The Artists

We our proud to feature jewelry by acclaimed artist Allison Stern.  Allison learned her craft first with the celebrated Rhode Island School of Design in Rome and later with Syracuse University’s architecture program in Florence and finally under the tutelage of renowned architect Frank Gehry.

Her distinctive form of creative expression is both based upon the historical influence of her time in Italy and the influence of Gehry’s seemingly fluid metal structures. Many of her designs are based on chain mail – a fabric-like network of tiny rings wrought in stainless steel or sterling silver – a material that has drape, texture, strength and movement in combination with striking beauty. Timely and timeless, her designs invoke an elegant combination of curiosity and distinction.

Allison's work has been featured at the Museum of Modern Art, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Twist, & more.  She no longer designs jewelry, making each piece a true treasure.

Joe graduated from the Swain School of Design in NewBedford, MA with a BFA in painting and then moved to NYC to attend Parsons School of Design's MFA program. In 1980 while working in EastHampton NY he met William deKooning and his brother-in-law, Conrad Fried. He earned his MFA from Parsons in 1981.

Some of Joe's shows include;
1984  Institute of International Finance Wash.DC.
1985 AMMO Gallery Brooklyn NY, 1992 Arts Commission Gallery SF CA 
1996 Painting Center NYC,  1998 Ansonia Pharmacy NYC  SFMOMA Artists Gallery SF CA 2007 Malia Mills NYC,  2008 Malia MIlls SouthHampton NY,  2010 Ed Haag Gallery Sacramento CA, 2011 Panache Cafe Lafayette CA 

From 1996 through 2011 Joe has been invited to SFMOMA Artists Gallery's Warehouse Show. He also has Mural Projects in Oakland CA, Lafayette CA and Squaw Valley CA

His paintings are both a direct reference to the insider information and encouragement the young artist received from DeKooning and Freid, while others reflect the ever changing and challenging situations he encounters. Many of Joe's paintings have been inspired by extensive time spent in Hawaii, Easthampton and Lake Tahoe.  Joe's paintings are pictures in pursuit of knowledge towards a goal of beauty.

Sandra Brooke received her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Oregon. She has held a longtime associate professorship in art at OSU Cascades Campus. Sandra's work has been shown extensively throughout the country and she has won numerous juried exhibitions.  

She also served as co-producer, director and writer for a 12 video series on the process of making art published on the Pearson Education website.  In addition, she served as a project producer for "A World of Art - Works in Progress", a 10 part video series broadcast on PBS funded by The Annenberg/CPB Project Telecourse in Art Appreciation.  

Sandy describes the act of looking at the surface of the work as comparable to looking into water—light and images behind the viewer are reflected off the semi-transparent surface beneath which forms appear and disappear, fragment and coalesce, depending on the degree of surface turbulence.  The water might be a pool or rain, falling across our vision, blinding us to the world beyond.  The paintings are multiple layers—what's in back? what's in front? Often what surrounds the image is more important than the mark or the symbol. 

Her work is included in numerous public and private collections throughout the country.

Martha Brouwer received her bachelor's degree from Lawrence University and her masters degree from Harvard University. She was a weaver for 4 years before becoming a graphic artist.

She was the Art Director of four publications including Spa, Simply Seafood and Seafood Leader magazines. During the past eleven years she has devoted herself to painting – primarily watermedia but also encaustics and collage. She has studied under Alex Powers, Christopher Schink, Fran Larsen, Katherine Chang Liu and Mark Rediske.  

Recent Exhibits include, Seattle CoArts, The Joy of Art, 60th Annual Juried Show, 2011, First Place Award;  American Watercolor Society, 144th Annual International Exhibition, New York City, 2011;  Northwest Watercolor Society, 71st Annual Open Exhibition Seattle, WA, 2011;  International Society of Acrylic Painters, 13th Annual ISAP International Exhibition, Santa Cruz, CA, 2010;   Southwestern Watercolor Society, 47th Annual Member Exhibition, Plano, TX, 2010, Cash Award;  Manhattan Arts International, The Healing Power of Art, Online Gallery, 2010; Women Painters of Washington, Spring Show, Kaewyn Gallery 2010, Merchandise Award; Northwest Watercolor Society, Waterworks 2009 Exhibition, Cash Award;  Seattle CoArts, Expressions in Art, 59th Annual Juried Show, 2009, First Place Award.

Brooks Hickerson is a renowned Plein Air painter in the Pacific Northwest.  He began painting after a 31 year successful career at IBM, where he worked on the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs for NASA.

