Evil Bobs is a self taught artist from Wendell, NC. Bobs' early work was mainly focused on pen and ink illustration and is using the smART program to focus on his painting. Bobs' art touches on the surrealist imagery that you see in many popular contemporary art magazines such as Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose.
Website: evilbobsart.com
Jamil Burton, born 1975 in Newark, New Jersey is an American artist and illustration painter. He lived a large part of his life in the states of New Jersey and North Carolina and attended Northern Nash Sr. High school, graduating in June of 1993. Jamil has formal training in fine art and illustration; Savannah Art & Design, St. Paul’s College and Katherine Gibbs School. He has completed numerous commissions professionally various companies, galleries, organizations and schools such as Williford Elementary School, Mount Vernon High School, The United Way. He has illustrated children's books, most recently, Hannah's World in collaboration with Tara S.Lewis and Oli the Octopus written by Kenneth Hamilton. Inspired by his community and the love of life and family, Jamil hopes to paint images of love & happiness. Painting a picture of his community and society, the good and bad, Jamil hopes to provoke thought, a feeling, and emotions. Take a look at the windows (paintings) of his soul.
Maximillian Mozingo's work reflects his motto: Art is Life. Goldsboro artist Maximillian specializes in fine art, murals & custom clothing and paints in with a myriad of mediums: acrylics, oils, spray paint, and does mixed media pieces as well. Art means everything to and he truly believes that this is his purpose and mission in life.
Facebook: Palmarius : Art By Maximillian Mozingo
Connie Hull’s art represents life’s challenges through her philosophy in “transitional art”. Being a physically challenged artist Connie believes in adaptational methodologies, including finger and pallet painting, polymer clay sculpting, and coil and slab pottery. A studio art graduate of Elizabeth City State University and long-time college educator, Connie believes that everyone, in some form, and in some way can utilize art as a healing modality, As a cancer survivor Connie fervently believes that art transcends many physical and emotional challenges, offering a way to manifest feelings and bringing beauty to stricken souls.
Elizabeth Piel is a surreal contemporary artist from Wilson, NC. After graduating college, she traveled the United States. Thousands of miles traveled, the highs and lows of living and being on the road brought her a sense of awareness and appreciation for all things. She engulfed herself in the culture of the Southwest to the pottery to the cacti and murals, she soaked it all in. The colors of the southwest and the dark corners of the Pacific Northwest is the pallet that she pulls her paint from. Her art ranges from dark surrealism to pop art collages.
Most of Elizabeth’s art is inspired by mental illness and focuses on mental health awareness. From anxiety, depression, mania, insomnia to sleep paralysis and nightmares, she paints the feeling. To portray that feeling she uses a variety of mediums. However, the light side of her art is bright pastels of mystic places;
she recalls her journeys by telling the story with her brush.
Therapeutic Art Life Coach
(252) 281-7814
ep.piel@yahoo.com
Maner Nobles is a North Carolina native and retired state employee whose passion is helping people and creating art.
Maner graduated from Woodington Consolidated School and Lenoir Community College. She has national certification in several behavioral disciplines and management strategies. She can't remember a time when she couldn't create art. She won an art contest as a teenager which provided her with training, materials and encouragement to make good art.
For the last nine years she has painted and exhibited her work nationwide. Her pieces have been juried into local and national shows and purchased for private collections. She does commissions routinely and is the lead painter for the Senior paintings and the Lenoir County Council on Aging. She is a member of the Lenoir County Artist League. Her long-term goal is to create a therapeutic art program for seniors.
Michael Mosca graduated in 2002 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where he studied sculpture and painting. Michael has spent the past 18 years investigating marks and movement created from his subconscious and represented in his large-scale charcoal drawings or his paintings in oils. Michael has shown his work regionally and internationally over the last 18 years. He has participated in several international artists colony's and residences. Currently, he is participating in the smART Kinston City Foundation.
Raney Rogers, Executive Director of Smart Kinston City Project Foundation, grew up in Durham, NC and majored in Art Education at East Carolina University. She moved to the mountains of NC in 1981 where she taught K-6 art for five years and then dedicated full time attention to her painting. She has been represented by galleries in NY and CA as well as the Southeast. Raney's work is in private and corporate collections worldwide. She is an advocate of preserving the flora and fauna of our planet which is also the subject of much of her work. Raney is a published writer of biographies, short stories and arts articles. She opened the Acorn Gallery in West Jefferson, NC in 1994 and she is also contributing her business and art expertise to lead the opening of the smART Gallery on downtown Queen Street in March of 2019 as an exhibition hub for all of the smART artist participants.
