Debra Greene

“II am a material-based artist living in a digital world. Being corporeal matters. Materials are tangibles. They offer unlimited possibilities. Taken out of assumed contexts I transform materials that are ordinary.

These pieces are studio improvisations. I let myself fall in love with the silliest things. I leaned into intuition. And sometimes just form. Abstract narratives were created where meaning is fluid. Channeling my inner Magpie important choices brought components together. A small gesture might seem like nothing. For me it was something enough. Less became more. Perhaps I have recreated a myth that I have lived before. 

In the pinhole work, instead of doing something on paper, I have done something to paper, transformed a simple material by making repetitive punctures with a needle. Form dominates these small pieces. I have made the hated Styrofoam look good. Expectations are subverted. Viewers are invited to look differently at materials they have seen everyday. 

It delights me that with keen attention to detail and my hands, work has been created from elements that might have been unworthy of consideration. Craftsmanship and aesthetics are important to me. So is poetry.”

Judy Riola

Judy Riola is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Vassar College. She was the recipient of a Traveling Scholarship from the Museum and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist in painting. Her work has been shown at galleries in Boston, New York, and California, and most recently at Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia. Her work is featured in issue #148 of New American Paintings, in the online exhibition “Open Call 2023” at mepaintsme.com, and is included in The White Columns Curated Artist Registry.

Cate White

Born in 1971 into the back-woods culture of Northern California, Cate White draws on life at the margins to observe cultural dynamics around power, belonging and meaning making. While primarily a painter, she often shows her work in multi-media exhibitions that include sculpture, video, books and installation.

Self-taught beginning at age 30, White’s work became public in 2015 with the Tournesol Award from Headlands, followed by Bay Area Now 8 at YBCA and residencies including the Mills College Art Museum A+P+I residency, and 14 solo shows and multiple group shows in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York City. 

White splits her time between Oakland and a shack on the Mendocino Coast where she hosts How Do You Paint on YouTube—part performance art, part Bob Ross parody, and part public laboratory for improvisation in painting.

Maria Porges

Maria Porges is an artist and writer whose work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions since the late eighties. She received a SECA award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has twice been in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. A finalist for the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Art Writer's Grant in 2014 and 2016,  her critical writing has appeared in many publications, including Artforum, Art in America, Sculpture, American Ceramics, Glass, the New York Times Book Review, and a host of other now-defunct art magazines. She has also authored essays for over 120 exhibition catalogues and dozens of scripts for museum audio tours.

Porges is a Professor at California College of the Arts. 

Vered Gersztenkorn

Born in Israel in1964, Vered Gersztenkorn is a self-taught painter whose practice has evolved through sustained independent inquiry and a deep engagement with abstract visual language.

Her early works incorporated childlike iconography, expressive chromatic intensity, intuitive line, and layered compositions integrating text and gesture within a loosely abstract framework. Over time, figuration gradually dissolved, giving way to a fully abstract vocabulary. Today, her paintings are process-oriented and materially driven: a line, a stain, or a chromatic event initiates the work, unfolding into a dynamic internal structure shaped by tension, erasure, accumulation, and release. Gersztenkorn’s practice inhabits the liminal space between the conscious and the unconscious, intention and surrender, opacity and transparency.

She has presented her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Israel, Europe, the United States, and Mexico, and her works are held in private collections internationally.

Terry Hoff

Artist Terry Hoff grew up in Lodi, California in the central valley of California among grape vineyards, migrant workers, and small farms.  

He left the Central Valley for San Francisco to go to the San Francisco Art Academy on a summer scholarship in 1978.  

Several years later, upon finishing a freelance illustration for Atari’s Asteroid video game, Hoff was offered a full time staff artist position and went on to produce dozens of images for Atari’s video game cartridges.

After Atari and a 16 year freelance illustration business, he  dedicated himself completely to his own personal studio practice.   His work was shown at Four Walls in San Francisco, the  Rare Gallery in New York and Acuna Hansen gallery in Los Angeles. His work was displayed along side the "mission school" artists” in the first "Bay Area Now" exhibition at Yerba Buena Center and he was awarded the Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation the following year.

Recent gallery/museum exhibitions have included Good Mother gallery in Los Angeles, Guerrero Gallery, Andrea Schwartz Gallery, di Rosa Foundation, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art,  Bedford Gallery, The Luggage Store and many others.

Susan Aulik

Susan Aulik believes deeply in the power of art to enrich our lives. Art is at the center of everything she does—supporting, collecting, sharing, promoting, and, of course, creating. She holds a Master of Arts degree from California State University, Sacramento and a Master in the Science of Journalism from Northwestern University. She founded The Fourth Wall gallery in Oakland in 2016 with the goal of supporting and promoting artists, fostering experimentation and risk-taking, and contributing to the growth of a strong local art community.