He has been painting full time since 2002 when he moved to Eugene, Oregon from Colorado. He is a member of the Watercolor Society of Oregon (WSO) and Oregon Society of Artists. He has had paintings accepted in four recent WSO shows, and four OSA juried shows. 

Recent exhibitions and awards include: 2010, WSO Spring Convention in Brookings – Steven Quiller juror, Oregon Society of Artist, OSA, Rose Festival Art Show, Hillsboro Pleir Air Show – People’s Choice Award,  OSA Fall Juried Art Show – Honorable Mention.  2011,  WSO Spring Convention in Eugene – Award of Distinction – Betsy Dillard Stroud juror, Lake Oswego  Festival of the Arts – Honorable Mention, Hillsboro Plein Air Show – Second place in Cityscapes category, OSA 2011 Spring Juried Art Show, OSA  2011 Rose Festival Art Show – Honorable Mention, OSA  2011 Fall Juried Show.

Marcy grew up in Central New York and received a bachelor of fine arts degree in textile design from Syracuse University in 1982. The following year she headed west, exploring the Sierra Nevada area of northern California before settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1991. There she was introduced to monotype printmaking and found it the perfect method to express her affinity for pattern and color. The high desert landscape also informed her uncluttered mixed media collages.

After several trips to the Pacific Northwest, Marcy and her husband relocated to Portland, Oregon in 2001. Inspired by the lush and varied urban and natural landscape, she began painting in delicate layers of acrylic and using elements of printmaking and collage in her process.

Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and is held in the collections of Hallmark Fine Art, Kansas Wesleyan University, and Graphic Chemical & Ink Company.

Eva graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and has attended several workshops in various art media throughout her long and prestigious career. She has taught both children and adults for many years in Maryland and in Oregon.

Her work has been shown in several galleries in the Washington DC and Maryland areas as well as Idaho, Colorado, Illinois and Oregon.  Her work is included in the permanent collections at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD and Children's Inn, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. She has been included in many juried shows and her many awards include 

Karen Story received her BS and M Ed degrees and worked in non-art related fields for many years. In 1990, she returned to school at Pacific Northwest College of Art and received a BFA degree, majoring in Painting and Printmaking.

Scholarships and awards include: The Louis Bunce award, Laura Russo Gallery, PNCA Printmaking Scholarship Award, and the Local 14 Scholarship award.  She has participated in numerous shows, group shows, group juried shows, and juried collaborative shows.

Having been a painter, printmaker, and glass artist, the encaustic medium is a natural progressive step for her work. Encaustic painting combines the very process-oriented work of printmaking with the mysterious translucence and transparency of glass, while demanding a foundation of composition, line, and form. Layering and removal of the layers keeps this process-oriented painting method somewhat archeological in nature, as there is much scraping back to reveal parts of the painting’s history. A non-attachment to the current phase of the painting develops, and allows a presence and freedom not experienced in other media.

Her work can be seen in the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Print Center at the Portland Art Museum, and in many private and corporate collections. 

Among the flat expanses of corn and rolling river bottoms, Bruce Ulrich had an idyllic childhood in Peoria, IL during the fifties. He came of age in the turbulent sixties when ideas about what is art, and what is art for, were being shared with a mass audience. Bruce juggled an interest in sports and a track scholarship to college with a love of books and art. Drawing, photography, and playing with clay balanced his study of science, anatomy, and physiology during Chiropractic College.

He began watercolor painting because it looked simple and glowing on the paper, seemed easier to clean up, and needed less space than clay. During the past 25 years he has enjoyed reading about art and painting, and had the pleasure of studying with many fine teachers. Bruce believes the most growth he makes comes from time spent putting paint on paper.

Bruce’s work has been accepted in the National Watercolor Society Annual Show and toured the country in their traveling show. It has also won awards and been included in other national and regional juried shows including Oregon State University’s Art About Agriculture; the Beaverton Showcase; biannual exhibits of the Watercolor Society of Oregon; and Lake Oswego’s Chronicles Show. His work is in private collections in Australia, Japan, the West Coast, and the Midwest.

Selene graduated in 2004 from the Oregon College of Arts and Craft, with a certificate in Fine Arts in Painting. She prefers to paint on life size canvases while listening to rock music to enter a world of paint throwing, drawing, and artistic abandon. The music is key as it allows her to escape into a private euphoria, a place that has no rules and no fear, where she can immerse herself in color, texture and movement. The large size canvas is essential as well, so that she can walk into and around the painting, engaging the entire surface with waves of her arm or assaulting it with multiple trowels of thick paint.

