Ilania Kaplan

Ilania’s paintings are intuitive and have evolved over a long period of time. She begins with an initial pour of liquified paint, then adds and subtracts layers of translucent color, building the surfaces. Her paintings are meant to suggest landscape, narrative, and pure abstract painting, with attention to the formal aspects of composition, creating a rhythm with the repetition of shapes. The abstract organic shapes are balanced not just with geometric lines but with patterns. The patterns elevate from bland decoration to incorporate into the paintings; they become the underlying structure, creating the movement in the compositions.

Ilania received her BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University and an MFA from SUNY Buffalo. She has won many awards for her work at art festivals in Allentown, Corning, Syracuse, and Lewiston, and at Cleveland’s Cain Park Art Festival, M&T’s Clothesline Art Festival, and the Virginia Beach Art Festival.

Alixandra Martin

Alixandra Martin, a professional artist for nearly 10 years, has traveled throughout the US and Europe studying and creating art. She was born into creative beginnings in Sarasota, on the west coast of Florida. Many days were spent at Towels Court, an artist colony near her childhood home where she observed many artists and all of their creative eccentricities and styles. “I was inspired to have a community of artists of my own one day,” she says.

As a young adult she studied art education and taught painting at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. When she eventually moved to the Northeast, she founded redFISH, a working studio and gallery in East Aurora.

Alix’s murals can be found in San Francisco, the Florida Keys, and Olonzac, France. Currently, her works in oil are on exhibit at the Albright-Knox Collectors Gallery, Hag Atelier Gallery in Toronto, redFISH Art Gallery, and the Neighborhood Collective.

Danielle Mazzotta

Danielle Mazzotta is looking forward to sharing her felted wool novelties including her new Santa and elf ornaments for the holidays. All her original pieces are created from natural sheep’s wool that is then worked into a solid, non-woven fabric. She uses a variety of felting techniques, including traditional wet felting and dry felting. Wet felting involves reforming the wool in a process involving warm water and agitation, while needle-felted wool is sculpted using a single barbed needle.

Mazzotta enjoys customizing the wool pieces to reflect one’s appearance or interests, including a variety of skin tones and hair colors. You can find her online at www.glitterylamb.etsy.com.

Katherine Miess

Katherine Miess of KM Jewelry Studio comes from a family that is rich in artistic interests, from music to creative writing to painting. It was not a surprise, then, when Katherine became involved in making jewelry. She attended Buffalo State College, where she fell in love with metal work and learned the many techniques used in her craft. Katherine works from her home studio creating handmade silver jewelry, and thrives on finding new ways to manipulate precious metals to create beautiful pieces of wearable art. She has a passion for exploring innovative and challenging methods from the limitless processes available in her medium. As a result, her designs continue to grow and evolve, keeping her creations fresh and exciting.

Paul Morgan

A visual and tactile person, Paul Morgan is self-taught at sewing and yet possessed of an innate sense of the nature of textiles. Morgan has worked in the fields of textiles, fashion, and design for more than 25 years, 16 of those in New York City. He was co-owner of Yuzen Kimono in Manhattan’s East Village and in Key West. “I marveled at the thousands of antique and vintage Japanese kimonos we imported,” Morgan says. “Each hand made and as unique as a snowflake…I search for fabrics that have that same inherent beauty, variety, and timeless design for the scarves I make.”

While living in Manhattan Morgan worked closely with dress designers Tom and Linda Platt. His fashion-related photography has appeared in Woman’s Wear Daily, Elle magazine, and on Dream Records album covers.

Michael Morgulis, New Buffalo Graphics

The work of designer Michael Morgulis is iconic for Buffalonians: His Buffalo Series of posters, prints, and t-shirts, created and produced by his business, New Buffalo Graphics, have been go-to holiday gifts for decades. “What drives my work most is the medium and process in which I am working at the time,” Morgulis says. “As a graphic designer, I am always interested in which design applications will work best to accomplish the task at hand.”

Catherine O’Connor

Catherine O’Connor worked for five years as a flat glass artist until branching out into three dimensions as a potter from 1984 through 1999. At her peak she was processing five tons of clay per year until a sensitivity to mold caused her to seek out another medium. She describes her “eureka moment” taking place when she read about adding heat to glass, and she’s never looked back.

Her skills in sculpting, mold making, seeing in three dimensions, and working with color all find expression in her vibrant glass pieces including tile, sinks, lighting, windows, and glass block overlays. She works across the country and in Canada with architects, design professionals and individual clients, and will be featured in the trend section of Women’s Day Kitchen & Bath magazine for spring 2009.

Her line of gift ware for this season includes sushi plates, platters, salad bowls, vases, seasonal ornaments, and window art, along with menorahs and other decorative pieces of glass.

Nancy J. Parisi

Nancy J. Parisi has been a practicing, full-time photojournalist, and journalist for over two decades, specializing in events, political work, and portraits. She’s a regular contributor to Buffalo Spree magazine and writes biographical and lifestyle features. Nancy attended University at Buffalo where she crafted an arts management curriculum via Black Mountain College II, while earning an Honors English Department BA and an unofficial photography minor. In 2005 she completed a Masters of Fine Arts degree at Parsons School of Design, as part of their first-ever class earning that degree at the school. For 15 years, Nancy created a photo essay column, “What Has Happened,” centering on Buffalo’s cultural life, for Artvoice, where she was photo editor. When not working on deadlines, Nancy works on three ongoing bodies of work: green spaces in Manhattan, the industrial landscape of Buffalo, and intimate studio portraits of lush organic objects with or without models. She also draws, and writes poetry.

