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Artsy Shark presents featured artist Mako Fufu, who combines East and West graphical influences to create her unique style of art. See more by visiting her website.

I was born in Argentina in August 1st 1983, with a mix of Italian, German, Spanish and French blood. As if this mix wasn’t enough already, I was attracted by all things Japanese from an early age. I´m hyperactive and curious and cannot stay still, nor limit myself to a single media, style or theme: I´m always eager to explore new grounds.

Since words seems to be not enough to transmit my deepest feelings and switching moods, I canalize it all through my artworks. My signature style could be defined as sensual and full of life.

I´m a self-taught artist. Still, I’ve complemented this self-acquired knowledge by studying for a Graphic Design degree on the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), but quitting it after a while. It wasn’t what I’ve expected. I´m currently starting my studies for a degree on Visual Arts on the National Institute of Arts (IUNA).

My goals are:
-Being the best artist I can by learning new techniques, trying new media, practicing and improving my own style. And having fun while I do it!
-Inspiring people, beyond the fact they´re artists or not. I like to let everybody know that if you´re really passionate about something you can get to make your dreams come true. You just have to put your mind and heart into it.
-Making a good living from this, so I can keep on doing what I enjoy, reaching the most people I can . . . with the least stress possible!

Right now I´m making murals as often as I can (I really enjoy it), filling up my sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project 2011, and I´ve just started working on my own webcomic!. I always wanted to share stories about facts that happened to me, good or bad, but in an enjoyable humorous way. I think it´s important to be able to laugh about situations that have pissed you off in the past, that way you get the most of them. And if you get to laugh about them too, you´ve made the most of them!. They´re available here.

I´m inspired by art made by passionate people. It may be animation, murals, illustrations, movies, music… you can tell when the work came from the artist´s heart.

Artsy Shark is pleased to present the collage portfolio of Lynette Williams. See more of this talented artist’s work by visiting her website.

I am an emerging artist using fabric collage as my medium. I have been surrounded by textiles all of my life.  My mother taught me to sew at a very young age. Throughout my life I have used many means of expressing myself creatively, including weaving, marquetry, sewing of all kinds and even a bit of pottery.  My love for the textures, patterns and  variation of colors in fabrics made it inevitable that I would use fabrics in my art at some point.  It grew out of appliqué; a technique of layering fabrics to achieve a unique pattern or picture, which is common in quilting.  Fabric Collage multiplies that process exponentially. Seeing an image blossom from “collaging” tiny bits of fabric is an adventure on each new piece I do.

I very seldom color my own fabric because I love to hunt for fabric to represent a particular color of hair or the perfect shade of pink for a sky. Often I use the “back” side of the fabric to get the look I want. I get a particular delight in using fabric for quite a different purpose than the designer may have intended.  It’s a sort of secret and unwitting collaboration with the designer. Most pieces have individual cuts of fabric numbering in the thousands.  I work mostly in the representational style with some experimentation in expressionism.

The biggest challenge for me right now is juggling my sewing business with my desire to spend more time in the studio. I am limited to stealing spare moments to do fabric collage – not yet able to quit my day job.  My goal is to be a full time artist; to make art that gives the viewer something they have not seen before, to give them something worthwhile – stimulating them to think about the subject in a new way.   I want those viewing my art to experience something of the pleasure that I had in creating each piece.  Through this process I want to be able to explore all of the possibilities that fabric has to offer as an art medium.

I am presently doing some commissioned portrait work, but am concurrently developing a series of images involving water.  I have been pondering the dichotomy that exists in relation to water.  Water is essential to our lives;   necessary for survival and yet it has an aesthetic quality that awes, inspires and even at times terrifies us.  It preserves life but can also take life. It has a unique place in each of the various cultures of the world and in some cases its absence creates severe hardship. There are so many uses and forms of the substance that I don’t think I would ever run out of material to experiment with.  I am especially attracted to images that use reflective surfaces to interact with light.  Water is a great subject for that. I am in the process of developing 10 to 12 works for a show around this theme.

