Author: Aria Sorell Vantine

Lisa Atkinson’s relationship with art began long before she ever considered it a serious path. Growing up by the beach in Santa Monica, she spent her childhood watching the Pacific shift through its daily moods—soft morning haze, sun-splashed afternoons, and the evening light melting into the horizon. These impressions stayed with her, forming the quiet foundation of her visual world. By First Grade, she had already won First Place for a Miro reproduction. In high school, she sold a mixed-media collage. That early sense of connection—someone responding to something she made with her hands—left a mark. Art wasn’t just a…

Pasquale J. Cuomo’s story begins with a teenager holding a camera without knowing he was opening the door to a lifelong pursuit. Born in the United States and shaped by more than fifty years behind the lens, Cuomo has traveled through the changing landscape of photography—film, digital, and everything in between. What started as a simple curiosity became a steady companion as he experimented across genres, traveled, and watched the medium reinvent itself again and again. Cuomo is one of those photographers whose relationship with the craft feels stitched into the rhythm of his life. He remembers the smell of chemicals…

Huang Yi Min’s story begins in Shanghai in 1950, but the places that shaped her most deeply are Beijing and, later, New York. Her life moved between upheaval and quiet observation, between cultural disruption and personal persistence. She studied at the Fine Arts Department of Beijing Normal University and eventually immigrated to the United States in 1997 as an outstanding talent. By then she had already lived several lives—student, young farmer, art editor, and painter working against the tide of a society in flux. Her early relationship with art started at age ten, when she was selected to join the…

TYDIED comes from Northern California, a place where DIY culture, street art, and independent music all live close together. His path into painting wasn’t planned or polished. It didn’t start with art school or theory. It began with something simple and almost accidental: leftover paint from silk-screening T-shirts. Instead of letting the extra paint dry up on the table, he pushed it onto canvas. That small act — not wanting to waste material — opened a door to a style that feels both raw and intentional. Before long, those experiments became their own language. TYDIED was already a clothing designer,…

Adamo Macri doesn’t approach art from a place of comfort. He was born in Montreal in 1964 and studied at Dawson College, where he immersed himself in commercial art, photography, drawing, fine arts, and art history. Those early foundations didn’t pull him toward one path but opened many. Today, he moves through sculpture, photography, video, painting, and drawing as if each form is simply another door to open. His work feels like an ongoing inquiry into what lives beneath the surface—identity, fear, duality, memory, and the quiet tension between what we think we know and what lies behind it. Macri’s…

Silas Rowan, also known as Rong Jingyu, has a clear way of explaining why he makes art. He says that art, for him, isn’t a performance. It isn’t decoration or a show of technique. It is a way of speaking the truth and waking up the parts of the mind that have gone quiet. He doesn’t care about external forms or stylistic polish. His interest sits with what is underneath—what the mind hides, what the spirit forgets, and what people ignore because it feels easier that way. His work often looks inward, toward the territory where instinct meets confusion and…

Kyukun Kang’s paintings begin with a simple moment most artists would dismiss: light hitting a wet canvas in the wrong way. One day, he walked into his studio, switched on the overhead lamp, and saw the glare stretch across the surface of a half-finished painting. It distorted the image just enough to unsettle him. What should have been a clear reflection of reality suddenly felt unfamiliar—almost like seeing a place he knew for the first time. This quiet disruption pushed Kang toward a new direction. He had spent years studying how light defines objects, shapes figures, and draws the line…

Salwa Zeidan’s story begins in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, a region shaped by mountains, farmland, and long memory. Growing up there gave her a sense of openness, but it was her travels that widened her view of the world. She moved through different countries, gathering impressions, learning from contrasts, and watching how art takes on new meaning in every culture. Over time, these experiences shaped the foundation of her work. She eventually settled in Abu Dhabi, where she founded a contemporary art gallery that reflects her belief in creative exchange. Her space has become a gathering point for artists…

Vandorn Hinnant entered the world in 1953 in Greensboro, North Carolina, and came of age in an environment filled with gentle rhythms, open spaces, and the understated shifts of Southern life. Those surroundings shaped his eye early. They trained him to notice structure, balance, and the subtle patterns that sit behind what we usually call “the real world.” He went on to study Art Design at North Carolina A&T State University, finishing with a BA, and later deepened his sculptural training at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The education gave him tools, but it was curiosity that opened…

Doug Caplan, born in 1965 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, has always regarded photography as a meeting point between observation and creation. His fascination began as a teenager when his parents handed him a black-and-white Polaroid instant camera. The tactile pleasure of winding film, the smell of chemicals, and the soft click of the shutter left a memory that never faded. Yet, photography remained a quiet companion rather than a calling for many years. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, after getting married, that Caplan rediscovered his connection to the camera. This return brought with it a new depth—an ability to…