Visual Art Mentors
Ira Joel Haber
NEW YORK, USA
Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 230 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS) two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists' Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.
Lorette C. Luzajic
TORONTO, CANADA
Lorette C. Luzajic, of Toronto, Canada, is an award winning artist, writer, and founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review. She creates collage and mixed media based works that are at turns abstract, urban, surreal or pop. Her works are inspired by eclectic curiosity, a sense of adventure, and an irreverent outlook on the world. Lorette takes in the stories around her, through poetry, fiction, travel, cinema, art history, music, mythology, psychology, religion, and individual narratives and remixes them in her studio laboratory. She has exhibited in hundreds of shows and venues locally in Canada and around the world, and is collected internationally. Last year, she was awarded top prize for a painting by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Canada. In 2017, she participated in a two week symposium of international contemporary artists in Tunisia, North Africa. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.
Anouk Vercouter
OSTEND, BELGIUM | GHENT, BELGIUM
Anouk Vercouter , born in 1991 (Ostend - Belgium), lives and works in Ghent, where she graduated as a Master in drawing and printmaking at LUCA School of Arts. Anouk is especially triggered by the period in art history where fine art and the representation of beauty disconnect. She expresses the results of her romantic vision by effortlessly drawing on paper, mainly in graphite or coloured pencil . The artist, whose oeuvre is situated between visual art and illustration , reaches out to her viewers by inviting them to join her on a trip into the imaginary. Her ambition is to never impose an unambiguous interpretation but to hand out only a few "props" in order to uncover a unique story into the individual viewer's imagination. The diversity of the storylines and the unrestricted associations revealed by her drawings, contaminated by the carefully chosen objects that the artist surrounds herself with in her studio/Wunderkammer excite her imagination and force her to draw, continuously.
Linden Eller
ARIZONA, USA
Born in 1984, Linden spent her youth in the urban Sonoran desert of Phoenix, Arizona before moving to Southern California to obtain her BA in Studio Art. She’s since lived and worked out of New England, Europe, India, Australia, Samoa, New Zealand, and Japan. She currently lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. This primary interest in place and self-archival attracted her to the collage medium. Using a combination of found fragments and personal elements, she composes floating abstract shapes sewn together with thread on paper. Her work centers around themes of memory architecture, its process, and the layers of alterations which happen each time a recollection occurs.
Choosing a distinctly pale colour palette together with the use of tracing paper, her pieces attempt to replicate the quiet hazy environment from which a memory is recalled. Blending autobiographical narratives with larger collective subjects such as childhood, longing, and place, Linden thinks of her collages as layered field recordings that represent multiple interpretations and perspectives of the same story.
Linden’s work has been mentioned online in Frankie & Yen magazines, and been included in numerous publications such as Collage by Woman: 50 Essential Contemporary Artists, Create!, Inside Artists, Making The Cut Vol. 1, and Art Ascent. Recent residencies include Dar Slimane (Morocco), La Filature des Calquières (France), Tenjinyama Art Studio (Japan), Cowwarr Art Space (Australia), and Tiapapata Art Centre (Samoa).
Ashley Cai
CALIFORNIA, USA
Ashley Cai is a painter, animator, and digital artist from the suburban heart of California's Silicon Valley. She is a caricature artist, graduating high school senior and has attended multiple summer programs including CSSSA Animation. Her work is driven by her excitement for cohesive color schemes and often explores the peculiarities of human behavior. Ashley derives inspiration for stories from situations encountered in her sleepy surroundings. She hopes to make an experience out of viewing her art by building narratives into the piece, whether still or moving. Her animated film has been screened at twelve film festivals globally such as the Austin Film Festival and received a national silver medal from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
I love to create engaging and beautiful pieces to enjoy for myself and share, as art has always been a way for me to relax and escape from reality. The best feeling in the world is becoming immersed in the emotions of another character, and I hope to harness the powers of storytelling to deliver powerful and captivating experiences.
You can find Ashley at ashleylcai.wixsite.com/portfolio.
Janelle Cordero
WASHINGTON, USA
Janelle Cordero is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in the seventh most hipster city in the U.S. As a writer and a painter, Janelle is constantly experimenting with form to create hybrid, genre-less pieces. Her poetry has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate and The Louisville Review, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Her debut poetry collection, Two Cups of Tomatoes, was published in 2015, and her chapbook with Black Sand Press was published in 2018. Her newest chapbook with Bottlecap Press, which also featured original artwork, was published in January of 2019. Stay connected with Janelle’s work at www.janellecordero.com.
