“The Winter Floods on the Russian River in Alexander Valley leave behind giant drifts of wood tangled together; broken branches, roots, trunks. Sometimes they’re laid out like blankets on the gravel bar and sometimes they’re wrapped high up in the Willow, Walnut and Cottonwood trees that line the river channel.

I’ve always thought that these flood created tangles were beautiful, and the more I observed them, the more I found that many of the individual pieces were beautiful as well. I had the idea to take a bunch of this wild, broken tree flotsam and give it new life in my own compositions.

A bleached piece of wood lying on the river rocks is a poem, so bringing a whole mess of them together is a story about a flood event, a season, a changed landscape, and also that every bit of the natural world is extraordinary and should be revered.”

Geri discovered a love of ceramics while taking a chance pottery class during the quarantine. Though she no longer works out of her garage or the old goat barn, Geri still takes inspiration from the outdoors. Distant vineyards and oak-laden hills visible from her tiny ceramics studio in Healdsburg, California inspire her simple, organic, hand-built pieces that bring a relaxed beauty to the every day.

geribiehlclay

Wolfgang Bloch was born and raised in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

The surface. This is one of the defining characteristics of works by Wolfgang Bloch, an artist known best for his moving and recognizable contemporary seascapes. His quiet and careful brushwork and his seamless assemblages have, over the past two decades, combined to yield works imbued with the romanticism of William Turner and the pure expression of Mark Rothko. Bloch is a rare artist whose hands are as guided by his dedication to craft and technique as they are by the nature of his materials and by the earnestness of his understated yet evocative experimentations.

Bolton Colburn, former director of The Laguna Art Museum calls Wolfgang's work
"sublime and terribly romantic."

Bloch's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world,
 as well as being published in magazines and books, including his own, published 
by Chronicle Books and titled: "Wolfgang Bloch: The Colors of Coincidence".
 Written by Mike Stice, and designed by David Carson. The book is an intimate
 and soulful account of the artist's rich and layered life, featuring the most evocative
 examples from his body of work.

Today, Bloch lives and works in Northern California.

wolfgangbloch.com

“As I experimented working with cable ties, it brought me back to my roots as a weaver. Working with this medium and creating these shapes feels like basket weaving, but the material allows for more improvisation and play. The breadth of colors available in cable ties are quite joyful. Bringing painting into the project allowed me to explore new styles that also referenced my past work with tapestry. I brought in folk elements with modernist touches to relate tot he sculptural forms. Beginnings is the arrival of spring, but also the the inspiration provided to my art from this project.”

manokart.com

“This is an excerpt from a poem written during my first year as the inaugural poet in residence at the Ecology Center located in lands stewarded by the Huichin Ohlone people, now known as Berkeley. My hope with this poem was to formalize for myself a version of land and labor acknowledgments that both calls in the ongoing systemic violence that continues to harm Black and indigenous communities, while also uplifting the liberatory possibilities of being in deep relationship with our local natural environments. Like all land and labor acknowledgments, it is an invitation in.”

gabrielmcortez.com

“Each project begins with its direction predetermined by a desired outcome; driven by the vision embedded within the primary inspiration or by the need of an end use. 

Whether working on a decorative wall adornment, developing a new furniture piece or embellishing a garden view, it's the moments when the creation process steers itself that I seek out in each piece.  

That's where the magic resides. 

