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The work of these artists is still available as a donation to RBNA - contact RBNA@RillitoBendNA.org
Melanie Campbell-Carter Jim Altenstadter Stephen Brigham Susan Andersen |
These artists can be contacted if you are interested in more of their work
Vicky Stromee Margo Barnes Lindy Brigham Mary Lou Tompkins Cynthia Dunn Lisa Scadron Michele Bryant Kellner Brown |
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Melanie Campbell-Carter is a retired family physician, who, in 2014, found and nurtured her innate ability to render the natural world in colored pencil by creating exquisitely detailed botanical art. Her artwork earned early success, winning awards and finding its way into prestigious collections and exhibitions both nationally and internationally.
Three years into her art career, in 2017, Melanie fell in love with Tucson, renovated a home in the RillitoBend neighborhood, and settled into an art practice inspired by the Sonoran Desert. She thrived in Tucson, expanding her media to include watercolor and acrylic painting as vehicles for more expressive and abstract artwork and continuing to find success. Melanie’s passion for our desert environment is the substance of this work, whether realistic or abstract. Her dearest hope is “to honor the essential bonds between humans and all the other life forms on our planet, by spreading the message that our precious planet deserves our love in return for all it gives us”. Melanie was an integral part of our neighborhood. Upon moving back to Texas, she donated several pieces of her art to benefit the neighborhood association. Her work will be available at the Spring Festival.
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Retiring after a thirty-five year career with local, regional, state and federal government agencies, Jim Altenstadter returned to the joy of making semi-abstract art in acrylics, oil and mixed media. He has professional degrees in architecture and design.
He will offer a premier exhibition of a series of sixteen original landscape paintings he did using a palette of Clark + Kensington 2023 Color Trends home paints. These invigorating hues were created to balance the essential elements of earth, air, water and fire into a harmony of color and emotion. Each of his sixteen imaginative and vibrant studies brings together timeless southwestern inspired vistas of light and wide-open spaces. All proceeds will be donated to the RillitoBend Neighborhood Association. |
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Steve is a Tucson native with family lineage spanning four generations in Southern Arizona and Mexico. He also has New England ancestry and attended schools in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York. After a career in architecture and planning, including more than 30 years with the University of Arizona, University Medical Center, and Banner Health, Steve has been creating travel watercolor sketches. He has served the RillitoBend Neighborhood as Board President and currently serves the neighborhood as planning advisor. He is currently the President of the Board for the Rancho Morado community where he lives with his wife, Lindy and their two dogs.
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You can learn more about Vicky's work here:
Web: www.vickystromeephotography.com IG: @vickystromeephotography FB: @vickystromeephotography My fascination with photography began at an early age. I got my first Brownie camera at age 8 and began shooting everything I saw. Watching the magic of an image emerge from the developing tray in my dad's darkroom; spending afternoons lying under the baby grand piano with waves of sound resonating around and through me; texture, pattern, fluidity, and change - these are my earliest influences and they continue to unfold in my work. Most recently I have begun to create photomontages incorporating natural objects into both abstract images and scenes of imaginary realism.
My work has been featured at multiple galleries including Waxlander, PhotoPlace, Griffin Museum of Photography and Afterimage. Selected images are represented by Cynthia Byrnes Contemporary Art. My bodies of work have received multiple national and international awards including American Society of Media Professionals’ Best of 2015 and Best of 2024 awards; Silver and Gold awards from Tokyo International Foto Awards and Juror’s Choice Award from the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards. In 2O22, my series “Koo and the Long Dark Night” was selected for the Communication Arts Award of Excellence in Photography. |
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I’ve been fascinated with making things for as long as I can remember: tiny clothes for my “troll” dolls with scraps from my mom’s sewing basket; a line of cutwork embroidery I designed and sold to the largest craft company in the U.S.; gourds that mimic contemporary ceramic lidded vessels and bowls. After a long corporate career, I was able to retire at 46 and now spend my time painting, writing and making things like these and other unique creations – limited only by my inspiration and imagination! |
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I grew up with beautiful fabrics. Vivid saris in India, Intricate batiks in Malaysia, luxurious silks in Hong Kong. In graduate school, when I needed a break from the grind, I of course took up weaving. I’ve explored just about every device from floor looms to pin looms and everything in between. I’ll be showing examples of many of the techniques. I favor ‘wearable’ art and over the years have added other fiber technologies to the mix including Tunisian crochet which I use to join my pinloom squares. Tucson has been my home for the last 50+ years and I have taken up spinning cotton (one of the five Cs of the Arizona economy to this day) to complement my weaving which is also mostly in cotton. I look forward to seeing you at the Festival! |
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Mary Lou's studio is still in RillitoBend. Her work is still available in a limited quantity. Email Cindy Dunn (Mary Lou's daughter) to make an appointment to visit her gallery.
Sometimes friends ask "When did Mary first become an artist?" "Around five or six years old, more specifically at chore time. For example, she would dry one dish, then run to her paper and pencil to draw a high-heeled shoe. Between drying each dish she would draw another high-heeled shoe!" Do I still draw high-heeled shoes? Never! My clay goddesses are lucky to even get feet. Anyway, I've worked myself up to the other end of people. Faces are my work in progress. At eighty-six I've found my calling. I want to become a clay sculptor who truly gets the essence of faces. -ML Tompkins Sadly, ML Tompkins passed away in September 2017, at age 95. |
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Exploring materials in service of beauty, I configure multiple layers of textures, vivid colors, and iridescent materials into abstract paintings that are at once ethereal and earthy, expressing my visceral connection to the landscapes of the Southwest and the scapes in my mind. Playing with the materials allows me to be present in the moment of making. I use that space to explore “mistakes” and “tangents," navigating the unknown territory of a work in progress. If I am patient enough to trust my creative process, beauty coalesces from the layers of media.
I play with acrylic paints, metallic leaf and a range of mixed media, sometimes applying as many as ten layers on a canvas or panel and then excavating into those layers with palette knives, old kitchen utensils and other tools. Most of my prints originate from photographs of sections of my paintings that I then digitally transform—they are not reproductions of my paintings, but original digital art printed on aluminum. Growing up immersed in Southern Arizona's beautiful and unique Sonoran Desert landscape profoundly influenced my internal identity and aesthetic. My formal visual arts training was primarily through my public fine arts magnet schooling. Encouraged by my parents and grandfather, a painter, I also began oil painting lessons at age eight and have been making art ever since. I have exhibited artwork in the U.S. and internationally. My art is part of corporate, hotel and hospital collections in the United States and private collections in the United States, Europe, New Zealand and India. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Human Biology with a minor in Art History from Stanford University and an Integrative Health Coach certification from Duke Integrative Medicine. |
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