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Audubon de Mexico’s Wild Arts Festival is a celebration of the timeless relationship between art and nature. The 2019 event took place on March 21st in the garden of the Instituto Allende Escuela de Arte y Español. It was a spectacular evening of art, food & wine, music and wonderful people who came to purchase original works of art in support of Audubon’s Niños y Naturaleza program.
We were honored by contributions from the following artists who drew us into the world of nature as seen through an artist’s eyes.
Details of the 2020 Wild Arts Festival coming soon!
Wild Arts Festival – Participating Artists
Oscar Aguirre
Oscar Aguirre was born in Durango, Durango, Mexico. He lives and works in San Miguel de Allende. He has a Bachelor in Visual Arts and has exhibited extensively in curated exhibitions in museums in Mexico, the United States, Europe and other places.
For more than thirty years he has taught workshops in various disciplines in various states of the republic. He has taught children’s workshops focusing on specialties in various areas such as materials management (reuse of plastics) and skills development among others. He is the director of EMPEZARTE (ARTSTART), a non-profit organization that provides scholarships for arts education, art therapy and creative life solutions for children and adolescents with special needs between the ages of 9 and 14.
Website: www.artessma.com
Ri Anderson
Ri was born in Boston MA and spent her childhood mainly in the northeastern United States. She received her MFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art in 2005, and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico shortly thereafter.
Her “Mariposas” series is based on her relationship with her two daughters and their bicultural lives as US expatriates residing in Mexico. The monarch butterfly has a migratory route between the northeastern United States and central Mexico and represents the delicate but unshakable balance between the two. Anderson creates each butterfly image by assembling selections of photographs of her daughters’ and her hair through a technique she terms “digital embroidery.” For Anderson this time consumptive, meditative process is revelatory of both the fragility and fortitude of the mother daughter bond.
Anderson has shown her work at numerous museums and galleries throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada. She has received numerous awards, and her work has been reviewed extensively. Recently she has had solo shows at the Museo de la Ciudad de Queretaro and Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende. Her work was published this year in the Australian journal “BETA-Developments in Photography” and the UK publication “Printmaking Today.” In addition to being an artist and mother Anderson is also a designer, master printer, and aerialist in the performing circus troupe Gravityworks Mexico.
Websites: www.rianderson.com www.facebook.com/riandersonart
Contact: ri@rianderson.com
Elisa Ayala Garza
Elisa usually makes mobiles, dolls, piñatas and Catrinas. Her interest is to promote Mexican folk art with her atypical designs of big eyes and colorful elements. Her work exhibits colors and party elements, in which skeletons, judas, luchadores, Alebrijes and children show the harmony of Mexico.
An emerging artisan from Guanajuato, her cardboard Catrinas gained her two State awards, and a National Award of 1st place with her cardboard “nacimientos” at Principio a Fin National Competition 2018.
Website: www.facebook/lacalaverandante
Gallery: La Calavera Andante, Gallery & Workshops, San Francisco #53 Second Floor, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Kathleen Cammarata
Kathleen Cammarata was born in NYC and lives in San Miguel year round. She has been a professional artist for 35 years. She has had 24 solo shows, the last one at the Belles Artes. She has participated in 50 juried shows and has received 26 awards and grants. She received two residency fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center.
She taught in two museums, a university and her studio in the States. She now exhibits mostly in her studio at Alameda #6 in Colonia San Antonio, San Miguel de Allende.
Website: kcammarata.com
Contact: katcammarata@gmail.com
Mariló Carral
Mariló is a self-taught artist from Mexico City. Her work is very much steeped in her native tradition. Culture and memories permeate her canvases.
Mariló Carral combines her love of nature and memories with elements of colors and pattern to create lush and living canvases. Each painting breathes human expression. In all, Carral paints from both spirit and bodily form and allows the viewer to partake in her invitation to a celebration.
Color is essential to Carral. With it, she creates a luminous quality that is composed of energy and light. Her palette is reminiscent of such Fauve artists as Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck. Complimentary to color, she uses pattern. Inspired by the Austrian Art Nouveau painter, Gustave Klimt, Carral synthesizes the elements of pattern and the circular motif to tie together her compositions. Her shapes and forms are drawn from her collection of hand-made textiles, Mexican pottery and toy miniatures.
Facebook: artistamc
Gallery: Cararal Espacio, 9-A, Fabrica la Aurora, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Contact: marilo_carral@hotmail.com
Ian Carter
Ian holds a degree in architecture from The Glasgow School of Art. Prior to retiring in 2013, he made a plan to “get back into watercolours”, learn to play the guitar, learn Spanish, finish a book he started several years ago, and travel. He and his wife first came to San Miguel de Allende in 2011 and fell in love with the people, the culture and the colours. They now live here during the winter months.
