Dennison W. "Denny" Griffith, along with his duties as President of the Columbus College of Art and Design, has maintained an active career as a visual artist. He is the recipient of artists fellowships for painting from the Greater Columbus Arts Council (1996), the Ohio Arts Council (1987-88 and 1989-90), and an Arts Midwest/NEA Regional Fellowship in 1990-91. His work has been included in more than 80 solo and group exhibitions and is represented in the collections of such institutions as the Butler Institute if American Art, the Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, and the Columbus Metropolitan Library as well as corporate collections ranging from Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City to ARCO in Los Angeles.

After graduating Summa Cum Laude from the Columbus College of Art and Design in 2003, Erin Wozniak went on to a summer fellowship at Yale University at Norfolk to study painting. Her work offers private moments of introspection and contemplation. Although painted from life, Erin's paintings are not strict representations, she takes the liberty to skew forms and colors to further express a heightened reality.

Recently, one of Erin's paintings was chosen to exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England.

James Mason is one of Hammond Harkins most widely recognized and respected artists. His work can be seen in private and public collecitons throughout North America. Completed in 1992, the Columbus Deaf School Park Topiary, A Sunday Afternoon on the Ile de la Grande Jatte (a topiary re-imagining of the Georges Seurat painting) continues to be Jim's best known work, providing travelers and residents of Columbus, Ohio a favorite sight-seeing destination.

In addition to creating exquisite topiaries and wooden figures, James Mason has been an instructor at Columbus' Cultural Arts Center from 1978 to present.

Geer studied in the San Francisco Bay area receiving his MFA from San Francisco State University in 1963. After studying with such luminaries as Richard Diebenkorn, Geer has become a prominent American painter in his own right with solo shows in California, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Maine, and Ohio. His work is displayed in major collections the world over.

Each of Morton's canvases are, in the words of Los Angeles Times critic Leah Ollman, "a celebration of the transitory moment, for he knows that color and light never meet in the same way in the same place twice.

Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson is one of the most prolific artists living today. Her diverse body of work ranges from drawings and woodcuts to complex sculptures made from natural and synthetic materials, such as twigs, carved leather, music boxes, and "hogmawg," her own material composed of mud, grease, dyes, and glue. Born in 1940, Robinson was raised in Columbus, Ohio, within the close-knit community of Poindexter Village, one of the country's first federally funded metropolitan housing developments. Robinson received her formal art training at the Columbus Art School (now the Columbus College of Art and Design). She continues to live and work in Columbus.

In 2004, Robinson became a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellows grant. Her work has been presented at a number of museums and galleries, including the Columbus Museum of Art, Akron Art Museum, the Oakland Museum; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Laurent Vialet was born in Paris on September 12, 1967. He studied painting and design at Ecole des Beaux Arts. In 1987 Vialet joined his uncle, the noted French painter Jean Kevorkian, as a pupil and painting companion. Vialet and Kevorkian paint together in the suburbs of Paris and in the Small towns of Normandy and Brittany. On occasion, they travel further afield south near Toulouse and north near Lille.

Laurent has established himself as one of the finest young painters working in France. He favors the style and palette of the Impressionists and his canvases are imbued with the natural light and colors of France. He has shown extensively in galleries in Paris, Nice, Rouen, as well as in London, England. A major exhibition in Tokyo in 1999 was an enormous success that has established Laurent as a rising international painter.

Born in New York City in 1934, Joan Wobst moved to Lynchburg, Virgina, in 1940 upon her father's death. She attended Randolph-Macon Women's College and graduated in 1956 with a major in German and a minor in sculpture. After marrying her husband, Frank in Dresden, Germany, Joan continued her studies at the University of Virgina and studied with Jack Greaves at The Ohio State University in 1984.

Joan's sculptures are featured in public and private collections throughout the United States

After earning his Bachelor's of Fine Art from CCAD, Curtis Bartone went on to finish his Master's Degree at Northwestern University.

