Music and Poetry

Born: Detroit, MI

Schools: Wayne State University; University of California

at Long Beach; Arizona State University.

B.A. in Art and Sociology.

Graduate Certificate in Counseling.

I have been working and exhibiting as a fine artist for twenty years. I am also a poet and performance artist.

For fifteen years, I worked as the Director for a mental health program. I emphasized the benefits of art and writing to help clients control symptoms. I developed and facilitated several art and writing workshops for mental health consumers.

Since 2003, I have devoted my full attention to art. I work in collage, assemblage, painting and digital imagery. My work has been featured in several Palm Springs galleries including Evocative Arts, M-Modern, The Vault, and Gallery Mystere. I was represented by the Karen Long Gallery in Long Beach, CA. My newest art combines both assemblage and digital prints. Recently I've also experimented with more traditional abstract painting.

Lisa Bahouth studied art at Rhode Island School of Design and received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture. The award-winning artist and concert pianist exhibited her work in New York City before moving to Los Angeles.

Her art encompasses ideas about architecture, structure(s), habitat and space shaped harmoniously in a continuous process inspired by musical composition.

As she puts it in her own words: "Painting is my primary laboratory where I explore concrete and vague ideas simultaneously, in a formal structure that hopefully holds some play and whimsy. Although my work has the appearance of abstraction, it is not non-objective; conveying references to rooms, interiors and conceptual spaces. Paintings, drawings and installations often refer to each other as I build upon groups of work. "

In her more recent works, she has been exploring the creation of biomorphic shapes and word compositions merging into an all-encompassing metaphysical style.

Bahouth’s work is currently on exhibit internationally in Japan, Russia, Armenia, and the US.

J. Natasha Kostan lives and works in Los Angeles and has been painting in multimedia for the past 30 years. She has studied Fashion and Interior Design in England and Fine Arts and Art History in the United States, and received her BFA from Immaculate Heart College. Her work includes oils, acrylics, mixed media and collage on canvas and on paper.

She studied printmaking extensively under Maurizio Barattucci, a well-known and highly respected artist and instructor. The printmaking process has been an inspiration for developing intriguing primary surfaces and the metamorphosis of Natasha's works on paper. Natasha states: "Ancient, and far away places and their unique moods created by light and changing color evoke intense responses and compel me to create my work. In order to capture every mood to my personal satisfaction, the surfaces have to be superimposed and juxtaposed, creating major and minor accents with some kind of harmony."

Her eclectic style is a manifestation of her multi-hued vision of the world. Her work expresses her experience of living in and traveling through several cultures. "Her palette reflects warmth, balance and strength," said the late Barbara Hagar, California artist, teacher and mentor with whom Natasha studied for many years. Numerous corporations as well as private collectors throughout the United States and England own her paintings. She has exhibited solo and in groups in the United States and Armenia.

Shahla Bebe is an award-winning photographer, was trained in graphic art, photography and post-production.

By 1996, photography had become Shahla’s profession and passion. Her life experiences led her to fine art photography as the best medium for artistic expression. Shahla has maintained a keen involvement all throughout in different groups and organizations dealing with political and social concerns. She believes that the Digital Art creates unique and powerful means to speak about issues that torment or exhilarate her.

Shahla Bebe’s Digital art as well as photography has been on display in various group exhibitions in the States, Canada, and Europe.

Helen Berger was born in London, England to Russian émigré parents. It was a family of musicians/painters/singers and she grew up surrounded by these artists, making her sensibilities pretty much pre determined. She has been an artist all her life. After years of family influence and guidance, independent study in Paris, London and Los Angeles, assisting established artists and attending numerous workshops, she considers herself self-taught.

After using many different mediums over the years - wood, paper, clay, found objects, fabric and the camera. – Helen then settled into working with wood, paper and acrylic.

Her previous process was to layer paint, painted and cut paper onto a wood panel, continuing in multiple sanded layers and finishing with a distinct application of paint to emphasize the negative spaces. This work started out as a chaos of color, she challenged herself to recreate a mood of coherence, clarity and harmony on the panel.

Her latest series, although still on wood panel and using vellum, gesso and acrylic, blends the simplicity of repetitive shape with simple color and textural contrasts to create a play between tension and harmony.

MSME USC 1966; Professor CSUN 1965 - 2007

Kunik was originally a plein-air watercolorist, but wanting to work more conceptually, she returned to school, earning a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Informed by environmental and global issues, Kunik’s abstract paintings began referencing these same issues, prompting a four-year community gardening project, which also explored photography and perception. Thus began her investigation of process: combining photography and painting and a unique emulsion process for photographs.

Kunik has been in more than 100 exhibitions in galleries and museums in California, New York and internationally, including Italy, Germany, Japan, Thailand and Peru. She recently received three Gold Awards and five Awards for Excellence for her work at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum. She has shown at Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, and Photo LA. Kunik was born in Chicago, Illinois, earning a BA degree from the University of Illinois and an MS from DePaul University. She moved to California in 1978, where she currently resides.