Jew­el­er Ari­an­na Bara has a num­ber of work tables in her stu­dio, each for a dif­fer­ent part of the jew­el­ry mak­ing process. There is a table full of stones, a design table, a sol­der­ing table, and a work bench for saw­ing, shap­ing and fin­ish­ing pieces. How­ev­er, it’s the first table where she selects the stones for each piece that most excites her. “When I am about to start a new piece some­times my ideas are large­ly com­plete, per­haps I know what shape I’d like to make but just need to select the right stones. Oth­er times I enter my stu­dio with no plan what­so­ev­er — and that is the most exhil­a­rat­ing time” says Bara. “Opals, agates, moon­stones, labradorite, onyx, azu­rite, fos­sils, stones of every col­or and shape fill the table, and as the sun­light comes in the win­dow, I mix and match, con­stant­ly exper­i­ment­ing, spurred on by more ideas. I notice the inter­play of col­ors, shapes, tex­tures, sizes and weights. The more I move things around the more excit­ed I become as the stones inter­act in unex­pect­ed ways. My imag­i­na­tion is spurred by what I see, what I feel and what I know about the folk­lore sur­round­ing stones. As my ideas coa­lesce and stones come togeth­er the “Glim­mer” becomes the “Spark”.

Painter Eduar­do Lapeti­na describes his cre­ative process this way. “I want my spaces to be paint­ed with­out inten­tion, with­out con­scious tech­nique, with­out any­thing that might inter­fere with the con­nec­tions I seek to cre­ate. I do not want to keep a tra­di­tion. I am not look­ing for beau­ty but the view­er might find it in my art. And it is not about any par­tic­u­lar theme or motif, it is about effec­tive­ly con­vey­ing the imma­te­r­i­al through mate­ri­al­i­ty. My aim is to project ener­gy, visu­al vibra­tions, light, voic­es, excite­ment, and enthu­si­asm, cap­tured in a phys­i­cal form that you can take home with you.”

For pho­tog­ra­ph­er and dig­i­tal artist Eric Saun­ders the show’s title is a descrip­tion of the begin­nings of a cre­ative process. “Dig­i­tal art” is his term for dig­i­tal changes to an image which go beyond adjust­ing focus, con­trast, den­si­ty, and col­or bal­ance, to actu­al­ly change the ele­ments of the image, and to enhance the inter­est or the effec­tive­ness of the com­po­si­tion­al struc­ture.
Says Saun­ders “When I pho­to­graph images, I am usu­al­ly inspired by unusu­al abstract pat­terns of light, col­or, and tone, which are found in nature and in human arti­facts. I then try to incor­po­rate these pat­terns into com­po­si­tion­al struc­tures, so that the result­ing image is acces­si­ble and com­pelling to the view­er.”