I Feel Lucky

Frank Yamrus’s self portraits take inspiration from a midlife crisis

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Debuting a series of self portraits at NYC’s Clamp Gallery today, Frank Yamrus returns from a photographic hiatus after several years of soul searching from out behind the camera. “I Feel Lucky” marks the photographer’s response to his mid-life crisis, reproducing significant moments from his life in an exploration of faith, relationships, mortality, photography and health. Reveling in the changing lines of his face and facing demons of his past, Yamrus creates a thoroughly personal examination of his life to date.

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Many of the themes from the series are explained in a brutally honest essay that accompanies the exhibition book. Yamrus admits hitting a creative wall in the years leading up to this show, feeling consumed by his photographic work. Accompanying this shift was the marked change in his appearance, from his jowls—which he associates with his father—to his expanding midsection. Rather than shirking these shortcomings, Yamrus prints them in high definition for the world to see.

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Sexuality is a recurring theme in the photographs, building off the success of his “Rapture” series. Critical moments like Yamrus’s last female relationship; moments with Frank, his partner of 30 years; and his thoughts on parenthood are among the featured moments. While he isn’t a parent, Yamrus recalls a pregnancy scare with an old girlfriend and his role as an uncle as influential factors on his personal development and his transition to maturity.

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The images play between reality and fiction, at once playfully spontaneous and highly staged. True to the experience of memory, his constructions are partly informed by past events, filled in by his own imagination. Spurred by the difficulty of aging, the collection becomes a celebration of his life to date, full of instances that reaffirm and validate his many stages.

Clamp Gallery

16 February – 24 March, 2012

521-531 West 25th Street

New York, NY 10001

All images courtesy of Frank Yamrus and the Clamp Art Gallery


Ricardo Filomeno

Papercraft becomes motion graphic-inspired art

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Having just sold his first framed piece and a short-film project getting underway, Sao Paulo-based Ricardo Filomeno is poised to turn his whimsical papercraft hobby into a profession.

Filomeno and his girlfriend, art director Carol Bella, who also works with the medium in her free time, are collaborating on an experimental papercraft horror amusement park project. Inspired by The Funhouse, the short film will employ live action rather than stop-motion as a way to animate the scenes and characters. They’re currently in the testing stage, playing around with simple motors and tiny lamps to see how they might be incorporated to pull off the scenes filmed inside the house. The project is expected to be completed in three months.

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Filomeno, a freelance motion graphics artist who primarily works in Brazil’s advertising industry, was first turned on to the art form in 2008, particularly by the pieces of Los Angeles artist Elsa Mora, and trips to France.

For Filomeno, his work creating graphics provided a natural foundation for his new endeavor. He started making various pieces in his spare time, creating cameo brooches of pop culture characters found in comic books and Wes Anderson and sci-fi films. A recurring personality is Deus Mendingo, which translates roughly as “hippie God” in English. Filomeno originally used the pieces as business cards to make a lasting impression on potential clients of his animation work, but after participating in a bazaar in São Paulo last year and successfully selling a few, it was obvious his work could reach a bigger audience.

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With plans to show his pieces on a bigger scale, Filomeno is set to share his burgeoning hobby well beyond São Paulo. For more information, or to order custom pieces visit the artist’s website, and keep an eye out for his paper-craft horror show later this year.


My Home, My House, My Stilthouse

The studies that inform Arne Quinze’s monumental installations

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Best known for massive, vibrant wood canopies installed in metropolitan locations, Arne Quinze presents “My Home, My House, My Stilthouse“, a collection of smaller works that helps to explain his larger undertakings. On view now through 31 March 2012 at the Vicky David Gallery in NYC, the new pieces explore themes of escapism, order and voyeurism. The exhibition gives a fascinating glimpse inside the quiet studio work that underpins Quinze’s precariously balanced structures.

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While many see his work as chaotic, Quinze is quick to correct. “I don’t believe in chaos,” he says. “There is absolutely no chaos. There is only structure. I don’t believe in chaos in life.” His work is a constant building, whether that be structures or relationships, and it seeks a democracy in art that confronts and challenges. As people build fences and walls to keep things out, stilt houses to keep things below, Quinze seeks to restructure the world in a manner that is open and engaging.

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Lamenting the shortage of markets, squares and other places of interaction, Quinze aims to force the issue through public art. “Today we live in a world where everything goes very fast. People are not used to saying ‘hi’ in the streets.” The victory of his work, he explains, is inspiring a dialogue: “They have a kind of openness in themselves, they have a smile, they have something to share, something to communicate with each other. For a moment they forget who they are and they communicate so much easier with each other.”

