TOFU INK ARTS PRESS SUMMER 2021 CONTRIBUTORS

 

Charlie Becker is a retired speech pathologist who now studies and writes poetry with the Community Literature Initiative in Los Angeles. He also has helped bring poetry to under-served high school students through the Living Writers Series and L.A. Unified School District. Charlie's first book of poetry and drawings, Friends My Poems Gave Me, was published by World Stage Press in 2016. He has also had poems published by Tofu Ink, Passager Journal, Comstock Review, The Dandelion Review, and Silver Pinion. Charlie lives with his partner, Aubry, in Laguna Woods, California.

 

Nicky Bosman is a psychologist and writer from the Netherlands, where she is a therapist by day and poet by night. She has just finished her debut novel.

 

Asantewaa Boykin is a proud native of San Diego, CA. She is the daughter of Valerie Boykin and the granddaughter of Bertha Brandy. Both women taught Asantewaa that family and community are not only important, but truly the backbone of our survival. Asantewaa has always harnessed the spirit of rebellion. As a poet, she’s written daring pieces that challenge her audiences’ thought processes. As an artist, she has applied her love for both artistic expression and resistance. 

 

Colette Chien is a senior at Sarah Lawrence College with a concentration in poetry and wildlife ecology. Her previous published work includes the chapbook, “the poison in our houses” in Silent Actions Magazine, the poem, “i was born into this place a bit of fire & a cancer” into Love and Squalor magazine and The Rising Phoenix Review, the poem, “visceral fears & ampersands have nothing to do with this” in The Sarah Lawrence College Literary Review, the poem “swamp angel, not even a little brackish” in The Rising Phoenix Review, and the poem “on top of the earth resting in uncertainty” in The Rising Phoenix Review. “i was born into this place a bit of fire & a cancer” has been nominated for the upcoming 2022 Pushcart Prize.

 

Adele Evershed  is an early years educator and writer. In the late 80s armed with a psychology degree and a post-graduate qualification to teacher middle-school science The Inner London Education Authority (ILEA)  thought her qualified to teach a class of thirty unruly six year olds. It was a baptism by fire but having the opportunity to learn how to teach a child to read gave her a life long appreciation for the transformative power of words. She was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut where she writes poetry and prose in a room overlooking a wood. Her work has been published in a number of print and online journals such as Every Day Fiction, Ab Terra Flash Fiction Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, bee house journal, rainbow Poems, Free Flash Fiction, and Shot Glass Journal. She has upcoming pieces in Gingerbread House and green Ink Poetry.

 

Hugh Findlay’s writing and photography has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, in print and online. He is in the third trimester of his life. Instagram & Twitter: @hughmanfindlay

 

Frank William Finney is a New England based poet who taught literature at Thammasat University in Thailand for 25 years.  His work appears in many small press magazines, university journals, and anthologies including: Constellations, Hedge Apple, Light, Poor Yorick, The Showbear Family Circus, Marathon Literary Review, and Terror House Magazine.   His chapbook  The Folding of the Wings is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

 

D. Dina Friedman has published fiction and poetry in many literary journals and received two Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry and fiction. She is the author of two YA novels, Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar Straus Giroux) and one chapbook of poetry, Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press). http://www.ddinafriedman.com.

 

Olga Gonzalez Latapi’s work has been published in Sonder Midwest literary arts magazine, BARNHOUSE Literary Journal, Wild Roof Journal and The Nasiona magazine, among others. Originally from Mexico City, she currently lives in Toronto.

 

Bryn Gribben is a poet, essayist, and senior lecturer of English at Seattle University, but her students call her their candy goth fairy godmother. She was the co-editor of fiction for The Laurel Review and is the creative non-fiction managing editor for Big Fiction Magazine. Bryn's work can be found in such places as the Passengers Journal, Superstition Review, The Rappahannock Review, and in the anthology Suitcase of Chrysanthemums, among others. Tilde nominated her essay "Cabin" for a 2019 Pushcart Prize.  Her poem "I Am Starving" is part of a larger chapbook-in-progress on the painter Simeon Solomon.

