Artists
Venice has been home to many artists whose creativity has shaped the neighborhood’s identity and spirit. Venice Open Studios continues this tradition by fostering connection, collaboration, and community, ensuring that art remains at the heart of Venice Beach’s cultural life.
Sandrine Rose Abessera
Sandrine Rose Abessera‘s practice is intuitive, layering fragments of ephemera, photographs, and daily life into assemblages rephotographed on wood, linen, and canvas. Rooted in memory and symbolism, her works function as visual essays—rebuses of coded imagery evoking personal and collective narratives. Inspired since childhood by art museums in Paris, she now creates in Los Angeles, balancing intimacy with monumentality.
Arcane Space
ARCANE Space opened in the hub of LA’s Venice Beach in October 2017. Founded by Morleigh Steinberg and Frally Hynes, ARCANE Space presents the work of a wide range of artists – both those of note and those who may not yet have had the opportunity to exhibit. A portion of proceeds benefits local charities.
William Attaway
Born in Barbados and based in Venice Beach since 1979, William Attaway is known for his monumental ceramic sculptures, mosaics, and paintings that celebrate community, nature, and resilience. His public artworks—vibrant and spiritually grounded—embody cultural unity and hope, transforming Los Angeles landmarks into living symbols of creativity, collaboration, and renewal.
Sandy Bleifer
Sandy Bleifer transforms handmade paper—art's most fragile medium—into layered monuments of resilience. Since the 1970s, she has fused silkscreen and papermaking with contemporary media to create "temporal topographies": surfaces where multiple moments coexist. Bleifer's social practice transforms artmaking itself into an act of restoration—both individual and collective. Her work is included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, at the Kitakamakura Museum (Japan), and in the Albuquerque Museum collection.
David Eddington
English-born, David Eddington received his art education at London’s Central School of Art, pursued postgraduate studies in Environmental Design at North London University, and earned an MA in the Social and Political Influence in Art from Trent University. He is Professor Emeritus at Plymouth University, United Kingdom. Eddington maintains an active studio practice and an extensive international exhibition record, with work regularly presented in England, the Netherlands, Spain, and Korea.
Ned Evans
Born in Burbank, California in 1950, with an MFA from UC Irvine in 1973, Ned Evans has lived in Venice, California since the early 1970s. Working primarily in painting in acrylic and mixed media on canvas, he has also spent years exploring photography, collage, and mixed media sculptural reliefs. He has shown throughout the United States and Europe. While his work is unquestionably influenced by the southern California landscape, the contours and colors of the sea, surf, and shore, ultimately and inevitably, he is re-constructing and building edifices and foundations, on top of which exist the nuances of illusion and light.
Marybeth Fama
Marybeth Fama earned a BA in literature at the University of Chicago and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, Otis College and LAAFA. She had a twenty-year career as a restaurateur and raised three children. At her Palo Verde studios in Joshua Tree and Venice, she creates both abstract and realist paintings, mainly in oils, as well as assemblage inspired by unique materials found in the desert and on the beaches of California.
Born in Santa Monica in 1976, Alejandro Gehry graduated in 1998 with a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is also a teacher of illustration and painting at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. Gehry has primarily worked in oils on a large-scale. Honing in on his skills and aesthetic development, he finds himself pushing against societal boundaries. Gehry currently lives and works in Venice.
Ben Jackal
Ben Jackel has been creating and exhibiting art in Los Angeles for over 20 years, and is represented by LA Louver Gallery in Venice, CA. Jackel’s work has also been shown at the Denver and Phoenix art museums as well as at the Venice Biennale. He received his BFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an MFA from The University of California, Los Angeles.
Linda Jacobson
Linda Jacobson, a Los Angeles-born painter based in Venice, CA since the 90’s, makes lyrical abstracted landscapes inspired by mysticism, shamanism, and meditation. She also incorporates Jungian psychology and dreamwork. Her flowing, light-filled paintings embody the poetic movement of life and the essential energy of nature. Exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous collections, Jacobson has taught at Otis College of Art, UCLA Extension and leads transformative art workshops worldwide and locally.
Jeremy Kidd
Jeremy Kidd is a British-born, Los Angeles-based contemporary artist known for his innovative approach to photography, sculpture, and painting. Recognised for his large-scale, digitally manipulated photographic panoramas that merge multiple perspectives into a single dynamic composition, Kidd draws inspiration from classical art, modernist architecture, and contemporary digital technology. A descendant of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, his work is exhibited and collected internationally by major museums, corporations, and private collectors.
