ARTIST PROFILES

Shawn Barber's body of work focuses primarily on painting and illustration. He received his BFA in 1999 from the Ringling School of Art and Design, in Sarasota, FL. His paintings have been exhibited in diverse solo and group venues including: The Shooting Gallery, San Francisco, CA; The Lineage Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, Strychnin Gallery, Berlin, Germany; CPop Gallery, Detroit, MI; Outer Edge Studio, Monterey, CA; The Society of Illustrators, NY, NY; White Walls, San Francisco, CA; Cazenovia College, Cazenovia, NY; Gallery 1988, Hollywood, CA; The Selby Gallery, Ringling, Sarasota, FL. Shawn's work is in collections worldwide, including those of Mat Hoffman, Van Morrison, Christian Slater and Rolling Stone magazine's founder Jan Wenner.

Strange as it sounds, tinkering was not always admired. During much of the Middle Ages, in fact, tinkering was considered a disease, a sort of "lust of the eyes." Artists who labored nightly over creative curiosities in atrabilious basements were often said to have sold their souls to the devil for useless skills.

It was after this time that the twentieth-century Toledo native, Mike Burnett, was sent down the street by his mother to take art lessons from an elderly Belgian painter. Here the budding virtuoso mastered still lives of empty liquor bottles and stinky old boots. Burnett later studied at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green and the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland and was one of the first Ohioans to lecture on taxidermy, cardboard and the doodle. He devoted himself to freelance illustration, architectural model building, graphic design, areology, baseball, action figures, trigonometry, indie comics, movies and cheeses of other cultures.

So who is Mike Burnett? He is arguably the world's twenty-seventh great tinkerer of moveable, wooden, toy-like sculptures and perhaps can even be accused of inventing characters for his own amusement. Some question whether he really undertakes his craft at all with one wife, three children, two dogs and a full time job at a major greeting card conglomerate. Burnett was recently named "Father of Little Wooden Figurines" by the International Society of Comparative Woods and continues paving the way for ground-breaking tinkering of succeeding generations.

Dave Chung's work evolved from his endless amounts of traveling throughout the universe and his undying love for culturally exotic foods despite the numerous cases of food poisoning and monkey viruses he's endured. Not really having a place to call "home", the theme of being lost or confused comes across his work quite often. His major influences come from the many different peoples he has met, cultures he has experienced, and foods he has eaten. Dave currently works as a freelance illustrator based in Detroit, MI and finds writing in the third person to be amusing...so he says.

My work isn't conceptual, personal, spiritual or political. And there's no secret underlying message or point I'm trying to get across. I'm not trying to say much with it....at all. I simply create art that I would like to see if I were not the one making it. The process, as I develop a piece, is little more than a stream of consciousness without much forethought to what the end result will be. But I do try to incorporate a few elements of conflict to create a narrative for interest. These usually deal with man vs. beast, beauty vs. ugly, sensuality vs. violence, etc. Believe it or not, I don't enjoy much of the actual process of creating art. It's a contant struggle for me and I'm my harshest critic, but the end result is what keeps me going. When I create something that I actually like, I'm a happy man.

I was born in 1979 (Glens Falls, NY). My father went into the Marine Corps when I was a year old, so we moved around a lot during my childhood. The longest I've ever lived in any home is 4 years. The constant relocating and exposure to different ways of life is something I probably didn't appreciate at the time...but I value it now.

I developed an interest in drawing early on. Always wanted to paint, but had little access to the materials while growing up. Mostly just did color pencil sketching on computer paper. Received encouragement from family and peers, built up some unrealistic hope, and went to town with it. I finally started to learn about painting in 1998, at college. It really changed my creative thought process....as did my peers, who treated painting as a lifestyle, and encouraged me to push my work further. Then I was opened up to art history. It was inspiring, humbling and overwhelming. I eventually began keeping sketchbooks/journals to organize my thoughts, and interpret them visually. I'm still working things out, and hope to continue doing so for a long time.

I gather inspiration mostly from current events, rare bits of social interaction, childhood memories, food, and music. I'm also a sucker for pretty packaging.

My early years were spent in the small midwestern town of Coldwater Michigan. An awkward child, scruffy and a bit of a loner, I had many strikes against me, but I refused to give up. What I lacked in social skills I more than made up for in other areas of my development. I had a super human lust for the arts, and a thirst for knowledge that no amount of books, museums, or field trips could quench. To refer to oneself as a renaissance man, a visionary, and the new Bob Dylan comes across as being concieted and a bit of a braggart. Not being one to toot my own horn I'll leave it to others to chronical my life's work and you can reach your own conclusion.