My inspiration comes from my insatiable appetite to make things.  A condition I have had for most of my life and for which there is no cure.  I am always looking for things to re-purpose for the sheer pleasure of seeing what can be out of what is.  Nature is also a huge inspiration for me.  In it there are endless beauties and wonders to explore.  I am also inspired by my medium – fabric.  “In The Garden” was inspired by a sheer print blouse I found in a second-hand shop. I immediately took it home and began to style it into this piece. My vision was of abstract flowers, but then, combining it with other sheer fabrics, a person emerged as well. The figure blends with and ultimately becomes part of the garden.  It portrays a person for whom gardens are a mainstay of life.  We all know someone like that.  The added bonus of the fabric being a sheer print gives the piece an ethereal element.

Artsy Shark presents the work of Canadian artist Sarah Gee – surprising, electric, retro and exciting. See more of her work by visiting her website.

Sarah Gee is an artist living and working in Vancouver BC. Primarily working with collaged paper, her geometric compositions are kaleidoscopic, harmonious and pensive. Concerned with regularity and equilibrium, her work strives toward a kind of transcendental austerity augmented by dazzling color. Continually experimenting, she has recently completed a series of scorched-paper images as well as large-scale discs abstracting a city block into a series of sequential color bands.

In the last few years she has had several group shows and two solo shows.

What are your goals?

Massive government cuts to culture organizations and a general indifference to art makes my city of Vancouver a pretty challenging place to work and live in. We’re a young city without a long history of institutional support for the arts, and that’s both good and bad. It’s good because it forces us to get out there and create our own support, and cement our own history. In many ways this is a DIY city, with young artists carving out galleries in unused downtown buildings and pop-up shows appearing in our poorest neighborhoods. Even I, with no experience, curated a successful group show of geometrically-inspired art, and in the process met lifelong friends and colleagues.

I think the world is changing for artists. Grants and galleries are disappearing, many artists are reevaluating the role of dealers and collectors and it’s essential we make our own path. The great challenge is reminding people how crucial the arts are to their everyday life. I live in a wonderful city, but many people would rather pay for a lift ticket to go skiing than a piece of art they’ll cherish forever.

So really, I have two goals, a lofty and probably impossible one, and a personal one. I would like to help create a vibrant and positive environment for young and emerging artists in my city, and I would like, on a more personal level, to have my work out in the world, where it belongs, to be seen and commented upon, hated or loved.

What are you working on now?

I’m starting to work toward a November show that reflects on Vancouver in its raw, modernist glory, so I’m beginning to plan a big ambitious series of geometric collages. All I’ve ever wanted to use in my work is paper. Nothing handmade or textured, just flat archival-quality cardstock. I also use a lot of architectural vellum to achieve a layered transparency. Of course paper can also be dangerously exacting, but it lets me to work quickly and intuitively, and I can use an exacto blade like nobody’s business. Paper is also perfect medium for what I’m trying to do, which is geometric abstraction with a nod to psychedelia, using bright, saturated color.

Part of my love for paper comes from the fact that I am entirely self-taught. It is an “everyman” kind of medium, and when I first began working seriously, only a few years ago, it allowed me to express the kind of complex geometrical imagery I wanted without the painstaking technical know-how I would need mixing paints or preparing canvas.

What inspires you?

Other than the memory of my older brother’s trippy black-light posters he used to have in his bedroom, I’m inspired by getting out and seeing the work of other artists. It brings out my joyfully competitive side. Every time I go to galleries and museums I want to rush back into the studio. Particularly, I love the hard-edge painters of the 60s and 70s. Those guys were courageous, experimental and tough-minded, some are still out there doing it. Frank Stella, Josef Albers, Tadasky, Miguel Angel Vidal, the cool Californians Frank Hammersley and Billy Bengston, the enigmatic John Stephan. These are names off the top of my head, but there are more. I love them all.