X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

MF: Ever since I was small, I liked to move my fingers, and I loved drawing and manga (Japanese comic books). I imitated manga characters and drew original characters by myself. I still like the work of the famous Japanese artist Katsuhiro Otomo even today.

"My role may be to increase the number of people interested in marine life and the beauty of the sea through my artwork."

— Masayo Fukuda

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist and a photographer.

MN: I have always loved photography as an art, but I started out with drawing and painting. Later in 2007, I discovered photography as a means of expressing myself, and it completely replaced painting for me. My photographs are not exactly photographs, because I do a lot of editing in Photoshop, and my creations are somewhere between paintings and photography. Both arts, for me, are very similar and interrelated.

Water is my creative vehicle. Creation, life, power... water is filled with tremendous energy. It gives both pleasure and delight. It gives life, but also poses a risk and a threat. It can destroy us.

— Mira Nedyalkova

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

"We can become numb to the facts and numbers regarding plastic pollution, but visual art can allow people to see the problem in a different light. Art can facilitate a dialogue about the issue and contribute to real changes."

— Kristen Regan

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist. From whom or what do you gain inspiration for your art and artistic process?

NK: My background is in painting, but I never studied at an art school. I taught myself both two-dimensional (painting) and three-dimensional (sculpture) art forms. I rely on my own hard work to learn and improve my artwork. I am convinced that I have a “work dependence syndrome" and create my work incessantly, as if I am going mad.

"The Japanese character for the word 'sea' has the character for 'mother' in it. The elements in seawater and in amniotic fluid are similar. The Ocean is the mother of the Earth."

— Noriko Kuresumi

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist. Are there mentors or artists or other sources of inspiration that have influenced you, your art or artistic process?

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

FW: I’m a self-taught artist born and raised in San Francisco. Like most kids, I always loved to draw and paint, but for me, that passion continued a lifetime. I was that kid in school that always colored inside the lines; maybe that’s why I’m a realist and love painting detail. I never considered art as a career. It was just a fun release for my imagination. Instead, I wanted to be a firefighter.

I strive for accuracy and want to know all there is about the subject I paint. The best way to do that is to dive into that world.

— Frank Walsh

After graduating with a degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano, Angheleddu specialized in interior design at an architecture studio, where he amassed a great deal of knowledge and experience in 3D digital modeling. He developed the concept of digital representation of not just the end product of a project, but each stage of refinement along the way in the process, starting with the initial idea, or “seed”, from which the ideal shape would develop.

Barb was an avid technical and wreck diver, underwater photographer and instructor, having learned to dive in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1979. She was a PADI Master Instructor and held instructor ratings with DAN, IANTD and NAUI. She became a NAUI Wreck and Archaeology Instructor to explore wrecks and an IANTD Trimix diver to photograph giant gorgonian sea fans at 200 feet.

 

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became a glass artist. 

Artists see and experience the world differently. And with their work, they lend the audience their eyes. I can think of nothing more important in the world than expanding one’s reality and seeing things from another perspective.

— Shayna Leib

X-RAY MAG: Tell us about yourself, your background and how you became an artist.

"Anytime you truly celebrate the visual beauty of something through art, you give it an importance that it may not have had for a lot of people—helping them appreciate it in a new way and start to consider how valuable that thing is." — Derek DeYoung