Symposium presenters come from a wide variety of media and from all walks of creative life including those in academia, emerging artists, international icons and working makers at various points in their careers.
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Martha Casanave
Pacific Grove, CA, Photography
Who’s a Good Girl?! Untold Stories of Women in Photography and the Men in Their Lives
This presentation shines a light on women in photography from a different angle, highlighting women’s own points of view. By women in photography I mean both women photographers and women who helped male photographers succeed. Women photographers face different obstacles than their male counterparts. Women are often burdened with domestic concerns while attempting to find the time, space, and energy to practice their art. Women who helped male artists succeed in the visual, literary and musical arts are footnotes in the history of the mediums, or, more likely, invisible altogether.
Bio- Martha Casanave graduated from the Monterey Institute of International Studies with a degree in Russian Language and Literature and began her working life as a translator in Washington, DC. She engaged in photography from early childhood, however, and later came back to the Monterey Peninsula, built up a portrait clientele, and began teaching photography, while continuing to pursue her personal work. She has been an exhibiting and working photographer and educator on the Monterey Peninsula for over thirty years.
Website- marthacasanave.com
Marilyn da Silva
Pinole, CA, Metals
Color on Metal: Icing on the Cake
Marilyn da Silva’s metalwork is based on telling stories through imagery and representational elements. As a narrative artist, she has been a pioneer in the use of alternative coloration on metal. Her trademark surface treatment of gesso and colored pencil creates a rich palette for her sculpture and wearable pieces. She will talk about the evolution of her use of color including her recent work. She will also show images describing her process in this lecture.
Bio- Marilyn da Silva is Professor Emerita of the Jewelry & Metal Arts Program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco where she has been since 1987. Before moving to California, she taught from 1978-87 at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She earned her MFA in Jewelry Design and Metalsmithing at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana and her BS in Art Education at Bowling Green State University.
Website– marilyndasilva.com
Susan Doyle
San Geronimo, CA, Mixed Media
Beneath the Surface: Visualizing Global Data and Shared Realities
In an increasingly interconnected world, artists serve as vital translators of our shared global climate. This talk explores how contemporary art can synthesize complex current events and regional data into universally compelling visual narratives. Using my own practice as a case study, I will demonstrate how research into political, environmental, feminist, and personal issues serves as the creative foundation for my work.
Bio- Susan Doyle is a contemporary fiber artist based in San Geronimo, California, whose work maps the fragile boundaries of our changing natural world utilizing textiles as a medium for ecological and political commentary. Her artistic foundation was solidified in the fiber sculpture program at the College of Marin under Carole Beadle, following a diverse background that includes studying at UC Berkeley, teaching in Spain, working as a research analyst in Washington, D.C., and running a design business. Doyle’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured in prestigious regional showcases.
Website- susankathleendoyle.com
Danielle Embry
Tucson, AZ,Metals
Glass, Metal, Fire
Over the past twenty years as a practicing metalsmith and enamellist, my work has evolved through a series of interconnected bodies of contemporary jewelry and small-scale sculpture that investigate the relationship between nature, memory, emotion, and imagined worlds. This lecture will trace that evolution through several key projects. The presentation will conclude with my newest body of work, which draws from botanical forms, alchemical histories, and invented biology to create wearable objects that inhabit the space between the familiar and the strange. Together, these works explore how natural forms and lived experience can be translated into objects that carry personal and collective meaning.
Bio- Tucson based maker, Danielle Embry creates contemporary jewelry and sculpture that abstracts the visual language of nature to present the viewer with an alternative perspective of the world we inhabit. Danielle received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio art from Arizona State University in 2004. Her work is represented in numerous private and public collections and exhibited widely in juried and invitational exhibitions throughout the U.S., Mexico, Denmark, and Taiwan.
Website-danielleembry.com
Dick Lehman
Goshen, IN, Ceramics
On-wheel Alteration and Oni-Glazing: 50 Years of Making
My work over 4 decades as a production potter necessarily focused on efficiency, and on how to bring pots as near to completion as possible while still on the wheel. That meant getting pots to a place of being fully formed, trimmed and even assembled before moving them to a ware board. In my semi-retirement years, no longer pursing production work, I’ve carried over that efficiency-impulse. However, I’ve set out to discover how much on-wheel alteration can take place while the pot is still wheel-bound. Additionally, since 2020 I have been pursuing “Oni-Glazing”: where up to 10 glazes, stains, and slips are layered onto a single piece for a single reduction high-firing. I work to keep “experimentation and discovery as my central voice”. My demonstration will show my alteration approaches and a thorough description of my current approach to the complex Oni-glazing. For me, the result of these pursuits has been a new window on design, personal narrative, and craftsmanship.
