Carrie Akre has over 25 years experience in the music world. She is the lead singer of the bands Hammerbox, Goodness, The Rockfords (with Mike McCready of Pearl Jam), the VIPs ( with Pat Dinizio of the Smithereens) and a solo artist.  She has been signed to  independent and major labels such as CZ,  A&M, Atlantic, Epic and Immortal Records. After experiencing the highs and lows of the music industry Akre started her own label, Good-Ink Records with Goodness band member Garth Reeves.  She release her first solo debut, HOME on Good-Ink. Goodness disbanded. In 1999 and Akre joined the Rockfords with guitarist Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, Rick Friel (vocals), and ex-Goodness members Danny Newcomb (bass) and Chris Friel (drums).  Akre then went on to release solo works under her own label, My Way Records. She has taught classes at EMP, Rain City Rock Girls, Continuing Education and in independent venues. She has a deep belief that everyone has a right to be creative and come to the table!

Julie Alpert is a Seattle-based installation artist whose work addresses nostalgia, illusion and decoration. She has a BA from the University of Maryland and an MFA from the University of Washington. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Award, MacDowell Colony Fellowship, VCCA residency, New Foundation Grant, and was a finalist for the 2013 Neddy Awards. In summer 2015, Julie was commissioned by the first inaugural Seattle Art Fair to create a large-scale installation at MadArt. In addition to her installation practice, Julie often collaborates on animation and performance with her husband, Andy Arkley, of the art collective LET'S and the band The Bran Flakes. She teaches teen programs at Cornish College of the Arts and Gage Academy, and works as a studio assistant for artist Katy Stone.

www.juliealpert.com

Gerald Kevin Bigelow is a Tacoma based artist, specializing in Cultural art forms. Being of both African American and Native American descent, Gerald combines the artistic styles of both Nations to create original coil basketry, acrylic paintings, illustrations and jewelry. 

Gerald was raised in the Watts section of Los Angeles, CA, near the Watts Towers. The mixture of Black and Latino cultures in the area was of great influence in the development of Gerald as an artist. His artistic skills were evident at an early age and he spent much of his time drawing, making toys to play with and reading books on art.

Gerald's trek through life led him through Texas, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Washington and Alaska. Gerald has spent most of his working career as a Graphic Designer. He began teaching cartooning for Bellingham Parks and Rec in 1995 and has been teaching some form of art for the last 20 years. 

Gerald is very dedicated to community based arts and has worked and volunteered for numerous organizations including The Catholic Youth Organization, S.E.R.R.C. Juneau, Alaska Public Radio, The Juneau Indian Studies Program, The Tlingit Immersion Program, The Sitka Tribes of Alaska, The Sitka School District and Tacoma Christian Center.

“My work draws from history and familiarity, a sense of time and place, from important people in my life and a deep appreciation of nature. I tend to work in series of paintings or sculptures as I go from point to point. Each piece informs the next and creates a personal narrative of events that I encounter as an artist and observer, husband, son and friend.”

Calkins works with a large variety of media, from working with fabric, wood and metal to encaustics to bookmaking — keeping my sense of discovery fresh and exciting, often leaning on sketches from my notebooks that have captured important and not so important events in his life.

He began exhibiting in 1994 at the MIA Gallery in Seattle, and is currently represented by the American Primitive Gallery in New York, Rice Polak in Provincetown, MA and Tanner Hill in Chattanooga, TN; he has worked as art instructor since 2005.

The M.F.A. Painting Program at University of Washington brought Celeste Cooning to Seattle. Ten years later, she is best known for creating large-scale, hand-cut paper installations. Cooning exhibited among select northwest artists in the 2012 Bellevue Arts Museum Biennial. Aside from numerous group exhibitions and a solo exhibition at Mission Gallery, Chicago, her work adorns city parks, storefronts, special events, and the stage. 
2013 marked the transformation of Cooning’s signature cut paper aesthetic into a permanent outdoor sculpture through 1% for Public Art and Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture. Bounty functions as a threshold for Jackson Park Perimeter Trail in Seattle’s Pinehurst neighborhood. The stylized, ornate fronds harken to the lush, abundant beauty of the Pacific Northwest landscape.
More of Celeste Cooning’s permanent installations are on view in Seattle at Starbuck’s Headquarters, Theo Chocolate Tour Hopper, Bridges @11th, and Harborview Medical Center. Her visual art practice thrives with the continued support from Sound Transit, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, Artist Trust, 4Culture, Pratt Fine Arts Center, and Chihuly Garden and Glass.
For additional information, please visit www.CelesteCooning.com

