I am bringing Comfort Food to Art-O-Matic. Not fried chicken and ice cream, but a whimsical look into our thoughts and feelings. Whether they be happy or sad, tranquil or angry, they bring us the solace of knowing what we all are: human.

Fiona Murphy is an Irish artist who lived in Cuba for 12 years and recently moved to Washington. She left her native Ireland for Florence in 1993 in a search for art and life that took her to Brazil and Ecuador. She has a B. A. in Fine Art Painting from the Limerick School of Art and Design and a Higher Diploma in Interior Design from the Limperts Academy of Design in Dublin. She acquired a passion for mural painting in the North East of Brazil and developed the medium further on walls in Cuba.

Fiona worked as head of the Art Department at the International School of Havana and exhibited her work with local artists and in solo exhibitions. Her last show was about Cuban leader Fidel Castro after illness removed him from public sight.

In Washington, she recently took part in the Eatonville mural project dedicated to African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. In DC, Fiona has begun to redesign recycled furniture.

Her work in Artomatic 2009 is from a recent exhibition called Abstract Landscapes that included 30 paintings (acrylic on canvas) inspired by memories of places the artist has visited and her homeland Ireland.

I'm an amateur photographer in the DC area. I started off in photography learning black and white landscapes in high school, but more recently have taken an eye towards the urban landscape as art inside Washington. I try to bring a different perception to common sights in our city, and show how we perceive our little corners of the world differently.

Feel free to contact me through email.

OF TWO FINDS ... Have been working with the nearly lost & forgotten classic communication medium of handset movable metal type printed and letterpress printing (thanks to the amazing DC-area resource of Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring!). Trying to see what can be expressed with different typestyles and sizes and plain old black ink. (Starting with the basics.)

I paint to capture the figure in a dynamic instant. I shoot to capture beauty within chaos.

The main work that I have displayed for the Artomatic showcase is from my Visual Kei Series. This work consists of Oil Paintings that are based on Japanese rock musicians. I am interested in there adrogeny and making them seem iconic. My other works revolve around my own alphabet system and the relationships between human and plant anotomy. I paint mostly in Oil but also enjoy using Water Colors. My influences include Salvador Dali, Ross Belchner and Michael Hussar. I was trained at the Corcoran College of Art and Design and you can find more of my work here: www.myspace.com/monarez

As an amateur photographer my goal is to capture and showcase the National Capital regions natural beauty, the diversity of its populace, the many annual festivals/sporting events, as well as the architectural splendor in our midst. In doing so, I hope to elevate the viewer to a greater appreciation of what surrounds us daily.

Our artwork is a collection of drawings and sculpture depicting the beauty of African American women.

I am inspired by observations of everyday life and popular culture to create artwork that explores and confronts the many roles and stereotypes of women.

My work is about identity, its construction and its restriction, its complexities and the fallacy of a protective and fixed nature.

"Fucking Hipster":

This is not an anti-smoking piece. Rather, it's an anti-hipster piece.

Ron has been honing his craft of photography for many years. Recently he decided to start presenting his work at arts and crafts fairs in the Maryland and Washington, DC area as well as submitting work to gallery shows. His “Arizona Bench” was part of the Travel Exhibit (January 16 – March 8, 2009) at the Towson Arts Collective in Townson, MD. His “Red Roof” was part of the 40th Annual Laurel Art Guild Open Juried Exhibition (March 6 – 29, 2009) at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel, Md. His photo entitled “Olana Sunset #15) will be in the upcoming exhibition entitled “Top to Bottom: A Hudson River Arts Map Installation (June 13 – August 9, 2009) at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, NY. Ron will also have his photography exhibited at the New Deal Café from June 1 -28, 2009. To see examples of his work, please visit www.mcwilder.com.

Ron has developed an affinity for nature photography and has focused on this aspect of his work in the last year. His "passion" for the medium actually grew out of moving to digital photography. He now works totally in the digital media. His subjects include landscapes, animals, flowers, sunsets, and various other topics. He recently started dabbling in infrared photography and this is proving to be a very exciting new aspect of photography for him.

Welcome! The photographs I'm displaying at this year's Artomatic were taken in the past year or so in places or at events that I found meaningful or inspiring. They range from stark desert scenes (Death Valley, CA) to Ansel Adams-inspired photos of the Canadian Rockies (Banff, Alberta) to closer-to-home photos from the Obama Inauguration and the American Visionary Arts Museum's Kinetic Sculpture Race. Each of them stands out for me in some way, and I hope you find at least a few that stand out for you.

I am interested in materials first and foremost.I am no longer trapped by the need to load work down with content.At the level of production, I try to achieve an almost passive attitude towards the process. I like to see myself as a middle man between materials, shapes and techniques.I am in a constant state of build and destroy,,I hope that as I finish writing this, I will have evolved beyond what was written here.

For a profession I work to preserve historic photographs. However, I find beauty in deterioration, and in my spare time, I explore the techniques to give digital prints a vintage aesthetic. By imitating the various styles of deterioration specific to each photographic process and by shortening the deterioration time from years to minutes, I draw attention to the materiality of photographs.