Kimberly A. Alvis has been painting for as long as she can remember. After winning first place in the CYO Art Contest on Staten Island, at the age of 8, she continued to study figure drawing and painting throughout High School and College. She graduated The Pennsylvania State University in 1987 with a B. A. in Art. She then entered the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied costume design, set design and art direction but left the Tisch School to pursue her career in the fine arts.

She has since studied at the Fechin Institute in New Mexico, The Ecole Albert Defois School in France, and The Art Students League in New York City. She has studied under the masters David Leffel, Sherrie Mcgraw, Michal Burban, and Gregg Kreutz to further develop her skills as a fine arts painter.

Kimberly’s artwork has been shown internationally, as well as in the United States. Her artwork has been exhibited at The Art Students League and The Salmagundi Club in NYC, The Huntsman Fine Arts Gallery in Aspen Colorado, and The Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit in NYC. Locally, Kimberly’s work can be seen at the Sommerhill Gallery in Chapel Hill and The Little Art Gallery and Craft Collection in Raleigh.

Visit Kimberly Alvis website

David Sovero was born in 1971 in Lima, Peru. He graduated from the Peruvian National Arts College where he attended from 1990 -1996. He has a strong academic foundation.

During his career as an artist in Peru, Sovero participated in many different exhibitions, solo and in groups, and won many honors and awards. Since his arrival to the United States in December, 2001, he has taken part in many exhibitions in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and other areas of North Carolina.

Sovero is an artist who creates layers of rich color, offering us new forms, concepts, and elements of art, over many generations. David's Incan ancestral roots are saturated with thousands of years of Andean stylized figures. His everyday existence and relationships are intimately tied to his work. Shadowy, semi-abstract specters emerge from the darkness of his canvas. His surreal compositions and simplistic geometric forms are based on lines, textures, and many dimensions, giving freedom to his talent and creativity.

Visit David Sovero website

 

Laura Nufire has been involved in art since 1985, beginning with metalsmithing, then exploring stained glass, and finally abstract painting. She comes from a creative family with many artists from her maternal side.

I have sought through the course of my life to reclaim the loose spontaneity and confidence of a child in my art. I pursue my art as a meditation and as a state of mind that taps into a wide scope of sensation, memory and experience, allowing a composition full of imagery and abstraction to issue forth. As a child, one is able to achieve this meditative state unconsciously and unselfconsciously. The most fertile ground for creativity, this state is more tangible for a child because there are no hang-ups, fewer emotional entanglements, prejudices and obstacles brought on by experience and dogma. The closer the adult comes to a more open and fluid state of mind, the more he or she should be able to take experience and technique and give presence and pertinence to their art.

The most daunting of tasks is to quiet the world and carry this meditation into the often chaotic buzz of our everyday lives. My ultimate goal is to carry on with all of my daily activities, mundane as well as profound, with this keen awareness and detachment. When I enter my studio my goal is the same. I briefly enter into a world where I become one with the process, the media, and the surface being created upon. I don't usually know what the end result will be, so I am not completely aware of the why and how when I am in the middle of a piece. For this reason I am dedicated to tapping in to an energy that transcends my logical leanings, allowing an intuition to emerge that relies solely on aesthetic principles and this, coupled with the knowledge of "how to paint", hopefully creates something compelling and memorable. An integral part of the process is a communication with the piece and after making many decisions and working on other paintings, allowing the pieces to gestate in their own ways, I come back when they command me and I dive back into them with marks, strokes, and pallet knife gashes. I do three things in this moment; I either reveal new elements by accentuating them, create elements that were not present before, or I diminish elements that are not working. I do this until the painting and the forces surrounding us communicate that we are finished and I never know when this moment will come until it does. It is always a surprise and something of a "Eureka!!" moment.

Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will. --Paul Klee

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the artist do good things.--Ogden Nash

"North American Landscapes in Pastel "

Dan Vaughan has always had a love and appreciation for art. His retirement in 2003 from the University of North Carolina allowed him the opportunity to devote time to painting for the first time. In 2006 he was an artist-in-residence for 11 weeks in the Badland's National Park in South Dakota. Removed from his usual routine, he had time to get totally immersed in his new found passion. In his pastel landscapes he paints a wide variety of beautiful vistas in North America, sometimes incorporating wildlife in their natural habitat. The coast of the Carolinas and Big Sur, as well as the mountainous terrains of Utah, Colorado, Alberta, and British Columbia have all provided inspiration. He has enjoyed plein air painting local scenes in Orange, Chatham, Durham, and Alamance counties as well.

Dan Vaughan can reached at dvaughan@email.unc.edu

Karen Stone began painting in middle age and has moved in recent years form watercolor on paper to collage and to acrylic on canvas."I am inspired by music and by forms and colors on nature. beyond that very little about painting is accessible verbally."

Chris Beachman has been painting for about two years. "My inital influence came from the Dadaists who saw the absurdity and tragedy of life. Since then he has been drawn to the more abstract expressionist art but the dadaists continues to provide my muse."