 

Jennifer L. Gauthier is a professor of media and culture at Randolph College in Southwestern Virginia. She has poems published or forthcoming in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, South 85, Gyroscope Review, Nightingale & Swallow, River River, The Bookends Review, little somethings press and HerWords Magazine. Her media commentary has appeared on the Pop Matters website, in Mayday Magazine and The Critical Flame: A Journal of Literature and Culture. Her poetry collection, “naked: poetry inspired by remarkable women,” was recently chosen as third runner-up in the New Women’s Voices poetry competition sponsored by Finishing Line Press.Instagram: @jengauthierthinks

 

Gabby Gilliam lives in the DC metro area. Her poetry has appeared in the Fredericksburg Literary Arts Review and The Chesapeake Reader. Her short fiction is forthcoming from Black Hare Press.

 

Glenn Hartman and The New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars are entering their 27th year as an active performing ensemble. In these times when folk music has meant rigidly sticking to a cliched format or collecting hackneyed stylistic features, the klezmer all stars have attempted to challenge and stretch boundaries...but without sacrificing the most exciting features of social music; driving rhythms, passion, and clear melodies that are sublime but remain memorable. Using the inspiration of the city where they began, the band has formed a unique approach to traditional melodies and, even more unusual, a way of writing in the style that leads to a sort of Yiddish Impressionism– keeping audiences dancing but cutting to the depths of their cultural imaginations, even where they didn't realize they had one.The Klezmer Allstars have grown into their name and are frequently seen with many of New Orleans' greatest musicians, including: Mean Willie Green, Stanton Moore, Benjamin Ellman, Jonathan Freilich, Joe Cabral, Doug Garrison, Dan Oestreicher, and Aurora Nealand.

Helen Hawley is a visual artist and writer. Her poetry is forthcoming in the Oakland Review. Her artwork has been shown in Chicago, Beijing, and New York. She’s been supported by residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic, NY, and Waaw in Senegal.

 

Jaclyn Hogan is a librarian assistant at The Birmingham Public Library in Birmingham, AL. In her free time, she reads, plays with her niblings, and considers the destruction of the patriarchy.

 

Matt Hollrah is a professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma. His poetry has appeared most recently in Tofu Ink Spring 2021, Parabola and is forthcoming in Artful Dodge. He lives in Edmond, OK, with his wife Julie and their kids, Sadie and Simon.

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Jones Irwin teaches Philosophy and Education in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. He has published original monographs on philosophy and aesthetics. He has published poetry most recently in Tofu Ink Arts Press: Spring 2021, Poetry London, Showbear Family Circus, Passengers Journal, Festival Review, Plainsongs, The Dewdrop and fiction/creative nonfiction have recently been published in Kairos Magazine, The Decadent Review, and Critical Read.  His vision is of a postmodern existentialist, with a dash of noir mixed in with a progressivist ethic. His new book is on how Paulo Freire's educational philosophy has influenced social and political thought in contemporary Italy.

 

Brian L. Jacobs is the editor of Tofu Ink Arts Press. Brian grew up in Southern California and has been teaching GATE English and Humanities for twenty-nine years in both K-12 and college settings. He is 51, lives in Pasadena and has been married for 16 years to Thye, a Professor of Nursing and a Nurse Practitioner. Both Thye and Brian are currently working on their PhD's. Brian was the assistant to the Poets Allen Ginsberg and Julie Patton during his time at Naropa in the mid 90’s.  During this time he walked half way around the world while on a peace pilgrimage with Buddhist monks commemorating WWII visiting Europe, the Middle East and India. Brian is also a three time Fulbright Scholar, which has allowed him to study in Brazil, where he studied its water issues; China, where he studied its vast 10,000 year history; and Japan, spending time to participate in a case study in one of its small towns near the Japanese Alps. He had also earned a National Endowment of Humanities grant to China, studying its philosophies and histories while living in Xi’an. He subsequently participated in a grant from Fund For Teachers visiting South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho, plus earning other various grants that have taken him to places all over in the United States. He also taught teachers at a university in Fuzhou, China for five summers under a grant from SABEH. Subsequently he has earned an Earth Watch grant to the rainforest of Ecuador, to study climate change and caterpillars. Brian's poetry has been published in several publications including, Shiela-Na-Gig, the Crank, The South Florida Florida Poetry Journal, Progenitor Art and Literary Journal, Foxtail, Rip Rap, The Bangalore Review, Sunspot Lit, Anthropod, Pa'Lante, Dark Moon Lilith Press, Black Tape Press, Genre, Inky Blue/Celery, Red Dancefloor Press, Entelechy, 1844 Pine Street, Pasta Poetics, Trouble and Praxis.  