“Getting back” into watercolours was a struggle; and at times Ian thought he should try something else. He has taken several workshops which have been motivating and inspirational; challenging him to use several different mediums, including watercolour, acrylics and mixed-media.
He considers watercolour painting a duality; a partnership, where he allows the watercolours to sometimes do their own thing. The pleasure in this is to harness the medium and let it play a role in the painting process.
He now has had four successful shows and is an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists. His recent show in San Miguel, included paintings of places remembered from his travels in Central and Southern Mexico. He first sketched and photographed these places and then painted them. They are acrylic, and acrylic with mixed-media. His new watercolour paintings are of San Miguel de Allende and of surrounding areas. In these, he tried to capture the spirit, colour and culture of San Miguel and although the scenes are certainly recognizable as real streets and buildings, they are not like photographs, they are impressions of very special places and moments in his life.
Website: www.iancarterartist.com
Contact: carterian86@gmail.com
Josue Eleazar Castro Razo
An artisan from Guanajuato recognized nationally and internationally for his whimsical mechanical cardboard toys, his achievements notably include 5 State awards of Guanajuato Artisan Creativity, and 8 national awards given by FONART, including the award of the best piece of the 6th Edition of the Mexican Folk Toy National Competition, and recently on 2018 he won the First Place of the National competition of Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art.
He has 8 years of producing art; his work has been shown at US, England and The Vatican. Showing that Mexican creativity has no barriers.
In his Mexican folk art elements he mainly uses skeletons as main protagonists.
Facebook: lacalaverandante
Gallery: La Calavera Andante, Gallery & Workshops, San Francisco #53, Second Floor, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Margarita Chacón Bache
Margarita Chacón lives and works in México City. Her work is a synthesis of the real with a touch of abstraction. Abstract interpretations of memories, sounds, landscapes, and feelings. These translate into shape and color that explode on canvas or paper, creating a strong visual effect. Margarita invites the viewer into her inner world where light and intense colors are her way of expression.
Margarita has had 15 solo exhibitions in México and abroad. Her work is in the Museum Leopoldo Flores and in the Cultural Center of Contemporary México collections, and in private collections in México and abroad.
For the several years she has taught art to children and to adults.
Website: www.margaritachacon.com
Email: mchaconbache@gmail.com
Abel Delgado
Since a child in his hometown in Chihuahua, Mexico, Abel knew that art would be part of his daily life. Even at an early age, the idea of being an actor was floating in his mind.It was when he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico at the age of 12 that his life would change forever and he became dedicated to art.Abel attended the University of Chihuahua ( FACULTAD DE ARTES DE LA UACH)and earned a degree in Art Education.To paint freely and to paint nature, birds, and animals is what he enjoys most.
Abel gives personal art classes to kids and adults in Ancha de San Antonio 3, in San Miguel de Allende. He lives in San Miguel de Allende with his wife and two boys – the perfect place for artist!
Follow Abel on Instagram: Abelblueartist
Jane Dill
Jane Dill is an internationally known calligrapher who has spent over 30 years working as a freelance lettering artist specializing in commercial hand lettering for headlines, product identity, wine labels, and corporate logos (including the Galeria San Francisco).
Since moving to San Miguel de Allende in 2012, Jane has been taking her lettering to a new and exciting level, combining it with painting and using calligraphy and lettering as design elements in her mixed media works. Jane also teaches a monthly Mixed
Media, Texture & Mark Making class, and a new Collage, Color & Symbols class at the Galeria San Francisco’s new Art Workshops space.
Contact: janedilldesign@gmail.com
Website: www.janedill.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco, Fabrica la Aurora , San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Susan Dorf
Susan Dorf is a painter, printmaker and sketch artist known for her richly layered, colorful paintings of both real and invented imagery, often depicting human interaction with the natural and urban environment.
Her work has been widely published and exhibited in the US and abroad. She currently resides in San Miguel de Allende, where she has a painting and printmaking studio and teaches workshops in “The Artist’s Journal”. She is co-owner of Galeria Espiral at the Fabrica Aurora.
“I have been living and traveling in Mexico for over thirty years, and have always been inspired by the colors and textures of this country, as well as by the surreal juxtapositions of imagery, the meeting of past and present, and the way it pushes my imagination into places and possibilities I could never have dream of.”
