ABOUT

Gigi Mills

"I think of paintings as elevating the everyday. When you focus on the objects around you, they become beautiful; beauty, negative space, and abstraction are foremost in my work. I arrange shapes (whether from human form or inanimate objects) so that they relinquish their own importance to that of the space between them. Just as a defining moment often comes when we search the silence between words in a conversation, so the negative space in my paintings is meant to reveal purpose and definition."

"In imagination, not in perception, lies the substance of experience, while science and reason are but its chastened and ultimate form." —Santayana, The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men

Originally from Ohio, Gigi Mills was raised in a circus family where studying the arts was encouraged and considered a most admirable pursuit. This environment fed Gigi's visual creativity and contributed to her deep understanding of and fascination for spacial relationships. Gigi has a BFA from The College of Santa Fe and an MA from The University of New Mexico.


Nina Tichava

"I am interested in the possibilities inherent in painting. I carry a strong, romantic belief in its tradition. I consider myself a modernist in that my most central dedication is to aesthetics and the 'beauty' of objects. That which I see as sweet, or lovely, holds such prominence in my daily life that I try to emulate that quality over and over, tirelessly. I do at the same time love technology, and progression, evolution--the excitement of it.--but I cannot ignore the draw I have to the tactile, human quality of artmaking. My work is influenced by and derivative of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, the Arts and Crafts Movement, media, design, architecture, science, figurative art, textiles, insects and flowers."

Nina Tichava was raised in both rural northern New Mexico and the Bay Area in California, by her father, a construction worker and mathematician, and her mother, an artist and designer. The reflections of these dualities--from country to city, from pragmatist to artist, from nature to technology--are essential to and evident in her paintings. Nina received her BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco/Oakland, California.