Create:Fixate is an organization dedicated to showcasing the work of emerging artists. From its inception in December 2001, they’ve produced much-anticipated one-night-only art and music happenings at a secluded Downtown Los Angeles loft. Organization founder Michelle Berc, an artist and photographer curates the ever-growing talent pool of visual artists and musical guests. “Today the LA art scene is stronger than ever. I want to help connect up-and-coming artists with the professional art world and the community at-large. By assisting innovative new artists, my goal is to encourage galleries/curators to look upon Create:Fixate as a venue to discover emerging talent.”

Each event offers new artists and new musical guests as well as returning artists but with new work. Past Create:Fixate events have pulled an average attendance of 500 guests and each show boasts a high art sales rate. The doors open at 8:00pm and early arrival is encouraged to enjoy ample viewing.

Below you will find short bios on the talent being showcased at the January 25th Create:Fixate event: “The Optical Lounge and The Audio Lab.”


The Optical Lounge:

Jonatan Damian
Jonatan Damian is a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where he studied Environmental Design. He works in a wide range of disciplines, often combining the fields of fine art, furniture, and interior design. Recent furniture pieces have been shown at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, Italy and were also featured this year at The Ace Gallery in New York and at !d Gallery in Los Angeles. His work has been published in Modo (Italy), LA Times, NY Times and Furniture Style. Other exhibitions include "Inner Action" video installation at Carte Blance sponsor show, California, "Un-Sexuall" space installation at Art Center College of Design Pasadena, CA, "Theories of a Perfect World" video installation, at Red - Los Angeles, CA and "Sequence" at Roam Gallery - Los Angeles, CA.

Drew Dunlap
Drew Dunlap has been in LA for three and a half years after studying in New York City. His major influence from the West Coast has been the juxtaposition of the natural and the artificial, which is apparent in the Southern California landscape; mountains, seascapes, and desert, contrasted with super highways and industrialization. The current body of work on display is exploring these elements - the fabricated versus the natural. Drew uses contrasting materials such as astro-turf, metal and wood with subtle text to portray our current environment, as well as to offer a bit of refuge in form of simple meditation.

Michelle Berc
Michelle’s unlimited creative endeavors include art, photography, film and music. Recently, her artwork and photography have been her central focus. The motivation behind Michelle’s photography stems from her passion for music and DJ culture. This musical passion also inspires her 2-dimensional artwork. Using design markers, Michelle creates a unique perspective, contrasting the granular structure of pointillism with the complexities of fractal design and tribal folk art. Her pieces are both organic and geometric in nature. Although reminiscent of the pop art of the 60s, Michelle’s artwork contains fluidity uncommon among the 2-dimensional trend of that era. She is also the founder of Create:Fixate.

James Bassett
James studied Art and Architecture at the NC School of Design and at SCIARC. Originally from North Carolina, he has been living and working in California for the past 11 years with an extended period in South Dakota. Working in many different mediums and scales, James has been exploring the space of drawing and silence as process. The current works focus on energy as line, awareness, slowness, the point where the individual 'signature' is the whole. Current works: water-soluble crayon, graphite, photography and bees wax.

Leslie Jay Griffith
Hollywood Hills native, Art Center alumni, and Spoonlamps creator, Leslie employs universal tools and materials in combination with light to create unique art objects. Through pattern, repetition, and obsession, comes Spoonlamps.

Ty Bennett
Ty Bennett is a self-taught artist who lives and works in Oceanside, California. His paintings represent the spirituality of delirium, combining images both volatile and serene. "No mind" appropriation of kitsch, and esoteric imagery create a setting for absurd and hidden meaning.

Gary Palmer
Gary Palmer was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1968, and educated at University of Edinburgh in Scotland where he gained his MA in Architecture in 1991. He spent his early years traveling the world etching out his paintings on city streets in the ephemeral medium of chalk.

Palmer’s work has been exhibited in group and one-person shows since ‘96 in Los Angeles and Venice, California. Selected Exhibitions include BHG Gallery, Bergamot Station, Art Heals - group show 2001, The Sand Box, Abbott Kinney Blvd., and Beige Magazine, Hollywood - group show, 2002.