Gallery: Galeria Espiral, Fabrica la Aurora, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Website: www.susandorf.com
Facebook: artbysusandorf
Rhoda Draws
Rhoda is an Urban Sketcher who teaches “Sketching Fast & Loose” workshops in San Miguel and other locations in Mexico and beyond. An award-winning caricature artist, she creates rapid drawings of people at events, as well as offering live painting on canvas for weddings and other special gatherings.
As an early pioneer of digital painting, Rhoda has used Corel Painter for live caricature events as well as studio work. She creates quick gestural drawings with a live model, then combines them in a variety of ways for printing on archival rice paper. Many such combinations inspire large paintings on canvas.
Rhoda moved to San Miguel one year ago from the San Francisco Bay Area. She lives in Colonia Guadalupe, in a house she calls “Casa de Dibujo.” Her urban sketches, paintings and prints can be viewed by appointment.
Website: www.rhodadraws.com
Contact: rhodadraws@gmail.com
Karen Lee Dunn
Karen has lived in Mexico since 1969, involved in many professional as well as volunteer art projects throughout her adult life. Upon retiring from her advertising career in Mexico City and moving to San Miguel in 2007, she began oil painting.
She spent two years studying at Belles Artes (El Centro Nigromante), and was subsequently introduced to the work and teaching of Donna and Tom Dickson. Five years of painting with Donna Dickson led her to Susan Santiago, fellow student, who was about to open Galeria San Francisco and asked her to join the group. She remains at Galeria San Francisco as a representational artist, capturing the life and architecture of our San Miguel streets.
Website: www.galeriasanfrancisco.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco, Fabrica la Aurora, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Contact: karenleedunn.kl@gmail.com
Ingalora Dwyer
Ingalora studied Photography in her native country Austria. She continued studies in Canada with classes in painting, printmaking and ceramics in Toronto, Vancouver, and then in San Miguel de Allende.
She started her artistic career when she was 3 years old. One day when my Artist/Architect grandfather was napping and letting his painting of a female nude dry, I decided to change the colour of the painting to bright green. My grandfather, recognizing my talents brought me my first set of water colours that I used immediately to modify his drawings for the design of a new house. My ideas were not very well received and that is why I never pursued a career in architecture.
For her 6th birthday I received my very own camera, a baby Brownie and she has not stopped taking photos since.
To Ingalora, colors represent life, energy strength and happiness. Therefore the focus in most of my work is COLOR. When I get up in the morning in my colorful house it gives me energy and strength to start another day and life adventure!”
Contact: ingalora@yahoo.com
Website: www.flickr.com/people/inga_mexicana
Kim Etherington-Reid
Kim Etherington-Reid is a Canadian artist whose work has been a response to the issues of global warming, environmental practices, and social responsibility or engagement. Her interest lies in the conscientious practices needed to protect our environment and how individuals reflect on their impact and contributions toward environmental responsibility.
Through opportunities of living internationally (Canada, Asia, Europe, USA) she has synthesized these experiences with observations of local art and culture. The origin of her work lies within influential forces on nature and their impact within nature. The mixed media work plays on relationships and reactions through texture and line that evoke energies and forces. Integrating traditional and non-traditional materials, she utilizes her multi-cultural experiences to explore global connectivity of the environment.
Kim’s work has exhibited in Canada, China, Italy, the United States, and Mexico.
Email: kimereid@hotmail.com
Marcela Evans
Marcela studied Graphic Design at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, and later took several workshops in Textile Design.
She received an MFA in Visual Effects from The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She worked as a Graphics Designer at Walter Landor & Associates in San Francisco. As an Art Director and Senior Artist for Broderbund Software, The Learning Company and Mattel Interactive, she was responsible for the creative development of award-winning educational software, such as: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Print Shop, Kid Pix and Prince of Persia. She is returning to her roots as a fine artist by painting one of the benches for Audubon’s Wild Arts Festival.
Contact: marcela@evansplace.com
Juan Ezcurdia
Juan was born in Mexico City in 1962. He is a self-taught artist.
In 1997, he received the first National Illustration prize awarded by the National Ministry of Art and Culture. Juan has worked for several publishing houses: Barca de vapor, Trillas, Santillana, Alteridades (UAM), Cidcli, Fernandes Editores, Sep, among others.
His work forms part of private collections in San Francisco, Houston, Toronto,Barcelona, Chicago, Bilboa, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Bogotá, New York, Madrid, and Atotonilco.
