Our Artists
Meet our artists
Joshua Adam Risner
Joshua Adam Risner grew up in rural central Ohio. Following high school he pursued a career in commercial art holding jobs such as sign painter, graphic designer, creative director and business owner. At the age of thirty he left the commercial art industry to attend Ashland University where he earned a BFA in painting with an art history minor. After finishing his undergraduate degree Risner moved to Michigan to pursue a graduate degree. He earned his MFA from Kendall College of Art and Design where he received a full tuition fellowship. He has won numerous awards for his oil paintings and drawings. He is best know for his portrait painting. He currently has six portraits on display at the Michigan State Capitol including the monumental portrait of Governor Rick Snyder.
Calli Salazar
Calli Salazar is a full time abstract artist here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She began her artistic career shortly after moving to Grand Rapids from her home town of Las Vegas, Nevada back in 2016. Calli's work is ever changing, she thrives in the variable and believes her work is an embodiment of that.
Bill Schahfer
These past couple of years Bill has been fortunate to be able to work from home, where he has been able to watch the flower garden cycle thru the seasons. Bill combines his photographs with other images for different effects, such as multiple exposures and textured backgrounds. The beauty in his garden is a major source of inspiration.
Marcia Guetschow
Marcia went to college for a BFA, studying drawing and watercolor painting. She became an art teacher earning a Masters in Art Education and over the years taught art to people of all ages, from children to adults. She focuses her creative energies on Japanese woodblock printmaking.
To Marcia, moku hanga, is the most satisfying way to capture the things she sees and feels. It is a way of recording the beauty and strength of nature, She finds each step of the process enjoyable, and it has lead her on a wonderful journey.
Juan Laden
Juan has been shooting photographs since 1968, his desire is to create an image that speaks too many more stories than what is in the photograph. He continues to shoot film and work with "wet" photography in the dark room.
Kelsey Seibert
Kelsey believes we connect with others through social media, art, similar interests, beliefs, and experiences. Her art is rooted in her feeling that we exist by being adaptable and flexible. Seeing the good in life and not letting the bad tear us down. We have hope, passion, and love in all that we do, Kelsey works to capture this feeling in her paintings.
Rosanne Coty
Rosanne Coty is a painter, designer, and photographer who received her BFA from the formerly affiliated Aquinas College, and the Kendall College of Art and Design, both in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Additional studies include the Scottsdale Artist School in Arizona. Past work included children’s clothing design, including that with the Disney license, and teaching Community Art instruction with Kendall College. Frequent participation in Grand Rapids’ ArtPrize increased her art exposure to the public and gained her a compliment from New York art critic, Jerry Saltz, who called her a "true artist". Coty strives to create thought provoking works to elicit an emotional response. “Tight cropping and color usage creates intensity, intimacy, and mood. I like to give people a different perspective and I make intentional choices to connect with the viewer. A fresh perspective can deepen our compassion and understanding, or renew respect for our world. My art is intended for everyone, and I appreciate opportunities to reach new audiences."
Moritz Kellerman
Born in Nicaragua, Moritz relocated to the United States and received a BA from the University of Washington and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. His work is an exploration of the glazing technique across the color spectrum. Moritz has been exhibited at a wide range of college campuses, museums and galleries. Today, as an artist and educator he continues to explore the layering of colors in his paintings.
Linda McConaughy
Linda considers her work to be a visual record of an unscripted dialogue between the constructed and natural worlds. She constructs boxes in which she arranges found objects to represent or evoke a memory of her experience of place. The boxes are typically small in scale and contain objects collected on site. In her current project she began asking people to send descriptions of everyday delights — handwritten — to discover what small objects, acts, or experiences brought joy and contentment to everyday life. Based on traditional apothecary cabinets, her hope is that this modern apothecary could be used to elicit delight on demand, whenever it is needed.
JoAnn Kennedy
JoAnn began working in pastels after years of teaching Basic Drawing and Basic Color and Design. She loves the pure pigment and bold colors pastels produce - and the striking effects she can get by applying one strong color next to another. She uses light and shadow to evoke emotion and pastel pencils to add detail as this is also an important part of her work. JoAnn arrives at her subject matter by roaming through old farms, museums and antique shops, looking for inspiration from the past. She tries to focus on imagery that is unique and tells some type of story. Her work is both meditative and meticulous, sometimes taking hours and hours to complete. Through intuition she always knows when a piece is complete.
Kirsty Godsell
Kirsty is a British based Fiber Artist, working with raw materials sourced from local farms. Her inspiration comes from the vast array of flora and fauna found in the UK countryside. Kirsty loves to forage for seasonal vegetation that can be used to dye the raw fiber and produces both wearable and decorative art.
Simone Christen
Simones paintings are abstract, reduced in color and content and mainly reflecting emotions and atmospheres. She focuses on balance without losing suspension, searching for reduction without banality, always intrigued by universal concepts of form, mass, proportion, rhythm and structure. Simone works in both, acrylics on canvas and water media on paper. The first, supplemented with natural materials like ash, rock flour or sand, allows her to create subtle textures and intriguing materialities, the second draws her in with luminous transparency, flow and spontaneity. Simone dives into deep color spaces, moving sensitive lines, placing subtle marks, and observing attentively the dynamic interaction between the different players. Experimentation is an essential part of her artistic process, and she always keeps the door open for surprises.
