Jeff Mermelstein

A photographer with a direct and distinct vision, Jeff Mermelstein can grab your attention and hold you in that one instant of happenstance which everyone else missed. Once described as “an absurdist with a sense of humour” it is easy to connect to “funny humanity” but harder to refine on the dramatic composition and impossible light which seems to recall divine intervention rather than street-style spontaneity. Mermelstein is a bit of a legend in the field with his images appearing in magazines like Life and The New Yorker, and looking at them now, it’s like he’s the narrator in the very best New York novel. (Text from It's Nice That)

Matthias Heiderich

Matthias Heiderich captures the brighter side of Berlin with his cheery, minimal photography. Heiderich focuses on things like vintage roller coasters, murals, and playgrounds making Berlin look more like a doppelgänger of Santa Monica. The compositions are flat and pretty barren, and taken together, they evoke a drugged-out listlessness. Heiderich is self-taught and uses a wide range of camera types including a medium format twin lens camera, Polaroids, and Holgas.

Jazmín Berakha

Jazmín Berakha, a Buenos Aires-based artist, composes delicate embroideries in a simplified style often reserved for drawing. A punch of color and pattern here and there strike the perfect balance with the pencil-thin body outlines. Her subjects are not overwhelmed by pattern, bundling up in one or two distinct articles at a time. Berakha will be exhibiting at Heskin Contemporary in New York City until July 2nd, 2011.

Josh Cochran

Josh Cochran is an illustrator who has lived in Taiwan, Los Angeles, and currently resides in New York where he teaches at Parsons School of Design. In school, he had aspirations of becoming a background painter for DreamWorks, but saw that hand-painted murals were being replaced by digitally printed backdrops. He preferred personal, imaginative work and turned to illustration. His mix of realism with cartoon inspired elements and quirky humor have brought him work from a diverse group of clients for editorial, advertising, books, broadcast, and internet media including Ace Hotel, The Atlantic, Volkswagen, New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Billabong, Sony, and McSweeney's.

Lee Mawdsley

Lee Mawdsley is a London based photographer whose commercial portfolio is packed with quietly engrossing architectural images. He strikes a different chord with his personal work which features kaleidoscopic flower arrangements. Titled "Garlands," the set creates an essence of hedonistic beauty directly taken from the natural environment.

Genevieve Simms

Genevieve Simms was born and raised in Newfoundland. She went west to study art in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and then to NY for a one year program at SVA. She is currently working and living in Edmonton, Alberta. Simms doesn't just illustrate people; They are characters captured in snapshots of their lives. Her latest work is full of saturated colors with bright pops that draw the forefront out of an otherwise flat perspective.

Mercedes Helnwein

Mercedes Helnwein was born in Vienna, Austria, daughter to painter and art provocateur Gottfried Helnwein. She grew up dedicating her time equally to visual arts and literature. At thirteen-years-old, she published a two-page comic for a German woman's-lib magazine. She spent her teenage years drawing and writing in Ireland where she relocated with her family. Later, she moved to Los Angeles where she officially began her career by contributing to a group show hosted by Jason Lee. Despite her success as a visual artist, Helwein continued to write and published her novel in 2008, "The Potential Hazards of Hester Day." Helwein currently lives and works in Los Angeles and Ireland, practicing in a wide range of mediums including oil pastels, paint, graphite, film, and continues writing.

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is a photographer whose work is influenced by nature transformed through industry. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are places outside of our normal experience, yet we have interaction with their output on a daily basis. He sets out to make it difficult for the viewer to ignore our human dependence on nature to provide material for our consumption. The photographs are at once attractive and repulsive, seducing and fear inducing.

Emily Robertson

Emily Robertson is an illustrator living and working in London. She is the co-founder of the artist collective PLATS, through which she has exhibited work in London, Glasgow and Germany. Her work has graced the walls of Marks&Spencers, the pages of Apartamento Magazine, and products of Poketo. It's easily assumed that she is well acquainted with good food considering her work for Marks&Spencer, possibly her most well known client. However, her sketchbook drawings and narrative portraits reveal a deeper world outside of her commissioned work and make her an artist worthy of watching.

Till Hafenbrak

Till Hafenbrak knows how to make the most of a limited palette. The Berlin based designer/illustrator uses unexpected and strongly contrasting colors to create vibrating landscapes of the natural world, often depicting animals and their interactions with humans. He also has a few commissioned works you can view on Flickr.

Margaret Kilgallen

Margaret Kilgallen was a San Francisco Bay Area artist. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement as a painter and a graffiti artist under the tags "Meta" and "Matokie Slaughter." Kilgallen's paintings and murals reflected a variety of influences, including the dying art of hand-painted signs, elements of American folk art, mural painting, and a variety of formal painting strategies. At an early age, she was impressed by examples of works by Southwest and Mexican artists, and she employed these artists' use of warm colors in her own painting. Her works in gouache and acrylic on found paper (often discarded book endpapers) reflect an interest in typographic styles and symbology that can be traced to her work as a book conservator at the San Francisco Public Library in the 90's. She was the wife of artist and collaborator Barry McGee, a graffiti artist known under the moniker "Twist," among others. Kilgallen died in 2001, at age 33, from complications of breast cancer.