Website: www.ezcurdia.com
Contact: ezcurdiajuan@gmail.com
Gallery: Fabrica la Aurora, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Kimberly Fairbanks
Kimberley’s life as an artist was inspired by modeling each year in a new ballerina costume for her mother’s portrait class. She majored in art in college but became an art teacher to make money and art was a hobby. Kimberley started out as a pastel painter, but eventually preferred three dimensional art, working in many media, but mostly clay. She likes to make clay bas-relief sculptures of figures. Much of her art is found in her house, including painted or mosaic murals of people and animals. Kimberley enjoys living with her work and has become less interested in selling her art. She is a San Miguel resident and also lives in Port Townsend, Washington during summer.
Leah Feldon
Leah’s photographs have appeared in magazines, been transposed into best selling greeting cards, and exhibited in New York’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum and galleries in the USA and Mexico. Her most recent exhibit, “REFLEJOS” was presented at San Miguel’s Centro Cutural El Nigromante Bellas Artes during July thru Nov 2015. Her work is also featured in The Other Face of Mexico, a full-color art book commissioned by, and sold at, San Miguel’s Mask Museum. She is also a best-selling author and former TV host, reporter, and spokesperson.
Contact: Leahfeldon@gmail.com
Website: Leahfeldonphotography.com
Facebook: Leah Feldon
Frank Gardner
Frank Gardner was born and raised in Poughkeepsie, New York. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986 with a BFA in Painting. A desire to find true inspiration for his paintings eventually led him to relocate to Mexico in 1990. His studio is in San Miguel de Allende, where he resides.
Gardner’s painting style adeptly captures his subject’s mood, whether it be a dramatic landscape, colorful Mexican street scene or boats in a harbor. The combination of confident brushwork, dynamic compositions and lively color invokes true character in Frank’s work. His paintings are often cityscapes and landscapes, many that include horses and other animals. Over the past several years he has also been working on a series of paintings based on his trips on horseback in Mexico.
Galleries:
McLarry Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Addison Art Gallery , Orleans on Cape Cod
Galeria Gardner, Zacateros 75, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Website: frankgardner.com
Instagram: frankgardner_art
Contact: frank@frankgardner.com
Shara Harel
Shara Harel is an artist who splits her time between West Virginia and San Miguel de Allende. She teaches art at a summer camp and spends time with her family in the beautiful mountains of West Virginia and while in San Miguel works on art projects, dances, does yoga and takes long walks in El Charco del Ingenio, where she finds herself most at home. She derives inspiration from her natural surroundings and appreciates simplicity, which is reflected in her work.
Websites: www.behance.net/user/?username=shara_harel
Facebook: sharaart
Contact: s_h64@hotmail.com
Leigh Hayes
Leigh lives in both San Miguel, Mexico and Chapel Hill, NC. Throughout his career as a chemical engineer, he maintained a passion for the visual and sensual beauty of fine art glass. He began glass blowing in 1999 at Urban Glass in NYC and continued in apprenticeships with acclaimed glass artists such as Robin Mix and Mike Hatch. Because of their visual clarity and rich, deep colors, he grew fond of working with transparent colors, building on this fondness by studying Venetian style techniques at the Pilchuck School, founded by glass artist Dale Chihuly, in Washington state in 2013. His work is represented in several galleries, including the Gallery on Madison outside DC and Liberty Arts in Durham, NC.
Contact: leigh075@gmail.com
Studio and gallery: Liberty Arts Sculpture Studio www.libertyartsnc.org
Thomas Humphrey
Thomas photographs people. All of his photos are taken in available light and none are posed. He moves about with his camera for hours at a time and photographs whatever attracts him.
Leslie Kate González Ordóñez
Leslie Kate González Ordóñez was born in Mexico city where she studied at the School of Fine Arts and achieved her degree. Leslie is an extremely talented artist who specialises in a variety of art mediums. Pen sketches are her passion and she also amazes the Abstract Art admirer with her multi medium Abstracts.
Visiting The Leslie Kate Art Gallery will allow you to admire her pen sketches, watercolours, abstracts & clay sculptures that has attracted art enthusiasts from all over the world.
Contact: lesskate@gmail.com
Instagram: lkpuppets
Facebook: Leslie Kate Art
Phone : 415-107-7471
Christa Klinckwort
Christa studied design at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, graduating in 1983. However, she opted for the fine arts as her profession.
Within the experiences of an artist, Christa has taken an interest in candid imaginary.