Kelly Ingleright-Telgenhoff
For Kelly, elevating a single, isolated object (or small collection of objects) through painting or sculpture, brings great peace and mental stimulation. The simplicity and sophistication of simple objects as a focal point allows her to wander through vast areas of space or to feel confined in some other settings. Generally, the mood Kelly tries to conjure is one of calm tranquility, one might even say serenity through the use of water imagery, nature, and items found in nature.
Kellys works often draw reference from the Great Lakes region, and also, the Southwest as she has lived in both areas and finds great meaning in nature regarding these two vastly different ecologies.
Brittney Grant
Brittney's pieces have been created with a desire to convey feeling through simple line and color work. They are inspired by various landscapes that invoke a similar feeling of awe and a sense of completeness.
Keith Buswell
Keith Buswell graduated with a BFA in art University of Nebraska--Lincoln. He works with various printmaking processes such as screen-printing, intaglio and mono printing and dabbles in drawing and multimedia. He currently is a member of Karen Kunc’s Constellation Studios where he creates his prints. His work has been shown in the United States, Egypt, Dubai, France and Italy. Notably, Keith received the Perry Family Award in 2018 and second place in the 40 Under 40 Showcase in Annapolis, MD.
Arena Shawn
Arena Shawn was a science major and obtained a Ph.D. in Physics in 2008 from Purdue University. However, her passion for art has prompted her to take many art classes and workshops around the country, and eventually lead to her leaving her job as a silicon engineer and studying in a classical atelier in the 19th century French academic lineage. It is there that she studied traditional life drawing, painting, and sculpture with great emphasis on in-depth study and classical techniques and the joy of working in a direct observational style in nature. Her still life arrangements are set up in her north light studio and painted directly from life. She paints directly so that her relationship to the subject is heightened in the moment in order to pass on that perception and experience to the viewer resulting in a painting that looks like a painting and not a photograph. Arena chooses objects and arrangements to create the most aesthetically beautiful design and a feeling of abundance and intimacy. These arrangements are influenced by centuries of traditional still life painting from the Dutch Masters of the 1600s to French Academics of the 1900s. From there, she strives to create paintings combining an old master feel with rich color and painterly brushstrokes.
Shannon Mack
Shannon Mack is a multidisciplinary artist exploring movement and color relationships found in nature, reinterpreting, and forming layered visual dialogs. The process is intuitive and often unplanned, resulting in raw, emotive evidence of life.
Rebecca Stevens
Judith Ford
Art has tightly held Judith's heart since childhood and ultimately became a spiritual journey of learning to trust her inner voice. Judith's art making is always evolving, intuitive, soul nourishing and FUN. Her personal Mantra “ Look for Joy and Listen for Guidance” is embedded in her art practice. Her pieces are full of color and spirit, whether figurative or abstract. Judith continues to learn and push herself to create art that can inspire and uplift.
Sayoko Wunsch
Sayoko is a mom of two and an artist. She has taught art to children in her community for over 15 years. The pandemic has allowed Sayoko to focus on her own art, painting her beautiful family and friends, portraying them in warm and heartwarming scenes.
Mauricio Perry
Mauricio Perry focuses in macro, close-up, still life, and non-figurative images. He digitally post-processes and crops simple, trivial photos “found” through keen observation, into unrecognizable, disconcerting images. As a self-taught photographer, he returned to photography after a hiatus of several years.
He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires. Later, he lived in Puerto Rico and currently in the Ft. Lauderdale area (Florida).
Dave Hull
Dave uses a multiplane camera to capture his images. The multiplane camera is traditionally a motion picture camera used in animation. After the objects are placed on the glass, lights are placed and adjusted. The camera pointed down “sees” the world created on the layers of glass…in camera. What you see is what you get! It is a combination of sculpture, lighting and photography. This “dance” of light and objects can take days to get the desired results.
Jeremy Blair
Jeremy investigates the intersections of place and self by developing cameraless photograms that transform found organic materials into personal narratives. Jeremy creates photograms outside in rural settings in a custom-designed light-proof darkroom tent. He ultimately observes vital ecologies in nature and documents experiences through light and chemistry, leading to an intimate connection with place, material, and self.
Maxwell Silva Batista
Maxwell creates intricate wall pieces that inspire you to really stop and investigate every crevice and corner. Inspired by architecture, nature, and the world, each piece is meticulously designed, laser-cut, and assembled bringing detailed shapes and forms to life. Maxwell, a Brazilian native based in Canada, loves all kinds of woodworking. He enjoys traveling the world to find inspiration and learn about the cultures he interacts with. Currently Maxwell has travelled to over 25 countries.
Erikka Spaid
Creating artwork has always been a journey of self exploration and expression for Erikka, she creates images of her interpretations of the landscape because it is free, unbiased, and unburdened. Nature is consistently resilient, strong, and learning to adapt to surroundings. Erikka chooses to encapsulate the essence and qualities of landscape to influence her paintings.