2018 Artists

Elaine Unell

Elaine Unell, a retired teacher, has been enjoying playing with clay for the last 12 years.  Exploring this medium over these years, she has been developing her skills in creating functional and sculptural pottery. In her more recent work, she has leaned toward glazing the functional pieces with brighter colors and creating whimsical characters.  The sculptural pieces feature elderly characters as “Story Tellers,” a “Men”orah and a “Women”orah.

Sandra Illian

After a successful business career, Sandi decided to focus on what she loved. After taking a Tapestry Weaving class recently, she fell in love with this artistic expression. Sandi has been experimenting with various types of fiber art, adding beads and embellishments to create one-of-a-kind weavings.  She found that weaving is a versatile, free-flowing art form that combines design, color and texture.

Fabric by Berta

Goldgaber’s Judaica items include Jewish and general quilts, challah covers, chuppahs and other specialty items, in a wide range of innovative designs. For specialty pieces, Goldgaber is in high demand for personal quilts or items for bar- and bat-mitzvahs or weddings.

Blue Heart Art

Christine Ortbals is a glass artist. Her inspiration begins with things that catch her eye in everyday life. Bright colors and patterns in textiles are reflected in her work.  Challenging artistic limits are seen in her functional and decorative pieces.

Aura Kavaldo

Aura Kavadlo, designer of Pomegranates & Honey Jewelry, specializes in Jewish-themed, soulful pieces that elevate the everyday. She wants to make the world a better place, one bead at a time.

Jeffrey Sass

Jeffrey’s creates beautiful jewelry with hand forged copper jewelry and semi-precious stones.

Jonah Lieberman

Jonah’s jewelry incorporates rare and unique stones from all over the world.

Rachel Zolotov

Thousands of seed pearls and fine gemstones are hand strung with silk thread into intricately woven necklaces and bracelets. Inspired by the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, Rachel incorporates re-purposed antique centerpieces to create a trendy yet timeless look.

Randi Chervitz

Randi’s handmade jewelry consists of silver, gold, gemstones and pearls.

Edo Rosenblith

Edo was born in Tel Aviv and spent most of his life in the United States. He has exhibited throughout St. Louis, at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, The Mildred Lane Kemper Art, and most recently at COCA with a community-collaborative mural. In 2011, Rosenblith began a blog: http://edosdrawingeveryday.tumblr.com posting one page from his sketchbook every day for two years. These sketches became the content of his first book, PINK, published by Fort Gondo Press in 2013.

Moshe Monzon Gallery

Moshe and his wife Goldie live and work in Israel. Moshe has been devoted to making tapestries, Judaica, blessing, gicle’e, painting, and jewelry. His works have been displayed all over the world.

Cadence Hodes

Cadence first started painting vinyl records when she was a college student living in New Orleans in the summer of 2013.  She always loved art as a kid and considered herself to be a creative person, but hadn’t thought to create anything in years.  It was fate that a few factors aligned that summer and inspired me to start this journey.  After a roommate moved out and left behind some vinyl records, Cady had the idea of using the records as a canvas. She bought a set of paints from Home Depot and started experimenting.

As she continued to practice and play with different colors and patterns, friends and family started to inquire about buying her work. She took the leap and turned her hobby into a business.  In another act of fate, her first name lends itself quite nicely to the musical theme of her artwork. Thus, CadenceVinyls was born.

Jasmine Raskas

Her work is acrylic on stretched canvas finished with gloss varnish. Mixed media pieces include found images and diagrams primarily from textbooks.

Her art straddles between the abstract and surreal. The images emerge alongside the study of life’s patterns, both physical and spiritual in nature. She strives to create images outside the context of size, culture and time.

Mark Koritz

Utilizing the unique characteristics of each piece of wood he strives to excite the mind and imagination with the pieces that he has developed. Each piece has a voice (spirit) that forms the final piece, allowing the viewer to see the work and possibilities in their own way. The spirit of each piece is tied to this concept allowing for multiple readings of the work.

Mark Schatz

Mark has been an artist and educator for over 40 years, holding degrees from the University of Missouri-Columbia, the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Chicago and the Rochester Institute of Technology. After a 30-year career teaching studio art and art history in the Wentzville, Missouri school district, he currently teaches at St. Charles Community College and Maryville University, usually spending the summers teaching in Europe. He lives outside St. Louis where he works on genre paintings inspired by quiet observation.

