categories
Sonoma Art Directory
artists
Kathleen Fox, teamed up with James Fox, creates hand thrown pottery and ceramic art, of exceptional character, design, and quality, stoneware and Raku pottery.
Marge Margulies Pottery creates lively and colorful centerpieces in fine porcelain, server sets and table ware.
Mikio Matsumoto, a ceramic artist at Nichibei Potters, specializes in “elegant handmade pottery that blends traditional Japanese folk art designs with a distinctly contemporary flair.”
Wayne Reynolds creates ceramic art, pottery, Sonoma area landscape paintings, and abstract paintings. He has been a full time artist ever since his training at the Pond Farm Colony under the master potter Marquerite Wildenhain.
Beverly Prevost is a clay artist who specializes in stoneware, pottery, handmade dinnerware, and handmade vessels. She graduated from the University of Georgia with an MFA in Ceramics and has lived in the Sonoma Valley since 1970. She is also a founding member of the Arts Guild of Sonoma and the Sonoma Valley Jazz Society.
The ceramic artist Cheryl Costantini of Nichibei Potters specializes in “elegant handmade pottery that blends traditional Japanese folk art designs with a distinctly contemporary flair.”
Louisa Comora designs bags, purses, and wallets. Her brand name is BOHLUX, which stands for Bohemian Luxury. BOHLUX provides handcrafted, one beautiful piece at a time, couture handbags and leather accessories.
Marta Shannon is known for her fiber arts, handwoven scarves, shawls, cowls and ponchos. She has a weaving studio in Petaluma, California.
Maria Bales is known for her paintings of Sonoma farms, rural landscapes, crows and some abstractions. She works in watercolor, oils, acrylics and colored pencil. She is also a knitting artist.
Michael Mudd is a photographer whose style in his own words is “a kind of photographic unconscious, a letting go in which the familiar is felt as dream-state – sometimes pastoral and serene, sometimes filled with fiery light, and other times dark and brooding.”
Shannon Clark is a Sonoma photographer and her subject matters include Sonoma rural scenery, San Francisco and cities, beaches, animals, skies, and dreamy and surreal carnival subjects. She offers prints, canvas matted photos, wall hangings and related home decor at her Etsy store: wall hangings, pillows, duvet covers, bedding and tapestries.
Marsha Connell is “a Northern California artist known for her colorful and expressive landscape paintings, oils, watercolors and pastels, and her evocative Dream Vessels collages.” She is also an Adjunct Professor in the art department of Santa Rosa Junior College, and Associate Professor in Sonoma State University’s Depth Psychology Masters Program.
Lorraine Weglarz is an installation artist and painter and works in gouache, watercolor and oils.
John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, producer and the chief creative officer for Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DisneyToon Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. He has won two Academy Awards for the Animated Short Film, Tin Toy, as well as a Special Achievement Award for the movie, Toy Story.
Movies & Animation directed by John Lasseter include:
Books about John Lasseter and Pixar Animation Studios include:
Kat Romine is a painter of Sonoma, California. “For the last 25 years Kat has channeled and honed her talents in art and settled in the glorious and inspiring Sonoma region of California where she can touch nature and be close to animals.”
M.C. Carolyn is a Sonoma County artist known for her stone sculptures, painting in oils, acrylics and mixed mediums, mixed media artwork on paper, and public art commissions. A quote: “Starting with the human figure and then moving beyond it’s traditional shapes I explore the possibilities of not being predictable, nor violent but always speaking visually of the human condition.” M.C. has a BA in Painting from the University of California at Berkeley, graduate studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, and researched abroad on Prehistoric, Copper Age, Bronze Age art, temples and tombs.
Victor Ries (1907-2013), the metal artist and jewelry designer, emigrated from Berlin, Germany to Northern California during World War II. He was one of the metal artists and teachers of the Pond Farm Artist Colony in Sonoma County. He is recognized in the Jewish-American Hall of Fame. He taught at the College of Marin, the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and Saint Marys College in Moraga.
Frans Wildenhain (1905-1980) was a Bauhaus-trained German potter and sculptor. Right after World War II, he joined his first wife Marguerite Wildenhain in Sonoma County and worked as a teacher and artist with her at the Pond Farm Artists Colony. Frans then moved to Rochester, NY, and taught for many years at the School for American Craftsmen at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Frans Wildenhain received numerous prizes for his artwork, from (among others) the International Exposition in Paris (1939), the Albright Art Gallery (1952), the Brussels Worlds Fair (1958), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1958).
See these books about Frans Wildenhain:
David produces functional and art ceramics using textures, slips and glazes to add unique aspects to each piece. He uses various firing techniques – wood, pit, soda, raku and gas – to create his works.
Suki Diamond offers a home living collection of pottery, home accessories and garden sculpture, handcrafted by the artist in Sonoma County. She has a ceramic studio and sculpture garden in Sebastopol, California. Working in traditional majolica technique, she employs color stains on a white background, and paints each piece in clear colors with stylized animals, people or designs. “All reflect her joyful observations of the world at large.”
Liana Harris paints in oils and acrylics. She writes an art blog in order to show her work and express her thoughts about the process behind each painting.
Paula Peterson is active in painting, drawing, collages and mosaics. She shares her travel journal and mixed media meditations on her website.
Hugh Buttrum masters woodturning, a form of woodworking that is used to create wooden objects such as bowls and housewares using a lathe.
Sissy Roo’s Closet is a sweet and sassy boutique that offers Shanea Thompson’s crafts: girls custom clothing, fun hair accessories, and rhinestone bling t-shirts. Favorite materials include felt, cotton, fleece, and ribbons.
The Sonoma county native, Donna DeLaBriandais is a plein air Impressionist painter who specializes in California landscape paintings. Donna also enjoys teaching, and offers workshops in watercolors, oil painting and drawing. Donna attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and a summer at LaRomita School of Art in Italy. She received a B.A. degree from the University of San Francisco.
Barbara Hoffmann has worked for 40 years with pottery and sculptural stoneware. She specializes in high, gas fired, reduction stoneware, as well as wood-fire, salt glaze, porcelain, earthenware and Raku.
Carole Rae Watanabe paints in an energetic and impressionist style. Her paintings are often featured on the wine labels of Artiste Winery in the Santa Inez Valley California, and Atascadero Creek Winery in Sonoma County. She has also written the book, The Ecstatic Marriage of Life and Art.
Gen Zorich is a Sonoma County painter and printmaker and produces Sonoma area landscapes and abstracts.
Gordon Herr was an architect and a co-founder with his wife Jane, of Pond Farm Artist Colony, the American Artist Colony near Guerneville, California that began in 1939-1940. The Herrs envisioned Pond Farm as a community for artists fleeing Europe at the onset of World War II. Gordon thought of it as “a sustainable sanctuary for artists away from a world gone amuck.” The colony would in part support itself through summer workshops, and several renowned resident artists came to teach there, including Victor Reis, Frans Wildenhain and wife Marguerite Wildenhain. The workshops ended in 1953. The complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. (sources: “Pond Farm Barn Exterior” by MikeVdP, and wikipedia.org)