It is within these moments that I may marvel in challenged belief as the iron vine appears to grow itself before me, one piece of metal welded in place at a time; climbing, crawling to life, a new presence of form. “

instagram.com/ray.degischer

Cycle of Nourishment by Liza Gershman traces the arc of food from its beginnings in the earth to its culmination at the table. The series moves through origins, harvest, growth, and feast — capturing moments that reveal both the beauty of nature and the human hands that shape it. Together, these images celebrate food as a continuum: a story of patience, care, and connection that feeds not only the body but the spirit.

lizagershman.com

Cristina Hobbs is a painter and sculptor living in Sebastopol, California. She was born in Hanover, Germany and raised bi-lingual and bi-cultural by her German and Argentine parents. After studying in Germany and Argentina her path led to California. In 2011, she graduated from California College of the Arts in San Francisco in Painting. Hobbs divides her time between the wine regions of Northern California and Argentina. When she is not in her studio in Sebastopol, you can find her in her studio in Chacras, Mendoza or rushing to pick up one of her two young daughters. It is a life divided between two callings: motherhood and art.

cristinahobbs.com

“My paintings use the wit and satire of The New Yorker Magazine and merge it with the theatrics and style of Vogue. From my experiences working in the publishing industry for various magazines and my interest in human interactions, I take a satirical approach to the group dynamics, non-verbal interactions, and inflated personalities that exist at social gatherings. I paint my view of the world and of the exaggerated personalities of the people around me that can only be described as cartoon characters. The reptilian character in my work represents contrite personalities and encapsulates our narcissistic tendencies through its outer skin.”

slipperydirt.com

“I am an interdisciplinary artist exploring how our sense of place and identity shifts with time. I work intuitively, building up layers of marks that I draw within, forming abstracted landscapes filled with hybrid creatures. In these spaces, flora and fauna morph between animal, landscape, and raw paint. Playing hide and seek with us, these elements are constantly shifting identity before disappearing and emerging as something new. What starts as a creature might become a mountain; what seems like sky might transform into fur.

My process involves making oil paint by hand from raw pigments, allowing me to control every aspect of texture and luminosity. I combine this with everyday materials like crayons and colored pencils, along with elements that catch light—24k gold leaf and tiny glass mosaic. These contrasting surfaces create visual tricks where images appear and disappear depending on how you look at them, much like seeing shapes in clouds. Pareidolia is the universal experience of finding familiar shapes in random patterns — I want others to have their own experience playing within my work, perpetually discovering something new.

These imagined worlds and feelings of place come from vivid memories and places I wish I could touch. While they are exploration of my own identity loss and fragmented reformation, they speak to something universal: the feeling that our identity is always shifting, always just out of reach. In painting, that uncertainty becomes a place of freedom rather than anxiety—a world where transformation is natural and nothing has to stay the same.”

lainejustice.com

Generations of Regeneration captures the faces, grit, and vision of Californians reshaping our relationship with food, land, and each other. These portraits honor risk-takers and rule-breakers—farmers who cultivate abundance while healing soil, strengthening communities, and daring to build alternatives to a broken food system.
Their stories radiate hope through daily action. Facing intensifying climate challenges, these individuals continue creating a parallel food system that offers a blueprint for our future. For them, farming is a daily act of resilience— a practice in navigating uncertainty, working with nature, and finding abundance amid constraint.

Though diverse in method, their shared goal is returning control of food systems to communities. Their work embodies an alternative way of growing food and organizing society— one rooted in reciprocity rather than extraction. This project stands as a visual testament to the daily hope, creativity, and resilience of those working the land. These stories remind us that tending soil is tending possibility, and real change is grown one seed, one meal, and one human connection at a time.

instagram.com/kristinalapinski

Hugh Livingston is a composer and digital media artist working with sound and large-scale video. He is an innovator in the presentation of public sound environments, with installations in gardens around the world. Hugh has degrees from Yale, CalArts and a PhD from the University of California, San Diego.

A permanent sound garden can be heard in the sculpture garden of the Sonoma County Museum. A river opera, Stages of the River, premiered in 2013 at Warnecke Ranch & Vineyards in Healdsburg. He has been a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, Artist in Residence at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, the McKnight Foundation Fellow Composer in Residence in Minneapolis with the American Composers Forum, and the recipient of numerous grants from foundations such as Rockefeller, Getty, Doris Duke, Andrew Mellon, Fleishhacker, and Haas. He was four-time sound artist-in-residence at the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in Washington, DC. His first sound installation, LISTEN EDGEMAR, was created for a Frank Gehry-designed building in Santa Monica, and is still playing after 23 years. His most recent book contribution is on contemporary sound garden design, from Harvard University Press. His sound and video work has been on view at the Smithsonian’s Freer|Sackler Galleries of Asian Art for three years.