Francisco Letelier
Chilean-American artist Francisco Letelier creates interdisciplinary visual art, integrating narratives that explore memory and identity. Based in Venice and Joshua Tree, California, he works nationally and internationally in a variety of media. His tile murals, 'El Sol and La Luna at Westlake/Macarthur Park Metro Station and 'Reflecting the Light' at Venice Whole Foods, honor local communities. 'Into the Blue', painted with studio partner Marybeth Fama, spans 105 feet through time, community, and airflight. His work is within and on the cover of 'Latino Heritage Month Guide Los Angeles. 'I Write Your Name,' a documentary covering his life and work, premieres at Laemmle Theaters in November.
Charles George Martone
Charles Martone is a woodworker drawn to the creative process where art meets tools, techniques, textures and problem solving. His work ranges from furniture to abstract sculptures. Balancing multiple types of projects he is able to surf between precise furniture and the abstract flow of a sculpture. Each piece becomes a tactile exploration between grain, weight and joinery, transforming wood into flow with a unique expressions of form.
Growing up in Colorado, John Mooney first worked in the glass medium at Pomona College, Claremont, California (BA Philosophy '86). He indulged his interests in art classes along with a glass blowing class. The path led to Venice. Apprenticeship for a year, then 10 years full time assisting/blowing glass (Venice/Santa Monica/Inglewood). John founded Moonlight Glass on Hampton Drive, 1996. Since building/turning the glass furnace on he's been improving his craft, exploring ideas, teaching glass class and selling creations in stores /galleries with multiple commissions over the years
Rocky Morton
Rocky Morton is an English-born, American-based artist known for his work as a painter and filmmaker. He attended Southampton School of Art, he later transferred to West Surrey College of Art and Design, where he studied animation. Rocky Morton co-created the character Max Headroom and directed the HBO TV show with his partner Annabel Jankel. Today, Rocky Morton remains dedicated to his artistic pursuits, particularly fine art painting, working from his studio in Venice, California.
Elizabeth Orleans
Elizabeth Orleans, BFA Tulane and MFA CCA, has created hand-built ceramic installations and sculptures in her Venice beach studio since 2008. Elizabeth is interested in breaking boundaries by creating architectural interventions. Her work explores memory, time, growth, and connections while transforming spaces into whimsical worlds. She also teaches Ceramic Social, a weekly class that invites the community to create together.
Gary Palmer
Born in Belfast in 1968, Gary Palmer graduated with a Masters degree in Architecture from the University of Edinburgh, He spent the next few years traveling the world making large scale chalk drawings on city streets. His anamorphic perspective street-paintings have been featured at festivals in Europe, Australia, and the US. Travels in East Africa were the inspiration for ‘Journey to Zanzibar’ - a series of abstract figurative paintings published as a collection of limited edition prints by Fathom Gallery. After living at a meditation retreat near the border to Mexico, his work took a more abstract and contemplative direction. Over the past few years he’s been working on an art retreat project in South of France.
Kayla Witt is a Czech-Canadian painter based in Los Angeles, recognized for her spiritually reflective and symbolically vivid oil paintings. She engages the viewer on a quest to find purpose, physical and spiritual well-being, and self-actualization. Windows, storefronts, and symbols of wellness culture are frequent motifs for the artist, who transforms them into surreal meditations on the marketing of pain and healing. With an interest in Jungian psychology, folk tales, and mythology, Witt transforms the genre of still-life into one that is full of movement, theatricality, and narrative.
Guest Artists
Venice Open Studios is pleased to present the work of distinguished guest artists in a curated group exhibition at Sunset Studios hosted by Kayla Witt, Studio 8.
Amadea Bailey
Amadea Bailey is an expressionist painter working in acrylic, mixed media, collage and drawing. Her large scale paintings are highly textured depictions of inner and outer landscapes and states of mind. Emotionally driven, Bailey’s work is drawn from a vast reservoir of experiences, emotions, dreams and memories.
Fu-Ding Cheng
Fu-Ding Cheng – artist, filmmaker, shaman. His prize-winning films have been exhibited at the Whitney in New York and the Hammer in LA which presented a retrospective of his series, Zen-Tales for the Urban Explorer. Expressing his shamanic perception, his transcendent paintings reveal the energy within objects as well as the beauty of their physical form.
Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez
Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez combines his signature graffiti style with the classical traditions of oil painting and sculpture. He was exposed to the Los Angeles graffiti arts scene and aerosol based mural painting where his family lived in Boyle Heights. His works range in materials using acrylic, ink, pigment on paper wood and canvas to multi dimensional cast and fabricated bronze, with patina and powder-coat. His work has been included in numerous museum and gallery shows over the past twenty years.
Ivo Vergara
Ivo Vergara, aka Ivotopia, is a Chilean-born international visual artist with over 27 years of experience. A founding member of Grupo Azar, he has exhibited across South America and the U.S., including Art Basel Miami, Track 16 Gallery, and the A+D Museum. His large-scale murals include a 10-story waterfall in Downtown LA and Venice Beach Sunset.