Artists of COSECHA
Jenny Armer
Jenny Armer grew up in San Diego and has always been a creative person. It wasn’t until college that she really took it seriously when she decided to switch from being a math major and decided to study art. She attended Grossmont College and took just about every art class she could, starting with drawing and painting. Then transferred to San Francisco State University where she received her bachelor’s degree in studio art with an emphasis in photography. While attending SFSU she was introduced to printmaking and immediately fell in love with the medium. After Graduating she moved back to San Diego and decided to keep exploring classes. Printmaking brought her to San Diego Mesa College and while she attended that class she decided to take another class called Museum Studies. Something that was offered at SFSU but she never had the time to take. Finally going through this program was something she considers to be one of the best decisions she made. It opened up so many doors and opportunities to work at a handful of San Diego Museums and Art Organizations, and the chance to work with some pretty amazing artists. She now works full-time at Mesa’s Art Gallery, and enjoys getting to share her experiences and love for the field and our San Diego arts community with students. In her spare time, she tries to make art as often as she can. She is always trying to find ways to combine the different mediums she has learned over the years. She usually works small because she feels like the pieces become these precious objects that you have to take the time to look at closely to really appreciate them.
Liliana Cruz
Liliana Cruz received a Bachelor Degree in Graphic Design from National University of Mexico in 1994. Since 2019 she has primarily focused on ceramics, dividing her studies between Lustre Estudio in Tijuana, B.C. and Southwestern College in Chula Vista, California. Her specific interest is in organic forms and the use of colorants such as slips, engobes, and oxide stains. In addition, her studies include the use of different clays and firing techniques. She is currently creating a series of vessels inspired by volcanos.
Cole Douglas
Cole is an engineer-turned-artist who juxtaposes the Black experience and nature to investigate and understand how his community can heal in spite of existential threats and generational cycles. After graduating Dartmouth College with a mechanical engineering degree, Cole sought art as a mode of healing and connection for himself and his community at large. Through his large-scale abstract works, he utilizes varied color, form, and textures to create stimulating abstract works that his community can draw healing and inspiration from.
Dianna Elizardo
I'm Dianna, a writer based in San Diego currently contemplating roots. Like, where to lay them and how to weave together the different parts of who I am with the environment and my community. While fiction prose is my main craft, I often expand into zine making, linocut printing, and collaging to express myself. I create art that serves as moments of escape or reflection for those who seek it.
Katie Flores
Katie Flores (Inclusion Art By Katie) is a prolific and passionate painter who has been described as a "color prodigy". Born in 1994, she happens to have autism. For many years she struggled with the intensity and vibrancy of life. However, as soon as Katie picked up the brush and felt the resistance of paint under her hand, painting became a powerful mode of expression. She works along with a team of creative mentors who help support and facilitate her in her professional journey as an artist! Katie is also an artist in residence at Revision San Diego.
Sora Gallagher
Sora Gallagher is a San Diego based artist. They are interested in exploring the contradictions within themselves and society using mixed mediums. Sora tries to blend mediums and techniques that seem at odds with each other, yet can still coexist together, either finely blended, openly contrasting, or anything in between.
Justin Hammond
Justin Hammond uses his art as a vessel for his stories. His work channels surreal moments as a child discovering remnants of a neighborhood washed away by a flood and the wildlife that consumed it. It became a playground for the imagination, of which, for the last decade, he has sought to recapture the essence. The landscapes he crafts inhabit troubled and knowledge-hungry figures born from trees loomed in the obscurity of their origins. Justin is fascinated with the image of memories crystallizing into a physically obtainable source and existing as a form of treasure to the figures within the hexagonal landscapes.
Aleya Lanteigne
Aleya Lanteigne (she/they) is a queer artist originally from Indianapolis Indiana, who currently lives and works in San Diego California. They are a graduate of San Diego State University (MFA-Furniture Design and Woodworking) and Herron School of Art and Design (BFAs-Furniture Design and Sculpture). They have shown work across the country, from Washington D.C to Los Angeles, and are involved in the local Arts community in San Diego. They can be found around the city teaching Contemporary Craft Workshops, installing artwork in museums/galleries, and dismantling furniture in unexpected places.
Kathleen Mitchell
Kathleen Mitchell was born in Jacksonville, North Carolina (1958) into a family that relocated frequently during her first 9 years. A lifelong maker of art, it has been said that her stegosaurus sculpture at the age of 6 was the best piece of pinched clay in all of Northeastern Pennsylvania. In 1967 her family settled in the multi-cultural city of San Diego, California. Here, she blended her proud Celtic heritage with a love of Mexican folk art. Both appear frequently in her work, much of which is mixed media with blown and cast glass as prominent components.
Chrissa OBrien
Chrissa OBrien is a graduate of San Diego State University with highest honors and emphasis on painting. She also works in ceramic sculpture.
