Blooming Scapes! Exhibition | Opening Reception
Friday, January 5 :: 6-9pm | Ongoing through February 17
@ Creative Alliance
Blooming Scapes! is a group exhibition focusing on the variation of use of the landscape within art. Vibrant hills, topographic scenes, and more will be on view! Featured artists include Kini Collins, Lyndie Vantine, Hyunsuk Erickson, Fanni Somogyi, Paula Zaremba, and Deb Jansen.
Artist Bios
Kini Collins
Upon graduating from high school in 1970, I moved to New York City where, driven by the need to protect myself from armed robberies, I began a study of martial arts that was to be the focus of my life for 20 years. I studied in the US and Japan and received ranking in several different movement forms; a third degree black belt in aikido, first degree black belt in iaido, second degree black belt in jujitsu, and I was the first non-Japanese to receive a master’s level ranking in Toda Ha Bukkyo Ryu. I taught classes in Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tulsa and Baltimore. In the pursuit of these rankings, I supported myself by teaching and working as a Japanese-English interpreter.
Other than a wealth of personal combat skills and some injuries, the most useful things I took away from those years of study was an understanding that failure is a misnomer and that discipline and desire are as important as talent. After being injured and unable to practice martial arts, I began working as a freelance writer and editor in 1994. With the thought that learning to draw would improve my observation skills and help me be a better writer, I decided to study drawing. Over the course of two years, I slowly stopped writing, and art-making became the focus of my life, where it has remained since.
I took art classes, read and looked voraciously, and over the course of 20 years, became established and respected in the Baltimore art scene. I had gallery representation locally and nationally. Coupled with a lot of luck, my success is, I believe, mostly a product of the regard for patience and trust of process I learned during my study of martial arts. To support my life as an artist I have held a series of “day jobs,” careful to choose work that is meaningful to me and jobs that contribute to the community in which I live. I also have an extensive history of volunteerism with neighborhood associations and arts organizations, most notably as a trustee for The Creative Alliance.
Hyunsuk Erickson
Hyunsuk Erickson (b. 1969, Seoul, Korea) is a multidisciplinary artist and art instructor. Hyunsuk seeks a harmonious balance between industrial materials, self-identity, and cultural hybridity in her studio practice. She explores surrounding materials from her Korean and American life within those materials utilizing Korean traditional craftsmanship and incorporating traditional philosophy ideas that she has been carrying unconsciously. She asserts the failures of our consumption, including the lasting presence of plastics and other industrial consumer products. These materials transform something alarming and uncomfortable into something beautiful in an unsettling way. Her work is symbolic of the duality of her cultures—her cultural spirit and her experience of the American materialistic world reflected on her body of work. This combination of intangible (spiritual) belief and tangible (materials) creates something between a flora and fauna of an imaginary unknown world, opening the way for conversations about culture and consumerism to take shape.
Fanni Somogyi
Fanni Somogyi (b. Budapest, Hungary) is an emerging artist working in Detroit, Michigan. She creates biomorphic metal and plant assemblages that explore environmental kinship and disconnectedness. Somogyi completed an MA in Curatorial Studies at the Node Center in Berlin in 2023 and earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Interdisciplinary Sculpture and Creative Writing in 2019. Her work has appeared at Target Gallery (Alexandria, VA), at Maryland Art Place (Baltimore, MD), and at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA) among others. Somogyi’s sculptures range in scale from tabletop pieces to large-scale installations, including a public sculpture at the Franconia Sculpture Park (Shafer, MN), and the traveling art installation Pop Sheep at Olala Street Festival (Linz, Austria) in 2018 and at Sziget Music Festival (Budapest, Hungary) between 2015 and 2017. Somogyi is currently completing her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Lyndie Vantine
Lyndie Vantine is an artist from central northern Maryland. Interested in creating work about the forms of topography, as well as the patterns and cadence of organic forms, she sees landscape as not just vistas or scenery. It’s also about the earth’s elemental life forces, harmony, and healing. She has exhibited regionally for the past 35 years. She earned her BFA from University of the Arts, an MFA from Mt. Royal Graduate School at Maryland Institute College of Art, and an MLA from the Advanced Academics Program of the Krueger School of Arts and Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University.
Paula Zaremba
Paula is an artist based in Baltimore, MD who explores her creative musings through photographs and photo painting to create digital collages and illustrations. She is most inspired by her journey to nurture her mental wellbeing, her loved ones, reflect on her travels, and use her art to connect with viewers in a way that allows them to see themselves. She would call herself an expanding artist/artivist with hopes to share her work, and therefore herself, with the world.