Cross is an active Seattle based artist working in drawing, painting, sculpture and collage.  Showing locally and nationally, Tim makes works that speak to the phenomena of nature and the imaginative vantage point that we experience life from. 
Beyond his studio activities Tim curates house shows at his place on lower Queen Anne and maintains the art collection and curates shows at Sea Tac airport.  
He received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in painting and drawing and is represented by Bridge Productions in Seattle.

An east coast transplant, Terese studied Painting and Printmaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Vermont Studio School.  She has been an Art teacher for about 15 years while pursuing her interest in painting, film and digital media.  Recently, she participated in a Media Arts Program at the Evergreen State College with a focus on animation, documentaries, and experimental approaches to the moving image. Over her career as a painter and an animator she has done illustrations, portraits, murals, and has shown her work in a variety of exhibitions.  Recently she she won the Judge's Award for "Best Transformation of Ordinary Objects Into Fields of Movement and Mystery" at the NW Filmmaker's Festival for her work "Pistachios". (See http://teresecuff.net/cv/ for more information).
 

Abrian Curington is an illustrator specializing in light-hearted visual narratives that champion fun, adventure, and conquering the obstacles of life. After graduating with a BA in Fine Art from WWU, she started Blue Cat Co., an independent publishing company dedicated to producing fantastical works that give people an escape from the din of the world. She works in digital, ink and watercolor mediums to create comics, maps and illustrated stories.

Aside from her work with Blue Cat Co., she is in training to become a tai chi instructor, plays an active role as a moderator for the Oatley Academy of Visual Storytelling, and often goes on real-life journeys in nature reserves.

For additional information, please visit BlueCatCo.com or catch her on Twitter @AbrianCArt.

Anne de Marcken is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in text and moving image. Her credits include multimedia installations, short and feature-length films and videos, algorithm-based narratives, interactive web environments, short stories, poetry, and screenplays. Her writing has been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts and in such publications as Best New American Voices, Glimmer Train, Hunger Mountain and Southern Indiana Review. She has received grant and fellowship support from the Jentel Foundation, Centrum, ArtistTrust and the Hafer Family Foundation. She currently is a visiting professor at The Evergreen State College.

www.annedemarcken.com

Priscilla Dobler is an interdisciplinary artist, born in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico and raised in Tacoma, Washington by an immigrant mother. Her artistic process comes from self-investigation, how identity is constructed in a globalized society and how architectural spaces represents gender roles and cultural structures. She is interested in developing her own unique artistic interpretation of her cultural identity through weaving, woodworking, audio, video and performances. 

I am a printmaker, mixed media and fiber artist.  Dreamlife, nature, animals and world travels have influenced the imagery
and symbolism in my work. I work intuitively and the materials and objects that I source, often dictate the direction
my work. My passion for printmaking was ignited in collage. I received my BFA in printmaking at California State
University Northridge. I have continued to explore the seemingly unlimited processes the medium offers. I use traditional methods of printmaking – intaglio (etching, aquatint), linocut and chine collé. With a background in graphic arts, it was natural to start combining techniques like photo-transfer and digital processes into my prints. I particularly enjoy the expansiveness, spontaneity and painterly qualities offered by monotypes. 

Photography is an important ingredient in my artwork; I use it to record my experiences, provide studies for drawings and images for painting and mixed-media work. I work from my home, Margaret Doty Studio and print at a local community college. I exhibit in various art shows, galleries and from my Etsy site. I discovered my second passion; teaching more than
ten years ago. My muse is Meika, a liver and white English Springer Spaniel. 
 

