City College of San Francisco Retiree Art Show @ chinatown/north beach center
Enjoy an evening of art, performances, conversation, and refreshments to mark the opening of "The Power of Art", a CCSF Retiree Art Show
October 9, 2025 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm | Room 402
Chinatown/North Beach Center | 808 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
An exhibition of works by CCSF Retirees in a vast range of art disciplines - ceramics, drawing, fabrics, printmaking, and other modes. Discover the artistic talents of the CCSF retirees.
October - December 2025
Chinatown/North Beach Center | 808 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
Building hours: Monday - Thursday 8 am - 8 pm | Friday & Saturday 8 am - 2 pm
Immerse yourself in the music by Lenny Carlson and connect with fellow music enthusiasts.
October 30, 2025 | 6:15 - 7:45 pm | Room 402
Chinatown/North Beach Center | 808 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
An unforgettable evening filled with extraordinary activities: poem reading, stories, and hair cut.
November 6, 2025 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm | Room 402
Chinatown/North Beach Center | 808 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
Join us for a special evening celebrating the success of the CCSF Retiree Art Show. Enjoy the stories, music and a final chance to experience the art in good company
December 11, 2025 | 5:00 - 8:00 pm | Room 402
Chinatown/North Beach Center | 808 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
CCSF Artists
Numbing Loss is an arrangement of 7, 5.5 x 5.5” monoprints and 1, 5.5 x 5.5” mixed media work on paper. Each is a unique composition of imagery layers atop a cut up piece of a random, 30 x 44” collagraph, etching, or monoprint that I have made since the early 1980s.
When cutting up the prints, I thought about the changes and constants in my life and in the world. One constant being authoritarians systematically terrorizing, assaulting, and killing others. Each piece includes an image layer that is based on a March 2022, New York Times photograph. That photograph was taken after a Russian bomb destroyed a Ukrainian bridge and killed fleeing Ukrainians. I altered the image, and its negative spaces were then laser cut into the surface of a plywood block that I used as a relief print element on the pieces. All other woodblocks, plates, marks, and color passages used to make the final images were made by my hands.
The dangerous volatility of our current political and social relationships is overwhelming. For our individual and collective wellbeing, we must not allow ourselves to become numb and, worse, afraid of one another. Each of us must take some sort of good action towards another person each day. That action may be as seemingly small as recognizing another person whether they see you or not and acknowledging that we all rely on each other for our civil lives.
Over the years my immediate goals have changed but I continue to work with cloth, color, line and stitching as my means of expression. A substantial part of my time has been enjoyably spent teaching others the art of my craft.
In the past I have produced work that ranges in size from bed quilts to art quilts; personal and home-dec accessories as well as a line of hand-dyed and textured fabric for quiltmakers. At the moment I am working exclusively repurposing denim, cotton and wool garments into a variety of one of a kind items that I sell.
Even though I am celebrating my fifty-ninth year of working with fiber, I am still excited, thrilled, pleased and proud to be working with cloth.
I taught quilt making and surface design for CCSF for 18 years; went to Australia and New Zealand for 3 months teaching and lecturing and beginning in 1980 have been teaching and lecturing all over the US.
My work has been displayed in many museums across the country as well as Japan and Germany. I have quilts in museum and private and corporate collections.
I started making tongue drums in the 1970’s and selling them on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Making a drum is a form of meditation— the wood, the sound, the rhythm.
For many years, Lenny has focused on composition. His genre can be called Americana: a blend of Jazz, American popular and folk music, Western European Art Music (aka classical) and influences from cultures around the world. He has been the resident composer for Jeff Sanford’s Cartoon Jazz Orchestra since 2009, writing and arranging over 100 pieces for the group. A native of Los Angeles, he has been active professionally since the 1970s as a composer, guitarist and producer. His earlier recorded collaborations have involved Ry Cooder, Joe Diorio, Eddie Marshall, Rebeca Mauleon, Hal Richards, Bill Douglass, Barry Green, Madeline Mueller, the California Quartet and Frederick Harris. His composition “Playland at the Beach” is the title of Jeff Sanford’s 2023 CD, available on Spotify.
Contact lenny.carlson@comcast.net
My jewelry-making journey started 10 years ago when my daughter invited me to join her in taking jewelry design classes at College of Marin. While I find it enjoyable to design and create jewelry, I'm not an avid wearer of jewelry. (except bolo ties which I wear every day) So I give most of my creations away to people who would appreciate them.
