View Metis Atash on Artsy

Metis Atash is as dynamic as the pieces that she meticulously sketches, sculpts, and brings to life. German born, and raised in Munich, Metis Atash is a citizen of the world. Her vast global travels led her to the Indonesian Island of Bali, where the lifestyle, culture, and philosophies quickly resonated with her, and eventually became the trajectory for her artistic style and her purpose as an artist. For the artist, Bali is a place where love is the only energy to be found, where people practice living in the now and know that a clear mind is the only way to happiness. Bali and its people have   appropriately become the source of inspiration for her artwork. 

Atash sculpts in fiberglass, bathes her creations with acrylic paint, and meticulously covers each piece by hand in upwards of 20,000 Swarovski crystals.  Her creations are subject to a multi-step process of clay modeling, molding, sculpting, sanding and lacquering.  The objects of her work are based on the spiritual being and her sculptures are inspired by the ancient teachings of the Daoism.  Daoist propriety and ethics focus on nature, the relationship between humanity and the cosmos, health and longevity, as well as action through inaction, which is thought to produce harmony with the universe. The artists’ work aims to be perceived as the mirror of our eternal souls. They showcase the duality in life and the merging of our inner beings with our physical ones. 

Atash’s entrepreneurial spirit, business saavy and her interest in pairing art, fashion and popular culture has lead to an awareness of her work around the globe.  Her art has been exhibited in select galleries throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, and has been featured in important international magazine publications like Vogue, Elle Decor, Architectural Digest, and Haute Living. Her intention is to create artworks that breathe and exhale uniqueness and individuality.  Each piece is one-of-a-kind and awards its viewer with a captivating experience.

View Hans Van de Bovenkamp on Artsy

Born in Holland in 1938, Hans Van De Bovenkamp entered into the School of Architecture in 1958, continuing onto the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor later that year. Hans graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science and Design. Following Hans’ move to New York, he became a part of the 10th street gallery co-op movement in the 1960s’. Hans takes much of his inspiration from myth, symbol, and nature. This inspiration partially derives from the time he spends in his residence in the Hamptons.

Over the course of his career, Hans has been the recipient of such distinguished awards as the Emily Lowe Sculpture Award (1964) and the Best Sculpture Award (2003) as awarded by Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York. Hans is also part of the permanent collections of City University of New York, Stony Brook University, Texas A&M, University of Missouri, Jing’an Park in Shanghai, Mt. Sinai Hospital in Miami, the Butler Institute of American Art, Lowe Art Museum, Boca Baton Museum of Art, and Miami University Art Museum.

Hans’ sculptures are in the private collections of the Tuft family, and he is additionally represented in the corporate collections of Neiman Marcus, the Gergetown Plaza Building, the Hyatt Regency, Louis Meisel, and the Manhattan House. Hans Van de Bovenkamp has also been in a number of group as well as solo exhibitions, including Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (1964), Oakland Museum (1982), Chicago Art Fair (1988), Shanghai Art Fair (2011), Bernarducci Meisel Gallery (2011), and Samuel Lynne Galleries (2014). Hans continues to split his time between New York City and his residence in Sagaponack in the Hamptons where he is able to work on and display his monumental sculptures.

View Brandon Boyd on Artsy

A Los Angeles, CA native, Boyd is famously recognized as the vocalist and frontman of Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum selling rock band, Incubus. His work as a singer-songwriter is well-documented and universally acclaimed, but his other life’s work as a visual artist is garnering increasing attention and devoted audiences of its own. 

Brandon Boyd views the creative processes of musicianship and visual artistry as both complementary and intertwined. As a musician, Boyd boasts a broad musical palette genre bending thrash, experimental rock, post-grunge, and alternative rock – and as an artist he is no different – his artworks are a combination of ink, watercolor, and acrylic, works on paper and on canvas, and a mix of portraiture and abstraction. His artwork pushes the boundaries of contemporary and abstract art, affecting viewers both physically and spiritually. Boyd’s watercolor drawings and experimental paintings create a sense of serendipity and mystery. His multidisciplinary approach of creation allows viewers to discover their own narrative of beauty, chaos, and curiosity.

Boyd is the author of three books combining his artwork, photography, and creative writing. He has held art talks, book signings, and solo and group exhibits domestically in cities such as: Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, and internationally in Amsterdam, Cape Town, Cologne, London, Paris, Rome, and Zurich. OptiMystic showcases Boyd’s versatility as an artist, featuring watercolors governed by chanced spills and blended pigments of color, and mixed media paintings on canvas juxtaposed by meticulously chaotic lines and figures in ink.

View Lea Fisher on Artsy

Lea Fisher is a former psychotherapist who has evolved from a problematic and conflicted childhood to become an intuitive artist who can express herself fearlessly, while powerfully addressing very complex issues related to contemporary societal afflictions.

