I have been called the Sock Monkey Lady. That could be because I had a line of Sock Monkey golf club headcovers carried on tour by six LPGA pros. But that's only one color in my crayon box, and I like to create with them all.

I better start at the beginning. I grew up in a musical household, and I spent my youth participating in all manner of musical activities. I didn't discover painting until I was 33. I took a tole painting class and painted an apple. I remember thinking that someday I would paint an entire scene! Anyway, after that class, I was hooked! I got up every day and painted a few hours before work. This demanding schedule was worth the effort. By 1999, I left my day job and launched my full-time art business. And thus began my Forest Gump-like ride…

At 44, I began producing the television series Give Your Walls Some Soul as a fun way to expand my teaching. (My teaching style is Bob Ross meets Emeril.) My instructional painting show grew from an audience of one station to over 50 stations across the country and over 10 million households and won numerous awards.

At 46, I wrote, illustrated, and self-published my first children's book, Monkey Made of Sockies. From that book grew a line of licensed merchandise. The popular Monkey Made of Sockies golf club headcovers became a global bestseller and LPGA players even carried them on tour.

At 50, I needed music to accompany my video work, so I began songwriting. At that point, I had come full circle.

Today, I am an award-winning artist, television producer/host, songwriter, and author. My artwork is licensed and sold globally. My most recent creation, The Sock Monkey Oracle, by Beyond Words Publishing, combines my sock monkey artwork with my painting and metaphysics.

Lately, I’ve been having fun creating work with the palette knife. But no matter what medium I use, my missions is for folks to feel the love in all my creations. I see art, music, writing, and multimedia as movements in one harmonious joyful symphony. I hope you can feel the love in all of my work.

I first took ceramics in high school in the early 1970s. Although I enjoyed the potter’s wheel, I felt hand-building provided more freedom to explore working in clay.

In college I majored in engineering but continued taking art courses in both ceramic sculpture and jewelry making. I was fortunate to work as the teacher’s assistant in the ceramics lab and learned a great deal about the science of mixing glazes and managing heat to fire pieces in the kilns.

After college, ceramics was put on hold while I pursued a career as a civil engineer, and my wife Karen and I raised our family. I retired in 2018 after a 35-year engineering career and we moved to a 55+ community in Rocklin.

I saw an electric kiln in the arts & crafts room and got back into ceramics. I joined Rocklin Fine Arts in early 2023. Joining RFA has helped advance my art by exposing me to artists with distinctive styles in a wide range of artistic media.

Inspiration for my ceramic art comes from many places. I make some functional pieces, such as bowls and mugs, but I primarily make sculptural pieces.

My art often contains humor and whimsy, and my artistic style might be described as “folksy”. I am a child of the 60s and 70s, so a lot of my pieces include references to pop culture.

My early influences included Bob Arneson and David Gilhooly, who were part of the famed UC Davis TB-9 ceramics studio.

Their use of humor in their art was refreshing for me as a young artist in the time after Vietnam and Watergate.

More recently, I have been enjoying the work of local ceramic artists Tony Natsoulas, Michele Fisher, and Valerie Birkhoff.

I gravitated to making tile murals after seeing one by Guillermo Wagner Granizo at the Vacaville City Hall that told the history of the community.

I love that tile murals can tell a story, and that they can be framed and hung like paintings. My tile murals often include layers of carved clay to give added depth and create a sculptural feel.

I enjoy taking a two-dimensional image and adding the third dimension in clay. Someone once told me that I was actually working in two and a half dimensions, not three. I got a kick out of that.

Some of my tile murals are based on my experiences, like abalone diving, or the architecture of a friend’s Napa Valley winery.

Others are based on famous paintings, such as Hokusai’s Great Wave or a Pollock abstract. The Internet is always a source of interesting photographs that I can interpret into a tile mural. One recent tile mural was based on images from the Webb deep space telescope. Another is based upon a koi pond my wife and I saw at a botanical garden.

Most of my art pieces have a background story. I primarily make ceramic gifts for family and friends, not having pursued commercializing my art yet. I try to make something that has a personal connection. A sculpture or ceramic plate of a beloved pet. Or a tile mural related to a hobby or area of interest. If my art can make that connection and bring a smile, then I have accomplished something.

Background: Susan became a tactile artist at a very early age beginning in a backyard puddle where she made mud balls and squares that were stacked all around her until she was made to stop and get cleaned up.

She has always loved experiencing different art mediums including ceramics, stained glass; collage, drawing and painting. At the age of nine she began her taking pictures of her younger sisters using a brownie box camera and thanks to her photography skills her five younger sisters have baby pictures.

Back in the early 1990s, Susan joined Matrix Arts, a Sacramento art gallery created for and run by women artists. During that time, she was considered a rising star as a photographer.

