San Diego Fine Art Society (SDFAS) is proud to announce that artist mentee Dani Dodge has been selected as a featured artist for the 2010 Mission Federal ArtWalk. ArtWalk, San Diego’s largest and best-known art festival, is celebrating its 25th anniversary on April 24 and 25, 2010, in Little Italy.
San Diego, CA, January 22, 2010 — San Diego Fine Art Society (SDFAS) is proud to announce that artist mentee Dani Dodge has been selected as a featured artist for the 2010 Mission Federal ArtWalk. ArtWalk, San Diego’s largest and best-known art festival, is celebrating its 25th anniversary on April 24 and 25, 2010, in Little Italy.
Dodge, a former reporter and editor with The San Diego Union-Tribune, began telling her stories in paint in 2004 after covering the war in Iraq.
Three months ago, she was invited to be part of the SDFAS mentorship program for midcareer artists. SDFAS is a nonprofit organization founded by April Game to strengthen the pulse of the art community through education and collaboration. The Society has retained Yoram Gil as the mentor to help artists like Dodge move forward in their careers.
“The San Diego Fine Art Society’s mentor program has given me the support and confidence I need to move my art in a new direction,” Dodge said. “The subways and crowds I experienced on a recent trip to New York City provided fodder for me to produce more powerful images on canvas. These images are the stories of intimate moments and human emotions. Encouragement from Yoram and April was instrumental in this new series of paintings, which will be introduced at ArtWalk.”
Dodge will be one of more than 300 artists exhibiting at ArtWalk. This is her third year showing at the festival.
“ArtWalk is an important event for the community and Dani being chosen as a featured artist speaks for the quality of this festival,” said April Game, SDFAS founding executive director. “Dani’s work has tremendous depth. Being chosen means that the organizers have seen the quality of her work and feel this is the level of quality they want to represent the festival.”
As a journalist, Dodge covered the invasion of Iraq and was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team recognized for coverage of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a Rancho Santa Fe congressman who ended up in prison after accepting bribes. Now, she tells her stories in paint.
Dodge saw the devastation of landscapes and the degradation of humanity as a reporter embedded with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. After she returned to the states, she found her primary medium, words, weren’t enough. She turned to art. Her work explores the beautiful in the tragic, the remarkable in the mundane, the feeling within the form. She seeks to see beyond the objects and objectivity. To find the elusive truth of the human soul by painting outside the lines.
Dodge started in watercolor but now often works in layers – acrylic paint over crayon and ink drawing over spray-painted poetry over collaged ephemera such as maps – to express the complexity of her primary subject – the searching soul. She is drawn to the human form, its structure, elegance, and inability to hide meaning. Her works often depict a solitary female figure, painted in a raw, textural manner that challenges the viewer to find the story in their own hearts.
Since 2004, Dani has sought out master artists and teachers to help her develop the drawing, painting and composing skills she needed to tell her stories without words. She learned in workshops and by following her gut outside the boundaries of tradition. Her paintings have been widely recognized and celebrated for their unique perspective. Her work has been included in international, national and regional juried shows. In 2009 alone, she won 15 awards including Best of Show in the Bonita Museum’s annual fine art exhibit, a People’s Choice Award at the San Diego County Fair, two first-place awards and three second-place awards around the county.
Currently, Dodge is a participating mentee in the SDFAS Artist Mentor Program, designed to empower artists to reach their dreams. Through this program, artists discover what is blocking them from success, learn to understand where their art falls among their peers’ in the marketplace, bond with fellow artists in weekly studio sessions, and move ahead with focused tasks that get them closer to their goals.
According to Jon Vencil, evaluation consultant for Nonprofit Management Solutions, there is no comparable program like it in the country. After following the Program for the first three months, Vencil concluded that “it has the potential to set the standard for mentor-based art programs in the country.”
The program is facilitated by Yoram Gil, an artist with more than 35 years experience as a gallery owner. Gil, who has coached artists in Los Angeles and abroad, is an experienced, no-nonsense mentor who drives artists to excel.
Through education and collaboration, SDFAS is removing barriers and building bridges throughout the San Diego art community, helping San Diego to reach its potential as a top arts destination in the country. The organization also produces Art Pulse TV, revealing the passion and the people behind the art.
For more information about SDFAS, please visit www.sdfas.org or call 858-205-4354.
To learn more about Dani Dodge and see her work, please visit www.danidodge.com or call 619-997-0725.
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