Heather’s love of art solidified by 3rd grade with a first prize ribbon at the county fair for a masterpiece in glue and chalk – a macaw. She has studied arts and crafts all her life and earned a BA in studio art, new media (digital arts) from CSU Chico. She has curated artists for the Curtis Fest Artisan Fair and taught classes and workshops in fine art techniques for adults and children. In addition to her passion for art, she is a web designer, graphic designer, public speaker, and lecturer. She has continued the study of art and art history at Sacramento City College, where she is an adjunct professor, teaching web and graphic design.
Find more at: https://www.tenaciousgoods.com
She was born in Sacramento California to a family of twelve siblings. She currently lives in Sacramento California, after moving to Stockton California as a child in the foster care system. She draws her inspiration from experiences. The main point of her art is post-traumatic growth, a stage of PTSD that is still being researched today. PTSD has been thought to only affect soldiers returning from battle, but that knowledge is based on stereotypes and lack of proper knowledge. She uses acrylic paint to portray this, though is best at sketch art. She was self-taught in her earlier years. She started sketch art after obtaining a book about mythical creatures and begun sketching them from sight alone. She moved to acrylic during a hard point in her life and found she rather enjoyed the use of color versus a specific message portrayed through faces and shapes.
The major obstacles she faced in her life ranged from childhood neglect, abuse, and abandonment. All of these things she draws on in her art, creating a form of self-therapy. She became invested in art to escape the reality of her situation as a child, and this escapism turned into a passion in her later years. Her current profession is spiritual work, through tarot readings, energetic cleansings, and the overall aid of others. She enjoys brightening the lives of others and guiding them down paths best suited for them based on their individual needs. She is most passionate about helping people. While art was used as a form of therapy, she realized that this therapy could reach a broader audience. Not everybody who needs help will seek help, and by bringing this into the community you are allowing people who need it most to get the help they need.
Sam Schaller was born in 1994 in Redding, Ca. Having always enjoyed creating art even as a child, she would pick up any kind of stationary she could get her hands on and try to create something with it. Animation and cartoons at a young age introduced her to great artists like Hayao Miyazaki, Jhonen Vasquez, Michael Dante DiMartino, and Bryan Konietzko, influencing her art style to this day.
It probably wasn’t until middle school when Sam decided she wanted to hone in on excelling in her art, with encouragement from her friends of course. After graduating high school in 2012 she started attending college at Shasta College for five years, then moved away from Redding, CA in 2017. Currently, she resides in Sacramento California where she plans on graduating with an Art Associates degree at American River College by 2021.
When Sam officially decided on becoming an artist it was with the hope that she could obtain a college degree and excel in something her parents could not. Despite having the partial disability of polysyndactyly in the hands and feet, a malformation of both, and being raised in poverty she has overcome and compensated with what she has learned from school. Currently, Sam works mostly in traditional art, favoring the use of graphite pencils and digital new media. Her hopes are now to one day become a great graphics designer, concept artist, or even an illustrator.
Stephanie Kadle is a contemporary photographer and writer who lives and works in Sacramento, California. She is a native of Aurora Colorado. Her photographs pay homage to the history of Sacramento, the built environment, and its place in history. Her distinctive personal style emanates the joy of storytelling in the environment and expresses the vibrant spirit and atmosphere of Sacramento. Through her photography, the stories of local landscapes and structural objects are told.
She earned Her bachelor's degree in Anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology with a Minor degree in Latin, with honors. She also holds additional degrees in Geographic Information systems, Geography, Social Science, and a certificate in Freelance photography. She also has national certification as an Interpretive Guide through the National Association of Interpretation and currently holds public office as Commissioner on the Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission
Laine Rugen was born and lives in Sacramento, CA. Drawing from a mixture of humanistic psychology, loss, and childhood memories, she creates pieces focused on competing dualities, the human condition, and nostalgia.