I am still new to painting. I picked up painting after I retired from CCSF. I take the Arts for Senior Class at C/NB Campus. I feel power I can do it and other students should be able to do it too.
We are participants of Fun With Paper Class at the Golden Gate Park Senior Center. We enjoy unleashing our hidden creativity in making greeting cards with different techniques. We learn great ideas and skills from our Instructor, Margaret Quintana. The weekly activity is beneficial for socialization, sharpening our minds and keeping us out of trouble!
We also get helpful inspirations from paper crafters on YouTube.
We are participants of Fun With Paper Class at the Golden Gate Park Senior Center. We enjoy unleashing our hidden creativity in making greeting cards with different techniques. We learn great ideas and skills from our Instructor, Margaret Quintana. The weekly activity is beneficial for socialization, sharpening our minds and keeping us out of trouble!
We also get helpful inspirations from paper crafters on YouTube.
Known for her colorful and abstract wedge weave tapestries, Deborah Corsini is inspired by color, a variety of materials, and contemporary themes of climate change and current events both personal and global. Although wool is her usual material of choice, the chance to experiment with different ingredients is alluring. This weaving was sparked by a large stash of yellow carbon papers — from the student attendance rosters saved from many years of teaching tapestry weaving at City College of San Francisco — transformed into yarn for weaving. Saved from our throwaway culture, the paper is elevated and transformed during the process of changing it into yarn for weaving.
Both experimentally and conceptually, Homage to Christo and Jeanne-Claude, developed
during the process of weaving. The paper was first cut and then roughly spun to create a yarn that was woven in a simple tabby (over / under plain weave). The resulting yellow fabric is broken by two red rectangles. Found Guatemalan ikat fringe was selectively draped and suspended between the two rectangles and carried around to the back. The resulting textile assemblage is an appreciative and humorous woven tribute to these two unique and visionary artists. The student rosters, filled with names, add symbolic meaning to the piece, an acknowledgement that the students inspired the teacher as well.
In my current practice this exploratory piece has encouraged a continued journey of playfulness and experimentation with unusual materials. It is a reminder to look at and use up my extremely bountiful stash of yarns both natural and manmade.
www.deborahcorsini.com
IG: DeborahCorsini_weaver
I’ve always loved color! All the colors of nature, of rainbows, of dresses in folclórico dancing, of life. Watercolors. I’m a mother of two kids, I like singing and dancing, hiking with our dog and swimming, and spending time with friends and familia. All of these activities help us to balance the difficult times we’re living in.
Color Wheel Design Period Piece of Young James Taylor (circa 20th century)
I took Art at LA City college and was close with a teacher, who encouraged me in this Design class and helped me apply for work study and financial aid. He gave me back my own painting, this one, that he'd saved when, as a new City College of San Francisco teacher, I looked him up nearly 25 years later. It was only after he passed away a few years later, I learned Kazuo Higa had been in an internment camp as a child with his family. He was always good-natured, an excellent and kind-hearted instructor and a caring role model. Dedicated to Kazuo Higa.
The essence of my exploration is the condensation of thought expressed through materials and images. Each object I create is a combination of my investing meaning into the work and the materiality of the work having its own meaning. Within those perimeters I am fabricating a curtain the rests between the material and ethereal, letting the shadows of both pass though.
Having just completed my MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry at U. Mass, Amherst in 1972, I started my 28 year career at City College of San Francisco teaching Poetry Workshops. I taught those classes for 12 years. When I retired as an Associate Vice Chancellor in 2010, I turned once again to poetry and my muse.
As a child, I had a deep fascination with clay. From the wet, sticky mud of San Francisco Bay, I made pinch pot vases, and then baked them hard in the sun. At 14 years old, while walking the halls of my high school during lunch period, I peered into the round window of the Ceramics Room and saw 10 wooden kick wheels. My inner-self said, "You need to try THAT!" I went back another lunchtime and the door was open. Chris Boyd (Sebastopol based potter) was teaching at the time and invited me in. In I went and never left as I discovered the most mesmerizing art form ever. I was hooked on the feel of clay in my hands that was delicious and soothing. The ability to create 3-dimensional forms out of the Earth, touched me deeply and awoke the artist within. Since then, I've never stopped in my quest to transform this earthy substance into something that is both functional and decorative. My whole life I have been immersed in clay, and throwing since 1969.