Curtis' highly detailed etchings are some of the most sophisticated and elegant we've encountered. His work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions in the Chicago area, Durham, North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia. His lively etchings are proudly displayed in many private collections throughout the United States.

Kenneth Batista is an Associate Professor in the Studio Arts Department at the University of Pittsburgh where he has been on faculty for the past thirty-one years. In addition to teaching, Professor Batista currently serves as an Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the School of Arts & Sciences. A tenured professor, he also served as Department Chair from 1987-1993. Professor Batista earned his B.F.A. from the Columbus College of Art & Design, in Columbus, Ohio (with the Outstanding Senior Award) in 1975 and went on to earn his M.F.A. at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. His work has been exhibited nationally and is included in numerous public and private collections. Professor Batista is also passionate about folk music. For the past eighteen years, he has produced and hosted a specialty show on WYEP 91.3 FM in Pittsburgh called An American Sampler -- a weekly program dedicated to traditional & contemporary folk music and acoustic blues. An American Sampler streams live every Sunday morning from 7:00-11:00 (eastern) at www.wyep.org. Professor Batista balances a full professional life with his family – wife Dr. Martica Hall & their 8-year-old son, Gabriel.

At an early age, Heather learned to create by absorbing an infectious curiosity from her father’s sketches and abstract paintings. In 2008, she followed her father’s footsteps by graduating with BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design. She received the Paul and Erika Bourguignon Achievement Scholarship and was a finalist for the AICUO Award for Excellence in Visual Arts. In her time there she was influenced by and assisted many artists of all ages and experiences

Heather recycles her work, often starting with shapes of old prints or drawings, hers or other artists, building a landscape of sentimental, reactionary marks and thoughts. A person or period of her life often inspires each piece. Looking closely, clues can be found as to who or what she was ruminating over at the moment.

Mark Bush is a recent graduate from the Columbus College of Art and Design. He majored in Fine Arts with an emphasis in representational painting and drawing. His current artistic endeavors explore modern portrait painting with a focus in hyperrealism. He usually paints portraits of people that he knows and likes to work in a relatively large scale.

Mark has received numerous scholarships and awards from Ohio and across the country. After placing 2nd for the nation in a painting contest for the National Society of Arts and Letters, Mark was featured in the Fall 2007 edition of American Artist Watercolor magazine as an emerging artist. Following his graduation in spring 2009, he plans to continue exploring portraiture with hopes of working even larger and more representational.

Amanda H. Cook was born in Nashville, TN in 1975. In 1994 she was awarded a scholarship to the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio where she double majored in Fine Art and Illustration.

Upon graduation, Amanda worked in a variety of fields as a visual artist, including freelance design and illustration for several advertising agencies, and as an Art Handler for several Museums and Galleries throughout the United States, including the Yale University Art Gallery, The Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, and The Wexner Center for the Arts. Throughout the aforementioned assortment of jobs, she subsequently discovered that her true passion lie in oil painting

In realizing her appreciation of Fine Art, Amanda has since exhibited in several group and juried exhibitions nationally, and is currently preparing for her premier solo exhibition in the Fall of 2009 at Hammond Harkins Gallery in Bexley, Ohio.

Originally trained as an architect with a B.A. from Princeton University, in the late seventies Tony turned his attention and passion to sculpture, receiving his M.F.A. from State University of New York at New Paltz in 1977.

From 1978 to 1979 he studied with Claude Horan in Kahalua, Hawaii under the Louis Comfort Tiffany Apprenticeship Grant. In the 1980's, Tony received three Artist in Residence Grants from the Ohio Arts Council Artists in Education program. During this time, Tony began teaching art at Ohio University.

Apart from his sculpture, Tony was also Director of Northwood Europe, chaperoning small groups on personalized tours across Europe. It was said that it was Tony's anecdotes and personal observations as much as the European landscape that made each trip memorable.

