula Delfosse.

In the main room we have the artwork of Clarence Stubblefield.

Clarence began his artistic development at a very early age, and cuntinued his formal training at Los Angeles City College.  He works primarily with acrylics, but he has also used other mediums (wood and photographs) to express his artistic talents.

He is best known for his beautiful original acrylics entitled "Instrumentalists", "Living and Working in the West Indies", "A Series of Old Houses" (in and around Pasadena) and "Children at Work and Play". 

In the conference room we have the artwork of Paula Delfosse.

Born in California, Paula Delfosse moved with her family to Maryland when she was five, and did not return to her home state until the age of twenty-one.  

Raised in a family which valued the practical above all else, her innate love of drawing and painting was discouraged, only to be reawakened after taking the course, Drawing for Non-Art Majors, as a humanities requirement during her studies as a biology major at Towson State University in Maryland.  Subsequently, Delfosse focused on art studies at Pasadena City College for a year to develop a portfolio prior to being accepted to the prestigious Art Center College of Design, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Art in Illustration.  However, after receiving repeated feedback from potential commercial clients that her technique was too "painterly", she opted for a career in fine arts where her artistic method and perceptions are better suited. 

Paula has since worked in diverse arenas, painting backdrops for photography, designing scenery and creating artwork for local theatre, and producing decorative murals for private residences. Studies with Peter Adams, Junn Roca and Tim Solliday refined and developed her plein air and fine art techniques. 

Please join us for an artist's reception on March 27th

from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Wine and cheese will be served.

February Artists - Jennifer Mullens and Rick Strieck

The Coffee Gallery is pleased to present the artwork of felt maker Jennifer Mullens and illustrator/painter Rick Strieck.

Exhibit runs through February 27th.

In the main room we have the beautiful artwork of felt maker Jennifer Mullens.

Jennifer discovered the art of felt making in a textile class at San Francisco State University where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Art History.

Shifting her emphasis from painting to textiles, opened up a more organic approach to her art.  The wool takes on a life of its own, as it shrinks and binds together, taking over the design, as the fibers are rolled and beaten into a piece of felt.  It's like taking a painting, that she worked on for days and then rolling it up, while it is still wet, and beating it with a broom.

Felt making  is both a physically and artistically challenging medium.  She draws her inspiration from nature and creates many of her pieces outdoors.

In the conference room we have the incredibly imaginative work of illustrator/painter 

Rick Strieck.

Born in California, Rick was drawn to the exciting and scary world of monsters, fairy tales, and nightmares.  He was heavily inspired by classic horror films, comic books, fine art and authors such as Clive Barker, Edward Gorey and Sam Keith.

Although he aspires to provide his unique stile to comic books and children's literature, Rick continues to broaden his experiences and opportunities in the arts.  Other than a limited amount of high school, college art classes and personal workshops, he has not had a large amount of formal training.

Rick continues to absorb ideas and spends his free time locked in his "Dungeon" creating playfully creepy illustrations which have the look and appeal of a child's imaginations, but the dark and twisted style only he could create.

January 2010 - The Photography of Annie Fourguette!

The Coffee Gallery is pleased to be starting off the New Year with an exhibit of the compelling photography of Annie Fourguette!

Annie is an L.A. area photographer whose passion for photography started in high school. Annie has a great love of nature and brings this depth of feeling to her landscape imagery.  She also loves unique urban architectural settings and distinctive views of daily life.  Her work has been shown in many local galleries, and is currently on display at the Heart and Soul Healing Arts Center in Pasadena.  Annie’s work was also recently juried into the Topanga Canyon Gallery Digital Arts Show.  She has also been published in BMW Magazine and Women on Wheels, a national journal with approximately 100,000 readers.  Annie is currently completing a black and white photo essay, Women Who Ride, a series of photographs highlighting the diversity of women who ride motorcycles.

Annie’s images give the viewer a window into the soul of her subjects.

Her work will be on exhibit from January 3rd until January 31st.

Please join us for a reception on Sunday, January 10th 

from 4:00 pm until 7:00 pm

"Drawn From Life" - Artwork by The Getty Group

The Coffee Gallery is pleased to announce the December art exhibit featuring a group show by

The Getty Group

"Drawn from Life"

 Offering a wonderful selection of artwork focusing on the human form.

Participating Artists:

Dexter Cannon, Aude Degrasssat, Elliott Kai-Kee, Anne Martens, Nancy Pau, Melissa Piper, Ron Schmidtling, Ellen South, Lee Tirce

The exhibit opens on December 1st and closes on December 31st.

Please join us for an artist reception on Saturday, December 12th

from

6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

About The Getty Group

Nine years ago, J. Paul Getty Center employees Elliot Kai-Kee and Ellen South discussed the fact that so many staff memebers at the hilltop campus are practicing artists.  It made sense, they thought, to share their passion for art-making by starting an after-work drawing group.  Since then, they've met with other staffers once a week for three hours at a time, to sketch from a nude model - a centuries-old tradition that many contemporary artists continue to practice.

For those involved, it's a nice change of pace from the large institution's exciting yet often hectic work atmosphere.  "It's theraputic at the end of the day to simply walk downstairs to the studio and shift from our professional capacities to making art," says South, who works by day as staff assistant to the Museum's Department of Sculpture and Decorative Arts.  Artists sit around a central stand, on which a model holds a single pose for two to twenty minutes at a time.  Music and conversation enliven the atmosphere.

The life drawing group is open to all Getty staff, including docents, volunteers and interns.  Although the institution generously provides studio space, the group is entirely self supported and administered.  "There are times when we've been able to employ two models simultaneously," says Melissa Piper, a staff assistant at the Getty Research Institute.  "And other times we worry about whether we will have enough to pay one!  But over the years we've had a core group of about eight of us."

Piper, South and Kai-Kee - who oversees gallery teaching in the Museum's Education Department - certainly count as that core group, as does Ron Schmidtling, a scientist for the Getty Conservation Institute and Anne Martens, a Museum media writer.  Other artists include volunteers Nancy Pau and Lee Tirce, graduate intern Aude Degrassat, and Museum associate Dexter Cannon.  Once a year, the group also generously donates to the Getty Community Service Teams' Annual Silent Auction to help raise funds for Los Angeles community charities.

Ron Schmidtling curated this exhibit, with the generous support of The Coffee Gallery.  The works on view were all made within the last year.  The drawing group is neither sponsored nor supported by the J. Paul Getty Trust.