Dawn Endean has been making art for over 40 years and has been working primarily as a printmaker since 2010. She is represented by Shift Gallery in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Endean has also exhibited in Seattle at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, the Tashiro Kaplan Gallery, the Columbia City Gallery and Click Design as well as the Northwind Arts Center in Port Townsend and Mighty Tieton in Tieton Washington, Gallery 25 in Fresno California and the Turner Print Museum in Sacremento CA.

Endean currently teaches Printmaking at the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle andat the BARN on Bainbridge Island.

Information and Contact:

www.dawnendean.com

www.shiftgallery.org

[email protected]

https://kalaescobar.design

Kala is a self-taught artist. Her training largely comes from being part of a very artistic family including a father who builds fine guitars, a mother who is a master gardener and fiber artist, and sisters who make jewelry, do paper art, and write poetry. She has a degree in pure mathematics from the University of Oregon, has worked in education and publishing, and is the mother of three young children. 

Kala has worked in various mediums over the years, including photography, pen and ink, watercolor, acrylic, beads, clay, felt and other fabric, and paper including  quilling. She is currently focusing on rock painting and applying the techniques and images used on her rocks to other art projects. 

You can see more of Kala's rock art on Instagram at instagram.com/kalaescobar

Sam Hamrick is a Seattle artist who has been making prints since the early 1980s. Primarily self-taught, he works in various types of printing mediums including linocut and blockcut. In addition to prints, he also sells his work as images on cards and t-shirts, often around fairs and galleries in the Northwest and on Etsy.

Alan’s ties to Tacoma began when he transferred to Univ. of Puget Sound in 1977. This began a spiritual connection to the region through Old City Hall, Mount Rainier, and the Salish Sea. He later received his teaching certification at Univ. of Washington Tacoma. He currently teaches middle school students in Federal Way Public Schools.

Learning is an ongoing process in which both the instructor and student can learn from one another. We learn best when we construct our own understanding. By actively engaging students in meaningful activities we form connections between our past understanding and gain new perspectives.

 Harvey helps facilitate these discoveries between text and personal connection to create spiritual growth. These beliefs were strengthened through a study of poetry while studying for his master’s degree in ‘Integrating the Arts into the Curriculum’. He uses poetry in many forms in his classroom.

Julia is a Seattle-based artist who uses wood to create jewelry and small sculpture.  Traveling and living out of a bag for many years led her to develop a toolkit and range of techniques that can turn any small space into a productive studio.  Her work has appeared in galleries and museums across the country and in Europe, and she has taught widely at venues including Pratt in Seattle, the 92nd St Y in New York, and the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina.  Her Feast classes focus on building woodcarving skills through the creation of everyday objects that are a pleasure to use.

As a felt-maker and educator, Jean has fabricated architectural textiles and theatrical sets for Gulassa Co., Olson/Kundig Architects, New City Theater and Maureen Whiting dance co.   She has exhibited her felt sculptures nationally at the Salt Lake Art Center, Penland School of Arts and Crafts, Kirkland Art Center, Pratt Fine Arts and The Whatcom Museum.  Her work has also been shown at the prestigious Smithsonian Craft Show and Philadelphia Museum Show.  Jean has also taught hundreds of kids in the northwest how to create felt through Coyote Central, Powerful Schools, Tacoma Art Museum and Seattle Public Schools and adults at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, Haystack School of Craft and Penland School of Arts and Crafts, Antioch University and Pratt Fine Art Center Seattle.  She has worked as an assistant to performance/fiber artists Nick Cave and Joan Livingstone. Jean has received funding from the NEA, Warhol Family Foundation, Windgate Foundation, Artist Trust, Poncho, City of Seattle and 4culture.  

Kamla Kakaria received an MFA in printmaking from the University of Washington and has exhibited at various galleries in and around Seattle and is currently a member of Shift Gallery in the TK building in Pioneer Square.   She works mostly with beeswax, wire, paper and pigment.  She has an upcoming show at 4Culture in May 2016.

