Ten artists from the Albion and Little River area have formed a group, eight of whom will be showing at the Burnett Gallery at Gualala Arts Center from December 5 through January 4, with a reception on Saturday, December 13. The group was formed almost three years ago and created a well received brochure to promote sale of their art from the artists' studios.

The group exhibited last December at Mendocino Art Center and is scheduled this October at Scharffenberger Cellars in Philo (and again next year). Individual artists have other gallery shows throughout the year and regularly exhibit at many at Gualala Arts.

Alena Guest

Alena Guest enjoyed early success as a professional actress in television, live theatre and film before focusing her full attention on her first love, painting. After receiving her formal art training at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, Alena was tutored by well known, abstract expressionist, Judith Hale.

Painting seriously for over a decade now, Alena's signature style has emerged, Her engaging work begins with an acrylic underpainting, teeming with vivid color, Then, using pastel, gold leaf, or ink, she completes her pieces with resonating symbology. Working intuitively, Alena summons images that are universally potent as well as personally powerful. Being featured, at present, in a number of galleries and other prestigious venues on the west coast, Ms. Guest has acquired a loyal following who find her work to be "profound, sophisticated, provocative and soulful." Alena makes her home on the beautiful Mendocino Coast of Northern California.

Cliff Glover

Cliff Glover talks about his past, "I've been a full time potter since 1991. Before that I worked as an editor for Nevada Magazine. Like many potters, I'm inspired by Japanese ceramics and use many oriental techniques on my own work. I also like natural materials in my glazes, such as wood ash and Big River mud. Once in a while I'll put a few brush strokes on a piece, but in general I try to keep the surface simple. A good glaze enhances the worst pot; a poor decoration ruins the best."

Cynthia Myers

Almost 20 years ago, young Cynthia Myers stood in her mom's kitchen and saw something in the barnyard below which would change her life.

What she saw was a woman in a mask, wearing goggles, gloves and using her Pop's air compressor - sandblasting a huge glass window. "I was instantly intrigued and wanted to do what she was doing," Cynthia recalls, and her love affair with glass began.

Of course, at the beginning the glass was barn finds: canning jars, old wine bottles and stained glass panels. But Cynthia taught herself and taught herself well. "I am privileged to work mostly with Blenko Glass, who for over 100 years have maintained the tradition of hand made glass in America."

In 1995 she won the prestigious NICHE Award and her work is exhibited in fine galleries and homes across the U.S., Japan, Italy, England, Norway and Greece.

"It's the light that fascinates me," she explains, "the play of color and tone that carving brings out in bending light. Glass is a wonderful medium, in that it plays with light, capturing it, reflecting it, sliding off a smooth surface and penetrating through to reflect the etchings. I work hard to create a design that will enhance the play of light with my glass, but my deepest hope is that these forms will have a function: to stop you during the passing of the day when the light hits the work just so, and make you say, 'Oh that's so beautiful, it makes me feel good'."

It has been said that collectors of Cynthia Myers glasswork possess a piece of poetry. All of Cynthia's work is carefully hand-crafted in the USA.

JoAnne Abreu

JoAnne explains how she creates her mixed media gourds, "I have been a basket maker for twenty years. The basketry technique I love most is coiling. When I was introduced to hard shell gourds ten years ago, I knew I had to use my coiling art on these great gifts of nature.

"Beginning with the gourd as my foundation, I use coiling to build something new. I create a structure that combines gourd and fiber, thus enhancing or altering the gourd's original shape. To accomplish this I wrap waxed linen thread around a fiber core, attaching row upon row to the gourd. Color is added using leather dye. The piece is preserved with a protective coating. Some gourds are covered with handmade paper.

"I love the entire process used to create my pieces. It begins with studying a gourd in its natural state, deciding how it should be cut and built upon, and then transforming it into a three-dimensional art form.

"A life-long fascination with shapes and textures in nature, as well as ceramics, woodturning, and fiber arts, keeps me motivated to explore and create."

Karen Bowers

In the 1980's, Karen Bowers began painting on location with a group called the San Francisco Sunday Afternoon Watercolor Society. She painted natural and man made landscapes: seashore, mountains, towns and cities. Karen explains that her life as an artist expanded when she and her husband, Leonardo, built the fabulous High Point of View Studio on Navarro Ridge in Albion. "Once I took my paintings inside, literally and metaphorically, the paint itself became a new inspiration."

