5080 W. Pico Boulevard LA, CA 90019

Talita Long’s creative expressions extend from her beautiful music as a singer songwriter, poet, to painter, printmaker, teacher, and Professor.  Starting her Art Education and Art Practice at Howard University, then to the School of Visual Arts, on to Cooper Union,  then to the University of Iowa where she received her MA and MFA degree, and finally earning her teaching credentials at UCLA in Applied Arts Program.  Long Continues to record music while maintaining an active art exhibiting calendar as well.  Trinidadian parents, she was born and raised in Brooklyn, Long’s artwork speaks of the struggles and injustices that continue for the black diaspora.  She often references the performers in the Trinidad Carnival Celebrations and Ceremonies depicting the Jab Jab Character as the tempter, seducer, sinner, luring the innocent unsuspecting souls.  Often Long hides, almost camouflages, these suspicious characters in the background making us aware of the constant possibility of danger, and giving us warning to stay alert and to be prepared.  

In Indigenous Matter, Long also presents us with the beauty and elegance of Blackness in her ‘Black Goddess’ series which features the nude form wrapped in rubbings of stylized design motifs referencing patterns in nature, architecture and fashion.  Each drawing reveals these female figures with the strength, wisdom and warrioress qualities embodied in Black Indigenous Matter.

Jora Nelstein is a self taught intuitive Dutch artist living in Los Angeles.

Substantive abstract painting’s, Jora’s compositions draw reference and inspiration from nature, and the human form.  Her techniques of building layers, both adding and subtracting, exposing and revealing what remains.  Her use of vibrant colors, her intuitive and spontaneous gestures allow the viewers to feel and recognize the influence, and impressions of what came before and what lies beneath.  

My art is an exploration in the experience of life. No matter what I encounter, I will never stop creating my visions! The three current topics explored in my work are identity theft, the female influences in my life, and the visualization of music and its emotional effects on my art.

Most of my art gravitates on and around the female. The female is everywhere in art and life. Just look around you and you will see! They birth and nurture humanity, even during times when it seems like there is no hope! The life they carry is most often a gift and at other times a terrible curse, yet the female perseveres like the unending and expanding universe. As a male, I could never imagine what it would be like to give birth to another human. The closest I will ever get is to create art that expresses the truest and profound meaning of my life! I never take the female or my art for granted, I come from the female! The female is the greatest work of art ever created. I am their clay!

Brian Atchley fell into painting when he discovered an abandoned canvas in a Chicago dumpster. He is an autodidact by choice, because he loves the process of learning through doing, rather than through prescriptive art classes. Currently, his work is focused on monochromatic studies of the human form. His use of black and white is used to punctuate the incongruous textures of the human body, and the profound effect light and shadow have in sculpting the human form.

“As I paint my intention is not to put bodies onto a canvas, but let them emerge from it. Starting from total darkness, I slowly bring them to light - enough so you can begin to see their shapes and contours but they still remain partially hidden. It is what we do not see that keeps us searching for more.”

Atchley recieved a Bachelor of Arts & Sciences from the Universtiy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.