"I care very little for my safety. I'm Here on a mission and I'll be damned if I allow anything to stand in my way." With these simple words I started (along with David Fair and David Stansky) what has now proven to be the quintessential power, punk, allstar, rock and roll band in the history of the universe. Half Japanese, the name itself is music. Too beautiful, too beautiful, too beautiful.

Joseph Daniel Fiedler, [nom de guerre "Scaryjoey"] was born and raised in the Appalachian hill country of Western Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in numerous publications and exhibitions. He has illustrated three children's books, received a Silver Medal from the New York Society of Illustrators, and has been recognized by Graphis, Print, Communication Arts, American Illustration, the Society of Publication Designers, The Spectrum International Annual of Fantastic Art, Taschen Publishing and the Broadcasting Design Association, among others. Joseph has lived in Tokyo, New Mexico, Michigan [as Associate Professor of Illustration at the College for Creative Studies, Detroit] and now resides in Berkeley, CA. He is an original member of the prestigious Art Dorks Collective and founder of BAYSIDE ARTBEAT BERKELEY.

A self-developed artist, Robert Hardgrave creates work both highly intricate and abundant with personal symbols. Inspired by experiences from disease and recovery, his paintings and drawings reflect ideas of reincarnation and the richness of life beyond death.

Gregory Jacobsen was born in Middlesex, New Jersey. He didn't have too many friends except for a Commodore 64 computer. He eventually befriended some "metal-heads" who would kill chickens and throw crayfish at the windshields of passing motorists. Gregory and his new friends would hang out in the woods and start fires. Ignited items of note: a pleather couch scribbled with Slayer logos, a headless doll with pentagram and "666" scrawled on chest, feces, an effigy of a disliked classmate composed of milk jug for head.

After being rejected from almost every art school applied to, Gregory Jacobsen made a poor decision of moving to the goddamn midwest to attend the Art Institute of Chicago. Worthless degree in hand, Gregory Jacobsen, much to his irritation, still resides in Chicago, where members of the populace have enormous sticks lodged in their asses.

Gregory Jacobsen still lacks friends and spends most of his time holed up in his west side apartment painting stupid little pictures. He also wastes a hell of a lot of time in a widely ignored performance orientated band named "Lovely Little Girls".

I was born in Queens, NY, about a mile from the site of the "1964 World's Fair". Most of my early childhood was spent watching "Atomic-age" Sci-Fi, and Horror pictures. My first drawings were of Godzilla and a host of creatures from Ray Harryhausen films. When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I decided that I wanted to do artwork for a living. After graduating from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Communication Design(Illustration Dept.), I did freelance for about 10 years, until I decided that I should concentrate on my own personal work. My artwork is heavily influenced by those genre films that I watched as a child, as well as my fascination with human oddities, sideshows, and things otherworldly.

Mostyn, born in 68, raised in a typically disfunctional suburb in Western New York, Raised on a glut of Science fiction and horror imagery. How else was I supposed to turn out. To top it off, raised Roman Catholic, guilt in droves, and educated in a Fundamentalist midwest seminary, my images feel to me like the result of mating Jerry Fallwell with Leonard Nemoy. I am trying to make something that would only exist because I walked on the earth. I just want to do something as original as possible in a day where everything has been done. I am still drawn to shapes in the fog, the ones I remember at dusk in the cool of autumn on a dark New York night. The ones that felt at once joyous and terrifying. That is what I paint.

I'm one of those artists who really can't decide whether to prefer a rerun of an obscure SF show or a trip to the old masters gallery; give me an opportunity however to watch slimy B-movie creatures on a backdrop of Bosch and Brueghel and I jump at the occasion. I have always been drawn to crossover art; it's just too much fun exploring the borderlines of things.

My most recent experiments include a combination of media technology with religious icon art and an exploration of merging points between renaissance painting and comic culture. Currently I'm thrilled by the kind of spiritual terror you find expressed in the paintings of the old Flemish masters, and I'm trying to find out what happens when you apply that mood to the serene and harmless world of rural folk art. On top of that I am also rediscovering drawing at the moment.

