Jonatan Lopez is an interdisciplinary artist living in Houston Texas. His performance and installation works address personal struggles and issues of debate, often becoming self-healing rituals and social experiments seeking to open valuable community dialogue. His sculpture and commercial works employ recycled metals and found objects, ranging from life size figurative sculpture to metal crafts. He experiments with other art forms such as video and sound. www.jonatan-lopez.com 512-689-0209
Jonatan has shown at numerous venues in Houston, from alternative art spaces such as Project Row Houses and DiverseWorks ArtSpace to traditional venues like Bayou City Art’s Festival. Jonatan currently co-facilitates Houston’s Performance Art project Continuum.
We all have the desire to belong and to connect. From the first cave drawings to today’s company logos or school mascots, we have used shared symbols to communicate with each other, form social and religious communities, remember together, comfort or inspire each other, and share our life stories. Symbols reflect what we are often unable to put into words. I collect symbolic antique and vintage wax stamps, wax seals from antique documents, and intaglios from the Grand Tour, from which I handcraft beautiful symbolic fine silver and bronze wax seal jewelry that has unique meaning or enduring symbolism. www.thesilveracorn.com 281-794-1180
After spending twelve years in the software industry, with the last two years of it working remotely with my work desk right next to my jeweler’s bench, I feel extremely blessed to be able to pursue my true passion of jewelry making full-time. I love the nature of the handmade process with every piece differing slightly with its own variations and beauty. The Japanese refer to this as wabi sabi – a beauty of things imperfect. It’s the appreciation of the quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object.
Currently residing in Katy, just outside of Houston, Texas, I design and handcraft each piece in my home studio, with the support of my loving husband, my inquisitive stepdaughter, and two loyal, but lazy dogs by my side.
I create remarkable jewelry from antique and vintage architectural elements, including hinges, keyholes, chandelier parts and doorbells. I also repurpose musical instruments, clock-parts, vintage tools and postage stamps. I search high and low for castoff pieces of the past, then reinvent them. I frame them in classical jewelry settings, to highlight their hidden and often unintended beauty. The result is a striking and adventurous synthesis of industrial strength, history and glamour.
I am a landscape and nature photographer living in Houston, Texas. My goal is to seek out inspiring rural locations and subjects, either natural or man-made, and capture them with the medium of photography to create fine art of the highest quality. http://www.herschbachphotography.com 713-454-9468
I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma and spent my childhood playing outdoors in the woods, fields, streams, and lakes. I have never much cared for the hustle and bustle of city life. My inspiration comes from my time spent walking, running, biking, riding, and driving the back roads where relatively few travel. Open pasture instead of parking lots. Silos instead of skyscrapers. Barns instead of strip malls. Hills and mountains instead of overpasses and super domes. The rural areas speak to me.
I became interested in art at a young age. My Aunt bought me Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad for my birthday when I was twelve and it taught me the fundamentals of creating a three dimensional world on a two dimensional piece of paper. In Junior High, I took a year of private instruction from a local acrylic painter who worked with wildlife and landscapes. During this time I also was taking piano lessons and even taught myself to play the harmonica and the guitar. I grew to enjoy and become skilled in various arts.
Throughout this time I had experimented in photography, from my first 110 film camera given to me by my first grade teacher, to the Minolta SLR I chose as a high school graduation present. However, it wasn’t until December of 2009 that I began to take photography more seriously when I decided that I would like to create some artwork to hang on the walls in our home. In order to do this, I knew that I had to develop a strong foundation for the technical aspect of photography and to continue developing my artistic eye and mind, which I had already begun years before.
I began scouring the internet and reading every book I could get my hands on and watching countless hours of videos on image processing. I submitted select photos for critique by professional photographers. I took on voluntary photography projects at work and at my church to learn how to use light effectively and picked up some small family portrait jobs here and there for family and friends. With every photograph I created, I grew closer to being able to use photography as not just a way to capture a beautiful scene or subject, but as a viable method of communicating emotion, a fundamental principle of fine art. While I understand that mastery of any genre of art is subjective and, at best, difficult to attain, I wish to share with you the artwork that I create along the way as I work toward this goal.
I make small objects with metal, some wearable and some not. My sterling silver jewelry line contains flowing designs that mimic fabric, ribbons, or leaves. My holloware collection is made from a variety of metals, primarily pewter, copper, and brass, and includes both functional and decorative pieces. terryfromm.com 832-275-2168
I make small objects out of metals, some sculptural, some wearable. Using silver, copper, pewter, and bronze, I design pieces that mimic the look and characteristics of other materials. When I began working with metals, I was surprised to find that metals act in many of the same ways that fabrics do. What I had always experienced as a rigid medium could actually be worked into forms with soft, flowing contours that resemble fabrics and that the construction concepts are essentially the same, only the tools and processes differ.