As a Reflectionist, Fisher paints dramatic compositions that mirror her life experiences. She creates bold, authentic, emotionally expansive artworks that frequently possess an ethereal quality.

Often painting without a sense of physical presence, the artist uses techniques that range from delicate feathering of oils, to using multiple media to create richly sculpted textures. Her aesthetically pleasing compositions captivate the eye with rich and vivid layers of elegant color palettes.

Her art emulates adventure, raw emotion, and an unparalleled flow of sentience. Drawing on her strong skill of composition, Fisher creates an illusion of solidity and weightlessness that simultaneously grounds the viewer while allowing the mind to float to engage intuitive consciousness.

The artist currently resides and works in Dallas, Texas.

View James Gill on Artsy

James Francis Gill was born in Tahoka, Texas in 1934. From 1960-1961 he studied at University of Texas, Austin on a painting scholarship, where he completed his formal education. He left Texas in 1962, and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his artistic career. The support he received from his first art dealer, Felix Landau, was pivotal to Gill’s early entrance into important private and public collections.

Throughout the fifties and sixties, a new school of artists emerged on the scene, and made “Pop Art” a household name. Among them was James Gill, who routinely exhibited alongside acclaimed artists such as Edward Hopper, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Gill experienced a rapid ascent in the art world and major museums began to take notice. The New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum and the Smithsonian Institute added his works to their collections.

In 1965, Gill taught at the University of Idaho, and in 1969 at the University of California, Irvine. The following year, he was offered a visiting professorship at the University of Oregon.

In 1967, Gill was featured in the “Environment USA: 1957-67” exhibit in Sao Paulo, Brazil, alongside acclaimed artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg and Edward Hopper. This exhibition led to Gill’s breakthrough in the international art world.

Gill was at the peak of his career, and very popular in the Pop Art scene, but many contemporaries saw a profound and complex meaning in his works, expressing more than Pop Art originally intended.

In 1972, Gill went surprisingly into a self-imposed exile. Not wishing to further succumb to the “me” generation, Gill joined a small group of artists, poets and writers to form an artist’s colony on the California/Oregon border. He continued to work and expand his artistic vision, taking the Pop Art practice of appropriating commercial photo-derived imagery as source material and applying the latest in technology to develop his current unique process. By running a raw canvas through an ink-jet printer he re-creates an image that he then manipulates with a clear gel medium, applying it as one would paint with regular pigment, to draw the inks up into the gel, giving the same effect as colored acrylics – only with colors dramatically more vibrant than pre-colored medium. Gill can then paint or glaze over the artwork until it thoroughly represents his artistic vision.

With iconic Pop Art depictions, as well as bold collaged abstract imagery, it was widely conceded among his contemporaries that Gill’s art reflected both qualities of a contemporary consciousness and a classical tradition.

Gill’s artwork can be found in the following collections; Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Stanford University Center for Visual Arts & The Art Institute of Chicago, to name a few.

View John Henry on Artsy

John Henry is known worldwide for his large-scale public works of art, which grace numerous museum, corporate, public and private collections. His works are prominently exhibited in many American cities and states as well as throughout Europe and Asia.

John has shown his work extensively since the early 1960’s and exhibits a definitive trademark style that is recognized internationally. His works range in scale from small tabletop pieces to some of the largest contemporary metal sculptures in the world. While identified by some in the 1970s as part of the Minimalist Movement, the geometric forms that have defined John’s work for more than forty years have their aesthetic and historical base in Constructivism. John has a supreme commitment to the materiality of his work, and an unwavering insistence on maintaining the integrity of the process and the materials in developing his visual vocabulary.

John attended the University of Kentucky, University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received a Ford Foundation grant, the Edward L Ryerson Fellowship and earned a BFA. He received an Honorary Doctor of Arts from the University of Kentucky in 1996. As a visiting professor of sculpture, John has taught at the University of lowa, University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is formerly Distinguished Professor of Art at Chattanooga State College. In 2002 he received the Governor’s National Award in the Arts from the State of Kentucky and in 2004, the Mayor’s Award of Distinction in the Arts from the City of Chattanooga. Other recent honors include recognition on the floor of the Tennessee State Senate in 2004, and in 2005 the honorary renaming of North Cermak Road to “John Henry Way” by the City of Chicago in recognition of his contributions to Public Art on the local and national levels.

As an active participant in promoting the arts John has served as a member of the Advisory Board of Lawyers for the Creative Arts in Chicago, a coordinator and advisor to the City and the Art Institute of Chicago for the Sculpture in the Parks Exhibition and as an advisor to the Art Council of Greater New Orleans for the Super Sculpture New Orleans exhibition. Since 1991 he has served on the Board of Trustees of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. John has also served on the Board of the International Sculpture Center since 1996 in various leadership roles including Chairman. John resigned from the ISC board in 2008 and has since been named Chairman Emeritus.

