Shane Izykowski
Shane Izykowski, born Oh Jin Kwon in Taegu, South Korea, was adopted at the age of two. Living in Northeastern Pennsylvania for most of his life, Shane has dabbled in many different mediums and art forms. He is mostly self taught, and has spent a great deal of time experimenting with music, painting, drawing, 3D and interactive sculpture, special effects and makeup, filmmaking and directing, writing poetry and scripts, costuming, mural work and photography. He's owned his own photography business, was the Art Director for a community art gallery for two years, founded Project Street Art in 2014 and won awards for short films and community service.
In 2015, Shane drove over 3,000 miles to San Francisco, CA to live and work. During his time in San Francisco, he worked as a set designer, production designer for films, curator, Museum Preparator for the SFO Museum and the Lead Artist for Madame Tussauds SF. Shane now works as a full time painter, sculptor and podcaster (Drawing From Experience Podcast) and is living and creating in Los Angeles, CA.
Stefania Medeiros
Stefania Medeiros is an American artist born in Providence, Rhode Island, June 24, 1994, whose unsettling and surrealistic sculptures and paintings beckon us into deeply textured and haunted worlds reminiscent of those envisioned by Giger and Beksiński. Medeiros’ extensive background in freelance hair, special effects makeup, and prosthetic artistry for film and television lends attention to detail that further accentuates her original creations.
Medeiros takes her inspiration from the forms and textures in the world around her, like the intricate and ruddy surfaces of tree bark or roots, and transmutes them into the skin of forlorn beings, imbued with angular forms that at once feel as organic as they do inorganic. Her creative process is, self-admittedly, entirely intuitive and revolves around the process itself, in which she discovers the form as she manipulates and plays with the medium, lending a sense of discovery to every piece of original art.
She has long been interested in the fine line between reality and fantasy and found herself attracted to the possibilities of fusing concepts and mediums, leading her into the realm of body painting. Here Medeiros was able to explore the application of two-dimensional art on three-dimensional, living canvases. Further inspired by these new experiments, she expanded her repertoire to include special effects for film and television, boasting a filmography of nearly thirty original productions.
Medeiros enjoys playing with reality and seeks to allow us, the audience, an avenue for stepping outside the known world, dipping so to speak into the unknown while allowing a foot to remain in reality.
Medeiros is currently an educator at the Rhode Island School of Design and the owner/operator of Asteria, a brick and mortar boutique, which showcases a selection of unique artwork from local artists, and local businesses, including her original art.”