The paintings are abstract figurative works in a variety of media. Palmer’s travels to East Africa, from Malawi to the island of Zanzibar have been the subject matter of his recent work. The paintings form a diary recording the journey of the artist’s own life. He now resides and paints at a monastic retreat close to the border to Mexico, and his work is featured on the web at www.urbancanvas.com.

Rebecca Bihr
Originally form Buffalo, New York, Rebecca moved to Los Angeles in 1996. She has been working in the field of photography since 1998. Her pieces are inspired by seeking symbolic value and beauty in things that have been discarded.

Colin Woods
A Hollywood native, Colin Woods, age 27 has approached the surreal style of painting in his own way. Influenced by graffiti and comic book art, he lets it show through his work. Using various mixed media, Colin reveals what you may see in a childhood dream (or nightmare). Involved in other creative hobbies like Video Editing and Hip-Hop production, the Fine Arts are what drive Colin to stay creative.

Elizabeth Chucker
Originally from the Washington D.C. area, Elizabeth graduated from Corcoran School of Art in 1994. Her work has been exhibited in many group and solo shows in the D.C. area. In 2000 she moved to Los Angeles and is currently continuing her studies in photography at Art Center College of Design. This time she is working on her commercial side of photography. Her images tend to deal with a more sensual nature of life.

Clay George
Clay is a self-taught artist who recently moved here from Austin, Texas to San Diego, CA. He works mainly with PhotoShop creating large scale digital collages, some of them consisting of over a thousand layers. All of these layers compressed create an explosion of vibrant abstract images of beauty and chaos.

Andrea Giardina
Andrea’s degree in Psychology & Holistic Health along with her love for music and art has sparked a new hobby since 1998. She has been creating "Visual Music" by making cut-n-paste collages. She shares these along with her photography at various art shows.

R.S. Yeager
Yeager is a photographic artist with a fascination for Polaroid film. He lives and works in Venice, California

Spectr
Known for his civic and artistic activities on the Drum and Bass DJ scene, Spectr uses black light paints to bring his oversized cyber-punk images to life. Influences from comics and Graffiti (as well as a steady diet of intense underground beats) fuel the intensity that is somehow balanced with a subtle sense of elegance drawn from an interest in fashion.

Andrew A. Soria
Andrew needs to make art. Favoring (but not excluded to) painting, sculpture and printmaking, h continues to make art that allows him to have fun and enjoy the process of creation, which gives him the greatest payoff. A musician at an early age, he can play most string and percussion instruments and will pull a groove out of anything he can make noise come out of. Andrew works as a visual effects artist and designer in Los Angeles.

Trace Palmer
Trace is a glass artist originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, currently living in Venice, CA. After a few Glass-blowing lessons in Oregon a couple of years ago, she acquired her own torch setup and began experimenting and developing her own style and techniques. Trace's main focus is jewelry, glass pendants and rings with an emphasis on depth and perspective within the glass. Trace’ jewelry is currently being sold in Fred Segal and Sharon Stone will be sporting her jewelry in the up and coming movie Cold Creek Manor. In addition, Elle magazine recently used her pieces in a photo shoot for the November issue and Trace was recently interviewed for the artist feature in the next edition of the Venice paper.

Matt DeMerritt
Matt discovered photography while touring the world as a musician, and soon after discovered the possibility of creating mandalas using photographs. Each mandala is one photograph duplicated into four quadrants, two of which are reversed, and all are placed together digitally to create a central mandalic image. This simple process turns something ordinary like a tree into images that are both strangely familiar and strikingly otherworldly.

James Chaconas
Jim is self-taught in photography. His work is about empowering women not exploiting them. All of his models have been inspired by being able to express their inner fantasies during the actual photo shoot. He is also the Pro Manager at Samy's Camera in Hollywood, CA.


The Audio Lab:

Live Performance featuring members of Dakah
Dakah is a local musical group best described as a hip-hop orchestra. With over 50 members, the group contains strings, horns, percussion, vocalists, DJs, and MCs. Many of the group’s musicians are classically trained. Dakah takes live music to the next level and a must-see to experience how today’s culture has taken the old and mixed it in with the new. Create:Fixate is fortunate to present a handful of Dakah’s members who will be performing a spontaneous live jam. This will only draw you in to catch their next show, which will include all 50 members.