Karen's expressive painting style continues to evolve with her use of a variety of mixed water media and collage elements. A national award winning artist, a once Artist in Residence at Yosemite National Park, and now a teacher of painting, Karen is a dynamic artist with a diverse body of work.

Among other occupations in a former life, Karen taught Political Thought at UC Berkeley, "Teaching contemporary painting is similar. As I see it, art and political thought create world views through a dialectic relationship between chaos and order. Begin a painting with a world view rooted in open mindedness and build relationships of color, values and design as you develop the piece."

Throughout the year, Karen offers workshops at Mendocino Art Center, Gualala Arts and her studio. Her work may be seen locally at the Artists Cooperative of Mendocino on Main Street in Mendocino Village.

Laura Rose

Laura Rose is a full time artist living and working in Albion. Her daily work, she says, is "her life blood." Though she received her degree from San Fransisco State in 1976, she feels her work really began after her full training in eurythmy and anthrophosophy,in 1990. Her first inquires into painting were to take her training and make music visible in painting. Her work has always gone back and forth from representational to abstract.

In 1993 , after Humboldt State and Oregon State cut back on their Masters programs ,she took the opportunity to visit friends all over Europe. After a six month trek, camping, painting and writing from Scotland, Russia, Italy, etc., ending in Spain, the owner of Modus Vivendi, Braulio Vilarino, in Santiago, Spain generously asked for all her work to be shown in his Gallery. This was her second one woman show and by the time she arrived in Santiago, all but one painting was sold.

After this long sojourn, she returned to America, somewhat reluctantly, and began living in 1994 in Mendocino, CA. Here, "seduced by the beauty," she took up a long practice of Plein Air painting, painting directly from nature. Since that time, she has been in over 40 local invitational and juried exhibitions. Moscow has recently acquired a portrait of Marina Tsvetaeva, for the Tsvetaeva Museum. She locally is also a part of the Mendocino figure drawing collective since about 1994.

Currently living with her love, Ira Rosenberg, she works on anatomical studies, of bones, plein air painting, and a series of abstract paintings, in which she allows her imagination to bring forth the image, or feeling, attempting work beyond intention. Her work is a continuous inquiry into the unknown, and a quest for expression of the light.

For further information on Laura Rose contact her at (707) 937-4921, see her work at mendocinofiguredrawingcollective.com, or laurarosegallery.com.

Rita Crane

Rita tells us about her exciting life, "Seeing through the eye of a camera was my main passion in high school - not surprisingly - since my father Ralph Crane was a photojournalist for The New York Times and a notable Life Magazine staff photographer for over thirty years. Those teen years behind a single lens reflex and the hours spent in the darkroom experimenting with wet printing techniques for black & white photography taught me skills that now translate nicely into digital format.

"Having spent much of my childhood overseas, I graduated from UCLA in History and Art History and traveled extensively - through France, Switzerland, Germany, Tahiti, to Los Angeles, New York City, the American Southwest, the Rocky Mountain front range - partly because of my father's profession and partly because I caught travel fever from him - wanting to see the world.

"My art education, apart from university studies, has included years of drawing, designing, and hands on artwork. Under the kind guidance of Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche, I made stained glass windows for the entrance pagodas to the beautiful temple at Odiyan, a Tibetan Buddhist retreat center in the hills of Sonoma County, California. A Pueblo Indian jeweler taught me lapidary and silversmithing in New Mexico, and later a partner and I designed and hand built an authentic Territorial Style adobe home complete with vigas, tilework, and kiva fireplaces in the colorful Rio Grande Valley near Albuquerque.

"With Peter Temple (www.petertemplestudio.com) I founded Denali Crystal (www.denalicrystal.com) a nationally known crystal glass sculpture company whose clients include Toyota, Pacific Bell, M.I.T, 3M Corporation, Tibetan Nyingma Meditation Center and countless private collectors. Having worked in various media, it's a delight to return to my first love - photography. I credit my father for the sensitivity and excitement with which I look at the world, and thank my mother - who was truly a lover and supporter of the fine arts."

The Gualala Arts Center, located at 46501 Old State Highway in Gualala, CA,
is open weekdays 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and weekends from noon to 4:00 p.m.
Please call (707) 884-1138 for more information, or email info@gualalaarts.org.

Serving the coastal communities of northern Sonoma & southern Mendocino Counties.