Deborah Kapoor is a Seattle-based artist who creates paintings, prints and sculpture about perceptual details of physical experience, examining themes of the feminine, landscape of the body, and embodiment of phenomena. She has an MFA from the University of Delaware and a BFA from the University of North Texas. Kapoor’s interest in encaustic is heightened by the flexibility of the medium, pushing or stretching convention to incorporate new materials that support the content of each body of work. Exhibitions include Square Foot Art Basel Miami, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Trenton City Museum, Seattle City Hall, and university and commercial galleries. Publications include Fiber Art Now, Surface Design Journaland books, Encaustic in the Twenty-First Century; Authentic Visual Voices; Paper + Wax: Techniques for Combining Handmade Paper with Encaustic; and Encaustic with a Textile Sensibility. She teaches at Bellevue College, Kirkland Art Center and Schack Art Center, and is represented locally by ArtXchange Gallery, Seattle.

 Stella Bell Kemper has been a sculptor and designer for 11 years. Her background is in metal sculpture, jewelry, ceramics, and digital design and fabrication. She regularly teaches metalworking, laser, and design classes at numerous venues in the area, including FabLab Tacoma and the City of Auburn. You can find her work at stella-bell.com. 

Angela has been teaching art to youth for over 10 years in places like schools (art, public, private), museums, and non-profits. She earned her BA in Interdisciplinary Art from the University of Washington and her MA in Teaching Art from New York University. In addition to her work as an arts educator, Angela paints murals around Tacoma and Seattle as well as drawing, painting, printing and whatever other new thing she falls in love with.

Her work can be seen at: angelalarsen.net

Kathy Liao currently resides in Kansas City, MO, and teaches painting and printmaking as an Assistant Professor of Art at Missouri Western State University. Drawing inspirations from her diverse cultural background and personal history, Kathy Liao mixed media work is about the intimate yet universal concept of relationships.

Liao received her MFA in Painting from Boston University and BFA in Painting and Drawing from University of Washington, Seattle. She was a recipient of various awards including the Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Grant, Artist Grants from Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, and Jentel Artist Residency.  Her works were exhibited nationally in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Kansas City.

kathyliao.com

Ethan is a Seattle-based artist and printmaker. A graduate of the KOH Atelierat Gage Academy, Ethan prints and sells his copper etchings at his day stall in Seattle's Pike Place market and shows in local galleries.

etchings.simpl.com

Kiki MacInnis is a painter whose primary studio practice is drawing with brush and ink--she draws on wood, paper, canvas, glassine and cardboard.  Sometimes she animates the drawings.  She has practiced writing Chinese calligraphy for the past 12 years which has influenced the brushwork in her drawings.

Kiki has taught drawing classes to all age groups and currently teaches ink drawing classes at Pratt in Seattle.  She is a member of SOIL, an artist run gallery in Seattle .

Jessica Pleyel is a conceptual artist and curator from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her work is an exploration of the dichotomy between predator and prey, the powerful connections of family and communities, and art-based activism’s role within the intersectional feminist community. She investigates how connections between advocates, activists, family and communities form, and how the individual voices become empowered and brazened when brought together through collaboration. Pleyel explores these and further themes through an interdisciplinary approach of performance, sculpture, storytelling, installation and video. 

 Whether it is repairing and creating a strong relationship with her father, advocating alongside other sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, or searching for the legacy of her Cajun grandmother Beulah along with the five hundred others in the mass unmarked grave in post-Katrina New Orleans, an imperative aspect of Pleyel's work is igniting dialogues on some of the wicked complications in our society.  