Sadly, Tony passed away suddenly in 2004. We are honored to continue to exhibit Tony's beautiful and challenging sculpture.

Born in Manhattan, Roselle Davenport lived in Provence, France with her husband, writer William Davenport. In lectures and articles, the eminent art historian, Rene Huyghe of the Academie Francaise cites her work with its themes of the bird and the search for light as an example of a spiritual renewal he discerns in certain contemporary artists. In his latest book, “Les Signes du Temps et l’Art Moderne” published by Flammarion, he describes her evolution and reproduces one of her paintings of the Genesis series exhibited at Coe Kerr Gallery in 1977.

From 1982 to 1988, Roselle Davenport had been one on the few Americans to be selected each year for exhibition in the International Exhibition of Contemporary Art in Monte Carlo where one of her Provencal landscapes was awarded a prize offered by H.H. the Pope Jean Paul II. In 1985, she was elected to the European Academy of Arts Sciences and Humanities. Her paintings are in the permanent collection of the Honolulu Academy of Arts and in The National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. as well as in many public and private collections.

Babette Herschberger was born in Indiana. In 1981 she moved to South Florida to attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, where she graduated with honors in 1984.

Her work has been in group shows at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, The Florida State Capital Building, the Melanie Cooper Gallery, Chicago, Lurie Fine Art Galleries, Boca Raton, Florida and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Loveladies, New Jersey.

Herschberger’s work is held by collectors throughout the United States and Europe; including the corporate collections of American Airlines, The Four Seasons Hotels, Neiman Marcus, Continental Real Estate Companies and Crescent Miami Centers.

Manuel Hughes has been active in the art scene since the early seventies. He graduated from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor's and a Master's of Fine Arts.

Hughes splits his time between New York City and Paris, France, haunting antique stores and thrift shops looking for old crates, tins and toys to use as subjects of his colorful and highly detailed still lifes.

The Whitney Museum of American Art, Chase Manhattan Bank, St. Louis Museum and High Museum are just a few of the many private collections that feature work by this internationally known artist.

Michael loves cities. They are growing and ever-changing. The city is not only a mosaic of the human endeavor, it is a mosaic of shape, color, texture and temperature. At night those elements lend themselves to be more abstract. The human element is always present. The setting may be void of the human figure, but an automobile, a light from a window, a lit sidewalk assures us that the city, is indeed, very much alive. Light, shapes of color, hints of texture, humanity…what a wonderful puzzle to work.

The artist lives with his wife and their 4 children in Columbus, Ohio.

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1983, Martina spent her early childhood studying piano in hopes of becoming professional pianist. In 2001, her family came to the United States and Martina began a lifelong relationship with the visual arts. In 2007, she graduated from the Columbus College of Art and Design and earned honors that year as Outstanding Senior. Martina is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts degree form the University of Illinois.

Martina begins by describing a shape, often building layers of free, translucent pigment and enclose the form with a bold line. The relatively large scale of her paintings allows her to interact with the piece as if it were a three dimensional object. All the marks, textures, layers, and even mistakes generate a meaning.

Originally from Akron, Ohio, Phil graduated with honors from Akron University with a BA in Fine Arts, emphasis in painting, with a minor in Education. He spent eight years teaching art in public school systems.

In 1986 Phil began carving and painting professionally. He has completed over 100 decorative carvings, many with which he competed internationally. He has won many awards at the most prestigious competitions in North America including the World Championships in Maryland, the North American Carving Competition in Michigan, and the California World Open. Phil’s work has been included in published books, on calendars and in Wildfowl Art Magazine. Many of his award-winning carvings and wildfowl paintings are held in prestigious collections throughout the United States.

Although versatile in all painting mediums, Phil prefers working in oils where he feels a greater sense of depth and vibrancy can be created.

Daina is a painter from Riga, Latvia, where she attended and received her BFA from the Riga Academy of Art. She came to America and continued her studies, receiving her MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland from which she graduated in 2004. Daina’s subject matter focuses on the figure, both male and female, and often contrasts the curvilinear forms of the nude with a rectilinear structure.