John Tejada
Since 1994, John Tejada has more than 50 recorded releases to his name. John has recorded for over a dozen of the world’s most respected techno labels including 7th City, Playhouse and Sino as well as his own 6 year old Palette Recordings imprint. He has showcased his unique DJ skills all over the world including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and his own birthplace Vienna, Austria.

Mok & Rusta
Originally from the UK, Mok & Rusta currently reside in Los Angeles where they run sublife.com, an internet site dedicated to drum and bass. Three years ago they started broadcasting "Databass", a live internet production showcasing some of the best drum and bass DJ/Producers. During the past two years they have hosted "DataBass Sessions", LA’s premiere monthly Drum and Bass club and "Substance", a weekly club at the Knitting Factory, which introduced new sounds from this musical genre. Recently, they’ve gone undercover working hard running their recording studio as well as producing their own original soundz, which will soon be released later in 2003.

Liza Richardson
Liza Richardson hosts "The Drop," 6:00pm to 9:00pm, on 89.9 KCRW and DJs around the underground West Coast house scene. She recently music supervised the Mexican hit, "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and supervises commercials exclusively through stimmüng, a music and sound-design house based in Santa Monica. She has found musical solutions for brands such as Microsoft, Apple, NASCAR, Acura, Honda, Nissan and Motorola.

AquaVee
Andrea Giardina aka DJ AquaVee has been DJing since 1992. After inspirations by such LA clubs at Flammable Liquid and Sunday Love, her passion for house music grew ever stronger. She started her electronic vinyl journey in Los Angeles and made her way down to San Diego where she frequented The Guf & Deep. At Club Post Nuclear in Laguna Beach she landed her first gig. After college in San Francisco and travels around the world, she finally settled back into Los Angeles where she has been DJing ever since. Since Oct. 1999 she has been a buyer at Beat Non Stop Records on Melrose in Hollywood. Nowadays you can hear her spinning what some might call "Deep Tech", a combination of house and techno. Her vinyl collection is such that she might be called upon to DJ a downtempo, house, jungle, breakbeat, trance or even world music set.

Frosty
Frosty produces charity dances for senior citizen nudist colonies, polishes roller derby trophies, doubts all double coupon claims, smuggles bootleg Bon Jovi cassingles, and serves as executive vice president of the Burt Reynolds look-a-like club. In his spare time Frosty runs internet radio station dublab.com, scribbles phrases for XLR8R Magazine, freaks airwaves on KPFK, and along with pal Daedelus records as Adventure Time for Plug Research Records.

Kate Simko
Kate is a classically-trained pianist who has also studied jazz piano, composition and music technology. Originally from Chicago, Kate became a part of the Chicago house scene as a young teenager. Since then, she has served as the music director at WNUR 89.3 Chicago, and was a radio DJ and recorded electronic music in Chile. She has a new album coming out in Spring 2003 on Traum/Kompakt. Along with producing her own music, she plays experimental techno, minimal techno, hip-hop, downtempo, etc.

Valida
This beat soulja loves to mix it up. Look inside her crate and you'll find house, 2-Step, broken beat, jungle, bossanova, and jazz. If you catch her DJing across town, her set is bound to hop from one style to another because as she puts it: "There is only one thing worse than someone who doesn't like to get down--someone who ONLY likes to get down to one kind of music!" Also, look out for her most recent tour de force, Concentric Beats--a documentary film that explores the drum'n'bass culture in the United States.

Trichome
Known for his electro-tech-house beats, Trichome has been spinning records for 5 years. He is also part of the ELM crew, known for heading up the LA local electro scene. ELM’s events showcase electro DJs and producers from all over the world.

DJ Lynk
DJ Lynk is best known for his down-tempo and breakbeat soundz. His label is BrokenSignal, and you can find him on the decks on any given night at 1235 Vine, and the Derby.

Julian Ivan
This sound navigator has been designing sound-scapes for 8 years, moving people from D.C., to AZ and now LA. Classically trained, you can expect to hear an eclectic mix covering the full spectrum of the drum and bass sound.

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For more information please contact Lynn Hasty at Green Galactic at 323-466-5141 or email lynn@greengalactic.com. Also, please visit www.createfixate.com.