Esther Zabin is a printmaker and painter. She has also worked in collage, drawing, mixed media, ceramics, basketry, and silk scarf painting. Her early inspiration to paint came in early childhood in Chicago, where her uncle was a sign painter and a “Sunday Painter”. She later studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1950 where she studied under the painter, Martin Lubner. She was influenced by Abstract Expressionism at the time, especially with Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko. She has shown her art at various community colleges around LA including Santa Monica and Northridge, at Café Cultural in LA, the Bergamot Station Arts Center in Santa Monica, and the North Oakland Senior Village in Oakland. Esther was diagnosed with macular degeneration at age 80, which lead her into a new community of artists and exhibitions at the Braille Institute in LA, the Lighthouse for the Blind at SF City Hall, and the Lions Center for the Blind in Oakland. Esther now lives at St Paul’s Towers in Oakland.
Esther Zabin’s Artwork
Apple
Monoprint. 10 1/2″ x 12 1/4″
NFS
Flood
Acrylic paint. 27″ x 31 1/4″
NFS
Lee Zabin is primarily a jeweler, but also is a painter and weaver. She uses abalone, clam, mussel, olivella, dentalia and other shells to make jewelry in the tradition of Native American regalia. She also uses some pine nuts from local forests. The abalone shell she uses is collected from the beaches on the Mendocino coast, where she lives. Her jewelry, Lee’s Haven, is sold across northern California.
Lee is a member of The Artists’ Collective Gallery in Elk, CA. She has exhibited her jewelry in the Marin Museum of American Indian in Novato, Gallery Route One in Point Reyes, Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, and Bill’s Trading Post in Berkeley. She has also participated in numerous festivals and fairs including the Novato Native American Trade Feast, The Round Valley Blackberry Festival in Covelo, and Kule Loklo’s Big Time Festival in Point Reyes.
Lee Zabin’s Artwork
Untitled
Cotton weaving. 28″ x 80″
NFS
Hopi Breton is a faculty member in the Art Department at Diablo Valley College, where she also heads the sculpture program. She earned a BA from Loyola University in New Orleans and an MFA in sculpture from Montana State University. She has organized students to create cast iron art performances nationally, including the International Cast Iron Art Conference at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Al, The Western Cast Iron Art Conference, in Denver, CO, and the Fire Arts Festival at the Crucible in Oakland, CA.
Hopi creates conceptual-craft sculptural work predominantly in metal, including steel, cast bronze, and cast iron, often combining these with various mixed media. Forms such as rocks, logs, buckets, and feet, as well as materials such as gold, wood, and salt are used as much for their symbolic qualities as for their formal qualities. In the wall sculpture in this exhibit, Hopi intentionally connects an abstracted form of the female reproductive organs to the material qualities of steel: carbon and iron. The piece celebrates the strength and life force of both the material and the form.
Website: http://hopibreton.squarespace.com | Instagram: @hopibeart
Hopi Breton’s Artwork
Meow
2021, forged steel, paint. 32″ x 32″ x 3″.
$1,400