 

Danielle Klebes has exhibited at notable galleries and museums across the United States and in Canada. Danielle received her MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA, in 2017.

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Jojo L. has more than ten years of experiences in branding, marketing and retail communications. He lives in both Singapore and Malaysia. In 2019, he started his own branding and marketing boutique agencies, JLTY Atelier (Singapore) and JLTY Marketing (Malaysia). Specialized in digital/ visual communications, he is mobile-tech savvy, skilled in typography, pre-press, printing and product photography. From 2010 to 2013, he was a part-time volunteer of Project X, a human rights organization based in Singapore that provides social, emotional, and health services to people in the sex industry. A linguistic graduate and polyglot, he speaks English, Mandarin, Malay and French. He has passion for the arts and travel, and occasionally, writes poetry.

 

Diamante Lavendar lives in the Midwest US. She enjoys using art as a medium to explore the issues of life with a strong emphasis on spirituality. Diamante's work is comprised of photography, fractals, drawing, painting, and digital art. https://www.diamantelavendar.com

 

Brendan Lorber is a writer and visual artist. Letterpress prints of his maps are available at www.brendanlorber.com He is the author of If this is paradise why are we still driving? (subpress, 2018) and several chapbooks, most recently Unfixed Elegy and Other Poems. He’s had work in The American Poetry Review, Brooklyn Rail, Fence, McSweeney’s, The Recluse, and elsewhere. Since 1995 he has edited Lungfull! Magazine, currently in hibernation, an annual anthology of contemporary literature that prints the rough draft of contributors’ work in addition to the final version in order to reveal the creative process. He’s also edited The Poetry Project Newsletter, and curated both the Zinc Bar Reading Series and the Segue Foundation Reading Series. His visual art is in The Museum of Modern Art, The Free Black Women’s Library, Opus 40 Gallery, Artists Space, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Woodland Pattern Center, The Scottish Poetry Library, and in private collections. He lives atop the tallest hill in Brooklyn, in a little castle across the street from a five-hundred-acre necropolis where he is working on a ghost story. 

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Jeff Mann lives in Fort Erie. Ontario just across from Buffalo. My studio is a shipping container. I use cars and car infrastructure as the basis of most of my work because I believe there are far too many cars in the world.

 

Kevin Foster McCarthy is an actor and writer. He is also a painter... of houses. His work has previously appeared in Soundings East and Molecule, among other journals.

 

Teong Beng Ngo was born in 1950, and been an artist for almost his entire life and has joined many group exhibitions over the years.

 

Thye Aun Ngo was born in 1974 and was a  full time artist since 1994 till 2000.  He went to Kuala Lumpur to learn video editing and animation, and now lives in Penang, Malaysia. He was working as a wedding videographer and is involved in a bike business.

 

Ashley Parker Owens is an Appalachian writer, poet, and artist. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University and an MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University.

 

Andre F. Peltier is a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where he has taught African American Literature, Afrofuturism, Science Fiction, Poetry, and Freshman Composition since 1998. He lives in Ypsilanti, MI with his wife, children, turtles, dog, and cat. His poetry is forthcoming in The Great Lakes Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Big Whoopie Deal, Prospectus, Tofu Ink Press, and an anthology from Quillkeepers Press. In his free time, he obsesses about soccer and comic books.