Laine’s earliest influence was an older eccentric second cousin, Brian, who spent a solitary life painting, experimenting with origami designs inspired by nature, sculpting with various mediums, and living within the imaginative structures he built on his land in Sutter Creek. Brian’s sister, Terry, ultimately led to Laine’s interest in oil pastel and color theory. However, her primary influence stems from the loss of a friend and artist, Melissa, to depression in 2010. The sketchbooks and artwork Melissa left behind conveyed unsettling and heartbreaking depths of persistent and debilitating psychache that ultimately shattered and reframed Laine’s long-held existential beliefs. Melissa’s focus on sunken dark eyes and melting faces alongside dissociative, ethereal figures continues to be an influence in Laine’s ongoing attempt to understand and depict the more delicate and tenebrous aspects of the human condition. Laine’s preferred mediums include oil pastel and photography. With oil pastel, a color selection similar to that of German Expressionists is used to convey stronger emotion, while photography allows for a moodier but clearer presentation.
Initially taught how to draw by a caretaker as a child, Laine turned away from creative pursuits for nearly all of her adolescence and her early 20s when familial depression symptoms became more pronounced. Having grown up hearing about a rampant family history of artists who ended up suffering from schizophrenia or manic depression, Laine decided to turn towards a different field that aligned more with her paternal grandfather’s work. After a stint in engineering and an eventual return to functional health in 2015, Laine returned to school in 2018 to focus on coursework in art and psychology. Currently, she is in the process of completing an AA in Art.
Rachel Pineda born was and raised in Sacramento, CA where she currently resides and works as an iconographer and portrait artist. She draws her artistic inspiration from several sources. Rachel’s main sources are the great renaissance artists like Artemisia Gentileschi, Duccio, Fra Angelico, and Martini. Among the many artists that Rachel admires, her favorites are Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov, Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, Zenaida Serebriakova, Joaquin Sorolla, and Therese Schwartze. She is experienced and trained in a variety of mediums and techniques such as oils, egg tempera, oil pastel, and encaustic, but she focuses on painting portraits and iconography. The styles range from traditional iconography in Greek and Russian styles and more modern abstract styles as well. Experienced in gilding techniques and the craft of traditional panel making, Rachel is able to build a painting in the exact way the masters created masterworks for centuries.
Rachel has apprenticed in iconography under a traditional master iconographer. She has also taken classes in portraiture under Ceasar Santos and Suchitra Bhosle.
In 2020, she was awarded the ARC Maddock Figure Scholarship. She has many icons and portraits in private and public collections. Currently, she also has three portraits of heroes of Aviation that are displayed in the Aerospace Museum of CA.
In 2015 Rachel survived neuroendocrine lung cancer and came out of it with almost all her lungs. The experience has given her a love of each moment, good and bad, and the ability to see the world around her with new eyes. Rachel believes that there is so much beauty all around. Her desire to create art really came to her as a child. She felt the wonder many artists share at the many ordinary things she found beautiful and wanted to translate that experience through drawing. The little “nuances of form” fascinated her. “The curve of someone’s wrist, the fuzzy texture on tomatoes in the garden, the electric orange and blue of sunsets, all of it produce a desire to communicate and translate the beauty through her own hands and vision." Rachel was first introduced to art by her great grandfather who was a particularly good portrait artist. His story intrigued her as most of his work was found hidden away until he died, the day after she was born. She spent many hours in her childhood standing in front of his portraits studying his technique. She felt it was a way to get to know him as she strangely and superstitiously felt guilty and somewhat responsible for his passing without seeing her mother. Her mother dearly loved her grandfather, who was her only father figure. During the depression and WWII, Rachel’s Great Grandfather had to put the art away for jobs that put bread on the table. Rachel’s inspiration comes from her faith, the people, and the experiences she faces in life. Some of her artwork are impressions that influence how she perceives the beauty she wishes to translate and hopefully communicate to others. She is amazed at the beauty of all cultures and people. Rachel likes to learn about the individual whose portrait she paints and their own universe. What makes them happy, their sufferings, what they love, all of it so she may translate the beauty she sees in front of her. Perhaps it sounds too idealistic, but it is easy to find ugliness and hatred. One must be patient for beauty to reveal itself, especially with human beings as we are all such complicated creatures. Her passion is to translate that vision, with clarity and sensitivity yet, not taking anything away from the mystery of each individual. This is the goal she is still working towards and does not think she has achieved.
Visit the Artist at: https://shamrocksociety.com/