Obsessed by the mystery of the creative accident that can manifest itself in a brushstroke or in the choice of some object found, intentionally sought after or treasured over time, Christa developed a multidisciplinary approach that extends from the two-dimensional to the expanded field of the three-dimensional: painting, collage, photography, mixed media, assemblages, installations, and printmaking.In these, formal innovation alternates with the interpretation of plant and mineral elements.Animal and marine remains, as well as new and old materials, reinforce the symbolic and poetic.
Christa’s work is recognized within the national and international art world.
Website: www.cklinckwort.com
Iliana Lanuza
Before becoming a photographer, Iliana had other passions such as Sociology and Cooking. In 2012 she opened
De Temporada the first “farm to table” restaurant in San Miguel de Allende. Iliana has lived in 4 different countries: England, Spain, Dominican Republic and Mexico.
Her passion for nature and photography started at a young age, however it was not until 2018 that she decided to go professional. She enjoys photographing anything that catches her eye, from events to street, portraits and documentary photography, but is a true lover of the Presa Allende, especially the birds and nature and early morning shoots.
Instagram: ilianalanuza@ilanuzaphotography
Website: www.ilanuzaphotography.com
Contact: 415 113-8925
Alberto Lenz
Alberto is a sculptor, painter and jewelry designer, linked with geometric art and constructivism. He was selected to participate in the VIII Bienial of Monterrey FEMSA, one of the most prestigious events of contemporary Mexican art. His work has been exhibited in thirty solo exhibitions and fifty group exhibitions in Mexico, United States, Canada, Spain, France and Venezuela.
Galleries:
Galería Intersección Arte Contemporáneo, Fábrica La Aurora Local 18A, , San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (sculpture and painting).
Galería Atotonilco, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (jewelry). www.folkartsanmiguel.com
David Leonardo
David was born and raised in Mexico City and received a degree and employment in International Relations. However, he had also painted since his teens, and eventually headed to the acclaimed San Carlos Academy of Art to study mural painting with Arnold Belkin and other masters. Belkin, who went on to achieve international acclaim, conveyed to Leonardo a belief in the power of culture to have a positive influence, on individuals, groups and even nations. All togethern Leonardo has painted twelve major murals, five of them in San Miguel de Allende at such places as the City Hall, Public Library and the famous art and language school, El Instituto de Allende. His themes range from the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, the Mexican Revolution with Spain and the History of the Aztecs, among others.
His work has been shown and collected internationally. He has participated in over 38 solo and collective exhibitions in galleries and museums in Mexico, the United States and Nicaragua. One of his most recent honors is having work acquired by the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California.
Website: www.facebook.com/davidleonardochc
Gallery: Instituto Allende, Ancha de San Antonio No. 22, , San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Heidi LeVasseur
Heidi was an art teacher for 35 years or maybe more. She taught adults and children using the formats from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. She runs the Casa de la Cuesta B&B and La Otra Cara de Mexico Mask Museum as well as the Folk Art Gallery. Her preferred medium is whatever she is working on at that moment, but all aspects of exploring the traditions of Mexican folk art inspire her creativity.
Contact: 415-149-1466
Marti McGinnis
Marti McGinnis is a prolific artist who engages with a wide array of media with joy, an optimistic outlet and generally a whole lot of color. She has been making her living as an artist since she returned from a stint with the U.S. Peace Corps several decades ago.
Her resume of creating large bodies of work and showing and selling these using a variety of outlets (galleries, art fairs, online platforms, etc) tells the tale of a creative energy that seeks new adventures! She has successfully explored many media running it all ‘through the Marti filter’. In other words, when Marti tackles painting, welding, cartooning, felting, paper maché, sewing, clay, etc – you know it was her who created the resulting pieces when she’s done. She has developed an instantly recognizable visual language that exerts itself no matter the media.
She is also an enthusiastic champion of the arts and finds great joy in teaching others.
Marti lives with her husband as well as 2 chubby horses, 3 dogs and a couple of cats on the side of an extinct volcano in central Mexico’s highland country just outside the artist’s mecca of San Miguel de Allende.
Websites:
www.happyart.com (pop and commercial art) www.martimcginnis.com (paintings and death shrouds)
Facebook: happyart
Lynn Miller
Lynn is an eclectic artist who studied at the Instituto Allende in 1972. Later, she completed her studies as an Expressive Arts Therapist in the US, combining her passions of Art and Therapy.
Lynn works in many art forms: painting, stained glass, mosaics, paper mache, dollmaking, puppets and silkscreen. She also paints frame drums with images for healing. She has created both painted and mosaic murals in the US and Switzerland. Her early art experiences in Mexico have influenced her work throughout the years.
