Open Studio 2013: Artist’s Stories

Efren Adalem
Local wildlife: fine art photography

My interest in photography started at an early age. My dad was stationed in Germany with the Army. Most summers, he would take the family on road trips exploring the many sites including castles along the rivers, beautiful lakes below the Alps, ancient cities, and countrysides dotted with farms. My dad would document these travels with his Kodak Super 8 camera and Agfa Solinette 35 mm camera. My brothers and I would watch the films over and over and go through the photo albums reliving our many adventures.

When I moved to Watsonville in 2000, I quickly noticed the beauty of the slough system and the many birds and other wildlife that thrive here. I have always loved wildlife – being an avid backpacker – and seeing many animals on my mountain bike rides through the area. I replaced my traveler’s point and shoot camera with a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera and picked up photography again with a new passion for documenting the wildlife, especially birds of the Monterey Bay Area.

(831) 239-3511 • oohlookphotography@gmail.com

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Anita Landon
Recycled paper collages

No one pursues art because they think that it is a lucrative career.

They do so for personal fulfillment, or maybe they’re born to it. I’m no different. I come from a family of artists. My grandfather and mother were both oil painters. I remember my grandfather painting rural scenes and ships in his basement studio; and my mother painting various and a sundry murals on our walls (when she wasn’t busy raising us eight kids). My older brother and sisters are artists also, so I was mentored from an early age.

Naturally I was an art major in college and went on to teach art in public school for a short time. Teaching art did not seem to suit me, so I did other thing through the years including homeschooling my kids. Now that they are grown, I’ve returned to pursuing my art in my little home studio.

(831) 426-2616 • anitamlandon@yahoo.com

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Evelyn Markasky
Elegant organic enamel metalwork

Evelyn started her life in an edgy little steel town with a large immigrant population in Youngstown, Ohio. Life in Youngstown was shaped by steel and she is left with the image of the nighttime sky glowing pink from the blast furnaces 24 hours a day. It is this image she has subconsciously recreated in her studio with her torch; heating, soldering, coloring, and melting metal, not quite 24 hours a day, but close!

Evelyn works mostly in copper using vitreous enamels sometimes for their colors, but mostly as a patina adding texture and an aged effect to her pieces. She likes to take a hard cold piece of metal and turn it into something soft, warm, and organic. She continues her love of fire by torch-firing her enamel pieces. Her jewelry is elegant, organic, sensitive, and moody. Working (wo)man’s jewelry meant to be worn every day.

(831) 419-5458 • eamarkasky55@gmail.com