Pleyel's work has been exhibited internationally in galleries such as The Article Gallery in Birmingham, United Kingdom, The Beauty and Brawn Gallery in Chicago, Illinois, and Davis Arts Center in Davis, California. She has received awards such as the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, the Obermann Graduate Senior Fellowship, and the Ana Mendieta Memorial Scholarship. She is currently researching and teaching Sculpture, Intermedia and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa.

jessicapleyel.com

A native of Salt Lake City, Dave Roholt lived in Northern Japan for two years prior to studying at Utah State University earning a BFA in Painting, and later a MFA in Painting from Colorado State University. His past teaching experience includes Northeastern Junior College located in Sterling, Colorado. He now enjoys residing in the Pacific Northwest with his artistically gifted wife Jenny who instructs art at Tacoma Community College. Gratefully, Dave currently is a Professor of Art at Pierce College Fort Steilacoom in Lakewood, Washington. When not in the studio Dave can be found prospecting all types of fish, looking for inspiration in nature and beyond for his next works of art, as he is an avid fly fisherman. 

Molly Schaeffer is a Portland-based artist and writer. A founding editor of the journal Big Big Wednesday, she graduated from Bard College with a degree in creative writing. Molly is interested in the intersections of language, textiles, and drawing, and makes art that merges these disciplines. Her work has been published in a number of books and publications, including illustrations for Sarah Mirk’s Sex from Scratch and Leslie Allison’s Martha. Her poetry has been published in Weekday Journal, the Burnside Review, and Bearings. She recently contributed a zine, Years Old, to “Connections,” part of ALLGOLD’S residency at the MoMA PS1 Printshop, and she will be a resident at Have Company in Grand Rapids, MI in early 2016.  Her drawings have recently been up at Bluebeard Coffee Roasters in Tacoma and the Fresh Pot in Portland. Molly’s work can be viewed at cargocollective.com/mollyschaeffer.

Jessica Sheinbaum was born and raised in New Hampshire and studied visual art at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. In 2002 she relocated to Seattle, Washington but since then has also spent time living and working in Southeast Asia, Vancouver, B.C., and more recently, Jyväskylä, Finland.

Her recent paintings confront speciesism - the idea that humans should have greater moral rights than non-humans - as well as how humans think about, and interact with, non-human animals. In November of 2014 she began a portrait series of the residents living at Tuulispää, an animal sanctuary in Southern Finland.  

Jessica is a Washington state certified art teacher and has taught art to both children and adults for over five years. She lives in Tacoma with her husband, 5 cats, and a dog.

Finding herself on a farm in Greece with ample time after all the chores were done, Kelli Thoumsin was taught how to knit by the female farmer who ran the place. As fiber artists know, it doesn't take long for one facet of the trade to snowball into another. Soon Kelli was also spinning, weaving, and natural dyeing. Through farming she learned about the importance of sustainability and tending to the soil, so when she found herself in Eugene, Oregon with an incredible food bounty surrounding her, she started investigating ways to utilize food waste. Natural dyeing was the perfect solution to the sad forgotten purple cabbage in the back of the fridge, avocado pits, and onion skins that could be given a new life before heading to the compost. She honed her foraging skills and not only found mushrooms and foraged forest foods to be delicious, but that many also yield colors! She was hooked, and hasn't looked back since. In 2017 she founded bedhead fiber, a naturally dyed fiber and textile company utilizing plants, flowers, mushrooms, and lichen--much of which she grows in her garden in Seattle and foraged in the surrounding mountains. She supplements her raw materials with dyes from fair trade or organic farms. She sources her fiber only from the US, with a focus on the PNW, as she believes that supporting local farms and farmers is imperative in order to have a healthy community. When she is not dyeing yarn or knitting, you can find her in her garden as her love of farming never left.

bedheadfiber.com

etsy.com/shop/bedheadfiber

My love of weaving grew from my wicker furniture restoration background which began in 1990 to 2000 in Berkeley California. Instantaneously my passion for craft and design was ignited!
The restoration of antique and contemporary wicker furniture ran the gamut from simple cane wrap replacements on the legs of chairs to full reweaves of chairs, tables, and planters etc. The blending of old to new finishes also became an important part of the restoration work. It was during the early 1990’s that I began teaching basketry as well.
A move to the Pacific Northwest in spring of 2000 provided the opportunity to start making woven home furnishings from the ground up using my own designs. My work today is the culmination of 26 years ranging from woven restoration work, custom woven garment accents for a NYC fashion designer during Fashion Week Spring 2007 and of course my own basket work.

