Below is a taste of our Curley School artists and alumni.
Beryl was raised in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. "I have worked to change the direction of my life from that staid, traditional New England control to co-creation. It seems like it has taken me a lifetime and as a result, I can now say that I know how to own my life.
Simultaneously, I was employed in the business world for 30 years and then retired. 'Retirement' is allowing me to find the answers I had been seeking since childhood. Come to find out, the heart has a brain and when it is used to guide the Self, the direction and quality of life changes. I call the process, the Journey to the Self. I came to the Curley School to teach and record this process so that anyone willing and intentional can also change the direction of their lives."
Marion is from Los Angeles, California. She is a professional graphic designer, fine artist, and adult educator. Marion's fine art work is in oil and acrylic paint, and pastel on paper. She has lived and worked more than 15 years in Dublin, Ireland; Barcelona and Madrid, Spain; as well as Paris, France, to pursue her art.
Marion's design web site is: http://www.marduignan.com
Marion's email is: marion@marduignan.com
Karen has always been curious about the way people see things. "As an undergrad in art school at ASU I was highly influenced by Andy Warhol and Cezanne. Andy for the way he lived his life as a performer and filter for pop life and Cezanne for his study of shifting perspective as the painter captures what is seen.
I have always wanted to paint what it feels like to see. I explored this in a series called, Trigger Items: Illusions in Discount Shopping. One of the key items is the peg board holes in product displays. I was curious about sensation and perception and how fast the brain processes peripheral information as we move past it. These dots are prominent in my work for the purpose of acknowledging how they become an unconscious distraction that disorients a shopper just enough to highlight the item on display.
Another part of being an artist that I enjoy is the ritual and practice of developing and honing technique. I do this through creating decorative paintings that match couches and interior spaces. I'm quite in love with the notion that someone may purchase my painting because it matches their furniture. This is something we were encouraged to shy away from in art school but I find it flattering and I am honored to offer a slightly functional element to some of the work I create."
Wendy, an Arizona-born artist, was influenced early on by adobe architecture, Native American pottery, and sand paintings of her native region. She later moved to San Diego, California, where she studied ceramics, expanding her artistic expertise to include jewelry, furniture, painting, sculpting, and majolica, a traditional English style and technique.
After spending some time in Savannah, Georgia, and New York City, where her art was commissioned and sold on Madison Avenue, Wendy returned to Arizona, where she currently resides, selling her art to the Tucson Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Fine Art.
Elaine says she has always been interested in art and remembers announcing she was one when she was about 5 or 6. “I took art classes all through school, including college where I received a BFA in Art History/Studio from Virginia Commonwealth University. In my senior year I took a textile design and dye class - batik and tie-dye which met in the weaving studio. When I saw the looms I thought to myself 'I want to do that.' I learned to weave a couple of years after graduation, bought a loom and started showing and selling my work.
My work has evolved over the years to include other textile techniques learned through various workshops at Penland School of Crafts, Arrowmont, ProChemical and Dye and the Art League, Alexandria, Va: Shibori - Japanese shaped resist dyeing, painting on silk, felting, and Kasuri - Japanese technique where the design is dyed into the yarn before weaving.
I've taught classes from my studio; taught hands on dye activities at The Textile Museum in Washington, DC and given lectures to the Textile Museum docents on dye terminology.
I consider myself a colorist and since moving to Ajo I have been working towards doing more with natural dyes in all of my textile work.”
Guillermo, born May 14, 1943 in Kino bay, is a graduate in Art Design and painting in Mexico City. He lived his childhood in Kino Bay and Puerto Peñasco, in the state of Sonora.
He worked in Lubbock, Texas as a silkscreen artist and sign painter. Then moved on to Advertising for Ad Service Publications in City of Commerce, California. He has done photography and painting.
He study painting in California, also cinematography, and radio and television advertising in Pasadena College. Also study acting in Nosotros Latino Actors Group in Los Angeles and aspects of film making, editing and filming and cinematography.
He writes chronicles and novels in Spanish. He paints in acrylics. He is married to Katy Munro. Have three daughters and two sons: Alexandra, Eunice, Claudine, Guillermo Jr. and Hector.
Jimmie Lee, graduated from Greenville County Museum of Art School with an art degree in painting, printmaking, and sculpture. He has public collections in the First National Bank of Henderson, Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc., Canyon Ranch Resort & Spa, Windstar Cruise Lines, Family Counseling Agency in Tucson, and Scottsdale Resort Hotels.
His work may be found in other public and private collections in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan.
Arnold is a native of South Los Angeles, California. He attended John C. Fremont High School, University of Oregon, Loyola Marymount University and Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.
He has traveled to numerous countries in pursuit of the canvases that nature has painted. The photographer has packed his camera gear off to such places as Myanmar(Burma), Jamaica, Yukon Territory, Alaska, Western Canada, Afghanistan, Mexico, El Salvador, England, Japan, Korea, Guatemala, Nicaragua, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Panama, Honduras, Costa Rica, Germany, Holland, Thailand and others.
Arnold is a veteran of the U.S. Army Security Agency. He is an avid fisherman, reader, chess player and paper-maker. He sells his work at art shows, galleries, by word of mouth and more recently on the net but he prefers art shows as it gives him the opportunity to meet clients face to face and talk travel and photography. Arnold is also is a hand paper-maker and uses the paper to mount his images or mat them or as greeting cards and sells to art and framing stores as straight art pieces in themselves or as matting material."
Website: http://www.9bears.com/
Karen's LunarStar pottery, now in its 17th year of production, was founded as a tribute to Genevieve, Karen's daughter who passed unexpectedly. Working from square one, Karen's love of creating built, grew and prospered her pottery and art business. Always striving to produce top quality art, Karen has delved into the mysteries behind glazing techniques that produce a unique signature style many collectors simply describe as beautiful.
