• Keira Boertzel-Smith is a shining example that an individual can successfully reinvent him or herself. After the birth of her first child, Keira was motivated to become a more authentic version of her self by putting aside her legal career and reconnecting with her creative side. She currently has an art business made up of art and note cards sold in local stores and commissioned pieces. Keira considers herself to be a visionary artist, creating art from her experiences, emotions, and instincts rather than from schooled instruction. Keira’s medium of choice is cut-paper art. She hand paints her paper with acrylic colors. Keira is inspired by her up bringing on Guam and Hawaii, as well as her time spent in San Francisco, Michigan, and currently in metro-NYC. Keira creates her art to bring more positive energy into this world.
• Vicki Reikes Fox Bio coming soon!
• Miriam Jacobs Though Miriam Jacobs was drawing non-stop since she was a child, it wasn’t until art school that she discovered a passion for drawing the human figure. Her study continues, many years since finishing school, and recently, she has extended her interest in the human form to clay sculpture. Miriam has also been working on textiles for a few years now, doing batik and disperse dye monoprinting. She has used these methods to make neckties, scarves and Judaica, including her first wedding canopy. Miriam has exhibited her work in museums, small galleries, and shops, and plans to continue to push herself outside her of comfort zone as often as possible. Visit www.merteltheturlefabricarts.com for more information on Miriam.
• Maria Papale is both fine artist and artisan, pursuing two creative passions: pastel painting and her Marigold line of handcrafted vintage creations. A self-professed pattern enthusiast, Maria worked in New York as a stylist/design director in the textile industry. For years she has collected vintage wallpaper, gift-wrap, fabric and cards from the 1930s-1950s as well as vintage embellishments. The Marigold line of decorative items includes Christmas ornaments, picture frames, note cards and book marks fashioned from these distinctly beautiful materials. Maria is also a representational pastel painter currently focusing on detailed still lifes featuring vibrant fruit, glassware and pewter emerging from their surroundings. Her award winning paintings have been featured in numerous exhibitions and hang in many private collections. For more information e-mail maria@mpapale.com.
• Amy Faye Polen is a jewelry designer who collects vintage trinkets such as rhinestone buttons, lockets, cameos, Monopoly game pieces, antique chandelier crystals and old subway tokens, which she then fashions into necklaces and bracelets in unexpected combinations. Amy is also an assemblage artist, who uses these same elements along with printed images and music box movements to create her three-dimensional pieces. The assemblages have the same playful, yet romantic feel as her original line of jewelry. This season, Amy has added hand-crafted sterling silver charm necklaces to her collection. Charms are personalized with a hand stamped initial or symbol, such as a heart, star, peace sign, paw print, foot print, or flower. For more information, contact amyfaye@comcast.net.
• Anne Sailer is an artist working with semi-precious stones; metals; beads of glass, metal and mineral; and textiles. Anne mixes these materials to create wearable, sculptural, and decorative art. Anne works consciously with and “listens to” her media to create pieces that support the materials and enhance their energy—and no two pieces are alike. Buyers of Anne’s work describe it as “warm and wonderful,” “powerful and grounding,” and “bringing clarity and peace.” Visit Anne’s website for more info: www.annesailer.com.
• Stefanie Silverman has been inspired by nature her whole life, as an artist and previously as an environmental writer, editor, and educator. She works in pastel and mixed media. Whether painting in her studio or outdoors, Stefanie enjoys feeling connected to the environment as she paints, and she enjoys seeing people’s emotional response to a special place, season, or time in the finished work. Her paintings have been in solo and group art exhibitions, have won awards, and hang in many private collections. For more information, visit www.stefaniesilverman.com. In addition to fine art, several of Stefanie’s paintings are reproduced on note cards, and she also creates handmade greeting cards.