About the Artists

Dyan Berk

My work emerges from an inquiry into the interconnectedness of all life. It embodies my interest in community, sustainability, and a continuous investigation of the dynamic strength of connection, regeneration, transformation, and growth. My art-making always begins with found and recycled material. Cutting, sawing, tearing, gluing, painting, drawing, construction, and deconstruction are central to my process. I work concurrently on a range of ideas in a variety of mediums, as the work benefits from cross-pollination.

Engagement with nature is a vital aspect of my creative process. Gardening, growing vegetables, raising seedlings, hiking, drawing, observing, and sketching are part of my daily practice.

I like to think of my work is a celebration of the art spirit, that fuels us, supports us, challenges us and asks us to grow into more conscious human beings.

Mike Stiler

I am basically a cartoonist who works with wood, copper, paint, nails, steel, aluminum, leather, rubber, chainsaws, plastic, stone, graphite, watercolor, charcoal, ink, linoleum block, glitter, silicone, found objects, junk, photographs, pixels, ball point pen, words, ideas and empty space.

Everything I do and everything I make comes out of the question, ‘Who am I?’ This question is fundamental to the realization of anything that deserves to be called art. It is my deepest longing to make art that is funny, serious, scary, humble, confused, light, heavy, deep, shallow, clumsy, elegant, common, colossal, abstract, figurative, narrative and enlivening. I wish to, in any way I can, carry on the tradition of my heroes, Louis Armstrong, Agnes Martin, Vincent VanGogh, Pierre Bonnard, Walt Whitman, Bob Dylan, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, J.S. Bach, Alice Neel, Blackie Langlais, Huang Po,Ta Hui, Dogen, Joshu, Bankei, Beethoven, Robert Crumb and anyone else committed to finding the smallest in the biggest and the biggest in the smallest.