OUR 2027 ARTISTS
The Artists of Scottsdale Ranch and our neighboring communities are diverse and unique. Each artist tells a story through their art, whether love of nature, people, places and things, experiences, new and different techniques and materials or just plain whimsy, you are sure to be awed and delighted. The 2027 show will feature the artists shown below. We look forward to seeing you at the show!
Acrylics
Judith Bloom
Acrylics, Director ASR Art Show
Judi has dedicated over 35 years to the cosmetic industry, pouring her heart into her work and truly making a difference in the lives of many. For 20 years, she led a vibrant special events program for a well-respected International beauty brand. Throughout her journey, she has empowered thousands of women, encouraged them to embrace their inner and outer beauty fostering a sense of self confidence and self worth.
After retirement, Judi and her husband made a move to Arizona, where she felt an exciting sense of possibility. There, she unlocked a hidden talent for painting that transformed her life and ignited her passion.
Judi found her voice in painting women and gradually expanded her artistry to include abstract landscapes, florals, animals and many commissioned pieces. She loves creating her pieces and focuses on the details, especially the eyes of her subjects. Her passion for life is reflected in every piece. Her work has been featured in many magazines and an esteemed book of poetry and art, "Living Large".
Six years ago, Judi became the Director of the Artists of Scottsdale Ranch Fine Art Show. She feels honored to lead this amazing show along with their Silent Auction benefiting Tina's Treasures Cancer Care Boutique at HonorHealth. Every year the show grows with new artists and exceeds the fundraising goal for the Silent Auction where 100% of the proceeds is donated to this amazing boutique that caters to women's post surgical needs. Judi's passion is her family, friends, art, the Art Show and Silent Auction and hopes it brings as much happiness, motivation and joy to others as it does to her.
Julieta Hughes
Charcoal & Acrylics on Canvas
Julieta Hughes' work centers on portraiture as a means of connection—between artist and subject, and between technique and emotional presence. Working primarily with oil paint, gold leaf, and fabric‑based mixed media for my paintings, she explores likeness not only as visual accuracy, but as a reflection of memory, personal narrative, and as a vehicle for inner strength, transformation and healing.
Elissa Nowacki
Acrylic on Canvas
Artist Elissa Nowacki enjoys adolescent humor, paranormal romance novels, 80's punk/alt rock and taking over her family's kitchen table to paint. When she isn't assistant principaling at a K-8 public school in Phoenix, she can be found in her tacky pajamas, using art as meditation from the stressors of adulting.
Her formal art education is minimal. She and her exceptionally tolerant husband once enrolled in an evening painting class at Phoenix College, which they affectionately refer to as "marriage counseling." Elissa's family is checkered with interesting artist types. She credits her mother for most of her artistic education.
Elissa is inspired by random things, including but not limited to flowers, skulls, Daleks, and family pets. In addition to painting, she has built wire sculptures, constructed intricate Halloween costumes for her children and made jewelry. She finds joy in paint...but also in clay, hot glue, and glitter.
Fiber Art
Barbara Janson
Fiber Art
The complexity and beauty of Barbara’s work reflect the essence of her heart and heritage. Her quilted landscapes often illustrate the Northwoods of her childhood, the rural countryside of her ancestors and her beloved Sonoran Desert home.
Barb thinks and works like a painter, using bit of appliqued batiks to create depth, dimension and details with hand and machine embroidery, threadplay, thread painting, and ink. She often captures a personal moment in time that has a universal understanding.
Original works by this award-winning fiber artist can be found in private collections from Alaska to Australia.
“The woman who works with her hands only is a laborer
The woman who works with her hands and her heart is a craftswoman. But the woman who works with her hands, her head and her heart is an artist.”
St. Francis of Assisi
Jacki Cohen
Glass Art
Fused-glass artist Jacki Cohen is inspired by vibrant color, bold design, and the crimson sunsets of the Sonoran Desert. She is passionate about living life to its fullest and takes advantage of the majestic Arizona mountains by starting most mornings with a hike or another form of exercise. “The morning is my meditative time,” explains Cohen. “I love being outside and pushing my body to the limit.”
Cohen finds inspiration everywhere from her guided informational path. From the vivid natural scenery surrounding her North Scottsdale studio, to an innovative wardrobe ensemble, to the burgundy splash of a good Cabernet, Cohen’s unique eye for color and design fuels her to re-envision ordinary objects into extraordinary expressions of fused-glass artwork.
“Color is my native language. Glass allows me to translate my vision to the world.”
- Jacki Cohen
Glass Art
Gourds
Jan Downey
Gourd Art
Jan’s love of art began at her childhood kitchen table, where her parents were amazingly tolerant and encouraging of her experimentation in creativity. After a fulfilling career in cultural anthropology, Jan turned to art full time, enjoying pen and ink, scratch art, and gourd art. She works from her home studio, which overlooks the desert and has become a large influence in her art. Jan uses a variety of processes in her gourd art, including pyrography, carving, embedding prickly pear “lace,” beading, building figures with modeling compound, embellishing with natural materials, and layering gourd pieces to build a structure.