The Asemic Notation series is an exploration of the visual gestures behind the representation of musical sounds, taken out of context, and meant to be readable by any viewer, rather than a code for musicians only. The materials may be wildflowers from Sonoma County, trimmings from grape vines, or energized calligraphy with a pen, and the scores attempt to capture the richness of color and texture in nature, while maintaining a sense of ephemerality even as they are now frozen on the page. The bounds of conventional musical composition are tested with 350’ long “Scores for Everyone". A drawn note is not just a symbol: it holds a range of expression and ornament, a sense of nature, a sense of the human. These scores capture spontaneity and evoke improvisation as well as careful contrapuntal composition. All viewers can freely interpret the visual gestures.

instagram.com/livingstonsound

Jessica Martin is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Healdsburg, California. Her work considers our continual process of growth and healing, and the ways we find joy and strength through connections with nature, one another, and ourselves.

Jessica studied Anthropology at Vassar College and did her field work in Madagascar and France. She received her MA at California College of the Arts. Jessica was recently artist in residence for Google, and her work has been shown throughout the Bay Area and abroad, including Amelie Maison Paris, Headlands Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Legion Projects, Traywick Contemporary, TedX, and San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art.

She is co-founder of Roving Venue, an itinerant gallery that produces temporary community- based public art projects in Sonoma County. She also created the viral hotline art project, Peptoc, with her students at West Side Elementary.

JessicaMartinArt.com

Graduated from University of New Mexico with a BFA in painting and photography, Naomi currently lives in Healdsburg.

“I am a painter. I paint from my mind, with inherent references from the wonderment of the world around me. I always feel this tenuous, not quite real element in all that I paint, and believe that there is a life force that is born into each piece, a soul and a will.

I cannot often enter into this creation with much determination of where it will lead. As anything in nature, I am left to my own devices and the outcome is often a surprising narrative. I love the relationship that is formed between artist and work in this playful interaction, when it is brought into being.

My references from this world have much to do with flora and natural flows in nature, as well as some of man's basic replications of natural form. I have found influence in Indian botanical miniature paintings, and textiles for their use of pattern and imagination, but have allowed the imagination to transcend and create worlds based in the ethereal.

I have lived many places, and find wonderment in place and our relation to them. New Lebanon NY, Santa Fe NM, San Francisco CA, Brooklyn NY, Seattle WA, Headlands CA, I find my reality shifted in each respective place, as if a new lens has been put over my pre existing world, and I can’t help but have it inform my relations with my work. I thrive on this newness and curiosity.”

instagram.com

“The world hums with beauty and danger, harmony and discord. We walk through these shifting currents every day. For as long as I can remember, I have turned toward the natural world—studying its patterns, its relationships, its quiet lessons. From petals and wings, branches and bones, I gather the raw language for my work, weaving them into forms that reflect the landscapes of our inner lives.

Nature is my muse, my refuge, my breath. Through it, I question the fears and unspoken rules that shape us. I linger in the smallest details, where mystery hides—in the curve of a stem, the flicker of an insect’s wing, the peculiar arrangements that hold both chaos and grace.
In my paintings, I attempt to preserve what is fleeting. I hold the fragile beauty of the natural world in place, so it will not vanish—so a flower does not die with the turning of the season, but lives on in color, line, and memory. Each piece becomes both offering and archive, a way of keeping wonder alive.

