Summer Celebration Art Show
Startup Curatorial x Flowers
Startup Curatorial, founded by artist and art educator Ray Beldner, is dedicated to connecting art collectors to exciting up-and-coming artists through curated art exhibitions, collector advising, and private art sales. Flowers’ Summer Celebration features art installations across the property from four talented Bay Area artists working in diverse mediums, yet united by their shared inspiration drawn from the natural world. Music for the event performed by songwriter, Malena Cadiz.
Jee Park / Seoul Sister Studio | Ceramics
Sonoma County-based ceramicist Jee Park started Seoul Sister Studio five years ago. However, her passion for clay began twenty years ago when she took her first class at the Palo Alto Art Center on her way home from work in Silicon Valley. She chose ceramics as her art form after a career in engineering and design, because she realized that clay is grounding – it is of the earth.
Jee’s work is guided by the principles of functionality, balance, and joy. All are illustrated in an irworobondo, a culturally significant Korean painting done on a folding screen, which was the backdrop for royalty. Her work strives to incorporate these elements by being utilitarian, often featuring contrasting surfaces, and highlighting extraordinary carved designs.
Nicole W. Kelly / YOLOTLI | Fiber Art
Nicole W. Kelly is a Napa-based fiber artist who hails from the Black Forest region of Southwest Germany. She is known for creating minimal and timeless textile goods exclusively crafted from high-quality natural fibers, as well as for her role as a founding member of Bay Area Made. Her work explores ways of transcribing antique textile techniques into contemporary contexts.
“My work consists of hand-crafted fiber goods and is inspired by the meticulously embroidered linens I grew up with in the Black Forest of Germany. At the heart of my practice lies a belief in the intrinsic value of slow craftsmanship. This practice serves as a reminder of our collective social and environmental responsibilities amidst a landscape dominated by mass production and disposability.”
Suzana Stamenovic | Photography
Suzana Stamenovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, and emigrated to Canada in 1991 after the war broke out in the former Yugoslavia. Suzana had a 16-year career as a computer game artist. Before becoming a full-time photographer in 2010. She currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Through photography and collage, my work reflects a personal journey exploring migration and discovery. Deconstruction of images, either in the form of a collage or digital manipulation, becomes a form of contemplation where I search for new visual connections. Blue Space Series emerged from the unique circumstances in 2020. The city streets, eerily empty, amplified my sense of isolation. Seeking peace, I turned my lens toward trees and the sky. Capturing the vastness of the sky gave me a sense of freedom and clarity, allowing me to focus on the endless possibilities ahead.”
Christine Walker | Monotype Prints & Paintings
Christine Walker is a visual artist and author based in Sonoma County, where she paints in her studio neighbored by vineyards and apple orchards. Her art is informed by nature, dance, and music.
“A trace of the seen, felt, and questioned appears on the canvas or paper. I’m attracted to the resilient, hopeful, transient, and transformative—the earth, water, skies, and people moving within environments. As an author, I try to illuminate the human condition with words. As a painter, I rely on visual language to provoke emotion and thought.”
Malena Cadiz | Singer-Songwriter
Malena Cadiz is a Los Angeles-based songwriter making a beautiful, dreamy brand of down-home folk music that has been likened to early Emmylou or Bob Dylan. There’s something Didion-esque about Cadiz’s storytelling as she crafts deeply personal vignettes that reveal greater narratives about the world we live in. Growing up a second-generation Filipino-American, Cadiz bounced between living in the suburbs of Michigan with her mother and bustling Singapore with her father. “I always felt rootless, not quite belonging to either place.” This longing for home and search for center rests at the heart of Cadiz’s work.