Lynn created the Firebird Festival, where artists come together to build a 30 foot Phoenix sculpture out of wood. Clay birds are also made with the community, representing rebirth when the sculpture is lit on fire. The festival has been in existence for 15 years and attracts over 10,000 people.
Lynn has presented workshops on Arts and Healing in India, Switzerland, Italy, France, Mexico and is the author of SpiritArts, Transformation through Creating Art, Music and Dance, a self help book bridging Arts and Spirituality, which is a culmination of her experience in this field.
Website: www.SpiritArts.us
Mario Mizrahi
Mizrahi’s art is a moving magical realism with a bold palette and unbound, indefatigable imagination. A native of Mexico City, he grew up under the influence of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. Mario studied with painters Mariano Paredes and Margott Guirette. He has traveled through the interior of Mexico, and lived in Cozumel, Oaxaca. Mario currently resides in San Miguel de Allende.
He has had solo exhibitions in France, Switzerland, and Spain. He represented Mexico in the thirtieth anniversary of Art Expo in New York.
Website: www.mariomizrahi.com
José Luis Santillán Montoya
Born in México City and raised in Acapulco, José Luis Santillán always took an interest in Studio and Nature photography. He has a Bachelor´s degree in the Science of Communications and a level of Master in the worldwide photography game Gurushots, making him a TOP 400 photographer worldwide.
Only 24 years old, he has an established photography studio in Instituto Allende where he has created multiple photography projects such as: Silver and Gold, Ghost, Chromatic, and more. José Luis is currently working on a nature project called ‘The Four Elements’ that plays on the model of Gurushots with modified features with the theme of ‘be one with nature and the four elements’. He has worked as Assistant Director and Director of Photography in various short films, and a feature documentary about artist Isis Rodriguez.
Facebook: José Luis Santillán Fotografía
Matt Naughton
Most of Matt Naughton’s professional career was spent in the culinary arts. Early on he trained in Salzburg, Austria and from there worked as a chef in prestigious restaurants and private clubs all around the world. He was an active participant and US team member for the American Culinary Foundation (ACF) where he participated in numerous worldwide competitions. While active in the program, he was awarded numerous medals in global competitions. Matt was also the owner/operator of several restaurants in Houston, Texas.
More recently Matt turned to photography as a creative outlet. His focus is on Central Mexico with emphasis on the unseen San Miguel de Allende. His work may be viewed in San Miguel at the local galleries Post 46 and Pedro Rosenblueth.
Contact: mattnaughton4@gmail.com
Hope Palmer
Contemporary Art Historian and artist whose art quickens to the beauty of nature and the human who dwells within. Each painting speaks to an individual moment in time.
Gallery & Studio: Estudio Arte Esperanza. Centro de Arte y Deseno Fabrica la Aurora, Casa 3 (inside Zona Grafica office, upstairs), San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Contact: hopeepal@gmail.com
Sandra Palma de Ruiz
Sandra spent her formative years in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. In 1998 she moved to San Miguel de Allende where she currently resides.
During her many years of artistic training, Sandra studied jewelry making, ceramics, photography, sculpture, painting, among others. It was painting where she found the ideal medium for her expression as an artist.
In San Miguel de Allende she studied with the great artist William Martin, and practiced the painting process used by the great Renaissance Masters. She then began a long journey experimenting with different techniques and styles in which she found figurative Surrealism, the way to materialize the connection between reality and imagination.
Website: www.galeriasanfrancisco.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco, Fabrica la Aurora, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Angelina Pérez Ibargüen
Angelina studied Education at UNAM and specialized in Psyco-physical Integration Therapy. She practiced as a therapist for 10 years.
In 1992 studies sculpture at Academia de San Carlos and ceramics at IMSS. In 1995 she moves to San Miguel de Allende, where she begins her professional life as a visual artist. For 6 years she was a teacher and dean of the Ceramics department at Instituto Allende and now she works and teaches in her own studio.
From 1998 to 2012 she made installations depicting everyday urban life, a topic that has been her source of inspiration. She uses humor to talk about the rush, precarious equilibrium and contradictions that we encounter with life in a city.
She has had 30 solo exhibits mostly in museums and public galleries and participated in more than 60 group shows. She works in clay but has always integrated other materials like metal, wood, recycled materials, drawings on walls, etc.
Website: www.angelinaprerzibaarguen.com
Katya Rice
Katya has been drawing designing dropping finding gluing, coloring claying-playing coating carving cutting collage-ing assemblage-ing, sketching sculpting scraping smearing sewing mixing tracing tearing, photographing, printing, pasting, painting, building, beading, breaking…. forever…. for fun….