My practice is a long, meandering growth—rooted in detail, reaching toward transformation. Through my work, I seek to bring the outside in, to honor the wildness that surrounds us, and to reveal the beauty and danger, the decay and renewal, that bind our outer and inner worlds together.”

jakemessing.com

“I have been a maker for most of my life, fully immersed in the process of working with materials—learning about them, forging them, hand-cutting and polishing them with equal parts curiosity and focus. My hands and mind are always engaged, creating something tangible and meaningful.
Curiosity has been my lifelong companion, shaped by the challenges of dyslexia and the freedom of self-taught practice. This has guided me into a dance of discovery and persistence, always inspired by the beauty of nature. My goal is to transform that inspiration into creations that can be worn, displayed, or simply admired for their connection to the world around us.

Whether I’m working with wood, deer leather, metalloids, paper, or sunlight, the process itself is what grounds me. I’ve learned that there isn’t a day I can go without getting my hands messy because my mind is constantly envisioning three-dimensional objects that must come to life.

My philosophy is simple: nothing goes to waste. I honor every material I work with, using or repurposing every piece to ensure that the process is both mindful and sustainable.”

memoore.co

Sébastien Pochan is a winemaker and artist-woodworker who is based in Healdsburg, California. He grew up in France, Africa, and Tahiti.

In his thirties, he became fascinated with furniture making and traditional joinery techniques through the works of George Nakashima and Shaker craftsmen. In the early months of the pandemic, he started experimenting with abstract carvings and has since begun to incorporate lathe turned pieces into some of his sculpture. He cites Constantin Brancusi, Barbara Hepworth, Martin Puryer, and JB Blunk as sources of inspiration. His work has been shown at Gallery Lulo in Healdsburg, Carter&Co in St Helena, Themes and Projects Gallery at the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, and Seattle Art Fair with K+Y gallery.

“I work mainly with salvaged wood from the area around Healdsburg (oak, walnut, madrone, bay), and my process is usually driven by the initial shape of the piece of wood. I think wood turning has influenced the forms that emerge from my carving, the curves, the hollows... Some forms re-emerge regularly that resemble vessels or masks (possibly from my exposure to African folk art). There is also a recurrence of inside/outside surfaces as a metaphor for the hidden and mysterious within ourselves and nature. I don’t really think about a possible meaning until the piece is almost done so it is as if some deeper insight was revealed through the process of making and that part is immensely gratifying.”

sebastienwoodworks.com

“My work concerns the weather and the weathered. Sometimes they seem about death, a shut case, sometimes about a god in the sky as a faucet who is not always generous
But who might be just enough.”

prestonfarmandwinery.com/in-ghost-time

The two prints exhibited at ArtFarm are excerpts from a book of 89 prints entitled Sara & Alan Come to My Living Room. At their origin is a nude figure drawing session with two models in the artist’s living room. The gestures of touch are occluded by layers of process that tell the story of personal interactions: pencil transferred to copper etching, light & shadows from nature & theater, and digital abstraction.

About the Artist

Alice Warnecke Sutro is an artist and wine producer. She studied Art History for seven years starting with an immersive art history program in high school, then received a BA from Stanford University in Art History. As an undergraduate she studied art abroad in Florence and Moscow and has worked at Cantor Center for the Arts, Tretyakov Gallery and Sonoma County Museum. She pursued studio art and graduated from California College of the Arts MFA program in Painting and Drawing in 2010. That's when she felt the call to return to the land and moved to Healdsburg to work for her family business Warnecke Ranch & Vineyard. She founded the wine label SUTRO in 2012 to highlight the unique volcanic terroir of her family’s one hundred year old property on the Russian River. It was in 2019 that she embarked on the new medium of performative, large-scale, public engagement figurative drawing. She is president of Alexander Valley Winegrowers Association and serves on the board of Chalk Hill Artist Residency.

Artist Statement

Alice Warnecke Sutro creates large-scale figurative installations that fully depend on audience interaction. Her live drawing sessions are humorous and lively, but they also reveal a philosophical approach to the nature of art. After many years of experimental drawing, Alice’s practice prioritizes art’s ancient purpose as a community-forming activity for ritual gatherings.