Diane Freyman

Diane specializes in watercolor, oil, mixed- media on board.

Sandi Shapiro

Sandi has been painting for many years. Her abstract oil paintings have been seen on murals, furniture, and canvas.

Tsila Schwartz

Tsila Schwartz—known as the Ketubah Lady— is a native of Jerusalem who makes her home in St. Louis. She is a Jewish calligrapher and folk artist who specializes in traditional Jewish ceremonial texts. These include ketubahs (Jewish wedding contracts), illuminated certificates, amulets, tallitot (prayer shawls) and Torah covers. She designed the Torah covers for Brit Shalom Knesset Israel (now Kol Rinah). She also designed the logo for the national Jewish CAJE conference. She also designed birth certificates and many certificates of appreciation for the synagogues of St. Louis. She is best-known for her exceptionally beautiful ketubahs.

David Coblitz

David specializes in fine art photographs including serene scenes designed to provide stress relief based upon research into medical facility design as well as St. Louis scenes.

Cakes Metal Whimsies

Cake’s is known for their CNC Plasma Cut Wall Art, ornaments, custom company logos, signs and home decor.

Weld Made Artworks

Jessie creates sculptures that can be physically turned and as a result, can be viewed with a new perspective. A theme in her work is metal that is curved. Often geometric shapes, as well as other shapes, are rolled and then welded. With each sculpture, she begins with a certain concept that often takes a new direction during the creation process.

Hand Turned Judaica

Sam Zitin dabbles in woodworking from small crafts to furniture making, but most of his work is produced by woodturning on a lathe.  The raw wood is mounted and turned at over 2000 rpms where it is then carved, shaped, sanded and polished with a variety of hand tools.  All my work is shaped by hand and every piece is one of a kind.  He employs a variety of finishes from food-safe mineral oil for honey dippers to painstakingly polished acrylic coatings for his pens.

Motek Jewelry

Bar Rodin’s connection to jewelry and creativity has its roots going all the way back to Israel, where she was born and raised.  About 20 years ago she moved from Israel to St. Louis but still travels to Israel bi-annually.  In 2015, she realized that she had a creative passion to design and create jewelry, which I began doing and selling at lower price points than the pieces that I imported.  Motek’s mission soon became to create Israeli-inspired, spiritual and creative jewelry and bring it to the US market at affordable prices.  All of the fashion jewelry is 22-24K gold plated, .925 silver plated and rhodium plated.  The higher ended jewelry is gold-filled, pure sterling silver and rhodium that can get wet and won’t tarnish.

Benjamin Lowder

Benjamin Lowder is an artist showing work comprised of geometrically arranged reclaimed wood and vintage metal signage. Lowder is a creative consultant for the Center for Spirituality and Sustainability housed in a Buckminster Fuller-designed geodesic dome on the SIUE campus. Lowder also serves on the board of the Fuller Dome Home historic site in Carbondale Illinois which is the house that Bucky lived in while teaching at SIU.

Nina Miller

Nina Schatzkamer Miller makes brightly colored kiln fired glass art. Sheets of glass are cut, shaped and fired in her home studio kiln and made into many different objects. Most of it is functional art such as platters, bowls and plates; some is wearable, such as jewelry and hair accessories; other pieces are purely decorative or whimsical.

Marian Steen

Marian Steen has been a professional artist all her life. She has several series that she works on and displays simultaneously. They are mostly abstract paintings, dominated by watercolor and inspired by nature. Her Passage Series and Quilt Series have much collage incorporated into them. She has also been accepted into the prestigious Clayton Art Fair each of the 22 years the show has existed.

Gary Kodner

Gary works as a commercial graphic designer, as well as a fine artist. The paintings he is displaying at Sababa represent work created from February 2018 to October 2018. They are acrylic paints on canvas board. This first series of paintings depict baseball greats who have worn the St. Louis Cardinals uniform. His goal is to achieve an accurate, but modified realism, and to honor my favorite figures who have had significant impact on Cardinals baseball history. He paints from photographs and a vast catalog of Cardinals uniforms and graphics that he has researched and illustrated over his 36-year association with the Cardinals as a creative consultant.

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