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Going deep inside the West Bank in Palestine, I was able to see for myself a new generation of Palestinians being raised in “Refugee Camps”. These are brave children, victims of an occupation that they didn’t asked for. They lost their families for the war, and the only thing they have is a “Refugee Camp”.

I took these are pictures at the Refugee Camps in: Beit Sahur, Jenin and Nablus. Despite all the tension and strife these children are being raised in, they are becoming a generation of brave and strong Palestinians. They are defiant, courageous and I love them all. I also discovered and captured some of the exquisite settings near the fantastic Sea of Galilee, including artwork in the streets around the old port of Haifa and the Wall of Shame.

Hairy Tales is part of the series called Beauty Salon. This is a work that explores contradictory ideas about beauty by using the beast/beauty metaphor. I created sculptures that represent pairs of woman’s legs covered with hair. I want to explore the contradictions between the object, woman’s legs and the material used, hairy fabric. By combining unexpected materials and colors I change the natural appearance of objects and forms, raising questions about traditional ideas and cultural patterns about beauty in our society. The objects I create, like toys, try to explain the world in a more playful way.

San Francisco based artist Renée Gertler pays homage to ATA’s artist-in-residence Craig Baldwin by doing a window installation based on his aura. Gertler, a former student of Baldwin’s, took him to have his aura photographed and has used the resulting image as the basis for a sculpture. The piece was inspired by a lecture Baldwin gave on Walter Benjamin’s “Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” The project is a continuation of Gertler’s work, which involves creating architectural models of natural phenomena that don’t have real rigid structures.