Lulu Yueming Qu
Lulu Yueming Qu is a professional artist and art teacher with the US Arts Education Center in San Diego. She moved from Beijing to New York in 2014 and relocated to San Diego in 2018, and founded her LLC “LULU.LIVE ART” in 2019. She has a Master’s degree in traditional Chinese painting at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and a second Master’s in Illustration at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, granting her a unique artistic style to combine traditional Chinese painting and story-telling illustration together. Her clients Include magazines, restaurants, fashion studios and education programs, such as GoodWill NYNJ, Eurostar, China National Radio, Joe's Pizza, Angelika Film Center, FIT Foundation, MILK x HongKong Magazine, Institute of Culinary Education, Edible Magazine, ArtReach, SDG&E, Harry’s Table by Cipriani, Serena & Lily …
Katie Ruiz
Katie Ruiz is a Chicana artist (1984-current), She is an interdisciplinary artist, making work in painting and fiber sculpture. She is most well known for her blanket series in which she portrays couples standing or lying under colorful Mexican blankets. Geometric patterns and bright colors are reiterated throughout her work. She is also known for her activism work with refugees, The Pompom Project, and children’s book Brian the Wildflower. Ruiz has a Bachelors Degree of Fine Art from Northern Arizona University and a Masters degree of Fine Art from The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture in NYC.
Cheryl Tall
Cheryl Tall is a Carlsbad artist whose work focuses on relationships between people and environments, and includes architectural and figurative elements. She is known or her pinch coil technique, which gives her ceramic work a texture reminiscent of scales, petals or roof shingles. Tall is inspired by folk and outsider art from her many travels. An early childhood steeped in fantasy, due to her family working at Disney World, Florida, has given her work a colorful sense of animation and humor. Originally from Miami, Florida, Tall has lived in Carlsbad, CA, since 2001. Tall earned a BFA in Art from the University of Central Florida and an MFA from the University of Miami in ceramics. Her work is included in books, and museum, corporate and private collections.
Orysya Barua
Orysya Barua is a Ukrainian artist living in San Diego. She works in various techniques and styles. Her art is influenced by traditional Ukrainian decorative designs and Art Nouveau style.
Gabriela Ponce Curlango
Gabriela Ponce Curlango is a Mexican-American artist studying Fine Arts and Photography at San Diego City College. After spending the last seven years at Xbox as one of the nation’s leading women and Latinx professionals in video game development, she has turned her full attention to pursuing a formal education in visual arts. Originally from El Centro, California, Gabriela is the proud granddaughter of farmworkers and the daughter of a Math educator father and dedicated community advocate mother. She is also a graduate of UC San Diego, where she was one of a small minority of women in her class to earn a degree in Computer Science. Now, as a full-time artist she is forming collaborative relationships with San Diego and Madrid-based artists and has explored every artistic medium she can get her hands on. In the future, Gabriela plans to move to Spain to continue her studies and ultimately combine her passions into a single multidisciplinary career.
Barbara Rabkin
Rachel Droessler's 11-year career as an archaeologist fostered a love of nature, history, and the beauty of historical architecture. She has always loved creating various forms of art and began her professional art career in 2019. Her favorite mediums are printmaking, gouache, pen and ink, and watercolors.
Shannon English
I am a spoken word poet, a home cook (with an affinity for squash), and a maker of sorts. I am passionate about connecting with my local farm community, learning to cook with what’s in season, and exploring movement in the outdoors.
Diana Fuentes
I'm a mexican native hailing from the vibrant city of Tijuana, I have worn many hats in my lifespan one of them being an artist, for which I dedicated six years to cultivating my artistic growth and sharing it to the world. My individual work delves into the ethereal androgyny of the human form, exploring the depths of beauty, identity, and the impacts of our surroundings, through traditional mediums such as pencil , watercolor and gouache. In addition to my individual pursuits I have collaborated in art collectives, helping with building sets that breathe life to artistic visions, my passion also extends to community involvement, working with associations in Tijuana to bring art to diverse communities. Today I find myself as a museum worker, committed to making our cultural resources accessible to our diverse community.
Christine Galuppo
I was born and raised in San Diego with strong ties to my parents' native homeland of the Philippines. Growing up in one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods of San Diego, my upbringing was critical in forming a strong sense of empathy and understanding for the immigrant experience. I am drawn to environments that foster equity and diversity. Inherently curious and adept at visual thinking, artistic creativity is at the forefront of who I am. Having painted since I was a teen, art (whether abstract or literal) has always been my primary mode of expression. I received formal training in fine arts, interior/graphic design from San Diego State University, with graduate education in sustainable community development and social responsibility from California Polytechnic State University, Pomona.
