Precious Panic

Artist Statement/Bios

Emilija:

Emilija Blake is an invisibly disabled artist who grew up with much turmoil in her early life, which eventually led to art becoming an escape from reality. After being diagnosed with multiple disorders, Emilija’s art became a conduit through which she interacts with and explores a vibrant “inner world” based on her disabilities and daily life as an invisibly disabled human being. Utilizing projection mapping and needle felt, her work creates a safe place for others to pursue conversation about and feel safe in being disabled.

Blake is a 21-year-old multimedia artist and illustrator born in Cheyanne, Wyoming. She graduated from Spokane Falls Community College through Running Start with an Associates in Liberal Arts and will graduate from Eastern Washington University in 2023 with her Bachelors of Fine Arts, focusing on Digital Art and Illustration as well as a minor in Art History. She is currently based in Spokane, Washington with her service dog Kasper.  

Noelle:

Noelle Bowden is a contemporary painter and poet based in Spokane, Washington, where she was born and raised. She has studied and become immersed in her visual and literary practice while attending Eastern Washington University, receiving a Bachelors in Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry. Noelle is continuing the 2022-2023 academic year by getting her Bachelors in Fine Arts, with a focus in painting. As a fragmented thinker, her work immerses visual conversations through abstraction, and the push and pull we have with language and memory.

Through the relationship between painting and poetry, Bowden explores the concepts of fragmentation and memory. Within the structure of language and abstraction, a visual dialogue forms through her use of color, shape, gesture, mark-making, and movement. Her attentive act of removing paint and fragmenting language reflects the human experience of memory. Guiding those connections by using found surfaces such as used book pages, paper, maps or, raw canvas, Bowden wants to transcend representation through moments that push and pull you closer to the world around you. Creating an interpretive bridge between the tangible and the ephemeral, her current body of work “Cold Connection” seeks to whisper the fragility and entropy of our lived experiences.

Chloe:

Chloe DiBisceglie was raised in Gig Harbor, Washington and is pursuing her BFA from Eastern Washington University. She primarily focuses on paintings depicting life altering moments that are personal to her growth as a person and as an athlete. Evoking extreme emotions from the audience makes her feel as though she has accomplished her goal as an aspiring artist through her use of disturbing and gory imagery.

My vision for my work is to be able to discuss my truth without hiding the disturbing and uncomfortable aspects in order to make the message clear to the viewer. In my work I depict painful topics both internal and external that represent some of my strong personal emotions. In order to achieve this, I over exaggerate and add an element to my work that is theatrical and dramatized. I create this art to help make sense of the feelings and emotions I have whilst allowing my paintings to alleviate the seriousness of subjects or scenarios. Some themes include beauty standards, loneliness, fantasy, and escapism. Allowing my paintings to be disturbing and dark, both in color and composition, will directly reflect the seriousness of my topic. I want viewers to react to my work strongly and be uncomfortable by my paintings and the deep message they send about struggling in your own body.

Fletcher:

Fletcher Leo is a visual artist based in Spokane, Washington. She was born in Southeast Alaska and derives inspiration from Alaska’s natural beauty. She expresses her vast inner world through many mediums and frequently mixes sculpture, drawing, and painting to achieve a messy and expressive collection. Fletcher is influenced by horror fiction and film in her themes of ritual, obsession and inhuman transformation.

With a propensity for personifying inanimate or inhuman beings, her subjects are often the overlooked simple organisms that embody undeniable character. Slugs, kelp, salmon sac fry and house flies take on symbolic characterizations and make up a cast of characters for drawings and sculptures that explore their unique personalities. With a flair for the decorative, Fletcher brings a nostalgic, and often childish, style to themes of extra-human transformation and personal growth.

Lourdes:

Lourdes Melendez is a comic artist and illustrator based in Spokane, WA. She studied studio art at Eastern Washington University and is slated to graduate with a BFA in drawing and minors in art history and creative writing in 2023. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, Melendez has been influenced by the urban landscape of her city and its diverse populations. Through her inclination of observation as a way to engage with others, Lourdes strives to create stories that are rooted in empathy and self-reflection, broadening one’s own perception of those around us.

Lourdes is influenced by film both visually and narratively when designing panel compositions and writing stories. As sequential arts, Lourdes believes both film and comics deliver tailored forms of expression which is something she finds important when telling stories that are personal. This medium presents her the freedom to share her own philosophies through her fictional creations. She is exploring themes of identity, existentialism, and duality. Lourdes is currently working on her first graphic novel, Gray Area, a dual narrative coming-of-age drama exploring themes of identity, family, and class.  