I am based in Hamburg, Germany, but my stuff has also been shown in such diverse places as Estonia, New York, Paris, Saint Petersburg, Sacramento and San Diego. When not busy with art or media work, I can usually be found painting pictures with my 5-year-old-son.

In my work, I do not intend to provoke or defend popular or unpopular messages. My motivation has always been initiated by instinct and the relentless pursuit of self-gratification. The desire to capture my own deepest nature and create a tangible incarnation in the form of a two-dimensional image has become my obsession. Often this is a romanticized expression of tragic nature in one of three stages; the potentiality, actuality and aftermath of conflict within all physical capabilities. This type of conflict can be trapped in the form of a picture by depicting the widest range of subject matter; figure, land and machine. I hope to expose these scenarios in a way that reflects a harmonic balance between horror and serenity, and utilize my interpretations of such scenes as metaphors for my own personal experience.

Matt grew up in Millburn, New Jersey. He took an interest in art at a young age and in first grade painted his first still life. Later, he moved to Florida and earned his Bachelor's Degree In Illustration at Ringling School of Art and Design. His paintings tell a story and express emotion through the medium of portraiture, essentially delving into the psychology behind each character and how they relate to their environment. The characters which appear detached and isolated, for an instance appear to make some connection with the viewer or with an element in the painting, giving us insight into their thoughts and motivations.

I was born in Indianapolis, the year was 1972 and the time was near 3:00 a.m. I come from a normal family, my folks divorced when I was 4, I went to 14 different schools and spent most of my childhood raising cows and learning the cross town bus routes. I was a ping pong ball with a rural route and an apartment # for a logo. I was saturated by the love/hate relationship produced by the fast paced pop culture of the city and the cultivation of simplicity grown on the farm. One weekend I would witness the birth of a goat and the next I would be front row to a crime scene. It was great! I lived a fantasy of two worlds and that eclectic youth influenced my creativity. Although I never actually painted I drew quite a bit as a kid. I drew cars, gene simmons, old country forts, arcades and fish. I remember drawing forts in city art classes and the teacher saying "there are no forts here... that was the olden days". I would rub my eyes and wonder as I rode past the old town fort on the way back to mom's house. I guess that is why I make paintings the way I do now. I try to let people know that there are no separations between myth and reality...

I was born in the wheat fields of Kansas and have always had a bit of a verve for art. Drawing plans for ant hills in his youth to poster design as an adult. A consent lurker at libraries, galleries and yard sales... just to have an opportunity of seeing, finding and learning more about art... any type of art. However, I would say that folk art, primitive cultures, naive and outsider art have made the biggest impact on me. I like the raw vivid expressiveness of it. It is art with true meaning and has a devotion to honest emotions in the mind of the maker. I try to bring that same kind honesty to life in my work.

Chris Ryniak was born in 1976 in a safely distanced suburb of Detroit, where he was raised in the graphically rich environment of the family offset printing shop. Through his early years of watching countless hours of Star Wars and Saturday Morning cartoons and creature double features, he developed a rich visual vocabulary of oddball characters that would later surface in his paintings.

Using his interests in Graphic design, cartoon imagery, narrative and concept-driven illustration as well as traditional painting, Chris creates a world where vast empty landscapes are inhabited by pearly-toothed mollusks and victorian flourishes float on the breeze. The artist uses these paintings to catalog a lifetime of rich experiences that run the gamut of human emotion.

My favored medium at this time is oil paint, which is what you will see used in this work. I also use other classic techniques, such as the gouache methods used by Indian miniature painters and Limoges enameling. I depict conventional and unconventional figures and objects sourced from different arenas such as: The Monster and Sci-fi movies I used to watch on TV after school, comics and books I read as a kid (and still do!) Mythology, High gothic, Surreal, Tibetan and Mexican painters, travel to exotic places, dreams, meditation and the hallucinations brought on by illness, nightmares and chemical ingestion, the ragged and beautiful artifacts seen in museums. I find scientific studies of the past and present are loaded with images and ideas. My two years living in India and asia also add a taste of the exotic to my choices. I mix in joy, humor and beauty with the horrible and mysterious, because that is my experience of life.

Johnny was born in the late 70's and grew up with Pee Wee's Playhouse, Run DMC and You Can't Do that on Television. He now lives in Akron, Ohio with his wife Jen (who is also an artist!), 4 cats, possessed dog and fish in a haunted mid-century home in the woods. When not attending the menagerie, Johnny enjoys painting, Ghostbustin' and hunting for kitsch.