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Terri Hughes-Oelrich
Terri Hughes-Oelrich is an artist residing in San Diego and a Professor of Art at San Diego City College. She received her MFA degree from San Diego State University and a BA in Art Studio from University of California, Santa Barbara.
Gaby López
Gaby is a first generation Mexican American artist from San Diego. Growing up, she spent many of her days at various family gatherings in Mexico and California. The memories and relationships created with family are the subject of her work. Gaby uses acrylic paint in traditional cultural colors to convey setting, emotion, and put her heritage on display. Her goal as an artist is to continue to connect with her heritage while painting love letters to her family.
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Chrisanne Moats
I am a self-taught artist and most of my work is assemblage, though I do like to paint. I use found objects to make large and small-scale sculptures, sometimes combined with my photography of abandoned places. Like archaeological discoveries, discarded things found in urban spaces tell humanities story. I like to put these objects together and create a dialogue of who we are collectively or perhaps create a new myth about who we were. Inspired by nature, humanity, the magical and mundane, I see art in everything. I like to write poetry, and make films and I’ve been known to break out in song on a rare occasion.
Christopher Padilla
Chris Padilla is a first-generation American who grew up between Tijuana and San Diego. He holds two bachelor’s degrees from SDSU in Art History as well as Painting & Printmaking. Chris is an experienced teaching artist who has worked in printmaking and as a leatherwork instructor at UCSD. Currently he is the director of the Athenaeum Art Center in Logan Heights and continues his printmaking and leatherworking practice at his studio in City Heights.
Barbara Rabkin
Barbara Rabkin, a self-educated multi-media artist, taught and exhibited her art in her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. She continued to teach and show her art in Panama, where she and her late husband lived for 9 years. Barbara currently lives and creates art in her home studio in Carmel Valley, San Diego. Barbara received her BA degree in political science from George Washington University 1967, and received a BSc in Nursing from Columbia University in 1974. She has worked in non profit development in education and women’s healthcare. In Panama, Barbara opened a studio and taught silk painting to visiting tourists as well as residents from throughout the region. She also took advantage of the colorful culture and impressive landscapes to create large quilted impressionistic tapestries in her hand dyed silk, as well as watercolors and acrylic paintings. Barbara’s art- acrylics, watercolors, oils, pencil, collages, mosaics, clay, textiles- shows her affinity for the rich colors and bold lines of the expressionists. Her works on paper and mixed media collages are playful experiments in the interaction of color, pattern and shape. Barbara’s commissions and other works are in private collections throughout Panama, Israel, Europe and the US.
Maggie Shen
Maggie Shen is a multidisciplinary artist with degrees in Studio Art, Education, and Art Therapy. She grew up in Taiwan, studied Art Therapy in the United States, and spent 7 years in France and Switzerland. Her work has been shown in venues such as the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Warehouse No. 20, the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, and the Nan Hai Gallery in Huashan Arts District, and she has participated in art shows curated by Ping Lin, Director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and Jui-jen Shih, former director of MoCA Taipei. Maggie’s art presents the active work of adapting to changing life circumstances while showcasing strength developed through her experiences as a woman and an immigrant. She takes a holistic approach, centering individual experiences while bringing them into connection and dialogue as a whole. She has been a San Diego resident since 2016.
Ana Valdeolivar
Until now, Ana has really enjoyed the process of painting organic shapes of fabrics. She likes the idea of something being so simple yet so beautiful at the same time. More recently she has really enjoyed the process of painting things of nature such as flowers, birds, and other animals, when it comes to flowers she really likes the idea of looking at something up close and see all the details that people usually don't absorb usually because they are looking at it from a distance and in big quantities. As an upcoming artist Ana has been spending time to develop her skills so she can make her pieces have a more realistic and appealing look.
Beate Bermann-Enn
Born in Germany and raised in Berlin Beate Bermann-Enn came to New York in 1964. She attended Brooklyn College and received B.A. in painting and drawing and a M.A. in art history from California State University in Long Beach. 1976 to 1979 were spent in Europe teaching at the American International School in Duesseldorf. She returned to the states in 1979 and lived in Los Angeles, working as a painter, gallery director and producer of 'ArtScene' a L.A. gallery guide. from 1991 to 2020 she was a tenured Professor of art history at San Diego Mesa College. After retiring she started painting again and experienced a "painter's block" which induced her to refresh her perspective with a painting class at Mesa College.
Crystal Daigle
San Diego-based artist and eating disorder recovery coach Crystal Daigle makes interactive artworks, short films and 2-D work examining personal and collective identities and our deep need for human connection. She draws on her lived experience with physical and mental illness and the solace she finds in nature. Crystal also creates custom artworks for collectors throughout the U.S.
