Anita Bates
Anita Bates' work tackles the subjects of surface and texture: specifically as they relate to decay, ruin and natural phenomena. Inspiration comes from observing the parts of the natural landscape that are often over-looked such as details of rock, concrete floors and weather beaten walls of torn down housing. An occasional integration of old photographs lend to the idea of someone once having contact with or inhabiting those spaces. Bates stated, "For me beauty can even be found by participating in the most abstract realities of life."

Ms. Bates earned an MFA from Wayne State University, MA from Eastern and BA from the Center for Creative Studies.

Charles Burwell
Charles Burwell is an abstract painter whose imagery consists of triangles, pyramids, checkerboards, circles and rectangles intermixed with arches, foliage and fossils. Burwell's work is solidly grounded in art history and reflects the influences of some other fine modern artists like Kandinsky, Gottlieb and Baziotes. Using materials such as oil, pastel, crayon, charcoal and India ink, Burwell creates tiny works on paper and board and moderately large works on canvas.

Burwell graduated from two outstanding art schools earning a B.F.A. in painting from the Temple University, Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1977 and an M.F.A.. in painting from the Yale University School of Art in 1979. Burwell is a prolific painter, and his work has been exhibited widely in both solo and group shows. He currently resides in Philadelphia.

Pauline Ender
Pauline Ender has traveled extensively to garner knowledge and history to enable her to paint the world on her canvases. She is both a figurative and landscape painter. Her appreciation for the human spirit is often depicted in her rich images of everyday people, doing noble deeds such as reading, conducting, singing or gardening. Her landscapes capture the color, motion and the subtleties of the place of her most recent expedition.

Ender was educated at Wayne State University and The Center for Creative Studies. She has exhibited in several galleries and Michigan competitions, often receiving critical acclaim for her distinct style of painting.

M. Saffell Gardner
M. Saffell Gardner is a graduate of Wayne State University earning a both a BFA and MFA in painting. He studied lithography at the College of Creative Studies and at the renowned Printmakers' Workshop in New York.

Gardner is a colorist who creates exciting paintings that seem to dance across the canvas. His inspiration homespun, "My father always worked with his hands. He would tell me that my art was part of my spirit. My mother created oil paintings and made leather bags and wallets. I began creating art at a very early age, in the Detroit Public School system. My teachers in elementary and high school chose my artwork, to be exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts city-wide public school art exhibit." He moves between representational painting and abstract by using icons that are steeped in history from pharaohs, ancient kings, queens, slave ships and slave castles. He is currently concerned with the primal state in which he submerges himself into his thought, thus his art. He works on small to large scale format, constantly using mixed media to challenge his experiences. His art is widely exhibited throughout Michigan

Lenore Gimpert
Gimpert is a 1997 graduate of the Center for creative studies, and received both her MA and   MFA from Wayne State University. She has a strong love of history, particularly the Greek Hellenistic, Baroque and Rococo periods. The romance of these periods is portrayed in her paintings and drawings as we view the old and classical through her contemporary eye. Her work constantly is metamorphosed from classical statues, to wrought iron gates, to a combination of statues and gates or furniture details to corsets.   She paints very different subjects, from varied times, with consistent elements of curves, femininity and romance. In her art she uses various materials and techniques to fuse the old and new. She emphasizes form over color. Her sparing use of color serves as a signature accent, to give her work an elegant ancient feeling.

Mary King
Mary King has been exhibiting professionally for over thirty years. She has had one- person shows in New York, Chicago, and Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, Saugatuck, and Battle Creek, Michigan.  King's work has been exhibited in group shows at: The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Butler Art Institute, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Detroit Focus, The Detroit Artists Market, and The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Competitions in which King received an award include those at The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, The University of Michigan, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, and Art Initiatives Salon [New York, New York]. She has received grants from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo and Education for the Arts of Kalamazoo County. King's work has been favorably reviewed by The Kalamazoo Gazette, The Ann Arbor News, Detroit News, The Detroit Free Press, The New Art Examiner, The Chicago Reader, and, most recently, The New York Times. King's work is included in the collections of Western Michigan University, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, The Battle Creek Art Center, The Michigan Education Association, and The Anderson Fine Arts Center of Anderson Indiana.

Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis was born in 1966, in Detroit, Michigan. He is a graduate of Cass Technical High School. Lewis earned his B.F.A. from the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan and his M.F.A. from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT. Lewis was an artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Richard started drawing when he was four or five, to entertain himself and his family. When he was ten his Godmother, who is an artist, told him to look at his family and go into the next room and draw. Richard says, "She gave me the inspiration to be an artist." Richard Lewis is a realist painter. His images are about life. He said, "When I paint people, I see it as a collaborative effort. For me it takes a collective intelligence to make art, especially art that represents people, which is the underlying aim of my work. James Baldwin called this kind of representation "witnessing": Art should be used to "corroborate" our reality, in a world that often overlooks or distorts our reality." Richard Lewis has taught at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, College of Creative Studies and Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT.

Nora Mendoza
Mendoza was one of six artists working on the restoration of the Detroit Music Hall with the New York Company that restored Orchestra Hall and the Masonic Temple. Born in Westlock, Texas, Nora Mendoza early on demonstrated a talent as an artist. Mendoza's work is highly biographical for she employs the beauty of the dusty landscapes of Mexico and Texas taking the viewer on a journey of the Hispanic existence in art history.

She studied at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit. Over the past 30 years, her paintings have taken on a fierce spirit of individualism as she has become well known for her hidden forms within the abstract. An active and recognized artist, Nora Mendoza has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and is represented in many corporate and museum collections throughout the country. She is the recipient of numerous awards .  

Jocelyn Rainey
Rainey's art is mainly influenced by her environment. Her art reveals past, present and future influence - social, political, religious and moral. She uses her platform to express her beliefs. She uses various mediums to create paintings and sculpture. Her designs consist of bright, cadmium colors and familiar shapes that create excitement. Her encaustic paintings are created by using agitated, textured brush strokes which yield a handprinted surface.

Rainey received a BA from Detroit's Center for Creative Studies College of Art and Design and a MFA from Wayne State University.

Bill Sanders
Sanders is a photographer and lecturer who works expressionistically with complex set-ups. He examines the nature of his medium and blends the resulting information to his own ends. Sanders final picture is a photographic image in which he records the various stages he goes through to produce it. Bill uses an optical illusion technique in his work. Sanders, an enormously gifted Detroit artist, received a BA MA and MFA from Wayne State University. He has received many awards, special recognition, scholarships and grants. In 1992, he received an Artist of Distinction award from Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and in 1994; he received special recognition from the National Council of Artist.

His work has been shown in many one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including Canada, Africa, Germany and Mexico.

Mark Schwing
Schwing was educated at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. His work is abstract statements of his observations on life. He is a fine colorist, who fuses color with rhythm and form. He paints small big paintings and drawings in an attempt to tell a story about his life experiences. His work is full of human gestures and iconography. His work allows the viewer to escape into a tiny space of endless motion and passion.

Nancy Thayer
Detroit-born painter Nancy Thayer is widely exhibited, collected, reviewed and published. The acclaimed artist and University of Michigan professor has taught art from grade school through university level. As one who influences "art policy," Nancy Thayer has served on several boards and has worked with a number of non-profit organizations.   Thayer's life as an artist has taken her around the city, the state, the country and the globe; she has created, taught or exhibited art in Europe, Detroit (including the Detroit Institute of Arts), Poland, Budapest, Hungary, Ann Arbor, Mexico, and Chicago, for example.  

Nancy Thayer earned her MFA from the Instituto Allende in Mexico, her MA at Michigan State University, and a BA in mathematics (with honors) from Michigan State University.   Of her work, she explains, "I have worked with an interpretation of the landscape for years. From graduate school in the mountains of Mexico to the flat farm fields of the Saginaw Valley and on to urban confines of crack houses and decay, my paintings have expressed a melding of the internal and external environments in which I have lived and worked." Her work expresses hope, the affirmation of life in the midst of that which appears to destroy life and dampen hope.