Featured Artists

Laura Reese

My work consists of hand-built, carved, porcelain tiles framed in wood.

I begin each design with a vision; a glimpse of what a particular piece will look like when it's completed. Throughout the creation process, I feel as though nature, chance, and a whimsical spirit all play a part. I think this results in pieces that are fresh and unique.

I began college as an art history major in 1991. After two years' study at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, I transferred to Tulane University's Architecture School in New Orleans. Early on, a friend inspired me to take a ceramics class and straightaway, I was hooked.

I continued to take ceramics and sculpture electives throughout school, finishing with a Master of Architecture in 1998. After graduation, I moved to Baltimore where I attended the Maryland Institute College of Art. There, I became familiar with computer graphics programs and Adobe Photoshop fast became my favorite.

Through my work, I strive to bring together a sense of structural permanence with the concept of transformative nature. Orthogonal tiles present a structure upon which images of the natural world traverse. The challenge to achieve beauty and harmony in this interplay of framework and freedom is what inspires me to explore my visions.

Julia Sutliff

It took me a long time to get around to art. In college and graduate school, I took courses in literature and history mostly, though I did sneak in some art courses at the Rhode Island School of Design while attending Brown. I later taught high-school English for a year, and then tutored kids and adults in reading and writing. But I never stopped wanting to paint. Finally, I couldn't ignore the feeling that if I died tomorrow, my greatest regret would be that I hadn't tried to see how good I could get at painting. And then I sort of dropped everything, except part-time tutoring, to try it and see what would happen. Once I did, it was like opening a door that I couldn't bear to shut again, and now I'm just a painter, plus a mom.

For a long time, I could only be happy painting outside, on location-it's so energizing to experience all the colors and the mood firsthand. I still prefer to paint that way, but I've begun to use photographs more, to accommodate my mothering schedule. What seems to be crucial is that the photographs are recent, so that I still feel close to the colors and mood, and to the internal, emotional response that first prompted me to take the photo.

Van Gogh wrote that he considered himself rich because he had "found his work" and found in it "something to which I can devote myself heart and soul, and which gives inspiration and significance to life." While I don't rely just on painting to give significance to my life, it has raised my experience of living and working higher than I ever imagined, and I'm similarly grateful to have found my work.

John Updike has said that writing for him is a "religious event," and painting is that for me. It's fully involving and uplifting, and it feels weighted with intense significance.

I'm drawn mostly to scenes that have natural elements, even if it's only an effect of sunlight slanting across a street. Above all, I try to find a composition that suggests "place" and, in doing so, carries the viewer to that place.

Like Monet and Winslow Homer, I try to paint quickly in order to preserve what Homer has called "freshness." I think of freshness as the capturing of a specific emotional and aesthetic response through a vivid, dynamic rendering that suggests the movement of the eye and the excitement of the senses. More than anything else (that can be expressed in words, anyway), a quality of freshness is essential to me as I try to bring to the viewer the joy that I feel as I work.