The format for her projects is recurring: she invites participants from a crowd and draws them live, in the moment and with no erasing. The figures are rendered with a sensitive line that demonstrates her love of people, often strangers, with whom she converses the entire time.

In keeping with ritual experiences and inspired by contemporary artists like Marina Abramovich and Matthew Barney, Alice always designs her projects to explore the edge of her physical capacity. Past projects have included tracing figures on a 3-story façade by means of a scissor lift and extension paintbrushes, drawing visitors at an art fair for 2 days straight in record heat to create a 120-foot continuous column of portraits, and 100 portraits in 24 hours.

alicesutro.com

“My paintings are rooted in California’s native flora and fauna and the relationships that connect them. I spend time in the wild as well as in my own native plant garden, observing where birds, insects, and flowers meet. Those encounters become the heart of my paintings, seeking to capture the magic within those fleeting moments.

With careful observation and attention to detail, I strive to honor both the individuality of each species and its role in the larger ecosystem. Native flowers are more than beautiful. They stabilize our soils, feed pollinators, and anchor the web of life around us.

Through painting, I share a sense of intimacy with these species and the worlds they support. My goal is to invite viewers to slow down, notice the quiet miracles of California’s native landscapes, and feel a deeper connection to the place we call home.”

katevandyke.art

Barbara is a self-taught visual artist living in Healdsburg, CA. For her, painting is a form of self-expression, and even abstract compositions have representational qualities that can elicit emotional responses. Inspiration for her art comes from her intuition, nature, faces, and many sights and sounds that flow in and out of her daily life.

She collages and painst in vivid colors to layer her surfaces with visceral emotional content. She engages the viewer by using familiar images, words, and symbols which, taken together, present a wry commentary on contemporary life.

For Barbara, creating art nurtures the soul.

Intimately entangled with both landscape and fabricated industrial materials, Wagner's sculptural paintings evoke visible and unseen realms. She grew up on the eastern slope of the Sierras, where tribal land and wild horses converge with dramatic vistas, sprawling ranches and 24-hour casino culture. Abject poverty exists alongside extreme, yet modest wealth. The air is thin, temperatures can be extreme, people work hard, play harder and the enormity of the sky and mountains feel like a religious experience. It is a place simultaneously chaotic and tranquil, rugged and contained. Coming of age in this landscape, amidst the cultural conditions, people and wildlife, Victoria learned about the relationships between land and its inhabitants, and became aware of industry’s great ironies — how its employment is necessary to people’s sustenance while its operations affect the health of the land. Having become sensitive to contrasting extremes, her work contains the tension of coexisting visual and theoretical paradoxes. In her painted wood and metal artworks, she uses unlikely material pairings and unusual color combinations to gently aggravate the viewer’s existing assumptions about spatial relationships. Working with disparate and seemingly unrelated elements, She is able to re-orchestrate and organize them into harmonic relationships that reveal unexpected beauty.

"I find that working with local wood provides a connection to land and becomes a practice of stewardship. Beyond the visible realm is a plane of vibration, energy, and mystery. This plane is where empirical knowledge becomes interwoven with belief, where our eyes can play tricks on us, where logic is overwritten by feeling and where my imagery originates. Through engagement and observation of nature’s patterns, I witness coincidence, reveal symbols, notice colors, explore relationships and feel a deep resonance with the spirit of the land. Overlaying geometric constellations onto organic topographies, my abstract compositions are as narrative as tree rings or cell structure or the materiality of aluminum."

With paint, she creates prismatic spectrums that ripple, accelerate, reverberate and flow. Invoking transcendentalists, she uses color as an intuitive tool to increase balance within the body. In these ways her colorful multi-media assemblages seek to connect people and objects — through what is seen and sensed — to the mystical nature of our world."

victoriawagner.com