My Feel for Clay
As clay revolves in my hands and my mind– becoming a vase, bowl or whatever shape my hands give to it and it gives to it-SELF– I feel an intense bonding experience. The act of centering the clay is so in sync with nature and the Earth. I feel totally at one.
Every ceramic piece I create is a manifestation of its own deep Nature, a merging of the elements Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Some of my bowls are covered on the outer side with assorted locally found clays that I've dug up and processed into shimmering slips. These clays have an incredible earthy appearance. For contrast, I use glazes on the inside of the bowl to reflect the celestial galaxies. The glazes always surprise me with their seemingly endless range of color and depth, much like the endless nature of the Universe.
My work is made of commercially manufactured stoneware and porcelain clay. I am proud to use the following commercial underglazes and glazes that are non-toxic and food safe, Amaco, Mayco, Laguna, Coyote Clay Company, and am represented on their website in the Enduro and Fantasy glaze lines. I glaze fire to Cone ,5/6 2160-2180ºF.
My clay slips are from clay that I have personally dug, i.e., Pacifica, where I once lived, and presently in Santa Rosa, Ca and clean and use on the exterior of my pieces for an interesting effect.
Educational background:
I took art and ceramics courses at College of San Mateo, Foothill College, City College of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and Skyline College in San Bruno.
I was a member of Ruby's Clay Studio and Gallery in San Francisco for 20 years and during my tenure at Ruby’s, I was involved with Open Studios of San Francisco. At Ruby's, I was surrounded by an incredible artist community of professional potters, who gave me the best education of ceramics, in addition to the many workshops of invited guest potters to the studio. Cori Couture, a once known potter for her exquisite Raku pottery, trained me in the art of throwing large pieces.
I was a tenured professor of English as a Second Language at City College of San Francisco for over 25 years. There I learned the patience to teach the world another communication system. It taught me patience and reflection of how we all are interconnected on the planet.
Family history.
My paternal grandfather, Charles Samuel aka, C. S. Hoffman founded Golden Gate Iron Works, a structural steel fabrication business in 1906 and helped rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake. Two magnificent works of art that Golden Gate Iron Works fabricated are visible today are: the ornamental iron works gates that are located at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, they are the gates with the gold tips and the ornamental iron work fence and the elaborate gates that surround San Francisco General Hospital on Potrero Street. My great Aunt Lena nee Hoffman, is the mother of the famous Joe Rosenthal, of whom shot the famous WWII photograph of the US Marines hoisting the flag at Iwo Jima.
Now that I am retired from teaching ESL, my true artistic dream has emerged. After 56+ years of being immersed in "mud", I am on a wonderful adventure of creativity that just keeps expanding to realms that have no end. It's the Universe of Art, it just keeps going and going and I love working with the Earth Goddess.
My spouse, Jean Decker, has also discovered the Clay Goddess and together we create in our studio work and sell at stores and fairs.
San Francisco State University M.A.T.E.F.L. 1988
San Francisco State University B.A. (English) 1984
I sell my work at MadeLocal Marketplace in Santa Rosa and Novato stores and Bodega Artisan Co-op. I do fairs throughout the year.
Member:
Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California
American Craft Council
Healdsburg Center for the Arts
My name is Raymond Holbert. I was born in 1945. I am a citizen of the Metropolitan Bay Area of California. My art life is officially listed as: Fine and Applied Art and Related Technologies. I love the physical and life sciences, photographically related outputs, digital and reproductive production, fashion and architecture.
My love continues for the above and the strongest growth over the past sixty-five years has been mixed media works on paper and other display surfaces.
I continue to have a very strong interest in colors, textures, values and their effect on my work as well as in human behavior. I am a “rewired” educator as well as being a practitioner of art and I have had many opportunities to work with students and colleagues of all ages and I continue to learn as much as possible. I remain a student in this life and I continue to see myself as “growing up”.
For more samples of journal keeping and a selection of sketches, drawings, ideas and photographs please see my web site. I have work in collections of businesses, museums and private collections. I currently reside in Berkeley, California. I also use Facebook as a creative part time display format.
http://www.memorybanque.com
What a Great Adventure!!!
We are participants of Fun With Paper Class at the Golden Gate Park Senior Center. We enjoy unleashing our hidden creativity in making greeting cards with different techniques. We learn great ideas and skills from our Instructor, Margaret Quintana. The weekly activity is beneficial for socialization, sharpening our minds and keeping us out of trouble!