 

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014) and served as the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX.  His poetry, fiction, translations, and photography have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals such as Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Pilgrimage, Green Mountains Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, Existere: A Journal of Art & Literature, and elsewhere. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published in Poetry Northwest, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Midway Journal, Gold Wake Live, Newfound, Chachalaca Review, Chair Poetry Evenings, Red Wedge, The Museum of Americana, About Place Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, The Windward Review, Tapestry, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, & The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas. Octavio’s visual work has been exhibited at the Southwest School of Art, Presa House Gallery, Equinox Gallery, The University of Texas—Rio Grande Valley (Brownsville Campus), the Weslaco Museum, Aanna Reyes Gallery, Our Lady of the Lake University, AllState Almaguer art space in Mission, TX, El Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, The Walker’s Gallery in San Marcos, TX, and in the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center / Black Box Theater in Austin, TX.  A new series of work titled, “Abstract Borderland,” will be exhibited in the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in July, 2021. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and poetry editor for The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism & for Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Literature & Arts Magazine.  Octavio teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.  Website: octavioquintanilla.com Instagram @writeroctavioquintanilla Twitter @OctQuintanilla 

 

Linda Ravenswood is a poet and performance artists from Los Angeles. She is the founder of The Los Angeles Press.  A new collection, rock waves / sloe drags, is forthcoming from Eyewear London in 2021.  Find her at www.thelosangelespress.com  

 

Jennifer Rawlings grew up in Salina, Kansas before moving to Los Angeles. Jennifer is the proud mother of five children. Jennifer is the winner of both the SCBWI Karen Cushman Award and the SCBWI-LA Sue Alexander Grant winner for her YA novel “Empty”. You may have seen Jennifer on Comedy Central, CMT, PBS, VH-1, A&E, CNN, HLN, CURRENT, Joy Behar, the film “I AM BATTLE COMIC” or streaming one of her three TEDx talks.She is a favorite at festivals including the prestigious “Humor for Peace Festival” and Carnegie Hall's "Voices of Hope". Jennifer is a beloved keynote speaker at events across around the globe and is known for her wit and inspiration. Using her humor as a way to tackle serious subject matter, she was named as one of the “21 Change makers of the 21st Century” by Women’s E News. For decades Jennifer has left her family to entertain the troops. She has performed in over 350 military shows in dozens of countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Bosnia. It was during these trips to war zones that Jennifer added the title documentary filmmaker to her list of jobs. Jennifer’s powerful directorial debut: “Forgotten Voices: Women in Bosnia” received critical acclaim and screened at film festivals worldwide. Several universities including Harvard and UCLA have included “Forgotten Voices: Women in Bosnia” as part of their curriculum. Traveling to war zones and directing “Forgotten Voices” prompted her award winning solo show “I ONLY SMOKE IN WAR ZONES”. Rawlings has written numerous essays and magazine articles for national publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, and Hybrid Mom. She has written tv, film, and after dinner speeches for world leaders. Jennifer contributed to best-selling anthology "I Killed : Road Stories from Americas Top Comedians" and "Fast Funny Women" (Woodhall Press) In addition to cooking, cleaning, playing her accordion, and touring the globe, she is currently finishing two new books. Jennifer also serves on the boards of several non-profits.

 

K.G. Ricci has spent most of his seventy years in New York City where he currently lives and works.  It has only been the last five years that he has devoted himself to the creation of his collage panels.  Though not formally trained, Ken worked in the art department at the Strand Bookstore during his student years  and it was there that he familiarized himself with the works of his favorite artists, including Bearden, di Chirico and Tooker.  After a career in the music business and a decade of teaching in NYC schools, Ken began creating his own original artwork in earnest. Ken’s collage panels are strictly cut/paste paper on a hardboard base.  As his work has evolved, he has added a hinged caption or title as an essential component of each panel.  In a relatively short period of time, Ken's approach became more focused on the latent  narrative possibilities of the medium and with that potential connection in mind, the size of the panels changed from the early 24" x 48" to the current 8"x 24".  The smaller panels seem to perfectly suit the artist's degree of narration and it is only recently that Ken has brought the lessons learned on  the small panels back to the larger surface with somewhat surprising results. Most recently, Ken has focused on creating collages on 6x9 black paper using a minimum of images to evoke or suggest a deeper narrative without title or caption. Ken has been fortunate to have a number of his panels from the series Hotel Kafka and Femma Dilemma appear at a number of themed exhibitions in both New York and California galleries. "I work in a sort of literary/philosophical framework so within that context my reference points are the parables of Kafka and the aphorisms of Kierkegaard. Because elements determine content, the process of creation is both constrained and liberated by the available elements at any given time and it is the improvised procedure of choice, assembly and judgment that settles the argument."

