Growing up in the Bronx project, I often found myself wanting to get out. I knew that there was more to the world than my confining environment. At a young age, I learned to navigate my way through the city streets and subways using transit maps as my guide and the subway my gateway to explore the city jungle. My thirst to discover new lands and experience new cultures has led me around the world. The maps I held promised routes and passages to travels unknown.
Roaming the city I discovered the Met and the Art Students League, both nurturing my artistic education. Eventually, I attended Fashion Institute of Technology receiving an A.A. degree in Interior Design. This landed me a job designing carpets for Edward Fields. Two years later, I transferred to Los Angeles where I met my first husband. We left L.A. to live in Spain and travel overland to India. Our journey took us to exotic places such as Morocco, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. After a year, we returned to Los Angeles, I attended CSUN receiving a Masters Degree in Fine Arts.
Traveling the world and mapping my journeys has been a way of exploring cultures, terrains and enhancing the visible search for adventures. What emerges is a visual exploration of the world around me.
My recent series of paintings reflect my interest in maps, cartography and topography. They do not represent actual maps, but reference a composite collection of locations that intuitively evoke a sense of place. The paintings are constructed on the grid as an underlying structure of poured colored paints, richly layered surfaces that reveal and conceal strata and crust. I am interested in the physicality of landforms and its evidence of time and age as it emerges from the residue of human marks.
BIO
Shelley Heffler is an artist and teacher. Her teaching experience includes Cal State University, Northridge, Otis College of Art and Design, and high school ceramics in Los Angeles.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Shelley discovered the Art Students League at the age of 15 taking drawing and painting classes. She received an A.A. degree in interior design from Fashion Institute of Technology. Painting was her first love and she worked as a carpet designer for Edward Fields. After moving to Los Angeles, she left the country for a year to travel abroad to destinations that were rarely seen and explored by western eyes. Returning to Los Angeles, she attended Cal State, Northridge, studying drawing with Marvin Hardin and sculpture with Robert Bassler.
She received a Masters degree from C.S.U.N. in sculpture and immediately had success with exhibitions at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Municipal Art Gallery.
Shelley has been teaching ceramics for more than 20 years. She is Nationally Board Certified Professional teacher and mentors new teachers for Los Angeles Unified School District. Her current studio is in Inglewood, California.
EDUCATION
2010 Studies Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Studies Penland School of Crafts, NC
1986 MFA California State University, Northridge
1984 BA California State University, Northridge
1972 AA Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY
Email: shelleyheffler@yahoo.com
Website: www.shelleyheffler.com
Raised in Southern Africa, (Zimbabwe), and then transplanted to the United States as a teenager; I have learned to straddle dynamically different worlds and cultures. My art reflects the empirical worlds of traditional or realistic figurative paintings and portraiture, and abstract art as well. I reside in Southern California and am a member of the Portrait Society of America and Southern California Artists Association.
After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I continued painting at the Art Students League in New York City, studying the Frank Reilly method of painting with Jack Faragasso. I paint both realistically as well as abstractly in oil paint as well as in acrylic paint. Although both styles are diametrically opposite, I approach both with the same high standards of quality and substance.
My commissioned portraits, still-lifes and abstract paintings hang in the homes and offices of patrons throughout the United States. My work has been shown in various galleries in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas. Concurrently, I teach art and animation at Segerstrom High School in Santa Ana, CA.
E-mail: gordo5@cox.net
Website: www.rogergordonart.com
JEAN FITCH JONES is a pure abstract expressionistic artist expressing reflections using both Eastern sensitivity, the use of calligraphy brush strokes and Western movement of unmediated expression and boldness.
Exemplifying abstract expression's spontaneity, the works are an exploration of self on canvas liberated from any evident reference to the world of appearances, creating form for its own sake, subject to the laws of art rather than those of nature. Such aesthetic frontiers, incorporating entirely non-representational imagery, invites therapeutic, meditative qualities of allowing the viewer to discover their own images within the canvas.
Employing gestural brushwork, powerful bold forms and improvisational exploration, the works portray a total risk to the artist as well as the viewer. A risk to look into oneself to discover peace or turmoil. Introduction to the Artist JEAN FITCH JONES is a current day abstract expressionistic artist living in Southern California.
This artist is successful and unique because of her ability marry the power of Western abstract expressionism to the reflective and sensuality of Japanese calligraphy. The art works are bold and daring canvases which push the aesthetic frontiers creating a spontaneous world of accidential splashes, brush strokes left undisguised and unworked on the canvas. The magic of color, form and texture are freed from associations which allows the viewer to explore the direction of a powerful sensual brush stroke or accidental blend of color.
This artist uniquely combines the art of the cerebral and intellect with private and intimate emotions. This art is a successful and refreshing example of unadulterated energy visualized. The marriage of these two vastly different approaches to the world yield an art that seems to create its own world.
JEAN FITCH JONES has travelled and studied art internationally. Extensive art tours in France, Italy, Spain, Greece as well as Southeast Asia, Bali, Thailand and Malaysia. Instructors have included Tony Delap, Craig Kaughman, Ed Bereal, John Paul Jones and RT Pece. Art influences include Elaine De Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, John Altoon, Richard Diebenkorn and Toko Shinoda.
EDUCATION:
B.A. - University of California, Irvine, California - Studio Art and Biology A.A. - Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, California - Art and Biology Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri - Art and Photography
EXHIBITIONS:
2000 Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, California Southern California Artists' Gallery, Pomona, California Aliso Viejo Library, Aliso Viejo, California Guggenheim Center at Chapman College, Orange, California Santora Artist Village, Santa Ana, California
1999 La Jolla Hilton, La Jolla, California Guggenheim Center at Chapman College, Orange, California Rancho Viejo Library, Rancho Viejo, California
1998 Art Tour, Paris, France Jewish Community Center, Costa Mesa, California Huntington Art Center, Huntington Beach, California Jack London Auditorium, Oakland, California
1997 Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, Illinois Guggenheim Center at Chapman College, Orange, California Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, California Deming Cultural Center, Deming, New Mexio
1996 Musee Adzak, Paris, France Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, Illinois Huntington Art Center, Huntington Beach, California Advertising Art Building, Santa Ana, California
1995 Santora Artists Village, Santa Ana, California Irvine Fine Arts, Irvine, California Ronald Reagan Federal Court House Project, Santa Ana, California Advertising Art Building, Santa Ana, California
AUCTIONS:
"La Fiesta 1995", Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Santa Ana, California Orange County Center for Contemporary Art "Silent Auction," Santa Ana, California Orange County People for Animals "Holiday Auction," Newport Beach, California
PRESS MENTIONS:
Orange County Register, June 3, 1995 - "From Eyesore to Canvas" Orange County Register, July 16, 1995 - "Art Lovers by the Hundreds Visit New Studios" Orange County Weekly, October 24, 1996 - Art Walk" JCC Center Voice, February, 1998 - "Expressionist Jean Fitch Jones to Show at the JCC"
CORPORATE COLLECTIONS:
Abramsohn Collection, Dana Point, California - "Odorokasu Hato" Orange County People for Animals, Irvine, California - "Yurushi" Diversified Newport Appraisal, Newport Beach, California - "Buffalo Dance" Carpenter & Company, Irvine, California - "Dancer of the Sky"