“My art is both deeply personal, yet global, drawing on my career as a cultural anthropologist. People everywhere, and throughout all time, have sought to make themselves, their material culture, and their surroundings distinctive and beautiful. I am inspired by the breadth of cultural differences in art expression, and by the extraordinary natural world around me.”
Jewelry & Accessories
April Bower
April Bower is fascinated by the many varied processes involved in metalworking. Her wearable art is executed in Argentium silver, sterling, copper & gold; featuring the metal with textures, and sparingly accented with gem stones.
Specializing in earrings, cuff bracelets, & pendants, she creates extremely wearable jewelry, with contemporary styling.
Bower teaches live and online workshops in Metalsmithing.
Veronique Benoit
Silversmith Artist & Enameling
For over three decades, I worked as an integrative psychotherapist, walking alongside people on their healing journeys. It was soulful, meaningful work—rooted in presence, transformation, and deep human connection.
In 2015, I moved to the U.S., carrying with me a lifetime of experience—but no clear path forward. I found myself in unfamiliar territory, with space to rediscover and reinvent.
It began quietly, with clay beads—small, meditative acts that kept me grounded. The colors, the textures, the rhythm of creation all stirred something deep within me. Then, by sheer chance, I missed a class and was placed in an advanced silversmithing workshop. That “accident” changed everything.
Silversmithing captivated me instantly. I dove in headfirst—immersing myself in workshops, retreats, and every technique I could find. Each new skill was like opening a door to another part of myself. Working with metal, with fire, with the alchemy of transformation—it felt like home.
As someone who had long facilitated inner change, I was now embodying that same energy with my hands. Metal became my new medium for healing.
Color has always spoken to me, and when I discovered enameling, something clicked into place. The soulfulness of color, the strength of silver, the beauty of imperfection—it was the perfect fusion. Enamel gave voice to emotion and instinct in a language beyond words.
Each piece I create tells a story—infused with a message, a feeling, an invitation. My work is both deeply personal and universally resonant, offering moments of reflection, connection, and transformation.
Today, my studio is growing—filled with passion, purpose, and a lifetime of listening. I’m proud to share that my pieces are now featured at the local Fountain Hills gallery, where they continue
to reach others on their own journeys. I work with intention, with love, and with the unwavering belief that transformation is always possible—whether in the psyche or in silver.
Mixed Media
Jim Rapisarda
Metal Artist
Painting is a talent that I discovered later in life. With no formal training, my art has taken many different directions through the years. Much of my early work was reflective of life on Long Island, NY, where I grew up with my family. Seascapes on stone and driftwood provided a variety of interpretive expressions using oils and acrylics.
After moving to Arizona in 1981, this new environment led me to a new direction in my artwork and the mediums that I could use. The use of copper has enabled me to capture desert landscapes and mountains in a unique and often abstract way. Using techniques that were developed for painting on stone, has enabled me to embellish copper in a way that is most interesting and exciting. Copper is a unique painting medium. In addition to its daily use in construction and technology, copper has properties that provide the artist an opportunity use it in a variety of ways.
Life, as in art, presents us with a new view of reality each day. That change in perspective has helped me create new and exciting approaches to use a variety of techniques in new and exciting works.
Leslie Kiefus
Ceramic Sculpture
I am inspired by the feel and shape of objects: textiles, tapestries, textured surfaces, sculpture, sand, and especially perfectly smooth pebbles. My creations started in grade school with sewing just because the fabrics were beautiful, transitioned to Papier-mâché because because the materials were readily available, but since taking a 2010 handbuilding class, I’ve been enamoured with clay.
Clay is a wonderful medium: forgiving, therapeutic, and magically transformed by heat and glaze. For me, sculpting bypasses any purposeful thinking. I visualize a shape, and minutes or hours or days later that shape has manifested in clay; it’s directly eyes to fingers, and it’s magic. Daydreaming is a key part of the process.
Each of my wall pieces is comprised of several parts, and final assembly is often challenging. The entire process, from working with raw clay to installing finished pieces in customers’ homes, is totally fulfilling and more than a bit addictive!
Judith Rothenstein-Putzer
Mixed Media
A Photographer’s Eye With An Artist’s Vision
Scottsdale artist Judith Rothenstein-Putzer has been putting a new spin on her love of photography by creating Alcohol Transfers with Pen and Ink. The mixed media technique she uses is a hybrid between printmaking and photography. The process involves printing an original photograph onto a transparency which is then transferred on to printmaking paper soaked in an alcohol-based solution. Depending upon the concentration of alcohol and the type of printmaking paper, the results vary from the softness of watercolor to the boldness of acrylics. When the transfer is completed, Rothenstein-Putzer enhances the negative space with pen and ink thereby creating dynamic linear and color effects in the artworks.
“Sometimes I take pleasure in capturing the moment for its form or color. Other times, I try to expand the boundaries of reality.”