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If the large works explore interpersonal interaction, the studies encourage an interface with the artist himself. “My Safe Garden” is a work enclosed in glass and backed by a large mirror. At once inspecting the work and becoming part of it, the viewer is meant to feel a connection to the locked-away corners of Quinze’s imagination. This is only possible to an extent. As he explains, “I give more questions than answers because the safe secret garden is very personal. I will not tell you what is happening in my safe secret garden, but you can be like a voyeur.”

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The signature bright vermilion hue of Quinze’s work, he notes, is a color of contrast. As blood, it is both life and death; as fire, both warmth and burning; in nature, both attraction and warning. The majority of the artist’s works are constructed from wood, a “warm” material that gives flexibility and strength to his technically complicated installations. While working with a small team and city engineers, Quinze hand-builds small models to plan each project. The result is then rendered on a computer and adjusted to accommodate structural considerations.

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Quinze sees his art originating from the “safe secret garden”, a concept essential to his works. For him, it marks the deepest place a person can go, one that is often hidden from the rest of the world. This theme fits with the city installations, inspiring openness and communication.

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“The studio is what is really happening in my mind—my safe secret garden,” explains Quinze. “And I think from my safe secret garden I create my own world, my own vision of how I perceive, how I absorb the world and how I want to create.” Mapping his own obsessions, Quinze uses elements of these experimental pieces when thinking about how to confront viewers in his installations. Invariably, the audience is transported into his vision, forced from their own consciousness to engage with that of the artist.

My Home, My House, My Stilthouse

2 February – 31 March 2012

Vicky David Gallery

522 W. 23rd Street

New York, NY 10011

All images courtesy of the Vicky David Gallery and Arne Quinze Studio.


Studio Visit: Ouattara Watts

The acclaimed artist offers us a rare glimpse inside his Brooklyn studio ahead of his upcoming mini retrospective
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While we all like to tap into an artist’s brain, find out exactly what goes on in their mind to make them create what they do, sometimes there isn’t really more behind a work of art than simply a vision that a person is unable to explain through words. The different approaches to making art—from pragmatic to utterly emotional—is part of what keeps the field perpetually intriguing.

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A reticent painter originally from Côte d’Ivoire, Ouattara Watts recently opened up his studio to Cool Hunting for a preview of the newly formed works comprising his forthcoming exhibition. The large, garage-like space is located in an industrial part of Brooklyn between Williamsburg and Bushwick that’s home to numerous emerging artists. With both the Whitney Museum and Venice biennials on his résumé, the veteran painter may hold more clout than his neighbors, but his artistic spirit seems unaffected by his widespread success.

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Organized by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, Watts’ upcoming NYC exhibition—which Roitfeld says is more like a small retrospective—will feature 18 new paintings alongside a few existing pieces. Watts completed all of these large-scale works in a matter of about six months, explaining that with the way the world is right now, he has a lot to say. At the moment, he is mostly preoccupied by the population of mistreated children in the world, a concern that presumably evolved since the birth of his own child, a life-changing moment for him.

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Bursting with color and layered in fabrics and objects picked up from his global travels, Watts’ paintings are still entrenched in his own style of Neo-Expressionism. Cryptic serial numbers abound, alluding to a secret code that only he knows about, but one that could potentially be worked out through clever deciphering or a deep understanding of West African cosmology. The mysticism that prevails reflects a coalescent spirituality, his beliefs not tied to one religion or another, but that together are very much a part of his enduring creative passion.

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The mix of media Watts uses is also symbolic of his constant exploration, and the people he encounters along the way. For example, the massive piece, “Vertigo #4” is covered in a denim remnant given to him by the shop owner of a fabric store near his Midtown apartment. Glued to this is an Ikea-like dish cloth embroidered with the initials “JL”—who they belong to Watts claims not to know. These found objects and recycled fabrics likely speak to the movement against using expensive materials, a notion developed in the 1970s by fellow Ivorian painter Mathilde Moraeau which she called Vohou-Vohou. The mix also undoubtedly marks a more natural way for Watts to express himself, free of monetary limitations or a prescribed aesthetic.

