Writers

McLean Emenegger

Ms. Emenegger is an art advisor, independent curator, art writer, and visual artist career coach. She launched the art consultancy firm Milo + McLean (milomclean.com) in 2010, and founded McLean Fine Art (mcleanfineart.com) in 2004. As Director of Bandini Art Gallery, Culver City, CA, she curated many of its critically recognized exhibitions. As Executive Director of the Gallery 825/LAAA, Ms. Emenegger presented hundreds of exhibitions and educational programs that received public and critical acclaim. Prior to Gallery 825, she worked at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Her independent curatorial projects have been reviewed in the LA Times, Artweek, Artscene, Review Magazine, on the Huffington Post, among others. Her own art reviews and articles have been featured in multiple publications. Ms. Emenegger has presented her business of art workshops through the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Santa Monica Museum of Art, UCLA Extension, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Santa Monica College, Center for Cultural Innovation, Pasadena City College, among many others. She is also an exhibiting artist.

Tanja M. Laden

Tanja M. Laden is Managing Editor at Flavorpill Los Angeles, a Huffington Post blogger, and a contributor to LA Weekly; The Rundown, and VS. Magazine and Dame Magazine. Tanja has also been published in Flavorwire, Los Angeles Times, Film Threat, Whitehot Magazine, and has worked as a media consultant with 20th Century Fox, MGM, Disney, and NBC. Her video work includes a finalist for Best Animated Music Video at the 2008 California International Animation Festival, and a selection at the 2010 Festival of [In]appropriation, in association with Los Angeles Filmforum. Tanja holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Occidental College and has volunteered as a mentor and associate anthology editor with WriteGirl.

Shana Nys Dambrot

LA Canvas Arts (and Books) Editor Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Los Angeles. Formerly Managing Editor at Flavorpill, she is currently LA Editor for Whitehot Magazine and a regular contributor to the LA Weekly. Her monthly blog, Urban Scrawl, lives at Createfixate.com, and her CV is periodically updated at sndx.net.

Peter Frank

Peter Frank is art critic for the Huffington Post, Associate Editor for Fabrik Magazine, and Adjunct Senior Curator at the Riverside Art Museum. He is former art critic for Angeleno Magazine, the LA Weekly, and the Village Voice, and has served as editor of Visions Art Quarterly and THEmagazine LA. Frank has curated exhibitions for the Guggenheim Museum, documenta, the Biennale di Venezia, and many other institutions and galleries. He has published numerous books and catalogues.

A. Moret

A native Angeleno, A. Moret conjures an investigative spirit in her power with words. Moret is co-founder of Installation Media and Editor in Chief of Installation Magazine. The first agency for the arts, Installation creates original content and images for artists, galleries, and collectors. Moret holds a BA in Mass Communication and Theory from the Annenberg School of Communication and in Art History from USC. Moret is a veteran of the LA Times Magazine and contributes to regional and national publications including Artinfo, Art Scene, Art Works, Art LTD, Flaunt, ForYourArt and Whitehot Magazine.

Sharon J. Yi

Sharon Yi is a Beauty Editor at TotalBeauty.com and also has been published in various newspapers including The Los Feliz Ledger, The Mid City Press, and Hello Milano in Milan, Italy. Having traveled, Yi found to be most at peace in LA. Appreciating the smudges and wildly different interpretations of a single moment, she possibly could have been an impressionist painter in another life. Yi likes to scuba dive, cliff jump and white water raft, though she's never done these things before and is particularly enthralled by the imaginative creatures that live under the sea.

Eve Wood

Eve Wood is both a critic and an artist. She was represented for five years by Western Project and has exhibited her work at Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles Projects, Angles Gallery, The Huntington Beach Museum of Art, The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, etc. Her art criticism has appeared in many magazines including Flash Art, Artnet.com, Tema Celeste, THE, NY Arts, Angelino Magazine, Art Papers, Bridge, ArtUS, Art Papers, Artweek, Latin Arts.com, Art Review and Artillery. She is also the author of five books of poetry and one novel.

Dina Noto

Dina Noto is a writer, animator, plush-maker and all around nerd enthusiast (that is, an enthusiast of both being a nerd, and of other nerds and their nerdy pursuits). A graduate of the Experimental Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, she currently lives in Los Angeles.