She was represented by an art gallery and exhibited her work all around Sacramento and Placer Counties. Along the way she won awards and was invited to exhibit her large abstract photographs of vibrant colors shining through water drops at the California State Capitol. While taking down her exhibit, her framed photographs stacked on a cart began rolling down the loading dock onto the hood of her car.

After the noise and shock subsided, all she could see was twisted metal frames and broken glass everywhere. Susan looked up to the sky and said out loud, “What’s the message here?” Over the years, Susan continued to delve into photography, but exhibiting her work took a back seat until 2023.

Today: Susan is primarily a photographer who loves to digitally transform her photographs and make them look like paintings. Her current endeavors include a love for photo encaustic art, paper collage and mixed media. Photography will always be her first love because it captures one moment in time.

Her inspiration comes from seeing what fellow artists are creating and photographing life around her. Susan currently serves on the board of directors for Northern California Arts, and the Sacramento Fine Arts Center in Carmichael, and she is co-chair of the Sac Arts Photography Group. Wanting to support art groups in Placer County, she became a member of Rocklin Fine Arts and Blue Line Arts.

Susan is a self-taught artist who has taken a few lessons and workshops along the way to help her get started with a new art medium.

She has an art studio in her home filled with art supplies old and new. Her studio is very organized until it’s not. Once a new art project is started her studio turns into organized chaos.

When she’s not generating art or entering juried art shows, she volunteers and supports other artists. Her dream is to one day create a unique body of work unlike anything she’s seen before.

At the age of 76, Susan feels like she’s just now finding her artistic voice and for her every day offers a new beginning with a renewed search for creative inspiration.

Rita Kauffman Fine Art shows paintings of landscapes, seascapes, and also abstracts.

www.facebook.com/RitaKauffmanArtist

Website:  ritakauffmanfineart.artspan.com

Rita Kauffman’s love of art began at a very early age while observing her father, a painter and draftsman.

She was most impressed by his paintings and his art box tools.

His influence inspired her to produce her first published piece of art, which appeared on the inside cover of her senior yearbook.

It was an ink drawing called ‘The Long Road.’ Rita’s mother also inspired her to work in their flower and vegetable gardens while observing nature at its fullest.

Rita grew up in a small northern Pennsylvania community called Hoban Heights.

She ventured into the woods to play or pick berries with her family while enjoying the countryside.

She overlooked the purple-blue Appalachian Mountains and the variety of trees changing colors during the fall and spring seasons.

Flowers grew abundantly, and to this day, her love of their beauty is apparent in her paintings and photography.

After moving to the Philadelphia suburbs of Gladwyne, PA, she took art lessons at the Main Line Art Center in Haverford, where she actively began to paint.

She produced her first solo show in 1981 at the University of Pennsylvania Faculty Club.

Thereafter, she decided to enter art school at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she studied Illustration, Graphic Design, and Printmaking, which influences her contemporary work today. She immediately learned the importance of color, composition, drawing, and perspective.

Rita received her Bachelor’s Degree in Fashion Design at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

Rita also paints in Impressionistic and Realistic styles as a result of her travels, country upbringing, and life experiences.

The ocean scenes are inspired by her nautical travels, as she was an avid boater along the Atlantic coast from Nantucket, MA, to Boca Raton, FL.

She lived during the summer in Ocean City, NJ, witnessing breathtaking sunsets and ocean scenes.

After Rita moved to northern California in 2007, she continued to create art and capture the beauty of her surroundings, in addition to serving as an Art Docent at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

Website:  ritakauffmanfineart.artspan.com

www.facebook.com/RitaKauffmanArtist

I like to say I was born with a pencil in my hand. In reality, my grandma put it there. She was a charcoal photo-realistic artist and did everything she could to turn me into an artist! Some of my first pieces of art are little circles drawn all over a piece of scratch paper and in the corner she wrote ‘ Circles by Tiffany, 14 months.

My prized possession of hers is a portrait she drew of 2-year-old me with my own characters traced around my portrait.

I have always been compelled to create but felt alone in my passions and somewhat used by my talents, but not taken seriously. If there was any creative or artistic portion of a class project I’d be fought over by my peers.

Once it was time for college, I didn’t pursue an art degree because a more local private school accepted me and ‘how am I gonna make a living learning about art?’ I try not to see it as one of the biggest wastes of time, money and deepest regrets. But that’s probably why I want to teach art so badly. Then I can be that voice that says ‘Do it! Pursue it! You were born for this!’

Once I found Rocklin Fine Arts I got involved with the Membership, Juried and Student Shows, the sketch crawls and the community events. I felt like I finally found my people and what I was meant to do! I’m also the type of person that likes saying ‘YES’. I like feeling needed.