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Although known in his own right, it’s difficult not to associate Watts with the legendary artist Jean-Michael Basquiat. The two met in Paris while Watts was studying at the renowned L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and while their friendship was short-lived due to Basquiat’s death, Watts considers him almost like a soulmate. Basquiat convinced him to move to NYC, where Watts gave rise to African art with prominent shows at the Gagosian and Vrej Baghoomian galleries.

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The exhibition opens 7 February and runs through 19 February 2012 at the cavernous space known simply as 560 Washington Street.

All images by BHP, see more in the slideshow below.


Xie Molin

Machine modifications, studies in white and endorsing abstraction in Beijing

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One of the highlights of a recent trip to Beijing was discovering the work of Xie Molin, a locally based artist who is currently part of the “Beijing Voice” group show at Pace Gallery Beijing. Xie’s process involves three phases, which begins with the artist developing the pattern for the piece on a computer. Xie then uses a machine that he designed himself to trace the movement of his pattern on a canvas using a brush and paint before the final step, which involves the application of pigment by hand, a process the artist has not yet recreated using a machine. The resulting artwork combines mesmerizing texture with a simplicity that contradicts the intensely technical process. Importantly, each piece is one of a kind—the tech is not leveraged to create multiple copies of the same work.

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Though mechanical processes in art occasionally garner criticism from purists, Xie’s work integrates his artist-adapted technology instead of relying on it to do the work in his place. By fashioning his own tailor-made machine, Xie’s made it an artistic appendage, giving him the freedom to achieve his vision. While the work certainly speaks to the alienation of people from materials, there is some pleasure that arises from the conflict between mechanical formality and artistic vision.

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Molin received attention early in his career for the recreation and destruction of Jin Shangyi’s well known “Tajik Bride.” After finishing the work, Xie applied steady heat to the reverse, melting the aluminum on which he had painted. His anti-establishment ethos is clear from his tendency to embrace abstraction, something that we noticed a lot of in our travels through Beijing.

Xie Molin is a young artist we’re keeping an eye on.

Pace Gallery

798 Art District, No.2

Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District

Beijing, China 100015

All images copyright Xie Molin, courtesy of the Pace Gallery Beijing.


Andreas Scheiger

How one designer represents the antiquity of type in the digital age
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Austrian designer Andreas Scheiger celebrates the “craft of etching, engraving and letter design” with a nod to both science and the graphic design of the Victorian era. Scheiger believes that letters are “full of life” and, in an effort to explore “the means of communication by dissecting and rearranging its basic elements,” he delves into the heart of typography with his sculptural letter series, The Evolution of Type, inspired by Frederic W. Goudy’s tome, The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering (1918). Says Scheiger, “Goudy analyzes the denomination of letters as we know them today. For him, the birth of the alphabet is the most momentous achievement because with it, written communication is independent from pictograms like hieroglyphs.”

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Turning typography into a metaphor for evolution, Scheiger depicts the immortal nature of the written word with his latest contribution to the Evolution of Type series, Exhibit 16/1-9. Reminiscent of fossilized specimens suspended in amber, Scheiger takes an anthropological look at the future of the craft. Casting solitary letters made of balsa wood into polyester glass resin, the designer spells out a cautionary tale that echoes the way of the extinct trilobite fossil group. Scheiger reflects, “With digital print processing, letterpress letters indeed become something like ancient species.”

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The seemingly petrified letter blocks follow in Scheiger’s alphabet, which also includes sculpted letters splayed in sections to reveal a realistic array of muscles and marrow. Using a combination of wood and carved chicken bones mixed with polymer clay, Scheiger’s Evolution of Type exhibits visually conjure up an anatomical riff on the children’s alphabet—S is for Spine, T is for Tendon and so on.

For Scheiger, “letters are organisms and typefaces are the species, all classified similar to biological taxonomy. Each letter displays the anatomical features and evolutionary characteristics shared by so many living creatures,” an idea harkening back to Goudy’s inspiration, which focuses on the notion that “a letter should possess an esthetic quality that is organic, an essential of the form itself and not the result of mere additions to its fundamental form nor to meaningless variations of it.” As a result, Scheiger becomes somewhat of a “font surgeon” of design-focused, dissected specimens.

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Items from The Evolution of Type series along with Scheiger’s graphic prints are available for purchase in his shop.


Curious Bones

Skeletal sculptures find playful inspiration in grim materials
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Like a collection plucked from an old Victorian curiosity cabinet, Suzanne Hagerstrom’s bone sculptures have the unanticipated effect of delighting the macabre corners of our childish minds. Far-removed from the trends and memes of the art world, Hagerstrom has been quietly producing the figurines for decades in pursuit of her own charming obsession. She creates anthropomorphic critters from her imagination, drawing from myths of impossible animals like mermaids, wood sprites and, sometimes, even the jackalope.

