Alchemy Art Center

Studio #25

Maria Michaelson
Ceramics, Mixed Media
mariamichaelson.com

Casey Reagan
Ceramic, Watercolor & Ink, Multimedia Assemblage
IG @casey.reagan.creations

Katey Rissi
Printmaking, Textiles, Painting
kateyrissi.com

Cozette Ellis
Ceramics, Painting
cozettee.com

1255 Wold Road

Maria Michaelson - Maria was born and raised on San Juan Island. After Spring Street International School, she received her BA degree in Ceramics from the California College of Art in 2009. Maria spent many years in West Africa learning the craft of bronze casting. In 2016 she was an Artist in Residence at 69 Rue de Rivoli in Paris, and she has participated in the San Juan Island Artist’s Studio Tour most years since 2008. Since 2016, she has been working to create Alchemy Art Center, where her art practice is currently based.

“When something is personal enough it becomes universal. My work is about reaching into my own mythology, and uncovering something that is intrinsic to being alive on this earth. I am illustrating what it means to be part of the human story. My work is about the spirit world, that material world, the emotional world.”

Casey Reagan is a multi-media artist primarily focused on functional and sculptural ceramic, watercolor & ink, and found objects assemblage.

"My watercolor and ink work is part of my devotion to the somatic sensation of "flow". I am exploring how it feels in the body to make organic, textural forms versus realistic sculptural rendering. My multi-media work typically blends raku ceramics, paint, mirrors & the glyph language I created in elementary school. I also like to incorporate found objects which are imbued with nature's beauty: wood, rocks, or plants- whether dry or alive.

My art aims to explore my own reverence for nature's forms, as well as human's relationship to magical folklore, ancient artifacts & high strangeness."

Katey Rissi is a San Juan Island-based printmaker, textile artist and educator. Her work explores themes of ecology, time, and enchantment. She loves the process-based nature of both printmaking and textiles. Her focus is on slow-making practices like analog/anachronistic image-making techniques, mending textiles, and making art materials out of things gathered and grown.

Katey holds a BFA in graphic design from Western Michigan University with a focus in photography and printmaking, and studied screenprinting at the Art Student’s League of Denver. She teaches art classes to both youth and adults, and has worked in program planning, as an elementary school art teacher, and as a teaching artist since 2016. She is currently the class coordinator and print studio manager at Alchemy Art Center, a community art center on San Juan Island.

Cozette Ellis is a ceramicist and illustrator based in the Pacific Northwest. The recurring motifs in her work are the physical body, vining plants and flowers, and memories. Her figures are often contorted and grasping upwards, reaching for something out of sight. Cozette uses her artwork both to transmute grief and invite in joy, as a way to beautify the hard parts of being a person.

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