Elizabeth:

Elizabeth Mendiola is a Chicana multimedia artist based who will be receiving her BFA, along with an Art History minor, at Eastern Washington University. She is heavily inspired by intricate storytelling and high fantasy settings, and she uses worldbuilding as a way to explore a diverse range of topics. Her works include anything from worldbuilding to painting and drawings on Chicana, and mental health issues drawing inspiration from her personal experiences and the world around her.

As technology develops and advances, new opportunities for innovation and advancement arise. It can, however, have negative consequences. Mendiola’s paintings, drawings, and installations aim to immerse the viewer in an astronomical, whimsical, and techno future. They use black light to create a unique and immersive experience for the audience, challenging their perceptions of technology and its role in society. Inviting the viewer to question what they see and look deeper into the message being conveyed by building a physical environment that explicitly recognizes our interactions with the online world. Mendiola aims to encourage a more thoughtful and intentional approach to the use and development of technology and consumerism.

Shelby:

Shelby Michelbrink is an artist who specializes in sculpture that grew up on the outskirts of a small town called Cosmopolis, Washington. In 2020, Shelby graduated with her Associate of Arts degree from Grays Harbor College. From there, she went on to pursue her art dreams at Eastern Washington University, where she is about to graduate with her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Minor in Art History in the Spring of 2023.

Shelby Michelbrink finds the process of transforming materials and creating something new out of ordinary objects very satisfying. With the jewelry soap carvings, she is taking everyday bars of soap and turning them into jewelry that you may find at a museum. Not all jewelry can be found at a museum, so it’s crucial that the inspiration behind the shape of the jewelry was art from museums that were so coveted they were stolen. The soap jewelry tricks the eye into believing they look genuine, so the inclusion of the soap boxes turned jewelry boxes force the viewer to remember that jewelry is made of soap.

Brandi:

Brandi Permin is a drawer and illustrator currently residing in Spokane, WA. She is a soon-to-be graduate from Eastern Washington University, earning her BFA as well as a minor in Art History and Creative Writing. At heart a portraitist, Permin’s work concerns themes of self-expression, diversity, and identity. However, with a growing interest in the technology that surrounds us, her work is slowly evolving to encapsulate the experiences of connection and alienation we encounter on a daily basis in an increasingly digitized world.

An integration of both digital and traditional techniques, Permin’s work aims to explore the blend and blur of our physical and virtual worlds. As inspiration, she often draws from historical art references in order to exemplify the transformation and continuation of generational issues in current times. She is currently working on her latest project, Behind the Screens, an ongoing series critiquing the effects of digital devices on our intimate relationships as a way to hold a mirror to society and our dependence on technology.

Jenn:

Jenn Ramsdell is a multidisciplinary printmaker who has a particular fondness for collograph as a vehicle for their exploration of cycle and regrowth.  Within their dark and playful prints, the artist questions the concepts of healing by talking about connection, cyclical trauma, and mental illness in society. They are currently finishing their BFA at Eastern Washington University.

Jenn Ramsdell’s prints are rooted in their process over outcome, growing their mottled imagery of disconnected human forms through the somatic rituals of printmaking. Inspired by artists like Francesca Woodman, Kiki Smith, and Samantha Wall, they integrate the visual processing of trauma and body awareness in installations of rice paper prints. Through these prints, they create meditative spaces that encourage and permit viewers to sit a moment with themselves and the works.

Michelle:

Michelle Robertson is a photographer and painter currently based in Spokane, WA. Though originally planning to receive a Bachelors in History, the COVID-19 Pandemic caused her to change her mind and pursue a Bachelors of Fine Art in Studio Art, with a medium focus on photography, and minors in Art History and Japanese.

By photography’s very nature, a moment in time is frozen, never to show the passing of time. The goal of Robertson’s work is not to freeze moments, but to force the viewer to acknowledge the inevitability of the passage of time. What began as a practice in mindfulness and grounding during the pandemic has quickly become an expression of anxiety about our environment. The tiniest details of nature, whether it’s the growth of tiny leaves, ripples over ponds, or plants reclaiming abandoned human made structures, are the main subject of the majority of work she captures. Robertson believes that the mindset of the western world is that nature is something that needs to be overcome and controlled, where in reality, we are completely at the will of the environment.

Fia:

Fia Tart is a Spokane, Washington based painter specializing in acrylic gouache and ink. Her favorite subjects to paint are florals that mix the aesthetics of neo-traditional tattoo with fine-line illustration.

“Personal Progress” is a series of nine paintings based on the eight “Young Women’s Values” that Tart grew up reciting in church every week. Each painting is named after one of the eight values which are: faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrity, virtue, and the added value- truth. These paintings explore what each of these values mean to Tart now, having left the church many years ago. To accomplish this, each painting uses a blend of Medieval and contemporary iconography to represent each value.