Author: Seraphina Calder
L. Scooter Morris creates artwork that doesn’t simply hang on a wall—it takes up space like a living thing. She describes herself as a sensory illusionist, and you can see why: her pieces operate in that split second between what your eyes report and what your body understands before language catches up. Her “Sculpted Paintings” aren’t content to stay flat. They advance, recede, and shift as you move. Light hits a raised edge and suddenly the whole surface changes. Step closer and you’ll notice the build: acrylic paired with mixed media, thickened areas, ridges, seams, and shadows that feel almost…
Born in Lisbon in 1962, Miguel Barros has built an artistic life shaped by crossing borders—geographic, emotional, and cultural. His years moving between Portugal, Canada, and Angola gave him a wide lens on place, identity, and the quiet ways people carry memory. Trained in Architecture and Design at IADE Lisbon (1984), Barros brings a designer’s sense of structure into his painting practice: an attention to balance, rhythm, layering, and how a surface can hold both order and surprise. That architectural discipline doesn’t restrict the work; it steadies it, giving his gestures a framework where intuition can move freely. In 2014,…
In the lively pulse of Milwaukee, Janet Adventure Sather is carving her own path in abstract sculpture by using a medium few would ever imagine. Instead of traditional sculptural materials, she turns to conductive light, fiber optics, and sugar—an unexpected combination that feels both delicate and luminous. This unusual blend does more than create beautiful forms; it carries electricity, radiance, and sensitivity, allowing her sculptures to feel almost alive. They glow, hum, and seem to breathe, channeling the inner life of the people and emotions that inspire them. Through these shimmering structures, Sather explores the unseen layers of human experience—the…
Fant Wenger’s work sits in a space that feels both timeless and forward-looking, as if it belongs equally to early myth and speculative futures. He does not commit to a single medium or category. Painting, sculpture, and installation blend into works that feel less like fixed objects and more like active zones—places where forces collide, drift, and reorganize. Since 2016, Wenger has been developing an ongoing body of work titled Frequenz, a long-term inquiry into vibration as a shaping force. Rhythm, resonance, structure, and motion are not metaphors in his practice; they are working principles. His art suggests that what we…
Julian Jamaal Jones grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, before he ever imagined becoming a multidisciplinary artist and educator. His path into the arts did not arrive through one transformative moment. Instead, it emerged slowly through lived culture, family memory, and an ongoing fascination with the images, symbols, and textures surrounding him as a child. Jones eventually built a practice that spans photography, quilting, performance, and historical research. These mediums serve different functions, yet they share a single foundation: using creativity to honor the stories carried through African American life. For Jones, artmaking is not simply an attempt to invent something…
At the heart of Union Square, the W Hotel set the stage for a powerful conversation about innovation and creativity as Catiana Van Dinh, founder of CVD FINE ARTS, took the spotlight on a panel hosted by the Onda Community. During this intimate yet dynamic discussion, Catiana shared the journey behind her company’s growth, the challenges she faced, and the vision driving her forward. Speaking with candor and insight, she touched on everything from her entrepreneurial beginnings to the values that shape her business today. Her talk resonated with the audience, drawing a mix of industry veterans, young professionals, and…
Ted Barr’s creative story begins with the feeling of being uprooted early in life. Born in Nevodar, Romania, near the vast stretch of the Black Sea, he spent his first years surrounded by shifting horizons. At just four years old, his family moved to Israel, setting him on a path shaped by transition. That move wasn’t just a relocation—it became the foundation of a life shaped by curiosity, constant questioning, and the desire to understand what lies beneath the surface of ordinary experience. Barr’s work shows this restlessness. Instead of staying grounded in everyday themes, he looks up and inward.…
Salwa Zeidan was born in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, a place where open landscapes and layered histories quietly shape the imagination. Her early life was defined by motion—traveling widely, absorbing different cultures, and learning how art shifts from one region to another. Those experiences gradually formed the foundation of her creative language. Eventually, she settled in Abu Dhabi, where she built a contemporary art gallery that reflects her commitment to the cultural life of the Middle East. The gallery serves as both a space of exchange and a launchpad for artists across the region. It welcomes painters, sculptors, photographers,…
Vandorn Hinnant was born in 1953 in Greensboro, North Carolina, and grew up surrounded by the sounds, spaces, and quiet shifts of the South. Those early impressions stayed with him and, over time, shaped the way he sees structure, balance, and the invisible patterns that guide the world. He studied Art Design at North Carolina A&T State University, earning a BA, and continued his studies in sculpture at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. That training gave him a solid technical base, but his curiosity pushed him beyond any traditional path. For decades, Hinnant has worked across sculpture, drawing,…
Doug Caplan, born in 1965 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, has long viewed photography as both an act of observation and construction. His story began in the quiet moment of childhood discovery—a black-and-white Polaroid instant camera, gifted by his parents, became the portal through which he first glimpsed the possibilities of image-making. The tactile rhythm of manual photography—the click, the flash, the scent of chemicals—left a mark on him. But photography didn’t immediately take root as a vocation. Life unfolded, years passed, and only after marriage in the early 1990s did that dormant fascination reignite. Returning to the camera as an…