Asuka Hisa

Asuka Hisa is Director of Education at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (since 2000), Arts Commissioner for the City of Santa Monica (since 2007), an artist and an arts advocate (always). She is also Board President of the Museum Educators of Southern California (since 2009). She received her BA from Barnard College, New York, and her National Diploma of Plastic Arts from the École des Beaux Arts, France.In 2003, she received the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

Margarita Korol

Margarita Korol is the Founder and Artist President at Urban Pop Art Projects. She functions as an internationally exhibiting artist, publisher of Urban Pop Art Books, graphic designer, promoter, and writer. She is headquartered in both Chicago and New York City.

Shana Nys Dambrot

LA Canvas Arts (and Books) Editor Shana Nys Dambrot is an art critic, curator, and author based in Los Angeles. Formerly Managing Editor at Flavorpill, she is currently LA Editor for Whitehot Magazine and a regular contributor to the LA Weekly. Her monthly blog, Urban Scrawl, lives at Createfixate.com, and her CV is periodically updated at sndx.net.

Johaina Crisostomo

...is working toward her BA in English Literature from Stanford University. Born in the Philippines, she immigrated to the United States when she was eleven, and has been living in Los Angeles ever since. After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in academia, where she can get paid for reading and curling up in obscure corners of the library. Other interests include painting, art history, foreign languages, and the color yellow.

Amalia Levari

...is a writer living in Los Angeles. She splits her time between some parts of Los Angeles and other parts of Los Angeles. "This city isn't really the city it's rumored to be. It's a massive Borgesian aleph," she gracelessly insists, before getting distracted by something with fangs.

Samantha McGirr

...is a senior at Stanford University, majoring in English and minoring in Human Biology. She originally hails from Stockton, California. Her literary interests include modernist poetry, T.S. Eliot, and the intersection of spirituality and literature. This past spring, she completed a tutorial in twentieth-century British poetry at the University of Oxford.

Brendan Sarsfield

Originally from Liverpool in the UK, Brendan Sarsfield is an artist and art educator currently based in Yokohama, Japan. Brendan's professional art practice includes sculptural stone carving, steel fabrication, and site specific work. Since moving to Japan in 2008, he has become increasingly interested in painting and printmaking as a means of visual communication. Brendan has undertaken a broad range of commission and residency work and internationally has artwork in a number of private and public collections. He has been involved in a wide range of group and solo exhibitions primarily showing sculpture, drawing, and printmaking work in the UK and Europe. In Japan he has participated in a group exhibition in Tokyo and is currently exhibiting as one of the 2010 selected artists from Japan at the 30th Mini-Print International of Cadaques, Barcelona.

Kanyapak Wuttara

Kanyapak Wuttara is a senior at the University of Oregon in their Journalism program. Born in Bangkok, she had spent time in Bergen, Norway and most of her teenage years in Perth, Western Australia after her parents sent her to an all-girls boarding school. She plans to return to Thailand post-graduation.

Ali Memarian

Ali Memarian is a writer and musician. He has an MA in Musicology from Claremont Graduate University and is currently working toward his PhD. He is also the in-house Music Supervisor for Barefoot Music, an independent company that produces music and provides audio services for television. Their work is featured on shows such as Project Runway, Real Housewives of Orange County/New York, and the Top Chef series. In his free time, Ali enjoys composing music, working on various writing projects and hanging out with the two special ladies in his life: his cat Augusta and his fiancé, Heather.

Meg Flynn

M. Flynn is a US citizen. She was born, raised and formally educated in the Midwest; has traveled briefly in France and Italy. She obtained a B.F.A. in ceramics from Kansas City Art Institute, fol- lowing graduation, Flynn lived and worked in rural Southwestern Virginia, where she taught in various colleges and was active within Stick to Your Guns Contemporary Art Group until 2006 when she moved to Southern California. During her first years in Los Angeles, distributers of Precious Metal Clay employed her to promote the material and provide technical support to customers. In 2007 she commenced formal study of Qigong (the energetic branch of Chinese Medicine) at AIMC, Berkeley. Since undertaking the latter, Flynn's external art practice alludes to her internal art practice, and vice verse.

Phil Schillaci Kropoth

Phil Schillaci Kropoth is a bicoastal writer and photographer who has split his creative energies between Venice Beach and Manhattan. The Los Angeles Times has published his work, as has New York Daily News, amNewYork, Newsday.com, and The Villager. He has landed gigs with Flavorpill and Flavorwire.com. He turns to writing to communicate, and photography to look inward.