SALON CORNER
Featuring Bay Area Artists and Beyond
work on view rotated on a periodic basis
THE ARTISTS
Adrienne Defendi
Dora Duan
Liz Hickok
Lucien Liu
Rachel Phillips
Andy Mattern
Arielle Rebek
Anna Rotty
Ron Moultrie Saunders
Liz Steketee
ADRIENNE DEFENDI
Adrienne Defendi is an artist whose work explores the cyclical, the ephemeral, and the fragility of life. Creating in a variety of mediums – analog and digital photography, alternative processes, printmaking and pewter – her artistic practice is process-oriented and includes meditative ritual and reiterative exploration. A Cadogan Contemporary Art Award recipient and MFA graduate of San Josè State University, Adrienne has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, and is currently an artist-in-residence with the City of Palo Alto’s Cubberley Artist Studio Program.
DORA DUAN
Dora Duan is a San Francisco Bay Area-based fine art photographer. Her passion for storytelling is evident in her work. With a strong emphasis on the emotional content, Duan creates photographs that explore identity and personal experience on a psychological level. Her work evokes inner connections with viewers through minimal visual elements and aesthetic aspects.
Duan started her career in California as a software engineer. During the time she worked in San Francisco, her office was across the street from the Academy of Art University campus; she often dreamed to take an adventure in art school, as her passion for photography went back to her childhood. Duan started a photography studio in 2012, and then became a full-time fine art photographer, she received an MFA from Academy of Art University in 2020.
LIZ HICKOK
San Francisco-based artist, Liz Hickok, works in an innovative creative style, mixing low and high tech to create immersive artworks that bring viewers into a whimsical and wondrous space. Using playful materials and intersecting photography, sculpture, video, and installation, Hickok makes art that intermingles science and nature. Her most recent projects use augmented reality and other interactive technologies, inviting her spectators to take a more personal approach to her art, and closing the gap between artist and viewer.
RACHEL PHILLIPS
Rachel Phillips began photography while completing her undergraduate degree at Skidmore College, graduating in 2005. In numerous group and solo exhibitions, she has presented a series of projects exploring the photograph as object, often resulting in unique works incorporating materials ranging from old envelopes to 19th century cabinet cards. A frequent theme in the work is a desire to “reanimate” the vernacular photographs and paper ephemera in her collection by reworking them in a variety of ways to create imagery that is resonant with the past yet has a new vitality and reflection of our own time and perspective.
ANDY MATTERN
Andy Mattern is a visual artist working in the expanded field of photography. His photographs and installations dissect the medium itself, reconfiguring expectations of photography's basic ingredients and conventions. His work is held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. His photographs and exhibitions have been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, The New Yorker, Camera Austria, and Photonews. Currently, he serves as Associate Professor of Photography at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He holds an MFA in Photography from the University of Minnesota and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of New Mexico.
About the GHOSTS
Arielle Rebek
Arielle Rebek (she/her) is an Oakland-based artist and educator whose work employs photography and installation. Working across analog and digital technology, Rebek explores translations of space, markers of time, and the visual language of archives. Arielle’s process is one of intuitive action - walking, collecting, folding, wrapping - that is informed by a specific attention to the natural environment and physicality of her materials. She is interested in a photograph's ability to reveal and illude.
ANNA ROTTY
Anna Rotty holds an MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. She lives on Tiwa Pueblo land in Albuquerque where she is instructor of
photography at the universaity. Anna investigates water, light and infrastructure, informing
her understanding of orientation and place. Anna has been published by Southwest Contemporary, Humble Arts Foundation, and Lenscratch, where she earned 3rd place in the Student Portfolio Prize. Anna recently exhibited a solo show in New Mexico at Strata Gallery Santa Fe. Anna has participated in group exhibitions at
Form & Concept, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, San Francisco Camerawork, Incline
Gallery, and Book & Job Gallery in San Francisco. Anna is part of Collective Constructs, a collaborative
group of artists and art historians responding with public visual scholarship to works from the permanent
collection at the UNM Art Museum.
See a the intended effects of Suns on Water
Ron Moultrie Saunders
A co-founding member of the 3.9 Art Collective, Ron Moultrie Saunders is a photographic artist and landscape architect. Originally from Jamaica, Queens, New York, he currently lives in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. He creates photograms: photographs that are made without the use of a camera.
Ron has completed numerous public and private commissions, from headquarters in Silicon Valley to the Bayview Clinic in San Francisco, Ron's one-of-a-kind creation is poetry in light.
LIZ STEKETEE
Liz was born in Michigan and lives in Marin County California with her family. She has
both a BFA ( University of Michigan) and MFA(SFAI) in photography, digital media, and mixed
media. For 11 years, after completing her master's degree, Liz taught on the San Francisco Art
Institute photo faculty. She specialized in digital imaging, mixed media, and bookmaking. In 2017,
Liz moved into a full time studio practice. Her work focuses the notions of photography and its role
in memory, and identity. In her practice, Liz utilizes her photography in combination with textiles,
sewing, sculpture, and installation.
Liz Has received numerous awards, articles, and residencies including the 2022 Critical
Mass Top 50, 2021 Center For Photographic Art _Artist Grant, Top 20 finalist in KlompChing Fresh
2021, LenScratch featured artist 2014, 2016, 2018 2020, 2021, Nazraeli Press One Picture Book.
Liz is represented by Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe, NM and by SeagerGray Gallery, Milly Valley, CA