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Los Angeles-based multi-media visual artist, painter and curator Dianna Cohen is best known for her two-dimensional and three-dimensional works using recycled plastic bags – sewn together – ranging from small hanging pieces to room-sized installations.

Cohen’s work has been applied to surfboards in the acclaimed group show FLOW – fine lines on water, which she also curated. In 2007, Cohen expanded into making wearable art pieces using recycled materials, including stage outfits worn by alt-rock duo The Ditty Bops and a “green carpet” dress worn by actress Rachelle Carson. Her “conscious couture” and art were featured on Ed Begley’s environmentally themed HGTV series Living With Ed and on the CBS EcoZone Project with Daisy Fuentes.

Other projects include:  The Curse, a book of stories at: http://www.thecurse.com and Citizenlove, new textiles based on her plastic work and viewable at: http://www.citizenlove.com

Solo shows include post in Los Angeles, Art Affairs in Amsterdam, Sutton Gallery in Melbourne, Frank Pictures in Santa Monica and Elizabeth Budia Gallery in Barcelona. She has shown in group exhibitions at Affirmation Arts in NYC, Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, the Bronx Museum in NYC and the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida,

OCCCA in Orange County, SPARC in Venice, CA and Art From Scrap in Santa Barbara.

In 2010, Cohen created Ocean of Plastic with students at BFIS and exhibited this at the Museum of Water in Barcelona & in The Hamptons and presented a solo exhibition of her at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.

In 2011, Cohen’s wallflowers will be shown in the AIEP collection of the US Embassy in Tijuana, Mexico and in May, her work will be part of the inaugural exhibition Flows to Bay at MoM Museum of Monterey.

Dianna Cohen is Creative Director & co-founder of Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance of individuals, organizations and businesses working together to stop plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on humans, animals and the environment.

http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org

http://www.DIANNACOHEN.com

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Lynzey Culver is a senior at Thunder Mountain High School who grew up in Juneau, Alaska learning to fly fishing with her dad, as well as learning the many weaving trails that covered Juneau’s Valley and mountains. To remember her hikes she now uses photography to help her capture artistic images that tell stories rather than just a colorful or pretty image. With her photogrphy it has helped her further her passion in loving art, and helped her become more creative in other forms of art including: digital art, mixed media art, drawing, and sculpting. Although she hasn’t decided whether or not art or photography is some thing she wants to pursue after high school it will always be a hobby she enjoys.

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Born in 1955, Susan Derges trained as a painter before turning to photography and in particular, to the cameraless photography for which she is best known. Internationally regarded and now considered to be one of Britain’s most groundbreaking photographers, much of her recent work has been made at night, in the open air, using the natural world as her darkroom. Drawing on the work of early 19th century experimental photographers, she has created a new and unique method of image-making.

Much of Susan Derges’s work revolves around the creation of visual metaphors. These explore the relationship between the observer and the observed; the self and nature or the imagined and the ‘real’. She endeavours to manifest or capture invisible scientific and natural processes – the physical appearance of sound vibration, the evolution of frogspawn or the cycles of the moon. Her works have taken many photographic forms but she is best known for her pioneering technique of capturing the continuous movement of water by immersing photographic paper directly into rivers or shorelines. She often creates her work at night, working with the light of the moon and a hand-held torch to expose images directly onto light sensitive paper. Her practice reflects the work of the earliest pioneers of photography but is also very contemporary in its awareness of environmental issues and the complexity of its conceptual meanings.

Her work is included in many major public collections, including those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Arts Council of England; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Instutute of Chicago; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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What is an artist? Alexis always imagined an artist as someone who could not only recreate familiar images, but also put their own creative spin and personal feeling into a piece.  She had not, until very recently discovered herself in this way.  Art, to Alexis, is about self-discovery.

Alexis currently lives in Anchorage, Alaska and has found herself here.  Alaska is her newfound inspiration and the ocean has been a lingering passionate theme in Alexis’s life.  She believes we are completely connected to our waters and the understanding of this interconnectedness is essential.

She is in her senior year at Alaska Pacific University studying marine biology and has learned the importance of the sea and all its resources.  She’s thrilled to be in a place with such beautiful and thriving oceans and can only hope to convey this through art.

All images are from Andy’s book ‘Dominant Wave Theory’ – published by Abrams, New York

Dockweiler Beach, Los Angeles
C-Type Digital Print 40 x 40 inches

El Segundo, Los Angeles
C-Type Digital Print 40 x 40 inches

Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles
Medium : C-Type Digital Print 40×40 inches

Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles 2
C-Type Digital Print 40 x 40 inches

Malibu Beach, Los Angeles
C-Type Digital Print 40 x 40 inches

Palos Verdes, Los Angeles
C-Type Digital Print 40 x 40 inches

Porthmeor Beach, St Ives, Cornwall, England
C-Type Digital Print 40 x 40 inches

Porthmeor Beach, St Ives, Cornwall, England 2
C-Type Digital Print 40 x 40 inches

Santa Monica, Los Angeles
C-Type Digital Print 40 x 40 inches

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Andy Hughes was born in Castleford, England in 1966. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Wales Institute in 1989, he received a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, London graduating with a Masters Degree in 1991. Since completing his studies he has spent the following years exhibiting and lecturing at various universities and colleges in the USA and UK.

In 2012 he will travel to Alaska, invited alongside scientists and artists he will work on a unique project titled GYREX. This is a most unique expedition and exhibition with Marine Debris as Material and Message, other participating artists are Pam Longobardi, Mark Dion, Alexis Rockman, Sonya Kelliher-Combs and scientist and author Carl Safina.

www.andyhughes.net

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David Liittschwager is a freelance photographer who, after working with Richard Avedon in New York in the eighties, left advertising to focus on portraiture and natural history. Now a regular contributor to National Geographic Liittschwager has produced a number of books. Among his many honors is a World Press Photo Award in 2008 for his article “Marine Microfauna” in National Geographic.

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Michelle Lougee’s work is a collection of tactile pieces produced from a range of often-repurposed materials including plastic bags, fabric, cast-off electrical wires, fur, and clay. The work is based on organic form but often with an uncomfortable twist.

The delicate balance and struggle of nature versus human society and its technology is the focus of Lougee’s art. The duality of this relationship is explored in both materials and subject matter. The combination of the two factions produces mysterious yet familiar forms. For example, the labor-intensive process of transforming bags into yarn and then into artwork has produced colorful, whimsical, and lifelike interpretations of sea life including jellyfish, anemone, coral, and octopus.

Described as “very rich” and “thought provoking”, Lougee’s work forces viewers to reconcile its whimsical yet simultaneously dark nature.

Michelle Lougee is an environmental artist, sculptor and ceramicist. Her artwork has been shown in many New England museums, including the Peabody Essex Museum, Chesterwood, the Danforth Museum and the Art Complex Museum. In addition, she teaches ceramics at several local institutions. She holds a M.F.A. and a B.F.A. from Boston University and lives in Cambridge, MA with her family.

Michelle Lougee joined Boston Sculptors in 2004.

www.mlougee.com

To see more of Lindsey’s work, click here.

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Lindsey Lenette von Borstel was raised in Seward, AK.  She’s a senior at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and in the BFA program for computer art, painting, and metal-smithing.  She’s also working on a minor in business and film studies.

The main focus of her artwork is expressing herself through the ocean.  Lindsey has lived by the ocean her whole life and feels connected with it.  It’s not just the ocean that she loves, but life under the sea.