John was a founding member of ConStruct, the artist-owned gallery that promoted and organized large-scale sculpture exhibitions throughout the United States. Other founding members include Mark diSuvero, Kenneth Snelson, Lyman Kipp and Charles Ginnever. John continues to curate exhibitions in the United States and in Europe; drawing on his nationally recognized expertise regarding sculptors and their work. He is now the Curator of the Outdoor Museum of Art at Chattanooga State College, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Recent exhibitions include: OPEN 2007, Venice, Italy; Sarasota Season of Sculpture 4, Sarasota, FL, 2007; American Sculptors in the Shadow of the Alps, Art St. Urban, Switzerland, 2007; Sculpture a Wyoming Invitational at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, 2008; his one man exhibition throughout the state of Florida, Drawing in Space: The Peninsula Project, 2008/09 and Sculpture for New Orleans, 2009. Upcoming exhibitions include: Art in the Garden at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, July 2009. Recent major acquisitions include: Tatlin, Hall Financial Group, Frisco, TX; Treemonisha, The Gateway Foundation, St. Louis, MO; Je Souhaite, Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL, Songbird of Seattle, WA and Rocky Mountain High of Evergreen, CO.

View JD Miller on Artsy

JD Miller began his painting career 20 years ago with a vision. Pursuing the law of attraction, with a conscious practice as a professional musician, he developed Reflectionism. Exploring other mediums,     the artist began using oil paints, based on sensorial experiences to create the 3-Dimensional oil technique. With this 3-Dimensional oil, Miller conveys his sense of freedom, his joy in the miracle of creation, and the synchronicity of the universe. Miller’s passion for painting and his process for like-energy attracting like-energy translates the law of vibration into the energy emanating from his work.

To create, the artist calls upon the universal vibrations of light and sound to flow through him to allow for the molding of oil paints. A unique process that identifies him among other artists, Miller creates impactful, strong, enlivening canvases that take their viewers on an existential journey.

Miller is represented in collections and museums throughout the United States and is involved with multiple educational and charitable organizations. The artist currently resides and works in Dallas, Texas.

View Philip J. Romano on Artsy

For over thirty years, painting has been a passion for entrepreneur Philip J. Romano. As a restaurateur, humanitarian, and author, Romano always had a passion for painting, giving away his artwork to his friends and family who showed enthusiasm for his talent. When he met JD Miller, he found a sense of definition in his work through the concept of the Reflectionist school, which explores the theory that the universe reflects back what one puts out. These views have always been at the core of Romano’s humanitarian and philanthropic efforts. He applies his worldview directly to the custom made, oversized canvases upon which he works, the only medium that mirrors his characteristically grand ideas. His paintings reflect a “larger than life” style of contemporary boldness through dramatic use of color. Emotionally attached to his artwork, he insists on meeting the buyers of his paintings to see who will be “adopting” his artwork. He says that, “I always wanted to meet the artist when I purchased his or her art because I wanted to make sure good vibes would be in my home.”

Romano is a native of New York and attended Florida Atlantic University before moving to Dallas, Texas. He has created six new restaurant concepts: Fuddruckers, Romano’s Macaroni Grill, Spageddies, Cozymel’s, Rudy’s Country Store and Barbeque, and EatZi’s Market and Bakery. His concepts generate more than a billion dollars a year and to date have produced over $10 billion in revenue. In addition to serving on the Board of Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business and multiple boards of businesses that he helped create, Romano also lectures at universities throughout the country and spends a large portion of his time involved in various charitable ventures.

Neon light boasts two primary identities: a jubilance that reflects the radiance of midday, and an evening persona of romance and excitement, wherein surging flickers of curved encapsulated candles intrigue passersby. Lisa Schulte, an American sculptor born in Long Island, New York, has mastered the many “faces” of neon, earning her the moniker, “The Neon Queen.”

A woman of German, Irish, and Spanish descent, Lisa has lived the majority of her life in Los Angeles, California. After a childhood eye injury left the artist in darkness for several months of healing, the then seven year old not only emerged re-gifted with sight, she now possessed a fierce appreciation of the nuanced interactions between light and dark.

Years later, in 1984, Lisa would discover innovation in her medium was a necessary step toward the realization of her conceptualized projects. Finding she possessed the talent to work with the medium, Lisa studied in Kansas under Master Neon Tube Bender Freddie Elliot, and her growing prowess sparked the beginnings of “Nights of Neon” – a Los Angeles neon studio and boutique creative space providing custom neon pieces for films, events, and branding.

