Now Showing at the 29 Palms Inn
Hiroko Momii & Heather Sprague
November 27 – January 29, 2017.
Hiroko Momii
Ms. Momii was born in Japan, and came to the USA in 1979 not knowing her deep desire to express herself through art. When she pulled a squeegee the first time at a silkscreen art studio, hired as an apprentice in 1980, she knew that she wanted to become an artist.
Hiroko entered the MFA program in painting and drawing at California State University Long Beach in 1994. During the program, she found the way to express her inner experiences and visions through abstract style. She graduated from CSULB with a Master’s Degree in painting and drawing in 1998. Since then, she has been showing her artwork in both solo and group exhibitions at numerous galleries in Santa Fe, Los Angeles, the Morongo Basin, and Japan.
Hiroko Momii is influenced by Wassily Kandinsky’s Statement, “Spirituality is the purpose of art.” Her growth as an artist and development on her spiritual path are parallel. The act of painting serves as meditation. The art making process has become a life process in itself.
Artist Statement
We experience our lives through our own unique individual perception. I intend to provoke each viewer’s perception through abstract painting.
My work is created through my feelings of close affinity with nature and indigenous cultures, which by nature are spiritual. I believe in beauty, awe, and the sublime in life. Painting is the act of reaching that state of being for me.
There is the concept of interconnected oneness of the universe. I explore this concept through “weaving” in my work.
I weave energy patterns as an expression of order in the universe.
I weave colors to create vibrations.
I weave movements, space, and time.
I weave two different structures together.
I weave art, spirituality, and science.
Weaving expresses womanhood, for traditionally weaving has been woman’s work.
Website: http://www.HirokoMomii.com
Heather Sprague
A native California, Heather Sprague spent her childhood roaming through and living in many different states, but has always come home. Originally moving to the Morongo Basin in 1985, and attending high school at Yucca Valley High School, she would leave the desert, and return two more times, the last bring in 2001, and has since called the desert home for the last sixteen years.
Heather holds two bachelors of Art Degrees from the University of California, Davis, one in Art History and one in Studio Art. Coming from a long history of talented artists and craftsmen on her Mother's side of the family, her mother included, Heather could not help but be influenced by that lineage, and so has had the same love of creativity flowing through her veins. Her time spent in Italy was a life changing and formative experience for her art and how she viewed the world, and served as the springboard for her decision to take her art seriously.
Heather has tried her hand at a variety of mediums, but photography has been the staple through every experimentation. Constantly fascinated by how and what the camera captures, she has stated that, "there is no bad photograph. Each one is showing me something I could never see in any other way, and some of my favorite altered images have come from original photos that others would have tossed." Heather works on an emotional level, and so therefore some images are altered, and some are not. She works until she feels the "click", as she would say, but always her goals are the same, to create beautiful images, to show the world in her own unique way and to give common things a new perspective, and sometimes to bring awareness to various issues. Following with the philosophy of, "you get more flies with honey than vinegar," shocking images have their place, but no one wants to look at them over and over again, but give someone something beautiful to look at that brings home the same point, and maybe it will sink in.
Currently, Heather has her own online photography and art business, is a member of MBCAC, and is an artist and board member at the 29 Palms Artists' Guild and Gallery in 29 Palms, CA. You can find her work online at www.feylittlewingphotography.com, or www.etsy.com/shop/FeyLitttleWingPhoto. She is also exhibiting at the Joshua Tree library until Jan 11, 2017.