Her abstract "wallscapes", allow the viewer to enter into a world of dripping, splashing and lashing out, while at the same time indulging in playful gesture and vibrant color. She purposely does not plan her compositions, as she needs the surprise of not knowing what will emerge.

The highlight of her painting career, thus far, came in 2009, where her painting "Little Black Dress" was included in the “Rauschenberg Tribute Exhibition” at the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur, Texas.  It was an International Juried Competition judged by Susan Davidson, the Senior Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

She paints for the moment and whatever emotion she feels determines the colors and textures. She paints spontaneously, quickly and intuitively.

Greg Lindstrom is a young, up-and-coming landscape documentarian and photojournalist who has already received national acclaim.  He was named a semi-finalist - one of fourteen - for the prestigious Hearst Journalism Awards, given to the best college photographers in the country. 

Greg grew up in Portland, Oregon, and was fortunate to have a family who loves the outdoors. As a youngster exploring the beautiful lands around the western US with his parents and sister, he developed a deep passion for the wilderness. 

This passion shows in his work.  His nature photographs have been featured in many galleries in Missoula, Montana.  Lindstrom has traveled extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest, searching for the most pristine land and the best light.  He is proud to call this place his home, and share its wonder and magnificence with others through his remarkable work.

He recently graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in journalism and an emphasis in photojournalism and multimedia. He currently works as an photojournalism intern at the Muskegon Chronicle, a daily newspaper in Michigan and soon will be working in Concord, New Hampshire for the Presidential primary season.

"This is a truly unique and beautiful place on which we live.  My wish is for my work to reconnect you to this spectacular place we call Earth."

Eileen “Ikie” Nolan Kressel is a printmaker, licensed clinical social worker and registered art therapist. For over 20 years she was a member of Inkling Studio, until its closing in 2009. Ikie is currently a member of and printing at "No.2 Print Shop" in S.E. Portland. Ikie grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She received a B.A. in art from Hunter College in N.Y.C. Following graduation, Ikie attended The School of Visual Arts and the Brooklyn Museum Art School. After moving to Oregon in 1971, she received a Masters in Social Work, became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Registered Art Therapist. In 2006 Ikie retired from her private practice to pursue art full time.

Art is a good and constant friend, a place to be, providing a voice that gives expression to relationships, challenges, joys, whimsies and sadness. To not create, would be to silence a part of me.

Ikie's portfolio includes whimsical paintings and linocuts, along with black and white etchings. She is fortunate to be part of No. 2 Print Shop in Portland, Oregon where printmakers share ideas, inspiration, perspiration and presses.

Thomas Hobbs graduated from Boston College, College of Arts & Sciences with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications.  Although he has dabbled in other media including photography, oil and acrylic paint, and ceramics, he found that his creative passion was truly ignited when he was introduced to blown glass.  It was this ignition of passion that led to the realization that art is as much for the artist as it is the viewer; that it is often a moving, personal and spiritual endeavor that develops more than just the artist’s sense of creativity or engagement, but which can pass that passion to others in an almost virulent manner when the frequency of the artist’s transmission is in synchronicity with the recipient’s heart.  

For more than 30 years Tom has worked in various art media, but when he discovered woodturning he was hooked. Since he got his first small lathe, it has been an almost daily ritual for Tom to spend some time turning. A few minutes turns into hours under the hypnotic charm of the spinning wood, as the rough blank becomes a finished piece. He strives to find the ideal balance between the nature of the wood and the best form to display it.  Most of the wood Tom uses is from the Pacific Northwest, and is usually salvaged from trees that have had to be removed. The segmented forms occasionally contain some exotic woods, and care is taken to use sustainable wood from reliable sources. Tom's work is shown extensively thoughout the Pacific Northwest.

Sharon Graugnard-Fall is the founder of The Art of Giving.  She is an emerging artist and has worked in several media including painting, pastel and glass.  Her latest love is painting. Prior to forming The Art of Giving, Sharon spent more than thirty years as a management and sustainability consultant.  She is also trained as a Feng Shui practitioner. 

She currently resides in Portland, Oregon after living in Washington, DC and San Francisco.  Her home is filled with a loving husband, three dogs and four cats. Her wish is that The Art of Giving will be wildly successful and become a significant source of donations for our four featured charities and especially those they help.