Website: acorngallery.com Etsy: acorngallery | Facebook: Painting with Raney | Instagram: acorngallery33
Kristy Kelly Writing is something that Kristy's done for as long as she can remember. Her writing career started with a few stories published with small presses. In 2019, she began writing for Neuse News as a journalist. She raised four children to adulthood and they rewarded her with four grandchildren with one on the way. In 2021 she started a video podcast about Lenoir County called Local Hogwash.
https://www.kristydbock.com • @KristyDBock Facebook • @KristyDBock Twitter • @KristyDBock Instagram
Anna Small is originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, and is a textile artist. She recently graduated from East Carolina University with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. After graduation, She decided to move to Kinston, North Carolina, to be a part of the smART Kinston City Foundation. She is the type of artist, who embraces new opportunities, and finds inspiration in those opportunities for the subject matter and techniques that she uses in her art. She enjoys working with mixed media, dye techniques, and screen printing. Through her background in textiles art, she seeks to feature and interpret the cultural perspectives of her generation while also documenting how past generations have influenced the cultural changes we are experiencing today. She finds inspiration and materials for her art in a variety of places, especially thrift stores. She collects bohemian clothing and often upcycles it into diverse garments that are each uniquely different, just like the people around her. Through her art, she celebrates the ideas of the people, the communities, and the cultures around her. She is grateful to connect to those stories that have inspired her art.
smART Kinston Artists …(all phots and bios to come)
Evil Bobs, Max Mozingo, Jamil Burton, Michael Mosca, Raney Rogers, Connie Hull, Kristy Denise Bock Elizabeth Piel, Maner Nobles,
Alicia Shapiro, Gail Kelly, Stephanie Brae, Annelise Brady, Davida Rawl, Pat Rooney, Kate Heraty, Kelly Rye, Corey Bennison, Karolina Sorenson, Joanne McCobb
Inactive smARTists (that have moved on with their careers!:)
Crystal Eadie, Anna Small, Seraphim Smith, Josh Blankenship, Stacia Hitt
Stephanie Brea is a poet whose work is centered in community engagement. Collaboration with organizations, other artists, and local residents results in poetry for everyone, by everyone.
Her work has been published in various small presses and poetry anthologies. She was a staff writer for an invention company, briefly copy edited for Alternative Press magazine, interviewed the infamous groundhog weather prognosticator Punxsutawney Phil, and currently is a process-analyst-slash-technical-writer for an ambulance billing company. This means that she may have had a hand in some of the things advertised on late-night infomercials, remembers how to spell the last name of the drummer for a few bands she never listened to, was sworn to secrecy about the goings-on of the Groundhog Day Inner Circle, and has a great mnemonic device for remembering Medicare billing rules.
Her public writing projects include an interactive map of Pittsburgh neighborhood poems, Bioetry: an exploration of science-based poetry and art, and Pizza Poems PGH (a project that delivers fresh, hot poems on pizza boxes for National Poetry Month). She spent many years teaching creative writing in both classroom and after-school settings with a primary focus on craft, courage and community.
With an additional 10+ years of events production experience, she is always up for brainstorming potential projects and working together to make things happen. Say hello:
Instagram: @sabrea
Website: https://sbrea51.wixsite.com/stephanie-brea
Gail Kelly Who am I? I seek out and absorb sights, sounds, tastes and touches. I hold, process and give off at a much slower, more deliberate pace. Interpretations by my brain sponge surprise and often delight me. I like gesture. I like strong color. I like rocks. I am very tactile. I am a maker. I have looked at shape and color in a critical manner from a very early age. Movement is essential-stasis is boring. Subtlety is good, forcing one to look beyond the obvious. I am a complex person. I think too much, I draw too little. Writing is an act of defiance or self-defense. Making is my way of sharing - a reflection of my being. I have made many things: technical, helpful, useful, some just beautiful. I try always to respond to what the object needs to be safe, strong, sharp or loud. I ask a pot: what will it hold? Who will use it? What will the decoration celebrate? They go out into the world to celebrate the nature of becoming. Desired or not, we are all in the process. Some aspects of the process we can control (education) some we can delay (gravity), others we must simply acknowledge- decay and death. I think my job as an artist is to raise awareness of man’s part in the complex process of becoming and begoing.