After amassing experience and exposure, Lisa shifted her focus to envisioning and creating intricate, abstract designs often absent in neon, and for the last decade, Lisa has turned inward to create personal pieces she has exhibited in museums and fine art galleries nationwide. This includes work exploring the artist's passion for organic forms; work that provokes a broader dialogue pertaining to relativity and environmental adaptation. In a recent series, the artist externalized the metaphor of unity by pairing two disparate mediums - white neon and found wood - in a novel harmony; their differences highlighting the inherent beauty possessed by each. The artist is presently creating abstract pieces built from neon and wood.

In addition to making her own art, Schulte’s fabrication studio, Nights of Neon, produces custom designs and signage for clients that include: Showtime, The WB, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, ABC, Nike, CBS, Chanel, Calvin Klein, Gucci, HBO, Hulu, Netflix, YSL, KARMA Automotive, & NBC. Schulte has been commissioned to create installations at Stagecoach, Grand Central Market LA, The MONA (Museum of Neon Art in LA), Stella McCartney, Bulleit Frontier Whiskey, POP Austin, Lancaster MOAH, MOCA San Diego, The Palladium, and The Staples Center.

View Tyler Shields on Artsy

Tyler Shields is known for his unique brand of volatile and off-handed photography, representative of his trademark edgy, and often risqué, style. Shields was born in Jacksonville, FL in 1982, and has spent the last few decades making a name for himself as a photographer, writer, and director in Los Angeles, CA. Often working with celebrities, models, and trending young Hollywood stars for his projects, he has become a creative tour de force in the photography and film industries.

Daring and suggestive, Shields’ photographs push the envelope to create a thought-provoking experience for each viewer. His work contains its own unique dialogue, with subjects ranging from historical figures to representations of modern materialism. Shields’ list of celebrity subjects makes his photography notably eye-catching.

Tyler Shields’ work moves through the complexes and layers of the “celebrity” sphere, into an inherently tangible vision of the portrait in the 21st-century. What does it mean to be alive in the 21st century? How does it look? How will it look in the future? No stranger to controversy, he is certainly not afraid to shock his viewers in his artistic attempt to convey his answers to such questions. His photographs are iconic, and are making their mark in the history of photography.

With international acclaim as a photographer cemented, Shields has stretched his artistic endeavors even further to write and publish several books, including The Dirty Side of Glamour, The Smartest Man and Provocateur. The past year has been especially impressive for Shields, as he collaborated on a limited edition merchandise collection with Urban Outfitters, created an evocative documentary with YouTube Red, and two of his photographs went to auction at Sotheby’s.

View David Yarrow on Artsy

David Yarrow was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1966. He took up photography at an early age and as a 20 year old found himself working as a photographer for The London Times on the pitch at the World Cup Final in Mexico City. On that day, David took the famous picture of Diego Maradona holding the World Cup and as a result, he was subsequently asked to cover the Olympics and numerous other sporting events. Yarrow refused to be pigeonholed and his interests expanded as he grew into himself. It was only many years later that he found his true comfort zone in documenting the natural world and the last eight years have been career defining.

Yarrow’s evocative and immersive photography of life on earth is most distinctive and it has earned him an ever growing following amongst art collectors. He has an undeniable aptitude for capturing the splendor of what remains wild and free in our world. His large monochrome images are on display in many leading galleries and museums across Europe and North America.

In May, at the Sotheby’s photography auction in London, Yarrow’s iconic image from South Sudan, Mankind was sold for $75,000, the highest of the 100 lots in the show, which included work from many of the most recognized photographers of the last 100 years.

In 2016, Rizzoli New York published his latest book “Wild Encounters” with a foreword written by HRH The Duke of Cambridge (Prince William). The book was awarded “Art Book of 2017” by Amazon and has already sold out of a second print run. All of Yarrow’s royalties from the book continue to be donated to Tusk, the leading British NGO that focuses on animal conservation in Africa.

Philanthropy and conservation are indeed central to Yarrow’s passion to document the animal and human world in a fresh and creative way. In 2017, charitable donations from the sale of David’s images exceeded $1 million, with four of David’s artworks raising $186,000 in just a few minutes at the Tusk Gala dinner in New York City in April 2017.

Yarrow’s position in the industry has been rewarded with a wide range of advisory and ambassadorial roles. In conservation, he is an ambassador for WildArk and on the advisory board of Tusk. In luxury goods, he is an ambassador for Bremont watches, and in 2017 Land Rover appointed David as a global ambassador and creative partner. He is the European ambassador for Nikon and has recently been integral to the company’s most anticipated camera release of the last decade. In December 2017, Yarrow shot LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, better known as LVMH’s latest campaign with Cara Delevingne. By 2018, Yarrow has firmly established himself as one of the bestselling fine art photographers in the world and his work clearly defines this statement.