We also get helpful inspirations from paper crafters on YouTube.
Andrew Leone is a painter, printmaker, and glass artist, residing in
Pacifica, California who helped found the Sanchez Art Center. He was the art
center's first director, and designed an eighty-foot wide mural; an award winning
community art project painted by dozens of volunteers.
Leone exhibits his paintings, mixed media and stained glass pieces
throughout the Bay Area, California and Canada and is featured in many public
and private collections. He taught painting and drawing at City College of San Francisco for 20 years.
In many of Leone’s paintings, like this series, Distiller of Dreams, objects are subjected to the forces of nature like air, water, fire, earth, time and space, and become animated with life. At the same time, the world of form is in the process of dissolving into color and texture
taking on a dream-like quality, pointing to a non-place where opposites, like hot
and cold, life and death are resolved into a field of unity.
The series are sign posts directing us towards this invisible world
where a self-organizing intelligence underlies all; where a dedicated explorer
might find chaos seeking order or discover the order in chaos; a contemplation of how divergent elements cooperate, converse and ultimately inspire.
All the models (folded origami) have been folded from a single square or dollar bill
without gluing or cutting. I learned to fold these models from diagrams. Some of the models are complex, e.g. Master Yoda has 60 steps. Nowadays, Youtube has many tutorials. If it has been a while since you folded a paper airplane, I encourage you to see
what the origami community offers. You will be rewarded with fun, creativity and plenty of brain engagement.
One piece of paper can bring the peace of paper!
My interest in drawing was born out of a need to save a class during the pandemic - Art for Older Adults, a Non-Credit class taught by Kelvin M Young. My last art class was in 6th grade; consequently, I took a tentative step for the class was going to be conducted on Zoom. An art class on Zoom?! Under Mr. Young's tutelage, I dutifully, and painstakingly, produced one drawing a week. As for my preferred subjects, I gravitate toward the natural world, inspired by the Pacific Northwest of my upbringing to Botswana of my retirement adventures...hence, the four drawings I selected for this art show. It had been indeed an unexpected, but delightful road to self-discovery.
1969: Bachelor of Fine Arts in Arts Practice, Michigan State University
1971: Masters of Science in Art Education, Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Institute of Art
1971: Moved to San Francisco
1971-1973: Substitute Teacher in San Francisco Public School System; participated in various art shows
1974: Began career with San Francisco Community College system, in the Older Adults program.
Taught leathercraft, jewelry making, painting and ceramics
1983-1993: Made copper and enameled fountains
1994: Received Cosmetology license from the State of California
2013: Retired from San Francisco Community College system, after 38 years of teaching
2015-16: Returned to San Francisco Community College system for 1 year, teaching painting
1994-present: Continuing to work as a licensed Cosmetologist in various salon settings
I have been interested in fiber art since I was a teen. Family members were very encouraging, men and women alike, since they worked in a yarn mill in their Rhode Island neighborhood.
When I moved to SF in 1981, I worked at Ft. Mason Youth Hostel and discovered the City College Art Center, where I studied weaving, dyeing, batik, spinning, basketry, seaweed crafting…It was perfectly stimulating for me.
The piece you are looking at was done under the influence of one of my weaving teachers.
I used 3 colors of woolen yarn in the complete scarf. When I finished weaving, it was 3 yards by 16 inches. I wove the scarf so loosely that you couldn’t wear it without getting something caught in it. It needs to be loose to give the scarf lots of space to shrink when it is agitated by hand in hot water right at the kitchen sink.
Finally, it is a felted scarf and much narrower and shorter than the piece that first came off the loom.
The final product is a handwoven, handfelted woolen scarf.
Walking through Muir Woods, I’m often struck by the quiet majesty of the redwoods. On rare evenings, when twilight filters through their branches, light touches my face like a blessing—filling me with wonder and lifting my spirit. This quilt reflects that luminous moment of connection between earth and sky, tree and soul.
Materials: Small pieces of silk were carefully arranged on the quilt sandwich and secured with free-motion machine quilting.
Kay Russell is a painter who works with watercolor, gouache, monotype, collage, and thread. Her images are a combination of representation entwined with interpretation. The watercolors are used additively and subtractively, with liberal use of gouache. This painting process allows a conversation to develop between subject and artist, a banter allowing the artist to participate with nature in decisions about line, shape, color, texture, and pattern. Her practice reflects a long relationship with the Sierra Nevada, where she draws observations of rock, water, and light to for inspiration.