Hagerstrom works out of her studio in Sag Harbor, NY, where nature remains her chief inspiration. About the origins of her work, the artist explains, “I turned over stones all the time and collected snails and turtles. I had a garbage can with snake eggs that I watched hatched. I had a magical childhood.” To this day, Hagerstrom sources her material from nature, gathering up bones of long-dead wild animals and domesticated fowl. She fuses the bones with a clay that is baked and painted to match the off-white patina. The hair, she admits, comes from a number of sources not limited to clippings from her dog, a friend’s fur coat and her own locks.

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“I love the idea of peering in, the voyeuristic aspect,” says Hagerstrom. While she admits her audience is limited to those with a stomach for morbid representations, it’s hard to deny her creatures are, in their own way, rather cute. They are convincing as well, as Hagerstrom relates, “People do ask, ‘Where did you find this?’ If I’ve painted them correctly, then they do look like living creatures.” She is fascinated by the story of a Fiji Mermaid, a hoax made of fish parts to resemble a real mermaid. “Of course it was found out, but I prefer to believe that, yes, that was a mermaid.”

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Hagerstrom’s creativity over the years is truly inspiring. Some of her past work includes a piece called “Leda and the Dead Duck” as well as an autobiographical series that used her own hair to decorate the sculptures. “It is play,” she explains. “It is the best kind of play because it is a meditative play.” Explaining her standards for good art, Hagerstrom admits, “If I’m moved by it and there isn’t a vocabulary for it yet, then that’s something really special. That’s what I want to engage in.”

We initially came across Hagerstrom’s work at her exhibition at artMRKT in the Hamptons last summer. While Hagerstrom doesn’t have any current exhibitions in the works, she did hint at the possibility of an upcoming project that riffs off the Pinocchio tale. Interested buyers should contact Julie Keyes of Keyes Art Projects for pricing and availability.


Jessica Eaton

Complex photographic methods yield stunningly colorful geometries

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Jessica Eaton‘s series, “Cubes for Albers and LeWitt” may be highly technical and conceptual, but the end result is dizzyingly beautiful. Based on Joseph Albers’ focus on the “discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect,” Eaton’s images add “multiple exposures and colored lights” to plain, monochromatic cubes to create enchanting graphics.

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The photographer starts with a set of cubes painted only white, black and gray, then shoots them under red, green and blue gels to capture the vibrant final pictures. The reflective value of the cubes controls levels of light and dark, while the layering of the primary colors creates a broad range of hues. One may be shocked to realize that the resulting images, made using only Eaton’s 4×5 camera, have not been digitally manipulated.

Eaton’s work recently appeared on the cover of Art News magazine in “The New Photography,” and she is currently showing at the FOAM museum’s “Talent 2011” show, at the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal for the 2011 Quebéc Triennial, and at Higher Pictures in New York.


Philip Bither

Walker Art curator searches far and wide for artistic innovation

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Curatorial savant and innovator Philip Bither exudes an infectious enthusiasm for the performing arts, fueling a passion that has spanned more than 25 years. Commissioning a range of artists from the emerging playwright Young Jean Lee to such stalwarts of the art scene as Laurie Andersen and Philip Glass, Bither has established a name as one of the most progressive curators of the interdisciplinary arts.

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Surrounded by a shared love of jazz while growing up—his grandfather was a jazz banjo performer—Bither cites music as a catalyst for his devotion to the arts. After graduating from the University of Illinois, Bither made the great leap to NYC and landed a fortuitous position in the fundraising department of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). “I went to BAM specifically because I was so interested in the large-scale avant-garde theatre, dance and music productions that they were supporting. The producer, Harvey Lichtenstein, was brilliant at making commitments to artists who he loved.”

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Equally committed, Bither’s dedication placed him at the forefront of BAM’s hallmark event, The Next Wave Festival, where he served as both associate director and music curator, producing “a lot of music shows that lived somewhere in the in-between land of downtown noise and rock and pop and avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical music.”

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Drawn to the dynamism of small venues that think big, Bither became assistant director of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, a homespun sensation in Burlington, Vermont. “I thought that I could translate some of the ideas and passions around the downtown dance and music scene that I was so involved with in New York into a smaller city and more community-based setting,” explains Bither. Under Bither’s tutelage, the Flynn Center’s burgeoning three-day jazz festival evolved into “one of the great small city jazz festivals in North America,” which continues to run, expanded to a two-week clip.

