For Jim Davis, photography is a passion and he has spent his life documenting the world through a lens. He has been a professional photographer since starting his own event photography business in 1974. The diversity of his photographic work ranges from celebrities and presidents, to marathons, graduations, to the beauty of nature and the majesty of the great outdoors.

Jim studied photography under masters such as Ansel Adams, David Muench and Ruth Bernhard. Jim’s work has been exhibited in galleries all over the United States including Borrego Art Institute, Linus Gallery and Los Angeles Center for Digital Art in California; Midwest Center for Photography in Kansas; Iowa Contemporary Art Gallery and Christopher Gallery in Chicago, Illinois. Jim’s work has also been included in museum exhibitions at the Figge Art Museum in Iowa and the Freeport Art Museum in Illinois. His work will be included in an upcoming exhibit at the Blanden Art Museum, as well as in Art Burst in England. He lives and works in the small town of Fairfield, Iowa, U.S., a community of cultural diversity, spirituality, and green living.

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Born in Michigan, Gail was privileged to grow up from coast to coast. Her education and careers are diverse. An undergraduate degree in literature was followed by a Masters in computer education. She has taught English, film, and Media Communications at the secondary level. Incorporating CAI and video delivery systems, she has been an educational designer for both K-12 and industry. She taught computer programming using computer animation. After selling healthcare computer systems, she served as director for a Professional Women’s Network

Gail has found a unique voice in metal.  She is uncomfortable with such current expressions as “Self Taught” or “Outsider,” since Gail has been mentored in metalwork by a generous blacksmith and critically supported by working artist friends. Art History and studio classes at a local college continue lifelong “formal” education.

Gail has a thriving internet business, offering images at chavenellestudio.com, Etsy.com, and wholesale marketing through Wholesalecrafts.com. She is now represented in galleries and shops nationwide and collected internationally.

Originally from Ames, Iowa, Brunia currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa.  She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Mexico in 2012 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa in 2007. Brunia has exhibited at venues throughout the United States including the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Center for Fine Art Photography, the Rayko Photo Center, the Rosalux Gallery, and at the Musee d’Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2011 Brunia was selected as one of three artists featured in the Des Moines Art Center’s annual Iowa Artists exhibition. In 2016, she was included in the Sioux City Art Center’s SCAC Selects exhibition. Most recently, Brunia has been named a 2016 Iowa Arts Council Fellow.

My work is an exercise in exploring the known versus the unknown: order versus chaos. The foundation of the work is built on familiar, realistic people, places or things. This represents for me the known in our world.  Over, around and through this foundation I add other images or fragments of images that are not so easily identified.  When combined with the familiar they create a new reality which may not be as easily understood but nevertheless exists: a new perspective. The comfort of the familiar combined with the confusion of the unfamiliar is an expression of my experience in the world. The unexpected can crash down at any moment. Our shared reality, the familiar, connects us to each other, which provides an anchor we can hold on to when necessary.

I have always been an artist but I have not always made art. The second of four children, I am the oldest daughter of a doctor father and a painter mother in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I went to college in my hometown, majored in art, and received a BFA in Painting from the University of Michigan. I married right out of college, had two children and supported my husband throughout his education. We lived in Richmond, VA, New Orleans, LA, and Ann Arbor, MI before finally settling in Iowa City, IA, a small mid-western town that appreciates and strongly supports the arts. I earned my MA and MFA in Painting from the University of Iowa. In my early fifties I was treated for breast cancer with a mastectomy and a year of chemotherapy and radiation. I worked as a clerk and graphic designer at the public library for 20 years. Several years ago I left the library to fully focus on my art.

Girl with Rhubarb is a short story of spring. It is the first fruit of the growing season. It marks the end of winter and hope in the future.

Beth Bird lives on a farm near Elizabeth Illinois so seasonal changes are noted because of the planting and harvesting of crops.  Not that we don’t all pay attention to the change of seasons, we all do, but how does the artist say it visually?  Without even thinking about it, color in our culture has meaning. We know that green represents hope, Black Death, rose joy, and white purity. All the colors used in this painting. Did she think about this as she did this painting?  Probably not. There is so much in art that is not said but what we collectively understand.

Beth bird is a Graduate of University of Iowa with a degree in Art Education and a graduate of Chicago School of the Art institute with a Master Degree of Art Therapy.

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I am an artist from Northwest Illinois. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio painting and a Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from Northern Illinois University (NIU). My artwork has been exhibited in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. In addition to my art career, I am also the Collections and Exhibitions Manager at the Freeport Art Museum, where I curate exhibitions featuring regional and national artists.

Using materials such as modeling paste, sand, and wax, I incorporate texture into my artwork so as to create a psychological struggle within the viewer. Although traditionally it has become socially unacceptable to touch artwork that is on display, my textured paintings provoke an overwhelming curiosity and desire for the viewer to reach out and touch the artwork’s surface. This desire places the viewer at an impasse where they have to decide whether or not to control their tactile impulses. That curiosity, in turn, provides the audience with a unique way of experiencing my artwork. I have painted with acrylic and oil, but most recently have shifted to working with encaustic wax. I have found that encaustic is an excellent medium for building layers that assimilate various natural wax textures into my artwork, as well as incorporate elements of mixed media collage.

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Building on 30 years of experience as a fiber artist, sculptor, creator of art for the body and bridge design team member, Judy Bales creates art that is the exciting and improbable marriage of cold industrial materials and the sensuality of nature. She utilizes industrial materials, many of which are found, recycled, or salvaged, in an ongoing effort to reveal beauty in unlikely places.

Bales received BFA and MFA degrees from the University of Georgia, majoring in painting as an undergraduate and completing post-graduate work in fiber art. This combination of very distinct even unlike disciplines has served her well and prevents her work from being precisely categorized. While closer to a fiber artist in choice of materials, she approaches her art more like an abstract painter, relying on improvisation and painterly techniques rather than the more exacting, controlled approach traditionally favored by fiber artists.

The broad range of her work is clearly unified by a sensibility that asserts the power of an artist to create beauty from anything, and convey that simple but vital truth to an audience. By manipulating materials in ways and for contexts for which they were never intended, she embraces creative transformation and a form of subversion that is alluring, sometimes whimsical and always nourishing to the imagination.