Highlighting the wonderful individuals and businesses that make the Funk Zone the amazing place it is today.
Loud Flower
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Instagram: @loudflowerartco
Website: loudflowerartco.com
Loud Flower Art Co is a screen print shop in Santa Barbara, CA making purpose-driven, celebratory art to cultivate courage and belonging through intentional wholeheartedness and emotional literacy.
Emotionally screen printed goods since 2020.
2. Karen Lehrer
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Artist Statement:
My paintings begin with no preconceived idea in mind. I never know how a painting will turn out. I paint in layers and respond to the prior layer of dried paint with each subsequent layer. It is not unusual for my paintings to have as many as eight to ten layers. Each under-layer becomes the history that informs the above layer. I continue painting layers until the composition and color become pleasing to me, when nothing bothers me, and then I know it’s done.
Artist Bio:
Karen Lehrer's career spans her lifetime. She began as a child, then college major, and later professional textile design as a way to support herself early on. Her styles have changed over the years, having engaged in a variety of art forms. She's been a painter since 1988.
At different times the themes of her paintings change, depending on her inspiration, focus, interests, travel, the seasons of the year, and so on. Her most recent series of paintings is called "Dreaming of Water”. I was influenced by textures and reflections from imagined worlds relating to water. At the time she was working on this series of paintings she was anticipating an upcoming trip to Alaska. After returning from Alaska she was really shocked at how much the artwork she created prior to the trip, mirrored her visual experience of what she saw and experienced while in Alaska.
I find myself using this symbolic language of pattern and shapes to more accurately depict and describe the world around me, both physical and imaginary. In addition, the paintings in this series are an exploration of a new material substrate, Yupo, which is a plastic paper. It was exciting to interact with this material, as it takes abuse such as sanding, and it allows me to build up layer after layer of acrylic, crayon, marker, pencil, etc.
Her artworks include acrylic paint and various mediums on wood panels, and sometimes incorporates collage. Yupo, which is a type of plastic paper, accepts the amount of layering she applies. As an example, on a wood panel, most of her paintings are anywhere from six to ten layers, meaning each layer is painting on top of the previous painting. The artwork changes constantly from one layer to the next, making the final painting an exploratory process to achieve. A process she has honed over many years, realized by facing the challenge of the unknown, and following principles of exploration, and trust in the process.
3. Dug Uyesaka & Michael Irwin
A 3 Part Series
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Dug Uyesaka : Short Bio
Dug Uyesaka’s quizzical outlook on life and love of the arts germinated while growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s in the fertile San Joaquin Valley. Living out in the boondocks provided many, many, hours to roam the country side and appreciate the slow side of life and fueled his passion to draw and make “stuff” from his imagination. Dug pursued painting and silk screen while at UCSB and went on to study graphic design and multimedia at SBCC. He also worked at a local film production company providing in house graphic design and media management. Dug has been a working artist and involved in the community arts scene since the 1970’s. He is currently teaching art at Laguna Blanca School and has taught at the Center for Life Long Learning in Santa Barbara, CA. In 2009 he was the recipient of the Laguna Blanca School Faculty Excellence Award for the Middle School and a William T. Colville Foundation grant. In 2010 he was the awarded the Individual Artist Award for Assemblage and Collage by The Arts Fund of Santa Barbara. He was privileged to have a mid-career survey, “long story short” at the Westmont Ridley Tree Museum of Art in 2016. Dug was also a Santa Barbara County Arts Commissioner for the Second District 2007 - 2019. He is currently on the Board of Directors for the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative.
And he is still trying to make “stuff”.
Artist Statement
“Bricoleur: a handyman who has a limited set of tools that he uses to solve any problem, and his way of thinking and working is … somewhere between scientific method and the magical method.” Claude Levi Strauss – The Savage Mind
“I work mainly in collage and assemblage, and various mediums on paper. I am continually amazed and intrigued with how the marriage of often disparate scraps of paper and found objects can give form to that which is intangible – memory, dreams, faith, and wonder. I try to imbue my work with the reverent attitude of serious play done in a playfully serious way. My works are my attempt at mark making and trying to capture grace and time.“
MICHAEL IRWIN has always been fearless when it comes to building interesting things.
Irwin’s passion for transforming material and process has driven his career as a working artist and an educator, living and working in Santa Barbara for over forty years. Receiving his MFA in Ceramics at UC Santa Barbara in 1979, he has inspired countless students as an art professor at UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara City College, and Santa Barbara County Schools. “I work to give them the experience of doing something magnificent, something that is profound and inspirational”.
Conceptually and process rich, his paintings and sculpture continually seek new forms and expressions. His artwork has been shown in galleries across the west and his works are in collections across the United States.
Irwin has maintained a studio in the Funk Zone of Santa Barbara since 1990, where he creates large outdoor sculptures, ceramic sculptures, and large-scale paintings.
Website: Michael Irwin Art
Instagram: @michaelirwinart