The deadline for submissions will be here before you know it as April 30 is right around the corner. Don’t miss this opportunity to have your work included – we want nothing more than to see the artists of Stark County (hearted and otherwise) to succeed. This book is one small way to get your work out there.

Indigo Ink Press, a new nonprofit independent publisher in Canton, Ohio, has announced that it will launch with Stark ARThology, the first book dedicated exclusively to the work of talented and creative visual artists in Stark County, Ohio.

Local artists are invited to submit work for consideration in the book through April 30, 2010.

About the Book

Stark ARThology will be a coffee table style hardcover book that showcases artwork through stunning oversized visuals. The book will feature artists who work in all visual media – including painting, pen and ink, pencil, photography, ceramics, jewelry, fiber arts, mixed media and more.

The book will be sold through local galleries, studios, art venues, specialty retailers and online through the Indigo Ink website and Amazon.com. The book will also be made available for free to high school and Stark County District Libraries. A portion of the proceeds from book sales will be donated to ArtsinStark’s SmArts Program.

The book will be published this fall in time for the holiday gift-giving season and is made possible through a special project grant from ArtsinStark, The County Arts Council.

Artist Benefits

Artists selected for the book will receive two free copies and professional photography services for the selected piece(s), as well as a professional artist headshot photo. Stark ARThology will be celebrated at a launch party in November.

An advisory committee will select artists and pieces for the book. Artists must submit work by April 30 to be considered. Submissions are being accepted online and there are more details available on our website at indigoinkpress.org.

If you have any questions, please contact Jessica Bennett via email at editor@indigoinkpress.org, or call (330) 417-7715.

It’s also unequivocally the word one uses to describe a true renaissance soul like Su Nimon – an artist who is delightfully dexterous in art and in life.

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Su’s work captures the collision between archetypical architecture and noir-charged emotion. Her work expresses iconic imagery grounded in clean lines and sensible serenity. She slips from medium to medium like a fish through wet hands. Her textile work (to which she’s only recent returned) is charming and tender, warm and wearable.

Everything about Su’s work simply says home.

As though all of that isn’t enough to garner the versatile label, she’s half of the fantastic folk duo Caboodle, and she offers to makeover more than your walls with her massage and wellness work through Journey Studios. Su’s a busy girl, but she’s never too busy for a commission consult, just get in touch with her.

Check out more of Su’s work on her website, or click over to her permanent Hearted-Artist gallery. She also posts her most recent endeavors on her facebook page.

Please let us know what YOU think about Su’s work by leaving a comment below, and by rating her portfolio. Come back in two weeks – to check out our next hearted artist!

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P.S. You’ll never be cool like Su if you don’t submit your artist portfolio! And if you’ve already submitted, we’ll be picking another hearted artist in two weeks – it might just be you!

Irene Tobias Rodriguez is a great example of someone who is genuine in the detail of her landscapes, seascapes and naturalist scenes.

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It is in the maritime art that we find Irene’s details fully disclosed. In Off Shore and Three Astern, we see her characteristically complex definition, but we also see the nature of the water. The careful chaos and calamity are conveyed fastidiously.

There’s also a wonderful softness to her Bumblebee as he gathers pollen, but the details on his anatomy are meticulous.

Irene’s long career in the arts, both as a teacher and as a practitioner, has granted her an artist’s skill. It’s her willingness to experiment and to let the work speak in its own voice that has granted her greatness.

Check out more of Irene’s work on her website, or click over to her permanent Hearted-Artist gallery.

Please let us know what YOU think about Irene’s work by leaving a comment below, and by rating her portfolio. Come back in two weeks – to check out our next hearted artist!

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P.S. You’ll never be cool like Irene if you don’t submit your artist portfolio! And if you’ve already submitted, we’ll be picking another hearted artist in two weeks – it might just be you!

This week, Margie Kinsley is showing us how creativity, while instinctive, is labyrinthine work through and through.

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The potency of creativity is startling, isn’t it? The way creative urges cross-breed and multiply, the way that they cannibalize artistic instincts in order to push forward toward the appealingly unknown.

If the hungers of a true artist are insatiable, then it follows that artists must have mighty heterogeneous palates.

For Margie, the wires that she uses to furl together her jewelry design have been a short fuse for the detonation of great artistic combustion. She’s not wary of blowing sky high the conceptions of herself as an artist or of experimenting with foreign mediums until they become comfortable old friends. Her jewelry-making, born of a pragmatic foundation, has given way to art photography and sketching.

We’re looking forward to future evolutions of this “bad girl” artist.

Check out more of Margie’s work on her website, or click over to her permanent Hearted-Artist gallery.

Please let us know what YOU think about Margie’s work by leaving a comment below, and by rating her portfolio. Come back in two weeks – to check out our next hearted artist!

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P.S. You’ll never be cool like Margie if you don’t submit your artist portfolio! And if you’ve already submitted, we’ll be picking another hearted artist in two weeks – it might just be you!

Craig “Uncle Dreg” Booth might claim to not have a clue what he’s doing, and maybe he doesn’t, but the result is extremely cool.

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Uncle Dreg calls it “art photography” because the creative juices don’t stop flowing just because the shutter snaps. His work becomes charged around the edges and electrocuted with color.

A simple stroll down Court Avenue in downtown Canton becomes a glowing etch-a-sketch portrait, like a neon x-ray that shows off the hidden energy lurking under the surface of our everyday surroundings. Uncle Dreg reveals the heat and passion that surrounds a young woman like an aura.  He shows us the apprehension that soaks a businessman embarking on a trip on a lonely train platform.

Some pieces show distinctly sinister undertones. Others are just plain unorthodox. But all of them are cool.

For more about Uncle Dreg, be sure to click over to his permanent Hearted-Artist gallery. You can also see his work in person at 2nd April Galerie’s The Dreg Spot or his website.