I have always allowed myself to explore the ceramic medium wherever firing, experience, opportunity and visual excitement lead me. In my studio, visitors often comment that the work looks like it is made by multiple artists.
I enjoy using varied surfaces, traditional Chinese glazes, contemporary surface treatments and I derive many expressions from my years as a studio potter. Expressions of house, topography, natural landscape, architectural structures, industrial textures and the geology that surrounds us are what tends to be the force behind my work.
Decorative vases are a natural fit to my love of gardening and the joy I feel in nature. I also enjoy making drinking vessels. The holding of a cup in the hand creates an intimate tactile and esthetic experience that is both personal and social when sharing a beverage with friends
After I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in anthropology and Japanese, I lived in Tokyo, Japan for two years where I taught English as a Second Language, and studied Japanese flower arrangement. When I returned to San Francisco, I received a Master’s Degree in English/TESL, and was a tenured English as a Second Language professor at City College of San Francisco.
In addition to teaching ESL at City College, I also created ikebana flower arrangements and made a 30-minute documentary film from 16mm black & white original 1920s found footage, “Budapest: An American Quest. A Family’s Journey to 1920’s Hungary,” which won the Berkeley Film Festival award and is now in the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
Making films and riding my bicycle brings me the joy of movement. Since 2017, I’ve studied botanical drawing, watercolor painting and nature journaling, traveling to the rainforest in Costa Rica and the Amazon River basin in Ecuador to paint birds and flowers in their natural environment. My artistic en plein air style has been described as “colorful, loose, and impressionistic.”
When I see a bird or a flower blowing in the wind, I am in their world for the moment. I paint all of my subjects outdoors, traveling on foot or bicycle along the Bay Trail to botanical gardens, or into the mountains carrying watercolors, colored pencils, ink, and black and white watercolor paper on my bicycle to paint outdoors. I painted this Feather River in the Woods watercolor along the banks of the Feather River near Quincy, California over a few hot summer days this year.
You can contact me at cyclefilms@gmail.com, call 510-841-8003, text 510-506-6704 or find me on
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lynn.schneider.142
Diana Scott’s work in mixed media sculpture explores the possibilities of transformations that can occur when the familiar and unassuming materials of everyday life are integrated. Unlikely elements such as Bamboo, copper wire, and Plexiglas change meaning and together create a single new identity. Common associations alter as individual elements combine. Negative space, defined by the lines and layers, interplay with light to cast shadows, adding extra dimension. The work is focused on metamorphosis, embellishment, and shifting perspectives.
Diana’s art has been exhibited in solo and group shows nationally. She has been represented by the Katie Gingrass Galleries in Milwaukee and Santa Fe, and the Virginia Breier Gallery in San Francisco. Her work is owned by individual clients and several corporations including Hewlett-Packard, Sun/Oracle, Carnation/Nestle, and Citicorp. She taught Art History in the Art Department and retired in 2019. She held classes at the Ocean, Downtown, and Mission Campuses as well as at the deYoung and Legion of Honor Museums.
We are living in a time of vulnerability; not everyone has equal opportunity, access, or recourse. Symbols of America, California, and Indigenous. Colors, broad strokes, direct communication.
Statement
The works of art you see here are transparent watercolor paintings. Transparent is a term to describe the type of paint that allows light to pass through and then reflect off the pure white paper. This brings luminosity and brightness to the subject. Painting on wet, 100% pure cotton watercolor paper inspires the spontaneity and freedom to express the joy I feel when I see an eye-catching scene. I only paint on location.
Artist Bio
Media: Transparent watercolor painting, and pen and ink drawing
I live in San Francisco and paint in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I paint and draw en plein air in a spirit of spontaneity, play and celebration. I especially
enjoy the camaraderie of painting with a group as we all interpret the world in our own,
unique ways. I also love to draw with pen-and-ink and rarely leave hope without a sketchbook.
Education:
BA in Art, Mills College
Painted and studied drawing in France, culminating in a one-person-show at the Foundation des États Unis, Cité Universitaire, Paris
MA in Education, SF State University
Student of Kenneth Potter, AWA (American Watercolor Association)
Groups:
East Bay Landscape Painters
San Francisco Women Artists Gallery
California Watercolor Association
Helen Stanley is a storyteller. Her work involves observation, mystery and suspense. Stanley recognizes her "stories" as visual experiences that come to her, often in the form of dreams and daydreams which becomes a journal, which then becomes a sketchbook from which she distills the dreams into paintings. She is dedicated as an artist, but also has enjoyed teaching, privately and in college: " Painting is so egocentric, so solitary, it's nice to get outside yourself, " she says of her passion to pass on the vision.