Recent ceramic sculptures can be seen at Mixta.
“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” ― Mary Oliver
Contact: Katyayani76@yahoo.com
Adrian Ross
Adrian Ross creates paper mache sculpture, using mixed media to create intricate representations of birds. He made his first birds in 1980 for a competition in Vancouver, Canada. He was really just having fun, however he won first prize and was commissioned for an installation of a flock of birds for a new children’s hospital. He continued making birds and held a show of his work once a year for three years, before moving to New York and going on to other things. He started making his birds again eight years and hasn’t stopped and is still having fun. His birds are sold exclusively at Camino Silvestre in San Miguel de Allende.
Gallery: Camino Silvestre, Zacateros 46 and Correo 43, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Marisa Ross
As an artist, Marisa’s inspiration has always been Nature and she paints to communicate the energy of natural forms. She loves the simplicity of the sumi-e style of painting. Using hand-ground ink, she seeks to depict the essence of a subject with minimal strokes of my brush.
Contact: Kokoro Studio, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (415) 120-0793
Susan Santiago
Susan Santiago, founder of Galeria San Francisco, moved to San Miguel de Allende upon retiring from teaching art in Los Angeles for over 25 years. Susan has exhibited in galleries on both the East and West coasts and was represented by Orlando Gallery in Los Angeles for 28 years, and by Magenta Gallery, in San Miguel de Allende for 2 years. She opened Galeria San Francisco in 2016, where she currently exhibits her work along with 12 other artists who reside in San Miguel. Galeria Francisco offers ongoing workshops in drawing, mixed media, and collage and Susan teaches Acrylic painting at the gallery throughout the year.
Website: www.galeriasanfrancisco.com
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco, Fabrica la Aurora, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Contact: galeriasanfranciscosma@gmail.com
Carol Schifman
Carol has been painting and creating art all her life – nothing formal in education, simply a practice in appreciation of expression. She found time during her 30 year career as an organizational development consultant to keep learning, experimenting and creating art. She is grateful to have a partner and companion who, through his photographic art, nudges her to see differently, always opening her practice up to new possibilities.
Currently Carol’s focus is in oil painting of atmospheric landscapes that express expansiveness, stillness and entry. Her skies melt into a dialogue with the earth, and the earth with the sky. She paints contemplatively, working together with the paint to eventually stumble onto, and into a landscape that moves her; one that she hopes the viewer will feel they can step into as well.
Website: www.instagram.com/cschifman/
Contact: caschifman.company@gmail.com
Robert Merrill Sweeny
Robert Merrill (Bo) Sweeny is a lifelong artist and permanent resident of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, having worked with several wonderful artists including Harry Callahan, Minor White, Dale Chihuly, Patrick Dougherty, and Rhett Thurman. In addition to RISD he has studied at the Boston Museum School and the Gibbes Museum School in Charleston, South Carolina. His artworks are photorealistic, created with acrylics and pencil from his own images. At present he is a member of the Galeria San Francisco located in the Fabrica La Aurora in San Miguel. Most recently his work has been included in the last three volumes of ‘AcrylicWorks: the Best of Acrylic Painting’ published by North Light Books.
Gallery: Galeria San Francisco, Fabrica la Aurora, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Suzy Taylor
Suzy Taylor was an interior designer, photo stylist and freelance magazine editor/stylist in New York City for twenty years. These skills have been a good background for her newer painting career since all of them deal with color, light and composition. Her work is mostly about light and how it creates the composition via shadows and brings out color and transparency. This is why she tends to paint flowers, cacti, clouds and glass. They all react interestingly and differently in sunlight.
She studied painting at the Art Students League in New York. In 1990 she moved to Connecticut to have more room and time to paint. She moved to San Miguel in 2006 where she built her own house and opened the Arroyo Gallery at Rinconada de la Aldea 27 (next door to Lifepath) where she shows her own paintings and custom furniture.
Website: www.suzytaylor.com
Gallery: KvF Gallery, Privada de 5 de Mayo, #11, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. 1-5 pm, Saturday or by appointment
Ana Thiel
Through the creation of sculpture, installations, commissions and wearable art in glass and mixed media, Ana Thiel is, in the words of art critic Mónica Mayer, an artist that has “the ability to scratch one’s spirit and wring one’s heart.”
Among numerous recognitions, she has twice been awarded a fellowship from the Mexican Council for the Arts. Her sculpture “Trine” won First Prize at the Latin-American I Bienal de Arte en Vidrio in Monterrey, Mexico. She has also been invited as a resident artist by renowned institutions in different continents. Her work forms part of museums and private collections worldwide.