Award-winning editorial cartoonist Jeff Stahler creates Moderately Confused, a whimsical slice-of-life daily comic panel. Editorial cartoonist for The Columbus Dispatch, Stahler also draws political cartoons that are distributed worldwide by Newspaper Enterprise Association. "Moderately Confused is an extension of my daily thinking routine," says Stahler. "I'm used to observing the front pages of the news and commenting with a cartoon. But every day, the rest of the paper tracks the culture, and all of those stories are rich for commentary, too. This panel gives me an outlet for observing those back pages of the paper that I enjoy reading as well." Stahler's cartoons appear every week in USA Today and are frequently reprinted in major magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek and The New York Times. Stahler's Moderately Confused was a finalist for the National Cartoonists Society's 2005 Reuben division award for Best Cartoon Panel. A native of Bellefontaine, Ohio, Stahler graduated from the Columbus College of Art and Design. He resides in Columbus, Ohio, with his family.

Pam Workman received her B.S. from The Ohio State University in 1967. Several years later, her passion for painting led her back to school and she earned a B.F.A. from Columbus College of Art and Design in 1999. Continuing on, Pam graduated with an M.F.A. form the prestigious Pratt Institute, NYC in 2003.

Check out more of Pam's work on her website: www.pamelaworkman.info.

Born in 1969, John Worthington lives and works in London. His eloquently painted figures have been the subject of many solo exhibitions throughout England and France.

We are proud to bring John's brilliant work to the United States.

A contemporary realist painter, Philip R. Jackson’s work has been shown in many national and international juried exhibitions and has been the spotlight of many museum venues. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Evansville Museum of Art in Evansville, Indiana and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Jackson is a recipient of an Individual Artists Grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission and an internationally juried fellowship from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in Montreal, Canada, which recognized him as a premier realist painter.

Jackson’s work has been featured in the Still-Life Issue of Southwest Art Magazine and was the subject of an extraordinary cover story in American Artist Magazine. Last year celebrated Jackson’s first major survey of paintings at the Evansville Museum of Art in Evansville, Indiana. In the 103rd history of the museum, he is the youngest artist ever chosen to exhibit. He received his BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio and his MFA from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Currently, he is the Painting Area Head in the Department of Art at The University of Mississippi in Oxford.

Zalban had spent many years as a successful photographer in Boston and Chicago before his path led him to a new form of expression. David creates intricate, three-dimensional, sculpture from a single strand of hand-bended wire. The results are simply astonishing. Not only are the forms a celebration of line but each piece creates astounding shadows that add mystery to his compositions.

The artist has been featured in group and solo exhibitions along the eastern coast of the United States, the Midwest and even as far as Brazil and Argentina.

When something has captured my attention (I call this an instance of “directed perception”), it stands isolated in my visual memory to the exclusion of everything else. These are often things or scenes glimpsed in passing, and I will turn and retrace my steps, or brake and turn the car around, struck by some unexpected elegance. Often, the precise aspect of the thing seen that has caused me such excitement will remain mysterious to me until I have begun to paint. This is, partly, why I feel driven to paint it. The other reason is so that others may share in my appreciation of these naturally-occurring compositions, and to that end I present only the thing I’ve seen and loved at first sight, leaving out all indications of its location and environment. In this way, too, I remain true to my initial experience of directed perception. My paintings, paradoxically enough, are not “about” the objects depicted, despite being shaped and painted so as to resemble those objects. I have no particular interest in barns, propane tanks, road signs, or the other things which serve as vehicles for these found compositions.

And so, the paintings themselves present their own paradoxes, using trompe-l’oeil techniques to give the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface; the paintings’ unusual shapes emphasize their existence as objects in their own right, but these objects seem to consist of one plane only, having no thickness, constructed so as to “float” just in front of the wall.