Please let us know what YOU think about Uncle Dreg’s work by leaving a comment below, and by rating his portfolio. Come back next week – same time, same place – to check out our next hearted artist!

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P.S. You’ll never be cool like Uncle Dreg if you don’t submit your artist portfolio! And if you’ve already submitted, we’ll be picking another hearted artist next week – it might just be you!

As for us – we’ll see you after the New Year with new hearted artists! Have a happy, safe & prosperous holiday.

Best Wishes,
Heart Stark Art

P.S. We hope you’ll spend a few moments of your holiday vacation submitting a portfolio online. It will only take a few minutes, and you’ll be on your way to Stark County stardom with an online artists profile and feature!

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The effect of her sedate work in color is results in a striking dimensional appeal.

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The layering in “Field of Green” is unexpected and thoughtful, the gentle turmoil of “Triptic” is mesmerizing, and “Ariel” radiates an electric energy.

With the talent that flows from her other passions, specifically in film, advertising and art direction, I count us lucky that she endeavors into the fine arts realm at all. As it is, she does endeavor, and work is esoteric, meaningful and more than a little profound.

For more about Georgia, be sure to click over to his permanent Hearted-Artist gallery. You can also contact Georgia to view more of her work.

Please let us know what YOU think about Georgia’s work by leaving a comment below, and by rating her portfolio. Come back next week – same time, same place – to check out our next hearted artist!

[ratings]

P.S. You’ll never be cool like Georgia if you don’t submit your artist portfolio! And if you’ve already submitted, we’ll be picking another hearted artist next week – it might just be you!

The difference this week is really quite simple. Conservation photographer Stephen McNulty’s work is literally imbued with benevolence.

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In the fleeting moments before the eagle sails over his prey, in the delicate, symbiotic palette of shallow tide pools, and in the resplendent electricity of the tiny frog’s environ, we find no hint of the remoteness of the locales. Instead, there is an intimate and accessible component, a beckoning, voyeur view of magnificent creatures and habitats.

The scenes Stephen shows us from his travels – be it Alaska, the Caribbean or Polynesia – are captured impeccably. They go a long way to replicate the wonder he must have experienced first hand, separated by a single, simple lens.

For more about Stephen, be sure to click over to his permanent Hearted-Artist gallery. You can also see his work in person at Cyrus Art Gallery or The Joseph Saxton Gallery of Photography, where he is the general manager.

Please let us know what YOU think about Stephen’s work by leaving a comment below, and by rating his portfolio. Come back next week – same time, same place – to check out our next hearted artist!

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P.S. You’ll never be cool like Stephen if you don’t submit your artist portfolio! And if you’ve already submitted, we’ll be picking another hearted artist next week – it might just be you!

On behalf of rogue spray enamel artist Steven Ehret, bite your tongue.

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Despite the lonely, esoteric and languishing spirit that infects much of his work, Steve’s work is infectious. And even when he’s painting on walls, I’m left thinking thank god for this “debasement.”

When Steve says that he draws inspiration from the people and places he encounters each day, one can hardly believe him. At first. But somewhere among the dilapidated, dingy hovels and the frenzied fiends that populate his pieces, it doesn’t take too much imagination to connect the hyperbolic dots.

Steve’s work imbibes the feeling of a merry riot. His isn’t a style that leaves you at the canvas edge. It’s an entire existence, happy in its gritty, sinister promenade. The creatures he creates, ones he lovingly calls “phontasmal,” are sometimes beleaguered, always beguiling, and often belligerent, but each surges with its own life – without moving an inch they are animated, stirring and memorable, to say the least.

If you’re looking for Steve’s work, you can look online at his site or blog, at the William Rupnik Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, or you can look around the city. He exhibited at the recent Stark Naked Salon exhibit at Massillon Museum of Art, and got rave reviews.

Whether with a can of spray paint or the more refined tools of the trade – with Steve, it’s not his work that is obscene, but his talent.

For more about Steve, be sure to click over to his permanent Hearted-Artist gallery.

Please let us know what YOU think about Steve’s work by leaving a comment below, and by rating his portfolio. Come back next week – same time, same place – to check out our next hearted artist!

[ratings]

P.S. You’ll never be cool like Steve if you don’t submit your artist portfolio! And if you’ve already submitted, we’ll be picking another hearted artist next week – it might just be you!

It takes a daring eye to capture these moments like he does. There’s no “fortunate accident” in his shutter work, he photographs while weaving a fastidious story into what appears in the viewfinder.

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I am especially enamored of Thom’s dealings in downtown Canton architecture. His work in infrared, especially, provides a sense of foreboding and awe, as though these monoliths are standing stoically at the twilight of the apocalypse, staring down disaster and ruin, and coming out no worse for the experience. There is a dark, menacing quality, sure, but they’re beautiful, too.

His edge-of-the-world view continues even when he moves on to flesh and bone subjects – I marvel at the gritty portrait of artist Joseph Close and others. And he certainly takes a “devil may care” point of view in his new Factory of Terror Series.

Then Thom completely transitions into cheery, lighthearted, but no less riveting images that still have a trace of dark comedy. His photo portfolio has everything from the Glenmoor Gathering to downtown summer festivals and musical performances.

At the end of the day, the universe wants what it wants. And it wants Thom to keep on taking pictures.

For more about Thom, visit his website and be sure to click over to his permanent Hearted-Artist gallery.

Please let us know what YOU think about Thom’s work by leaving a comment below, and by rating his portfolio. Come back next week – same time, same place – to check out our next hearted artist!

[ratings]

P.S. You’ll never be cool like Thom if you don’t submit your artist portfolio! And if you’ve already submitted, we’ll be picking another hearted artist next week – it might just be you!