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H. Raven Rose bleeds stardust-tinted ink. Captivated by stories as a girl, portals to distant worlds, she began writing as a teen. Her stage play The Park at Night was staged as readings in Los Angeles by First Stage LA, one of which starred Jessica Biel in the lead role as Leila. The play was based on Rose's novella Dark Eros. Rose has won awards for game and animation storytelling and writing and is a postgraduate in Creative Writing at Swansea University. Rose's undergraduate screenwriting thesis research analysed the superiority of alternative versus traditional story development techniques for screenwriters in the context of hemispheres of the brain and used tools and techniques drawn from brain research, expressive arts, and mind-body practices. Her PhD practice-led creativity research explores voice development and writing flow, and writer's block. Her research focuses on childhood development and advancement of the individual female psyche and personality in the context of critical issues of attachment and identity (and how those pertain to emerging adult creativity and the literary individuation process). Rose has taught advanced screenwriting and writing the world over from Los Angeles to Wales. Find her online at hravenrose.com.

 

Calum Robertson is a queer fae tea-drinking riverbank wanderer from Calgary, Canada. Their work has previously been featured online by Tofu Ink Arts Press. They hope to be reincarnated as a self-aware tea cosy, for whimsy's sake.

 

Ken Edward Rutkowski lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. His work has most recently appeared in The Fiction Pool, Synchronized Chaos and forthcoming in Fiction International (Summer 2021).

 

Amaris Sanden has been doing art since age 5, and is currently 21 years old. He is very excited to work with Tofu Ink to spread his message that creativity is something that everyone possesses.

 

Diego Share-Vargas is a LA based multimedia artist with an undergraduate degree from UCLA who makes their art in their free time when not working as an EMT or Covid Compliance Officer. Their roots come from Oaxaca Mexico and their art explores the complexity and plurality of identity, survival, sex, anticapitalim, and honoring lived experiences. Pre-Pandemic they performed regularly as part of the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Nuart Theatre in Santa Monica. Diego links are to zines they have written with art, poetry, and intergenerational knowledge. The Beauty of Belonging: Biracial Chicanx Narratives: https://www.flipsnack.com/quijoteanonimo/the-beauty-of-belonging.html

Sepulveda Basin: Metal y Tierra https://www.flipsnack.com/quijoteanonimo/sepulveda-basin-metal-y-tierra.html. Documenting Funds of Knowledge: Medicine and Midwife Family Narrative

https://www.flipsnack.com/quijoteanonimo/documenting-funds-of-knowledge-medicine-and-midwife.html

 

Howard Skrill is a Brooklyn artist living in Brooklyn with his wife creating widely published and exhibited works on paper on the fate of figurative public monuments, spectacular tableaus vivant of the splashing of monuments in our current moment.

 

Melinda R. Smith came late to painting through the medium of poetry. It was while designing the cover for her collection of poems Tiny Island that she became entranced with visual imagery. Soon, she was working exclusively in a visual medium. In her work, Melinda explores the liminal regions between reality and fantasy, using tropes strongly reminiscent of childhood play. With her background in poetry and theater, she conceives of her pictures as staged theatrical scenes that tell archetypal stories whose roots reach for the dark core of memory and truth. Melinda was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and has lived in Los Angeles, California, for over 25 years. She can be found at melindarsmith.com. These paintings were a reaction to urban life in an industrial loft. I took the window/stage/theater motif of the giant glass wall of my studio/home near downtown Los Angeles and turned it into a fantasy of having returned to the humid, green Michigan summers of my childhood. Once again, the window became a space onto which I was able to project what stirred within my soul, and, through the paintings, I lived vicariously, while coming to terms with my industrial surroundings.

 

George L. Stein is a photographer from the greater NYC area focused on street, art, urban decay, surreal and alt/portrait photography. He has been published in a number of literary magazines.

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Jordon Tate lives in Trophy Club, TX with his wife and four kids. Connect with him at jordangabrieltate@gmail.com

 

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco.  He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in journals across the globe, including Tofu Ink, Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award. Pretty Things to Say, (Six Ft. Swells Press, 2020) is his latest collection of poetry.

