The Artists

Here are bios of some of our featured artists.

Amy Fredrick - amyfrederick.net | myspace.com/amyfrederick

Cephalopawn

CHARM (TYS Crew)

Cristina Tacata

Darlisa Guzman

Karin Anna Cheung- karinannacheung.com

Kwen - kwen75@gmail.com

Gregory Pacificar - narragroup.com

MECA ISA - isa17.com
Meca Isa currently resides in San Francisco as Creative Director of The Giant Peach Dot Com. Raised in Virginia Beach, Meca developed a "girls can do it too" attitude which manifested as she wandered about town BMX riding, playing street football, bodyboarding, and listening to hip-hop; Meca's adventurous childhood experiences has influenced her art today. Her work has been shown in well-respected galleries as well as her graphic designs on album covers, print advertisements, and clothing. Her recent work is a playful combination of nature, anime, hip-hop, illustration and street lifestyle.

Mia Villanueva - myspace.com/mi_avillanueva
Mia Villanueva received her BFA in Film Production from LoyolaMarymount University School of Film and Television in Los Angeles, CA. For over two years,Villanueva served as the Job Coordinator for Film Independent (formerly IFP/Los Angeles), Project:Involve program where she founded their film job placement program and placed over 250 filmmakers of color in paid jobs within the film and television industry.

In 2000, Villanueva was selected as an Honoree/Fellow of the Project:Involve program where she was mentored by Gary Farmer (Smoke Signals, Ghostdog: Way of the Samurai), independent filmmaker and well-respected Native American actor. Villanueva received her Certification for Intercultural Training in diversity training and conflict management from an Intercultural Training program funded by the Irvine Foundation; she has been a strong advocate for creating more open doors for people of color in the film and entertainment industry.

Villanueva has worked in all aspects of the film industry including development, pre-production, production, post- production, and human resources for companies such as Sony, DreamWorks, Xerox, West Post Digital, and Film Independent. She has also served on grant review committees for the Entertainment Industry Foundation and in 2002, she was the recipient of the Kodak Film Scholarship for her films, Children Under 12 and On Sundays. Her films have screened at the Visual Communications Film Festival, NewFilmWorks in New York, and the New York International Asian-American Film Festival. At theNew York International Asian Film Festival, Villanueva was named a"Director to Watch For". Villanueva was recently accepted as one of nine writers to the Atlantic Center for the Arts where she was mentored by acclaimed playwright/novelist Jessica Hagedorn (Dogeaters, Dream Jungle) while completing re writes on her first feature narrative screenplay.

Featured in Director's Guild of America Magazine in 2004, Villanueva was the recipient of Visual Communication "Armed with a Camera" fellowship for the feature documentary film she is currently directing entitled The Unheard Musician (currently in post-production.) Just recently Villanueva produced a documentary sponsored by the United States Embassy and the Malaysian AIDS Council in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The film is entitled Mangosteen: HIV/AIDS in Malaysia, which was named "Best of Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival" for 2006. In addition to filmmaking, Villanueva is also a partner with The Narra Group film production company and continues to help people find jobs in the entertainment industry. To date, Villanueva has helped over 800 people find employment in the entertainment industry as she continues to write/direct/produce feature and documentary films.

Ms. YE Torres
My current work focuses on invented characters and line drawings visually representing my emotional state during the moment of creation. As a collage artist, I arrange copies of my own imagery and artwork to document the people, ideas and emotions that I am releasing. Like a stream of consciousness that is never put to rest, the autobiographical context of the artwork can be viewed as lines created by letters and words, abstract drawings and invented characters intermingled together to make the finished piece. My current collection is a documentation of experiences of my life, told to amuse myself and to work through the misery, stress and healing within my own mind and existence.

Naomi Valdivia - www.beenznrice.com | www.myspace.com/beenznriceart
Naomi Valdivia is truly a Southern California artist, raised in Carson, CA, went to highschool in Hollywood at Fairfax Visual Arts Magnet, and college finishing with a BFA in Illustration from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. She currently is a Graphic Designer and freelance Illustrator in Camarillo, CA.

Her style is influenced by meshing cultures, as she is a living, breathing mesh of cultures herself-specifically half Filipino, a quarter Japanese, and a quarter Caucasian, and within those ethnicities, are countless mixtures. Her work is
mostly digital, mixing the clean vector quality of Illustrator with the many painterly possibilities of Photoshop.

She is the "Rice" factor of Beenznrice, of which her husband Carlos, who is Mexican American, is the "Beenz". She also mixes religious and Mexican themes in her work, most strongly Dia De Los Muertos themes and aesthetics. She likes the idea of mixing something that is beautiful with something that is seen as morbid-therefore creating its own haunting and thought provoking beauty.

Philippa Isherwood

phloe is a hack who spends her “quality time” mulling over various scenarios on how to fake her own death. She can think of no better homage to the Sallie Mae Corporation for making her life a miserable, oily, unrepayable hell. She attended Otis College of Art and Design after UCLA said they lost her undergraduate transcripts three times. She was extremely dysfunctional in art school, and administration called security on her after she tried to return her Master’s Degree for her money back. www.studfinder.org

Rebecca Baroma
Rebecca E. Baroma is a regular performer and can be seen five days a week at John Muir M.S. in her role as a special education teacher...Lives in venice; claims oxnard; wants another degree; and thinks she's going to run a marathon...she dabbles in other mediums such as seen here

SHERM - shermgrafik.com
Sherm is a graffiti artist from Los Angeles. She is currently repping 2 crews; COI and OTP and is pushing 30. When she is not working, she is usually painting walls, trying to create art, being lazy or sleeping. Go to www.shermgrafik.com to check out more of her artwork.

shredONE

Urban Envy - www.urbanenvy.com | www.myspace.com/urbanenvynyc