Linda Behar studied photography, blacksmithing, bronze and glass casting at such renowned institutions as the Pilchuck Glass School outside Seattle and the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. She has exhibited in some three dozen national juried shows, museums, and prestigious galleries in her native Venezuela as well as in Puerto Rico and in Michigan, North Carolina and Florida.

Born in El Salvador in 1976, Santiago Beltran-Valladares studied at the University of El Salvador, the Centro Nacional de Artes (CENAR) and Guzman Museum in El Salvador. His work was juried into the 2002 and 2004 National Biennials of El Salvador and was recognized with awards in juried exhibitions at BANCASA, the National Bank of Construction and Saving, as well as in two of the CLIC Foundation’s Palmares Diplomat juried exhibitions.

Michelle Concepción has exhibited in dozens of prestigious public and private galleries and major art fairs in Barcelona, Chicago, Frankfurt, Miami, New York, and Santa Fe. She received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago after having studied at the Design Academy in Offenbach, Germany, and at the University of Barcelona.

Hugo Crosthwaite’s most recent honor is to be included in the VII FEMSA Biennial of Painting, Sculpture, and Installation, opening Nov. 10 at the Centro de las Artes in Monterrey, Mexico. A native of Tijuana, he graduated from San Diego State University before having one-person exhibitions in Mexico, California, and at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries. He also has participated in group exhibitions at the Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum in Mexico City, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the Hispanic Museum of Nevada in Las Vegas, and the State Foundation for Culture and Arts in Mexicali, Mexico.

Juan Roberto Diago has held one-person shows since 1990 in major galleries and art expositions in his native Havana, New York City, and Miami as well as in Argentina, Canada, Chile, France, Norway, Monaco and Spain. He also has participated in group exhibits since 1987 in major venues such as FIAC, Paris; ARCO, Madrid; and FIAC, Viña del Mar, Chile. He studied at the San Alejandro National Academy of Arts in Cuba.

Born in Bogotá, Guillermo Londoño studied drawing with José Luis Cuevas in Mexico before being awarded his Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987. Since then he has held more than a dozen solo exhibitions in top galleries in Tokyo and Berlin as well as the U.S. and Latin America, and been included in 14 group shows in Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and the United States.

Ivan Rickenmann, also from Bogotá, studied in the fabled studio of David Manzur in his home town before being awarded a degree from l’Ecole Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. He has held one-person exhibitions in New York, Paris, Zürich, and Bogotá and has participated in important group shows in this country, Colombia, Brussels, and New York.

Still lifes by Edgar Soberón often are more concerned with an underlying structure or concept about space, color or form than the actual subject matter. Still life, the artist feels, is “the most abstract form of realism one can practice.” Because it is both formal and anchored to reality, “bridging the gap between traditional illusionistic space and flat modern abstract space,” Soberón asserts that still life “is the quintessential modernist genre, free from narrative and linked to reality by way of form.”