Orangutans are classified as Critically Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) due to deforestation and the international exotic animal trade.
Numerous groups are working to slow the rate of population decrease in various endangered species, but in most cases, it is almost impossible to reverse the trend.
Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) is one of the few organizations that is working hard to actually increase the population of wild orangutans in Borneo. In collaboration with the Indonesian government they have purchased huge tracts of rainforest and designated them as protected National Forests so as to provide safe habitats not only for orangutans, but for other flora and fauna that make up a healthy rainforest. They also work closely with local communities to teach sustainable crop production, employing workers and purchasing as much as possible from local indigenous communities.
BOS rescues displaced and orphaned orangutans, treats them for any medical conditions, rehabilitates them, and in the case of young orangutans, spends years teaching them the skills necessary for them to survive in the wild. They are then moved to the protected forests. To date they have released over 500 orangutans back into the wild, many of whom have successfully raised a new generation of offspring.
I work as a remote volunteer for BOS because I truly believe in their mission. I hope these comic strips will increase public awareness of the work that BOS is doing to improve the status of orangutans in Borneo.
Frances Valesco has exhibited at the Museo José Guadalupe Posada, Aguascalientes, Mexico, the Galería Nacional San José, Costa Rica, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA. Her work is in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., the New York Museum of Modern Art, and the New York City Public Library. She has taught at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Between 1998 and 2019, she was a faculty member at CCSF. She has received artist residency awards from the Guanlan Printmaking Base in China, ArtPrint Residence in Spain, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland.
Recent exhibitions include Marie Curie Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland, Mini Print International, Cadaqués, Spain. Douros Biennal, Portugal, US Art in Embassies, Ankara, Turkey, and the International Print Biennale Yerevan, Armenia. In her social practice, she has organized and completed over fifty murals and public art events. She is a significant figure in the Mission Muralists movement in San Francisco, CA.
Legacies and Legends #1 is about the modern-day myth of climate denial. These last years of escalating fires are the worst in California's history. Our fate as a species is tied to the health of the planet, and we have not allied ourselves in caring for it.
The image features a nautical map of the Sacramento River. The river is associated with one of the largest mass migrations in the US, with the 19th-century discovery of gold in California. Now the glitter is merely a reflection of flames in the waters. The drawings of broken sand dollars represent the changes brought about as the planet evolves into a state of unsustainability for all life forms as we know them.
Thomas enjoys colors and patterns. When he has an idea or a vision for a creation, he can see the general bones and structure, then gradually fleshes it in and out over a period of a couple of days to a week or so. Kinda making it up as he goes along with a basic itinerary but no set course. The painting usually talks back to him and tells him where to fill in a cavity or add a dark or light streak or hue.
Thomas likes all the different materials and media, from acrylics to wood, textile to whatever he can get his hands on. He took art classes all throughout school but was never formally indoctrinated or trained in any one particular way. He does fondly remember one class called non-western art that described these yam cults and carvings in Africa, and he still recalls a teacher who was nice but gave him a hard time named Faith Ringgold. His style is probably best described as simple and direct. There is usually a story involved. He is okay with details but not all that attentive to them. Most of his art is inspired by nature, cool people, ceremonies, and other such motifs he has picked up along his life journey.
Art is a first love but a part time vocation. Imagine if I did it full time my tooth paste of inspiration would be squeezed out pretty fast, and the process would lose some of the fun and madness. It happens when it happens. And when it does, it is a combination of a heart attack, lightning strike, night turning into day, and paintbrush bristled pointed concentration. Then I am spent out for a bit and go back to regular day to day duties like washing dishes, fixing broken things, and pulling weeds.
Thank you for coming to see the show. Hope to share some stories and hear yours as well.
Appreciate your presence and energetic vibes.
We are participants of Fun With Paper Class at the Golden Gate Park Senior Center. We enjoy unleashing our hidden creativity in making greeting cards with different techniques. We learn great ideas and skills from our Instructor, Margaret Quintana. The weekly activity is beneficial for socialization, sharpening our minds and keeping us out of trouble!
We also get helpful inspirations from paper crafters on YouTube.
Please contact Leslie Plato Smith, leslie@leslieplatosmith.com