The artist and her husband have been avid travelers for many years, which to the artist is synonymous with photography (She’s been known to pack more camera equipment than clothes)! Rothenstein-Putzer’s subject matter tends to be very eclectic. She remarks that some of her photos are the typical tourist shots, while others tend toward social commentary. Sometimes she just looks at objects in
everyday life with regard to color, form and space. Those are the ones that are generally the basis for her art. An award-winning artist, she is a juried member of both the Sonoran Arts League and the Arizona Art Alliance.
Sandy Gatlin
Abstract and Mixed Media
As an Art Major in High School and College, life came with priorities, marriage, raising my kids, and a career in the medical world. Now in my retirement years it is the time for creating art.
Pure joy is in a tube of paint. Happiness happens on a finished canvas. Inspired by my father and my son’s incredible art I finally found my joy and my happiness at the end of a Palette knife. Through the use of color, texture, intuition and imagination, I am on my own Abstract journey.
I am living the dream. I am finally doing what my college journey was all about, teaching art, selling art and displaying in a Gallery! I am grateful.
Gulgun (Gigi) Fingerhut
Gigi started painting at a very young age and as an artist wants her own inner-world to be shown and painted on canvas. Her greatest desire has always been to connect with people through beauty and positiveness. Gigi effortlessly blends different mediums together, transitioning between acrylic, crystal beads and lace to create masterpieces of art. She loves to paint beautiful women who not only have style and class but seem to hold a sacred secret.
Gulgun (Gigi) Fingerhut, currently lives in Scottsdale, AZ and frequents Minneapolis, MN. She was classically trained in Turkey at Ankara Devlet Konservatuari. Her works have been exhibited at galleries, festivals, and museums internationally, as well as purchased by private collectors. Today, in the popular contemporary arts, she has developed a major following.
One critic noted, "Gigi's art elicits an immediate emotional response, a moment in time is stopped, a familiar face revealed, the grace and beauty of a body frozen in time. The viewer becomes more that the observer, he/she becomes a participant in the drama unfolding before his eyes.
Mosaic
Kathy Samuels
Mosaic Pots
Kathy is a former High School teacher who fulfilled her lifelong dream of raising two boys. She began the art of mosaic in 1998 when a colleague invited several teachers to learn how to create stained glass windows and to mosaic terra cotta pots. Creating inventive patterns using clay tiles, sea glass, pottery, china, etc.
She began designing pots to be sold at charity auctions. Mexican tile is her preferred resource as the colors and patterns speak to her on her most creative level. Many friends and colleagues have plants potted in their yards and businesses that she has created, a most gratifying sight to see for Kathy!
Oil Painting
Joanna Pregon
Born in Communist Poland, Joanna Pregon immigrated to the United States when she was 12. It took her and her family two years as they crossed national, cultural and linguistic borders negotiating their way through Germany before settling in Connecticut.
Pregon attended Pine Manor College in Massachusetts before her curiosity for the West and a growing desire to do creative work brought her to Arizona. While concluding her studies in graphic design, she realized that painting was her true passion, and has been expressing her creativity and unique vision through art ever since.
Tapping inspiration from her life’s journey, Pregon’s paintings play at the intersections of the natural, physical and dream-state. Her sensual, curvilinear art invites the viewer to cross the border from the external world to the quieter interiors of the self.
Since picking up a paintbrush in 1999, Pregon has shown with galleries throughout the country and sold her art to collectors across the globe. From 2006 to 2009 she was the owner and operator of a gallery in the mountainside town of Jerome,
Arizona.
She has been a four-time guest in the “Little Gallery” at DeGrazia, curating her own one woman shown. In addition to maintaining an active studio practice, she has volunteered her time teaching school-age children, and supporting nonprofit organizations.
Today, she lives and paints in Scottsdale Arizona.
Chris Demma
As a native Arizonian, I am an artist who is inspired by the beauty of the rugged and evocative Sonoran desert landscape and its botanicals. My Oil paintings depict the uniqueness of the many shapes, colors, and forms that exist in the desert. I seek to create works of art pleasing to the eye and intriguing to the mind. I invite you to look and linger at my artistic impressions.
Watercolor
Judy Nelson
Watercolor
I didn't start painting until the ripe old age of 60 years. I had no training but a challenge from a younger sister was bm one I couldn’t resist. Living in Minnesota and Door Co, WI there were plenty of “arti” opportunities to explore, and one day I just said “Today is the day” and signed up for a beginning watercolor class at the local art school and there you have it, an immediate love!
Since then I’ve tried many mediums watercolor being my primary one but love to try many others. It’s never boring and the world is so full of fun and beauty that you never run out of ideas or things to paint. This art show has been great fun and a super outlet for something that started out as a hobby but has turned into a real passion. Enjoy the show this year! Many new things to bring a smile to the day!
Carolyn Wheelock
Watercolor
Carolyn had always “dabbled” in painting, but it wasn’t until her husband’s job was transferred from the Bay Area to Phoenix that she seriously invested herself in art. Now she pursues painting in transparent watercolor and in acrylics with a watercolor feel.
Carolyn’s style is representational but not overly illustrated. She calls her compositions “intimate landscapes” – including such things as patio gates, interesting architectural features, and subjects from plein air outings. At the 2025 ASR Show she is presenting some of her recent watercolor and acrylic paintings.