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In 1997, Bither accepted a coveted opportunity to head the Performing Arts Centerof the internationally recognized Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. An amalgamation of art, the Walker Art Center hosts a variety of art events and exhibitions that offer an “intellectual ferment” where attendees “can simultaneously walk and see a French New Wave film, look at current trends in graphic design and watch a postmodern dance movement.” Named one of the nation’s “big five” museums of modern art, The Walker Art Center is dedicated to finding the “newest of the new” in art trends and talent. “We try to stay attuned to the next generation of innovators and artists who are combining art forms in new ways and even changing the whole relationship between audiences and live art,” enthuses Bither. Upholding the museum’s mission to “select works that have an intrigue and freshness,” Bither travels extensively in search of new and, often, international talent.

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To showcase its provocative and engaging roster of performers, the Walker Art Center offers a range of unique programs including the annual Out There series, an event that “creates a framework for brand-new hybrid art forms.” Entering its 23rd year, the still-innovative event gets creatively “reinvented” each year. The Walker Art Center further promotes artists with the “SpeakEasy” program, an informal post-performance bar-side chat for audience members. Engendering an environment that both informs and intrigues, Bither hosts an interview series that has amassed “an amazing library of conversations with artists who are now written up in the history books of dance, theater, performance and music.”

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Motivated by the diversifying climate of performing arts, Bither and his team are also involved in pioneering an academic initiative to train a new generation of curators. Bither explains, “We’re helping to evolve a half dozen of initiatives or networks, some of which we helped start. The leadership role that the Walker plays is something that spans the visual arts and film. The Walker is very ambitious and inspired to work way beyond its own state lines or national boundaries.”

This story is part of an editorial series sponsored and inspired by Le Meridien. New Perspectives explores fresh ideas and distinct points of view in global art and culture.


Four Seasons Maui Artists Showcase

A well-curated collection of local artists and their work on view daily
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During a recent stay at the Four Seasons Resort at Wailea in Maui, Hawaii, we wandered through the artists showcase in the hotel’s lower lobby area. The open-air gallery rotates throughout the week, featuring six different local artists each day. It’s a great way for tourists to engage directly with the local arts community, as the artists present their work directly. Being selected to participate is considered a local honor, and the group is edited each year to keep things fresh. We were impressed with both the quality of the work (hotel lobbies don’t tend to deliver awesome art) but also with the breadth—native basket weaving, photography, sculpture, glass making, and painting. It was great to be able to speak with the artists directly about their work and process.

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Of the artists we met, two stood out for their creativity and innovation. They happen to be mother (Nancy Mosely) and daughter (Lisa Widell) who share the Shepards Beads studio in the middle of a Christmas tree farm on Maui, where they create work independently and collaboratively. Nancy works with fimo, which she extrudes to different shapes using a pasta machine. She works the various strands together to make tubes of kaleidoscopic patterns, which are then cut. The sliced fimo is put around beads and glazed, which Lisa then takes and makes into all types of jewelry.

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Nancy also uses the cut fimo to make colorful “fabrics” which she then transforms into miniature aloha shirts and muu’muus, many of which feature amazingly intricate fimo flower leis with very, very small petals, each made by hand. The “Aloha” shirt sculptures are then framed in Koa shadow boxes

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In addition to clay, Lisa also does Italian lampwork glass beadmaking, finishing her delicate products in precious stones, gold, and swarovski crystals. The jewelry is unique, handmade and bears the distinct mark of the Maui spirit. Had we seen their work in a gallery we probably wouldn’t have given it a second look, but having the opportunity to speak with them about their art and process made us fans, and we left with several pieces. Their work is also available through the Shepards Beads online shop.

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We also loved the photography of Cameron Nelson, a technical photographer who captures fleeting moments of ecological beauty. With a spirit of adventure, Nelson travels to global locales in search of original environments. In his extensive career photographing the islands, Nelson has recorded everything from the rugged Napali Coast and Hana’s bamboo forests to competitive surfers in the Banzai Pipeline. Nelson’s camera is equipped with waterproof housing for use when lying in wait for the perfect spray of sea foam.

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The artist showcase at the Four Seasons Maui runs year round, with new artists added each year. The collection celebrates local craftsmanship and the aesthetic spirit of a prized Hawaiian island.