A hallway full of vintage cameras Following a professional career in martial arts (and several broken bones), Tom Callos is pursuing a quieter calling in relief print making. This form of print making requires carving into linoleum, vinyl, and wood surfaces, inking that surface, and pressing paper to it to produce a printed image. “I like paper. Paper attracts me.” “I like people.” Portraiture gave him the opportunity to work with people, research the lives of interesting people and recreate them. With a background in performing martial arts — with comedy — around the world, in tv and movi ..read more

Filip Vogelpohl sits on a stool facing his workbench filled with collections of glass tubes, small handheld tools, some piles of broken glass and some burnt papers. As he notices me taking video of the burnt invoices, he says, “yeah that just happened the other day. That’s a very rare occurrence.” Filip Vogelpohl examines a hole he just made in an olive oil bottle he is making. Papers catching fire might be rare, but hearing glass shatter in the studio is pretty common for glass blowers, an unfortunate byproduct of spending so many hours working with such a fragile material. A pile of broken ..read more

Tactile Studios is tucked amongst a park of Garden City storage units. This single storage unit serves a conglomeration of artists, the largest space belonging to Ace Zappa. The name of the studio is apt considering Ace’s background in sewing. She has recently reconnected with her long-standing interest in fiber-based work, experimenting with small patchwork quilting and larger crochet sculptures—two of which were part of recent exhibitions at the Idaho Botanical Garden. Currently she’s exploring ways to combine her love of fiber with her painting. Ace gathers and accepts donations of materia ..read more

Grove Street Illuminated - Downtown Boise What is your primary medium? That's really difficult to answer. I work in a little bit of everything. I have worked in printmaking and sculpture, so materials of all kinds for that. But really over the course of the last, I would say, 10 years I've focused in on glass, kiln formed glass. So that's a serious interest. But I would say that I work in a lot of different materials. What got you interested in doing art? That's another difficult question to answer. I feel like I've tried to answer that question my whole life, but there's really, I think o ..read more

Examples of Roxy’s illustration What's your primary medium? Well, I like to use alcohol markers a lot. Ink and gouache when I create more intricate pieces that I sell. That's my main medium, but I also like to spray paint. That's mostly my own personal enjoyment. I like to experiment with it a lot and feel like it's a lot more free than those really nitty gritty mediums. I don't know. How long have you been doing art? The answer is, you know, I've been doing it since I was a kid, but I started taking it pretty seriously when I was in eighth or seventh grade. I got a sketchbook and I was lik ..read more

Enameled panels in John’s backyard What is your primary medium?  What I'm known for is enameling. Worldwide. How long have you been doing enamel? I began in 1974. It was a competition to do a piece on the exterior of the Boise Art Museum and surprisingly, I won the commission to do it. I proposed to do it in the automotive enamel they put on cars, which is paint. I thought, “Well, it'll last a while.” Harold Balazs was one of the judges from the Spokane area. He was an analyst and sculptor and there were two other judges. They chose me based on my little airbrush example. He said a bet ..read more

One of Ben’s award winning examples What is your primary medium? So technically, it's mixed media. Most of my end products are digital. But I always start out with a pencil under drawing. And I do digital line work in procreate, and I color in Photoshop, and I animate in Photoshop and After Effects. So it's kind of a broad range of things. So that's why I say mixed media. How long have you been working in art? Yeah. So I mean, I've been drawing and illustrating since I was a kid. But I got serious about it and started leaning into more professional illustration work about five years ago. Wh ..read more

A Front Window Example of Zion’s Work What is your primary medium? Blown glass How long have you been working with glass? I've been doing glass about 25 years full time now. What got you Interested in it? I used to do pottery and I actually wanted to be a pottery teacher. I went to Seattle to take a glass blowing class for six weeks and have been doing it ever since.  What made you set up shop in Garden City? I just saw the building and it was for rent and I was looking for a more commercial place. I was up in the mountains for about 10 years so it kind of seemed like a good location ..read more

What is your primary medium? This is a fully functional mosaic workshop where 40 hours a week we crank out mosaics and products that incorporate mosaic. What got you interested in working with mosaic? I actually did an apprenticeship. I had worked in tile before so I had a background in tilework after I graduated from college. I did an apprenticeship that focused on wet application tile, so showers and tubs and pools and water features, fountains, things like that. But initially, as I think about it now, when I was living in Missoula, how I got turned onto it was by a guy who had a lodgepole ..read more

What is your primary medium? Well, obviously neon. But I do other things too, some porcelain enamel, which is basically powdered glass melted on to steel or copper, but mostly neon. What got you interested in working with neon? Well, I'd always loved working with glass. They had a nice program at College of Idaho where I attended. But many years later I saw an ad in the Idaho Statesman for an apprentice, and I was sick and tired of what I was doing. So I answered the ad and I fibbed a little bit and said Oh, I know all about neon. They hired me. Is it complex to work with gases and glass? It ..read more