Her most recent exhibition “The Sense of Ice” opened last year in Mexico City, was then shown in Querétaro at the Museo de la Ciudad and is scheduled to open in San Miguel de Allende at Bellas Artes this summer. She has also been invited as a resident artist by renowned institutions in different continents.
Elizabeth Rosner, author, states that “Her sculptural language is as innocent as rain pooling on stone, as dangerous as the burning of books.” and “Like Andy Goldsworthy, like Anselm Kiefer – two artists with whom she has been favorably compared – Ana Thiel is reminding us to love the world, no matter how ephemeral or damaged by time. We may feel unsettled or even broken-hearted by her works, but we will most certainly feel transformed by them.”
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ana_thiel/
Barbara Valverde
Barbara Valverde describes her hand painted paper collage style as “painting with paper”. Her themes include landscapes, cacti, dogs, florals, birds, and still life. She uses different types of rice papers, onion skin, tissue, books, magazines, deli paper and found papers, some revealing print in various languages. Her vibrant color palette of professional quality acrylics includes metallics and fluorescents, hand painted and printed using a home made gelli plate. Her passion is to create the drama of color, light and shadow in paper.
Instagram: barbvalverde100
Contact: mbvalverde@gmail.com
Lane VanDoren
Lane is a highly sought-after artist who has made a living by producing a variety of artworks in the private and public sector. He enjoys the challenge of working in context of existing architecture and natural settings. He transforms the physical environment by connecting human function with natural environment. The end result is a fabrication of distinct architectural accents, sculptural elements, lighting, and art that offer a subtle invitation to pleasure, to treasure, and to delight.
Lane and his son, Alex, are the owners of Van Doren Art Studio in San Miguel de Allende. In their studio they create commissioned metal artworks and host workshops to share their expertise with others who are interested in learning metal art.
Website: www.vandorenmetalart.com/the-workshop
Contact: vandorenmetalart@gmail.com
Mila Villasana
Mila is a digital artist and designer from Vermont currently residing in San Miguel de Allende. After an amazing experience working with the Audubon de Mexico, she developed a strong passion for the environment. She has been involved in the Zero Waste movement for a year now, a global effort to reduce the production of plastic and waste in the world. Her current focus is developing a program dedicated to teaching ways to lead a more environmentally-conscious life.
As an artist, she plans to someday become a professional animator. Through animation she hopes to create visual pieces with messages about issues that have influenced her life such as immigration, women’s rights, permaculture, and animal rights.
Contact: o.kami.artwork@gmail.com
Nancy Voris
Nancy has been working in clay for the last 20 years in San Miguel de Allende and Santa Fe, NM. Before that, she had not done any art since I last had a coloring book. Her favorite part of creating clay sculpture is the experience of being in the studio, learning new techniques and being exposed to other artists’ processes. She tends toward hand built sculptures that recreate everyday objects in clay, such as shoes, shirts, suitcases, little red wagons, shopping bags, books, etc. Some, such as her globes, are meant to be picked up, held and even shaken, not just observed.
Linda Whynman
Linda and her husband retired to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, over 13 years ago from New York. She has been involved in art and art education her entire professional career. She taught art from kindergarten to masters degree programs and was the Arts in Education Director in New York State bringing arts-related programs from New York City to upstate schools. Her areas of media expertise include watercolor and computer graphics. She recently co-authored a book with Lori Topinka, featuring their watercolor illustrations of the historic churches of San Miguel.
Contact: vellum1@mac.com
Website: www.capillasma.org
Sandi Wong
Influenced by her love of texture, pattern and colour, Sandi found painting and drawing after her full-time career as a design executive for the apparel industry.
Having a country home north of Toronto has provided not only inspiration from nature, it has exposed Sandi to the fragility of the natural environment. With her artistic and environmental efforts, Sandi hopes to raise awareness and encourage us all to do our part to appreciate and protect the natural world for future generations.
She has shown and sold extensively in Toronto and north of the city, in the Creemore area.
Contact: Sandiwongartist@gmail.com
Instagram: Sandilwong@Instagram
Erik Zavala
Eric Zavala is a professional wedding and commercial photographer. His studio is located in the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende. He studied acting at the prestigious Centro Universitario de Teatro (CUT) UNAM and often performs in community theater productions.
Website: www.erikzavalaphoto.com
Facebook: erikzavalafoto
Instagram: erikzk
Contact: erikzavala@me.com