Sonia Peñaranda-Taggart

Sonia Peñaranda-Taggart is an American, Colombian-born artist specializing in abstract-figurative art. Sonia’s distinctive use of color and shape give her works a unique quality. She uses the representation of feelings and emotions, alluding to the intimate intricacy of our daily relationships.

She has studied oil, acrylics, fabric, wood and porcelain techniques throughout her career; however her area of expertise is in creating oil paintings on canvas. She completed her BS in architecture and practiced with prominent firms in New Haven,, Atlanta, Georgia, and Boston, Massachusetts before returning to her true passion—art.

Sonia has participated in numerous art exhibitions and competitions in the United States and Colombia. Her paintings are found in numerous private and corporate collections, both nationally and internationally.

Ann Peterson: Mundo Images

Mundo Images is a culmination of Ann Peterson’s love of exploring the world with photography, educating young people, and working to improve the environment.

Ann developed a passion for photography, travel, and the Spanish language when she was a child living in Spain and Ireland with her family. With a bachelor’s degree is Studio Art and a master’s in Spanish Language and Literature, Ann taught English in Spain and Costa Rica, and taught Spanish in Buffalo. In the winter of 2007, she decided to dedicate all of her time to photography and her greeting card business.

Ann has thrived on opportunities to travel as a volunteer, and has led several eco-trips for her students. Since her return to Buffalo in 2000, Ann has been exhibiting her photographs locally, and she is a member of the Buffalo Society of Artists and Urban Artisans.

Shaun Silverwood

Shaun Silverwood began experimenting with enamels 13 years ago. Intrigued by the medium of uniting copper and vitreous glass, Shaun started out creating abstract wall hangings that are hung throughout the country in private collections as well as in places of business. Now Shaun focuses on creating switchplates and jewelry, but breaks the rules of purists by mixing transparent and opaque enamels into her work.

Shaun works with Helen Biggie, an enamelist who has exhibited her work at many galleries in Western New York and Pennsylvania. With nearly 30 years of experience, Helen’s pieces are created using firescale, transparent, and opaque enamels. She superimposes opaque colors over the transparent enamels to produce warmth and brilliance in her work.

Christopher Stangler

Buffalo native Christopher Stangler works in several media—collage, paper making, mixed media, painting, and photography. The landscape of his immediate environment provides the raw material and inspiration. He combines a wide range of artistic methods with carefully selected discarded elements or imagery taken from nature and industry. This process of reusing or recycling becomes a symbolic act of preservation.

Stangler uses drawing and painting as a visual glue to integrate unexpected materials such as cardboard, refuse, or newspaper into a familiar landscape. The paper making process reflects his interest in the environment and recycling. He describes his art by concept rather than by the material and techniques he uses. For more information, visit www.stanglerart.com.

David Vitrano

After a 25-year hiatus from artwork, a purchase of a kiln at a garage sale in 2004 rekindled David Vitrano’s interest in making ceramic objects.

It is easy to consider that the sole purpose of ceramic sculpture is the creation of an object, but Vitrano’s objects are only the consequence of his building process. Initially, his concern is preventing the clay from returning to being a pile of mud. His interest during the process is to preserve the various tracks and prints that are made by his fingers. The form of the object is the result of the accidents that happen along the way.

Because the final forms are most often related to the human figure, the finished result is most often viewed only as the object that they seem to represent. The accidents, finger marks, and surface texture, which are his primary concern, seem to be accepted as secondary to the hardened and fired clay object.

Kristina Wentzell

Kristina’s art is inspired by direct engagement with natural places. Her inspiration is rooted in the beauty she sees around her—not just in picture postcard scenes, but everywhere: in the play of light on a leaf in the backyard, the shapes and colors in the sky, stones on a beach, or reflections in a puddle. Her pieces are meant to capture the feeling of a place, its movement and energy. Her work reflects a belief that the familiar is extraordinary when discovered in the right combinations of color and light.

Kristina is noted for her expressive brushwork, her strong sense of color, and her ability to capture the mood of a landscape. A lifelong painter, Kristina studied with Parsons School of Design in France, and the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. She earned a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. Kristina works in her home studio in East Aurora.

Deborah Lynn Williams

After selling the first handbag she ever made right off her arm in Spot Coffee over six years ago, Deborah Lynn Williams decided to make a few more bags to see what happened next. Those sold as well. Tired of making mittens, sweaters, and scarves, she concentrated on hand-knit, felted handbags and vessels—BuffaloBags was born.

Using her own patterns with plenty of creative inspiration mixed in, day bags and nifty evening bags and clutches with buttons and colors everyone notices are her specialty. New in the last year are bowls and vessels ready to hold anything needing a distinctive a place. Choose from one of the fabulous designs or be part of the process and design your own custom bag.