 

Ali Telmesani is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Swansea University in South Wales. Author of House of Abbas: The Legacy of Harun al-Rashid (Claritas Books), his research interests focus on Eastern and Islamic mysticism.

 

Olivia Rose Umstead is a writer based in San Mateo, California. She is the 2020 Academy of American Poets Jean Burden Poetry Prize winner, and has been published in magazines such as Beyond Words, Drunk Monkeys, and Prometheus Dreaming.

 

R.L. Edmondson Vance is a visual artist who uses a variety of media to explore feminist themes and the self. Vance’s work is inspired by the art of pre-history and antiquity, pop culture, nature and the cosmos, the found object, and feminist art.

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Rachel Wright is a native of Long Beach, California and raised in Corona Del Mar. Formerly a vocalist for Bleu (aka Ruben Hernandez), and a magician’s assistant for Simon Winthrop she was an art curator for magazines and also the owner of Siren an eclectic magical gift shop and gallery. She studied voice, piano, acting, belly dancing, art and photography at Long Beach City College. Photography quickly became her main focal point and it blossomed into something totally unexpected. Her work has been featured in galleries such as The Phantom Gallery (Los Angeles, Ca.), The Loft Gallery (Pomona Ca.), Salon Pop (Long Beach, Ca.), Luz (Long Beach, Ca.), and the Historic Pico House Gallery (Los Angeles, Ca.) where she received a certificate of appreciation from the City of Los Angeles. Publications include: LA Raw, Spark Plug, City magazine and more. Awards include: 1st Place for her fashion narrative series called HOLLYWOODLAND where she recreates the lives and deaths of old Hollywood starlets. Her recreation of the Life and Death of Jayne Mansfield features the car that Mansfield died in which was used as a prop for the shoot. The car was kindly provided by Jeff Perrin. The award was provided by Kara Saun and also judged by Neil France. Rachel has a love for high fashion, fine art, cinematography, astrology and tarot. https://rachelwrightphotography.blogspot.com

IG: ray_of_luz

 

Sarah Sophia Yanni writing has appeared in DREGINALD, Maudlin House, Feelings, Full Stop, Tofu Ink Arts Press Spring 2021 and others. A finalist for BOMB Magazine’s 2020 Poetry Contest, she lives and works in Los Angeles. sarahsophiayanni.com

 

Brian Yapko is a lawyer whose poems have appeared in Prometheus Dreaming, Tofu Ink, Sparks of Calliope, Gyroscope, Cagibi, Society of Classical Poets, Chained Muse, Abstract Elephant, Poetica and other publications. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 

Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. With an M.A. in child development and a B.A. in education, she has a strong interest in art education and teaches art to adults, children and families in Seattle. A former ceramicist, she studied with J.T. Abernathy in Ann Arbor, MI. though after receiving her B.F.A. in painting from the University of Washington she switched from 3D art to 2D and has stayed there since, working primarily on paintings, prints and collages. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections and has been shown nationally in California, Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Oregon and Wyoming. She has exhibited extensively in the Northwest, including shows at Seattle University, Seattle PaciOic University, Shoreline Community College, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the PaciOic Science Center. She is an afOiliate member of Gallery 110 and is a member of the Seattle Print Art Association and COCA (Center of Contemporary Art) and an affiliate member of Gallery 110 in Seattle. 

 

Darren Yu: I could be boring and say I’ve always loved art ever since I drew on the walls of my house with crayon and was forcefully shuffled into art class.  But that's kind of generic.  Enraptured with a middle school project exploring our personal heroes and influences, I started thinking of words and art in a new way as I came to terms with being gay.  Working on that project pushed me to be honest with myself and those around in me a way that would probably make me cringe so very hard.  I know this to be true because I simultaneously respect and will never reread that project, but I attribute all my personal growth to it  Since then, art has been my place to process.  Maybe I’m a narcissist or maybe I just love the idea of a visual diary, but I really do hope that each of my work really captures a thought, a feeling in as much depth and detail as I can.Also, I’m currently an economic consultant full time and I think it’s important to stress that I like being this soft art boi but I also enjoy research and analysis.  Maybe one day I’ll bridge the two.  My instagram is @yuheffa.