Nine Hearts Exploring

Andrew Li's (b. 1962, Shanghai, China) most frequent subjects are cityscapes in motion. From Li's ink-splattered process emerges a representation of how the eye reads the urban environment - how it latches onto certain details and summarizes others, making sense of all the dizzying activity on a busy street.

In 2009, his rendering of a San Francisco Muni bus and its passengers was chosen to adorn an Actions REALized skateboard deck produced by Real Skateboards and Deluxe Distribution. Li's illustrations were also used throughout the San Francisco Muni Accessible Services Guide.

Li joined the Creativity Explored studio in 1990, and his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Camille Holvoet's (b. 1952, San Francisco, CA) work is deceptively sweet as her practice tends to draw on remembrances of life's anxieties and forbidden desires. Holvoet’s process is an endless discovery, in which – through repeatedly drawing in oil pastel her sacred objects: dessert, Ferris Wheels, and crossed eyes – the pressures of the past are relieved by the joy of the creative process. When Holvoet combines text with imagery, the resonance between the two is powerful as beautiful, vibrant renderings of cakes and pies are overwritten with recollections of nightmares, fears, frustrated sexual feelings, and religious doubt.

A San Francisco native, Holvoet joined the Creativity Explored studio in 2001. Her artwork has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Daniel Green's (b. 1985, San Francisco, CA) artwork conveys an intense and playful fascination with American entertainment and popular culture. Working on wood, cardboard, and paper, Green uses ink to draw figures from television, politics, sports, or history, and then carefully lists dates, titles of shows and songs, cities, and names. Within the dense repetition of his lists sometimes lurks a brief, but direct, personal statement, “Now Eric,” “Shut Up Gilles,” “No More Treasure Island Movin’ Back,” which comments on his immediate environment and concerns. These short bursts of the personal show that inside this impressive visual display of his memory, the present moment is registered, but must be actively sought out amid the tangle of other stimuli.

Green began working at Creativity Explored in 2008, and his work has been exhibited internationally. In 2015, Green's artwork Basketball Michael Jordan, 2014, was selected for honorable mention in the Big-i Art Project's fifth open call. 

Evelyn Reyes (b. 1957) creates series of works of repeated abstract shapes in oil pastel on paper. Working on one specific shape at a time, her periods of abstract depictions include cakes, garbage cans, and carrots.

With ritualistic reverence for each aspect of the process, Reyes’ art practice mirrors the repetition and order that are central to her daily life. She begins with a specifically sized paper, always 11 x 17 inches. Next, she chooses a particular shade of oil pastel, outlines the forms, and then fills them with a thick impasto. The finished piece she carefully examines, cradles in her arms, and takes to certain cardinal points in the studio.

Reyes worked in Creativity Explored's studio from 2002 to 2017, and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is included in the permanent collections of Le MADmusée, Liège, Belgium, and the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA.

Soft-spoken and reticent, James Miles (b. 1957, San Francisco, CA) is known for his miniature ink drawings of quiet scenes that tell stories. Miles' scenes blur the distinctions between inside/outside, near/far, small/large, male/female, and past/present, enticing audiences into the paradoxically immense spaces of his diminutive artwork. His scenes celebrate ambiguity, particularly in the everyday.

Miles joined the Creativity Explored studio in 1998 and has had work featured in several prominent exhibitions including This Container Isn't Big Enough at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY; Create, a traveling exhibition that originated at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA.

John Patrick McKenzie (b. 1962, Philippines) uses text for both its visual and semantic qualities, creating work that simultaneously serves as both image and poetry. McKenzie’s process is based on a complex, repetitive sequencing of calligraphy that methodically adds layers of nuance to his chosen subjects, which are most often people and objects from pop culture, current events, and his immediate surroundings. Swirling, multi­angled, and disorienting, the placement of his language, comments on the contradictory sometimes overwhelming, nature of media attention and celebrity.

McKenzie moved to the United States with his family in 1964 and joined the Creativity Explored studio in 1989. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and he was nominated for SFMOMA's prestigious SECA Art Award in 2012. McKenzie's drawings are included in the permanent collections of Le MADmusée, Liège, Belgium, and abcd (art brut connaissance et diffusion), Paris, France.

Nubia Ortega (b. 1976, El Salvador) joined the Creativity Explored studio in 2003. Ortega experiments with different types of media. Whether in pencil, paint, or clay, her artwork is very realistic and detail-oriented.

A focused artist, she spends ample time on each piece, first methodically laying out a composition and then carefully choosing colors to fill in her landscapes and portraits. Most recently, Ortega has excelled at clay hand building, creating stylized human figures and plant forms and firing them with ultra-colorful glazes.

Ortega's work has been exhibited in over twelve exhibitions at Creativity Explored. 

Roland Record (b. 1975) joined the Creativity Explored studio in 2008. Record prefers graphite or ink to make his unique drawings.

He begins his drawings by blocking off the surface in an open, fragmented grid, which through the gradual accumulation of detail becomes an all-over expansive intersection of pattern and occasional figures, hearts, or flowers. The effect, when completed, is that of a map depicting purely graphical terrain, or the cross-section of an impossible building showing its skeleton of wood, wiring, hearts beating within and faces beaming out.

When asked details of where he was born and currently lives, Record points to the drawing he is working on and smiles before answering each question, “Right here,” which is a perfectly artistic response.

In addition to numerous exhibitions at Creativity Explored, in 2013, Record was featured in I Have Never Taken the Time to Really Look, at Accident and Artifact, San Francisco, CA. 

Samedi Djeimguero (b. 1995, Cameroon) is a fashion icon at Creativity Explored, describing his style as "sunny." His artwork reflects his affinity for bright colors. Djeimguero most often works with paint, creating vibrant abstract artworks. Fluent in French, English, and Cantonese, he appreciates opportunities to talk with visitors about his artwork, saying, "I like it when people see my painting work and say, 'You're pretty good!' That makes me feel happy. Very, very good."

Djeimguero began working in Creativity Explored's studios in 2017.