Sarah Walsh is a Southern California–based artist and educator. She is especially passionate about painting and art history, and her work reflects a deep engagement with both studio practice and critical inquiry. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from California State University, Long Beach, and later completed a Master of Arts in Art Education along with a graduate certificate in Applied Disability Studies, also from Cal State Long Beach. Her academic and creative work explores themes of memory and space, history, and inclusive art practices.

Joel Woodard

Artist | MFA, Cal State Long Beach | joelrwoodard@gmail.com

Artist Biography

Joel Woodard is a Southern California-based artist whose work explores the intricate intersections of emergence, evolution, and systemic structure. Born in San Leandro and raised in Northern California, Woodard’s practice is rooted in a lifelong fascination with the “uncanny”. A pursuit of the tension that exists between the familiar and the unknown.

With an MFA from California State University, Long Beach, and a BFA from Laguna College of Art and Design, Woodard’s technical foundation is matched by a deep institutional knowledge of the art world. He served over two decades at the Laguna Art Museum, ultimately rising to the position of Director of Operations. This dual perspective of creator and high-level administrator informs his disciplined yet experimental approach with traditional art-making materials.

His current body of work, Algorhythm, investigates the visual language of patterns and gestured abstraction, where intentional systems collide with spontaneous, visceral marks. Woodard has exhibited extensively throughout California, with solo exhibitions at Soka University and the Doyle Arts Pavilion, and group showings at the Torrance Art Museum and the Los Angeles Art Association. When not in his Rancho Santa Margarita studio, he shares his expertise in Color Theory and Drawing as an adjunct faculty member at several Southern California colleges.

Jeannie Denholm has been active in the art business for over 3 decades and has an extensive background assisting private collectors and corporations with art acquisitions and curatorial services.  She worked with The Broad Art Foundation (Santa Monica, CA) for over 9 years as project curator for Eli Broad’s corporate collections.  Denholm takes pride in developing long term relationships with her clients and continues to work with most of them in an ongoing collection management capacity.   She became sole owner of Southern California  Art Projects & Exhibitions | SCAPE in 2016; a venue in Corona Del Mar where significant art exhibits and salon-style cultural events are scheduled throughout the year.   Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree (BA) in art history, graduate studies in art history at York University in Toronto, Canada, and a master’s degree (MA) in Museum Studies and Exhibition Design from California State University, Fullerton. 

Ellen Friedlander is a lens-based artist bridging urban landscapes and intimate portraits. Raised in New York’s Adirondack Mountains and later shaped by years living in multiple U.S. cities, Friedlander developed a sensitivity to space, intimacy, and quiet observation. She went on to spend more than a decade raising her family in Hong Kong, a city that profoundly influenced her street photography and established her professional technical repertoire. Using a range of in-camera and post-processing collage, Friedlander builds photographs that are layered, expressive, and psychologically resonant.

Friedlander has exhibited in numerous galleries across the United States and Internationally, notably showing with L’étrangère Gallery in London, and “LA Sees Itself” a curated exhibition by Carl Berg at Biola University. In 2025, Friedlander exhibited “The Soul Speaks” at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History. In addition to her art practice, Friedlander has been a guest lecturer with the International Photography Hall of Fame, is a Kipaipai fellow, Co-Director of Pasadena Photography Arts, a mentor for ASMP’s The Bridge Program and Executive Producer of “The Crit House Podcast.”

Website: www.ellenfriedlander.com

Instagram: @emfphoto59

Orange County based sculptor, Brent Walker, has been making a career in the commissioned art world for two decades. His interest in art began as soon as he could hold a pencil. With an emphasis on the entertainment arts, he graduated with Honors and with a BFA in Illustration at Art Center College of Design, he pursued sculpting and immediately developed a passion. Since then, projects have included fantastic toy maquettes, privately commissioned drawings and sculptures, as well as personal paintings and works. His public works have made their way to restaurants, hotels, casinos, and luxury resorts all around the world, most notably, bronze gorillas and a piece depicting mice in a game of tug of war displayed at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas and also a 6’ tall bronze peacock at the Wynn in Macau.

Recently, Brent has moved his focus away from commissioned works and has been concentrating on and exploring new ideas in the way of sculpted portraits and paintings. His inclusion of developing a more realistic approach to eyes in sculpture and implementing new techniques in his painting style to include more graphic elements have both informed his decisions about his current and future personal works.

Based in Southern California, Tyler Stallings is a curator, writer, and editor whose work explores the intersection of speculative thought, contemporary art, and the human condition. He has edited and contributed to influential exhibition-driven publications, including Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas, Uncontrollable Bodies: Testimonies of Identity and Culture, and Aridtopia: Essays on Art and Culture from Deserts in the Southwest United States, as well as Whiteness: A Wayward Construction and Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing—projects that have become touchstones in their fields.

Stallings brings decades of curatorial leadership to his writing. His roles have included Interim Executive Director and curator at UC Riverside’s UCR ARTS (California Museum of Photography and Culver Center of the Arts), Chief Curator at Laguna Art Museum, and Director of Programs at Huntington Beach Art Center. Most recently, he served as Director and Senior Curator at the Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion at Orange Coast College.

He is currently guest curating exhibitions drawn from Laguna Art Museum’s permanent collection while completing HOTEL ART: STORIES, a linked short story collection inspired by Naida Osline’s long-term photographic project pairing hotel-room artwork with the view beyond the window. The book uses this visual structure to explore the tension between curated interiors and the realities they attempt to contain.

Stallings holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). More information on his projects can be found at www.tylerstallings.com