My work builds on this discovery by designing metal objects with fluid forms and an unexpected illusion of softness. This shift in materials creates a shift in meaning. A quilt square made from metal retains the same design quality, but is not experienced as warm and comforting. An apron made from bronze resembles a suit of armor more than feminine domestic apparel. I want others to experience the unexpected qualities that a shift in materials inspires.
I’m an old hippie whose jewelry making began 20 years ago when on a dare my wife signed me up for a beginner beading class at a local bead shop. I was hooked pretty quickly and began making women’s jewelry using silver, stone and crystal beads and constantly learning techniques to make better pieces. While beading is still a passion, most of my work now is with chain and wire wrap.
Five years ago on yet another dare, I began making rings from old silver coins. I don’t cut or solder the coins. One coin makes one ring and the detail from both sides of the coin is preserved and visible. I fell in love with working metal, and am constantly learning new techniques and exploring the boundaries of turning old coins into cool jewelry. Taking something like a 100-year-old coin and turning it into something it was never intended to be has been an unbelievably rewarding journey, and I love that the possibilities are endless.
I make handcrafted furniture, sculptures, lamps and art creatively designed with an industrial bent using all my skills learned over a lifetime of wood and metalworking. Most of all, I enjoy sourcing the reclaimed materials and the inspiration that comes from finding new ways to use existing items. My furniture makes use of a variety of elements : steel, copper, iron, and the entire spectrum of hardwoods: oak, pecan, birch and maple. I get great satisfaction from making something that works perfectly for a customer’s environment, something custom and unique that can’t be purchased at any retail store. www.carpendeum.com 713-315-7150
Paul Kopecky, founder of Carpendeum™, is a custom furniture, wood and metal craftsman based in the Houston Heights. He works with reclaimed and virgin materials.
I create fused glass in my studio; beginning with sheets of glass, I cut, stack, and shape pieces and then fuse them together to create original functional art. Most are sandblasted and fire polished to give a matte finish to add an extra dimension to the art piece.
Nancy and Tuz Adams at TheTinArmadillo.com We take the ordinary tin can and elevate it into an unusual and beautiful piece of art with the help of a torch and hand molding. Every item is hand-cut with no patterns creating a patina and shape unique to that particular can. Just like the armadillo….he’s an enjoyable mystery! Lanterns create elegant illuminations…Planter/windchimes sound from lids…Creatures that make you chuckle….and sculpture you simply enjoy either inside or out in the garden. All cans are donated…creating a circle of useful life for Mr.Tin. TheTinArmadillo.com 713-303-5279
Back in the early Seventies, during Earth Day’s inception, I was a young teen experimenting with torches and metal…copper, tin, brass etc. I came upon the idea of working with the cans, and it evolved into creating saleable pieces, for which I traveled to juried shows that eventually paid my way through The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Flash forward nearly forty years. Yikes! We still have far too many cans going into the trash… My husband bought me a torch for Valentine’s day so we could resurrect my tin art and create new and more mature refined pieces for the twenty-first century.
The Fish Sculpture on our website is an original, now literally a timeless antique!
I use natural fiber such as wool, alpaca, and angora as my media, transforming the raw fiber by hand dying and using a variety of felting and surface design techniques in my creative process. My style is expressive and impressionistic and centers on vivid colors and textures to create striking visual movement. My representational art is primarily landscapes and botanical images. I also creates stunning non-representational art in the process of exploring composition, medium, and color. www.michellebowersart.com 281-299-9049
I am an emerging fiber artist in the Katy/Houston Area. I began my artistic pursuits at an early age studying sketching, drawing, painting, and writing in a multitude of venues from academic courses to artist’s cooperatives. In recent years, I have transitioned from a casual painter and artist to a career artist. I think of my artwork as inner reflections of the outer natural world, full of color texture and experience.
My work reproduces familiar visual signs, arranging them into new conceptually layered pieces. This work has always been grounded in pleasure and aesthetics. Felting is my key to sharing this inner landscape with the world. Hand dying and wet felting started it. From the beginning, the process of transforming fiber into cloth has struck me as magical. And, over the years, that magical process has had its way with me, leading me from hobby to art.
Felting fills me with a sense of accomplishment and integrity, and has proven a most amenable vehicle for translating inner vision to outer reality. I felt from the inside out. Though I work quite deliberately, consciously employing both traditional and innovative techniques, my unconscious is the undisputed project manager. The organic nature of this work frees my imagination and provides many opportunities for happy accident and grace to influence the finished product.
Moving to Texas has opened new vistas that resonate deeply with my fiber work. Inspired and invigorated by a renewed sense of continuity, and awed by the mystery of how creation occurs, I am now exploring the many patterns, textures and colors of this new land.