As an artivist, Laila Tova has explored acting, singing/songwriting, ballet, and performance art, but her medium of choice is poetry. Her themes include abuse survival, mental illness, and post-feminist ideals.
In the last year, she has self-published a chapbook of poems entitled PARADIS, collaborated with poets Bradley Cale and D. M. Micklow, edited a poetry manuscript for J. D. Craft, received endorsement from Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland, performed at the 1120 Creative House, and had her poetry displayed at the Tacoma Art Museum and Proctor Art Gallery.
She is a member of Tacoma/Olympia writer’s group Creative Colloquy and has had two works of poetry published on their website. Previously an English & Composition tutor, she now works as a freelance copy editor and has served as co-editor and contributor to ERIS magazine.
Tova also designs accessories made from recycled leather under the name Thorn + Glory, which has operated locally and online for the last two years.
Connect with her and her art at LAILATOVA.COM.

Audrey Tulimiero Welch is an internationally exhibited painter who grew up in Livingston, New Jersey and currently resides in Tacoma, Washington. She earned her BFA in 1980 from the University of Delaware and her MFA (Scholarship Award) in 2010 from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. For the past fifteen years Welch has lived and work in Indonesia, Thailand, and Australia which led the artist to focus on the subjects of line, mapping and place. Welch’s abstract acrylic paintings can be read as metamorphic ‘maps’ that contain in their vibrant layers embedded stories and the lived relationships of daily life.

Welch’s paintings are included in numerous public and private collections around the globe, including GOOGLE, Ronald McDonald House, Perth, Western Australia, Hyatt Regency, Oman, Four Seasons Hotel, MGM, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Bangkok, Indonesia, Germany, Singapore and Australia. Museum exhibitions include Frauen Museum, Bonn, Germany; Bade Museum, Berkeley, California; Coos Bay Art Museum, Oregon; and Museo Italo Americano, San Francisco. She was awarded a 2011 artist residency in Western Australia, and nominated for the 2010 Daedalus Foundation Fellowship in painting. Publications include Fine Art Magazine, Thailand Art and Design Guide, Architectural Digest, New American Paintings and the San Francisco Chronicle.

“the paintings of American-born Audrey Welch, who has lived on the far side of the Pacific for many years, exemplify a kind of contemporary international-style abstraction . . .The sophistication of Welch's work appears to derive equally from studio practice, life experience and observation of other contemporaries' works.”

-Kenneth Baker, Art Critic, San Francisco Chronicle

“But while [Welch’s] paintings refer to much – from aerial views to graffito – they defy the strictly referential. As ‘maps’ they do not provide information but instead function as painterly equivalents that suggest the movement through and memory of spaces; Welch conflates the spaces of her references with the space of the painted surface and the works emerge as both cerebral and physical”. –Brian Curtin, Art Writer, Exhibition Catalogue, Audrey Tulimiero Welch: South is at the Top.

“Welch’s abstract language combines expressive and calligraphic strokes with sharp linear structures, both embedded in and overlaying painterly grounds.” - Brian Curtin, Art Writer

 http://nancytoomeyfineart.com/artists-exhibitions/audrey-tulimiero-welch/, http://www.audreytulimierowelch.com, https://www.instagram.com/audreytulimierowelch/

After a quarter of a century of playing alongside all ages in a variety of creative settings, around the globe, Jodi is settling into a period of home studio practice, determined discipline, and robust art exploration. There will be fiber, there will be paper and there will be ink. Wait for it…and surely, inspiration from some smashed cast-off found on the ground.

Jodi is represented by Shift Gallery in Seattle

www.shiftgallery.org

Chandler is a Tacoma-based painter and draftsman and co founder of Feast Arts Center.  Using watercolor and charcoal, she examines what it means to be human in both its personal and social contexts.   She focuses on the moments in between action, the overlooked difficulties of our day-to-day existence, and tries to provide antidotes of comfort to our common ailments.  Chandler received her BFA from Columbia College of Missouri, and completed a two-year painting apprenticeship at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, WA.