Bio- Dick Lehman has been a presenter at more than 75 national and international teaching workshops. His work is in collections at Everson Museum, American Museum of Ceramic Art, Arizona State University Ceramic Research Center as well as 35 collections in Japan. In 2023 Dick was the first ceramic artist selected for the Indian Heritage Fellowship Award, honoring his lifetime of employing and mentoring more than 50 clay artists many who have gone onto their own clay careers.
Website- dicklehman.com
Judy Natal
Santa FE, NM, Hybrid Photography
The Weather Diaries
My presentation shares the journey of my creative process of how The Weather Diaries came to be, inviting the audience into the evolutionary process of this long-term project as it morphed and shape shifted through traditional photographic methods to emerge as a multimedia.
The Weather Diaries is based upon repeatedly traversing the island landscapes of Hawai’i, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, to probe the emotional, moral, ethical, spiritual, and intellectual implications of climate action and inaction through environmental portraits, video interviews, landscapes, still lifes and climate research.
Bio- Judy Natal is hybrid photographic artist, curator, writer, and Professor Emeritus in the Photography Department at Columbia College Chicago. An archive of her environmentally focused work was established at The Institute for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in 2012. Her videos and photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Sao Paulo Biennial, Brazil and FotoFest Biennial.
Website- judynatal.com
Masako Onodera
Minneapolis, MN, Sculpture
Phantoms
Objects exist for decades, centuries or even millennia. Their function transforms over time from utilitarian to symbolic, from direct use by their owners to a ritual, indirect use. In this lecture, I will discuss my recent series Phantoms, developed over the past ten years. This body of work explores the presence of neglected or forgotten objects used by female members of the family in the past—such as fur coats and silver-plated housewares—and considers the traces left by the anonymous hands that once used and touched them. After the presentation, I will demonstrate a process for transferring the form of an object into hollow paper structures using Japanese kozo paper.
Bio– Masako Onodera utilizes craft techniques in her art and connects the audience emotionally to the materials and practices employed. Her creations suggest an experience of the body altered by the tactile and visual characteristics of the object. Onodera’s art is exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in many private and public collections. She graduated with an MFA in Metals from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently a Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, WI
Website- masakoonodera.com
Taylor Reinhold
Soquel, CA, Murals
The Intersection of Art & Environmental Justice
Taylor Reinhold has spent the last two decades turning walls into public conversations, and no project reflects that more than Sea Walls Santa Cruz, the ocean conservation mural initiative he directed in 2021. Sea Walls brought the PangeaSeed Foundation’s global Sea Walls: Artists for Oceans program to California for the first time and reshaped Santa Cruz’s public art landscape in the process. His talk will relate how that project came together, from organizing artists and partners to the community response it generated. Taylor will also discuss how using art to make conservation and social justice visible carries into his mural work with students, including his current environmental justice mural at UC Santa Cruz’s Rachel Carson College and his mural at John R. Lewis College representing the college’s charge of social justice and community.
Bio- Santa Cruz native, Taylor Reinhold has discovered his passion in painting vibrant murals and crafting captivating logos. His expertise extends across various creative realms, including design, art curation, and the execution of large-scale installations. His imaginative murals grace locations worldwide, from the streets of Brazil and Costa Rica to the landscapes of Tanzania and Thailand.
Website– taylorreinhold.com
Dana Seeger
Poulsbo, WA, Printmaking & Book Binding
Defining Gravity: A collaborative lithographic book project
Tom Goglio of Taglio Litho Press and I worked on this project from 2016 through 2025. The presentation is unique in that it combines a printmaking process that is disappearing from fine art schools and commercial industry, as well as book binding that enabled us to problem solve the presentation of a large and extensive portfolio of prints, while making it marketable and manageable to offer to collections.
Bio- Dana Seeger holds a BA in Painting from Anderson University and an MFA in Printmaking from San Jose State University. She is a member of the California Society of Printmakers. Dana co-created the School of Visual Philosophy in San Jose and is currently the Program Director of the school.
Website- danaharrisseeger.com
Adon Valenziano
Santa Cruz, CA, Sculpture
Some Kind of Strange New Beauty
A survey of work, techniques, themes and materials I have explored over the last 30 years of sculpting. I will be presenting a variety of “mixed media” sculptural works that often include a number of materials such as bronze, wood, glass, ceramics, copper and found objects.
Bio- Adon’s work is deeply rooted in the natural world it references the synthetic, machine and art worlds as well. He is fascinated with the idea of symbiosis, using a combination of surrealism, abstraction and hybridity to create fantastical new “life forms”. He studied bronze casting for many years with Holt Murray at Cabrillo Community College in Aptos California before completing an MFA degree at San Jose State University. He currently lives and works in Santa Cruz California.
Website- adonvalenziano.com