Saying yes has opened some amazing doors for me! Once I jumped in, got involved and comfortable I started saying yes to a couple of other groups because of the different things they offer, and now I’m drowning in art opportunities, and I couldn’t be happier.

I organize the artists in the Flour Garden Bakery in Auburn. I will be at Clarks Corner both weekends with Karen Camara and Rita Kauffman for the Placer Artist Tour.

I have been attending the Sac Fine Arts Live figure class and did many vibrant paintings on canvas there that I will be bringing to the tour. In addition, I will be bringing what I learned there and offering quick 5 minute portraits for the visitors who come see us. If anyone wants to go with me on a Friday to Sac Fine Arts from 9-12, I’ll drive my van and we can carpool!

My mediums of choice are acrylics, watercolors, Procreate on iPad, and craft supplies.

With these I enjoy sewing my own clothes, crocheting, paint custom designs on canvas shoes and purses (examples can be found in the Art League of Lincoln Gift Shop), plein air paint with friends, make t-shirt designs and Cricut svg’s for crafters, sketch and watercolor people secretly in public and surprise them with their portrait, face paint for parties and community events.

This year I started painting to song lyrics and music that moves me. I’m titling my pieces with the song title so the viewer can listen to it while they get lost in my painting. It helps me explain what my inspiration for the painting is without having to say much.

enjoy all the secrets, hidden messages and Easter eggs that can be put into paintings - much more than the techniques. I gather inspiration from the photorealism of Audrey Flack to the surrealism of Frida Kahlo and the still life pieces of Paul Wonner.

I also gravitate towards abstract and Naive artists like Kandinsky, Mondrian, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Grandma Moses. I really enjoy children’s art and am working on becoming a more legit art teacher so I can encourage and guide them like my grandma did for me.

In addition to teaching, I dream of doing more events like Art in the Park with The Auburn Symphony and creating artwork for musicians and the people who love their music. That marriage of the two arts is just so special to me. Maybe someday I could be invited to paint live on stage while a band plays!

If you ever want to contact me for any reason - even just to chat, my email is tiffsdigitaldreams@gmail.com, phone number is 916-316-1142 and my website is tiffsdigitaldreams.carrd.co and all of my socials are listed there.

I come from a family of artists.

My grandfather did hand lettering of signs and painted murals around the city in Buffalo NY in the early to middle 20th century. My father was a US Navy photographer and when he retired he went to work for Kodak.

I’ve been a photographer all my life. My friends used to joke that they wouldn’t know me if they didn’t see a camera pressed to my face.

Then I married into an artistic family. Both my husband, Larry, and my father-in-law were draftsmen (they designed cotton gins) and artists. So being around artistic people just was part of my life.

I have no formal training in any form of art so never thought the skill and work life I had with cameras and photography could translate into drawing or painting.

One day, standing in a Michaels’s in Salt Lake City, Utah, I watched a very talented oil artist doing a demo. I realized I hadn’t actually whispered to Larry that I would LOVE to be able to do that, when she turned and said, 'You can…and I can teach you.'

Those classes started me on a journey that has been so much fun. I have tried virtually every medium and style, taken a lot of classes from many very talented artists around the US, had a ton of support and encouragement and made a lot of friends!

When people ask who inspires you, Lisa McCullough, the above oil painter, would be on the top of the list because she taught me that anyone can paint…it takes practice and effort, and more…love.

She truly got me over the hurdle of, 'Who are you kidding? I can’t do that!'

Then in California, Fred Ekman and Robert D’Vorak. Fred with his teaching style of, 'Watch while I paint, and now you go do the exact same thing.' helped me realize how to start, how to work the process and not only how to finish, but to know WHEN I was finished.

Robert is so adventurous, making his classes use unconventional techniques like sticks and strings to paint and be totally free of any preconceived notion of what your art “should” look like.

And in Florida, Sandi Levy, who is willing to try anything and always says, 'If I can do it, I can show you how to do it!'

While there have been many artists who inspire me and have helped me, these stand out as the ones who helped me take a step forward and realize a new potential.

Larry and I both love to draw or paint together and we do a lot of plein-aire.

We always have our gear with us…even if it’s only a pad and pencil or pen. Our favorite drawing session is to sit back-to-back and every 15 minutes turn 90 degrees.

At the end of an hour we sit and compare our work…what did each of us see and what did we think was important.

You can learn so much about yourself and your art when you work with and around others and are open to seeing the world through a different set of eyes!

My favorite artistic comment is to say…’It’s only a piece of paper, just have FUN!'

I am on Facebook and Instagram and have an art page on Facebook at Artwork By Jaci