In May 2012 the Boston Pops kicks off its 2012 concert season with Visions of America. The theme continues throughout the season as the Pops celebrates many of America's greatest musical traditions, featuring Joseph Sohm's striking images from all 50 states.  The season's theme culminates in Visions of America Photo Symphony Concert for America, a multi-media composition created by Joseph Sohm, Oscar-nominated Roger Kellaway, Oscar winning songwriters Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and narrated by Clint Eastwood. The concerts feature vocal performances by Grammy winning Patti Austin and Tony winning, Brian Stokes Mitchell.

Books and CD will be available the night of the event with sales benefiting FOTM’s arts educational programming.
For more information: 

www.VisionsOfAmerica.com and www.RogerKellaway.com

March 27, 2012
Luther Gerlach, Photographer.
Luther Gerlach is a photographer whose work captures modern images using old-world techniques.  He is an ambrotypist who has built his own camera and who produces negatives in the waxed paper collotype process, wet plate collodion, dry plate gelatin, or commercially available, large format film.  He has demonstrated and exhibited his work at the Getty and other museums and colleges.
For more information:  www.LutherGerlach.com

April 24, 2012
Jenchi Wu, Ceramist.
Jenchi Wu earned a BA in Art at California State University Northridge and MFA at CSULA.  She is on the faculty at Ventura College.  Jenchi’s work has a deeply intellectual underpinning and challenges expectations and preconceptions.  She is concerned with external forces such as inertia and gravity and how they affect the medium. 
For more information: www.JenchiWu.com

May 22, 2012
Helle Scharling-Todd, Glass Artist.
Danish-born Helle Scharling-Todd was educated in Europe and in Mexico.  It was the mosaics in Mexico that changed the course of her life and her art.  Her colorful glass mosaic murals and glass and copper sculptures can be found from Florida to California as well as in Europe.  Helle feels that public art is an attempt to unite an individual expression with a social function.  “It is,” she says, “a duet with architecture.”
For more information:  www.GlassAndMosaics.com

June 26, 2012
Karen K. Lewis, Painter.
A member of Ojai Studio Artists, Karen K. Lewis is a studio painter whose subjects include still lifes, landscapes and large groups of people.  She is also a plein air painter and a printmaker.  Her fascinating life is filled with the unexpected.  Lewis was interned during World War II in the Philippines.  She reunites annually with “the kids,” fellow internees from the prisoner of war camp. 
For more information:  www.KarenKLewis.com

August 28, 2012
Michael Cullen Todd, Sculptor.
Michael Todd’s work can be found at the Whitney, the Metoropolitan, the Hirschorn and Los Angeles County Museums, among others.  He was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, a Fullbright Fellowship to Paris, and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Throughout his career he has created sculptures in wood, metal and now in ceramics.  “Clay is wonderful,” he says.  “ It has given me a new creative lust, late in life.”
For more information:  www.MichaelToddSculpture.com

September 25, 2012
Michael Dvortcsak, Painter.
Michael Dvortcsak is no stranger to Focus on the Masters having been documented in 2000.  Michael earned a BA and MFA at UC Santa Barbara, where he has also lectured and taught.  His works are in many private and public collections around the world.  His paintings are diverse and speak to the intellect but contain elements that are as primal as a scream.  His most recent body of work, The Museum Suites, are wonderful observations of human interaction with the great art collections of the world.
For more information: www.Dvortcsak.com



October 23, 2012
Chris Provenzano Sculptor.
A resident artist at Ventura’s Art City, Chris Provenzano’s  career has combined commercial sculpting and fine art, sculpting in stone and bronze.  Her sense of design in painting and sculpture was strongly affected from working as a commercial sculptor making stylized animals for Disneyland and Universal Studios and other amusement parks.  In 2007 her design of a large scale sculpture was awarded a public art commission, The Business of Bees, which is part of Ojai's Art in Public Places.
For more information:  www.ChrisProvenzano.com



November 27, 2012
Tom Jenkins, Painter, Sculptor, Musician.
An artist who cannot easily be categorized, Tom Jenkins earned his BA and MFA degrees at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  He came to Los Angeles in the 70s and has taught at Santa Monica College, UC Irvine, Claremont Graduate School and Otis/Parsons Art Institute.  His works include kinetic and sound sculptures, paintings in high gloss enamel paint on metal and plastic surfaces, and the creation of musical instruments used in the performance of songs and stories.
For more information:  http://www.collageartists.org/meetingsarchive/2008_12_Tom-Jenkins.html