Philip Dunn
I studied Irish Literature in college but chose to pursue a career as a professional endurance athlete – 3-time US Olympian in track and field. Since then I have been a stay-at-home dad, owner/operator of a small urban farm (Agua Dulce Farm), founder of a non-profit that distributes excess fruit from backyard fruit trees to local food pantries (Harvesting San Diego) and now I am the head men’s cross-country coach at San Diego City College.
Gaby Espina
Gaby Espina is a mixed media artist that focuses primarily on sculpture and printmaking. She grew up in San Diego, California and received her BA in Visual and Performing Arts from California State University, San Marcos. The bulk of her artistic research goes into testing the limits of different materials. Whether it be playing with the boundaries of their intended purposes or combining multiple mediums, she finds this process can often go hand-in-hand with how she develops new ideas. She hopes to create works that evoke a response from the viewer, whether it be mentally, emotionally, and/or physically.
Adele Gaburo
Adele Gaburo is a New Jersey born artist, currently based in San Diego. Since childhood she has had a fascination with art and an aptitude for getting her hands dirty. As a third year Studio Art major at San Diego State University, her sculptural and two-dimensional works explore concepts such as viscera, the body, death, intrusive thoughts, and dreams. Her intention is to develop pieces that force conversation regarding subjects that people tend to relegate to the subconscious.
Juliet Gentry
Juliet Gentry is a local artist. She’s been interested in art/visual media since she was young but only started consistently drawing for the last few years but started painting in 2023. Her interests are oil painting and figurative drawing. Her work is signed as JNG.
Hannah Rose Johansen
Hannah Rose Johansen is an emerging studio artist born in San Diego, California. She works in her in-apartment studio on oil and acrylic paintings, illustrations, and performative works. Hannah graduated from UCSD's Studio Art program and received her bachelors degree in 2014. Hannah is currently enrolled at Mesa college Museum Studies. She participates in San Diego county art shows and enjoys her membership with local feminist collective, FIG. Her subjects are usually distorted self portraits, taking on monstrous or alien forms. Sex, pain, and kitsch are focuses of her work. Her goals involve educating others on the experience of chronic illness through her artwork.
Socrates M. Medina
Socrates Marko Medina Ahearn is a Mexican designer and founder of Perro y Arena. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture with a minor in Art History from Cal Poly Pomona. He was born in Tijuana, B.C. Mex and raised in this bicultural region with San Diego. His work is very much influenced by the rich and diverse culture emerging from those two cities, the natural environment that surrounds him and his Greek and Mexican roots.
Lydia Niebla
Lydia Niebla is a California native. Daughter of farmworkers and proud mother to two girls. She draws inspiration from her childhood growing up in the San Joaquin Valley and her love for food and nature. She is pursuing her passion for designing unique handcrafted apparel and will be completing her degree in Fashion Design next year.
Amertah Perman
Starting from a passion for drawing and painting, Amertah Perman has grown into a primarily fiber-based maker, creating hand-stitched and machine sewn creatures and objects. She loves working with her hands and exploring materials. Her construction techniques include simple, repetitive, hand skills combined with loose design practices that lead to unique pieces.
Jenny Rubottom
Cheeky and aspiring photographer. I discovered Vivian Dorothy Maier during a photography class at San Diego City College and consider her my biggest inspiration. I'm an hors d'oeuvre aficionado and bagger of adventures.
Charlie Spadone
Charlie Spadone is a multimedia artist exploring themes of identity and the subconscious as a queer person. They are particularly interested in how their identity interacts with the current political climate in the U.S. The mediums and techniques used in their work can be described as illustrative crafts put on a pedestal. Charlie was born in Los Angeles in 1998 and has lived in Southern California their entire life. They graduated from University of the Arts London with a Foundation Diploma in Fine Art in 2020 and are currently pursuing a BA in Studio Arts from SDSU. Their work has been shown in over a dozen exhibitions and in numerous publications.
Montserrat Ventura
Montserrat Ventura is a San Diego-based sculpture artist intent on exploring relationships with and through food in all contexts. Working primarily in soft sculptural forms and utilizing various textile techniques, her work establishes a humorous world through which to explore tradition, culture, celebration, comfort, struggle, nostalgia, fantasy, play, generosity, gratitude, and the grotesque. The elements of labor, energy, and attention are present in all work, down to the smallest detail. Her work varies in its installation with some site-specific work or opts to invite the viewer to sit at the same table, become eye-level with the work, eat it, touch it, hit it, reach inside it, or wear it. She received an undergraduate degree in visual arts from the University of San Diego in May 2024.
Cindy Zimmerman
Adjunct professor emeritus, community artist, co-founder of City Heights’ Fern Street Circus, social change activist, nonprofit and government administrator, all-around instigator, She got her start as an artist at her neighborhood rec center and got her MFA at UCSD, Visual Arts Department.