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!

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!

Despite rigorous experimentation and a willingness to try new things in new ways, every artist has a style that is distinctively theirs. Subtle nuances in color, in texture, in subject, and in composition will ultimately belie their creator’s hand.

For Joe Martino, his remarkable “tell” is the cycle of chaos and order that blooms rhythmically in his work.

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There is something both tidy and disgruntled in the layers of paint, gesso, and paste. Each neat succession of fiber, metal and paper has delightfully destructive bursts. With the use of so many media, one anticipates crowding and clutter. But alas, each element fits and removing of any one would come at the detriment to the flow of quiet anarchy.

Joe’s Martino’s work is dual natured: creationist and destructionist. His connection to nature, to science, is undeniable – his “Artissimo” series is paramount to the Big Bang, and other pieces have celestial essences that hint around the edges. We expect no less from an artist who has lived a dual nature himself: as artist and science educator.

In his artist statement, Joe describes his work as non-traditional, textural and dimensional. These words seem too small to soak up the watery descent we make into his spectacular Koi pond, or the lustrous contours of his lovely Aeola.

His work has been described as “organic” but I’d be so bold as to disagree. With Joe’s artful melding of light, purpose and mass, certainly his work hails from the cosmos.

Joe has a variety of events coming up throughout Northeast Ohio – stop out and see him!
Check out more of Joe’s work on his website, or click over to his permanent Hearted-Artist gallery.

Please let us know what YOU think about Joe’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 Joe 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!

Fiber artist Michele Waalkes is a master media manipulator. She thinks ahead of the confines of rigid and permanent surfaces and into flowing, stretchable and fluid fabric, and she bends the medium to her will seamlessly.

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Michele discards what she calls the “humble beginnings” of  the fabric itself. She lets the fiber be at once canvas and brush. The result is that her dimensionally salient work on fabric achieves for the images what the canvas and the paper cannot.

Best of all, the juxtaposition of her work never seems forced. Michele never sacrifices one element or image for another, even when the imagery seems unrelated at first look. On the contrary, all of the elements cling and intertwine steadfastly with one another. As a result, the final union brings a harmony that could never be accomplished should the images have been left to their own devices. In Indecisive, the weathervane and the stairs each tell singular tales of expectation, of direction and of trepidation. United in “indecision” the story broadens, deepens. It’s nice to see someone proving Aristotle right with so much conviction.

The lack of sacrifice in Michele’s artistic endeavors contrasts nicely with her willingness to sacrifice time to ensure that her fellow artists each have their day in the sun. As curator of 2nd April galerie, Michele is part of an ever-expanding contingent of Canton artists and Stark County artists who collaborate to bring creativity to our community.

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

Please let us know what YOU think about Michele’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 Michele 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!